Dark Corners

The Death Addict

Code blue, code blue.

Stat time. Lights flashing, crash wagon rolling, an ominous flat tone from Room 301, the ICU nurses quietly and efficiently hurrying through their well practiced routine: strip, drip, ventilation, clear the mouth of obstructions, insert the air passage, blow, pump, pump, pump, pump, blow—

“Here’s the wagon. Clear! Clear, dammit!” Panic, rather than urgency, in the doctor’s voice. New resident.

The whump of multiple volts passing through still living tissue, the muscles contracting and relaxing, lifting a frail old form from the bed.

“Still flat!”

“Clear!”

Whump.

Adrenaline.

Blow, pump, pump, pump, pump, blow.

“Clear!”

Whump.

“Still flat.”

Another jolt.

One more.

A pause. A brief moment of silence to allow acceptance to spread over the losing team. Acceptance of the mortal fact that sooner or later every doctor loses every patient.

“Okay … time.”

“Eight twenty-two.”

“Great damned way to start the shift.”

“It was righteous. We did everything we could and we did it all right. Lighten up.” Alberta hadn’t said lighten up,kid , but it had been in her voice.

“She knew she was going to die, doc,” said Nurse Ramos. “So did we. Didn’t that news make it down to the doctor’s lounge?”

“Okay. Yeah, you’re right. Get her prepped and down to the morgue. I’ll be back in a few minutes to sign the papers. Shit, I hate this part.”

The losing team captain ducked out to hit the doctor’s lounge to suck down some smoke and the first of twenty cups of coffee he’ll consume that night, risking his own heart in an attempt at lifting himself out of his feelings of personal defeat. And he was taking the death personally, Nurse Ramos decided. On his shift and everything. How inconsiderate. Should the doctor live so long, in a few years it will be easier. He’ll learn that the doctors never win. First quarter or overtime, death wins. Always. It’s the law. Erico Ramos turned back to the task of clearing out the old tenant and preparing the room for the next contestant.

The loser this time was Rachael Raddenburg, 61, mother, grandmother, owner of a doll shop employing three persons. Nurse Alberta Smallet, who had invested some minutes of her night shift hours the past three days talking with Rachael, knew that the elderly Mrs. Raddenburg would have been mortified if she could’ve seen herself at that moment. She had been very fussy about her appearance, and now, her hair askew, she lay flat on her back, eyes sunken, skin waxy yellow, naked, withered breasts, stretch marks, hardened arteries, and all. She had been so afraid of dying.

Yet Rachael’s face was now soft, relaxed, more than peaceful. It was as though she were in a state of bliss. “The things one tries to convince oneself of,” muttered Nurse Smallet. She closed off the drip, removed the IV, and tossed the old tape and clear plastic plumbing into the medical waste. No need to bandage where the IV had been pulled. For a wound to bleed a heart needs to beat.

Nurse Ramos checked to make certain the oxygen was turned off and removed that plumbing, tossing it into the medical waste, as well. Clearing and punching off the video monitor, he began removing the multiple leads, clips and automatic cuff that had passed on to the room monitor and the bank of monitors at the ICU nurse’s station the information regarding Rachael’s no longer existent heartbeat, respiration, blood oxygen absorption, and blood pressure. As he removed the self-sticking tabs to which the EKG and respiration leads had been attached, he winced at the ripping sound made by the removal of each tab. It resembled the sound of Velcro being parted.

There was no point in wincing. After all, Rachael Raddenburg was past pain. It was the sound more than the possibility of pain. It was a raucous, disrespectful, sound.

“He’s back,” muttered Nurse Smallet. She had announced it with a voice dulled with dark humor; perhaps disgust; anger.

Erico Ramos didn’t have to look up. He knew to whom his colleague was referring. Standing respectfully in the doorway, his face carrying the same tranquil expression as the corpse’s, would be Rene Boniface, the morgue orderly. Skinny, dark, spectacled, geeky son of a bitch.

“I didn’t call for you,” said Erico.

“I know. You ready for the cart?”

Ramos and Smallet exchanged glances and Erico faced the door. “On this side.”

As Rene pushed the wheeled stretcher around the end of the bed, Erico guided one end until it was parallel to the bed and up against it. He, Nurse Smallet, and the morgue orderly leaned across the stretcher, grabbed the rolled up edge of the bed sheet, and pulled the body onto the stretcher’s surface. Rachael Raddenburg was deceptively light.

As they threw the sides of the sheet over the body, Erico Ramos saw the morgue orderly squeeze Rachael Raddenburg’s hand. Afterward, the geek rolled the stiff toward the elevators and Nurse Smallet called down to housekeeping. Erico gathered the soiled laundry and stuffed it into the bag hanging from the door. He looked up just as the elevator doors closed.

At the nurse’s station Alberta shook her head and bent to the eternal paperwork. Erico sighed and looked back into the room. There were still Rachael Raddenburg’s belongings to collect.

He felt a headache coming on as he opened the small metal clothes locker. Hanging inside were a full length charcoal cloth coat and a pale blue woman’s leisure suit. The suit and coat both were torn and stained, even though they had both been cleaned. When Rachael Raddenburg had blacked out she had been in the center of a freshly asphalted piece of 37th Street. One car had bumped her as she went down. No one had stopped.

She didn’t have a suitcase. Everything went into the white plastic tote bag. No purse. Someone on 37th had paused long enough to grab her purse and her shoes. In the pocket of her coat were some tissues and a plastic daily pill counter containing another failed doctor’s impotent ammunition. In the night stand an untouched cache of hospital issue: rose plastic wash basin, barf tray, cup and pitcher, tissues, body lotion, toothbrush, toothpaste, and mouthwash. Towel and washcloth, both clean. The laundry bag got the towel and washcloth, the rest went into the white plastic tote bag.

And who would rise to claim this pitiful legacy? Rachael had told Alberta that she had a will. There were a few belongings in her apartment, and the doll shop, of course. In her apartment, though, would be only a few old photos, some well worn dishes, dented pots, a few things spoiling in her refrigerator, bed clothes dotted with fuzz pills, some costume jewelry, a few threadbare dresses in her closet, an eight year old TV, and a tiny collection of old movies to play on her VCR. There would be Excalibur , Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood , El Cid. Rachael Raddenburg’s fantasies were of knights, kings, princesses, honor, courage, and courtesy. Doll shops, in addition, were like some restaurants and saloons: the place was what it was because of the owner. The new owner makes it a different place. Raddenburg’s Doll Hospital died along with it’s owner.

Rachael had given the nurses a few names and they had managed to track down two of the woman’s grown children. One of them, an attorney in Oregon, couldn’t come to his mother’s side due to the immense pressures of his schedule. In a few days, perhaps. Perhaps not.

Her daughter, a San Francisco real estate agent, had hung up on the nurse who had called.

Erico Ramos looked down at the empty bed. Whatever did you do, Rachael Raddenburg, to rate such a response from your offspring? What were your crimes? Child abuse? Neglect? Over indulgence? You tried too little? Tried too hard? Failed to stroke an ego or refused to bless a particularly foolish choice? What do your transgressions amount to now that the main concern of those around you is to get you to a drain table before your bladder and bowels relax? Is that what it comes down to: making the least mess on the way out?

