2. Dante
DANTE
A high, metallic whine bursts through my pounding head. Muffled voices, distorted as if underwater, speak in a rapid clip I can't make out. A screech echoes, and my body shifts.
It's bright. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm not seeing at all. Can a person see without opening their eyes?
Something cold brushes my bare chest. Someone touches me, and I'm undressed. I want to jerk away, but my body has become a foreign country, unmapped and unreachable. It’s as though it isn’t mine anymore.
A vehicle I no longer command. So many questions form, but none that can be answered.
My world has devolved into the chaos I meticulously try to avoid.
The space smells like rubber. Like alcohol and chemicals. Like my father's hospital room at the end. I still don't know why I bothered to visit. Now that same coppery tang of blood and sterile scents assails me.
A siren wails, dull-edged and pulsing as if muffled by fabric.
A jolt hits my chest—hard, electric—but no answering beat follows. Just the hollow ache of silence where a rhythm should be.
"Patient has no pulse," someone says, their voice focused, firm.
More movement. More touching, maybe. More of the endless, dull wailing of a siren.
"Patient is in asystole."
Something presses against my sternum. Or maybe it’s just the weight of my own dissolution. Perhaps this is the place between the act and the end. The moment before the curtains fall and shadows descend.
The first voice echoes through my fading thoughts. "Time of death?"
"8:03 pm."