#c ray

He felt odd walking up the step and pushing the door open. He’d never expected himself to be voluntarily going to an ME office. Ray awkwardly shuffled through the smallest gap he could get through in the door, not wanting to make a spectacle of himself and closing the door as quietly as he could. As much as he did want to meet Regan, he was a little out of his depth with this investigation he’d started. He was no expert in data collection, not in this way and not in places like this. If only he could open a textbook or piece of software to find the answers. But he had to do this. He’d made a promise to Ryan that he’d try to figure this out. For both of them.

He lingered by the door looking around as if he’d recognise the doctor if she wandered by, because she wouldn’t recognise him. Ray pulled his phone out of his pocket and shot a quick ‘Hey, I’m here at the front door :)’ looking around for any sign of someone looking for a stranger as well.

When Regan had invited Ray to the morgue, she hadn’t expected his immediate arrival. As soon as Marcy messaged her that a confused boy had wandered in looking for her, she rushed up to receive him. She’d barely had time to look into the strange file Ray was asking about. Ryan Baxter had died back in 2013, and she didn’t even recognize the name of the forensic pathologist who had conducted the autopsy. That was only the beginning of the problem.

As she pushed through the lobby doors, it occurred to her that she didn’t even know who to look for. Despite conversing with Ray online for months, they had not yet met face to face. Fortunately, there was only one person there: a lanky young man with a slouch that made Regan want to forcefully straighten his spine. There was also a bandage around one of his fingers, she noted. “Ray?” Regan asked for good measure with a tilt of her head. Something slithered inside of her chest, some emotion, and she pushed it away. Yes, they had spoken online. Yes, she had a certain fondness for Ray the same way a human might enjoy a bird regularly returning to their feeder, but what did that matter, really? “Dr. Kavanagh. As you’re well-aware.” Regan extended her hand. “I can’t say I expected that we would ever meet in person.”

There was another surprise. Something was… off. With Ray. Like he was surrounded by a dark, eerie pulse – the same mockery of death she felt around Metzli, but weaker, stranger. Her mind itched with the possibility of looking with her asfís bháis, but she couldn’t do that while Ray was paying attention. She couldn’t even imagine how that would go over. For now, they were to move on. As she led him down to her office, she braced him for impact. “I have some questions for you about this file you asked about. And I don’t suggest lying to me.”

Ryan buzzed in the back of his mind, increasing Ray's usual levels of discomfort in new situations tenfold. But he couldn’t tell the ghost to quiet down, that was rude, especially since they were here on his behalf to find out about his death. It seemed a bit callous to ask the dead to shut up about it for his own comfort. Ray was brought out of his head when he spotted just what he was looking for. Someone looking for a stranger. 

She opened her mouth and called his name and he smiled brightly at her. It was nice to see a friend for the first time. He was really getting to love the feeling -even if he’d never say as much to her directly considering her stance on friendship. Ray extended his hand to shake hers, aborted the action realizing his finger was still healing and instead grasped her hand oddly with his left, shaking it quickly. “Oh, well I appreciate you helping me out with this stuff. I’m glad we get to meet in person.” he told her enthusiastically. “What do I call you here? Doctor?”

His head was on a swivel as they walked towards her office looking around in some sort of morbid curiosity and not actually wanting to see anything. “Hey you’re helping me out, why would I lie?” He responded before really thinking about the implications of what he’d said and what he was definitely going to have to keep to himself. He’d already been bending the truth a little when he’d initially asked her. As was usual for him, worry started to set in and he tried valiantly to mask it from his face. Ray then spoke up again against his better judgment. “How’d you know if it was a lie anyway?”

Regan cast her eyes down to Ray’s injured hand, as he seemed to forget he’d acquired a splint. Curious. “When did that happen?” She nodded down to his finger. And why hadn’t he mentioned it before? Not that she needed to know everything medically wrong with this child. But it would be nice. “Doctor Kavanagh is fine. And if it suits you, I’m going to continue calling you Ray, and not Soup.” Something lingered on her own fingers after she’d shaken his hand. Her skin felt twitchy, wrong, but the sensation was brief enough that she waved it away, questioning if it had ever been there to begin with. But she couldn’t entirely ignore that Ray himself still elicited something in her. Cliodhna would have understood it immediately.

As she carded the two of them into her office, she turned to Ray. “I don’t want you touching anything in here. None of the bones. And certainly not the file.” The chair, though; he could touch the chair. “You may sit,” Regan said, pointing to the chair in front of her desk. She circled around it and sat down herself. 