He sealed the bag and paused as he mused over the fact that there was something else concerning him. Two days earlier Rachael Raddenburg and he had something in common: a terror of death. Now Rachael had a smile on her lips and death still sat in Erico’s pocket.

Had he become a nurse to join the fight against death? If so, he thought, it had been a childish move. He knew who it was who always won in the end. Erico Ramos had learned that lesson four hospitals ago. Everyone who is born is born to die. Every person who studies to heal is studying to lose.

But Rachael Raddenburg had been wide eyed with terror two nights ago. Last night she had been calm. She had even made a couple of small jokes to cover her embarrassment about having to use the bedpan. He remembered laughing with her, and wondering if she had bent her perception into a sufficient form of denial that she could blot out that this was it: the end; two minute warning, get your shit together. If it had been denial, it had lasted all of the way through the next day until her death at twenty-two after eight PM.

The look on her face, however, had been one of genuine bliss. Nurse Ramos had seen the giddy manner, bad jokes, and harsh laughter of those attempting to jolly themselves out of the big dark. Eventually the jokes end, the fear fills every corner, and all he could do was give them a hand to hold as he tried to swallow his own terror.

Erico Ramos had seen hospital death in its many forms. He had seen the stare, the frozen scream, lips and tongues bitten through, tears pooled in the corner of an eye, and every now and then indifferent oblivion. All but the last had fought death down to the last gasp from sheer panic. Terrible ways to go, all of them.

He had never before seen the blissful expression that had been on Rachael’s face; not until he had come to Northvale General. He had hung onto, fought for, lost, and cleaned up after six losers at Northvale, and all of them but one had carried the same joyous expression. Nurse Ramos had checked out the one exception. Patient Ben Crawford had been in ICU for only three days, then he had died, and without a happy face. In fact, he had bitten his tongue clean off. Rene Boniface, the morgue orderly, had been out that week with a virus.

Weekly staff meeting, Room 1113. Emergency room staff, the attempted malpractice suits stemming from the interstate pileup the previous November had been thrown out as frivolous. Hang onto your notes, though. One of the patients was looking for a new lawyer. Wilbur Stokes’s kidney, as well as Doctor Pinell’s work on it, will be featured in the February JAMA . Two ICU deaths the past week, both righteous and routine.

Question time.

Erico Ramos had never done anything in those meetings before except answer direct questions. This time he stuck up his hand. “Yeah, I got a question.”

“Yes, Erico?” said Doctor Janice Landry, who was chairing the exercise.

“First, what gets said in here stays in here, right?”

Dr. Landry nodded. “Of course. Those are the rules.”

Erico leaned forward until his elbows rested upon his knees. He glanced first at Alberta, then back at Dr. Landry. “It’s Rene down in the morgue. What can anyone tell me about him? The reason I want to know is that he seems to have some strange kind of relationship with the terminal patients — a strange effect on them.”

An actionable hush fell over the room. Doctors, nurses, lawyer, and administrator racing through their memories, reexamining their cases and orders, making certain their asses were covered. The hospital’s attorney blanching at the possibility of a big mistake and an even bigger scandal. There was nothing bigger than a serial killer secretly flitting from bed to bed, leaving corpses behind. Remember Donald Harvey, the nurse’s aide in some hospital out in Ohio, who snuck around injecting arsenic and cyanide into the IVs? He never would’ve been caught except that one of his victims had been in a motorcycle accident and the law had required, in such cases, an autopsy.

Rene Boniface? No. That would be nothing but rank projection, thought the attorney. It had nothing to do with the morgue orderly. Not yet. Nothing had been proven. The attorney quickly reviewed the provisions of his own malpractice protection.

“What kind of effect do you mean, Erico?” asked the attorney.

“Look, I’ve been at Northvale a little over a month. In that time, up in ICU we’ve had six deaths.”

“That’s not unusual,” said Dr. Landry. “This is a very large facility in a very large city. In addition we’re closest to center city and the interstate. We get the majority of the Saturday night stabbings and shootings, the attempted suicides, and the traffic accident trade.”

“I’m not talking about the body count, doctor. I’m talking about how they looked when they died.”

“Then, what do you mean?”

“Look, one of those deaths, Benjamin Crawford, was like every other death I’ve ever seen. Maybe even a little more grim. He bit off his tongue, died, and that was that. The other five deaths were different.”

“Different how?”

As it came out of his mouth, Erico knew how silly he sounded. “They were smiling.”

Laughter interrupted Erico, and when it died down, Dr. Kramer the staff pathologist asked, “What does this have to do with Rene Boniface?”

“He visited every one of those five when they were still alive. Rene never got to see Crawford.”

Dr. Kramer held out his hands. “I don’t get it. What are you saying? Are you suggesting that Rene had something to do with causing their deaths?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Then what are you getting at?” Dr. Kramer faced the room at large. “Rene has been my orderly for more than two years. He is competent, uncomplaining, and he does his work with efficiency, compassion, and respect. I admit he seems a little strange at times, but for Christ’s sake, he works in a morgue.” He turned back to Erico. “Look, all of this highfalutin anonymity notwithstanding, this is exactly the kind of thing that can permanently damage someone’s reputation. If you’ve got a charge you can substantiate, then let’s hear it. If not, then let’s call it a day and get the hell back to work.”

What are the charges, Erico asked himself. Rene Boniface smiles. He visits patients. The patients smile. When a patient dies, Rene shows up without being called. Not exactly Jeffrey Dahlmer stuff. Erico Ramos shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “Sorry. I guess I spoke out of turn.”

“Erico,” said Dr. Landry, “If you know something, or even suspect something, I need to know. If we’re going to make any mistakes around here, I want them to be on the side of caution.”

“I don’t suppose I have anything more on Rene than that the guy gives me the creeps. All of those patients he visited all died with big happy smiling faces. The one he didn’t have a chance to visit just looked dead; cold, gray, sour, dead. And you never have to call the guy when there’s someone to be taken down to the morgue. He’s always there.”

Landry frowned and clasped her hands together. “Euthanasia? Are you suggesting Rene Boniface is killing these patients?”

“No … maybe. I don’t know. Look, I said I was out of line, and I was. I had a feeling, okay? It bothered me and I said something about it, and now I’m sorry I did.”

Dr. Landry held up her hand. “As I said, Erico, with the cost of being sorry so terribly high, being safe is all we can afford.”

“This is idiotic,” declared Dr. Kramer. “Look, these patients died with smiles on their faces. What’s wrong with that? Erico, you have something against happiness? Rene shows up without being called. Did you ever stop to think that someone might’ve called him and didn’t tell you?”

“Why?”

“Maybe they forgot. It’s not a crime not to tell you every time someone makes a phone call.” He grinned wickedly. “Just maybe everybody’s hip to how flaky you’re getting about this thing and they’re pulling your leg.”

Someone began humming the theme from Twilight Zone and another round of giggles made its way around the room.

