Gina Grant: Scythe Does Matter

My life was a mess. Afterlife, too. I really wanted to sit down. A sagging sofa along one wall sang a siren song to my spinning head. Not to mention spinning stomach. I hadn’t worked so hard to keep my last meal down through the ferry ride only to lose it here.

Dante seemed focused on Sybil, his firm grip keeping me upright—and also keeping me from reaching the sofa. “Sybil, you had something to tell us?” he prompted.

“No, I just hate being eavesdropped on. Sorry. I got nothing either.”

We all had big fat nothings. And I only had a couple of months to fix this—months, like the rest of time, being relative. But I had resolved to do something and do something I would.

Apparently, that something was to pass out.

The faces around me blurred and spun and I didn’t so much slip into unconsciousness as dive headfirst into a long, spinny journey with flashes of light, sound, and fury.

I found myself plunked into a hospital room. I often dreamed about this room. In my dreams, I’d float up by the ceiling, just like I had the day I’d been scythed, watching my body lie there in that metal-railed bed, hooked up to high-tech medical equipment that blinked and beeped.

The first thing I always did, dream or no dream, was try to force my way back into my body. I’d throw myself at the poor sleeping carcass over and over, trying to re-soul my body like a well-worn shoe.

My attempts always failed.

Sometimes I woke up back in Dante’s bed in Hell crying as if my little heart would break. On those occasions, Dante would wake up and hold me until I calmed down enough to sleep again.

Sometimes, in my dream, I’d get a pattern going with the diving and bouncing. Then I’d wake up still bouncing, dark marks appearing on my chest. I jokingly called it “rhythm and bruise,” trying to make light of it so Dante wouldn’t think I was unhappy in my life with him. I’m pretty sure he saw through my ruse, though. Perhaps my continued obsession with getting my Coil life back gave me away.

Today’s dream was different. I still hovered up near the ceiling, but everything was clearer. More in focus. As if I had somehow been transported back to my body. Well, near it, anyway.

The girl in the bed had grown gaunt and ashen. I stared at her, feeling too numb even to try to climb back into my physical body. Machines fed her, machines breathed for her. On one side of the bed, that clear plastic bag continued to fill with embarrassing yellow fluid. But I didn’t blush. I had no true presence here. I was just an observer.

But not the only one. On this trip there were people in the room. My aunt Carey and her partner, Leslie. My former boss Conrad, who’d stolen my soul and ruined my life, and Shannon, his daughter and my best friend. The women were weeping. Even Leslie, who was always so stoic.

An unfamiliar woman in a lab coat stood with them, holding a clipboard and a pen. The stethoscope necklace proclaimed her as some sort of medical professional. I could see her lips moving and she gestured toward me with the pen. Not the floating me, the bedridden me. I drifted around like an astronaut, kicking off walls until I could angle around to hear her better.

“You’ve been very brave, Carey.”

Carey sniffed. “Tha—” She tried again. “Thank you, Doctor.”

The doctor nodded, her fingers circling my ankle as she spoke. I felt nothing. What connection did I have with the body on the bed? The doctor watched her own hand stroke my calf as she continued. “A great deal of money has been spent keeping your niece in this private care facility . . .”

“Money was never an issue,” Conrad said, placing his hand on Carey’s shoulder. “Kirsty was like a second daughter to me and it happened at a company function. Paying for her care was the least I could do.”

So Conrad felt guilty enough to cover the cost of this place. Well, what needed to be paid over and above the provincial health care system. Nice of the skegging skegger. Look at me, using Hell’s all-purpose swear word. I was really starting to fit in here; good thing I was leaving as soon as I could swing it.

Carey gave him a watery smile while shrugging away from his hand. She had always been a good judge of character and apparently she liked him about as much as I do—which is to say not much.

I played his words over in my mind. He was talking past tense in terms of my care. What had changed? Had some new law rescinded whatever tax break he’d been getting? Had he maxed out a handy health care subsidy? Or was it that now that he had used my blood to forge my signature on the contract amendment, he couldn’t risk my coming back to life and denying it?

“But as you know,” the doctor continued, driving my train of thought off the rails. “The likelihood of her waking is practically nonexistent at this point. It’s very brave of you to face that grim reality. You are doing the right thing for others who could use this bed, this level of care. Others with . . . more promising prognoses.” She gripped my ankle more tightly. Not that I could feel it, but I could see her knuckles whiten from where I hovered nearby. “You’re doing the right thing,” she repeated, voice cracking along with her professional demeanor.

Carey nodded. I didn’t think she could speak if she tried.

“Our lawyers have prepared the documentation. If you could just sign here, where it says ‘Next of Kin.’ ”

When Carey didn’t reach for the clipboard, Conrad took it instead. He gently placed the pen in my aunt’s hand and supported the clipboard while she signed. Looked like he couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. Knowing him, he’d probably booked a meeting right after this and didn’t want to be late.

I peered over my aunt’s shoulder as she signed her name. For a moment I was surprised the ink was blue, rather than the red I’d become accustomed to.

July 2, she wrote on the date line. So, my time in Hell equaled about ten months on the Coil. Today, anyway. Might be different tomorrow. Ten months to the day since I’d been reaped. We were only a couple of months off in Hell.

We.

They.

Where did I belong now? Where had I ever belonged? I wished my soul felt as numb as my body. Instead it felt cold and shaky and desperate.

The doctor took the clipboard from Carey’s trembling hand. She studied it carefully. “She’ll only last a few minutes once we remove the breathing tube.”

Leslie held Carey’s right hand, Shannon her left. At the doctor’s nod, the nurse who’d been standing by the door came in to assist. Conrad stepped back as far as possible, pressing himself into the wall, craning his neck to watch, his face slightly manic.

The doctor and nurse worked efficiently. The doctor shut off one machine, while the nurse yanked a plug from the wall and wound the cord around another device. Then the nurse held out a tray to receive the breathing tube.

Everyone in the room held their breath. Even me.

The doctor pinched my wrist between fingers and thumb, eyes on her watch.

I floated back up to the ceiling, watching myself die.

Suddenly, I felt a tugging. Then with dizzying speed, my body sucked me in like a big, fleshy vacuum cleaner. I hit bottom with a thud and a gasp.

A gasp that was echoed by six others. My eyes remained shut so I couldn’t see.

But I could hear.

“Oh, my God!”

“Kirsty!”

“She’s breathing on her own, Doctor!”

The exclamations tumbled over one another. I could hear the doctor ordering people back as she and the nurse leapt into action. I could feel them reattaching the little cardboard disks of the heart monitor. Then the near-painful squeeze of the blood pressure cuff. Shaky fingers drew back my eyelid and painful light burned into my brain.