As Helen stepped into the light, a bright smile crossed her face as she saw her parents. Then she turned to Stan.
“You can take off the shield now holding me here,” she said.
“Not me,” Stan said, smiling.
Helen turned to stare at her parents. “Mom?”
“We’ll talk,” she said.
And with that Helen vanished, and not to a place she wanted to go I would wager.
“Thank you again,” Lady Luck said and behind her Benny nodded.
It never got old having Lady Luck thank you.
Lady Luck went on. “After we get family business taken care of, I would love to hear about your adventure on the other side. I’ll come join you all for lunch one of these days.”
Then she and Benny vanished as the four of us stood there with our mouths open.
An instant later Stan had us back in my office and we were all missing our parkas.
And I had about six thousand questions built up to ask.
Screamer shook his head and looked out at Las Vegas below my office. “Well, that was an interesting afternoon trip. I think there’s a steak with my name on it at the MGM Grand.”
“Mind if I join you?” Stan asked. “I would love to know how you knew Helen or Sheila, as you called her.”
“You drive,” Screamer said, smiling, and an instant later they were both gone.
Without answering a single question I had.
“So that leaves just the two of us,” Patty said, looking at me with those big brown eyes of hers. “Any ideas?”
“Maybe trying to find out what just happened? And what those keys were all about. And why exactly that city is there. And who did it.”
“More than enough time for that,” Patty said, smiling. “I’m going to call in and cancel work tonight. I think they can get by without me, don’t you?”
I took a deep breath and looked out over the city I loved. I was finally starting to catch her drift. It was time to celebrate being back and being alive.
“I do,” I said, nodding seriously.
“Then after I call work I want to take a long hot shower,” she said, smiling at me and giving me a quick kiss. “I’m still chilled. Then maybe some dinner.”
“Mind if I join you?” I asked, holding her close. “I’m sure they can get along without me at the poker tournament tonight as well.”
“For dinner?” she asked.
“I was thinking of the shower to be honest,” I said.
“You drive,” she said, smiling.
“With pleasure,” I said.
And it turned out that with pleasure was a very good description of the rest of the evening.
Not really dead, not really alive. Debbie finds herself one fine day in a hospital morgue and the man of her dreams walks in to start her autopsy.
In just moments her wonderful body will be cut open.
And she can’t move to stop him.
MATED FROM THE MORGUE
(Published under the name Dee W. Schofield)
ONE
I’m on one damn cold metal table, bright lights shining on my naked body, my brand new, enhanced breasts aiming at the ceiling tile of this stupid hospital morgue like they were supposed to. And what do I feel? Annoyed. Just annoyed. Not cold, not embarrassed, just annoyed.
And just a little scared.
Panic?
Sure. That was in the mix as well.
I’m about to be very, very dead if someone doesn’t catch a clue real quick that I am still inside this stupid body of mine and very much alive, even though it doesn’t look like I am.
Some pimply-faced kid set up a tray of sharp knives and bone spreaders beside my table, looked at my breasts, then my crotch, and left.
This felt like sitting in a dentist’s chair getting ready for the dentist to use all his nasty-looking instruments. Only, that tray of stuff was sitting there just waiting for some lowlife mortician to come in and cut me open like a stupid trout.
While I’m still alive and can feel it! Okay, maybe panic was a little closer to the surface than I thought.
Can’t any of the idiots out there see that I’m still alive, that some blood was pumping? Otherwise, how could I be lying here on this damn cold metal table thinking that if I ever did get out of this, I was going to kill someone.
Anyone.
From across the embalming room I heard a door open. I sure as hell wanted to turn my head and smile at the person just to give them a shock. I tried.
Nothing.
Not even a muscle twitch.
Suddenly, a hunk of a good-looking guy in a rubber apron and a hairnet appeared over me like an angel. He had flashing dark eyes, longish, dark brown hair under the net, and a smile that just wouldn’t stop.
And he was looking right in to my eyes.
“You are far too good-looking to be here on this table,” he said.
I tried to shout, No Shit, Sherlock!
My mouth wouldn’t move. Not even a grunt came out.
He walked slowly down along the table, clearly taking in all my naked assets.
Now I was starting to feel embarrassed. This was not really the way I wanted a hunk of a guy to see me. He looked at the toe tag on my foot, then came back up and checked off something on a clipboard.
“Debbie,” he said, smiling at me again. “My name is Mathew. I’m here to try to find out why you just keeled over dead in your tuna salad.”
I’m not dead! I tried to scream.
Nothing.
I was facing a young hunk of a doctor who talked to the bodies. Even with that bad habit, I still wanted to jump his bones.
I wanted to jump anything, actually. Getting cut open on a morgue table was not my idea of a good way to leave the planet.
How the hell did I end up here?
