Word Count: 6965

They had never separated since, and married while still in college. So, I thought, wasn’t it strange that they had been apart for Shane’s business trip? What business trip could a college dropout take anyway? But I didn’t know if he was a college dropout, making it wrong of me to assume. Perhaps he and Noah had stayed through all of college, and eventually went to graduate school together. My thoughts were interrupted by my alarm. It was time once again; time for my body to move, stand, dress, and prepare for the day ahead. I was an unstoppable force when awake, but not this morning. It took several cups of coffee just to keep the gears turning, and I normally don’t drink coffee. I do, however, keep a silent inventory of the bean in a hidden pantry, just in case. I don’t like to forcibly do anything to myself – even forcibly wake myself – unless it is absolutely necessary. However, if I was not awake, I was liable to miss some crucial clue about Shane’s death during his autopsy.

I was not the pathologist, but I had requested that I be present during the autopsy. I had found a replacement doctor to cover my patients during this important adventure. I wanted to see the body, for my own selfish reasons. I wanted to determine the cause of death all on my own. I wanted to be the new Sherlock Holmes and solve the mystery of Shane Evans, but I would wield a scalpel instead of a magnifying glass, and scrubs instead of a stylish hat. Or, I would have if the autopsy had not been postponed. This was horrible news to bring to Noah, who had been worrying all night long about her deceased husband.

The delay, I was told, would be a week and a half at most, but a week minimum. In the mean time the body was kept in a safe area, frozen, and left alone. There was no need to check upon Shane from that moment on. I told Noah to go home and get some well-deserved rest, and she obliged. She was still shivering from the day before, and I had begun to pick this trait up. I saw my hands shaking, and prayed that wouldn’t affect my performance at the table once the body was lain down. In the meantime, I was told to continue my work and not worry about the condition of the body. To say I did this would be a lie so grand it could fill the great oceans of the world when turned to liquid. No, I visited the body. I visited the body even when its wife could not.

It was peaceful. I could hear soft music playing behind me – I turned, saw nothing that could be producing the sound. The sound stopped. What could it have been? I ignored it and looked at the body again through the glass panel. Some ignorant fool who had designed the cadaver chambers felt it would be wonderful if we could all see the bodies inside. I saw not only Shane’s body but the bodies of all other dead patients. Who knew so many were fated to lose their lives in this hospital? I had never known that we were so incompetent in our work, that all of the doctors in this building were careless enough to let their patients slip away. I hoped that they were not like me, who ignored the alarm when he was needed most. I hoped that they were the responsible ones, but the bodies in this room were so numerous that I could not look for long. So I stopped by every day to see the bodies during my lunch. I would sit under the painting for forty-five minutes, and look inside the cadaver chambers for fifteen minutes.

They were large chambers. Yes, there were multiple chambers, and they were whole rooms, not smaller refrigerator-like apparatuses. It was relatively new technology, released shortly after cryogenic freezing became cheap. Once that happened, every medical expert – and economic expert - on Earth knew nobody would want to freeze themselves anymore. It was the economic basics that told us once supply of cryo-freezing apparatuses went up demand to be frozen in death would go down. Thankfully, hospitals were able to use this technology cheaply to build massive chambers in which doctors and morticians could store the bodies of the deceased. There were shelves upon shelves of bodies in this hospital – the room was covered in a fine blue mist. This mist loomed over every corpse as though their souls were out and about, floating above their lifeless figures, wondering where the room’s exit was.

They wouldn’t find it. The door was securely locked, and I was quite sure that it was a one-way view to the inside of the cadaver chamber. Whoever was in there wasn’t getting out, and they certainly weren’t seeing out either. The souls locked within stayed within, another possible contributor to the strange events that were soon to begin. With the passing days I looked into the chamber, I would notice that Shane’s body looked inexplicably different than all of the other corpses that surrounded him. His was far more “living” than the others. I began to think the impossible, but brushed the thought away. I cleared the canvas of my mind and forgot all about it. I made sure not to mention a word of my thoughts to Noah, who would have surely screamed if she heard my superstitious thoughts of Shane’s soul reentering his body and keeping it alive and warm in an environment that would clearly keep any seemingly dead person dead for good.

