Living the Good Death

by Scott Baron

  In the distance, the blare of sirens could be heard approaching, their steady wail echoing the agony in Dorothy’s breaking heart.

  CHAPTER 31

  Dorothy stood in the doorway of the hospital room, looking down at the man she loved as he lay immobile in his bed. A mass of tubes and wires ran from his body to the myriad machines that flanked him on either side, monitoring his ever-so-faint vital signs.

  Her eyes were red from crying, her nose pink and raw, as she wiped it absentmindedly with a tissue clenched in her hand. The antiseptic smell of the room had briefly triggered the memory of her own stay in the hospital, and, for an instant, she found it grimly amusing that Randy had been more successful than she ever had when it came to being run over.

  This can’t be happening. Not him. Not now.

  She felt tears welling up again and pushed off from the doorway, willing her exhausted legs to walk down the long corridor.

  I just need somewhere to think.

  No one else was in the chapel when she entered and took a seat.

  It was a modest room, designed for use by any faith, and over the years, a great many people of all backgrounds had taken shelter in the small space, seeking whatever answers they hoped for, and whatever solace they could find.

  As Dorothy quietly sobbed, oblivious to the discomfort of the wooden bench, a clean-shaven priest in his mid-fifties quietly approached her. She didn’t even notice his arrival. He stood over her, quietly, looking down on the distraught woman with an expression of kindness, love, and pity.

  Finally, he sat next to her, his presence suddenly registering on her radar.

  She looked up at his kind face, then dropped her gaze to the name tag pinned to his chest. “Father McKenzie.”

  “Can I be of help, child?” he asked in a soothing tone. “Can I be of any comfort?”

  “Nothing can comfort me, Father,” she sneered, her anger surging up through her sadness. The priest simply took it in stride.

  “Perhaps,” he began. “But comfort can be found in many places.”

  “Well, not today!” she snapped, then turned her attentions skyward, angrily ranting to the air.

  “This isn’t fair! This is my domain! It’s my job!” she wailed to the ether. “Haven’t I always done what you wanted? Haven’t I taken them all, young or old, without questioning you even once? Why do this to me? Why torment me like this?”

  The priest quietly waited for her to calm and take a breath before interjecting.

  “Child, the Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  “Don’t toss clichés at me, holy man. Save your breath.”

  “What I am trying to say, is that oftentimes a loss does not seem fair. This is simply the way things are. You must accept His will.”

  “No, not me.” She glared at him. “Me? I’m different. I’m being punished. He’s making me suffer, when all I’ve ever done is exactly what he created me to do in the first place! Is he trying to teach me a lesson? What the hell have I ever done wrong?”

  Father McKenzie’s expression hardened ever so slightly as he listened to her angry outburst. He thought for a moment, choosing his words before replying.

  “You say these things, but I hear the same from countless people every day. ‘Why me?’ ‘It’s not fair!’ ‘What did I do wrong?’” He paused and waited for her to meet his gaze before he continued.

  “Do you really believe you are the only being who has ever felt such pain? This is a part of human existence. Every single day mothers ask why their child was taken, husbands mourn their wives, children bury their parents, yet the world goes on, and though it is difficult, they ultimately grow as people for it. That very delicacy of humanity is what makes life so beautiful. What makes it so precious, in the first place.”

  She sat quietly as his words slowly began to sink in.

  I’ve been so callous…

  “They—they all felt this. And I was the cause,” she murmured, staring meekly at the floor. Her eyes glistened, not from her own pain, but as the enormity of the realization truly hit home.

  “They all hurt, and I didn’t care.”

  The priest watched her processing for a moment, then reached out and lifted her chin, gazing into her eyes as he took her hands in his.

  His skin is so warm.

  “Every life is precious,” he began, watching her, gauging her reaction as he spoke. “Some people will go an entire lifetime without realizing that.” A sparkle flashed in his eye. “And for some, it can take quite a bit longer,” he added with a little grin.