“Many people have a lie they wish to tell about the death of a loved one, someone they knew. I encounter them daily. Sometimes they wish to obfuscate the case from me, and other times they wish to obfuscate their connection to the deceased to others in their life. I can always tell.” It was true. She’d sat through dozens of witnesses trying to convince her that they’d never seen someone in their life, or next of kin trying to bury affairs and family secrets along with the deceased. And while Regan didn’t have a preternatural sense for detecting those lies, she had grown seasoned at it, her mind as sharp as her scalpel. Her eyes turned down to what sat on her desk, the file. “As I have told you, I must protect the confidentiality of the decedent. But these are unusual circumstances. I want to know the truth, and I don’t think I’m going to get it from this file.” She held up the unusually thin manilla folder, which was only about half the size of the others swelling in the morgue’s file cabinets. “So let’s start at the beginning, hm? How do you know Mr. Baxter?”

“A week ago I think?” Ray responded, lifting his hand to also look at his bound fingers. “Hockey accident, didn’t have my gloves on during practice.” It had been one of the few times Ryan had actually let Ray play for himself instead of taking over. The ghost assured him that he would not stop making fun of him for that until the fingers were healed. “Doctor Kavanagh, sure Ray is good.” He repeated back as they walked. He didn’t know that Regan could tell there was something up with him, in his mind all he had to do was keep his story straight.

Rest assured, Ray has absolutely no desire to touch anything, especially not the bones. In fact he gave everything in her office a pretty wide berth as he made his way over to the chair to sit down - even if he did catalog things as they passed. He clasped his hands together in his lap as best he could carefully, looking at her with even more uncertainty now that they were sitting down to an interrogation of sorts. He just had to play it cool. He could play it cool right? The ‘no’ that echoed in his skull was unwelcome and he grimaced slightly, willing the ghost to shut up.

It was definitely intimidating. Her whole speech about detecting lies made his thin guise of calm dissolve a tiny bit - the true anxiety of the situation shining through more clearly on his face. But he hadn’t murdered anyone…directly, certainly not Ryan anyway, directly or indirectly. “We ar- we were pretty close before he died?” it was a terrible start, his resolve was already crumbling and even Ryan was losing motivation for this. The first hurdle. The VERY first question. “Well no I didn’t meet him before he died, actually. But, I just…want to know what happened to him. I think we need closure to move forward, and I don’t think we can be at peace without knowing what happened.”

“So you never knew him.” Regan clarified, mulling over that information. That only produced more questions. “Perhaps a better question I should ask, then, is how do you know of him? If the two of you had never met, what brings you here asking about him?” She was acutely aware this was beginning to have the edge of an interrogation, and it was only going in one direction. Which was how she liked it. But she didn’t want to scare Ray off or render his tongue silenced before he provided some actual information of value. She was in this now, and she needed to understand what had happened to this file.

Regan laid the file flat on her desk and flicked it open, her hand smoothing out the first sheet inside, the autopsy report. It was of an older format than the ones the ME’s office used now, and covered in a doctor’s messy scrawl rather than neat, legible typing. Time had introduced wrinkles and yellowed the page, which Regan could only hope had been digitized years ago, but she lacked confidence in that. “This is Baxter’s autopsy report,” Regan explained, holding the stapled packet up but not for long enough for Ray to glean anything from it. She had his attention though, and he looked raptly even as his long limbs poured awkwardly out of his chair and he seemed to be drowning in discomfort. “There are pages missing, several, and the cause of death is highly unusual for a man of the decedent’s age. Not only that, it’s a terribly lazy one. We pathologists try not to list “congestive heart failure” as a cause of death. Everyone’s heart fails when they die. There is always an underlying cause. I see none noted here, and the autopsy photos are scant. Very few are of the heart, and I see no evidence of anything amiss.” She paused, realizing her lungs had been picking up pace, attuned to her mounting frustration. Few things got to her more than sloppy autopsies and documentation. But was this really poor work, or was there something bigger at play?

She met Ray’s eyes. “You know something that I don’t, and I would like to hear it.”

