Robbie watched Neri as she hugged her side pillow. She was fast asleep in her sleeveless and shorts; he thought, she was really attractive and that he should go.
Neri wouldn't want him to leave as much as he wanted to stay. It had seemed that Robbie's place can only be with her or in the white place. Right now, the latter was calling for him now; telling him to go home.
Robbie gazed at his girlfriend for the last time that evening. Her long carrot-brown hair had framed her heart-shaped face nicely, better when she have it in a loose bun. Her lips were partly open, inviting for a kiss.
A kiss?
Robbie smiled at the idea. Touching Neri's arm and hand had been possible. It wasn't totally feeling her skin but the energy over it. Holding her was like moving his hand in a really low electric current. He wondered if kissing her would be like Julian throwing him on the wall in full force.
Robbie pushed the latter thought and concentrated with Neri's lips as something wonderful. Still... what can be their future together? The love between the living and the dead?
Watching Neri as she pulled her sheet to cover her legs, reflexively; he imagined himself suddenly being snatched up by the angels from heaven, leaving her alone and lonely with his business on Earth finished. Neri will be alone again.
And then a much more worst scenario of Robbie staying forever and Neri getting old without any children to take care of her.
It will be just him, an invisible lover. Neri would be accused being mentally ill because of him. And her life will be miserable. Robbie wouldn't want Neri to suffer. What can he do?
Disappear as soon as possible? Robbie's own suggestion was like taking a bitter pill. Something he'll want to regret. But if he wants Neri to have a better, ordinary life, he should let her go and have her fall in love for someone more alive.
Ordinary life? He wondered if he had one and sighed, he couldn't remember!
Neri would leave her light open; Robbie switched it off before dissolving into the air. He materialized in a foggy, white place. His place.
It was still the same. White and empty. Just him and the fog.
Robbie would appear in the place surrounded by white flimsy mists. He would just stand there, marveling if he was actually in a limbo because heaven would require angels and God. But if he was in a limbo, shouldn't he see lost souls like himself?
The mists would soon gather and thicken. Then the sound of a steady rhythm like a memory of his own heartbeat. It would be nauseating; he would have to leave.
Time in the white place wasn't as the same as the Neri's world. A minute spend there would be an hour in the world of the living. His girlfriend will be waiting for him having breakfast if he would choose to go after nine minutes. Neri will wake up from her nine hours of sleep. Robbie would remain awake for all eternity. Indeed no sleep for a ghost.
Thud... thud... thud!
He considered Julian who had been imprisoned in the Jones' house for years. There wasn't the privilege of rest for the ghost, as well. Robbie thought, Julian must be really, really tired.
Thud... thud!
The fog had invaded the whole place, nothing to see... just white. Robbie found himself roaming the area; his temples pulsing because of the drumming sound, vibrating into his mind. He should had gone for Neri but he realized, he must finally face that horrible sound. Groping for the wall hidden within the mist, he found a door knob and turned.
Robbie's jaw dropped.
He discovered a person looking very much like himself in a white room with an apparatus and tubes hook up to him. The patient was lying in a hospital bed, unconscious. His curly hair much longer and messy. He'd grown a thin mustache, tiny stubble around his jawline had made him haggard. He looked very frail and pale. A respirator was attached over his nose and mouth for him to breathe. His chest was heaving steadily under the green hospital dress he was garbed with.
Robbie realized, it was the person's heart that he was hearing. And the person was actually him... still alive -!
But what happened to him? Is he in a coma -?
The door opened behind Robbie and a figure in grey PPE, entered the room. He started checking the apparatus and the tubes attached to Robbie's living body. A chart was lying on a chair beside his bed; the hospital staff had picked it up and wrote something on it.
"Just hang in there." The person in grey PPE wasn't a man but a woman. "You're going to make it."
And Robbie recognized her voice as the doctor they'd encountered in a hospital at Lucena city. Doctor Zoila!
Her next words shook him the most, "You are going to live, Tobias. Stay strong."
Tobias? His real name is Tobias?