Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.27 - Aftercare (Patreon)

Disgustingly, the nurses didn’t know if the ward had been exorcised, or if there were any ghosts at all. Very irresponsible, really This was the kind of thing that could lead to medical complications, like a sudden heart attack from seeing a ghost in the middle of the night!

Fortunately, she was here to keep that from happening!

It took a little convincing on Harmony’s part, since the nurses had immediately trotted out that only family could stay overnight with the patient, but thankfully they were apathetic enough to not fight very hard when she said that Loren’s family wouldn’t be able to come. She probably looked really out of place since she was sweaty, wearing old jeans stains with flecks of paint, and had on an old shirt over her company work shirt, but there was nothing she could do about that since Steve had picked her up in the middle of work.

Ugh, she was going to need to find a bathroom to try and wash up, wasn’t she?

Well, later, right now, she had calls to make.

Now that Loren was finally safe and settled—and probably having a very awkward conversation with Steve and Norm—she’d made the call she’d been dreading: calling his parents and telling them what happened. The phone rang five times before it was picked up, horribly dashing her hopes that maybe they were too busy. “Hello?”

“Uncle Ben,” she said. He wasn’t actually her uncle, but what else was she supposed to call Loren’s dad when he’d practically raised her as much as her own dad, the two of them joking both they had extra children on timeshare? “Something happened to Loren…”

About an hour later, she was finally able to get off her phone after calling Loren’s parents, her aunt—to let her know she was probably not coming home that night, and could they send her a change of clothes by courier because everything she was wearing was sweaty—and Sara. That… had been a difficult conversation, mostly because it was hard to make out the ghost’s responses. The ghost had taken the information with a ringing of wind chimes, and static that had sounded like words has responded that Sara would be find, but Harmony made a note to call her again later that night… once she’d recharged her phone.

Uncle Ben and Aunt Marie, after getting over the initial distress, had been reassured that Loren was now resting and his arm had been properly put in a cast to heal. They said they would be driving tomorrow to pick up Loren and her, since he couldn’t drive home anymore. By that time Malory had shown up again, the bag takeout she was carrying letting Harmony know she’d gone on a food run.

“Thanks,” she said, accepting the burger, fries and drink. The fries were soggy, the drink was a bit lukewarm despite the ice, but the burger looked okay. Harmony also realized she was famished, and it was all she could do not to pig out then and there.

Malory’s tongue flicked out briefly, tasting the air. “You taste horrible,” she said.

“I know, I’ve got new clothes on the way,” she said as the two of them entered the ward.

“—it’s all right for spirits to eat the vene imbuement in food?” she heard Loren ask.

“Yes, it’s fine, although they don’t really get anything out of it the way ghosts do,” Steve said.

“I’ve noticed,” Loren said. “Well, glad I don’t have to worry about that.”

“Now, as to ways to keep ghosts occupied, it isn’t really something I’ve had to really consider,” the Spiritualist said. “They have each other for company, so that keeps them from being isolated, although having private places to get away from each other becomes important. But I think you’re on the right track. They’re always using either playing chess, checkers, backgammon, gaming, watching TV… we’re also probably one of the few places that still has newspapers and magazines delivered.”

Loren blinked blearily. They’d put him on a mild Water-based painkiller so he wouldn’t just cheating-metabolism it away, and he still had a fat emulsion IV on his arm. “They still deliver those things?” He frowned. “They still make actual newspapers?”

“Yeah, they do. Travel magazines and Facts magazine, mainly.” He chuckled. “They also play with new boardgames more than my kids do.”

“Sara doesn’t have anyone to play with, though…” Loren said, then tilted his head. “Well, I suppose there’s the squad. Maybe she can teach them how to play. Not sure if they can do card games, though…” He turned his head and saw her. “Hey, Hari.”

“Hey, Lor. Feeling better?”

He gave her a flat look. “That’s a joke, right?”

“Yeah, stupid question. Steve, I might need a couple of days off to help Loren adjust. Tomorrow at least, and maybe the one after that.”

Steve nodded. “Got it. Do you need us to pick you up tomorrow?”

