Death Co: 5 (The Infirmary)

5. The Infirmary

     I’ve woken up in a lot of infirmaries in life, but none quite as busy as the one in death. The first thing I noticed was the screams. Through my eyelids I saw nothing but a bright white light and I was sure that it was death. My eyelids fluttered open and it was confirmed. I was indeed dead, but had been that way for some time. My brain had been quite muddled by the sudden, metal intrusion into its cortex.

     The screams were coming from the man next to me. Gingerly I rolled over and looked at his bed. Looking back at me, wide eyed, was a man covered head to toe in burns. His exclamations were of a religious nature and thus I judged him to be one of the missionaries from the bus I had been sent to requisition. However, he was not what held my attention. What did hold my attention was the line of gurneys. They extended past my field of vision. Thousands, maybe millions of patients, all screaming, all wishing that they could die. The living don’t realize eternal rest is a much better gift than the truth. Living, whether it be in un-death, or in the flesh is a tiring experience.

     There are days where I long for the wind on my cheeks and feel nothing but the grey numbness that has become routine, but even more I long for blackness. The undead do not sleep. The creator thought it better for our work productivity. On my breaks I often just stare blankly at the wall, contemplating how to break the cycle. It’s easy to see how people are driven to the edge of their wits when I live there.

     The machine next to me played a constant tone, indicating that I’ve flat-lined. I later learned that the IVs are somewhat of a useless gesture, but help to maintain a sense of normalcy in a room filled with chaos. A young woman in a white coat walks to the bed of the screaming man next to me. “Hush now, it’s not so bad. I just saw a man who had been run over by a tank in a peaceful protest.”

     “I don’t care if he was stabbed, shot or drawn and quartered! I require medical attention now!”

“Feet first…”

     “My skin is on fire!”

     “No, it’s not. It was, and now you are badly burnt, but screaming isn’t going to help that is it?”

     “Give me drugs or something!”

     “They won’t help.” Bedside manner isn’t something that can be practiced when you’ve got millions of patients that can’t be helped. The qualifications for nurses in this place are a little morbid (as I suppose everything must seem). Mostly they were tailors. The sad thing about being a medical professional in the afterlife is that there is nothing to be done about the injuries, other than to sew the person up. Bleeding isn’t really an issue, the fresh ones do it a lot, but after a while it stops and turns to a fine, grey dust, kind of like hot chocolate mix, but that’s beside the point.

     When the man wouldn’t stop screaming the nurse kindly pulled a ball gag from her pocket and shoved it in his mouth. “Now, I’m working on finding you some skin, but it’s not an easy job, someone has to be willing to give it up. So sit here, shut up, and maybe I’ll take that out when I get back.” Muffled obscenities flew vehemently from his burnt lips. The nurse just smiled and turned to my table.

     “Ah. Let’s see, what do we have here?”

     As if she couldn’t see the massive metal sword protruding from my forehead. We both know exactly what she’s going to do about it. The ambiguity helped to calm my nerves a bit. I don’t feel pain much anymore, the body habituates to it, but that first day, I had no idea what I was in for. There was still a dull ache in my head from when I had first been stabbed, but it had faded a bit, and overall I was feeling good, until the nurse announced her intentions.

     “Well that’s going to have to come out.”