Memento: An anthology.

[D]: Halfway People.

One of the weirdest things you will ever hear is the sound of a human voice coming from a decaying larynx. It's gravelly, almost like it's strained through one of those trays used to filter water. It's even weirder when the skin of the person's chest is peeled back like a bloodless pale banana and the ribs are held apart with a wench while I examine the internal organs, trying to determine the cause of death. You never realise that your entire body is like a large speaker phone, and that it echoes inside you, using the air in your lungs as a propellant before it reaches the outside world. I touched each organ gently, even more gently that I normally would because this one was a girl, a child really. From what I could tell, she was only fifteen when she was cut down; single gunshot wound to the chest did her in. But I opened her up because there were so many bruises all over her. She'd been beaten viciously. There were bruises on the spleen and liver, the sixth rib on the left side was cracked. She'd begun haemorrhaging on the inside long before her life was ended. 

"Is it bad?"  

Those were the first words she said to me, as I pushed aside her colon to check her left kidney for trauma. I raised my head. She was staring at me, or trying to. She only managed to raise her head about an inch off the gurney. I wasn't really surprised that she couldn't raise her head any higher, after the entire first thing to go is usually the muscles but I was surprised that she spoke to me first. Usually I have to coax them to awareness. Especially the women, death makes women ridiculously shy. She had blue eyes; they must have been spectacular in life, because even now, they looked deep and unfathomable even through the gray film that obscured them.  

"You suffered a lot before you died." I replied diplomatically. "If the person who killed you hadn't shot you, you would have died terribly slow, from all your blood draining out from the internal wounds you have here."  

"Oh." is all she responds. That was one of the first things I learnt. The dead have so much clarity little fazes them. They are stripped of most intense human emotions; hate, love, rage, revulsion. Everything they feel is filtered through their cold hearts and come out watered down. Like my Grandmother, she used to be so angry, angry at my parents for dying so young, angry at me for not being a more vocal, 'normal' child. She used to rail for hours, chasing me around with a switch to go out and find something to occupy me so she could brood in peace. She got worse as I got older, slowly losing herself into senescence, her bursts of anger reduced to violent flailing episodes as she lost the ability to twist her thoughts into words. I cared for her, going to med school by night and caring for her during the day, the morphine I slipped into her evening teas keeping her asleep while I studied to find a way to cure her. And then one day she was gone, the fight leached out of her frail body. So I switched disciplines and learnt to care for the dead instead. She doesn't flail anymore and all she can do is growl appreciatively when I wrap her in her blanket and lie beside her; her voice box is a shrivelled little thing held in place by her desiccated skin.  

I finished my autopsy and sewed her up, and I held my urge to laugh as she winced each time the curved needle dipped into her flesh. I put her into a sitting position and sprayed her over with formaldehyde so she wouldn't peel and flake and it took her a while before she could give up the reflex to close her eyes so the formaldehyde would preserve her eyeballs. I told her they would be the first to go, then the internal organs. At least I told her that was what I surmised. She asked the usual questions. How was she still alive (she wasn't), was she a ghost (she wasn't either), How could I talk to her (I had no idea), did this happen with every other dead body I opened up (It did). She whispered to me that her name was Lisa.  

The words flowed easily between me and her. I don't know what was different, maybe because I worked for the Homicide department and the bulk of my charges were victims of terrible crimes, or the beasts who perpetrated them, but everyone before her had always talked and rarely listened. They all had so many regrets, and I was like the final chance at a confessional before the grave or the great beyond, which ever they believed. She was different; she had no regrets, only dreams. She'd been planning to join the soccer team; she was tired of being a cheerleader. She'd begun to write a novel; before it happened she'd scheduled an appointment for the big chop. She asked what my dreams were; I said I was content here, helping the halfway people, giving them a last conversation before they got shipped off to the morgue. She thought for a while and mouthed the words to herself. 

M E D I U M.  

Then she laughed, out loud. I have to admit it shocked me. I had never had any of the halfway people I tended to laugh before. They tried, but there was never enough air in their lungs to fuel a laugh. She looked at me in surprise. It was funny to see the halfway people involuntarily emote. Her eyes widened but her brow refused to move, but I'd been around enough of them to notice it for what it was. 

"I'm sorry; I've just never seen any of you laugh before." 

"Us?" 

"Yeah, those of you who've passed." 

Suddenly sadness fell over us; it was like at the same time we both realised there was only one person alive in the room. Her eyes fell and her fingers twitched from the effort of trying to control them. That was another thing the halfway people struggled with, not being able to physically express themselves. It was a Sunday and I only had seven hours with her before they took her away. 

"I told my parents I wanted to be cremated." She said finally, "I don't want that anymore, I want to celebrate my 21st birthday; I don't want to be an urn on their mantelpiece." 

I stared at her, wondering why she just told me that. Halfway people never wanted anything, by the time they got to me, they had given up. I looked at her, with her tiny wrists, twitching frantically as she tried to command her body, even though she had no idea that without haemoglobin, her muscles wouldn't have the fuel they needed to work. She didn't care, she just kept twitching. She reminded me of my grandma, and how she completely ignored the fact that she was dead and kept watching her favourite shows and trying to crawl out of bed every morning.  

"Do you remember your parent's numbers?" I found myself asking.  

She did, along with their address and names of their pet dogs. I dialled the number on my small monochrome screened phone and waited as the dial tone reached me. Her mother's voice was smooth and clipped, no hint of an accent. The slight increase in pitch was the only indication I got that she'd heard what I'd said.  

"Your daughter doesn't want to be cremated anymore." 

"My daughter? What sort of joke is this?"  

I glanced down at the tag on her foot. "Your daughter Lisa, she thinks I'm a medium. I don't know if I am, but I am talking to her right now. She says she loves you and doesn't want to leave yet. She doesn't want to be cremated anymore. She wants you to let her stay till she's 21." 

A long pause. "Where are you, right this moment?" 

"At the coroner's office. I'm the attending." 

She cut the call so fast she didn't hear the other part of my sentence. I didn't realise they lived so close because it felt like Lisa and I had barely talked for ten minutes when the door to the theatre flung open and there she was, hair a mess, racoon eyed, fingers clenched around her bag and phone. Her free hand flew to her mouth when she saw Lisa sitting nicely on her gurney, back propped against the door of her freezer compartment, eyes alive with anticipation. She began to bawl, confusing Lisa and I as she clacked furiously on her phone and put it to her ear.  

"911?!!!!!" 

I tried to calm her down but she wouldn't listen to me. I think at some point she actually swiped at me. Lisa just looked at us sad-eyed, refusing to say anything to her mother. A few detectives from the precinct swung into check up on us and immediately went for me, even though Lisa's mother was the one acting crazy. They tackled me and put my hands behind my back. Then they laid Lisa back on her gurney and slid it back into the freezer and locked the door, completely oblivious to how frightened she was. I tried to rescue her but all that made them do was slap handcuffs on me.  

____ __________ ____________ ____________ 

This cell is cold, not the artificial cold of my autopsy room. I have been here twelve hours. I've only had one visitor. The lawyer from legal aid. He says they can't find something to press charges with; it's not a crime to prop a corpse up and talk to it, but that Lisa's parents are rich enough to pay lawyers who will find something. I am uninterested with any of that; all I want to know is how I can make Lisa's parents stay their request for a cremation. If a formal investigation is opened, then they would have to stay the cremation so another coroner can re-evaluate the body and determine cause of death. I know I don't have any other options, the police will search my house tonight, and my 'free' lawyer came with the search warrant. They will find grandma; they will revoke my license when they do. So I have nothing else to lose.  

"I want to confess to the murder of Lisa."