And what the hell was a guy like him doing here? He could be modeling for a men’s magazine in sweaters with golf clubs in his hands. Instead he was cutting open dead people.
And more than likely a not-so-dead one in just a moment.
I had two degrees in business and ran my own company. He clearly had a medical license of some sort to call himself a doctor. He couldn’t be dumb. Maybe, just maybe, he might figure this all out. The idiots in the ambulance and the bitch doctor in the emergency room sure hadn’t.
Having yourself declared dead while you are listening is just not a good time. If I got out of here, I was going to need counseling for years.
The door to the room opened again, and Doctor Mathew turned those wonderful, dark eyes away from me.
“I won’t need you anymore today, Jim,” he said.
His voice sort of echoed, so the room had to be fairly large. More than likely he was talking to the kid with the face-full of pimples, but I couldn’t see the kid.
Doctor Mathew disappeared from my limited sight, and I heard the kid mumble something, then the door closed.
And then there was the sound of a lock turning.
Oh, shit!
This might turn even uglier than it was. I just went from a horror sit-com to a full-out horror movie.
TWO
Now the panic was starting to swell up. I had seen far too many movies where the good-looking doctor was some sort of perv.
My brain told me I wanted to swallow and then scream for help, but none of that was happening.
In horror movies, they always made the poor victim unable to move as well.
The hunk of a man appeared above me again, smiling. At least he was a good-looking monster.
“We’re all alone now, Debbie. Just you and me. Maybe we could call this a date. You would be the first date I’ve had in a year. Since my wife died.”
Oh, shit! Oh, shit! I was doomed. I just hoped I didn’t remind the guy of his dead wife.
“You remind me a little of Marcie,” he said, smiling and checking out my scalp with very tender fingers and a light touch.
Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!
“But she was s
horter and had green eyes,” he said, “instead of pretty blue ones like yours. She also wanted to have breast enhancements like yours, but was killed in a car crash before she got the chance. Life is so short. Clearly it was for you as well.”
He kept working over my scalp, very carefully, like a lost hairdresser trying to pad her bill and find her way to the door by Braille.
“I’m afraid I won’t be a very good date,” he said, smiling at me and looking right into my eyes. “I just don’t think it’s been long enough for me since my Marcie left.”
He laughed in a strained way and shook his head.
Wasn’t it bad enough that I was on a morgue table, thought to be dead, and now some guy was going to get his jollies on my naked body?
“But don’t worry,” he said as he smiled down at me. “I have always been a complete gentleman on a first date.”
I’d believe that if I wasn’t as naked as the day I came into this stupid world. Except for the toe tag.
He started to check out my neck with those wonderful hands of his, then he stepped back, a frown on his face. “Your skin is still warm to the touch.”
Could he be figuring this out?
He stepped away and I could no longer see him. From what I could tell he was flipping through some sort of paperwork.
“It’s been three hours since you collapsed,” he said, clearly still talking to me. “Two hours since you were declared dead. And you’ve been down here on this table for over an hour now. That’s just weird.”
I should be as cold as a rock. Right? Come on, Doc! Figure it out.
Next I could hear him rummaging through a drawer, and a moment later he was back, a stethoscope around his neck and a small device in one hand.
He held the device in my ear for a moment, then looked at it.
“Weird,” he said. “Just weird.” He looked into my eyes again. “You are as strange as you are beautiful.”
If I could have even blushed I would have right at that moment. Maybe I did, just a little. I couldn’t tell.
He put one hand on my chest, right on my brand new, specially-enhanced left breast, and leaned forward, not noticing at all what he was touching. I was still just dead meat to him, like I had been to my first husband for two years of that disaster laughingly called a marriage.
With his other hand he held the cold stethoscope to my chest.
For a moment he listened, then he moved the stethoscope to a location just under my enhancement and held it there. His eyes were distant, intense, as he tried to listen.
I’m in here, Doc! I wanted to shout.
After a moment he pushed down fairly hard on my chest with one hand while listening.
And then he pushed again, right on my breast.
Gentleman, hell!
But I knew he had no real idea what part of my body he was touching and pushing on. And that was damn fine with me. I wanted out of this nightmare—then he could push on my new breasts as much as he wanted. In a nice soft bed at his place or mine.
Suddenly he jumped back as if I had shocked him.
My new breasts were good, but not that good.
THREE
“Not possible!” he said.
Then he was back at my chest, leaning over, breathing gently into my chin as he leaned way down and almost put his ear against my chest with the stethoscope pressed in hard.
He listened and listened and then suddenly jumped back again, knocking over the tray of instruments.
“Oh, hell, Debbie, are you still in there?”
If I could have moved I would have jumped up and kissed him.
Suddenly, he vanished out of my vision and I could hear him grab a phone. He called in some sort of code and unlocked the door. Then he was back at my side, staring into my eyes.
“Hang on, Debbie. Help is on the way.”
