A knock sounded on the door, and the face of the only nurse that could make Zoe smile appeared. “Evening, Miss Zoe. Helen’s here with your evening meds. Hope I caught you at a good spot in your game.” The plus-size African American nurse came into the room without waiting for a reply.

That was okay. Nurses were overworked and always on a tight schedule. Zoe understood and paused her video game without complaint. Helen Barfield was usually the brightest spot in her day. “How’s it going, Helen?”

“Girl, nothing but trouble. Little Bobby got suspended from school for fighting again. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him! He’s so mad about his daddy leaving. I’d give anything to get my two boys and my little girl out of our school district, but you know I can’t afford to live anywhere else on this crappy salary. And then I get here and find out they’re cutting dental out of our insurance policy—just when Quentin and Jessica both need braces. See this hair?” Helen had beautiful braids with colorful beads woven into them. “Remember it, because it might be gone tomorrow. I may rip it out overnight.”

Zoe nodded sympathetically. “It doesn’t seem right, Helen. The people doing the most to help others—the teachers, nurses, police, firefighters, EMS, even the military—are all way underpaid. And yet, a guy can get paid millions of dollars a year to run a ball from one end of a field to another? I just don’t get it.”

“Amen to that, sister.”

“Is Bobby’s suspension in-school or at-home?”

“In-school, thank the good Lord. I don’t know what I’m going to do with that child. Can’t afford to leave him to himself while I sleep, can’t afford to miss sleep.”

Zoe reached for her soda can to wet her hands with the condensate. She ran her fingers over her short, brown hair to slick it back. Then she rubbed her hands together, made her best impression of an evil face, and said in a bad imitation of a Count Dracula accent, “Muahahaha. You leave the male child with me for the day. He’ll be much more with the respecting of his mother and the completing of his homework after that.”

Helen gave her an earnest look. “Zoe, do not tempt me. You may find yourself with an angry young man on your hands for a whole weekend while the rest of us take a break.”

Zoe laughed. “I would do that if you could clear it with administration. I’ve taken on quite a few teenaged princes and princesses in my time. They thought they didn’t have to do the same barn chores as the rest of us, but I whipped them into shape. Pushing some of our more spry and flatulent seniors in their wheelchairs can’t be much better than pushing yard carts full of manure. Worked every time.”

Helen sighed and grinned. “When I fall asleep tomorrow morning after the kids go to school, I’ll skip the sheep and do it by counting the number of laps Bobby does around the quad with old Mr. R.J. cackling for him to go faster.”

Zoe laughed again. “I’d pay good money to see that.” She waited for Helen to count out her medications.

“Okay, my girl. We’ve got Lyrica for your nerve damage, Cymbalta for the depression, Wellbutrin for the depression, Topamax as a mood stabilizer, Percocet to help with the pain, Colace to help with your bowels after the Percocet…”

“Ugh, Colace,” Zoe groaned. “That is way too Girl Interrupted for me. I swear, I can’t handle it. Plus, it makes me want pancakes.”

Helen laughed. “Girl, I love that movie. Whoopi Goldberg was brilliant. Mm, mm, mm. I swear, all these medications. Haldol to help with your hallucinations, Ambien to help you sleep… And you let me know if that Percocet isn’t enough to get rid of the pain, okay? I can get something added to it. In fact, since it’s Dr. Landers on call tonight, let me know at two o’clock in the morning so I can call and wake his sorry ass up. I hate that man.”

Zoe laughed and accepted the small cup of pills and larger cup of water, setting both on the bedside table. “You’re too good to me, Helen. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Would you mind getting me more water? That’s a lot of pills to swallow on one little cup.”

Helen grinned at Zoe, “Girl, you ain’t telling me nothing I do not already know.”

The moment Helen turned her back, Zoe removed the Haldol from her cup and stuck it under her sheets. As Helen returned, Zoe picked up the cup with the remaining pills, threw them back like a shot, and downed the water. The nurse handed her the second glass, and she drained that too. “You’re the best, Helen.”

“You too, my girl. Go back to killing whatever you were killing. What is it tonight anyway?”

Zoe glanced at her giant television. Only the best for daddy’s little girl, as long as he didn’t have to come visit. “Mutant zombies have risen on Earth, and only I can stop them.”

“What? I thought that was last night.”

“No, last night was mutant robots invading Earth and only I could stop them. Alas, I am sorry to report that I could not stop them, and we all died horribly.”

Helen shook her head, setting the braids and colorful beads swinging. “Well, damn it, Zoe. You either got to get better at these games or quit telling me when you let the planet die. It’s too depressing.” She sighed dramatically.

Zoe laughed as the nurse left the room and closed the door. She discarded the pill by wrapping it in a tissue and stuffing it in an empty soda can before tossing it in her trashcan. She hated deceiving her only friend, but not taking that pill was the only way to get where she needed to go.

It took a frustrating ten minutes to put on the boots that she wore at night to prevent the contraction of her leg muscles and to position her legs so she could sleep relatively comfortably. There was a trick to using the foam wedges that kept her legs in place, and Zoe had not figured it out yet. The patient shut down her gaming system and turned off the lights.

She was breathing hard by the time she lay back down on her pillow. Her arms ached—arms that used to be able to lift an eighty-pound bale of alfalfa hay and throw it into the back of a truck like it weighed nothing. Her leg muscles had shrunk too. They now resembled a turkey at Thanksgiving. She laughed wryly as she realized they probably weighed about the same.

Those thoughts led to five minutes of vengeful visualization. Her favorite weapon was a baseball bat as she mentally beat up the asshole who had driven through a stop sign and T-boned her truck. He had been so drunk that he should have been dead already. Instead, he walked away, and she was left paralyzed from the waist down. Two weeks after her twentieth birthday, two days after the announcement that she’d earned the alternate position on the United States Equestrian Team and would be going to the Olympics.

She took a breath and reminded herself once again to be grateful. She hadn’t been pulling a trailer that night, so none of her horses had been hurt. Of course, none of them were hers anymore, but at least they were safe and sound. Unlike her.

She took another breath. None of that mattered. In a few minutes, nothing on Earth would matter. As soon as she could fall asleep, she would enter the dreamscape. That’s where her real life was now. She would be able to walk. She would be able to ride.

And Drake would be there.

They would talk for hours. They would laugh together and play together, and damn if that ghost didn’t give her the most amazing sex.