Thompson, John approached the door, locking his habitual frown into place. The first appointment of the day was always a little awkward. It was like wading into cold water; the initial steps were the hardest.  Once you were wet, well…

“Chang, Michael”, he called through the speaker, “I’m from Dr. Rook’s office.  I’m here with news.”

Behind the door, there was a delayed shuffle of slippers on slate.  The door slid open with a soft whoosh, bringing forth a wall of stale air.  Chang, 54 years old, was leaning into an armoire, sucking in oxygen from the dispenser tab under his nose.  Huge, desperate gulps.

He looked Thompson up and down, taking in the telltale lab coat. “Please. I’m getting better.”

Denial. As common as the cold. 

“Chang, Michael.  You have pneumonia complicated by a weakened immune system.  Based on your most recent labs, it has been deemed untreatable.  I am therefore required to deliver your declaration of death.  The date of the event will be the 15^th of October, 2147.”

“Please. Don’t you—”

“This declaration will be followed by confirmation on the 15^th of October. As part your grief package, sanctioned counseling will be offered to any interested family members within two weeks of death.”

Chang just shook his head, crossing trembling arms across his chest. “You’re not even listening.”

Je suis désolé. Duìbuqǐ. Lo siento. 

Thompson swallowed hard.  “I am sorry.”

#

“Well, it's definitely an ulcer.  About as big as the hole in the atmo over Mexico.” Dr. Rook looked at the results of Thompson's scan on his tiny handheld.  “I'll zap it, but take care of yourself.  The last thing this place needs is another Reaper sent into the recovery program.”

Over ten thousand patients had trudged through the doctor’s office that year alone.  The pastel room felt worked over and Thompson badly wanted out.

“Message received, Doc.”

Dr. Rook’s pat on Thompson’s shoulder was way too rigid.  He needed to learn proper technique.

After the hole in his belly had been evaporated, Thompson headed down to the white-halled admin levels to pick up his afternoon diagnosis package. Stepping off the elevator, he ran into an ill-looking Harland.

If Thompson delivered bad news, Harland, James delivered people.  As Doctor Rook’s angel, he gave patients the good news of answered prayers and miraculous cures; a job that demanded his refusal to accept the world as anything but a beautiful, shiny diamond. The man’s current distress sat awkwardly in flushed cheeks. 

“We need to talk,” Harland said. His hand held a bleach-white folder, a black ribbon of code curled around the outside.

“Why do you have my package?”

Harland took a shallow breath. “Just look.” 

Thompson took the folder and opened it.

“Jesus.” His vision swam out of focus. He leaned up against the cold concrete wall, hands sliding down till they found his knees.

She was there.

Morrison, Mary was going to die of a brain aneurysm before the end of the month. For Thompson, she had once been so much more than number three on a list of outgoing bodies. 

She had once been his.   

“Thompson?” Harland was getting sweaty; panic was not his forte. “You’re way too close. I mean, we both are.”

Cases involving loved ones were not, under any circumstances, to be taken on by the intimate party. Too bad Morrison had always insisted on being the exception to every rule.

Thompson looked Harland in the eye, seeing the soft gleam of an unaccustomed doubt. He clasped his friend on the shoulder.  Strong and tight. 

“I’m doing it.”  

#

They’d first met in her parents’ house under the cover of prognosticated grief.  Her brother wouldn’t last the night.  Hell hath no fury like a non-responsive respiratory virus, and yet, while the young man drowned in his own fluids, lungs percolating, all Thompson could do was stare at the woman curled up cross-legged on the edge of the bed.

Tonight all his official duty required was the signature of next of kin on the blue form: confirmation of death. 

He would be courteous but passive. The separation between death and its recorder must be concrete, and emotional involvement eroded that divide. This was mourning by the book.

And yet.  

She looked over at him, as if something behind her sad eyes understood.  Her hair was tangled, out-of-control.  She had creases in her skin, curves in her body, freckles. Such character was usually lost in the attainment of perfection, in trimmed cuticles, silky hair, and gleaming eyes. The monotonous majority had long ago confiscated beauty from the eye of the beholder. She looked the way a woman should, but never did anymore.

The mother tapped Thompson on his shoulder, nudging him out of the sister’s gaze. Sallow cheeks, steely resolve.  She was ready.

The boy took his last gasping breath at 03:07 hours. 

The mother signed the form while distant relatives and old acquaintances filed out. Thompson lingered.  

He found her in the washroom. She was on the floor, her brown eyes red.  She looked up, smiling.

Thompson knew all about the sexual side effects of grief.  The release was instinctual, and it was in his job description to resist.

But she reached up to him.  Her hand against his chest was so warm.

Whatever possessed him, it didn’t hesitate.  He bent down and they met formally for the first time. It was clumsy and short, hands grabbing for something to hold onto, mouths closing on muted invitation.