  Dorothy had stopped crying, soothed by the priest’s presence and his calming words in spite of herself. Wiping her eyes, she looked at his warm, smiling face not with annoyance, but with gratitude.

  “Thank you Father. I-I always played my part, did what I was made to do, but I never really…” She looked away briefly, almost ashamed at herself, before meeting his eyes once more. “I get it now,” she said, holding his gaze. “I get how important it is.”

  “Good,” he said, beaming like a proud father, the warmth of his smile relieving her doubts and soothing her heart.

  Dorothy rose to her feet and slowly walked to the door, when the priest spoke to her once more.

  “Child.”

  “Yes Father?”

  “One last thing.” He sized her up quietly for a moment.

  “Remember, a person does not always need to have done something wrong to need to be taught a lesson. Many lessons, though often difficult to endure, can be a gift. Even a reward of sorts. But most importantly, sometimes the lesson itself is the entire point. People learn and evolve over time, it’s the way of things, but, occasionally, they might need a little nudge in the right direction.”

  A final smile was shared between them as she stepped out of the chapel, thankful for his counsel.

  She paused in the hallway, feeling pretty good. Surprisingly good, actually. Better than she’d felt in a while. Something had changed.

  She stood there in front of the chapel for a minute, trying to focus on what it was that felt different.

  “Can I help you?” a passing nurse asked. “Would you like me to find the priest for you?”

  “No, that’s all right,” she replied. “Father McKenzie already spoke to me.”

  “Father McKenzie? We have a Father Jacobs here, but I don’t know a Father McKenzie on staff.”

  A light bulb flashed in Dorothy’s head. Spinning on her heel, she rushed back into the chapel. The door she had passed through was the only way in or out, and no one had exited behind her.

  The chapel was empty.

  Ah, I see. She smiled to herself. Of course.

  She rolled her neck slowly and stood tall, shoulders back, as she finally tuned in to what had changed.

  Surprising how something so familiar to her had become so foreign.

  She stretched her hands as she moved, a faint ripple of power thrumming over her being as she turned from the chapel and exited back into the hallway.

  She looked different. Calmer. Standing taller, confident. She turned toward Randy’s room and started walking with measured strides.

  “You!” she heard a startled and angry voice call out from down the hall. Doctor Vaughan was there, his huge lackey standing right behind him. Even from that distance, Dorothy could easily make out his black eye and broken nose.

  Ah, yes, I forgot to call in to the police about Stan, she realized. Curtis certainly did a number on him, though.

  Doctor Vaughan stormed down the hallway, anger radiating off him in waves as he barreled toward her.

  “You’ve caused me a lot of headaches, and once you’re back in isolation—”

  She calmly raised her hand.

  “No.”

  This time it worked.

  Doctor Vaughan stopped in his tracks, his eyes going wide as he clutched his chest. He looked at Dorothy with surprise, which quickly turned to disbelief as he struggled to catch his breath, his face betraying his fear, while
hers showed nothing but calm as she watched him collapse to the floor.

  “He’s having an MI—get the crash cart!” the nearest nurse yelled to her co-workers.

  Staff fluttered about in a hurry, trying to save Doctor Vaughan as he lay on the cold tile, writhing in pain and staring at Dorothy, in shock.

  A faint smile bloomed on her face, which only added to the dying man’s alarm.

  Dorothy slowly held up her empty hands, showing him the bare palms and bare backs of them. Then, while staring him square in the eye, with the slightest of twitches, an old silver coin appeared between her fingers.

  His coin, Doctor Vaughan realized.

  The amateur magician knew there was no way she could have possibly done that trick. The coin was in his office, and her hands hadn’t even moved.

  “It can’t be…” he gasped.

  Dorothy gave him a cold smile and dropped his coin to the ground as he watched helplessly. Then, after a moment, her gaze snapped from the dying man to the one still standing.

