by S L Shelton
She cried into his chest for a moment, then looked up, trying to smile past the tears. “Storc, do you remember Aunt—”
“Kelly, of course,” he said, wiping his renewed tears and hugging her as well.
John patted Jo on the back and leaned over. “Maybe we should let the family have the room,” he said.
Caroline looked at them, then up to Storc. “No. It’s okay. It’s better if the people he loved are here now. I know it’s what he would have wanted.”
John nodded and rubbed Jo’s back again, awkwardly trying to convey support.
The doctor cleared his throat then stepped over to Scott’s monitors and a small computer screen. “As you can see, the area of the brain that controls higher function is almost completely absent activity. The life-support machines are the only thing keeping his autonomic functions going.”
Storc shook his head and pointed at two other spots on the scan. “What about those areas. They’re very active.”
The doctor nodded. “I admit, it’s unusual to see that much activity in those regions, but those parts of the brain have nothing to do with what we’d call ‘consciousness’ or ‘function’. More likely, they are pain center echoes, searching for a home.”
“How can you be sure though,” Storc said. “Scott was different from most people. He—”
“There is not a single component of brain activity in the areas related to cognitive ability, memory, or autonomic function. If he were conscious, the pain would be so intense that his entire brain would be lit up like a stadium for Friday Night Football.”
“But what’s the harm in—”
Caroline touched Storc’s arm. “Storc, I know you love him. But please, this is hard enough.”
Storc bit down on his molars and tried to stifle a fresh round of sobs.
“He wouldn’t want to be left like this,” Caroline said. “You know him. If he couldn’t climb, if he couldn’t take care of himself, he’d…”
Aunt Kelly wrapped her arm around Caroline’s shoulder and kissed the top of her head, then looked up at Storc, wiping tears from her swollen eyes. “You’re his strongest advocate,” she said. “You always have been. I’m so sorry Bonbon couldn’t be here with us, but I’ll bet you anything she’s waiting for him on the other side.”
More grief reached up to grasp the knot in Storc’s throat. There remained no one from his past if Scott left. He had no more family but Jo. But he nodded as hopelessness welled up in his gut. Even he was too tired to fight the obvious, the inevitable.
“He’d be twenty-six next week,” Kelly said, then sat as another convulsion of grief wracked over her. “He was such a smart, handsome boy.”
Caroline looked over at the doctor and nodded.
Without a word, the doctor reached over and began turning off machines. After flipping the switch on the respirator, the only monitor left running was the heart rate monitor. He touched the panel and preemptively turned off the alarm function. Storc found the move cold though he instantly realized having the peaceful moment interrupted by crash alarms would be equally in poor taste.
As the machine ceased, Scott’s chest collapsed and didn’t rise again. Storc stared at Scott, his eyes darting back and forth between his face and the monitor, hoping that being taken off life support would somehow, some way, spur Scott into breathing on his own.
Instead, the heart rate continued to fall until after only a couple of minutes, he flatlined.
The doctor looked up at the clock and muttered, “Eight eleven a.m.”
Caroline and Kelly hugged each other, then Storc. The doctor moved away to the door and held it open, waiting to see if anyone was prepared to leave. Kelly looked back and shook her head, prompting the doctor to go, closing the door behind him.
Through glassy eyes, John rolled over to Caroline and Kelly. “I’m sorry for your loss. Scott was unlike anyone I’ve ever worked with. It may not be any comfort right now, but rest in the knowledge that he has provided a great service to the nation.”
Caroline nodded and patted his hand before turning away. Kelly hugged Storc once more and turned to join her.
She looked back as they were about to leave. “I’m not sure how arrangements are supposed to be made when working with the government,” she said. “I’m not even sure what he had specified.”
John shook his head. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of all that. He specified in his enlistment package that he wanted his remains cremated,” he said, then rolled toward her minutely. “If you like, I can have them brought to you before the memorial service.”
Kelly nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Temple,” she said softly, then left.
John looked at Storc. “They seem a little out of their element here,” he said, patting Storc on the arm. “You can go with them.”
Storc smiled thinly as Jo rose from her seat, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “He wouldn’t have done for anyone else but you,” Storc said as he put his arm around Jo and opened the door. “I know him. He went CIA for you.”
John nodded. “I’ll see you soon. We’ll talk about a debrief after things settle down a bit.”
Storc nodded and left. He looked back just before the door closed and saw John drop his head, his hands pressed to his face.
**
There’s something liberating in having no senses.
I had no sense of anything except that of peaceful rest—no aches, pains, or pressure anywhere. Also, no knowledge of anything outside of the fact that I was no longer in pain.
But somehow, I knew I had been in pain. In my darkness, I had heard voices. Phrases like ‘no brain activity’, ‘it’s what he would have wanted’, and ‘remains cremated’, gave way to a shrill hum then silence.
I didn’t know what any of it meant. I only knew I wasn’t in any pain, and that made me happy…I guess. It felt lonely where I was for some reason as if someone who was once here with me wasn’t any longer. That I guess was a sort of pain, but it wasn’t sharp and prickly like the rest of it. More of a hollow feeling.