Afterwards, entangled in the corner, they laughed openly at their awkwardness.  She pulled him to her, hair tickling his ear.

“I’m Mary,” she whispered, “And you just saved my life.”

#

Getting off the elevator on the eighteenth floor, he felt like he was standing in the middle of a residential bowling lane.  Down endless, narrow halls, he still knew the way.

Morrison had lived in this Retrorent since he'd met her. For a time, so had he. Every sketchy room had twelve-foot plaster ceilings that had long ago yellowed. Moving out had been one of the few perks of their breakup.

The brass doorknob was smeared with charcoal. It took her a moment to respond to his knock.  She was swearing under her breath, fussing with antiquated locks.  The door finally swung open and her eyes crinkled as she smiled up at him.

“I had forgotten how good you look in that coat.  It broadens your shoulders.”

He nodded curtly.

“So, what is it, Johnny, you after your Godzilla T-shirt?  I got paint on it. A giant yellow spot over his face.  It looks like he’s puking out the sun.”

“Morrison, I’m not...”  

“Why are you here?  Feeling especially masochistic today?”

“Morrison.”  He dropped his chin to his shirt.  Her eyes followed, for the first time seeing the paper, damp and crinkled where his hand clung tight.

Thompson knew how to read people, knew that look, the moment of clarity that came before he even spoke, as if something clicked and they saw all the universal possibilities align for a triple cherry jackpot.

She reached for the door, her blind hand clawing air, once, twice— before Thompson grabbed it and led it to the cold metal, his own firm grip sliding on top.

“It’s alright, I’ve got you.”

Her weight sagged forward. Ten seconds of overwhelming panic. That was supposed to be the worst of it.  He counted silently, as she stared right through him.

#

“Will it be messy? They just put in new carpets.”

Morrison's heaving sobs had settled into quiet, restrained huffs. Coffee always helped her put things in perspective.  Thompson went to the kitchen to dispense her third cup, and as he walked he couldn't help but stare.

The mural climbed up the walls.  Baroque savagery crept between the plaster arches and alcoves. Fragmented snapshots of railroad discoveries and back alley indiscretions, splattered red, black and blue all over.

Morrison had run away from home at fifteen, choosing to walk the world in a different, harder way.  She never really talked about her experiences during those years away, but looking up at the lacerated portraits, Thompson knew that the teen runaway had eventually found her voice.

He returned to the living room to find Morrison no longer hunched half-fetal but sitting upright.  She accepted the steaming cup with a smile.    

“So, what’s on the paper?” She wiped her palm hard across her cheek. “The hard-copy prediction of my imminent demise?”

He flipped it over so she could see the lab report. “The aneurysm is hugging your brain stem. There's no procedure, publicly known or otherwise, that would remove it safely.”

“Except decapitation,” Morrison chirped.  

“Even extremely experimental surgery,” he continued, “would give you a 0.26% chance of survival. Those odds just don’t make you a candidate for a Hail Mary appeal.”

“Right, that would bring wonderful Harland to my door, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?” She looked past him.  Took a steady sip of her coffee.

“Look,” he said, “If you’re not telling me how you feel, directly—”

Her cup clanged down on the table.  

“Oh?  You want to sit around and talk about our feelings? How quaint.  Tell me, John, what does is it feel like to tell someone who cheated on you that they’re dying?”

He felt a ping in his ear.  A well-timed intrusion.

“Excuse me.” He straightened his jacket as he walked back out the hallway to take the call. 

“This is Thompson.”

“Are you still there?” The antiquated concrete walls roughed-up the signal, but behind the static, Harland’s voice was stern.

“Yeah, we were just—”

“Just talking?”

“I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, I know how to—”

“Yours isn’t a professional concern.  I think it would be best if I came over to—”

“No,” Thompson snapped.  He took a deep breath to cover.  “I’ll leave now.  Should I tell Morrison you say hello?” Silence lingered in static. "Harland?" 

“Tell her… I’m sorry.” 

“Right. That says it all, doesn’t it?” Thompson whispered. 

When he went back in, she was over the sink, squeezing worms of paint into porcelain.

“I have to go. I have another Declaration. It’s all the way up in the North Quadrant.”

She didn’t look up. “So what’s next?”

“September 30th. That’s the day.  I’ll be here.”

She nodded, looking resigned.  “Two weeks isn’t long.  That’s about as much as I can take, I’m guessing.”  

“You’ll do fine.  Your family’s presence is encouraged, of course.”

She shook her head and shrugged.

As they walked to the door their shoulders brushed, nudging encouragement. She stopped and faced him.

“Why are you doing this? We already know how it’s going to end.”

He looked her over, breathed her in.  “Remember when we went to Coney Island the week before they obliterated the Cyclone?  Why did you force us to go on it eighteen times, even though you knew every single loop it was going to take?”