“Nah, Loren’s folks are going to be picking us up tomorrow. They’d have come tonight, but I told them he’s under observation, so he can’t leave anyway.”

Steve nodded, turning back to Loren. “Then I think you’re all set. We’ll head back to the Selurong, then. Loren, take as much time as you need to feel better. When you get back, we’ll put you on office duty, and if you think you can take it you’ll be running the paperwork instead of Harmony.”

“Got it, Steve,” Loren said. “I’ll try to be back in three days.” Lor, you do not need money that badly!

“As much time as you need,” Steve emphasized. “At the very least, wait until you don’t have headaches anymore and you’ve managed to put weight on again. You just managed to survive a violent ghost. Don’t let going to work be what kills you.”

Loren winced. “Understood, boss. In that case, I might not come in until next week.”

The spiritualist nodded, looking satisfied. “If it makes you feel better, we’ll be suing the bank that owns that house. The house wasn’t listed as stigmatized, and you got hurt as a result. At the very least, we’re going to have them pay for your hospital bills and for the days you’re going to be missing work.”

“We’ll need pictures recording his injuries for that,” Norm said, already taking out his phone. “Best we do it now, when the damage is the most obvious. Cast, bandages, the IV…”

“Now I feel like we should have gone for the private room,” Loren said.

“Well, we haven’t sued them yet, so until then we’re paying for this,” Steve said wryly.

“Sorry, boss.”

“Not your fault, Loren. We should have warned you it was a possibility.”

“Though I’d have thought you’d just assume it was a haunted house by default,” Harmony said. “I mean, considering what we do and all.”

“I was distracted, all right? And I didn’t think ghosts could reach through windows. I’ve never seen Sara do it.”

Steve and the others left soon after, with Norm reluctantly driving the pickup while Malory accompanied him, leaving the test results and other paperwork to her since Loren wasn’t really in a state to put them away himself. After the courier finally arrived with her clothes—Uncle had sprung for the Thaumaturgist courier, so it had been flown in and arrived after only an hour—Harmony was able to use the ward’s shared bathroom to freshen up and get changed, stuffing her work clothes into her backpack. She’d already arranged to have a day off tomorrow with Steve, so that was one more vacation day gone. Well, she mostly spent her vacation time hanging out with him anyway, so that was no big loss. And now that the two of them were alone, they finally had time to talk.

“Sorry,” she said immediately.

“What for?” he said, sounding tired.

“I should have warned you about Norm’s luck. It’s not exactly the sort of thing Steve just tells people, since luck is just… well, luck, but as your friend I should have told you to be on your guard in case it struck.”

His left hand made a little gesture like he was just sweeping all that to the side. “Don’t worry about it. Like you said, I should have realized the place would have been haunted.” Loren grimaced. “I should have done a lot of things. Like set the furniture on fire as soon as I could. I should have had oil on me. Fuck, even a beeswax candy would have worked…”

She reached out—making sure he could see her moving—and gently patted his shoulder. “I’ll help you find something you can carry emergency oil in. Oh, maybe you could get one those hip flasks! You know the one.”

“I don’t know, I feel like I’d falling into the stereotype…”  he mused.

“Wait, that’s a stereotype?”

“Well, the stereotype of flame mages always drinking alcohol. It’s not actually alcohol, but it’s using an alcoholic accessory…”

They talked about stupid shit until a nurse came by to remove Loren’s IV, as he’d just emptied the last fat emulsion pack. Taking the opportunity the break afforded, Loren finally went to sleep, leaving her to turn off the lights and get comfortable on the chair next to his bed. The nurses had offered to get her a cot, but honestly the chair had actually felt pretty good once she’d put a pillow behind her head so she wasn’t leaning directly on the wall.

Her last thought before she fell asleep herself was that she forgot to call Sara again…

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The next day, the doctors looked Loren over again and gave him a clean bill of health, or at least a bill that said they couldn’t find any sign of brain damage from getting hit on the head. A measurement on the scale showed he’d also put on a little weight since last night from all the fat emulsion IVs, although it was recommended that he eat fatty foods until he gained about more ten pounds. Ugh, stupid cheating Flame mage metabolism! Why couldn’t her doctor ever tell her to do that?

