Unclean Spirit Read Free

all right?"
                  Starr watched as the flight attendant leaned toward her and directly through the image of her father, an image that was slowly fading away. Starr's throat was incredibly dry and her skin felt clammy.
                  "Miss?"
                  "What? What did you say?"
                  "I asked if anything is wrong. You look like you've just seen a ghost!"
                  "God, I hope not!"
                  "Excuse me?"
                  "I'm sorry. It's nothing, I guess I was dreaming. Listen, I could sure use a scotch and water...scotch for me and water for my cat."
                  "Jesus H. Christ," Starr whispered to Penelope, "what's going on?"
                  Penelope responded with a sharp "meow, meow," and Starr noted that despite the light in the cabin Pen's pupils were fully dilated.
                  Starr figured that a scotch would take the edge off--she was mistaken, it had taken two. A third would really have done the trick, but the plane was entering its descent. Despite the pleasant buzz provided by the alcohol, Starr's anxiety level began to rise; not for surrealistic reasons but because she was afraid of what she would find once she reached the hospital.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
                  As Starr was claiming her luggage and making arrangements for a rental car, Tamara was pacing the floor of the Operating Suite's waiting-room. Paul had been taken into surgery an hour ago for evacuation of an acute subdural hematoma. Dr. Javier Gomez, the neurosurgeon, had explained to Tamara that the CT scan had revealed a collection of blood beneath the skull that was placing pressure on the right side of Paul's brain. It was imperative, Dr. Gomez had informed her, that the pocket of blood be removed as soon as possible in order to forestall any further tension on the brain tissue. 
                  Tamara had been allowed to stay with Paul prior to the surgery and had been relieved to find that he had regained consciousness. His lack of orientation and multiple bruises and cuts had shocked her but Dr. Gomez had assured her that the confusion was "normal" and that the bruising and lacerations looked worse than they actually were. Furthermore, there was no evidence of fractures or additional internal injury. The bad news was that the pending surgical procedure was not without risk; the surgery or the damage already done by the head injury might leave Paul with any number of neurological deficits. "Neurological deficits"--such an ominous and all-encompassing description of potential complications. Would Paul be left paralyzed, incapable of speech, or cognitively impaired? Surely not. Not the man Tamara had married thirty-five years ago.
                  Tamara and Paul had bumped into one another--literally--in 1960. Tamara's VW Bug had stalled at a traffic light and Paul, who was moderately stoned at the time, had rear-ended the Day-Glo yellow car. Tamara, a woman whose vocabulary often belied her pacifism, greeted Paul with, "Goddamn son-of-a-bitch! Look what you've done to my beautiful little car! Shit, shit, shit!" One year later Tamara Conroy and Paul Forsythe became husband and wife, a month before the birth of their child, whom they named Starr.
                  The first seven years of their marriage were spent in San Francisco. Haight-Ashbury was the hub of the hippie movement and it was there that the Forsythes cohabitated with three other couples: Marybeth and Patsy; Elliot, Ming and their two year-old son Piper; Candace and Peter. Aside from the occasional transient counterculture groupies who resided at "The Forsythe House," a title coined by Marybeth and Patsy, the individuals who lived within its walls were stable, committed, sincere persons who believed in hard work and peaceful living. They weren't drug zombies, although