She tipped her head back, remembering.  “Mmmm.  I liked the sinking feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want to forget.”

It happened before he realized his intention to act. His fingers moved slowly down the edge of her cheek, lingering as they curved around her chin.  “Exactly.”

He turned lightheaded for the door, and didn’t look back.

#

Thompson stared out of his 145^th floor window at the slow, synthetic illumination of the metropolis.  He caught a glimpse of movement from the next building over, less than twenty feet away. A young couple sat on their bed, reading.  They curled into each other, oblivious of the outside world.

Morrison would be at home right now.  Madly channeling her emotions through watercolor. The paint would be running down her fingers, drops slipping onto her thighs.

Christ. 

His kitchen display flickered blue as security piped through the speaker, jarring him upright. “Sir, you have a visitor.” 

He answered without thinking.  “Send them up.” 

His back was to the door when the vibration alert sounded. His palms were soaked, and he had to wipe them on his leg before entering the unlock code.  

She rushed at him, throwing her fists at his chest, smudging his undershirt with paint as she pushed him back against the couch.  Before he could grab her, she pulled back, revealing flushed cheeks and wild eyes.      

“Goddamn you, John,” she yelled.  “Goddamn you for doing this to me.” She was grabbing at her own chest now, like she was trying to pull something out.  He inched toward her, arms up in defense, but she stepped back further. 

“Okay, just calm down.” His heart pounded furiously.

“Fuck you, don’t tell me how to deal with this.” She covered her face and moved to the wall.  “You come back into my life just to tell me I’m going to die?”

He stepped closer, unbidden and unflinching. “I thought it would make it easier.”

She pulled her hands away from shining cheeks.  “Because you have experience? Because of your three thousand customers served? You’re incapable of providing any real emotional support, John.  Why do you think I slept with Harland in the first place?

This twisted his insides, sent his anger boiling over. Suddenly he was yelling.

“That’s right—why you did what you did.  I didn’t do a Goddamn thing!”

She walked up to him then, mouth curling at the edge.  The sectional was behind him; he had nowhere to go as he felt the bones in her hips push against his. His legs turned soft.  She swung her arms around his neck, and pulled his ear down to her lips.  In a voice trembling with consequence, she whispered, “Exactly.”  

She was out the door before Thompson had the courage to breathe.

#

“I fucking suck at this.”

Harland was trying to keep a straight face, but the lines of a carved smile were pressing inward.

“You’re a happy bastard, I’ll give you that.” Thompson stared down at his beer.  Harland broke out into a snorting laugh, spilling white ale on the table. 

The night inside Sententia, a local watering hole offering respite to those in the diagnosis business, had grown long and limber.  Mozart’s Requiem drizzled over the white noise of overworked collars mingling in the dark.

“And you, you are pathetic coward.” Harland laughed again, but Thompson hadn’t had enough to drink yet to find him funny.  “This is why I was worried, you know,” Harland said, refilling his glass. “She gets into your head.”

“And your pants,” Thompson added, taking a long draw from his stein.  

It had been over three years, but to Thompson, the memory was still raw: He had been living with Morrison six months. He’d come home early from work one day to find her naked back arched over Harland’s. She paused in her ministrations to look at Thompson blankly before wiping her brow and soldiering on.  He stood watching for a moment, before turning without a word.

He had intended, quite rationally, to kill Harland.  But that night, his friend had come over to his motel with a bottle of 2021 Glenlivet, bawling his eyes out.  His job had slowly made him ill equipped to process any complex sentiment beyond relief and happiness.

It hadn't really been his fault anyway. 

Two days after the incident, over slowly steeping violet tea, Morrison had explained to Thompson her reasoning bluntly and without remorse: She was tired of being talked to like a shadow.  Tired of being touched like a distant stranger. He had become detached from her in every sense.

 It had been hard to argue with a beautiful, angry woman—and so it was still.

"Forget her, man.” Harland drew circles with his finger in the deflated foam on the table. His eyes were cast downward, maybe with regret, maybe with longing, Thompson couldn’t tell. “After the amount of death you’ve been associated with, you really want to be close to somebody?“

#

The next morning, Thompson sat crumpled on his couch. There was something burning in his gut again, but it was different than the ulcer; it pressed deeper. The couple in the next building was at their kitchen counter, shoulders touching as they drank their coffee.

He was fifteen minutes late for work and traffic wasn’t the least to blame.   

Metcalf, Lori, 118 years old, was scheduled to die at 16:15. Having suffered from Alzheimer’s and various other symptoms of senility for years, she had finally drifted into a coma two weeks ago.  

All Thompson’s communication had been with the woman’s husband, Jones, Joseph, who loved his wife, but seemed to hate most everyone else.  