The tests added more sheets to what she was already holding, then again when Harmony went through getting him discharged. Thankfully she’d gone through this before, so she was familiar with the procedure.

Uncle Ben and Aunt Marie arrived as she was finishing up.

“Harmony!” Aunt Marie called out. “Is Loren all right?”

“He’s fine now, auntie,” Harmony said. “The headache mostly went away as he slept, and the doctors said he didn’t have a concussion. I was just about to help him get changed.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Uncle Ben said, and she nodded. She and Loren weren’t exactly shy with each other—she’d been the one to help him get changed last night, and thankfully that had been after they’d set his arm—but she understood where they were coming from. Though she was fairly certain Loren would feel just as awkward being dressed by his dad as her.

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Of course, they didn’t go straight home. After all, they were in Galugod, Loren was already fine, everyone had taken a day off, and the stores to buy the local-made strawberry jam, strawberry preserves, and peanut brittle were right there, not to mention the bakery that sold the really, really good raisin bread.

“Go,” Loren said tiredly. “I’ll just sleep in the car and soak in the heat to get my magic back.”

After leaving the window open a crack, they went to get souvenirs. She bought a loaf for raisin bread for the company break room, a couple for her parents and her sister; another for Aunt Ganda, Uncle Tetsu and Maddie; one for Loren because he was unconscious and she knew he’d want one; two for the meeting that she would definitely be attending that week; and one for herself, for medical purposes. It was raisins, the sweeteners were natural!

All right, the same couldn’t be said for the jam, preserves and brittle, but she was young and fit! She could take it!

“Is this sort of thing normal in your job, Harmony?” Uncle Ben said, sounding casual.

“Not normally, no,” Harmony said honestly. “If we know something like this could happen, we stay out of the house and let the vigilants take care of it. But I can’t say it hasn’t happened before. It’s why the first ones to check inside a new house are always me, Steve and Malory.” Steve had been in the army before he’d retired to take care of his family’s holdings. Malory had competed in the local dueling circuit for several years after she’d left her sect, and had only stopped because of Loni’s nervous breakdown. And while she had to drop out of actually joining the army, she’d been an officer in her high school Citizen Army Training, which she’d continued with in college before she’d dropped out to actually enlist.

Between the three of them, they could usually survive the first move of an isolation-addled ghost long enough to get its attention or try to negotiate. And while they technically weren’t supposed to, if they thought they could handle the ghost by themselves… well, it saved money.

Of course, the moment one of them called a retreat for any reason, they did and called the vigilants to finish the job. Often it worked, but sometimes…

Well, the vigilants watched for and watched their own.

So did Happy Homes.

“If we’d had any idea that place was haunted, we wouldn’t have sent just Loren and Norm, but the bank didn't list it as stigmatized so we thought it was safe,” she said, which was technically true. Norm’s luck wasn’t certainty. There was, to date, no conclusive proof that magic could affect luck, and after literal centuries of people believing in things like lucky charms, if there was going to be a psycho-reactive effect, it would have happened already. “We’d all been there, and Loren would have been outside to observe and maybe set the house on fire if it was a demon instead of a ghost.” They’d discussed it among themselves, since it was only a matter of time before they worked on houses that were classically haunted. It had been the plan, a perfectly logical part of Loren’s training. If he actually did start applying for internships again and left in a year as he’d planned, they might not have even need to do it.

“But it does happen?” Uncle Ben said.

Harmony nodded. “Happened to me. We went in, and it turned out the house had a demon instead of a ghost. Luckily it had managed to hit me instead of anybody else, or else they would have died.”

“… how is that lucky?” he said, sounding vaguely horrified.

 “Well, when it pulped my organs, it forced me to Symbolize and everything got fixed. The other two wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“Wait… you’re a Symbol?”

Oh, right, uncle didn’t know, did he?

…

Well, they’d have something to talk about on the way back…