Erico felt his face getting red. “Okay, doc. But what about him visiting the patients? What’s it do to our bedside manner to have a morgue orderly dropping in to see our terminal patients? Before even we know they’re terminally ill, I might add. Two of those patients were expected to recover. Rene visited them anyway. And they died, big happy smiles and all.”

Dr. Kramer, an exasperated expression on his face, turned to Dr. Landry. “Janice, I fear young Ramos has gone off the deep end.”

“Does Rene Boniface visit the patients?” asked Landry.

“Sure. So do I. So do you. So do all the medical, administrative, and housekeeping staff. So what? A relative, a friend, maybe just some nice person, an old lady or a little kid who could use a little company. What’s wrong with that?”

“What Erico said about a morgue orderly dropping in on the patients. Don’t you think that might be a shade morbid? He might become something of a death angel sort of thing, frightening the patients. We don’t need anything like that.”

“Especially in the newspapers,” added the attorney.

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Kramer. “Rene Boniface has a perfectly respectable job. As for dropping in on patients unannounced, I don’t know about the others, but I can certainly speak to his visit with Rachael Raddenburg. She requested him.”

“Requested him?” repeated Nurse Ramos.

“That’s right. And before you accuse him of lying to me about it, I was the one who took the call from her and passed the message on to Rene. She asked for him by name. Early in the afternoon two days ago, she telephoned and asked for him to come up to her room in ICU.”

A week passed and no one seemed to be concerned about the morgue geek, Rene Boniface. Erico Ramos didn’t like looking ridiculous, hence he never mentioned the subject again. When he should chance to pass Rene in a corridor, he would look through him or turn the other way. It was true, he argued with himself, that he had begun being obsessed by Rene and his association with the morgue and the terminally ill patients — obsessed with death; with the fear of death. Erico Ramos had to get at least that honest with himself. It was death and Rene’s seemingly friendly relationship with death and the dying that had caught his attention. If he didn’t put it away soon, he, not Rene, would be the one who would be asked to leave Northvale. He put it away and did his job.

Two more days later a little girl of thirteen, Alicia Fuentes, was brought in from an auto accident on the interstate. The paramedics had been covered with blood. Alicia’s family car had rear ended a truck carrying an overhanging load of sheet metal and pipe. Alicia’s left kidney was crushed, her right kidney severed, her liver shattered, and her spinal cord cut through. Nearly all of her bodily functions needed artificial assistance. Despite the Demerol drip, she was awake, in pain, and she was dying. Her mother, father, and sister hadn’t survived the crash.

In theory, if several improbable accidents happened within an extremely narrow time window, if the victims of those accidents were matchable organ donors, and if by some stroke of number magic Alicia could be moved to the top of the eight month long waiting list, the girl might’ve lived if they could’ve done the operations on that night, providing she had been strong enough to withstand the procedures. None of those improbabilities, however, materialized. There was no well-heeled nationwide TV campaign to come up with organs, waivers, pressure, and the green stuff that made everything happen. Not for Alicia Fuentes. There wasn’t time enough to get her on 60 Minutes. Besides, there were lots of little girls dying in the world. No one was making a special place at life’s table for them, either. Alicia was just waiting to lie down, mortally speaking.

The night shift again. Erico Ramos stood next to Alicia’s bed checking the drip that fed the pain killer into her tiny wrecked body. Without looking at her large brown eyes, he checked the video monitor and the automatic cuff. “Are you having any pain?” he asked automatically, his own feelings frozen from the sheer terror of what the little girl faced.

“No,” she whispered.

“You look like you're having some discomfort.” Erico kicked himself for saying “discomfort” instead of “pain.” Patients knew that it didn’t matter what you called it, pain hurts. “Are you sure I can’t get you something?”

“Anything more and I’d go to sleep. I don’t want to sleep before I have to. What’s your name?”

“Erico Ramos. I’m going to be one of your nurses tonight.”

“Funny,” she said, “a man being a nurse.”

“Lots of men are nurses. Do you think it’s funny for women to be doctors?”

“No. My doctor’s a woman. Dr. Landry. Do you know her?”

“Very well. She’s a terrific doctor. Can I get you anything? Some ice to suck on? Want me to turn on the TV? You’re allowed to have it on as late as you want.”

“Is it all right if I call you Erico?”

Erico Ramos looked at the girl’s eyes for the first time. Her eyes were huge, clear, intelligent, and did not waver from his for a split second. “Sure. You can call me Erico. Is it all right if I call you Alicia?”

“At home they call me Ally. I prefer Alicia, though. Erico, if I ask you a hard question, will you answer me with the truth?”

It was Erico Ramos’s second worst nightmare. Please, the doctors won’t tell me. Will I ever walk again? Did my baby live? Can I see my daughter? When the bandages come off will I be able to see? Erico, am I going to die? The family’s keeping secrets from me, the doctor has a yellow streak a yard wide, and the nurses won’t talk. Erico, am I going to die?

I’ll do the best I can,” he answered, leaving himself a technical loophole. Alicia, however, was too smart for that. She moved her piece and blocked his exit.

Her beautiful brown eyes closed as she frowned. “The best you can do is a lie, isn’t it? I want the truth.” Check and mate.

“What’s your question?”

“My mother, my father—” her voice caught as her eyes opened and filled with tears. “-My sister Dolores, are they dead?”

Judgment calls, Erico swore to himself. God, do I hate judgment calls. She was full of pain killers. She ought to be out cold. But she had to be awake. Wide awake. Erico knew those huge eyes could tell if he lied. He didn’t want to disappoint her. Also, he didn’t want to hurt her any more than she had already been hurt. “Tell me,” she insisted.

Erico took her hand in his and nodded. “Yes. They died in the accident.”

There was a long pause while Alicia cried. When she calmed a bit, she asked, “Was anyone else hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you just guessing?”

“No. No one else was hurt. We would’ve heard about it if someone else had been brought in. Do you remember the crash?”

“I don’t remember it. I was reading a book.”

“The paramedics said it was a miracle they got you out alive. They said there’s nothing left of the car. I’m really sorry.”

Her moist, angry eyes looked up at the ceiling. She had known the answer to her question before she asked it. No one had given her credit for that. The only reason she’d asked the question was to kill that nagging hope that seemed so much more important to adults than it was to children. Before she could get on with whatever remained of her life, certain childish fantasies needed to be put to rest. “I have another question, Erico.”

Here it comes, he said to himself. The big one. “Go ahead.”

“Am I dying?”

Erico moistened his lips, squeezed her hand, and nodded, surprised as the tears came to his own eyes. He could’ve fed her the party line: not for a long time yet; why would you say such a thing; a few transplants and you’ll be as good as new; that’s right, stupid, life’s a god damned sitcom. All you need to do is wait for the obligatory third act miracle closer followed by all the new things they’ve figured out to do with corn flakes.

“You’re dying, Alicia. God, I wish I could tell you different, but that’d be a lie.”

She looked at him, her eyes concerned. “Will you get into trouble for telling me?”

“No, honey,” he whispered. “That’s my job.”

