Expiration Date

by Nancy Kilpatrick

  As Angela continued working on him in the ambulance, she could not help but feel that she was being watched. She glanced at the wife, who was smiling at the roof of the vehicle, and knew it wasn’t the old woman’s presence that was throwing her. This felt like a hunch. Like the certainty that the coffee pot was left on when one was on route to a vacation destination. Or the need to recheck locks before going to bed. It was a tugging, deep inside, that enslaved as it distracted. It was the equivalent of being warned to stay on the path, but being tricked into a race to Grandmother’s cottage by a charming canine.

  When the man’s eyes had opened, they focused on the front cab. Angela would have sworn that she saw Gary’s face reflected in the eyes of the patient. Impossible! Gary was driving.

  “What a nice dog,” the old woman casually said, and looked at the same spot on which her husband had been fixated. “I had a dog like that once, not as big, of course, but a nice dog…” She then looked at her husband, whose eyes were closed again. “Henry, I think the dog wants you to go with him.”

  Every time the husband’s vitals ceased, the woman spoke to the dog. When his signs were restored, she stopped talking.

  As they arrived at the hospital, the wife waved and called, “Bye, doggie.”

  * * *

  The feeling of forgetting something important, that nagging hunch, came to fruition later. Angela arrived home to find her front door ajar. She knew she had locked it, swore she had locked it. She always did. Besides, the television news had warned of severe gusts. Sometimes she kidded that while Eric lived in a house of stone — a formidable beach cottage that was impervious to the onslaught of ocean winds and salivating sea spray — she lived in the proverbial house made of straw: her doors blew open with such frequency and ease.

  Which was why she always locked the door carefully. Which was why she always gently pushed on the outside of the door, to assure herself of its security.

  The open door wouldn’t matter — it would not be a stomach-dropping sight — if not for her beloved cat, Lijah, who spooked easily. He was nowhere to be found. Lijah had always been an indoor cat, so she worried about his safety. She hoped he would be on the front step, waiting for breakfast in the morning.

  Her hopes were met halfway: in the morning, the cat was on the step, but he was not alive. His body looked peaceful, except for the fact that his heart had been pulled out and pulverized. Despite her training, Angela had no idea what could cause this.

  Normally, death did not startle her; she was far too accustomed to it. Besides the loss of her pet, the irony shocked Angela: she had saved one man’s heart, while her companion’s heart had been torn away.

  Broken hearted, in a way that was neither like the saved man nor the slaughtered animal, Angela held a quick burial for Lijah and then reported to work.

  When she pulled into her driveway on her way home, she had a clear view of the old oak tree under which poor Lijah lay. The stone she had placed as a temporary marker was in view, as well as a figure, clad in what appeared to be a black shroud. She could not see the face, but some intuitive part of her feared that if she saw it, it would be recognizable.

  She shut her eyes for a minute to collect herself, then saw that the figure was gone.

  * * *

  After assisting a psych transfer, a bleeding ulcer call, and a minor head wound victim, the winner of worst case of the day called in.

  A girl had been submerged in her backyard swimming pool for an estimated fifteen minutes. She had been trying to retrieve one of her dolls which had found its way into the pool.

  After arriving, they hit the on scene button on the rig and grabbed the defibrillators. CPR was already in progress by the police, who were using a bag. Angela began trying to get a tube into the girl’s mouth, but her throat had constricted. She and Gary worked and worked; in the background the police talked to the parents and took notes for their report. Angela felt dizzy, winded. She peered at Gary’s sweaty brow, shadowing his jaundiced eyes.

  “God,” she sighed with fatigue.

  “You wanna quit? Call it presumed?” he whispered, reaching a hairy arm toward the tubing that Angela had struggled with.

  She was shocked. They weren’t supposed to quit; they couldn’t quit. She shook her head, focusing on the girl. From the corner of her eye, she saw Gary’s ubiquitous hood slide back, revealing feral hair much whiter than it had been before.

  If his hair was an anomaly, the girl was a miracle.

  Her heart began to beat again, faintly, in a lazy waltz-like time. Angela couldn’t help but think about how the girl probably resembled the doll she had been trying to rescue. Her thin, golden hair was plastered to her porcelain cheeks. Her blue lips were slack and they quivered with each difficult breath.

  But, miraculously, she was breathing.

  Angela felt higher than the clouds where the white wolf lived.

  * * *

  When she arrived home, her neighbors were in the street. Mrs. Taylor, who lived next door to her, was crying and talking to a police officer. Angela had been a surrogate aunt to young Lydia: had babysat her when needed, had attended her school play. They baked cookies, and shared a love of fables starring wolves. Angela had volunteered to watch the seven- year-old that night while her parents went to a concert.

  Her stomach dropped as she neared the scene, overhearing the discussion between her neighbor and the officer.

  “It was a horrible accident,” Mrs. Taylor was saying, wiping tears with her wrist. “I had been watching her. She was in the tub, playing with a doll, washing the doll’s hair.” She rocked on her feet and picked at her cuticles.

  “The phone rang… I thought it would be all right. I thought…when I returned, I was only gone for a minute … no more than two … she was under water. She’s not a toddler, the water was not that deep, but she was under.”

