Chapter 16
Dustin found himself pulling into a parking garage attached to a sprawling medical complex that looked like it had been expanded more than once since its inception.
This was good. A new face wouldn't stand out much.
He parked on the third level and sat for a moment, hands on the wheel.
Twenty-five minutes until the window opened.
He looked at himself in the rearview mirror. He'd taken out his more visible piercings, which made him look almost… Well, no, he did not look respectable, but he could pass.
Dustin got out of the truck, and when the automatic doors to the complex slid open, he walked into St. Anthony's Hospital like he belonged there.
The lobby was chaos, with visitors clustering near the information desk, arguing with each other as well as the hospital staff.
Dustin adopted a confident stride and kept his eyes pointed forward. The trick to going places you weren't supposed to be was to never look like you were asking permission.
He found the elevators and pressed the button for the fourth floor.
A nurse stepped in beside him, holding a cup of coffee. She glanced at him, then at the stethoscope around his neck. Her brows furrowed slightly.
Dustin's heart stuttered.
“You new?” She asked. “I don't think I've seen you before.”
“Not new,” Dustin said, reaching for a casual tone. “They're just bouncing me around.”
“Ugh, I hate when they do that. Good luck.”
The elevator dinged. Fourth floor.
“Thanks,” Dustin said, and stepped out before she could ask any more questions.
The doors opened onto a central junction where three corridors branched off. A sign hung from the ceiling, the kind with little colored arrows pointing in different directions. East Wing — 4E. North Wing — 4N. West Wing — 4W.
Dustin turned left.
The hallway stretched ahead of him, room numbers on small plaques beside each door. 4W-01. 4W-03. 4W-05.
He kept walking, past a supply cart and a half-open door he didn't look into.
The corridor turned at a nurses' station and he followed it around without slowing.
4W-11. 4W-09.
The door was closed. A small whiteboard beside it read Reyes-Ybarra, M. in blue marker.
Dustin looked up and down the hallway. A nurse was typing at a station about thirty feet away, her back to him. Another was pushing a cart in the opposite direction.
He opened the door and slipped inside.
With the blinds half-closed, the room was dim.
Machines beeped in a slow, steady rhythm, and the air had that typical hospital smell.
Marco Reyes-Ybarra lay in the bed, eyes closed, chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. He looked smaller than he had in his Facebook photo, somehow.
There were no flowers on the windowsill and no cards on the table beside the bed. No jacket draped over a chair to suggest someone had been here recently and would be back soon.
Nothing here but a man in a bed, hooked up to machines that kept watch over his remaining time.
Dustin moved closer, scanning the room, not even really sure what he was looking for.
A medication bag hung from an IV pole, dripping steadily into a line that snaked into Marco's arm. Dustin checked the label.
Since he didn't actually have medical training, it didn't tell him much, but nothing seemed obviously wrong.
So he looked at the monitors instead. What were they measuring? Heart rate? Oxygen levels?
None of it meant anything to him, but the machines weren't screaming, at least.
He found the call button so he'd know where to reach if something did happen.
Then he spent another minute examining the floor around the bed, half-expecting to find a loose cable someone might trip over—or a spill that might cause a fall. Something he could fix. Something he could point to and say there, that's the thing that was going to kill him, and I stopped it.
There was nothing.
Dustin stood in the middle of the room.
What now?
He checked his phone.
11:19 AM.
Four minutes.
Four minutes and there was nothing for him to do here.
Nothing except for…
He pulled a chair closer to the bed and sat down.
“Hey, Marco,” he said quietly. “I'm Dustin. You don't know me.”
Marco didn't respond. His breathing stayed shallow and even.
“I saw your fish,” Dustin continued, because he needed to fill the silence. “You know, the one you posted on Facebook. The big one. That was a nice fish.”
He shifted in his chair.
“I don't know if you can hear me. Probably not.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “But I figured no one should have to do this alone. Even if you don't know I'm here. Humans aren't meant to be alone, not really, you know?”
The machines beeped. Marco breathed.
11:22 AM.
One minute.
Where was Greg?
Shouldn't he be here for this?
Was he running late?
“I swear if clipboard guy is late for this, I'll—”
“I'm not late.”
Suddenly Greg stood at the foot of Marco's bed, clipboard clutched to his chest, looking nervous and slightly rumpled in his usual button-down and crooked tie. His eyes found Dustin's.
