Word Count: 23,368

It was dark. I had eaten later than I thought, but I knew that the on call doctors would let me in. Once at the hospital, I parked in my normal space, close to the entrance, picked myself up slowly out of the driver’s seat and marched towards the entrance. It was locked; I rang the buzzer and was promptly allowed in on the basis that I’d forgotten my laptop computer. I didn’t even own a laptop. I still don’t. But that wasn’t what mattered – what mattered was the drawer, and what was in it. I stumbled into the hospital and quickly looked from side to side, as though I were committing a suspicious crime. The gleaming white tile floors distracted me; the environment was too sterile, and I felt too dirty to be there. I picked myself up out of the ooze and continued forward, watching the on call doctors scramble around the hospital, completely helpless. They were lost in their own worlds, and I was just a ghostly figure nearby – even if I had been doing something suspicious, nobody would have noticed.

As I moved closer to the morgue, the floor became dirtier. The walls were less clean. White turned steadily to off-white, and as soon as I had noticed the color change the steel double doors were in front of me. I had instinctively walked to the steel doors that nobody but I used, although they were further away than the normal entrance to the morgue wing. They creaked open, and slammed shut; light gleamed off of their surfaces like the car lights that had blinded me driving on the road at night. And there were the cadaver chambers – the cryogenic freezers, the basement rooms where bodies were stored at a warm room temperature. And there was the room where the mortician had been working with the bodies.

He was absent. I did the job quickly, rushing into the room and pulling open the drawer as fast as possible to examine its contents. Inside was a body – but it was a good thirty seconds of staring before I knew whose it was. It was the body of a man I’d only met once, one with a cruel temper and an arrogant disposition towards all dead – and living – things. And when I realized who had been stuffed into this drawer, I fainted.

                I dreamt of what a horrible failure that adventure had become. I awoke in a hospital bed. Someone had found me next to the open drawer. Had they seen who was inside? The entire hospital would have known in a day if a staff member had seen him inside that drawer. I was afraid not for what was in the drawer, but that I was now in a hospital bed inside the hospital that had killed both he and Victor, and in part Shane Evans.

My doctor looked at me; for some reason I did not know who she was. My mind told me nothing, kept everything a secret as though producing the memory of the man in that drawer has overridden the memory of my doctor’s identity. She brought me a glass of water; I thanked her.

“He hasn’t been moved,” she said, taking my glass and walking over to the water cooler to refill it.

“I see. But do they know about it?”

“If you mean the higher-ups, yes. They’ve known for a while. The man passed about five days ago, as far as I know, but I don’t really know more than that. I do know that they’re allowing the crazy mortician to keep it around for a reason. He’s been blabbering on saying that the man’s body doesn’t ‘feel’ like a normal corpse.” She handed me the glass of water; the water rinsed over us and purified the subject of conversation. “I want to keep you here until tomorrow, if that’s alright with you. You seem fine; you probably just had a scare seeing the body.”

I looked outside – it was morning. A whole day in this room…

“If you’re sure that you’re alright, you’re free to go. I just want to make sure you don’t pass out again.”

“I think I’ll take my chances, thank you,” I told her, and removed the sheet from my body. The light from the window was now the light to blind me as I picked myself up and stretched, then looked at my doctor. “Could I have my normal clothes?” I asked, chuckling when I noticed that they’d put me in scrubs. If this place couldn’t keep people alive, they at least went out of their way to ensure that procedure was upheld. She handed me my clothes, which were on the counter in a bag. I asked her for a moment, and pulled the curtain while I changed, pulled the curtain back again and shook her hand as thanks. “I didn’t expect to be brought into a room if anything ever happened to me in here. It was a pleasant surprise.”

“It happened to me once, too. And I’ll let you know that I was just as surprised as you were!” She smiled and we spoke for another minute or so before I departed. My car was still parked in the same spot, and I was free to begin work as though it were a normal day. But it was not going to be a normal day, because I had seen the old mortician’s body stuffed into a drawer like so many vegetables.

                How had he died? That was my ultimate question, and it truly meant the difference between a death like Shane or Victor and a death as a normal disease might kill, or a normal condition might kill. It was the difference between a new lead on the special antibiotic resistant bacteria and absolutely nothing at all, and I would not settle for nothingness. If the new mortician was really keeping his partner around because his corpse seemed “different”, then I knew that he was seeing the same difference that I had seen in Shane and now in Victor. I decided to give the new mortician a little interview, courtesy of Ethan Hemmings.

