With the dead!
Oh my God! How long had I been unconscious? Who had put me on the gurney?
Was that person still here?
I opened my eyes and raised my head.
Shards of glass blasted through my brain. My insides contracted.
I listened.
Silence.
I pushed to my elbows and blinked hard.
Inky black.
I rose to a sitting position, waited. Shaky, but no nausea.
My feet were dead weight. Using my hands, I drew my ankles to me and began rubbing. Slowly, feeling returned.
I listened for signs of activity outside the cooler.
Stillness.
I swung my legs over the edge and pushed off the gurney.
My knees were liquid, and I collapsed to the floor hard. Pain shot through my left wrist.
Damn!
My right hand came down on a rubber wheel.
I crawled on all fours and pulled myself up.
Another gurney.
I was not alone.
The gurney held a bag. The bag was occupied.
I recoiled from the corpse. My mouth felt dry. My heart pounded.
I turned and stumbled in the direction I thought the door should be.
Dear God, is there a handle on the inside? Do these things have handles on the inside? Let there be a handle on the inside!
I’d opened morgue coolers a thousand times, never noticed.
Trembling, I groped in the dark.
Please!
Cold, hard metal. Smooth. I moved along it.
Please! Let there be a handle!
I could feel myself weakening by the minute. I tasted bile, fought a tremor.
Years, decades, millennia later, my hand fell on it.
Yes! I depressed the handle, pushed on the door. It opened with a soft whoosh. I peeked out.
On the light box, smoky gray organs and opaque bones, a glow-in-the dark portrait of a human being.
Autopsy room three, dimly lit.
Did the gurney behind me hold room three’s recent occupant? Were we both put on ice by the same hand?
Leaving the door slightly ajar, I staggered to the gurney and unzipped the pouch. A slash of light fell across pasty white feet.
I twisted the toe tag, strained to read the name. The light was dim and the letters were not large.
RAM—
They swam in and out of focus like pebbles at the bottom of a stream.
I blinked.
RAMIR—
Fuzzy.
RAMIREZ.
The Guatemalan equivalent of Smith or Jones.
I worked my way down the gurney, unzipping as I went. At the head end, I pulled back the flap.
Maria Zuckerman’s face was ghostly, the hole in her forehead a small black dot. Smears darkened the front of her clothing.
I lifted a hand. She was fully rigorous.
