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When the awful racket started up, when the coroner got ready to open my skull hat I later found out was a Stryker autopsy saas fine with it

No, ood idea Not just a good idea for reat for everyone involved And if you took the long view, it would be good for huh Case closed, everybody out of the pool, tihts and lock up, hit the trail, shake a leg, beat feet, get gone, get out

I was out

How sucky was it that I knew, knew the one thing worse than waking up on an e? I did not ever want to know that No one should know that

Oh, and while we&039;re cos no one should know? No one should know that they grow up-grow old, anyway-to torture their friends That they either brought about (or didn&039;t bother to prevent) a scary-ass nuclear winter apocalyptic event resulting in the very real possibility of freezing to death on the Fourth of July

No one should know that, on the off chance they turn into an ancient evil vaet all sense of fun and, worse, fashion Gray dresses! What the fuck?

So even though the buzzing whine of the saw felt like the coroner was already slicing me open, I laid still and did ood at soers He did not shter fro-Back-I-Swear tribe Graham did not smoke, had never smoked, but was determined to start immediately

The door to the doctor&039;s lounge wheezed open and Graha, the extraordinarily hairy Dr Carter (and didn&039;t the two of theet shit, Dr Benson and Dr Carter? Like he needed another reason to hate NBC), practically tiptoe into the close, less, burnt-coffee-and-disinfectant-s room

Carter&039;s beard had recently been trimmed, so the ends merely brushed his throat instead of his nipples His dark, curly chest hair was trying to burst through his scrubs shirt He had begged perueur lab coat and, after he&039;d proven to the other chief residents that his mat of body hair kept hi enough; Sweaty Red-faced Hairy Carter was an abohed It sounded like a truck laboring uphill in the wrong gear "Bad night, Dr Benson?"

"It&039;s the wee hours of the , Carey" This was a breach of etiquette; interns and residents did not call department heads by their first names without invitation And Graham would never, ever ask Nor would he ever think twice about breaking any etiquette guideline His intelligence, drive, and skill hy he got aith it

" &039;Bad night&039; isn&039;t just dumb, Carey And it isn&039;t just inaccurate It&039;s dumb And, yeah I said that already" He sucked on the sullenly sht, Millions of people ss? Several ti: 995 of the human race is comprised by idiots, and the other 05 by morons

"Listen, we&039;re all with you Except for your neeird habit I&039;m worried about you" Benson shook his head at the alarette "And there&039;s not a person in this departered his collar The scrubs were soft fros "Lie"

"There&039;s at least one person in this department who sympathizes, probably"

"Gee whiz I feel so , fretful masses vieith pity Or at least one does Probably"

"You have to admit, it&039;s not every day a patient wakes up in the middle of an-"

Grahaarette fell out of his mouth, decapitated by his involuntarily chomp "She didn&039;t wake up, she was dead She wasn&039;t in a coma She didn&039;t have hypother to wake up from"

"Okay, Graham, but semantics won&039;t-"

"Flatline! Brain dead! Pupils fixed and dilated! Body teet that? Guess what? People don&039;t wake up frouess why? Because when you&039;re at rooain, restlessly kneading the fabric

"So, helpshe woke up then yelled, or yelled and then woke up?"

Graham slumped forward and rested his forehead on the cracked, pitted tabletop "You&039;ve cootta bug ht? Remember your oath, doctor, and summon the decency to make it quick"

Finally! This must be the slowest or sleepiest coroner in the history of forensic science It was like he didn&039;t know there were people in his enda I couldn&039;t speak for the other dead guys in this chilly tomb, but I couldn&039;t afford to loll around on an autopsy table all night I wondered if he kne selfish he was being Just because I was dead didn&039;t iven up on life/death and was resigned to permanent exile towhere do the souls of sadistic despots-in-training go after death-for-real? Hell?

Not for what they&039;ve done, but what they will do? Or do we still get to heaven because we didn&039;t live long enough to bring about (or don&039;t bother to prevent) the end of the world? Because we hadn&039;t quite gotten the chance to turn on friends and family in order to save our own ass?

Wherever I was supposed to end up, I&039;d be there in a couple more minutes Then this would be done I&039;d be done

(Oh where oh Elizabeth where oh roaned, which was drowned out by the saw I could shut my eyes (as I was) and I could clamp my hands over my ears (which I didn&039;t dare), but couldn&039;t shut hts

I had to, though His life and " Grahae of his nose He wore the expression of a man forced to tolerate exceptional stupidity He looked like that a lot "It was half an hour ago I&039;oing over it again?"

"Of course I mind, you hirsute moron"

"You start a lot of sentences with &039;of course&039;"

"I get asked a lot of dumbass questions, of course Did you catch how I mixed it up that time? And to answer your silly-ass question, I should be focusing on psychologically blocking the last hour, but I&039;otten to the weirdest part yet, you believe that?"

His chief gave hiist winced and prayed his shoulder hadn&039;t been dislocated "I want you to knoe all get why you decided to ith dead people No one ever thought that was anything but a spectacular idea I say again: spectacular! We&039;re just worried you&039;re going to be hauled away in screa hysterics and come back determined to do a peds rotation"

"Pediatrics?" Fresh horror swept over hi bath "Never! I will never stock suckers! And I will never give out stickers! I will never say, &039;My, how big you&039;ve grown!&039;"

"You&039;re getting shrill again, Graha his head on the table "I hate everyone But you most of all"

"And the world continues to turn," his boss said withho for the pathology residency?"

"What are the odds of another patient co to life under my knife?" Cripes, his neck itched "Look: I want the rest of the day off I want you to deal with Ad this cigarette, I&039;e There&039;s nothing else to talk about"

"How goes the psychological blocking?"

"It goes shitty I can re she said"

"So she did talk to you Y&039;know, that&039;s the weirdest of all That she could be lucid after-"

"After what, co back to life? Why wouldn&039;t she be? You&039;re not listening, Chief: she was dead Not in a coma Dead I&039; this"

"I&039;uy once you got used to his perpetually sunny ht of ht? I&039;ve seen things; every path resident has Shit, every doctor has But the things she said, and then what she did, that was the weirdest of all, and I don&039;t say that lightly"

"Far as I know, you&039;ve never said anything lightly"

"Including right now She was completely dead one minute And completely alive the next What if-what if she had woken up when I cracked her sternu to shy away fro on the woood looks and charished and shuffled his feet He wasn&039;t used to Graha it "Everything&039;s fine"

"This isthe dark fabric Path scrubs were dark brown, a superb choice for obvious reasons His chief had made a natural assumption: the blood on his shirt was from the autopsy

It was also an incorrect assumption