To himself he thought, that’s my job. That’s my god damned job. Especially when everyone else is ignoring the subject, avoiding it, hoping that the patient doesn’t notice his family’s just been wiped out or that he’s dying. Perhaps the patient really doesn’t want to know.

The big black dragon sitting in the middle of the bed. Everyone knows it’s there, but if we ignore it, work around it, and pretend it isn’t there, maybe it will just go away. A great comfortable theory, except that patients really do want to know if they’re going to die. There is a lot of old business to take care of, even for a little girl. Faces you want to remember, to apologize to, to forgive, to say I love you, even if it’s only in one’s thoughts.

A lot of times the patient won’t ask if he or she thinks answering will make the medical staff uncomfortable. What a pathetic place from which to draw pity, he cursed to himself. But Alicia wanted to know more than she pitied the staff.

Her tears were dribbling down the sides of her head. No crying. Just the tears; her eyes sad brown oceans. She lifted Erico’s hand up to her mouth, kissed it, and held it to her cheek. He could feel the wetness of her tears against the back of his hand. “Thank you, Erico. Thank you for telling me.” Her eyes darted back and forth in her head and she squeezed Erico’s hand. “I’m so scared.”

“I know, honey.”

She closed those enormous moist eyes and asked, “One more favor? Please?”

“Sure, honey. Anything.”

“I can’t reach the telephone. Please call down to the morgue. Extension 446. Ask for someone called Rene and tell him I want to see him. I want to see him right away. Do that for me?”

“How do you know Rene?”

She shook her head. “I — I just know. Please call down.”

Erico realized his mouth was hanging open and he closed it. “Yeah. Sure.” He released her hand, walked around the foot of the bed to the night stand, and picked up the phone. He dialed for the morgue and one of the orderlies answered. “Could you send Rene up to ICU, Room 307?”

“He’s on his way,” answered the orderly.

“Thanks.” Erico hung up and looked down at the girl. “He’ll be here in a minute.”

She was crying. She was scared. Erico Ramos closed his eyes and choked off his own tears. He was scared, too, but for a different reason.

Rene Boniface didn’t do anything but sit in a chair next to the girl’s bed and hold her hand. That much Erico witnessed. He was called away, however, to bring up a new admission from emergency. The interstate had nailed another one. This time it was an off duty police officer, Dana Storey, who must’ve decided his occupation exempted him from the laws of chemistry, biology, and physics. When he had taken his Olds for that flight off the overpass and dived into six lanes of rush hour traffic, he had a blood alcohol level that looked more like his IQ. As the wheel of justice turned this time, the off duty officer would live once his stomach and bladder woke up and went back to functioning. Then he could begin detox, rehab, and that long climb back to reality, if he chose. Two of the persons riding in one of the cars he slammed into, however, had no choices. They were dead on arrival.

By the time Erico was finished with Dana Storey, Room 307 was already vacant, the bed stripped, and housekeeping dusting up the floor. The only sign that Alicia Fuentes had ever been there was a crumpled tissue on the floor. There ought to have been a toy, a picture, a paper cutout, a book, a piece of ribbon, something besides a used piece of Kleenex. Soon that was gone, as well.

“Excuse me, Erico.” He turned his head and saw Alberta carrying fresh linen for the bed. He stood out of the way and asked, “What happened?”

“She flat-lined a little after nine,” came her answer. She unfolded and snapped out the bottom sheet and began cornering and tucking it in. Erico could see Alberta’s face. Her eyes were red, but already she was forcing herself to occupy safe mental corners. After all the girl hadn’t been there but a few hours. Hardly enough time to get attached. That’s why she’s reduced in memory to “she” and “the girl” rather than Alicia. In another hour she’ll lose that, too. No longer “the girl,” she’ll become “the patient” or simply “Tuesday’s 307.” That’s why she “flat-lined” instead of “died.” Alberta needed to insulate herself from death, too. Find those safe places. Erico, too, looked for those safe places.

Well, she’d been expected to die. That’s what Erico had told the girl.

Her.

The girl.

Alicia.

Alicia of the ocean eyes. It was a clean croak, too. The girl had been all alone in the world. There hadn’t been any wailing relatives or loved ones freaking out on the floor. She was even light.

“What’d her face look like?” asked Erico.

Alberta frowned as she looked back at him. “Are you all right, Erico? You’re as pale as a sheet.”

“The geek. What’d he do?”

“Rene?” A frown crossed Alberta’s face. “Don’t call him that, Erico. I don’t like it. It’s unkind. I don’t ever want to hear it again.”

Erico put his hands into his pockets and cocked his head to one side, his eyes closed. “I’m sorry. What’d he do? Rene Boniface. What’d he do while he was in here?”

“All I saw him do was sit next to her and hold her hand. I don’t even think he said anything.”

“What was her face like? What did Alicia’s face look like?”

Alberta shook out the draw sheet and crossed the bed with it. She stood up, glanced at Erico, and said, “You know what her face looked like.” She looked down at the bed and returned to her work. “It’s not wrong, you know. What Rene does. It’s not wrong.”

“I’ll know that once I know what the hell it is that he does.”

“He put a smile on that little girl’s face, Erico. That’s what he does.” She looked up at him, her eyes filled with angry tears. “That’s what he does!”

The morgue was dark, the door closed. It was at the end of a doglegged corridor in the basement level, far from the hospital cafeteria, far from where a civilian could accidentally stumble upon it, helping to keep the secret that death really hadn’t been conquered. Erico Ramos pushed open the door and looked inside. It was a minimalist operating room with lights, drain table, sink, supply shelves, and a desk with an automatic coffee maker brewing upon it. There were files, forms, and paperwork cluttering up the desk between the coffee maker and the morgue’s computer terminal. Beyond the insulated door on the opposite side of the drain table was the cold room. Alicia would be in there as well as the motorist and passenger crushed by Dana Storey’s flying Oldsmobile. Perhaps others might be in there, as well. There were the two cancers on the sixth floor, the premature birth on the eighth, and the incredibly old man on the fifth. ICU wasn’t the only unit where they died.

Erico felt as though he couldn’t breathe. Death was in the room. It’s feel, its smell, its clammy presence. It crowded him. Images of skulls, mould covered hands, spider webs, and ancient dust raced through his mind. Grave stones, tombs, black veils, flowers, and organ music. Coffins, satin, ministers, old men and women viewing the remains, counting their own remaining moments.

He remembered his father’s face as the dead man rested in his coffin. Hector Ramos’s corpse had been brushed, powdered and rouged. Erico had been eleven and he remembered thinking that he had never seen his father look so neat and healthy. He was like a department store dummy taking a nap, his mouth sewn shut. He was even wearing a necktie; one that he hated. Everything about the funeral, everything about death, seemed unnecessarily disrespectful, needlessly cruel. Death took no notice of his father’s smiles, his angers, his moments of fear, compassion, hope and love. His father’s strengths, his skill as a stone mason, his weakness for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups; death cared nothing for any of it. All of those special qualities and moments that had made Hector Ramos who he was were gone, and death didn’t even notice.

Death.

Dead.

Gone. The end.

Cold.

Dark.

Still and silent.

