Chapter 2
The door handle turned before she could answer me.
I hadn't moved. The steel table had burned cold through the lace at my back, and my veil was caught under my shoulder where the attendant's gloved hand still pressed lightly on my chest. I could hear my own breathing now, shallow and uneven, and the red indicator light in the back of the room was still on. Someone on the other side tried the handle again.
The attendant didn't look away from me. She turned her body just enough to block the table from the door and reached behind her with her left hand. I heard the lock click.
"Not yet," she said, not loud. She was speaking to the door. "She's breathing."
A voice on the other side, muffled. "You got a —"
"She has a pulse," she said. She kept her hand on my sternum. Her goggles had fogged a little at the edges. "I need a rapid response to the morgue exam room. Live patient. Adult female. Do not call the funeral home. Do not call the emergency contact."
I tried to say his name and couldn't. My throat was dry. The small stud in my ear pressed against the table.
She leaned down so I could see her face clearly. "I'm not calling your husband," she said. Her voice was even, like she was charting out loud. "You told me not to. I'm listening to you. That phone on the tray is going to stay right there until the nurses come. I'm not touching it with bare hands."
I swallowed. The red mark on the side of my neck throbbed.
"Can you blink twice if you understand me?" she asked.
I blinked twice. My eyes watered.
"Good," she said. "What's your name?"
My lips moved before sound came. "Elise."
"Elise, I'm Diane," she said. "I work here. I'm going to keep that door locked until help gets here. No one else is coming in."
The radio on her coat crackled. A distant overhead tone sounded, then a calm voice over the hospital intercom calling a medical response team to the lower level. Footsteps started in the hall — fast, more than one set. Someone knocked hard twice.
"Diane? It's ICU, open up."
Diane didn't open it right away. She looked at me. "They're here to move you. I'm going to keep your veil with you. Your dress too. We don't cut anything off without you saying so, okay? This is all evidence now."
I nodded, just a little. The lace sleeve of my dress had ridden up and the cool air hit my wrist.
She unlocked the door.
Two nurses came in fast pushing a gurney, and the room that had felt still for so long suddenly felt too small. One nurse, a woman in navy scrubs with her hair in a ponytail, stopped short when she saw me.
"Oh my God," she said, then caught herself. She was already pulling gloves on. "Hi, honey, hi, I'm Sarah, ICU. We're getting you upstairs."
Diane stayed at my head and kept talking, loud enough for them to chart it. "Approximately late twenties, found responsive on exam table, reports injection to lateral neck prior to ceremony by husband. Puncture mark visible left side. Wedding dress and veil intact. Phone with dark blue case on tray, untouched. No next-of-kin call made per patient request."
Sarah nodded and slid the gurney tight to the steel table. "We heard. No call. Got it."
They didn't lift me like I was being carried somewhere ceremonial. They counted. "One, two," and hands slid under my back and knees. The steel was so cold I'd stopped feeling it, and the gurney sheet was somehow colder for a second, then warm from the blanket they pulled over me. Diane lifted the edge of my veil herself and laid it across my chest, not folded, not balled up.
"Stays with her," Diane said to Sarah. "Tray comes too."
Sarah grabbed the whole brushed metal tray — phone, tweezers, everything — and set it on the foot of the gurney, then covered the bottom half with the blanket so nothing would slide.
The hallway outside was gray and bright in a different way than the morgue. The overhead lights were flat and white. The wheels rattled over the tile. I stared up at the ceiling tiles passing and tried to keep my breathing steady. Every door we passed was closed.
"Elise, you're doing great," Sarah said, walking beside me, one hand on the rail so I could see it. "We're going straight to the ER bay. Diane's right here."
Diane walked on my other side, one hand on the rail near my shoulder, the tray rattling faintly at my feet. The dark screen of the phone caught the hall lights as we moved.
We turned a corner and the ER doors hissed open. I could hear monitors beeping and someone calling for labs. I hadn't realized how quiet the morgue had been until it wasn't.
Sarah leaned in as we pushed into the bay. "Elise, do you know what he gave you?"
I shook my head. The puncture mark pulsed. "Needle," I whispered. "Before altar."
Diane answered for the record, not for me. "Unknown injectable, pre-ceremony. Needs tox."
May you like
Sarah squeezed the rail. "We will."
The gurney locked with a clack inside the bay, and the curtain pulled halfway. Diane didn't leave. She stood between me and the hallway with that tray at her hip like she was guarding it, and for the first time since I'd opened my eyes on that table, I wasn't looking up at someone who thought I was already gone.