He took my hand and squeezed it gently.
I just stared into those wonderful dark eyes of his and said nothing. Not like me, but I had no choice.
It was still a very, very nice moment.
What seemed like only a few seconds later the door exploded open and help arrived.
Six of them, including Doctor Mathew, moved me onto a stretcher, put an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, covered me with a sheet, and banged me out of the room so fast I thought I was on a ride in an amusement park.
Doctor Mathew never left my side as he and two other doctors talked all the way down the hall and up an elevator, clearly headed into more tests than I wanted to think about. I had no idea what they were talking about, but to be honest, it all sounded wonderful. A ton better than having someone declare you dead when you were really just fine.
For the moment my nightmare in the morgue was over. Now if I died, it wouldn’t be because I was sliced and diced. It would be with real doctors trying to save me.
They arrived in a place with dozens of people swarming around all seeming to talk at the same time. They hooked me up to a dozen monitors and confirmed I still had a very, very slowly beating heart.
And that my brain was still working.
I knew that, but it sure felt better to have some doctor say that.
“Oh, wow,” I heard Doctor Mathew say as someone else announced the test results. “I could have killed her on that table.”
Some other male doctor said, “But you didn’t. Nice work, doctor.”
So after what seemed like only a moment since they shoved me out of the morgue, Doctor Mathew leaned in over me again and smiled.
His smile got more wonderful every time I saw it. And those dark eyes of his could melt an iceberg.
I was almost dead and still in lust. How sad was that? It had clearly been too long since I had been laid.
“Hang in there, Debbie. We’re going to put you under while we do more tests and figure out just what is happening to you. But don’t worry, I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
Then he gently reached forward and closed my eyelids.
“Sleep well.”
He could do that to me for years if he wanted to.
And that was the last thing I remembered as that little cloud of blackness sort of came in from all sides.
FOUR
And then the blackness pushed back.
Weird. It seemed I didn’t want to be knocked out.
Or all of that had been some horrible nightmare.
Around me, I could hear the beeping of machines; and in the background, the sounds of a people talking.
And a television was on, softly going over some sort of news.
I blinked and opened my eyes to the lights of the room.
I was in a very different room than the one the tests had been in. And CNN was on the television. I had a light oxygen mask on my nose.
And holy crap, I had moved my eyelids!
I tried a finger and could feel it move as well.
And then an arm.
And then a leg.
Everything moved!
And I could feel I had a tube stuck in my arm.
And my chest hurt something awful.
And I was beyond thirsty.
“Water?” I tried to say, and I actually think what I managed to croak out sounded like a word.
Instantly Doctor Mathew was standing over me, smiling. He had been sitting beside my bed watching television.
“Glad to have you back, Debbie,” he said, again giving me that wonderful smile of his.
He eased a tiny ice cube toward my lips and managed to help me get it in my mouth.
“Just let that melt for a moment.”
In all my life, an ice cube had never tasted or felt as good.
Doctor Mathew smiled as I worked the tiny ice chip over like it was a seven-course meal.
“My name is Doctor Mathew Stevens,” he said. “I have no idea how much you remember, but you were declared dead.”
I nodded slightly, and indicated he should come closer. He leaned in and I somehow managed to whisper. “A weird first date, Mathew. Th
ank you for saving me.”
He leaned back, smiling and blushing, realizing I had heard every word he had said in the morgue. Somehow, with that handsome face of his bright red, he managed to recover a little and go on.
“We had to remove your breast implants,” he said. “You had an allergy to them that just shut you down. It would have killed you completely in another few hours. Don’t worry, you can get the implants replaced with a different type later.”
At that moment I didn’t care. Who knew having large breasts could kill a woman? My original, factory-issued breasts weren’t that bad in the first place. Dumb idea by me to think they might help me with men.
I just nodded to Mathew, so he went on.
“You’ve been out for about five days,” he said, “in a drug-induced coma so the toxins could clear your system completely. You should be up and around in a few days and feeling back to normal in a week.”
He leaned in and gave me another piece of ice, which again felt wonderful.
I sure liked having him close.
“Thank you for saving me,” I said again, my voice gaining strength.
“That’s what we try to do,” he said, nodding and blushing a little again. “You are welcome.”
A bashful doctor. Who knew there was such a thing?
I smiled at him.
“You have a beautiful smile,” he said. “Glad I could see it.”
“So am I,” I said.
Then I smiled again. “I understand about your wife, at least what little you told me. But if you are willing to give it a try and are ready, I would be up for a second date. The first one turned out so well.”
He stood there just staring at me, then, after a long few seconds, he finally laughed.
“Honestly,” I said, “I don’t expect you to save my life every date.”
“That’s good,” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “I would love to try a second date. Especially since that was a first date I could never imagine happening. I normally don’t date patients.”
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