I Heard Him Whisper Forgive Me While I Lay Still In My Coffin...

I heard his hands hit the wood before I felt anything else.

Daniel didn't ask. He slammed both palms on the rim of the coffin and leaned his weight into it, the whole dark box shuddering under me. The white lining bunched against my shoulder. My eyes were still closed and I couldn't move them, couldn't lift a finger, but I could hear every breath in that hall.

The furnace roared behind him. I hadn't understood that sound until now — a low, even burn coming from the wall unit, heat pressing against the air. Someone near the back had been moving me toward it. Now Daniel was in the way.

"Sir, you need to step back," a man said. He wasn't unkind at first. Just procedural, tired. I knew the voice from earlier, the one who'd told Helen the viewing would be brief. "Sir, please. We have a schedule."

Daniel didn't move. His beard brushed my forehead again, quick, and then he was upright, his chest between me and that heat.

"No," he said. His voice broke on it. "You're not touching her. Get a doctor. Get someone with a monitor. Now."

"We have a declaration," the staff man said. Papers rustled. "This was signed this morning. Sir, I understand you're upset —"

"She's alive," Daniel said. Louder this time, so it carried to the back wall. "¡Parar! ¡Está viva! Don't you touch that door."

I tried to breathe. It was the only thing I could do and it was so shallow I wasn't sure it counted. The silver rosary bracelet Helen had slipped onto my wrist was still pressed against my cheek. The beads were cool. I had held them when they lowered me in because Helen had whispered it would keep me safe, and now they were the only part of me that felt real.

Helen made a sound then. Not words at first. She'd been standing with her hand over her mouth since Daniel shouted, frozen in her black veil and dress, her gold crosses catching the warm light. I heard her heels shift on the stone.

"No puede ser," she had whispered at the end, and now she said it again, but different, angry. "No. No, you wait."

The staff man tried again. "Ma'am, the furnace is already primed. We can't —"

"You will wait," Helen snapped. Her voice cracked and steadied. "That's my daughter. You will not roll her in there because your paper says so. You call an ambulance."

There was a pause. The kind where everyone realizes there's going to be trouble if they keep pushing. I heard a second set of shoes — heavier, another staff member — and the soft beep of a radio.

"Call county EMS," the first man said finally, low. "Tell them we have a... tell them we need a medical re-check in the viewing hall. And turn down the furnace."

"It doesn't turn down like that," the second man muttered. "It holds heat. You know it holds."

Daniel's hands tightened on the coffin. I felt the vibration through the wood.

"Then open the bay doors. Do something," he said. He wasn't yelling anymore. He was right over me, and I could feel his breath when he leaned down. Two fingers pressed gently against the side of my neck, trembling. He'd done it earlier, right after he'd shouted, but now he held them there, searching.

I tried to answer that pressure. I tried to swallow, to twitch, to make my throat move under his hand. Nothing happened. My breathing stayed thin and careful, like air moving through a straw.

"Come on, Elena," he whispered, so only I could hear. It wasn't Spanish this time. It was raw and small. "Come on, honey, give me something. Please."

Helen was beside him now. I could smell her perfume, the powdery one she wore to church. Her hand hovered over mine, afraid to touch me like I might break.

"Her hand was warm," she said to no one, to the staff, to God. "I thought — I thought that was the lights."

The bay doors at the far end hissed open and cold October air cut through the heat. The furnace kept roaring, but the room got cooler around us. Someone had propped the ambulance bay open.

The paramedics came in fast, two of them with a gurney rattling over stone. A woman knelt first.

"Sir, I need you to let me in," she said to Daniel. He moved only enough for her to get her hands on me. She pressed a pulse oximeter to my fingertip. It didn't read at first. She repositioned it, frowned, tried my other hand where the rosary was. She pushed the beads gently aside.

"Got a thready pulse," she said quietly to her partner. "Forty-one. Respiration shallow, six. Pupils nonreactive but — she's warm."

Her partner lifted my wrist and shone a light across my closed eyes. My eyes didn't move. I wanted to scream.

" ma'am? Can you hear me? Elena, if you can hear me, try to wiggle a finger."

I sent everything I had to that finger. Nothing.

"She's locked in," the woman paramedic said. "Possible catalepsy, possible tox. But she's alive."

Daniel made a noise like he'd been hit.

Helen's hand finally landed on mine and squeezed.

"Get her out of that box," the paramedic ordered. "Now. Before that furnace —"

They didn't wait for permission. The man paramedic and Daniel slid their arms under me together — under my back and knees — and lifted me out of the white lining. My head tipped back. The beads of the rosary dragged across my cheek and fell against my chest. Cool air hit my back through my light top and I felt, absurdly, how stiff I was.

They laid me on the gurney and strapped me down. The gurney clacked high. The dark wood coffin stayed behind, empty, under the warm lights, with the furnace still glowing orange in the wall behind it.

As they pushed me toward the open bay doors, I heard the first staff man on his radio again.