Part 2
The article would not have helped
Mortimer’s disposition towards his situation had he read it. He had listened to
various doctors and surgeons explain to him how his version of the still
experimental procedure would go: He would be administered a general anesthesia,
under which a series of several hundred tube fibers would be attached to every
artery in his body, supplying his body with the oxygen his dead heart would be
unable to deliver. After that, a cardioplegia would be injected directly into his
heart, stopping it cold, and he would die and remain dead until surgeons could
remove his tumor.
The concept was still troubling him
when doctors carted his bed into a specially equipped operating room, one with
hundreds of thousands of plastic tube fibers dangling from the ceiling, each
with sharp needle accenting its tip. This did little to comfort him, and
certainly did not comfort him as well as the numbing anesthesia which was soon
injected into his arm, knocking him into a comfortable unconsciousness.
Mortimer
awoke lying down in a vast, empty plain. At least he thought that he awoke
lying down in a vast, empty plain. In the true waking world, his heart had been
stopped artificially by a medical intern who was hoping his voluntary
involvement with the experimental procedure would earn him respect among his
peers. It wouldn’t.
Mortimer
attempted to stand, but lost his balance and fell onto the firm and unforgiving
ground. A shot of pain flew through his chest, causing him to curl himself into
a fetal position. In the process of this he struck his knee against a rock that
he had not previously seen, and let out a howl of agony. Upon this howl, he
discovered that his throat was unusually dry. The stimulation caused by his
howling had caused severe pain in his throat, which he attempted to clasp with
both hands. It was during this attempt that he realized that he was missing his
left arm, which turned out to be the cause of his lost balance upon standing.
He lied on the ground, shocked and in pain.
“You might
want to try to avoid doing that sort of thing.”
Mortimer
turned his head to see a skeleton in a black hooded robe standing over him. After
he had finished a solid two minutes of screaming and subsequently rubbing his
sore throat with his one remaining hand, Mortimer managed to stand and face his
skeletal visitor. It was a stereotypical Grim Reaper figure, complete with a
scythe and low drawn black hood. Mortimer wanted to take a few steps back, but
didn’t trust himself to attempt walking with his new balance.
“A-are you…
are you the Grim Reaper?” He asked in an understandably rasped voice. The robed
figure shook it’s head, then thought better of it and gave a non-committal half
shrug. “I suppose you could call me that. It’s been awhile since I’ve looked
like this, though. Humans these days rarely personify me, and it’s good to have
a solid body again. Thanks for that.”
Mortimer
nodded in a bewildered fashion. The apparently-not-Grim-Reaper began to twirl its
scythe. “So, Mortimer, tell me: what did you die of? The cancer wasn’t supposed
to get you for another sixty three days. Trouble in the OR?”
“I guess it
could be… I’m not entirely sure. The last thing I recall was being knocked out
by an anesthetic in the room where I was meant to get my Temporary Death
treatment.” Mortimer was feeling a bit calmer. He began to come to terms with
the fact that he was dead. Then he remembered his missing left arm. “By the
way, you wouldn’t happen to know what happened to my arm, would you?”
But the
Reaper-thing seemed troubled. Facial expressions on a face with no skin or
muscles are hard to explain, but Mortimer could easily imagine a creased brow
and thin lips, despite the lack of a brow or lips. “‘Temporary Death’, you say?
How exactly would one go about doing that?”
Mortimer
shook his head. “I’m not sure of the specifics, but I was assured on several
occasions that it was the only way that the doctors could cure my cancer. Now
returning to the arm issue, you haven’t seen it around here, have you?”
The skeleton
looked towards Mortimer’s stump, then back to Mortimer. “Souls are brought here
in the condition in which their bodies died. If you lost your arm somewhere
along the line, there’s not much I can do about that. But you say death is
temporary now?” Mortimer looked around at the featureless plain that stretched
around him in all directions. “If this is death, then I guess not. I’m not sure
how I’d get out of here.”
“You know
that this isn’t death,” said the skeleton. “If you did, then I wouldn’t be
standing in front of you right now. You would probably be standing on me, and I
for one wouldn’t have appreciated you hitting me with your knee earlier. This
is more of a foyer, so to speak. And what you think of as death…” said Death,
“…is here to usher you inside.”
Mortimer soon
found that his running was not noticeably affected by his loss of limb. Dodging
the rocks of various sizes which appeared before him as he ran away from Death
was a bit more difficult, but was still practical enough to lead him away at what
he judged to be a reasonable speed. A few moments ago, Mortimer had been
telling himself that he was ready to die. But of course, that was when he
thought that he had already experienced death.
Several
hundred yards back, an exasperated Death heaved its shoulders. “A game of chess
would have been easier to handle.”With that, Death took flight.
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