“Me either, but the more I learn, the more I realize there are all kinds of things I’ve never heard of.” She considered for a moment. “But there might be someone that we can ask. And if she doesn’t know, she might know someone who does. I can ask Mamacita.”
“She’s not even a shaman,” he scoffed.
“Well, I wonder about that sometimes. Just little things she says, as though she’s been there.”
“She meets a lot of shamans, and wanna-bes. She can talk the talk, but so can I.”
“Well, it’s not going to hurt to ask,” she said flatly, standing up.
“We’re not going now, are we?” he asked, surprised.
“No,” she said, heading to the kitchen. She switched on the light, and they both blinked against the brightness. “I was wondering if there was anything to eat?”
“Sure,” he said, smiling. “I guess if we’re not going back to sleep, we might as well eat.”
“I feel like I haven’t eaten in a week,” she said, as he opened the refrigerator door.
“Look, we’re in luck,” he said, bringing out a plastic container. “Stew.”
He dished out and then microwaved two bowls. As he placed them on the counter, steaming, he yawned. Livvy realized that, even though this was SK, probably the last thing he wanted to do right now was eat. He probably wanted to go right back to sleep.
But the last thing that Livvy wanted was to be alone, and she definitely didn’t want to go back to sleep. She sensed that somehow SK knew that.
“What?” he said, taking his seat.
She realized she’d been smiling at him.
“Nothing,” she said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
THE POSTMORTEM SPASM wasn’t dwelt on much in medical school, but Dr. Dorsey had seen a thing or two while officiating in basement admissions, better known as the hospital morgue. Most of the time a review of the chart was all that was necessary for a doctor to establish the cause of death. Cancer was cancer. It didn’t take an autopsy to reveal that cancer had killed a patient. Even so, bodies could not be released to the funeral homes until he had signed off, which meant he was down here on nearly a daily basis.
The sheet twitched again.
The degree of rigor mortis was often used in forensic investigations to help establish a time of death. However, most people outside the medical and funeral home industries didn’t know that there was a progression to it, peaking at about twelve hours after death and then lessening. It was during that time that a postmortem spasm was most likely to occur.
Dr. Dorsey looked back to the chart at the end of the gurney. Before they bagged and tagged the cadaver, he would need to complete the paperwork, but he had never gotten used to the postmortem spasms. In fact, he hated it. This one was particularly twitchy.
He inched toward the chart. If any of his colleagues could see him now, they’d laugh him out of the lounge.
It wasn’t clear what produced the spasms. Directly after death, it could be explained by the residual firing of the neurons or the body relaxing, since rigor mortis didn’t start for three hours. This long after death, however, there was little data, only anecdotes.
As he reached for the chart, the sheet moved so slowly that he didn’t realize it at first. He stopped, hand in mid-air. The sheet was definitely moving. The far end of it was rising. The corpse was sitting up.
“Oh Jesus,” he muttered, as he grabbed the clipboard and backed up.
He had heard of cadavers jackknifing, in particularly violent spasms, and that was the last thing he wanted to see. Before the sheet could slip from the face, he turned and hurried to the exit. He slammed his hand down on the large metal button to open the double doors. As he waited for them to open, he saw a reflection in the window glass.
“Oh my God,” he said, as the door swung open.
He shouldn’t have looked. Its eyes were open.
He rushed out and hit the close button as he ran by. Fleeing through the outer door without turning around, he pounded his fist down on that close button too. Now moving at a full run, he reached the elevator and jabbed the call button several times before running over to the stairwell.
Forget the elevator. He’d take the stairs to the ground floor and the elevator from there. An orderly could come back down for the bag and tag.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
LIVVY CREPT CLOSE to the door, knocking so faintly that no one would hear. She pushed it open slowly and peeked in. There didn’t seem to be anyone there at first, but as she came into Min’s room she saw Sam, the brother, dozing in the chair. He started awake when the door closed.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“That’s okay,” he said, not quite awake. Then he realized who she was. “My parents aren’t here. They went home to take a shower and change.”
He had a hospital blanket draped around his shoulders and his hoodie was up.
“How’s she doing?” said Livvy, looking down at Min, who looked like she’d lost weight.
There still wasn’t a feeding tube, but there was a ventilator. At least her parents had allowed that.
“Not too good,” he said, sitting up.
Livvy went to the bedside, carefully lifted the blanket so as not to disturb the saline drip, and felt Min’s hand. It was cool to the touch.
“Some different doctor stopped by, and they want to run some test on her brain,” said Sam.
Livvy nodded slowly. They wanted to check brain activity, probably trying to decide if she was still alive. The breathing tube had been inserted but, without the feeding tube, she would starve to death.