  Mrs. Taylor, noticing Angela’s presence, looked at her imploringly. “I tried to save her, I tried to pull her up but… but it felt as if something … someone … was holding her down…”

  * * *

  Angela had been riding shotgun with Gary for some time. She confided everything, but knew little about him. She watched him from her passenger seat. She enjoyed being with him and had even imagined spending time with him off the job. She felt he knew her, understood her. And, she thought he was handsome. She liked his height and his eyes. His smile was the only thing she needed to warm up to — it could be cold and disconcerting, and his gums were purplish — the color of the inside of a dog’s mouth.

  Despite his cold smile, he often howled with laughter at her lame attempts at jokes. And he was very easy to get along with.

  This particular shotgun ride ended at an apartment at 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning. It was a small corner nook of an old Victorian, reminding Angela of a tower that would house either a damsel with very long hair, or one with a fetish for spinning wheels. Their visit was not instigated by external witches, but from villainy within, in the form of a faulty line in the gas stove. When Angela and Gary reached the top of the stairs, she noticed claw marks on the door. Gary kicked the door open and they found a man lying on the rug, desperate for oxygen. Immediately, they tried to resuscitate him.

  Just as Angela was thinking they were stabilizing him, the door to the apartment blew shut. She was reminded of her own door, blown open; both doors propelled by imperceptible winds.

  “Open it,” Gary growled.

  Stunned, Angela couldn’t help but momentarily ignore the patient.

  “The door,” Gary urged.

  “We can get it when we load him on the stretcher.”

  Gary pulled away from the man and pointed to the door. Angela saw flecks of stain beneath Gary’s thick nails. Flecks of color that matched the stain of the door jamb of the apartment. Flecks that matched the dense hair on Gary’s knuckles.

  He
fixed her with phosphorescent eyes. There was a roaring in her ears, like the sound the waves made at Eric’s cottage. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t remember why she was in this small, hot room. Her only thought was about opening the door and getting some fresh air and relief from the monotonous wailing in her ears. She was compelled, driven, to the door.

  When she turned back, she found Gary still on his knees, his arms crossed, shaking his head.

  “He’s gone,” he said, his hood forcing his face into shadows.

  * * *

  Shotgun again, and wondering why Gary never let her drive.

  Some boys had been joy riding and the ride had soon become short on joy and long on grief. According to a survivor, two cars had been racing when they came to a bend in the road. One car cleared the bend, the other slammed into the guardrail, the vehicle wedged tightly by the blood-splattered rail on either side.

  Angela and Gary immediately assessed a double-fatality. The passenger had been thrown through the windshield, over the guardrail, where he slid several yards across gravel, rocks and thorny border hedges. A large portion of his internal organs had migrated outside of his body, and he gave no signs of life. The driver was still in his seat, similarly violated, and unresponsive.

  The police were interviewing the riders of the other car, when one teen, obviously in shock, shouted, “Where’s Will?”

  “Will?” the cop asked.

  “Yeah. He was in that other car, too.”

  All the responders looked at the car: no one else was around the vehicle. They scanned the area where the passenger had been found. Nothing. Angela tried to look, but was distracted by the fact that Gary was standing still, breathing heavily. This was the steamy exhale of a beast that could blow your house down. She examined the lit area around him— the exploring officers walked amongst the shadows their bodies made; Gary’s body cast none.

  One of the searching officers looked up and yelled, “Oh God, there he is!”

  Will was suspended in a tree, the branches holding his neck like a makeshift noose.

  “How are we supposed to get him?” Gary pulled his hood tighter. “Where’s the fire trucks… the ladders?”

  Angela wondered the same thing. She raced to the ambulance and got on the walkie. It was dead. She shouted to an officer, “Try your radio!”

  The boy dangled helplessly, unconscious; his color was not good. He was not far up and, ignoring protocol, Angela scurried up the tree. Gently, she freed the boy.

  “Help me!” she called.

  One of the officers at the base of the tree caught Will as she lowered him, easing the boy to the ground. As Angela was getting to the ground herself, the officer called out, “He’s got a pulse!”

  The mainlined drug of the miracle hit Angela and she cheered. Gary, though, had turned his back to them, his interest captured by the deceased.

  * * *

  Angela tried to sleep, but could not stop thinking about Gary’s odd behavior on the scene. He had seemed disinterested, reluctant to go through with the rescue. Could she no longer trust him to help out when the chips were down? Why did he seem to lack a connection to the victims? Her phone rang, a reprieve from further worrisome thoughts.

  Her mother said hello, but could manage no more.

  “Mom? What is it?”

  Wet gasps followed by, “It’s your brother.”

  “Eric? What about him?”

  Nothing from the other end but shattered breath.

  “Mom!” the acoustic equivalent to a slap across the face.

  “Angela,” her mother managed, “he’s dead.”

  She remembered building forts with him and playing with flashlights beneath the tented sheets. She remembered his warmth and the way he teased her. Those are things that can’t be snuffed out, that can’t die. “It’s not true.”

  “It is. Hung… he left a note.”

