Reversal

Memento mori

“She gave up,” the doctor said, his face inscrutable. “She did it of her own accord.”

 “Y-you mean, sir, you don’t think this is foul play?”

"It is certain.” He stepped closer and crouched down next to the pale lifeless form they were observing. The woman’s dark eyes stared into the ceiling, unseeing. Her hands lay atop her stomach, as if she had been caressing it in the last moments of her short life. The raised bump on it was small but unmistakable. The woman was with child. 

The doctor, swift and gentle, brushed across the corpse’s face to set her hair in place. He closed her eyes. He imagined her skin was warm. For a moment, he took the liberty of letting his hand brush against her cheek. The shock of its coldness brought him back. She is dead, he thought to himself.

“This woman has no relations in the ciudad. I will sign her papers. Make certain of a speedy burial,” the doctor finally said, rising.

“I will, doctor.”

Outside, the sky promised rain. The doctor stepped out into the street, his valise in one hand and umbrella in the other. When it began raining, he dove straight into it, throwing umbrella away and letting the dark and the damp wash away a name and a face he wanted to forget—he stretched his hand out to the storm to grasp fingers colder than the ones he failed to hold for the last time.