text: Its Monday. I arrive at the office, pass by the reception desk, “My God Kathy, you look like crap!”, softer now, I sit near the reception desk where Melissa works, she says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, you just look like you didn’t sleep all weekend. Are you OK?” I answer, “Yes. Everything is fine now. Sarah’s fine. Friday she had pneumonia, but she’s past the worst part. It has just all been such a strange ordeal.” “Was she that sick?”, Melissa asks softly. “No, it’s not that . . . Its . . . For a while now, she’s been telling us about *The Green Lady*. Things would happen like, she’d misplace her favorite doll and The Green Lady would remind her she took it outside. That it’s near the dog house where she was playing with it the day before. I had an imaginary friend when I was a kid. Lots of kids do for a short period, so Daniel and I never really thought much about it.” Melissa said, “You thought it was a ‘phase’ she would grow out of.” “Right. But then, she’d say The Green Lady would tell her things, things she couldn’t possibly know herself. We had a family friend that was very sick. Daniel and I were afraid she might die. But we’d kept all that from the children until, or unless, it actually happened. Then one day we were planning a weekend trip to Disneyland in three weeks, something the kids love to do, and she said the next morning ‘We shouldn’t go that weekend, The Green Lady said last night, your friend will die that Saturday and you’ll want to be here for the family that weekend.” Melissa looked on, eyes wide, shocked and speechless. I continued, “Yeah. We thought we’d done a pretty thorough job of keeping how serious the friends illness was from the kids, and here she is saying our friend is about to die. Well, three weeks later, Saturday morning I get a call from our friends mother telling us she had just passed minutes before.” Melissa leans in to place her hand on mine, “Oh my Gosh.” “Yeah. So Daniel and I are searching the attic and crawlspaces and everywhere someone could hide. Because I’m beginning to wonder if The Green Lady is some real person that has been talking to the children when we aren’t around. We find nothing. We don’t want to scare the kids, but talk to both separately and our other younger daughter mentions she’s seen her too. That she tucks her in at night some times, and sings to her after Daniel and I have left her in bed. So, Daniel and I are fully freaking at this point. Wondering if moving, or an exorcism, is the better option?” Melissa snorts, “Right.” “We talk to the children, and very discretely slip in some casual questions, to make sure The Green Lady isn’t asking them to kill the neighbors or anything wild, but no, it’s all tucking them in at night, and harmless bedtime stories, or finding the occasional lost or misplaced doll or calming them if something unsettling happened during the previous day. We asked where they’ve seen her at, they say ‘mostly in the house, in our bedroom’. So it’s not someone meeting them out at daycare or school, somewhere when we aren’t around.” Melissa shrugs, “Like when they’re out clubbing.” “Right, I mean they’re seven and four, it’s not like they spend any real time outside close, trusted, adult supervision . . .” “Three months pass, the occasional mention of The Green Lady drops. While its bizarre to us, to the children she’s harmless and it’s all meaningless. Then the oldest daughters allergies kick in, or, it’s a cold, or the flu, we can’t tell yet. She’s not particularly getting worse, but not getting better either and her temperature is back and forth. I tell Daniel I’ll take her to the Doctor tomorrow just as we’re going to bed. 2:30am, I feel a tug on my shoulder and roll over to see . . . A woman, who looks vaguely familiar, with long probably red hair, freckles, and flowing green Victorian length dress, with a bright green aura glowing around her, lean over and say. “She’ll be fine, but it’s gone over to pneumonia, you should probably take her to the hospital and have them check oxygen levels and give her something to drain the fluid around her lungs.” I roll over and scream at Daniel to get up and get dressed, that we’re taking Sarah to the hospital. Turn back and see . . . Nothing. The Green Lady is gone.” “I throw a robe on and head to the girls room as Daniel gets dressed. Her breathing is worse, we take her to the hospital, and the doctor confirms . . . Pneumonia. He gives her something to reduce the fluids and help her breath, and we monitor the oxygen levels for a few hours, and eventually take her home six or so hours later. The Doctor asks what made me bring her in, was her breathing that bad? I paused head down, sighed and said barely audible, ‘No, it was The Green Lady.’ He turned back to the chart, chuckled softly, hanging the stethoscope around his neck and responded, ‘Ah, fifth time in the last year. Who do you think she looks like?’ I couldn’t believe someone else had heard of her and said I didn’t know, but she did look familiar. He asked if I watched a certain TV show’, I blurted out a characters name, that’s where I recognize her from.” I lean back in the guest chair, “Mom and Daniel were with the kids. Phone rings Saturday evening, just as I get home from the grocery. It’s the Doctor from the ER. He’s a friend of a friend of the actress the Green Lady looks like, and wants to know if I’d like to meet her? I said, ‘Sure, I guess’. So he tells me they’ll be home Sunday afternoon and gives me the address. I talk it over with Daniel. My mother had already stopped by to help with the kids, so Daniel and I decide to go.” Melissa asked, “You went over to her house?” “Yes, and recapped the entire story to her and her boyfriend. Her eyes get wide, she leaps off the couch, and says to her boyfriend ‘Oh my God John, they’re crazy. You keep them here, I’ll go in the back and call the police’, and she bolts out of the room.” Melissa gasps, “So you’re about to be arrested?” “We thought so. Daniel and I are panicking. Standing up and apologizing profusely to the boyfriend and trying to excuse ourselves to leave. The boyfriend just smiles, shakes his head, waves us to sit down ‘She’s not calling the police. She’s going into the spare bedroom to get a drawing hanging on the wall.’ Thirty seconds later she comes out and spins around a roughly 11x14 portrait in a very old frame and there is . . . The Green Lady. Red hair like the actress. Long flowing Victorian Green Dress, like the one I saw next to my bed. Not a twin, but enough of a likeness to the actress to make you think of her.” The actress says, ‘This is my Great Aunt Jessica. Its a Black and White charcoal drawing that was shaded over in color. Some of the green is actually coal shading. Apparently if you’re skilled enough, you can shade color with coal, depending on the surrounding room light. She’s been gone for sixty years. I never met her, well,’, she nods with a bit of an eyebrow wink, ‘not while she was alive anyway. But she had no children of her own, and spent most of her life looking after others children while the parents were out working. I saw her as a child, like your daughters do. And, every three to six months, someone sends us a letter, telling us a story, similar to the one you just told us. I can’t explain it, there seems to be no connection to these other people. It’s as if . . . Jessica just continues looking after children as she always has.’” Melissa exhales, “Oh my God, that’s amazing. So a ghost saved your daughter?” I shrug, “Someone, or something did. I can’t explain it. And I haven’t seen her since. Daniel has never seen her. So, that was my weekend, how about you?” Melissa said, “Oh no. I can’t top that.