Erico leaned his back against the wall and slid down until he was squatting, his sobs making him choke for air. “God!” he cried. “God, your rules suck!”

“Erico?”

He turned and started as he saw Rene looking down at him. The man’s face was completely cast in shadows, obscuring it. He was carrying a donut and napkin in his hand. Erico felt his heart beating hard enough to thump against his rib cage. “Jesus!”

He pushed himself to his feet and almost leaped into the corridor. Once away from the morgue door, he steadied himself by leaning up against the wall. He took deep breaths and tried to keep his heart from racing.

“Are you all right?”

Erico turned his head and faced Rene. The morgue orderly still had that donut in his hand. “Yeah.” He nodded once and took another deep breath. “I’m okay.”

“You sure? I can get some help down here if you want. You look like hell.”

“I’m okay,” snapped Erico. “That place, the morgue. It made me feel like things were closing in on me for a bit. Maybe I have a touch of the flu.”

“It’s going around.”

Erico stood up and glared as he snapped, “It’s always going around!” He forced himself to calm down, looked into Rene’s eyes, and asked, “You and the girl; when you were in her room, what did you do?”

Rene’s face, dark and filled with compassion, became expressionless, wary, as he seemed to back off a bit. “I visited her. I was only there for a few minutes, then she died. I was sitting next to her the whole time.”

“Did you kill her?”

Rene’s gaze remained fixed on Erico’s face as he slowly shook his head. “No.”

“You sure you didn’t help her along? Pinch her drip? Dick with the oxygen?”

“I didn’t kill Alicia Fuentes. I did nothing to accelerate her death. Perhaps I did help her, but that was limited to holding her hand.”

“How did she know to call you, Rene? Why did she have me ring your extension?”

“You’d have to ask her that.”

“Well, that’s just a little hard to do, now, isn’t it?”

Rene shrugged and half turned back toward the morgue. Erico grabbed the man’s arm and stopped him. “Then here’s something you can answer. How come you didn’t need the phone call? You were already on your way up to ICU when I called. How did you know?”

“I just know. I always know.” He looked down at Erico’s hand and pulled his arm free. Looking at Erico’s eyes, he said, “I can’t afford not to know.” He turned and walked back to the morgue.

Some days passed. Erico concentrated as hard as he could on minding his own business, to no avail. The head of nursing had him moved from the night shift and ICU both. He was now on the morning shift at the rehab unit. Instead of warring with death he had been traded down to the war against better living through chemistry; a harder form of death to see. “Just until you get back on track,” Maureen Staples had assured him. Getting back on track was the head nurse’s way of saying, seeketh thou a wigpicker. Picketh thy wig, go forth and freak no more.

Erico hadn’t objected to the shift and unit changes. He felt he needed a vacation from death, a vacation from Rene Boniface. Rene had become, in his mind, what Dr. Landry had called an angel of death. The association between death and the morgue orderly had become so strong in Erico’s mind that he was beginning to convince himself that Renewas death personified: that the morgue orderly was responsible for the deaths on the unit, perhaps even all the deaths in the world.

It was silly; insane. He knew this, and he welcomed his transfer to the rehab unit. Erico needed some distance until he could get his head straight. Because he couldn’t think of a single thing about his condition that he was willing to admit to another human being, he decided against the shrink. The wig would not be picked. Instead, he threw himself into his new duties and tried to bury himself with work.

The big players on the rehab unit were the group counselors. Erico dispensed medications three times a day, took vitals, escorted rehab patients to their various appointments for tests, physicals, and other kinds of therapy, and kept patient charts up to date. The rehab nurses, most of whom were recovering addicts themselves, were a breed different from any other kind of nurse he had ever worked with. By and large they were the most positive, uplifting coworkers he had ever had. They had problems, but they talked about them to each other, without shame, and listened to each other as though they cared. The floor counselors and group counselors were the same. So were most of the patients. Eventually the patients who weren’t like that began to disturb Erico.

It began on a Tuesday night just about three months after he had been assigned to the rehab unit. One of the patients came to the counter at the nurse’s station while Erico was seated updating a pile of patient charts. “Excuse me? Erico?”

Erico looked up and he could feel the blood drain from his face as he stared at a death’s head. It was a face, not unusually thin, but there was the image of a death’s head within the features, almost as though Erico could see through the tissues that covered the skull.

“Erico?” asked the patient. “Are you all right?”

Erico Ramos blinked his eyes, rubbed them, and willed the death’s head image from the patient’s face. The patient was a boy in his late teens, Pat Nelson. Tall, olive skinned, trimmed black hair and liquid brown eyes. His eyes reminded Erico of the little girl, Alicia. The image of the death’s head would not go away.

“What is it, Pat?”

“Are you all right, man? You look like you seen a ghost.”

“I’m all right. What is it?”

The kid shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “If you say so. What I want to know is what to do with my bedding and book issue. I’m going home today.”

Erico leaned back in his chair and frowned at the boy, death’s head and all. “What the hell do you mean you’re going home? You’ve only been here a week.”

Pat looked sheepish and turned his head so that he no longer was making eye contact with Erico. “I’m not going to do the whole month. This place isn’t for me.” It was a death’s head talking. It was saying, “I’m terrified. I’m so frightened of death, I’m going right out there and make certain I die.”

Death’s head. Erico couldn’t shake the image. Pat Nelson had bent things to the point where anything would be better than facing life, and eventual death was one piece of life those who lived in the real world all had to face. Pat Nelson was going to die. It was written, literally, all over his face.

“Pat, you know what your odds of recovering are even if you go all the way through treatment and complete it? Maybe one out of three. If you quit, your chances are maybe a hundred — a thousand to one. I wish you’d reconsider.”

The boy’s face reddened slightly and he still refused any kind of eye contact. “I’ve heard the sales pitch from my counselor, and from about half a dozen members of my group. I really don’t think I have a problem. All I really need to do is learn to control my using better.”

“Don’t try to snow me, Pat. Don’t you remember back there in detox? I was there when they pumped your guts out and fought all night to quiet down your heart before it ripped loose from its supports.”

“I overdid it one time,” answered Pat Nelson. “One time. Okay, I’ve learned my lesson, and that’s it. I’ll never do that again, so don’t worry about it. All I need to know is what to do with my bedding and my book issue. The N.A. text and the A.A. Big Book are brand new; hardly been opened.”

“I wonder why I already knew that,” cracked Erico. Like the rehab nurses kept telling him, if a person wants to recover, you can’t say anything wrong. If he wants to die, you can’t say anything right. Recovery isn’t for those who need it; it’s only available for those who want it. “Stuff your sheets and blanket in your pillow case and leave it on the floor in your room. The books are yours. I suggest you take them home with you and read them.”

Later that day housekeeping found Pat Nelson’s bedding stuffed in a pillow case on the floor where he had been told to leave it. Housekeeping also found Pat’s book issue in the room’s trash can. Nine days later the assistant manager of the Seventh Street McDonald’s found Pat Nelson himself dead in the toilet stall in the men’s room at the aforementioned establishment, a few granules of blow still adhering to his upper lip.