Joseph had refused hospice palliative care for Lori in favor of a quiet death in the privacy of their eco estate in the outskirts of the West Quadrant.  Thompson rode there on autopilot.

Lori went smoothly and gracefully—a wish granted to few. After Joe had signed the required forms and spent a few tearful moments alone with his wife, he invited Thompson downstairs for a drink.

Thompson knew how it went: for those who were at the end of months or years spent attending to the intimacies of mental and physical decay in those they loved, the first reaction was usually relief.  The real sadness would hit later. Joe would be ordering groceries or taking a run at the back nine when a smell or a voice would bring it all back.

So, while a crew upstairs bagged and tagged that which once had been everything to him, Joe sat in his favorite leather chair and told Thompson all about his wife’s shapely breasts, her incredible mashed potatoes, and their rip-roaring, drag-out battles over issues small as dishes and big as babies. 

Only after their fourth round of whiskey did Thompson remember to look at his watch. Protocol dictated he spend a maximum of one hour after death consoling the family.  He’d been with Joe for 90 minutes.  Only once he had he ever gone over his allotted time before.

Mary.  

Joe had just finished telling him about the time Lori had found him drunk on the front stoop, eating her entire birthday cake, when Thompson finally had the courage to ask.

“Joe, I want you to tell me something, if you don’t mind.  I’d like to have it straight.”

“Ain’t any other way to give it, my friend,” Joe slurred.  Thompson leaned forward in his lounger, steadying his resolve with elbows on knees.  

“I just want to know…was it worth it?”

Joe laughed.  “You mean, all the pain, all the arguing, all the bullshit…just to see it die?”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. It’s inappropriate-”

“Is it worth it?” Joe repeated, squinting.  After a little shake of his head, he leaned forward in his chair to match Thompson’s stance.  His hands shook as he reached around into his back pocket and pulled out a folded paper—a hard-copy photo—that glistened under the halogen lights. 

It slid across the table. 

Joe leaned closer, suddenly sober. “You tell me.”

Thompson picked it up and gently opened the well-worn crease.

It had been a sunny day.  They were standing in front of the old Ferris wheel at Berkeley Park, their faces flushed with the fullness of youth. He stood behind her, hand wrapped around her hourglass hips, pulling her in.  The wind was blowing through her hair, and she was caught in the middle of a hearty laugh. 

Thompson flipped it over again and read the digital stamp. It was dated eighty-six years ago.  Below the imprinted numbers, in scratchy, feminine handwriting, was another date—just last year —and a message:

          This is why I know I love you.

Thompson dropped the photo back on the table and put his hands on his lap before Joe could see them shaking.  

“I appreciate your honesty.”   He cleared his throat and stood, wobbling.  Sweat trickled down his back. “If you’ll excuse me, I have another appointment.”

#

Transway 707 West was packed with evening commuters.  Thompson was driving on manual, and every tap of the brakes shortened his fuse.  When he got to the apartment, breathless with anticipation, he positioned himself to park in the drop-off zone, but there was already a vehicle there.  Harland’s standing lights were blinking furiously.  There was no one inside.  It was possible Morrison been given an appeal, but Thompson suspected this was something more desperate.

Thompson ran through the endless hallway, feet sinking beneath him.  He didn’t bother to knock on the door, trusting it would be open.  

He saw Harland first.  His friend looked disheveled and flushed, blending into the searing image of pulsing veins on the wall behind him.  The top buttons of his shirt were undone, his tie hanging limp. 

Thompson whirled around to Morrison’s strained intake of air.  She was hiding behind her ladder, staring wide-eyed through the rungs.

“Mary.” He moved toward her.  Harland fell in behind.

“Thompson, nothing happened, it’s just that…”

“Mary.” He walked up to Morrison’s shrinking presence and grabbed her by the shoulders.  She didn’t pull away.  

“I’m sorry, John.”  She spoke in a hushed, frantic tone barely audible over the pounding in his head. She eyed Harland.  “He just showed up and I needed…I needed you.”

“I’m here.” 

His hands quaked as they found the small of her back.  He moved fast. For a moment, her lips tensed under his.  He held his ground, though, as quietly, openly, she acquiesced.  He pulled back before he could enjoy it. 

The tears slid silently down her cheeks as she took his face in her hands. Her mouth trembled like her body. 

“We st— we still have time.”

He felt the pain, then.  He pulled it to him, held it shaking to his chest.  

We already know how this is going to end, she had said.

---

Stacy Sinclair is a freelance copywriter living in Waterloo, Ontario with her husband, newborn son, and belligerent welsh corgi. Her work has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, at Everydayfiction.com and is forthcoming in Kaleidotrope.

I’d asked my husband one rainy Sunday afternoon what he would do if someone showed up at the door, telling him he was going to die.  I was hoping for some deep, emotional response, but he did me one better, saying, “I don’t know, but it would make a good story.”  Turns out he was right.