Free What a Ghoul Wants by Victoria Laurie

man with gleaming white
     teeth dressed in a blue jacket with a red patch on the arm smiled down at me. “Nice
     to have you back in the land of the living,” he said jovially.
    I nearly smiled in return, but then the memory of what’d happened barreled into my
     thoughts. “Heath!”
    My voice sounded muffled and it was a moment before I realized my mouth and nose were
     covered by an oxygen mask.
    The paramedic looked quizzically at me as he laid a calming hand on my shoulder. “Lie
     still, please.”
    I ignored him, struggling to sit up, but I was covered in several blankets and was
     frankly too weak to get very far. “My boyfriend!” I said to him, pleading for him
     to tell me that Heath was okay. But then I remembered Heath’s blue face as it emerged
     from the water, and the fact that he hadn’t been breathing, and then. . . that I had
     let go of him at the end.
    “He’s in the other ambulance,” the paramedic said. “We sent him ahead of you. He should
     beat us to hospital by several minutes, I believe.”
    I blinked back the tears that had suddenly clouded my vision. It took me a moment
     to take in what the paramedic said. Heath was in an ambulance. He’d gone ahead of
     me to the hospital. They wouldn’t have taken him there if there hadn’t been a chance
     that he could be revived, right?
    “He wasn’t breathing,” I whispered while the kindly paramedic jotted down some notes
     onto a clipboard he’d just picked up.
    He looked at me then, and I saw sympathy in his eyes. “I think they got him back right
     after we pulled up,” he told me.
    My lower lip quivered and for a minute I couldn’t speak. A few years earlier I’d pulled
     another boyfriend out of the water after he’d almost drowned too, and I didn’t know
     if I could be that lucky to have two lovers survive such similar near-death experiences.
    The paramedic set aside his clipboard and took my hand in his, squeezing it to let
     me know he cared. “There, there, miss. Not to worry. We’ve got one of the best hospitals
     in all of Wales just a few kilometers from Kidwellah. They’ll take such good care
     of you, you’ll feel like you’re on holiday.”
    I swallowed hard and shivered under the blankets. I wasn’t going to panic until I
     got some sort of official word that there was a need to worry. Heath was young, strong,
     and in amazingly good physical shape. He’d come back. I knew it.
    As my fears subsided, I seemed to sink into the cold, however, and my thoughts became
     foggy. It was almost as if once the adrenaline had worn off, I stopped being able
     to think clearly. I shivered and shivered, and the man attending to me put on another
     blanket. “I know you’re probably freezing,” he said. “Just a few more minutes and
     we’ll be able to warm you back up.”
    I nodded dully but I could feel my lids blink heavily. I wanted to drift back off
     to sleep.
    “Stay awake, miss,” the paramedic commanded. My eyes snapped open again, but it was
     hard to fight the crushing fatigue. To help me stay awake the paramedic began to ask
     me questions. What was my name? Where was I from? How old was I? What was my birthday?
    My answers were difficult to form, both in my brain and as I spoke them. Nothing wanted
     to cooperate, not my mind and not my body.
    At last the ambulance slowed and made a tight left turn. As we straightened out, the
     siren cut off. A moment later we stopped and the doors were flung open.
    My personal information and my vitals were rattled off and I had a thought that the
     paramedic had said I was from New York, which was wrong, I knew, but my brain was
     even more fuzzy now and I was even less able to form coherent thought.
    The stretcher I was lying on was quickly wheeled through the brightly lit corridors.
     I watched the fluorescent lights scroll by, too weary to pick my head up and far too
     cold to do more than just lie there and shiver violently.
    At last we came to a row of curtains