What had I heard? Something about a birthday?
Mine? Whose birthday?
That sudden worry caused stress…and a flash of pain.
As though drifting deeper, narrower, colder, I suddenly panicked.
“Wait. Where am I going? Do I know anyone there?”
Not yet, came a familiar voice.
“Do I know you?”
No answer as darkness seemed to wrap me, closing my awareness to the narrowest scope imaginable.
“Are you there?” I asked.
I could feel my consciousness slipping into a void. Closing like a swirl of dark water.
“Am I dead?”
I waited, afraid yet excited to hear the answer.
“Am—I—Dead?!”
No, came the answer. Breathe!
**
JOHN TEMPLE sat at Scott’s side for a long time after his family and Storc had left. There were so many things he’d wanted to say to Scott. It never occurred to him that he might not make it. He’d seemed so invincible.
Aside from the great grief he felt over losing someone he’d come to view as a son after such a short period of time, he also had a more selfish question to ask— “With whom did you share your revelation about the two Russian hit teams, and the words I’d used at Ralsko Airbase?”
“You asshole,” John muttered. “Had to go and get yourself killed, didn’t you?”
The flatline tone on the heart monitor had been dialed down until barely audible, but it hummed in John’s ears as he stared at the most incredible weapon he’d ever had at his command.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” John said, wiping a single tear from his eye then pointing at him. “As soon as your star is up at Langley, I’m going to use it as the measuring stick for every new recruit.”
He laughed.
He was about to recount a war story of his own when the heart monitor pinged a beat.
John’s attention shot to th
e machine to see the single pulse drifting backward, led by more flatline—then another tone, accompanied by a spike on the screen.
“You have got to be shitting me,” John whispered, rolling closer to Scott.
A third and then a fourth pulse on the monitor occurred, closer together than the previous two.
John stared, wide-eyed, leaning forward so far in anticipation, he risked falling from his wheelchair.
More pulses, each closer together than the last, then the shock that sent him back in his chair—Scott took a breath. His chest rose shallowly, then fell again.
“Sonofabitch, son—of—a—bitch!”
John pulled his phone from the pouch hanging on the arm of his chair, then dialed.
“Longview Pro Shop,” the woman answered at the other end.
“Temple, John Patrick, alpha blue response, five, five, seven,” John said, rolling backward and locking the room door.
“Evac type?” the woman asked.
“I need medical transport and long-term care facility arrangements for a critical care protectee.”
“Location?”
“Bethesda Naval Hospital, Intensive Care room 217,” he said, then listened at the door.
“Tactical?”
John snapped his head back to the phone. “Negative. Covert, and immediate.”
“Understood. Ten minutes.”
“Great, and make sure you deep, deep cover this one.”
“Affirmative. Do you have a profile packet to aid in the new identity?”
John looked at Scott’s face and body. “Negative. There’s so much damage he’ll need major reconstructive surgery anyway. Five-eleven and a half, blue eyes, dark brown hair. That’s all you need to know about his old life.”
“Understood. Point of contact agency and chain?”
“Just me…no one else.”
“Got it. The team is already in motion.”
“Thank you.” He was about to end the call when he thought of something else. “Oh. One more thing. I need an urn of cremated remains.”
“I won’t be able to have that for you in the next ten minutes, sir,” the woman said with a hint of amusement in her voice.
“When?”
“Checking,” she said, then a few seconds later. “Is twenty-two hundred Zulu Time soon enough?”
“That’s perfect. Thank you.”
“My pleasure, sir. I’ll ring you back on this number when the evac team is at your door.”
“Roger that,” John said. “See you in ten.”
John dropped his phone into his lap and rolled over to Scott’s side. He looked at the heart monitor and felt more hopeful with each tone. It was weak but steady. His breaths drew shallow, and very slow, but also steady.
“Hang on, Scott,” John whispered in his ear. “No one deserves a second chance more than you do.”
epilogue
Friday, May 13th, 2011
10:15 p.m. — Morgue, Mortuary Affairs Section, Fort Belvoir, Virginia
ALEX HAVEMAN liked his job. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, four nights a week. With two meals shoved in there at some point during the night, he often worked fewer than nine hours—and that’s if you count sitting at a desk reading spy novels until someone showed up with a body as work.
The drawers in a morgue are actually of two types. Most people don’t know that the vast majority of bodies end up in the “positive temperature” drawers at a constant temperature of between 36 and 39 degrees Fahrenheit (+2 to +4 Celsius).
In the positive temperature drawers, or “warm drawers” as they are sometimes called, bodies can linger days or even a few weeks at a reduced rate of decomposition.
“Negative temperature” drawers, or “cold drawers”, on the other hand, are used for longer-term storage, or for the stoppage of decomposition altogether for biological study or biological hazard. These drawers maintain a temperature of -5 to -13 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 to -25 Celsius).
Alex didn’t know that when he first enlisted, but after a short stint in Quarter Master AIT, he knew a great deal about the body and its relation to the drawer it occupied. He just didn’t care that much. He liked reading spy novels.
