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Would this be the day I get coffee with cream, sugar and strychnine?
I pulled aside the privacy curtain and stepped into room one. It was eerily quiet in contrast to all the activity from just a moment ago. The nurses had returned to their other patients, the ambulance crew drove back to base, and the patient, or at least his spirit, had risen to answer for committing the ultimate sin.
Or so I thought.
I searched the top of the equipment cart. Odd, my phone wasn't there. That's where I'd been standing.
A sheet covered the patient's corpse from stem to stern. My black-leather encased cellular was easy to spot against the white cloth.
"How did you get there?"
One of the staff must have found it and didn't want it to get lost in the clean-up. Very thoughtful.
As I reached for my phone, I thought about Donovan and laced coffee. What concerned me was that the possibility of death didn't frighten me. I almost welcomed it.
Then the corpse sat up and grabbed my arm.
~ 6 ~
Initially, I was simply startled at being grabbed.
I thought the room was empty. Obviously I was mistaken. There must have been a nurse kneeling to the floor who I hadn't seen, or someone had entered quietly behind me.
My bowels loosened when I realized I was alone. The corpse had sat up. His milky-cloudy, sightless eyes stared straight ahead. He couldn't be alive!
The white sheet that was his death shroud slipped from his head and collected in ribboned layers at his waist.
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