I had another patient to deal with, anyway. I approached the woman, young, probably in her thirties, with a broken ankle. I told her that she would be just fine – that although there were several fractures, her surgery had gone without a hitch and she was expected to make a full recovery.

I paused, “…but you’ll have to be patient with it. It could take several weeks, perhaps months.” She didn’t seem like the patient type. She kept blinking as I spoke, as though beyond her broken ankle was nestled a case of epilepsy as well. “I can see you’re restless, but you’ll have to calm down. You’ve been under a lot of stress. The hospital is working diligently to get you moved to a more comfortable recovery room until you’re fit to leave. We’ve notified the rest of your family – there shouldn’t be any more problems. Is that alright?”

She nodded, and pushed her short shoulder-length blonde hair to the side. “It’s fine,” she said. “Just see where you can stick me until you’re ready to ship me out. I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible. No, no, don’t make yourself into a worry wart over me. There’s no need to rush. Just please find me a comfortable room.” She seemed too picky for my tastes, although she was my age. I nodded back to her, told her that I would do my best to get her out of here. I told her some other doctors would also be in shortly to give her some shots of morphine. Her face lit up – she wasn’t an addict, but one could see that she was in intense pain. If there was anything she must have wanted to do, it would have been to run around the room, run the pain away. But her ankle was broken. She would be unable to run for months. I secretly wished her good luck learning to walk again.

I wished more heavily that the next doctor wouldn’t be the incompetent one – the one causing all of the deaths in the hospital. I was kidding myself – it wasn’t a single murderous doctor killing everybody! We were all guilty of incompetence, the doctors and the patients both. Nobody was free from the blame and guilt.

Shane’s body looked too peaceful, as though it were sleeping. I didn’t blame his spirit for wanting to rest. I knew Noah was in the same sleep-like trance as her husband was, but she was on a cushioned bed, waiting for the day where I would inform her of the cause of death. That day finally came to us, exactly one week and three days after the announcement of the delay. I was brought into the morgue wing to fully understand what had been backing up the system. Not only was one of our cadaver chambers completely decimated, but one of our morticians had quit. The morgue wing was full of dead bodies. The cadaver chambers beyond the broken one were full – I was beginning to see corpses that were made to stand up. It was strange to see that, but because they were frozen they remained standing.

In fact, during the accident one man had been severely injured. I did not know him, but I did hear the accident could have been caused by the mortician who quit. That man is not staying at this hospital; he has moved to a hospital the next town over, closer to the city. There were so many questions I had for the mortician remaining. Why are there so many bodies? How did the chamber become so broken? It looked as though a bomb had gone off! Wouldn’t the entire hospital have heard?

“Sir, behind you is a one-foot thick steel door. No sound can escape this wing, not even the sound of an explosion.” The man spoke professionally. He had prepared for all possible questions, clearly. “Now, I’m very busy. I’m working alone now, so these bodies… they can’t tend to themselves, you know? Huh, you should just pack up your things and leave this wing. The steel door is open for now. You’d know, I guess, since you came in through it.”

I didn’t tell him that I had not come through that door. I never did, because there’s a back route that’s closer to where most of my patients are located. I was surprised he didn’t know about it. Granted, there’s still a mildly thick metal door around that entrance. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll leave you alone to your work. Don’t kill yourself over these bodies.” I chuckled, but he didn’t seem to find it very funny. He was trying to make sure each body bad was properly labeled and in a compartment that suited the corpse. Those scheduled for a recent autopsy – within the hour – were put into room temperature “drawers.” The rest were frozen in the remaining cadaver chambers.