“I wouldn't be late for this.” He licked his lips. “I guess neither would you.”
“I said I would be here.”
“I know. I just—” Greg stopped. “I hoped you'd change your mind.”
“Why?”
Greg didn't answer. His gaze shifted to Marco, and Dustin watched him take a breath. Then another. His hands were trembling slightly where they gripped the clipboard.
Then something changed.
Greg set the clipboard down on the windowsill, straightened his tie and rolled back his shoulders. And when he moved to Marco's side, it was like watching a different person step into his skin.
The nervousness didn't disappear entirely—it was still there, underneath—but it was overlaid now by something steadier.
Greg knew what he was doing.
“Hello, Marco,” he said softly. “My name is Greg. I'm here to help you.”
Marco's eyes stayed closed. His body didn't move.
But something else happened.
Dustin struggled to make sense of what he was seeing, but it was like a heat shimmer, or a double exposure—Marco was still lying in the bed, but there was something else there too. A shape overlaid on his body.
And then the shape sat up.
No way.
Dustin blinked hard, but the image didn't go away. If anything, it got clearer. Marco's spirit or his soul or whatever had left his body and sat up on the bed.
The spirit looked around the room with confusion. His gaze passed over the machines, and the bed, and his own body still lying there. Then his eyes landed on Greg.
“What's happening?” Marco's voice was strange. Thin. Like it was coming from very far away. “I don't understand.”
“You're dying,” Greg said. The words were blunt, but his voice was gentle. “I'm sorry. I know that's not easy to hear.”
“Dying?” Marco looked down at his own body. At the chest that was barely rising now. “But I don't feel…” He struggled with his words. “I thought it would hurt more.”
“It doesn't have to hurt,” Greg assured him.
“What happens now?” Marco's face crumpled. “I'm not ready. I need more time.”
“There’s never enough time,” Greg said. “That's not your fault. That's just how it is.”
The machines beeped faster. Marco's physical body shuddered, and the soul-shape flickered like a bad signal.
“I messed it all up.” Marco's thin voice cracked. “Forty years I worked at that plant. Forty years, and for what? I never went anywhere. Never did anything. I just worked and came home and sat in front of the TV and told myself I'd do the other stuff later.”
Greg reached out and took Marco's hand.
Dustin watched their fingers interlock—Greg's solid and real, Marco's flickering and strange—and something tightened in his chest.
“Later doesn't matter,” Greg said. “Later was never real. There's only ever now, and now you are with me, and you are safe.”
“I'm scared,” Marco whispered.
“I know.”
“I don't want to go.”
“I know that too.” Greg squeezed his hand.
“But I promise you—what comes next isn't something to fear.
I've seen it, Marco. I've seen hundreds of people walk to that door. And every single one of them, when they got there...” He paused.
“Every single one of them wished they hadn't spent so long being afraid.”
The body in the bed went still.
Marco's soul flickered violently, and panic flashed across his face.
But Greg kept holding his hand and looking at him with that steady, gentle certainty.
“It's okay,” Greg said. “I've got you. Look.”
Marco turned toward something Dustin couldn't see.
Whatever it was, it changed his face. The fear melted away, along with the grief and regret. What replaced those emotions was something Dustin didn't have a word for.
“Oh,” Marco breathed. “Oh, that's—I didn't know it would be—”
“Beautiful?” Greg smiled.
Marco laughed. It was a wet, startled sound. “Eddie's there. I can see him. He's there.”
“Then go to him. Go home, Marco.”
Marco turned back to Greg. “Thank you. For being here for me.”
“It was my honor.”
Marco let go of Greg's hand.
And then he was gone. Not gone like the body—still and empty in the bed. Gone like a breath released.
The machines flatlined.
Greg stood motionless for a moment, hand still extended toward empty air. Then he lowered it and turned to look at Dustin.
His expression shifted, softened. “Dustin,” he said quietly. “You're…”
Dustin frowned. “What?”
Greg gestured vaguely at his own face.
Dustin raised a hand to his cheek. His fingers came away wet.
What the fuck.
He was crying. He was standing in a dead stranger's hospital room, wearing cheap scrubs, and he was crying.
He was going to say something to defend himself when he heard footsteps in the hall, closing in.