                The mortician would not be in until after my lunch. I supposed that the hospital was having serious trouble finding another new mortician, but didn’t think much of it. I passed through the day checking upon Victor’s cultures, which were beginning to lose their whiteness. It was happening again, but now on a much larger scale. I could see what the bacteria were doing to the skin cells. They were reviving them in exchange for their own life. Spotches of peach color appeared on several of the agar plates that belonged to Victor. If it took only this long for Victor’s cultures to spawn peach speckles, what would Shane’s look like? I took his out of the freezer. The freezer had slowed the process, but even then the plates were almost entire peach colored. I didn’t touch them, but if I had I would have felt the skin-like texture that was only there for another few days. Once the white bacteria had given up all their sustenance to the skin cells, the skin cells perished once more. I tracked this process over the next few days, but not before I met with the only mortician left in the building to speak about his little project. I found him after heating my usual lunch under the painting. He had been walking by me – just like the rest of the hospital always did when I ate lunch – and I did not let my lunch wait for him.

                “Stop!” I yelled. He promptly froze, knowing my voice.

                “Oh, hello!” he said cheerily. He looked at me, his gaze never failing. His eyes reminded me of my own, with a certain fire inside them. It was almost like Shane’s, and possibly even Victor’s, but one could see that he knew, and enjoyed, what he was doing.

                “I know what’s in there,” I said, pointing to the drawer, not wanting to delay my words. I had nothing extravagant to say to him. “I know who’s in there, too.”

                “I see,” he said, his grin fading, but still faint. “And why does that matter to you?”

                “You’ve been hiding him in there for five days, have you not? How is the corpse even remaining intact for that long?” I gazed back at him with the same intensity that he was gazing at me. We were at visual war, and I knew he wouldn’t spare me an answer as long as I showed interest this intensely.

                “Well, I can’t deny you the information,” he said, as I’d expected him to. “Do you want the long or the short of it?”

                “I’ll take the long, if you don’t mind. I’ve got plenty of time, if you’re willing to tell me the story.”

                “One of my mentors once had a saying,” he said, laughing beforehand. “He would always say, ‘The long of it? Yes. The short? No.’ That was if you had asked the man a complicated yes or no question. Thing was, he’s only answer your question if it was complicated! But enough of that. This man passed away, actually, six days ago.” He walked over to the drawer and pulled it open. The dead mortician looked straight at me, his body turned diagonally so that his face was a reflection of my own. I was glad that it was not actually a mirror. “It was a very slow process, and he knew he was going to die at the end of it. The man was a strong believer in God, you know. So he felt that it was not proper to interfere with his untimely demise by sticking him in a hospital room. I’d only known him for a couple of months, so I said alright, buddy – go do whatever you want. If you die, I’ll make sure you get put to the front of the autopsy line so you can get buried right quick. Yeah, it was weird to talk about death like that, but when you so all your work in a morgue, especially one this big, you get kind of immune to death. It’s not shocking anymore once you’re surrounded by corpses all the time. About a week or two after that the man actually died. Was I surprised? Sure, but I kept my word and hid him in this drawer, to pretend that he was next in line for an autopsy.

                Because of the backlog, he still hasn’t received his autopsy. But I’m not even looking to get him that anymore, because his body isn’t changing. In six days, all of the bodies in the room have cycled except for his. No corpse is kept in this room for too long without a scheduled autopsy. But his body, it always stays the same! It never rots, it never begins to smell, and I swear it doesn’t even look completely dead. So I’ve been keeping it hidden in that drawer.” He shut the drawer after the word “drawer,” as though he thought he was hiding it again and that I didn’t know what was inside.

                “You know that people know you’re keeping the body, right?” I asked him, curious if he was that oblivious to the situation.

                “Of course; I’m the guy who told those people. I just didn’t tell you. I’ve got permission to keep his body in there so long as no harm comes to it. The guy had no family, he was on his own. He didn’t have many possessions, either. A very modest man, this man. He said that in exchange for keeping his body safe, he would donate all of his possessions to me. But that’s not why I kept him. I kept him because he seems so strange – even in death he is lonely. So lonely that I fear he might wake up to find a companion, as though his own Lord that he was so passionate about would put the life back into him just to give him another chance to make a friend.”

“Do you really expect him to remain that way? I mean, intact? There’s only so long somebody can stay like that, even if a mystical outside force is acting upon him which, by the way, I don’t believe is happening. You see, I’m doing some research on a new disease. That’s how I found this man, in the drawer. I was going to take a skin sample, but fell ill just before I could get one. But I think this man was sick with that disease.” I crossed my arms and continued looking directly at him. If I my gaze could outlive his, I would win over his mind and he would open the drawer and allow me to take a tissue sample. Then I would know what was happening to this old mortician.