The autopsy showed his heart had torn itself to pieces. Erico read the notice of Pat Nelson’s death that made it to the rehab unit. It upset him because, since then, he had seen the death’s head in the faces of four more of the rehab patients and one of the nurses.

Erico Ramos went to a psychiatrist and paid a total of one hundred and twenty dollars to be told that he had a fear of death. A little on the extreme side, but perfectly normal. The death’s heads were a manifestation of his fear in combination with twelve hour shifts, too much caffeine, and the life style of a lone wolf; he was too isolated; too much into his own head. Pat Nelson’s death had been simple coincidence, as were the deaths of the nurse and the four other patients in whose faces he had imagined seeing death’s heads. After all, how many had died without such advance advertising? Less caffeine, fewer hours, a little meditation, and a lot of medication.

Erico had spent long enough on the rehab unit to appreciate the risks of treating problems with Valium and other chemical wonders. He destroyed the prescription. Meditation seemed like nothing but a way to play with his nightmares. He didn’t bother with meditation. He did manage to arrange for fewer hours and he cut out caffeine.

He didn’t have any idea what to do about his isolation; his lone wolf life style. He wasn’t dating and he had no close friends or family. He didn’t know what good it would do anyway. Friends seemed to be more obligation than comfort. That went doubly so for romantic attachments. It was redoubled for family. For a brief moment he considered splitting the difference and purchasing a kitten, but his landlord didn’t allow pets any riskier than a goldfish. Hard to cuddle a goldfish.

He did note that several persons he had known had died recently, none of whom had sported death’s heads in advance. One was a suicide; Mrs. Baum who worked for the cleaners next door to the apartment house. She had inoperable cancer and had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Erico had seen no death’s head in her face. Roger Stokes, a police officer who lived in the apartment building, had died in his sleep from a massive coronary. There had been no death’s head in his face.

Perhaps the wigpicker was right. Imagination, lack of sleep, a preoccupation with the fear of death. Erico decided to take it easy, take care of himself, and ignore the death’s heads that he continued to see. After all, anyone who had a head had a skull inside of it. A little outline here, a jutting chin, a cheekbone, the ridge of an eye socket. The suggestions were all about him. It was his imagination that was turning them into death’s heads. He forced himself to relax.

One snowy night in late December Erico was driving back to his apartment on the interstate after shopping at the supermarket. In the oncoming lane was a BMW full of merrymakers wending their way from one party to another. Young, modern, and politically correct, they had designated a driver, one of their friends who could not tolerate alcohol. It was he who, after four joints and a line of coke, plowed the vehicle and his mates head on into the front end of Erico’s Mazda. When the fire department, paramedics, and coroner showed up to sort out the pieces, the merrymakers were on their way to the county morgue while Erico Ramos was unconscious, bleeding internally, and on a fast chopper heading toward Northvale General.

Dread.

Before he opened his eyes, Erico was filled with horror. He remembered the accident, the car’s dashboard and steering post folding into his abdomen, the shower of glass, the stunning blow through the back of the seat into his spine that caused him to lose consciousness. He knew he was in an ICU. The heart monitor was on audio, he could feel the automatic cuff on his upper left arm, the IV taped to the back of his left hand, the blood oxy clip on the tip of his index finger, the catheter inserted into his bladder.

He caught his breath.

It was there in the room with him.

Death.

The nightmare he had fought for so long and from which he had tried to flee.

Death.

Quickly he recited to himself the Platitudes of Acceptance: Everyone dies. No one has a lock on the next ten minutes. Who does Erico Ramos think he is to be granted immortality? Everyone eventually faces their final moment. How will Erico Ramos measure up? Be a man, Erico. There are people watching. They’re not only watching, they’re taking extensive notes.

How will Erico Ramos go out? What will those who see him die think of his departure? If I must die, thought Erico, I want to do so with dignity, although dignity is a tough thing to manage with a piece of plastic stuck up your dick.

The automatic cuff began squeezing his arm as the tiny air compressor grumbled into his left ear with the sound of a monotone machine fart. All of his vitals would be up on the video screen, but he wouldn’t be able to see the screen unless he could face it. He could feel the sandbags against both sides of his head. Broken neck? He wiggled the fingers of his right hand and the toes of his left foot, somehow pleased that he wasn’t paralyzed.

The back of his head hurt and he could feel that the pain had been numbed by pain killers. But his breath was short. It was as though icy fingers were gently gripping his throat, squeezing, cutting off the flow of oxygen.

Erico knew he was getting enough oxygen. He could feel the nose piece hissing into his nostrils, smelling of stale plastic, drying out his nasal membranes. The icy fingers were nothing more than his fears. Fears of death, fears of knowledge. Ignorance is not only bliss; at times it’s a bloody necessity.

Still, his breath was short, panic began gnawing at his resolve to lie still in bed. He forced himself to lie motionless. After all, he might not be dying. It’s possible. Ripping out his IV and trying to run from the room might kill the one chance had of staying alive, and staying alive was the point of all of this expensive equipment, wasn’t it? Besides, he still had that piece of plastic stuck up his dick.

Nonetheless, Erico’s cosmic accountant was in there hard at work making up the final tally. That was your life, Erico. What had you made of it? Nursing school when you could have been a physician or a great research scientist? Hell, thought Erico, I did save some lives and helped to save many more. The fleeting nature of this accomplishment, however, was never clearer. The law was still on the books: everyone dies. No one ever lost money by betting on death’s eventual victory.

There were other things, though. A childhood that was lonely, save for a brief flirtation with a street gang. No one, nothing, left behind. Not even a kitten.

That was the fear of death, he thought. Finding out your ticket’s expired and you hadn’t yet had your turn on the ride. Dying without having lived. He could feel the tears running down the sides of his head. It was no longer possible for Erico to remain confined within his own head and he opened his eyes. Because of his tears the images were smeared, but he blinked them away. Above was the acoustic tile set into the room’s false ceiling. A corner of one of the tiles was cracked. There was a brown spot on another. Coffee? Feces? Blood?

He looked down and to his left. Next to his hand, hanging from the raised bed rail, was the combination call button and TV control. Beneath his wrist were the leads leading to the contact patches attached to his chest. The TV, hanging above the foot of the bed, was off. He looked up and to his left and saw the edge of the video monitor’s side. The screen was pointed toward the foot of the bed and he couldn’t view it. There was a clock on the wall and it registered a little after nine in the evening. He pushed the call button, feeling somehow ashamed for doing so.

A face appeared in the doorway. Female. Unfamiliar. “Hi. Mr. Ramos? I’m your nurse for tonight. My name’s Helen. How are we doing?”

“You’re half of us seems to be doing very well,” answered Erico, his voice sounding strange in his ears. “I still don’t know anything official about my half.”

“Well, you certainly sound better.” She checked the video monitor, cycled the blood pressure cuff, and took a note or two. “I can get you a little broth, if you’re hungry. How about a ginger ale?”

“Nothing. How am I doing?”

“Well, your blood pressure and pulse are very good. Are you feeling any pain?”

“Not overwhelming. My head mostly. I’d like to know my condition.”

