Ducks? Life clocks? For Whom the Bell Tolls?

Featuring a new scene, a couple of tools, and an ever-so-slightly re-worked ending.

Rain pounded steadily down as the medical examiner descended the stained marble steps to the city morgue, fixing his beaten old hat over his still-thick, salt-and-pepper hair.  The bell tower across the street tolled, alerting the world that six o’clock had arrived.

He took the stairs instead of the elevator, though more out of habit than choice.  It didn’t really matter anymore.  I’m sorry, the doctor’s voice echoed through his head.

He’d understood.  How long? he’d asked, a crushing feeling descending through his stomach.

At best? the doctor’s eyebrows creased. Probably two months.

“Hey, doc,” a voice from below broke through his mental haze.  The medical examiner waved quickly at the police officer, pasting a smile across his face.

“Got something waiting for me down there?” he asked, his accent obscuring any tremors in his voice.

“Yeah, real weird one actually,” the police officer shook his head, “twenty-nine, dropped dead.  No one’s quite sure why.”

“Should be interesting,” the medical examiner replied.

He went through his preparations mechanically, adjusting the body on the table until it was perfectly placed under the hanging light and aligning every tool in order of use.  Scalpel first, he thought, rib cutters next, Hagedorn needle last.  The dead man’s eyes followed him, cracked open as if spying through a window.  The examiner gently slid them shut.

“I guess I should be happy for the two months,” he said to the body as he readied the scalpel.  “I’m sure you would be.”

As he made the first incision, his mind began to drift.

The screen door slammed as the boy careened out, following his sister into the warm summer night.  Little flashing lights blinked in and out of existence, hanging suspended above the ground, defying time.  He reached out and plucked a light from the air, watching the tiny black bug crawl along his finger, unfazed, before lifting off.

Enthralled, he dashed down the sidewalk, watching the lights flutter around him.  Every few seconds he’d reach out and cup his hand around one, watching the fire blink out as the bug closed its wings and reignite as it took flight.

“Oh no!” he heard his sister’s voice, saw her looking down at the ground a few steps in front of him.  He knelt down, knees brushing the rough concrete.  The firefly lay there, trembling faintly, its wings crushed and its brilliant light slowly withering away.  He moved closer, fascinated but with no idea why, as it extinguished.

The medical examiner jolted himself out of his stupor, his hand halfway through the first incision.  He looked around for a moment, wondering where his assistant had run off to before realizing that he’d called in sick.  Maybe I should have done that, he thought.  But, the dead wait for no one.

He finished the incision in one fluid stroke, paused, and added two more to form a Y from the shoulders to the pelvis.  As he was about to peel back the skin and muscle, he realized he’d forgotten to wear his face shield, and absentmindedly grabbed it from the table.

Focus.  You’re not dead yet, he berated himself, and picked up the rib cutters.  Twenty-four snaps later, he carefully withdrew the broken bones and reached into the dead man’s chest, cupping the silent heart in his hands.  For a split second, there seemed to be movement beneath his fingers.

Shaking his head, he went back to work, severing darkened arteries and connective tissues with practiced speed and caution, smelling the familiar, slightly-metallic tang of blood as it entered the air.  After slicing the final stringy fiber, he cut the heart from the lungs and placed it on the hanging scale.  Surprisingly small, it oozed a tiny dribble of blood onto the polished metal, self-compressing as the silver platter settled.

Three-hundred grams, he scrawled on his notepad, normal.

He lifted the heart from the scale, giving it its own spot on a second table.  Where it had once pumped inside the man’s glistening chest cavity, he could just glimpse the bright white line of the spine, hidden under the remaining organs like a camouflaged snake.

The bell tower rang faintly in the distance, signaling nine o’clock.

Sharp grassy fronds whipped around his knees as he dashed through the park on his way home from school, the near-summer air hanging heavily like an invisible fog.  The day behind him, his mind was fixed on the future.  There was a dance on Saturday, the last one of middle school.  Tomorrow, tomorrow he would ask her to go.

“Gotcha!” he heard a voice from his left and spun to see a group of three boys.  One was standing back, his face bloodless with fear.  Another was watching with fascination as the third held up a wriggling garter snake, its body thrashing from side to side as it tried to escape the boy’s grip.

“Dude, get rid of it,” the pale one shook his head, “those things’ll kill you.”

“Sure about that?” the other grinned.  In one fluid movement, he snapped the snake’s fragile spine.

The boy who had watched, fascinated by the fading of a firefly’s light on a slate gray sidewalk, felt something clench inside his stomach as that thin crack echoed around the park.  From a distance, it looked as if the snake were still wiggling, still trying to escape, but its lopsided head affirmed the story the sickening sound had already told.

The medical examiner looked down at the blank report, blinking at the box labeled cause of death.  For a second, he almost wrote down fractured C1 vertebra, but caught himself before pen touched paper.  Natural causes, he scrawled, cerebral aneurysm.

Time bombs, those things, he remembered one of his med school professors announcing to a sleepy lecture hall.  Millions of people don’t know they have them, little life clocks inside their heads, waiting for the right trigger.

He shook his head and placed the pen atop the remaining pages, deciding to finish the rest from his notes the next morning.  After one last glance at the now-empty table, he flipped on his hat and headed for the door.

A few moments later, he exited the darkened building into the muggy night.  The rain had stopped, but the pavement was still dark with moisture, exhaling that thick musty smell that the medical examiner found strangely comforting.  Beside the steps was a black metal bench, damp with rainwater.  Without a second thought, he sat, placing his hat down beside him and gazing up at the shadowy tower across the street.

The bell began to toll.

The ripples lapped lazily against the pond’s muddy banks as he watched the family of ducks swim contentedly through the murky water.  It was a large family, twelve ducks that it seemed he’d known ever since he could see.  Some were young, bright yellow adolescents that had appeared as chicks that spring, while others were beginning to gray, their plumage growing fragmented and sparse.  His sister had never understood why he spent so much time watching a family of ducks in the pond across the street, and he’d never found the words to explain.

As he watched, one of the ducks began to flap its wings, taking off from the water and launching itself into the cloudless sky.  A faint autumn chill crept through the air, signaling to the rest of the family that it was time to move south.

One by one, the ducks ascended into the evening sky, hovering over the church at the end of the street as they waited for the rest of their flock.  He watched them fade, looking forward to the day the next spring when he would see them return.

Soon he was left with one solitary duck, the oldest of the bunch, swimming through the calm water as its brothers and sisters winged south.  The boy watched the duck, waiting for it to rise up and join its family in the sunset.  And, at times, he could swear the duck was gazing back, its dark, tired eyes telling a solemn story.

“Dinner!” he heard his mother call from across the street.

He took one last glance at the duck as it wandered around the peaceful pond.  Then, exhaling a breath he hadn’t realized he’d held, the boy turned and headed home.