The cold drawers in Alex’s morgue were full. That was rare. In fact, sitting and reading his Vince Flynn paperback with every cold drawer in use was the most excitement he’d ever experienced on the job. The bodies had come in two nights earlier—a lot of bodies.
The IDs weren’t names or Social Security numbers as normal guests in his refrigerated hotel were. They were tagged on the toe with a simple title and a two digit number—Jagger 39, Jagger 27, Jagger…they went on and on. Almost a dozen of them, men and women, all blown to hell in one form or another.
Alex had seen wounds before. Most of his job consisted of processing the honored fallen. A job he performed with a high degree of respect and reverence—usually. But these fellas, and girls were different—no flags, no medals, no histories, or next of kin, and more than likely, had something to do with all the traitor shit that had been going down.
Then there were two others with no tags at all—women. One, a brunette, had a ponytail on the back of her head, and that was about it. In fact, she pretty much only had a “back of her head”. Bits of skin around the edge of an eye still held a few eyelashes, but aside from that, well, she wouldn’t be having an open casket funeral.
The other one was a blonde. Pretty as all get out. He was actually a little sad at sliding her into a cold drawer. Aside from a few ribs that had pushed through her skin and odd bends in limbs nowhere near joints, you could still totally see she’d been a hottie. A major hottie.
But caskets wouldn’t be in the travel plans for these folks. They came in marked CBRN B1-A; “Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear” handling. That meant they had to be cremated, and they had to remain frozen until cremation. Though he found it odd they’d been marked B1-A. He knew that B1 stood for “Biological Threat”, but for the first time since he had started his job, he had to look up what the “A” stood for.
It turned out that the “A” in “B1-A” stood for “administrative”, and usually meant the material received its classification for security reasons, not safety.
Figuring he’d have an interesting story to give the day shift guy the next morning, Alex had simply gone to work logging, photographing, and shelving these poor broken bodies—then returned to his Vince Flynn novel.
For two nights he sat at his desk, feet up, read until meal time, ate, returned to his “feet up” position until the next meal, then came back for a few more hours of reading until the day shift showed up.
But at slightly past twenty-two hundred hours on the third night, the buzzer at the back-loading ramp buzzed. The noise shook him as it always did. “Jesus son of Sam,” he muttered as his heart raced.
In the quiet of a morgue, one becomes used to complete silence with no interaction—corpses are only fun to talk to when they first come in. After that, the lack of a response makes the exercise boring, and if one weren’t careful, creepy.
After slipping a blank toe tag into his book to mark his place, he rolled his chair backward to the double doors and pushed the bar down. He looked out the crack to see Specialist Johnson.
“Did I scare you?” he asked, grinning broadly.
“I almost pissed myself,” Alex said, laughing as much for stress relief as self-deprecating amusement.
Johnson laughed, too and pulled the door wide, flicking the stop down before opening the second door.
“Picking up?” Alex asked.
“Yeah. The biohazard lot. Ready for the furnace.”
Alex got up and kneeled on the chair, rowing himself over to the drawers as if it were a scooter. He hopped off and flung the chair back toward his desk, sliding it right into place under the center drawer. He threw his arms up. “Goal!”
On the rare occasions when there were more than one attendant in the morgue at night, they often occupied themselves for hours, rol
ling the chairs to targets with increasing levels of difficulty.
“Do I need to put on a MOPP suit?” Johnson asked as he joined Alex next to the drawers.
Alex shook his head. “Nah. They're bagged up tight, but even if they weren’t, they’re B1-A.”
Johnson’s frowned in confusion, obviously never having heard of B1-A, before.
Alex rolled his eyes. “The ‘A’ stands for ‘administrative’. They’re not actually a hazard, just classified.” He shook his head in disapproval. “You have to know that stuff if you ever want to make sergeant.”
“Whatever. How many are there?”
“Well,” he said as he opened the first drawer. “One potato,” then opened the next. “Two potato,” and continued to open the Jagger drawers, “three potato, four, five potato, six potato—”
“How many? I only have so much room.”
“Eleven of these Jagger guys. Then over here we have, ponytail girl.” He opened the door containing the faceless woman, then grabbed the handle for the last. “And last but not least, we have Blondie McHotstuff.”
As he opened the door, he realized he’d grabbed the wrong one.
“Sorry. She’s right here.” He grabbed the one next to it and pulled it open. Again, an empty drawer. “That’s weird.”
“Maybe she’s in a warm drawer…maybe?”
He went over to his desk and picked up the clipboard containing the drawer lineup. After zipping his finger down the line, he shook his head. “Day shift must have taken her already and forgot to log her out.”
Johnson shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t care. I only have room for twelve anyway. Help me load ‘em up.”
Alex dropped the board on his desk and grabbed his shoulder, rotating it around once. “Can’t man. I threw my shoulder out big time last night.”
“Jerking off?” Johnson asked. “NoGo. Help me load.”
Alex grinned and went to the corner to retrieve a metal transport table. “Okay, but two at a time. I want to finish this chapter before lunch.”
“Take three at a time. That way it’s only…” Johnson squinted one eye in brief concentration. “Four trips.”