The wing was so separated from the rest of the hospital, but Shane’s death had made me oblivious to this morbid wing. Blocked on each end by steel doors, the morgue wing is a depressing site lined with cadaver chambers and warmer, unfrozen morgue “basement” rooms. The basement rooms are usually filled with workers, but that day there was only one. Everybody else had gone home, for they are not all morticians, but the single mortician left in the hospital. In a day or so the relinquished mortician would be replaced, but not before Shane’s autopsy. Not before that incredible day that changed the reason why the new mortician was hired.

Shane’s body was placed into an above-zero degree room shortly after I was told his autopsy would happen in the next day. There he defrosted – or, as I know say, repaired himself – and by the next day he was ready to be examined. I kept Noah Evans up to date on the issue, and told her that by the end of the day she’d have the cause of death of her husband. It had now been one week and four days since his death.

The cadaver table was prepared and the pathologist told me that I would be his diener. I would do as I was told and ensure that no irreversible damage was done to the body. I thought this was quite the understatement, considering that we were dealing the most permanent damage anybody could do to a body, but I obliged and struggled out a smile. There were various other people around the table – biochemists, doctors and the like. They were all here to observe and identify any strange happenings within the body. I felt like I was about to embark on a miraculous journey as they placed the body block upon the table, and ripped Shane’s spiritless body from the body bag. He was clumsily placed on the table, and clumsily observed. I, however, looked at him with the utmost intensity.

His closed eyes looked back at me. People around us were talking. What did we perceive the cause of death as currently? I remembered – I had gotten an email from Noah during the week. She’d sent a reply to me not long after I gave her my email. It must have been one of the only things she did in those eleven days. There she described how he had died. Slowly he grew weaker, until he could not talk. His breathing grew quiet. He showed signs of being in intense pain, but could not identify where the pain was, being unconscious. We would never know how his initial collapse had gone, only how he died. It seemed painful, how he died, but at the same time unnatural. Noah had written that in his last moments he had begun to lurch a bit, back and forth in the hospital bed. She was almost, she wrote, going to announce that he was waking up from his death slumber, but when his body ceased motion she shut herself up and sat down next to him once more.

Eventually his breathing stopped completely. It was not sudden, but she had written “…by the time I was able to notice that he was not breathing, his breaths had become so quieted that I couldn’t possibly have made them out… as though he died… over a period of time, one piece at a time, and the final step was his breath.” If such were true, his pulse would have been cut off long before his lungs.

“According to Noah’s description,” I told the group of doctors, “his lungs were still functioning after his heart gave way. She admits to not having checked the man’s pulse frequently, and relying heavily on his breathing as a sign of life.”

“Then those statements are utterly useless!” retorted another doctor. “It’s not possible for a man’s heart to stop, but his lungs to continue breathing for a significant amount of time.” He crossed his arm – his views were firm. “Besides, if he did die slowly – one piece at a time, as his wife said – then I can only imagine his breathing would be staggered. He may have begun to cough, especially if his body was beginning to break down.”

“I agree,” said the female biochemist, “but, as you’ve all touched upon, the cause of death is genuinely unknown. Why not start this obduction now? It’ll clear up any doubt for sure.” She looked at the body, and then around the room. The atmosphere told everybody that she wanted to dig deep into that body’s contents alone and discover whatever was left of this dead man. The pathologist, however, sensed it, and made a light joke:

“Sorry about that, Shanna – I know you two have similar named, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you take all the credit for whatever’s inside this guy. You’ll just have to work with me this time.” Shanna pouted, and then smiled.

“Alright, you win. Please, make the first incision.” Her smile widened.

The pathologist nodded, grabbed his scalpel, and looked at Shane’s body on the body block. His chest was protruding outward, as though he had been placed over a cinder block and his gut left open to empty its contents over the next person to accidentally kick him off of the cinder block. The incision was made – a deep cut ranging from one shoulder to the next, and then a line down the center of his abdomen. This would leave all of his innards exposed, but the man wanted to give me a chance to cut Shane up. After making his incisions, he looked at me. “Take the knife, and make a Y-shaped cut underneath his ear. Extend that cut down to his pelvic area, as I did my T-shaped chest cut. We’ll examine from there.”

