I couldn’t afford to loll around on an autopsy table all night. I wondered if he knew how selfish he was being. Just because I was dead didn’t mean I wasn’t in a hurry.
Bad enough I had given up on life/death and was resigned to permanent exile to . . . where do the souls of sadistic despots-in-training go after death-for-real? Hell?
Not for what they’ve done, but what they will do? Or do we still get to heaven because we didn’t live long enough to bring about (or don’t bother to prevent) the end of the world? Because we hadn’t quite gotten the chance to turn on friends and family in order to save our own ass?
Wherever I was supposed to end up, I’d be there in a couple more minutes. Then this would be done. I’d be done.
(Oh where oh Elizabeth where oh my own where are you?)
I softly groaned, which was drowned out by the saw. I could shut my eyes (as I was) and I could clamp my hands over my ears (which I didn’t dare), but couldn’t shut my brain off. Couldn’t block my husband’s thoughts.
I had to, though. His life and my soul depended on it.
“Of course I remember everything.” Graham pinched the bridge of his nose. He wore the expression of a man forced to tolerate exceptional stupidity. He looked like that a lot. “It was half an hour ago. I’m freaked out, not brain dead.”
“Do you . . . do you mind going over it again?”
“Of course I mind, you hirsute moron.”
“You start a lot of sentences with ‘of course.’”
“I get asked a lot of dumbass questions, of course. Did you catch how I mixed it up that time? And to answer your silly-ass question, I should be focusing on psychologically blocking the last hour, but I’m sitting here, aren’t I? I haven’t even gotten to the weirdest part yet, you believe that?”
His chief gave him a manly clap on the shoulder. The pathologist winced and prayed his shoulder hadn’t been dislocated. “I want you to know we all get why you decided to work with dead people. No one ever thought that was anything but a spectacular idea. I say again: spectacular! We’re just worried you’re going to be hauled away in screaming hysterics and come back determined to do a peds rotation.”
“Pediatrics?” Fresh horror swept over him like a freezing bath. “Never! I will never stock suckers! And I will never give out stickers! I will never say, ‘My, how big you’ve grown!’”
“You’re getting shrill again, Graham.”
He resisted the urge to bang his head on the table. “I hate everyone. But you most of all.”
“And the world continues to turn,” his boss said with maddening cheer. “Soooo . . . you’re still gung ho for the pathology residency?”
“What are the odds of another patient coming to life under my knife?” Cripes, his neck itched. “Look: I want the rest of the day off. I want you to deal with Admin and then I want you to go away. When I finish eating this cigarette, I’m outta here. I’ll be back tomorrow by shift change. There’s nothing else to talk about.”
“How goes the psychological blocking?”
“It goes shitty. I can remember everything. Everything that happened and everything she said.”
“So she did talk to you. Y’know, that’s the weirdest of all. That she could be lucid after—”
“After what, coming back to life? Why wouldn’t she be? You’re not listening, Chief: she was dead. Not in a coma. Dead. I’m concerned, Benson. You don’t seem to be getting this.”
“I’m concerned, too,” said his boss—who really was an okay guy once you got used to his perpetually sunny mood—“but for different reasons.”
“Weirdest night of my life, and I’m not a rookie, right? I’ve seen things; every path resident has. Shit, every doctor has. But the things she said, and then what she did, that was the weirdest of all, and I don’t say that lightly.”
“Far as I know, you’ve never said anything lightly.”
“Including right now. She was completely dead one minute. And completely alive the next. What if—what if she had woken up when I cracked her sternum?” He could actually feel his mind trying to shy away from the image, distracting him by focusing on the woman’s extraordinary good looks and charisma.
“She didn’t, though.” Benson coughed and shuffled his feet. He wasn’t used to Graham wanting reassurance. And Graham wasn’t used to needing it. “Everything’s fine.”
“This is my blood,” he said quietly, touching the dark