“I-” She was a woman of science she was unlikely to accept his reasoning, if he were honest with himself she was likely already tired of his backwards explanations. But he was unsure what else he could do, if she were to write him off as a blithering idiot he was unlikely to find out anything more for himself and Ryan. Ray needed her to tell him what was wrong with everything, show him the papers if possible in order to glean any tiny little detail that might help him find out truly what happened. Ray realized he'd been silent with his mouth open for a little too long, sat back slightly away from her to regroup and wet his dry lips more nervously still. “I know him. I’ve recently found out a lot about him. He was…on my hockey team ten years ago and I’ve inherited his nickname and…” none of that a lie, and in that he could at least be sure.

His eyes raked over the papers she held up to him but he couldn’t make out much before she was back to asking questions. Ray’s whole body shivered involuntarily as Ryan left him. The ghost was unseen to Ray and unreachable to him now that they weren’t connected in the same body. He didn’t know what had bothered the ghost so much that he’d abandon him to this alone but there was no way to ask him back for support in front of the doctor. “Can it be that it’s just someone lazy? Is it that unusual?” 

The ghost himself had moved to look over the doctor's shoulder. If his autopsy report was weird enough for them to be called in to talk about it…well it was his surely he should be allowed to look at it. 

Ray was caught in her gaze and couldn't quite break the heavy question she was asking him. “It’ll sound like you should throw me out of the building.” he said vaguely. Could he tell her? Probably not. He shouldn’t. She was no nonsense. She’d write him off. Another friend gone. “I met him after his death.”

“I have never met a lazy medical examiner. The demands of the work weed out all but the most qualified and diligent.” Regan had looked into this medical examiner with a cursory search. Dr. Patil. He had been a medical examiner in the county for only a year before his disappearance, which was probably why she hadn’t seen any other reports penned by him yet. The circumstances of his probable-death also likely explained why Dr. Rickers had neglected to mention the other doctor to her. Examiners had come and gone. Some moved elsewhere. Others vanished. Such was life in Wicked’s Rest.

She nudged her notebook in front of her and started making a list of pertinent information she was collecting from Ray, as well as everything unusual she had noticed about the report. Mid-way through writing that the cardiac findings section was missing every other field, she froze. The implication of what Ray had just told her snaked into her ears and wrapped around her bones. The living did not meet the dead. It would have been a perfectly normal answer in Saol Eile, but not here. It was as if a cold wind had just swept across the room. Setting her pen down, she looked up at Ray. He captured her full attention now. “And how did you do that?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, but there was no disbelief in them. She believed Ray entirely. And that was the problem.  

Ryan read through her notes quickly as she wrote them, she didn’t seem to have gleaned much from the report itself other than it’s lack of detail -or she had already filed her findings on that away before they’d arrived- but what Ryan could tell clearly was that she was interested in the case. More so than a few of the people he had already had Ray ask about him. But he didn’t remember having ever met her in life, so she was curious about this all on her own merits, maybe she really could help them. Curiosity could work well in their favor, they could bargain details for contacts maybe? Ryan was spinning a hook for them to bribe her as she spoke with Ray. Drifting back towards the human, to be drawn in quickly by the space in his soul that Ryan had taken to inhabiting. 

Ray hummed in acknowledgement of her words. She’d know her profession better than he would. But it was concerning. He could have perhaps settled into her interrogation style if she’d not asked such direct questions. “By accident. Not on purpose. I didn't do anything. He did it all for me.” It was unusual for someone normal to ask how and not if he was okay. It was unusual the amount of clarity she was looking at him with. “Ghosts you know. They don’t ask before they take from you. But we’re trapped together now. Ryan and Me…”

Ghosts. Regan closed her eyes, feeling again the way death had wrapped itself around Ray, light touch though it was. She had known there was something off. And where death was concerned, Regan was never wrong. The others spoke of ghosts as if they were as commonplace as a squirrel or sparrow. Some disparagingly, others with fondness. Regan herself had seen plenty of those apparitions, though she refused to slap such a fantastical label on them, rather thinking of them as an extension of the visions – hallucinations – she was able to slip into. Interestingly, there were humans in town who seemed to be able to see these “ghosts,” too, and they weren’t timid about calling them such a ridiculous term.

She had no time nor desire to feign incredulity, though she had little idea of what Ray meant about ghosts taking things, about being together. It was prudent to make sure they were talking about the same thing. Regan gave Ray a hard look, like if she stared for long enough Ryan himself would appear. …Would he? “I don’t know anything about ghosts. But I know death. And I know you’ve carried some in here.” Again, she looked. Eyes narrowing to slits. Her asfís bháis was there in her periphery, an option and perhaps a door to seeing and understanding, but she didn’t want to cause Ray to run out of the office. Asking was better. “This thing that you’re calling Ryan. Is it present now? I suspect yes.”