Helen’s face showed the nightmare. Judgment call. Tell me, nurse, am I dying? She reviewed her options and selected the elsewhere road. “The doctor’ll have to tell you that in the morning. I can say you’ve been in a bit of a scrape, but we’re taking care of you now. Your neck’s been injured, so for the time being you have to remain on your back. If you need help or a bedpan, just push the button.” And, before the waves of her final audio communication landed upon Erico’s eardrums, she was long gone.

Of course by not answering his question she had answered it, changing Erico’s question from “what?” to “how long?” He closed his eyes as a chill traveled the length of his body.

He didn’t want to travel the extent of his fears again. He opened his eyes, reached for the control, and turned on the television. After running around the available channels twice, the amount of time he had left and what he was doing with it began to plague his thoughts. If he only had seconds or minutes left, did he want to go out listening to Jeopardy or reruns of Cheers ? High school basketball? Oprah and women married to midget mimes with body odor?

He punched off the set and took a deep breath, letting it out as a ragged sob. Another face appeared in the door. Hesitant. Dark. “Rene.”

“Yes.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“I’ll go, if you want.”

“No. No, don’t go. I wanted to see you — talk to you. I just didn’t know it.” A pause. “How did you know it?”

Rene smiled sadly. “I told you before, man. I just know.” He entered the room and stood at the right side of Erico’s bed, looking down at him. His usually smiling face carried a grave cast. “How can I help you?”

“Do you know how bad a shape I’m in?”

“No. I just got up here. Did you ask the nurse?”

“I asked her and she told me squat.”

Rene nodded. “That tells you something.”

Erico closed his eyes. “Yeah. About her as well as me.” The fear that was choking him made his eyes jump open. “I’m scared.”

Rene Boniface took Erico’s right hand in both of his and held it. “I know, man.”

“I’m so damned scared of dying I can hardly breathe. What did you do to those people? Rachael Raddenburg, Alicia Fuentes, all of them?”

Rene glanced down, his face troubled. “I have a gift. Maybe it’s a curse. Anyway, I took them to death.”

“What?”

“Death. Dying. I showed them what it’s like. I can take you there. I can show you it’s nothing to fear. In fact it’s the most wonderful thing you’ll ever experience.” He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “That’s all I do.”

“That’s it? No catches? No money?”

Rene nodded. “Oh, there’s a catch; a payment.”

“What?”

“If I do this for you, Erico, you agree to share your death with me.”

“Share my … death?” The fear climbed into Erico’s throat, the physical sensation of being strangled. “How do I share my death with you?” he whispered. “And why? What do you get out of it”

Rene squeezed Erico’s hand. “Like I said, man, it’s the most wonderful feeling you’ve ever had.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’ll see. And don’t worry about how I do it. I could take it. If I wanted I could take your death and share it without your permission. But I don’t do that. I ask first.”

Erico tried to shake his head, but the sandbags stopped the gesture. His neck muscles seemed to scream. “I don’t care how. I just don’t want to be afraid anymore. I just don’t want to be afraid.”

Still gripping Erico’s fingers with his left hand, Rene reached back with his right hand, pulled up a chair, and sat down. “We have a deal?”

“Yes.”

Rene Boniface nodded, closed his eyes, and held Erico’s hand with both of his.

Erico felt his headache fall way, the aches and tension in his limbs, in his chest, his abdomen, his head and neck, it all fell away. He could see no lights, no colors, but he could see hope, joy, a peculiar tension that was an anticipation of something splendorous about to happen.

“This was Rachael’s death,” said Rene, his voice speaking to Erico as from within Erico’s own mind.

There was a glow, a hazy blue light high above her. Rachael could feel her arm reach up toward the light, although she could not see her own hand. She couldn’t see it, yet it was not strange to her, for she understood everything.

All that had been anxiety, all that had been worry, all that had been fear. Nothing. Foolish, silly. It would have been laughable, save the reality that Rachael now understood all. Hence she understood herself, her fear, and the fears of the entire universe. The answers to all of the questions ever asked reposed within her memory. Not just her questions; everyone’s questions. All that was unimportant fell away. All that was important became understood. Every cell of her body became aware and understood its place and worth to the organ, the body, the universe, the soul of Rachael Raddenburg.

Beyond the light, the warmth, perhaps its source, was the end, the beginning, the source, the center, an event/power/entity/state of such towering consequence, attaching any name to it diminished it. Next to it any conception of god that had ever existed became as nothing.

It was something of love.

The love was for Rachael, and because she understood everything in the universe, Rachael knew that she was worthy of the love. It was hers for eternity.

Glittering billows of down soft diamonds parted and folded her within as every particle of her joined with every particle of the universe and forever became both the mother and the child of existence.

The blinding light dimmed, the warmth diminished, and Erico opened his eyes to see Rene looking back at him. Rene’s face looked drawn, empty. Erico still felt the understanding, the meaning, of the experience. He had been gone for years; perhaps decades. “Rene?”

The morgue orderly nodded, his eyes still closed.

“Was that God?”

Even as he asked it, Erico could feel his understanding collapsing, his life of answerless questions returning, the love dissolving in a bath of petty doubt and self-recrimination. The clock on the wall showed the time to be seventeen after nine. “I shouldn’t’ve asked,” said Erico. “I shouldn’t’ve said anything.”

Rene sighed as his face grew a patient smile and he squeezed Erico’s hand. “You’re not dead. The things you see, the things you hear, the things you feel and think begin cluttering up what you experienced. How do you feel?”

“Feel?”

“Yes. Your fear. How do you feel?”

Erico looked within himself. There was something he felt. It was the residue of a great peace slowly being eroded by a desperate sense of loss. The fear of death, though, was gone. There were still some things that remained from his experience. He felt relaxed, confident, worthy of love.

Of course it had been Rachael Raddenburg’s feelings he had experienced.She had been the one who had been worthy of love; not Erico. The more he teased at it, the faster the feelings left him. “I can’t stay like this, Rene. I’m not scared of death. It’s something worse. The way I felt. I want to feel that way again.” Erico squeezed Rene’s hand. “It’s leaving me, man. I don’t want to lose it.”

“It’ll come soon enough, Erico.”

He closed his eyes as he mentally nodded. Soon enough. Death would come soon enough. A shard of the understanding he had experienced remained in his memory. It was the knowledge of what an incredibly improbable gift life is. Any life; his life. There was no way to cast it aside now that he knew the truth.

Peace. A feeling of serenity— that everything was exactly where it was supposed to be — washed over him just as he relaxed and drifted off to sleep, the morgue orderly still holding his hand.

The next morning when Erico Ramos awakened, he was hungry. When his doctor, Janice Landry, came by on her rounds, Erico was proclaimed “guardedly stable.” There were setbacks, periods of progress, and a series of operations. In three weeks, however, Erico was allowed to sit up. In another four days he was, with the aid of a walker, allowed to go to his room’s bathroom on his own. Six days after that he was allowed to take a shower. In another week he was discharged and continued physical therapy on an outpatient basis.