“Gotta go,” Dustin said, already moving toward the door, swiping at his face with his sleeve. He slipped out just as a nurse rounded the corner at a run. A doctor followed right behind her.
Dustin pressed himself against the wall, head down, letting them rush past. Just another staff member. Nothing to see here.
Greg was beside him, clipboard clutched to his chest once more.
“Outside,” Dustin muttered. “Now.”
The courtyard behind the hospital consisted of a couple of benches, some struggling bushes, and a sad concrete path to stroll along.
Dustin didn't feel like strolling. He sat down on a bench.
Greg sat down next to him.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Dustin scrubbed at his face again. The tears had stopped, but he could still feel the tracks they'd left.
He'd come here knowing he might fail. He never thought he'd cry when he did.
Who was Marco to him?
Nobody.
But what he'd just witnessed… It was too much to comprehend without feeling something.
“I'm fine,” he said, because he knew Greg wanted to ask. “I didn't cry because I was upset. At least, I don't think so.”
“Okay,” Greg said.
Dustin glanced at him. “Okay?”
“You're not sure.” Greg turned to him. “That's okay. Human emotions are confusing.” He nodded to himself. “I feel a lot of confusing things too.”
“Do you?”
Greg lowered his gaze. “Yes.”
Dustin didn't press him on it. His thoughts were still elsewhere. “Can I see ghosts now?”
“That wasn't a ghost,” Greg said.
“Whatever it was, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have been able to see it.”
“True,” Greg confirmed. “I don't know why you could.
It might be because you've been marked for collection and your soul is.
.. closer to the surface than most people's.
Or it might be because I was there, and you've been exposed to me long enough that…” He stopped and shook his head. “I don't know.”
Dustin let that sit, unsure what to make of it all.
His thoughts kept circling back to the moment Marco had vanished. “Where did he go?”
Greg lifted an eyebrow in question.
“Marco,” Dustin clarified. “Where did he go at the end?”
“Oh. He went where all souls go.”
“And where is that?”
“The source.” Greg said it as if it was self-explanatory.
Dustin tilted his head at him. “Do you realize that that means nothing to me?”
“It's a good place,” Greg said. “It's peaceful.”
Peaceful.
Dustin pondered that.
“Every soul goes there?”
“Almost all souls,” Greg confirmed.
“And is there always… at the end…” Dustin struggled to phrase his question, suddenly. He tried again. His voice came out rough. “When someone dies in an accident, like a fall, and it happens very quickly, is there always a reaper there?”
Greg turned to him fully. “Always,” he said with emphasis. “It doesn't matter if it's sudden. We're always there.”
Dustin nodded, unable to speak past the lump that was forming in his throat.
“He wasn't alone,” Greg said quietly. “I promise you, Dustin. He wasn't alone at the end.”
Dustin closed his eyes.
For a moment, he let himself imagine it. Tyler, falling. A hand reaching out to catch him. A voice saying I've got you. It's okay. Look.
It didn't fix anything. It didn't bring Tyler back. It didn't undo three years of grief and guilt and the cold certainty that his brother's death had been fast and violent.
But it helped.
“Thanks,” Dustin said.
He opened his eyes. Greg was pointedly not watching him, as if he understood that Dustin had needed a minute to himself.
Dustin appreciated that more than he could say.
He said something else instead. “You did good in there with Marco.”
“Thank you,” Greg said softly.
“Really, I mean it,” Dustin insisted. He remembered what he'd told Greg over dinner, that he hadn't really chosen this life, this job for himself, but watching him in that room, holding a dying man's hand, promising him that what came next was beautiful…
Whatever else was true, Greg had been made for helping people.
“Come on,” Dustin said, standing up. “I'll buy you a milkshake.”
Greg blinked. “What?”
“I'm buying you a milkshake,” Dustin repeated. “It'll be our third date. Maybe it'll end with a kiss, wouldn't that be nice?” That last part he added only to rile Greg up, and, predictably, the reaper shot to his feet, turned red and started sputtering.
“A kiss?!” His eyes went comically wide. “But I— You— We—”
“Yes, we,” Dustin confirmed. “Do you not want a milkshake? You can have chocolate again.”
“But I can't date you!”
“Oh, don't hurt me like that. I won't tell anyone if you won't.” He winked at Greg and turned to walk. “Now are you coming or not?”
It took only a moment until Dustin heard footsteps following him.
Without meaning to, he smiled.