I’ve always had the impression that he was old. I see dead people in general as old, because I believe that that’s when people are fated to die. Only in old age. But in truth, the dead mortician wasn’t a day over forty-five. The new mortician was much younger, but only because the hospital staff must have thought a young mortician wasn’t likely to die soon, and that they therefore wouldn’t need to hire a new one. Young people, unfortunately, are more volatile and likely to leave a job than an old man, who has nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do but remain at work. In the dead mortician’s face it was proven that one must not be old to die, but must be weak, feeble, and tired to die. No matter your age, if you are weak and feeble, you will die – in many times, it is not a case of physical weakness and feebleness, but emotional weakness and feebleness. Many times it is called “the will to live,” but I’ve never believed in that. If the “will to live” mattered, then many people would die during stressful times. People doubt their usefulness, but do not realize that they are always useful. Every human is useful – and when they forget that, they lose part of “the will to live.” But they continue living.

“What sort of disease is this? I can’t just give this man’s skin away for no reason,” the mortician told me. “It’d better be something good.”

“So far it’s killed two people. Your friend might be the third. But that’s not what’s crazy about it.”

“What is, then? A bunch of diseases kill people. If something like that killed him, I’d rather wait for the autopsy.”

“One of those two people woke up a week and a half after dying.”

After about thirty seconds, the man unfroze. “What?” was all that came out of his mouth.

“One of them woke up,” I repeated. “During his autopsy. He started bleeding.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“He’s alive. I can call him if you’d like.”

“You’re lying. Please go away.”

“This isn’t some kind of joke. Why would I lie?”

“Nobody comes back to life, Hemmings. Nobody! You’re talking crazy. Now get out of my site, before I’m offended.” He turned around d and pretended to work, hoping I’d go away if he ignored me long enough.

“They do and they did. I’ve been watching the bacteria at work, and they’re doing amazing things. They’re reviving skin cells! Who says they wouldn’t revive a person? Who says the people killed by them are even dead anyway? I need to find out. I need you to let me take just two tissue samples from this man.”I kept staring at him, even though he was turned around. I wanted to make sure he never knew a world without my gaze, and then he would be forced to allow me to take a tissue sample.

“I’m sorry, but you make a mockery of his beliefs. Nobody comes back to life. Nobody but the great Lord Jesus himself, as he’d say.” He was talking to a dead body, recently taken out of the cadaver chambers.

“You’re being a little unreasonable, don’t you think?” I kept staring. He finally turned around.

“The unreasonable one isn’t saying that the dead come back to life!” he shouted. I found it so strange that the man willing to keep a corpse around for six days, watching it remain in perfect condition, could not believe that the body might one day wake up, just as Shane had. And then I realized that it might only take those few words.

“Six days,” I said.

“What?”

“In the six days you kept that body,” I began, “what have you seen?”

“Absolutely nothing. The body’s been the same every day.”

I crossed my arms and grinned. I saw his face change from anger to surprise to urgency.

“Take the tissue samples,” he said. “Make it quick. You’d better damn well let me know what you find.” He forced a smile and turned around to face the cold cadaver behind him, then scratched his head, wondering where to put it. I walked out to retrieve some Petri dishes filled with agar, and a sterile knife and cotton swab. I returned five minutes later with everything needed to obtain a sample.

As I was scraping tissue off of the body, I turned to the mortician. “How did you know my name, by the way?” I’d never even met the man, but he’s called me Hemmings. It was so informal, as though he’d known me for a while. But he hadn’t.

“He told me,” the mortician said, looking at the corpse I was scraping tissue off of and gesturing toward it with his head. “He said you were the last guy to come in and see him before I was hired.” He was right; I had been. But he didn’t seem to know why he’d been hired. He probably only knew that the mortician before him had quit. He didn’t know that he had been hired in anticipation for a second Shane Evans. But what’s more, he didn’t seem to be getting sick with this strange disease.

In my mind I was having just as hard of a time as the mortician was understanding – and believing in – the power of those bacteria to keep a cell alive. But Shane Evans was alive, and still infected. And Victor had fire in his eyes, even after death – just as Shane had had. And now this man, whose name I didn’t even know. Victor, and Shane were inextricably linked. It would be fate if this old mortician was also linked. Fate would allow me to discover the nature of this disease, no matter what. Although I’ve come to regret the discovery of these bacteria, it is doubtless that they’ve changed the world. I could not have possibly imagined – even with the most creative mind in the world – what this would eventually grow into, but that was not even brought into consideration at the time. All that mattered were the tissue samples and my silly little microscope.

“Done,” I said, and closed the lids on the agar plates. I bid farewell to the mortician, who wished me luck with my research as I stepped out of the room, and out of the morgue wing, the large steel double doors closing loudly behind me. I clutched the agar plates with fierce intensity. I didn’t want them to go anywhere, so I held to them with all the force my fingers would allow. They were too important to let slip, and I had worked too hard to get them. They were important enough to determine the fate of all of my patients, and beyond that, the entire hospital.