John Matthews - Ascension Day

While the grey was softer, there was also some pain attached to it, and so the black felt warmer, more welcoming. He wanted to go back to it, where he’d been a minute ago. No pain.

A steady beep… beep… beep now too as more of the blackness swilled away and became grey, like an alarm going off. Prompting him gently, incessantly… wake up… wake up… wake up . But Jac thought: I’m dead. And surely that’s the one advantage of being dead… not having to wake up to annoying alarms any more when you don’t want to.

Beep … beep … beep … beep…

As the grey too started to swill away, get whited out, Jac opened his eyes and focused: a monitoring machine at his side steadily beeping, a nurse by the end of his bed checking a clipboard chart, looking up at him as his eyes flickered open.

‘Ah, you are with us again?’

Jac looked down at himself, blinking, still trying to make sense of everything. ‘ But … but I was shot?’

The nurse shook her head. ‘No, senor, not you. You have a cracked shoulder joint, which was also dislocated, and a lot of water had to be drained from your lungs. It was the other man with you, el hombre negre . He was shot twice from behind.’

The blood warm and swilling all around him, maybe even too the last impetus of the bullets hitting Jac as they’d come straight through Nel-M. But it not computing in that instant that it could possibly have been Nel-M shot. Nobody there to shoot him? ‘ Who … who shot him?’

The nurse shrugged. ‘The police don’t know. They are still investigating.’

But then the rest hit Jac, what he’d been there for in those final minutes, and he tried to sit up. Larry ! His eyes shifted to the clock on the wall, 11.47 p.m., 10.47 p.m. in New Orleans, the tears welling, stinging his eyes. Almost five hours since Larry had been executed ! And this time his father’s die-hard tenet, look to the bright side , didn’t, couldn’t help; no bright side possible. The tears flowed freely, the nurse looking at him with concern.

‘You shouldn’t cry, senor. You’re alive. You made it.’

‘I know,’ Jac said, wiping at the tears with the back of one hand. But that’s half the problem, don’t you see? he wanted to scream at her. I feel ashamed to be alive . Getting the proof to save Durrant and still letting him die made it all the more painful. Unbearable . ‘It’s… it’s not me,’ Jac explained. ‘It’s my friend.’

The nurse lifted her eyes hopefully. ‘But your friend — he’s made it too, senor. He was hurt much worse than you with a stomach wound, muy malo … but they’ve already operated and the surgeon thinks he’ll pull through.’

Jac could see from a name-tag that her name was Carmita Terra. He shook his head as he realized she was talking about Truelle. ‘No, not him — another friend. In New Orleans.’

‘Oh.’ She looked blank for a second, then, seeing how distraught he was, tears once again welling, she gave a tight-lipped grimace, her eyes softening. ‘I am sorry to hear about your other friend, senor. So sorry.’

In those last minutes, Larry had stopped looking at the clock.

But everyone else started watching it all the more then; and as the final minute approached, their eyes were riveted to it. They could hardly shift them for one second to look at anything else.

None more so than Warden Haveling as he watched the second hand start on its final 60-second sweep.

And everything suddenly fell deathly silent. Not only in the observation room looking onto the death chamber, but in the prison beyond, inmates looking up from their bunks with heavy, expectant eyes; the protestors outside, having stopped playing their music twenty minutes ago — even the mutter of their voices at that instant died as they looked on at the prison gates, breath vapours pluming gently on the cool night air; and half of New Orleans, too, hands halted mid-air with coffee cups or beers as live newscasts took them to reporters outside the prison gates in those final seconds.

Though two more people didn’t look at the clock then. Josh Durrant, bedroom door shut, face down on his bed as he started sobbing. And Francine, TV off, refusing to acknowledge the time, tried to distract herself by preparing dinner, but her hands felt like lead, hardly able to move or pick up the right things; until, in the end, she wasn’t able to move at all, her eyes gently closing as they filled, feeling those final seconds tick inside her with her laden heartbeat.

All of that silent expectation weighed heavily on Warden Haveling’s shoulders as he watched the second hand make that final sweep; the silence so heavy that you could actually hear the clock ticking, making the seconds seem to pass more agonizingly, before finally, the last few seconds ticking down with the slow deliberation of full-swing axe-blows, Haveling gave a small, solemn nod towards Torvald Engelson.

Engelson acknowledged with equal solemnity, half-closing his eyes for a second, and then he lifted one hand towards the two medics.

They started feeding through the sodium thiopental.

Carmita’s eyebrows furrowed at something Jac had said the moment before.

‘ New Orleo, senor? There have been some calls from there for you. Mickel something?’ She looked towards the corridor outside. ‘Your other friend in white brought your phone with him in case you needed to call anyone.’

Mike Coultaine. Calbrey . Jac nodded. ‘Yes, I… I might need to make some calls.’ But he was thinking more of calling Alaysha, telling her that he was all right and pouring out his soul, before hearing all the bad news from Coultaine. He wasn’t sure he could face that news right now. But when Carmita returned with his phone a minute later and he tried Alaysha’s number, there was no answer.

He scrolled down and looked at the time of Coultaine’s calls: one forty minutes before Durrant’s execution, no doubt to press for what was happening his end, Not much time left now … then two more since, one twenty minutes after and the other just over an hour ago to find out what had happened. Though Coultaine probably already half knew if he’d spoken to the hospital staff or Calbrey. With a tired sigh, Jac pressed to dial Coultaine back.

It answered after the first ring.

‘Mike… it’s Ayliss, uh… Jac.’

‘Jac…. Jac ! Thank God! You’re back in the land of the living!’

‘Yeah… yeah.’ Jac’s voice subdued, not really wanting to share Coultaine’s exuberance at him still being alive at that moment. He exhaled heavily. ‘I’m sorry, Mike… I tried . And the damnest thing is, I had the proof right there in my hand at the last moment! Truelle had — ’

‘Jac… Jac! Stop ! That’s why I’ve been calling… there’s still time!’

‘ What ?’ Jac sat up sharply, sudden lance of pain in his shoulder. ‘What do you mean — still time ?’

‘Durrant got an injury the night before, which was stitched. But as the first of the knock-out feed came through and he strained against the straps, one of the stitches burst and the wound started bleeding. Head of the execution team, guy called Engelson, stopped it right there. It was re-stitched, medics then had to check and re-check him, the media here meanwhile having a field-day… and finally it was re-scheduled.’

‘ When ?’ Dizzy from sitting up so sharply, the room swam in and out of focus for a second.

‘Midnight. Just over an hour from now.’

Jac’s eyes darted frantically. The tape had been shattered, ruined! His eyes fixed back on the nurse. Truelle !