Ray met her stare for only a second before he looked away. He was serious, he was deadly serious about Ryan, but he wasn't built for eye contact so serious. Regan was intense, he gathered that from the times they'd spoken online but there was something so much more in person. Ryan was asking in his head what he was waiting for, she clearly believed in this what was he doing staying so quiet? Why was it so easy to speak about Ryan when it didn't matter, but as soon as they had someone asking real questions it didn't seem so fun anymore. She had an autopsy or something in front of her, Ryan's. 

"Yeah, he's here." Ray tapped his chest first, followed by yet another aborted gesture -possibly heading for his head- but deeming it unimportant to clarify further. Ryan was getting impatient but Ray still wasn't saying anything. The ghost was not one to waste time. This was HIS death. He was bored of having Ray speak for him when she clearly understood. Ray's eyes rolled slightly, his limbs locking and his breath stuttering. A moment later his body hung differently in the chair, arms crossing. The body now hung oddly as if a puppet had strings just a little too long. "Ryan J Baxter. Hand me the file right? What's wrong with it?" It was an introduction, maybe.

“If he’s here, where is he?” Regan raised a brow. She was clearly not understanding something. Was Ray saying that he kept Ryan inside of him, the way one might clutch to their fading memories of a deceased loved one? But then Ray’s entire body jolted, his head lolled violently, and his eyes rolled back in his skull like two big, white marbles. At once, Regan mobilized. She flew out of her seat, one word burning through her brain: seizure. Before she could even grab his shoulders it was over. Regan hovered next to Ray’s chair, ready to attend to whatever was needed, but waiting for an indication that something was needed. “Ray…?” She said quietly, her breath bunched up in her throat. Had it been a seizure? Was it over?

Stillness coated the room. And then Ray started talking. His voice, she noted, sounded different. Produced by the same tongue, but syllables rolled differently, hesitation no longer living between his words. 

She had not been prepared for the assertion that Ray was Ryan.

A chill pinched down her spine. She backed away a couple of steps so she could see him better, observe him. Something was not right, but she didn’t understand it. What… was she seeing? There were mental disturbances that could look like this. More on television than in actual practice, generally, but it was the best explanation she had. Then again, Ray had briefly looked as though he had a seizure. Could this have been related to that? Seizures could correlate with odd beliefs, cause altered mental status. Was this temporal lobe epilepsy or a cousin to it? Was “ghost” seriously in the differential?

He was looking at her, demanding an answer. Even his eyes looked different than before. The same color, the same set, but his gaze was more firm, impatient. Regan decided that the danger – if there had been danger – has passed. She could engage with whatever this was. “I am not handing anything over to you…” She looked at his hands, Ray’s hands. They would not hold someone else’s file. “You claim to be Ryan, and I will humor you. You need to prove it. What is your social security number? The names of your parents? Tell me the locations of your scars.” Regan gestured to the file. “I have all of that information in here.”

If Ray had been at all aware of the shift from himself to Ryan he would have been touched by the attention Regan paid him. He’d have appreciated the way she moved quickly to reach towards whatever unknown that was happening to him, in the moment between one soul and the other. But she wasn’t greeted with the nervous giant she’d been speaking to online for months. Ray had been put in suspension of sorts and instead she was met with the other. The other soul wasn’t nervous, and the other soul hadn’t ever spoken to Regan before. He didn’t appreciate her hovering and he didn’t have time for her whispered and worried address to his host. 

Ryan lowered Ray's hand and crossed his gangly arms instead. “It’s my file. I already read your notes but I want to see the whole thing.” it was the most direct this voice ever got - when it wasn’t being used by its owner. 

There was an impatient huff of breath before Ryan set out to answer her questions. One by one the numbers of his social security lined up in formation. The full name of his mother followed quickly by the full name of his father. The only piece that seemed to trip his flow of speech was found when they were half way through the number of scars he had on his hands. He named a little over half before he gave up. “Just believe me. You believed in ghosts a minute ago doctor, you let Ray think you were on board. Are you taking it back now I’m here? Even with his face, am I not as trustworthy?” Ryan was usually a lot kinder, usually a lot more jovial, and usually a lot more ready for a laugh. But as they’d been having trouble gathering information about his death his humor decreased. Every obstacle, and every closed door with no answers made him itch.  

“I just want to know what the hell happened. It’s my death.”