  A damp spot slowly spread across the front of Stan’s pants as his bladder let loose. Somewhere deep in his subconscious, the man so used to being an apex predator suddenly realized the horrifying reality. He was nothing more than the tiniest of fish in a deep and dark sea, and something huge and deadly had taken notice of him.

  Damp with a terror-sweat, he slowly backed up until his foot felt the flat of the wall become the angle of a corner. Not daring to break eye contact, the terrified man slid backwards until he rounded the corner. The moment he was out of sight, he turned and ran faster than he’d ever moved in his life.

  Go ahead and run, Stan. I’ll be seeing you again soon enough.

  Her attention shifted, her eyes finding a familiar face smiling at her from the end of the hallway. Curtis, wearing an amused grin, leaned casually against the wall. Watching.

  Watching over her, like he always did.

  The friends shared a knowing smile, then the madman slowly started to glow a warm golden amber as his wings unfolded from behind his back.

  Well, he did say he was my guardian angel.

  Curtis chuckled, as if he could hear her thoughts, and who knows, maybe he could.

  “Go on now,” he said. “Click your heels together.” A loving smile flashed across his face, then he winked at her and was gone.

  Unconscious and alone, Randy lay in his bed, monitors beeping steadily as they tracked his every vital function. A battery of IVs dripped various solutions into his battered body as the doctors did their best to keep him alive.

  Dorothy stood at the doorway, though if you asked anyone if they’d seen the slender young woman in black, they’d all have answered in the negative.

  Gone was her beautiful red dress. Dorothy, her skin a slightly cooler tone once more, was clad in her traditional attire as she sadly looked upon her unconscious lover.

  A small crease furrowed on her brow, then softened. The monitors suddenly cried out in unison, their shrill alarms sounding a sad distress call.

  Randy found himself standing beside Dorothy, observing his own body as it lay in bed, while doctors and nurses rushed into the room to tend their dying patient. They frantically pushed drugs into his IV as a defibrillator was quickly rolled into the room and charged.

  He stared at himself lying there a moment longer, still unsure exactly how to process what he was seeing, then turned to Dorothy and looked her up and down.

  Though her skin was cooler, all the fire and warmth remained in her eyes.

  His fiancée, the Grim Reaper.

  “Holy shit. It was true,” he said, amazed.

  More staff rushed into the room, but no one paid the slightest bit of attention to either of them. Of course not, he realized.

  “He’s flatlined,” called out the lead nurse.

  “Pulsox is dropping,” added another as she jabbed a syringe into his IV line.

  Staff swarmed his body, injecting more chemicals and prepping him for the defibrillator. Slowly, Randy turned back to Dorothy.

  “So, I guess this means it’s time to go,” he said.

  She shushed him with a pale, yet shockingly warm finger to his lips. Sadness and love burned in the depths of her eyes.

  Death removed her finger and leaned in to her lover, kissing him as intensely as she ever had. An intensity he returned, holding her close, running his hands through her hair as he held her to him.

  She finally broke the embrace, a tear dripping from her eye.

  “I love you,” was the last thing he heard her say before the world turned upside down as he jolted back to consciousness, the machines suddenly roaring back to their normal, rhythmic beeping.

  The doctors stopped charging the defib paddles, unsure what had just happened, while a nurse began examining the machines.

  “Wait, hold the defib. Rhythm is normal. It looks like it must’ve been an equipment malfunction.”

  “But all of them at once?”

  “I know, it’s weird, but what else could it be? Better have everything swapped out, and get the techs to run diagnostics.”

  “Doctor, he seems to be conscious,” a nurse noted.

  “Well, this one certainly seems determined to beat the odds,” he said, then leaned over his patient, checking his pupillary reactions with a light.

  “You’re doing good, Randy. Keep fighting.”

  The staff gathered their equipment and began filtering back out of the room, leaving Randy to rest and heal. What no one had noticed was Randy’s intense gaze at his hand.

