Wild Is The Wind

The song was 'Wild is the Wind' -- the Nina Simone version. It had been what? Forty years since she last heard it?

But sure as the living walk the Earth, that's what was playing. Ringing far away in Ania's ears, in echoes travelling the long, dusty halls of the abandoned hospital.

She came by every day (after midnight, obviously). Never ran into anyone.

But tonight there was someone -- and they were listening to music.

And not just any music. It’s that song.

Slow step by slow step, Ania delved deeper down the hallway – the music growing louder and louder as she walked.

Love me love me, say you do.

Her room was 193. The room she visited every day. It wasn't far. Ania kept walking. The music went on – a soft piano paving the way for Nina's words.

Let me fly away with you.

Past room 180. 182. 184. As she went by, Ania peeked through the half-opened, half-destroyed doors into the ruins of the rooms. Beds with no mattress. Wooden closets tumbled to the ground. The ghosts of so many people who died and got better and were born there seem to peek right back at her.

For my love is like the wind.

Who could be listening to music at an abandoned hospital at 2 in morning? And why that song?

And wild is the wind.

188.

191.

192.

Ania stopped right before the open door of room 193. That was where the music was coming from.

Why is someone listening to Nina Simone in the room I died in?

She was about to take the final step when the shadow cast itself on the floor. Coming right from inside the room, a cut of black against the triangular shaped moonlight spread from the open door onto the hallway. A human shape. A person, moving back and forth, one hand raised in the air at chest high to the side, knees bending slightly, up and down with each step.

Dancing.

Give me more than one caress. Satisfy this hunger.

Ania frowned. She took the last step and looked through the door, and involuntarily brought her hand to her mouth.

"Ed…"

The man stopped. He turned the green eyes Ania knew so well and for so long towards her, and his mouth opened too.

He was old -- forty years older than the last time she saw him -- but it was him. Unmistakably him.

"Ania."

She stepped in.

Let the wind blow through your heart.

"What – what is –"

Ed swallowed. His eyebrows were bent down, his eyes growing watery. His breathing fast like giving birth.

"Calm down. You look like you've seen a ghost," Ania said, quietly.

For wild is the wind.

Ania stepped closer. "You come here every day too?"

"You're dead," Ed whispered.

"So?," Ania replied. "That just means I shouldn't bother the living. It doesn't mean I can't come back to the room I died in. The room I saw you for the last time. I just have to wait until after midnight, so no one sees me."

"But... how?" Ed whispered. "How are you here? I don't --"

Ania put her finger on Ed's lips. She pulled his body close to hers.

You touch me. I hear the sound of mandolins.

"You know, this is really against afterlife regulations," she said, with a smirk. "I could really get in trouble, up there."

Ed didn't answer. Ania rested her cheek on his shoulder.

She thought back on their first date – the party at Irene Jackson's house, where he asked her to dance at the very end of the party, after all the upbeat songs had played and most people were gone and Irene's mother had put the Nina Simone record to try and bore away the few kids still left.

She had asked him, years later, "Why didn't you ask me to dance before? When all the happy songs were on?"

And he had said that he wanted to dance a slow dance with her, so they could be closer together.

(And she had said 'Bullshit, how did you even know they were gonna play slow songs?' and he had said 'Yeah, I was just not drunk enough until the very end to have the guts').

And then Ania thought back on their last day together – inside that very room, when – despite the doctors vehemently disapproving the idea – Ed had brought their son's iPod, plugged one phone to her ear, one to his and pulled her out of bed for a last ‘Wild is the Wind’ dance.

Well... second to last, now.

Ed sighed. "Am I imagining this?" he asked, in a weak voice. "Have I gone crazy?"

Her head against Ed's shoulder, Ania smiled. They waved around the room, left and right, left and right, slow like dying before your time.

You kiss me. With your kiss my life begins.

"Does it matter?" she whispered in his ear. Ed pulled his face back, looking down into her eyes the same way he looked into her eyes at Irene's party.

Ania closed her eyes and waited for his kiss. Just like at Irene's party.

For wild is the wind.