To Regan’s astonishment, Ray was able to recite everything she had asked for. Was there any other way for Ray to have acquired that information? Yes, realistically. It was unlikely. But she also was not ready or willing to admit that the person sitting across the room from her, in Ray’s body, was a dead man. “You must have been very close for him to tell you that information.” Which contradicted what Ray had told her earlier: that he met Ryan only after he had died, somehow. But how was she to believe any of this? Regan ran her hands through her hair, the only visible sign that she might have been a little frustrated. Had she been willing to think about it or admit it, she might have realized most of that was out of concern for Ray’s behavior.

She wasn’t quite sure how to handle this. Ray wanted information about someone who – regardless of how or when – he had a close relationship with, enough to know the locations and sizes of Ryan’s scars, which were at least correctly reported in the file. Apparently. She couldn’t exactly check Ray’s body for them.

Was it really sharing information if the information was incorrect at worst or obfuscated at best? Regan wasn’t sure. And part of her, however small that part was, wondered if Ray – or “Ryan” – might be able to fill in some of the gaps. Perhaps she could treat this more as a fishing expedition. Let Ryan provide details she didn’t have.

“You’re going to be disappointed,” Regan cautioned, a bit of an edge to her voice; she didn’t appreciate being told what to do. She flipped through a few of the pages. Dr. Patil’s work was rushed, incomplete, and in some places a flagrant abuse of protocol. But there were things she could probably share, and what was missing might be more valuable than what scant information was present. “As I said, the cause of death is listed as ‘congestive heart failure,’ which means nothing.” She flicked through a couple autopsy photos. “And there’s nothing wrong here. A berry aneurysm, which is a common incidental finding. Some eczema.” She turned to the toxicology report. “Nothing of note in here, either. Marijuana in the hair.” She turned to Ray, or Ryan, or whatever he wished to be called. “I don’t know why Dr. Patil provided no evidence to support his already-flimsy cause of death. Anyone looking at these photos would be able to see that. See nothing, rather. They look healthy. Dead, but healthy.” She was a little unnerved by how much Ray’s mannerisms had changed, but she spoke to him plainly nonetheless, pretending nothing was different. “I’d like to hear what you have to say about that.”  

Ryan tensed Ray’s fingers and flexed them in his lap. Being disappointed was starting to become a usual occurrence. He was getting restless and more frustrated the longer he and Ray searched for information. No one knew. He’d had hope that maybe she was holding something back from them due to the unusual story they’d presented to her, but she’d moved to repeating the information he’d read over her shoulder with a finality to the words. A finality that led him to believe they’d hit another cold trail, a cold trail with the added obstacle of letting an onlooker to their search. No one else they’d asked for anything from had been as insistent on knowing more. Death made people uncomfortable. No one else had the gumption to inquire further. 

“I was an athlete. I was as healthy as I could get…pot aside.” bitterness tinted his tone as he heaved a breath and looked towards the file. “I can’t believe there’s really nothing officially recorded anywhere. Damnit.” Ryan cursed and stood up suddenly, knocking Ray's knees against the desk as he went. He didn’t pause for a second, he turned away from her, staring angrily into the middle distance. “How did I fall through the cracks like this? My family… they loved me, I had so many friends, I was on the hockey team. But no one asked any questions, no one got any extra information. No one knows.” It was dramatic, but he couldn’t help the display of increased emotion. Having control of the body always did this to him. The longer you didn’t get to feel anything the more intensely the welling of emotion could knock you off balance. 

Ryan turned back towards her and held onto the back of the chair he’d just vacated. “There are no other records? None? No one has anything more? Surely there’s something somewhere, the hospital maybe? The university?” He was searching for hope. They’d spent the entirety of winter up until now mentioning his death to anyone they could, but this was nearing the last straw. “I know this is the first time you’ve met Ray in person, but he likes you, he considers you a friend. Will you help him?” It was selfish to put Ray’s friendship with the doctor on the line for his own gain, but if it meant professional help - as much as he’d never admit as much to his host- he’d throw away all the friendships he’d helped Ray make in order to just know something.

The situation was slipping from her control. Regan was used to being in command in the morgue. It was her office, her duty; here, she cloaked herself in the respect of others and she called the shots, and her apparent age didn’t matter as much as the comma-MD behind her name. But every once in a while, circumstances would zig when they really should have been zagging, and whatever was happening now was not a typical conversation she had with next of kin. This was not the anger of losing a loved one, having a life snatched away from them. Ray had the sound of someone who was coming to terms with his own death after it already happened. It was unfamiliar territory, unfamiliar emotion, and she was equal parts uncomfortable and curious. She was taken aback enough to be stunned into silence, and as a result, Ray was given more allowance for this display than she would have normally permitted. The rawness of it all made Regan’s skin scurry with distaste. She needed to rein things in.