Although he was grateful to have pulled through, each moment he lived was touched by the sense he was living on borrowed time, that he had touched something wondrous that was now gone, and that he owed Rene Boniface a death. After Erico got his old job in ICU back, he would, at times, see Rene visit a patient. The patient would always say that he or she had requested the morgue orderly, usually the patient died within a few days, and the remains took that last ride down to the cold room, big smile and all. Perversely, Erico envied them their smiles.

Then came a period of almost three weeks during which no one at Northvale General died. It was nothing special; just a statistical lull in deaths by alcohol and other drugs, fatal traffic accidents, various diseases and old age. Just as there are statistical peaks, there are valleys. For whatever reason, at that point in time, there were no death experiences for the morgue orderly to collect.

There was something about it all that disturbed Erico. Perhaps it was the old debt he owed Rene; perhaps it was the fact of what Rene Boniface was: a spiritual ghoul who fed upon death. A very hungry ghoul.

It was the night shift in early summer, the warm breezes carrying the scent of honeysuckle past the sealed windows, Erico sat in the almost deserted cafeteria sipping at a cup of decaf until Rene Boniface came for his usual mid-shift donut. As he went through the line, paid for his donut, and headed for the door, the morgue orderly avoided any eye contact with Erico.

“Rene,” called out Erico.

The morgue orderly stopped and turned toward him. His face was drawn, his eyes wide and frightened. “What is it?”

Erico held out a hand toward the opposite side of the cafeteria table. “Have a seat.”

“You don’t like me, man. You never did. You needed me, once. But you don’t like me.”

“I want to talk.”

The tip of Rene’s tongue nervously moistened his lips. He glanced down at the napkin and donut in his hand, then dropped into the seat facing Erico and draped an arm over the back of the chair. “Okay, what?”

Erico glanced down at his coffee cup. “Look, maybe I wanted to thank you for what you did for me.”

“You’re welcome. Can I go now?”

Erico slowly shook his head as he stared at his coffee cup. One thing he had learned from his time on the rehab unit was that the only way to say it was to say it. He lifted his gaze until he was looking directly into the morgue orderly’s eyes. “You need it, don’t you? I don’t pretend to understand much about this, but you need it.”

Rene’s eyes narrowed. “Need it? Need what?”

“Death — not death, but those feelings. How a person feels when he dies. You need that, don’t you? You get off on it.”

“Man, you are poking into something that is none of your business.”

Rene began standing, but Erico placed his hand on the morgue orderly’s arm. “Wait. Hear me out.”

Rene settled back into his chair but withdrew his arm. “I’m listening.”

“Look, I guess I feel like I do owe you something. You helped me when I was so afraid I might’ve died from the fear alone. The deal was I’d share my death with you, and I haven’t come across.”

“You will someday.”

Erico sat back in his chair. “Is that some kind of threat?”

“No. Just a reminder of mortality. Everyone dies.”

“Okay. But look at you right now. It’s been twenty days since you’ve had your fix, right? No one’s died here in almost three weeks. It’s getting to you, isn’t it?”

“You’re calling me a junky?”

Erico nodded. “It’s true, isn’t it? Just like a late stage addict, you need it. You need it just to feel normal. And you haven’t had any for a long time.”

Rene moistened his lips again and looked down at the arms that were folded across his chest. “I helped you, man. I helped them all. What’s so bad about that?”

“Great for them. Great for me. But what about you? Look at yourself. You look like any strung out coke head getting ready to do something desperate to get his shit.”

Rene bit at the inner skin on his lower lip as he looked at a point in space. “Erico, man, it’s not like that with me. I can control it. I told you before, I always ask. I never took anyone’s feelings, and I never killed anyone to get my fix, as you call it. If I was willing to do that, then I’d be down on Skid Row prowling among the homeless. All I do is share what death feels like with those who need it and share their deaths when they happen —naturally . I don’t kill anyone.”

“Look, Rene, you need help. Besides, what you can do is real special. Maybe you can make some important contribution to science or medicine. With— ”

“What I do, Erico, everyone can do. You too.” Upon saying that, Rene Boniface stood and pushed back the chair, picked up his donut, and left the cafeteria.

Code blue, code blue.

Stat time. Lights flashing, crash wagon rolling, an ominous flat tone from Room 324, the ICU nurses quietly and efficiently hurrying through their well practiced routine: strip, drip, ventilation, clear the mouth of obstructions, insert the air passage, blow, pump, pump, pump, pump, blow —

“Wagon over here. Let’s move it. Clear.” Calm in the doctor’s voice. Old hand. The whump of multiple volts passing through still living tissue, the muscles contracting and relaxing, lifting a middle aged carpenter named Pete Midori from the bed, going on the ride he paid for with a lifetime of Winstons and saturated fats.

Some scrambled tones for a moment settling down to a steady bip, bip, bip.

“Sinus rhythm.”

“Well, that was easy.”

Orders for meds, a chest x-ray, this and that. Once the patient was stabilized and the others had left, Erico noticed that the man’s eyes were open. Open and wide. He stood next to the man’s side, took his hand, and looked down into the man’s face.

The death’s head was there, grinning back through the man’s fear.

“You’re all right for now, Pete,” said Erico.

The man’s hand gripped Erico’s with surprising strength. “Help me,” he whispered. “Oh please God help me.”

The ancient enemy: the fear of death. A strange feeling of need and power, of wealth and longing, came over Erico; a vision of dangerous paths through newly opened gates. Erico Ramos looked down at face of death and said, “Maybe I can help.” He closed his eyes and entered the deepest pools of his soul.

There was a glow, a hazy blue light high above them. Rachael could feel her arm reach up toward the light, although she could not see her own hand. She couldn’t see it, yet it was not strange to her, for she understood everything.

“What is this?” asked Pete Midori.

“It’s a death,” answered Erico. “The death of a woman named Rachael.”

They traveled Rachael’s path, understood all and defeated the fears of the universe. They possessed the answers to all of the questions ever asked. All that was unimportant fell away. Every cell of their bodies became aware and understood its place and worth to the organ, the body, the universe, the soul.

The light, the center, the power without name.

Love.

Eternity.

Glittering billows of down soft diamonds parted and folded them within as every particle of them joined with every particle of the universe and became both the mother and the child of existence.

Erico felt chilly and desolate as he opened his eyes and looked down upon the joyful face of Pete Midori. He released the man’s hand and felt even more forsaken. “Thank you,” said the carpenter. “You’re an angel. You came to me when I was afraid. I don’t understand it, but thank you. I was so scared. But I’m not frightened now. How can I ever thank you?”

The image of the carpenter swam before him as Erico looked through his tears. “Yes,” he whispered as fresh caverns of despair yawned beneath his feet. “There’s something you can do. If you should die, please share your death with me. Then I can pass it on to whoever needs it.”

What was the knowing look in the man’s face? Secret knowledge? Suspicion? Or only concern. Erico couldn’t get over the feeling that Pete Midori knew exactly what was happening. “Yes,” said Pete quietly. “Sure.” Erico looked up to see Rene Boniface standing in the room’s doorway. The man’s face was desperate, hungry. “This one,” said Erico through clenched teeth, “is mine !”

The morgue orderly studied Erico’s eyes for a moment, nodded, and headed back toward the elevators.