  Angela was whispering, “No, no, no…” This was not the Eric that she knew. He would not do something like this.

  “There’s more… he talks to you in the note.”

  “Oh, God!” Should she stop her; did she want to know?

  “He says that you were right, all along. You were right about the wolf.”

  * * *

  All through her training and experience, Angela had been blissfully unaware of the psychological pain of death. Some of what she had seen, and had to do as part of her job had traumatized. She’d gone into a state of shock after responding to a particularly gruesome scene involving several men at a construction site. But she had never felt the hopeless despair that death leaves behind. It felt like being trapped in a wolf’s mouth, all 1500 pounds of pressure per square inch, squeezing. The pressure smothered and hurt her heart.

  How could life continue around her? Her brother, her oldest friend, was gone. How could she continue?

  A few days after the funeral, Angela went to Eric’s to empty the refrigerator, hoping the mundane work would empty her mind. From the window, she was surprised to see Gary standing on the beach. This Gary looked like the figure at Lijah’s grave and, unlike the man with whom she rode shotgun, his face was longer, more feral.

  He was not the hunter/hero. Over the years, she had confused her instant identification with him for some sort of companionable comfort. But now she knew: he was no longer in the sky; she just hadn’t recognized his human form.

  Enraged, she ran to him. She was furious with him and with herself. She realized what she had always known but had been unwilling to admit. “Why?” she screamed at the back of his hooded head. “Why did you have to take him?”

  He turned toward her, his lupine face peeking from the folds of his hood.

  “He wouldn’t have done this… he wouldn’t have killed himself. You did it and I want to know why!”

  He shrugged with that aggravating disinterest. “It’s my job.”

  He had given her this same, noncommittal answer before and it infuriated her now.

  Before she could say or do anything more, he said, “Let me show you.” He drew a picture of a body hanging from a tree, then another body hanging from a belt. He put an equal sign between them. “One for the other.” He pointed to the tree, “he didn’t go, so,” he pointed to the belt, “he had to.”

  She felt sick. “An exchange?”

  He nodded and continued drawing in the sand. The old man, the drowned girl. They were never meant to survive. Since they did, someone else had to take their place.

  It was not about miracles, it was about mathematics.

  Gary’s demonstration began to show the fairness of it— a balance. He drew numbers in the sand, computed equations. The sand took on the appearance of a chalkboard in a master’s level calculus class. He scratched out Social Security numbers, personal identifier numbers, national identity numbers, and computed those. The math worked out. There were ones who had to go when they had to go. If they didn’t, another had to go in their place.

  Balance.

  She shook her head, angry at the simplicity of it all. “It’s all an arrangement. Predestined,” she muttered.

  He nodded gravely, yellow eyes lowered. “Most doctors and rescuers realize that. But you, you have always been unique, the outlier. That’s why you had to ride shotgun.” He took on the cold smile again, the one that looks inside the picnic basket meant for Grandma and suggests the race.

  “Why?”

  “To learn.”

  She hated the lesson but knew there was no point in arguing. She also hated herself, knowing she had endangered those around her, simply because she had been too headstrong to heed the warnings. “But, how will I know the ones that aren’t destined to go? We have to be able to save some, right?”

  He nodded again. Then, he drew a symbol. When Angela saw the symbol, she would know: these she could save.

  The wind
blew sharply, toying with the loose flesh around his mouth, pulling his lips into the pantomime of a snarl.

  “What about… me?” she asked.

  He pointed to a number that was the same one on her tax forms and student loans. Then he reconfigured the equation around it. It needed no explanation: if she did not play fairly, the next number to be up would be hers.

  * * *

  For some time, Angela was mindful of the symbols, or lack thereof. It was simple to ‘flub’ a rescue: easier than she would have imagined. But over time, something changed. Maybe a part of her missed Gary, missed riding the highs — riding shotgun — with him. Maybe she missed the miracles, which were no longer miraculous, but a revolt against Death. Or, maybe she was simply crazy. But who could have turned away from the small child swelling to three times his normal size from a bee sting? Or the newlywed, the wheels of his new SUV pinning him to the pavement, while he tried to gasp the name of his love?

  Even with her own life on the line, she couldn’t avoid the thrill.

  As the symbols grew larger and more obvious, she made more effort to ignore them. On a day filled with another nagging hunch, she returned to the sandy spot where Gary had done his calculations. Despite the recent rain, she saw a number engraved on the beach, a new number, and only one: her number.

  There was nowhere to hide, so she drove. Driving made her feel powerful, in control. No more passenger seat for her. She felt safe inside the familiar vehicle.

  Until the passenger seat belt light began blinking. An angry chime accompanied the flashing light; a warning sent only when weight pressed on the seat.

  A part of her wanted to reach out, to feel if anything, anyone, was there. The sane part of her wanted to focus on the road.

  She glanced to her right: a wolfish face, cloaked in Gary’s hood. Death was now riding shotgun.

  As she skidded, Angela realized that she was no longer angry and not the least bit terrified. She whispered, “Hi, doggie,” and she waited. Waited for the white wolf to make his move, because, contrary to rumor, to what she had always believed, when you’re time came, Death played fair.