She stood up, unwilling to let him march around her office unchallenged. He was still taller, of course – by quite a lot – but it made her feel more in control. Ray still seemed focused on answers. That was good. He would not be completely unreasonable. Regan shot him a no-nonsense look. “If you want to discuss this you will calm yourself.” Her throat swelled a little at the claim of friendship but she quickly swallowed it back. “He’s foolish to consider me a friend.” He’s. Why had she said that? Why not you’re? This was starting to mess with her head. She couldn’t deny that the presence in the room with her seemed utterly unfamiliar compared to the awkward kid that had been sitting in the chair before, though. She’d get a second opinion about this later from someone. Preferably a physician who was not Rickers, but she’d make due with a nurse at this point. Actually, she did know one…

Things seemed to calm. Ray’s knuckles relaxing their grip on the chair. Good. Regan eased up in turn. “This is an older file. The hospital probably still has records, but little that isn’t already in here.” She flicked the folder. “It isn’t going to help you understand what happened. It didn’t… help me. The pathologist who did this autopsy was either hiding something or simply sloppy.” She hesitated for a moment, wondering if this was a good idea. It was not. Yet she’d offered similar to Lil regardless. Cliodhna would turn in her grave if she knew (the one she enjoyed spending recreational time in while alive). What was Regan even gaining from this? Yet she was compelled. If pressed she’d excuse it as her own curiosity. “But I might be able to help. If you can bring me something that belonged to Baxter, something that held importance, maybe I’ll be able to give you better answers. That is what you want, right? You want to know what really transpired at the time of death.” She let the offer linger for a moment but knew there was more she needed to say. “One other thing. I am leaving in a couple of months – moving overseas. The window for my help is limited.”

Ryan didn't even watch as Regan got to her feet in order to get a handle on his swing of emotion. He was too busy trying to get a grip to focus on a singular individual that wasn't himself for too long. If Ray was able to hear the ghosts thoughts he'd comment how dramatic it all sounded, likely to be put back in his place when reminded where they were. It hadn't always been like that for the ghost, but the abundance of dead ends and lost notes were taking his patience and wearing it thin like the heel of a well loved pair of shoes - uncomfortably thin but not yet broken. If he'd been honest the idea was to wear her down, keep badgering, use Ray as a hinge on which to swing the door open to his story. But she gave a little. She hesitated and then she gave a little more. Perhaps she cared for the human a bit more than she would let on…or maybe the idea that this unexplained death existed itched at her skin. Either way he'd take it.

Ryan extended a hand towards her “you've got yourself a deal, if I can bring you something of mine that might have some relevance, you'll see what you can dig up?” A small ember of hope had reignited. “Short time frame…right…Ray will be gutted when he finds out you're leaving but I'll take it. What's important enough a thing to get more information? A hat? A trophy? I'm not a jewelry person if it's a reward thing. Can't flog much of mine now I'm dead. Imagine all the good stuff is gone.”

Regan lifted a brow, but kept the stern look on her face. Just who was she making a deal with? The person in front of her still didn’t seem like Ray. But the need for understanding scratched at her brain, and was there really anything wrong with sharing information that came not from a confidential report, but from her own gift? She would be guarded, but she wasn’t ready to declare this a waste of her dwindling time here. Especially if it would help Ray. She finally nodded. “I don’t think the – I mean, the object in question does not matter. Anything you’re able to get your hands on that you care about, that connects you to who you… were. But yes, I’ll do it. I dislike unanswered questions.” Better to sound confident, authoritative, even when she wasn’t positive this would even work. And even more importantly, better to sound not personally invested in Ray for any reasons other than the objective, the practical. 

A chill scurried up her arm when she shook his hand. She took care to be gentle with his uninjured finger. More care than he took, which gnawed at her. Was it because he was a careless child, or because this “Ryan” was an entity of the mind and not the body? Regan looked away when he mentioned Ray in the 3rd person, but it was more because of what he’d said than how he’d said it. “He’ll be fine. Everyone will be fine. Life goes on, and then it doesn’t. And while you’re at it, bring me a dead chipmunk. For morale.”