Gillian accepted a tissue from the doctor and dabbed at her tears before returning to hold her daughter’s hands.
“Is there really no hope?”
The doctor shook his head.
“None, I’m afraid.”
Gillian squeezed Keira’s hands even tighter.
“We’re going to have to be strong, love – for each other and for your dad. We need to let him go. It’s what’s best for your father. It’ll just be me and you now.”
How about letting me decide what’s best for me?
Arnold wasn’t prone to panic – he was normally a very calm individual – but panic was the best word to describe what he felt when confronted with what he considered to be his impending execution. Yes, panic rampaged through Arnold’s now fragile veins.
No. You can’t do this. I’m here. I’m alive. Please don’t switch the machine off. Please don’t switch me off. I’ll get better. I promise. I’ll get better.
The nurse had been outside the door, waiting for her cue to come into the room with the necessary forms to sign. Most next of kin who found themselves in this tragic situation eventually consented to turning off their loved one’s life support machine. It was their final act of kindness, a final act of love.
Gillian took the clipboard and pen from the nurse and was about to sign the paperwork when Keira stopped her.
“Wait, mum. What about dad’s organs? I’m sure he’d want to donate his organs to help others.”
Arnold agreed – in principle. He tried to sit up and say something, but nothing happened.
If I was dead, I would. Yes. But I’m not dead. Not yet anyway. Not by a long chalk. I’m in here. I’m alive, and I want to stay alive.
The doctor shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Miss Leadbetter, but we’d be transplanting non-functioning and unhealthy organs, As much as there’s a need for organs, it’s not possible I’m afraid.”
Gilliam and Keira stood in silence for a moment, looking at Arnold. Gillian’s hand gripped the pen tightly as she scribbled her signature on the assent form.
The tragic formalities out of the way, both wife and daughter gave Arnold a final kiss on the cheek and left the room in silence, leaving the medical staff to perform the emotionally difficult task of terminating a patient’s life. Even though they had done so many times before, the enormity of ending a human life was never easy.
The humming noise faded away and the flapping noise of the bellows of the respirator machine stopped abruptly. The few seconds before the beep of vital signs monitor turned into a long monotonous tone seemed like an eternity to everyone left in the room.
The doctor checked his watch.
“Time of death, zero seven fifty-seven.”
The room was empty once more, so quiet that if the proverbial pin dropped it would sound like dustbin lids crashing to the ground. Even the two sparrows had long since flown away. The silence was deafening.
A single unheard thought swirled around Arnold’s brain, unsure of what to do or where to go.
But I’m not dead.
2
Arnold wanted to go back to his bed in the hospital room. Even though he’d been hooked up to machines, at least he’d been safe there. Now, his face covered by a pale blue sheet and travelling through corridors on a gurney with a wobbly leg, he felt decidedly unsafe. He had no idea where he was going. Nobody bothered to tell the dead where they were going.
Even if, like Arnold, they weren’t dead.
In the hospital morgue, Roger Rogerson was awaiting his new delivery eagerly; he’d already sold the body to a friend who made amateur porn movies. He didn’t ask too much about what the corpse would be used for, although he did have a vivid imagination and had devised all kinds of potential fates for the cadaver. It was a porn movie after all. Whoever was the next stiff through the double-doors was worth seven hundred and fifty pounds to him. He’d tried to negotiate for one thousand pounds, but the fresh corpse market was very competitive and he needed the money.
The swing doors suddenly burst open and Arnold was pushed into the morgue. His escort, Ralph, a skinny wretch with acne scars, parked the gurney against the left-hand wall of the room and held his palm out to Roger, all the while staring at the mortician’s neck. He couldn’t help himself – Roger had the largest Adam’s apple that Ralph had ever seen.
“We agreed 50/50. You owe me two hundred and fifty quid, Roger. I could’ve taken it to St. Matthew’s down the road.”
Roger walked over to the trolley and lifted up the sheet that covered Arnold’s face. Arnold’s lifeless eyes stared back at him.
“Not exactly a looker, is he?”
Arnold felt affronted. He’d always considered himself quite good looking. Well, reasonably so. Not movie star material, sure, but he had seen a lot worse.
You’re no Brad Pitt yourself.
Roger ignored the comment, as he hadn’t heard it. The skinny one stood alongside Roger and stared at Arnold’s face.
“What’d he die of, anyway?”
Roger shrugged.
“Who knows? Who cares?”
Arnold was losing patience.
I’m not dead. Look at me. Do I look dead?
The ludicrousness of what he thought he’d said out loud suddenly hit him. Of course he looked dead. He wasn’t moving – in fact, he wasn’t even breathing. He supposed that he should perhaps forgive the hospital staff for thinking he was dead. But that doctor – he should have known better.
Ralph, was still waiting for his money.
“So? Where’s me dosh?”
Roger covered Arnold up again.
“You’ll get it when I get it. The van’s due in about an hour. I’ll give it to you at tea-break.”
Ralph did his best to sneer at the mortician, but his gesture looked more like a Jack Russell Terrier trying to smile.
“Make sure you do, Rogerson. Don’t forget – I could take you.”
Roger smirked.
“In your dreams, mate. In your dreams.”
Ralph’s walkie-talkie crackled into life with an unintelligible message.
“Gotta go, Roger. Another croaker on level three. See you at tea-break.”
Roger liked his own company, which was just as well as it was difficult to find anyone to work with him. It wasn’t the job, per se. It wasn’t even that people didn’t get on with Roger. It was just that his Adam’s apple was so large that it was a distraction. One of his previous co-workers had even asked an oncologist if perhaps it was a tumour. Upon being told that it wasn’t, the woman had requested a transfer to a unit with less of an aesthetic inconvenience.
Arnold was getting bored with the light blue gauze that was diffusing his view and was quite grateful when Roger drew the sheet back again, allowing the light to enter his eyes again. The mortician looked at the tag that was attached to Arnold’s big toe.
“Arnold Leadbetter. Born 1 August 1979. Died 13 December 2019.”
He returned to the top end of the gurney.
“Forty years old. And you didn’t even make it to Christmas.”
In his mind, Arnold blinked.
“But I’m not dead. Why won’t anyone believe me?”
Roger ignored the question that he hadn’t heard. He pointed to a machine in the corner of the room.
“You know, you’re quite lucky really. Usually, I’d be replacing your bodily fluids with embalming fluid from that box of tricks over there.”
Arnold strained to move his head so that he could see what the mortician was pointing at, but all he could do was to look straight up at the ceiling. Roger continued his little speech.
“But you, my friend, you’re going on to bigger things. You’re going to be a movie star.”