I took the knife from the man, who kept speaking. “Go get ‘em, diener.” I nodded, just as he had – it helped with concentrating on the body, I noticed, and gave you a sense of where the body really was in relation to yours. It seemed so flat, so bare. I went under his ears and make the Y-shaped incision, then began to drag the knife down the side of his neck.

Before I could go any further, I screamed. “Blood! This man is bleeding! Please come and look at this – this is not ordinary!” I tried to cover the blood with my hands, but it was pouring out of his neck at an alarming rate. That should not have happened, because the dead do not bleed. They did not bleed then, and they do not bleed now. He did not bleed on his chest, but he bled at his neck. Seeing the blood, the other doctors attempted to stitch the man together before something truly awful occurred. But the blood was just the beginning of our fears. I was attempting to gain control over the situation – towels, stitches, anything to stop the blood and close up the wound. Whatever had to be done had to be done fast.

But it was not fast enough. Shane moved. One of his arms – untouched by our incisions – shook and shivered. We saw his open gut rise once. His other arm moved, then one of his legs.

Shane Evans was alive. And he was waking up.

The pathologist grabbed a needle and some stitching thread and began to close Shane’s incisions as he stirred. Luckily, the major areas of the incisions were able to be closed before his movements became exaggerated and lively, including the incision on his neck. We were trying to clean him up when one of his arms lifted off of the table. Everybody screamed, for we knew not what was happening. He was presumed dead – he had been frozen for a week and a half! we all said. The man was absolutely, without a doubt, dead. Yet his arm moved – touched his forehead. Rubbed it. How can a dead man rub his forehead? How can a dead man then moan, and speak?

“Ugh…” said the revived Shane Evans. “…Ouch… my goodness, this is quite serious pain I’m in. I should probably see a doctor.” The revived Shane Evans began to sit up, but we held him down, for we did not want his insides spilling out.

“Shane!” I shouted. “Do not move. You are in a hospital morgue – you are seeing doctors. Do not move an inch, or you may die. I’ll repeat that for you, because I’m sure it’s shocking: Do not move an inch or you will die. It is certain.” I was as blunt as possible. I didn’t want him to move, from the bottom of my heart. His eyes opened, and saw his fear. I saw myself in my eyes – I saw fire in his eyes. It was ravaging him, destroying him. Those ashes would raise a new Shane Evans. All we had to do was help him along a bit, stitch him up. He’d be good as new and, maybe, if we did it all absolutely perfect, lead a normal life again.

Shane remained still while the pathologist continued to stitch. “Could I stitch as well? The process would move much faster if everybody worked conjunctively.”

“Grab a needle and some stitching thread, and get to work. Shane, stay put like he said. I’ll tell you this because you’ve got to know why you’re staying still. Our friend over here just said you’d die if you moved. Well, we actually thought you were dead already. Now, take that however you want, but you’re obviously alive. God up thee loves you, probably more than any other person on Earth. Pray to him, and stay put while we sit itch up our incisions. Then you can move all we want.”

I heard Shane gasp, but it was quiet. He obviously was having trouble breathing again. Meanwhile, I had gotten a needle and was finishing the job that had been started on his neck and ear incisions. After half an hour or so, every inch of him was stitched up. His innards had never been touched, so they were alright. I looked at Shane again, who was now looking at the ceiling. His did not blink, but a tear ran down his face. Inside the tear was all the fire that had been in his eyes. I spoke more compassionately to him, “Your wife, Noah… she told me all about you. She’ll be elated to hear that you’re alive.”

He did not blink, but he smiled. “My body hurts everywhere,” he muttered. “Could you fix it?”

“I can fix it,” I told him. “You just rest. When you wake up, you’ll be in a normal hospital room.” And he fell asleep.