  There, between his fingers, were a few strands of Dorothy’s dark hair.

  CHAPTER 32

  Over a week had passed since the accident, and Randy was getting stir-crazy, confined to a hospital bed as his body slowly healed. Though he was mending faster than doctors had anticipated, he still couldn’t leave. Not just yet.

  “She still hasn’t been in?” he asked, though he was pretty sure he knew the answer he’d receive. “Not even once?”

  Sitting next to him on the bed, Angela fed him another bite of the blackberry cream pie she’d brought to the hospital.

  “Sorry, hon,” she said. “I haven’t seen her since the night of the accident. No one has.”

  He remembered what he had experienced in the ICU that night clearly enough, but Randy had chalked the strange out-of-body experience up to his severe trauma, along with the massive amounts of pain killers flooding his body playing tricks on his mind.

  If not that, what else could it have been?

  Randy chewed glumly, barely taking any pleasure in his treat as he sank farther into his bed and his depression. Though a few close friends had visited him and kept him company, he hadn’t called his parents, not wanting to cause a stir and disrupt Sam as she neared the end of her school year. Instead, he focused on healing and getting back to his new life, but as the days crept by, Dorothy was nowhere to be found.

  A week later, he had healed enough to convince his doctors to allow his return home. Though still heavily bandaged and walking with crutches, they told him that hopefully he’d be using just a cane within the month, and ideally would be off of any walking aids within three.

  Randy finally contacted his father by email and told him that he was swamped with work, so he’d be off-radar over the next several weeks. He felt bad, not being forthcoming with his father, but his world was spinning, and he felt desperately in need of some quiet alone time to process things.

  Gary gave him a ride home upon his release, saving his friend the misery of riding a bus on crutches. Randy made a single request.

  The pair found themselves hobbling through Lafayette Park. Randy looked high and low, just in case he’d catch a glimpse of Dorothy, Gary following close by, helping when the exertion got to be too much.

  He would have chided his friend for being excessively obsessed, but he knew it wouldn’t make a difference. It was better to say nothing. He just quietly trailed his friend as he hobbled across the uneven ground, hoping
to find his love.

  When they finally gave up and left the park, Randy looked over his shoulder one last time, then gingerly slid into Gary’s car.

  He felt a gut-twisting surge of sadness flood his body. Not having her in the hospital was one thing, but now, out in familiar places, well, it was more than a little unsettling.

  His world felt that much emptier without her in it.

  “Listen, you take as much time as you need to get healthy,” Gary told him. “The job ain’t going anywhere, and you already booked the next four months, so I’ll just get Jamie to come help me hang the shows until you feel up to coming back.”

  “Thanks. I really don’t think I could schmooze with anyone at this point.”

  “I understand. Give it time, man, things’ll look up. Now let’s get you back to your place. It’ll do you good to sleep in your own sheets.”

  Homecoming was a bit overwhelming at first. Everything had taken on a memory or familiarity associated with Dorothy, and none of them more than their shared bedroom.

  Other things had meaning, but that space, well, it smelled of her, and every time Randy would inadvertently brush up against one of her things, the whiff of his missing fiancée would threaten to drag him farther into a depressive spiral.

  Some days the sadness would win. At least the pain medication would help take the edge off.

  When things got particularly bad, Randy would find himself sitting on the couch with a bottle of wine and one of her shirts, occasionally holding it to his face just to catch another faint olfactory reminder of her. On those days, the shirt would often wind up wet with tears, a few drops of spilled wine, or quite often, both.

  The days turned into weeks, and Randy slowly, albeit reluctantly, began to accept that Dorothy might really have left him for good. The realization cut deep, leaving a pain that wouldn’t go away as he became ever more miserable in his loneliness.

  He often went unshaven since her departure, and in his increasing depression, he lost his appetite, only picking at the takeout he ordered, and even then more out of habit than hunger.