It was a harsh fact of hospital life, but they were there to help those that could be helped. Those they couldn’t help would be referred to a hospice organization to make the end of their lives as comfortable as possible.
“I haven’t given up,” Livvy said to Min. “You can’t either.”
She squeezed her hand before putting the blanket back in place.
“She was breathing so hard,” said Sam. “It seemed like it was…painful.” His eyes had a haunted look. “That’s when they said it was okay to put in the breathing tube.”
“They still don’t want a feeding tube?” asked Livvy.
“No,” he said, flatly, as though he was imitating them, but it was subconscious. “They don’t want to put it off, if it’s going to happen.”
He was studiously avoiding the word ‘die.’
“Is she suffering?” he whispered.
Who knows? thought Livvy. Wherever her spirit was right now, who knows.
“No, she doesn’t feel a thing.”
He sniffed and wiped his nose on the blanket. Livvy wanted to hug him, tell him that she was going to save his sister, tell him it was all going to be all right. Instead, though, she gripped the bed railing and stared down at her white knuckles.
“Can’t you do something?” he said finally. “I don’t care what happened. I don’t care how she got like this. I just don’t want her to die.” He wiped his nose again. “Isn’t there something you can do?” he pleaded.
“I don’t know,” she said and paused.
His eyes teared up as he stared at her and then he looked back at Min, as did Livvy.
“But what I do know is that I have to try. And I will,” Livvy said. Livvy looked back to him. “I will do anything and everything that I can. I promise you that.”
Some of the tension in his shoulders seemed to lessen.
The door opened without a knock, and a nursing aide came in, rolling a blood pressure machine. She paused when she saw Livvy. Livvy didn’t recognize her but, for a moment, she seemed like she was about to leave and call a nurse. Instead, she continued into the room.
“Time to take a blood pressure reading,” she chirped, although neither Livvy nor Sam responded.
Livvy watched as the cuff inflated and the machine beeped. The nurse’s aide seemed to be watching her out of the corner of her eye. The machine finished and deflated.
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br /> “85 over 50,” she said, as she coiled the tubing back up and placed it in the metal basket. She stole another look at Livvy.
That’s low, thought Livvy, very low. As the nurse’s aide left, Min’s brother looked at Livvy. He also knew the readings weren’t good.
“Hurry,” he said, quietly. “I think if you’re going to help her, you better hurry.”
“Don’t let them remove the breathing tube,” she said, heading to the door.
“I’ll do my best,” he said.
“Me too.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
AS JACK GOT dressed for work, he heard the doorbell ring. He was pulling on his socks at the side of the bed and looked over at the alarm clock.
“What in the hell?” he said.
It wasn’t even eight a.m. As he grabbed his tie, the doorbell rang again.
“All right,” he said, irritated.
Who was ringing doorbells at eight in the morning? Was he expecting any deliveries? Was there a broken sprinkler somewhere? As he came down the stairs, the bell rang again. By the time he got to the door, he was mad.
“All right, all–” he was saying as he jerked the door open.
“Jack, why was the door locked?” said Indra, or almost said.
Her mouth didn’t work quite right. There was still dried spittle and vomit trailing across the mottled skin of her face, from the corner of her mouth to her ear. She was wearing the same nightgown that he’d last seen her in when the ambulance attendees had zipped up the body bag and taken her away.
He was about to scream when she started to come in. He slammed the door shut and started fumbling with the locks. The doorknob started to turn so he grabbed it to keep it from moving, but it slowly rotated despite his desperate grip. He used both hands, but there was no way he was going to be able to keep it from turning. The door started to inch inward. He threw himself against it, slamming it back shut. He wrenched the deadbolt so hard he thought he might snap it off. The doorbell rang.
He jumped back from the door, panting, and waited but there were no more sounds.
Had it really been Indra? How could that be? Should he open the door and check? No. He shook his head. No. He’d barely been able to get the door closed. Oh, the smell! Some of it had come into the room.
There was a dark figure moving behind the vertical blinds at the patio’s sliding glass door. She was trying again. He stared at the shadow but didn’t dare go over. He never opened the sliding glass door to the patio. He knew it would be locked. He watched as the silhouette reached down to the handle and tried to slide the door. It moved about an eighth of an inch, only the distance of play in the lock.
Now he wished he’d put a wood dowel in the sliding channel, like Indra had always asked him to do.
She tugged the door again and tilted her head down at the handle. Then, as though she could see through the plastic blinds, her silhouette seemed to look right at him. Can she see me? His mind raced. Were there any other doors or windows that she could try? No, only the door and slider on the tiny patio. The rest of the place was vertical. Wait, he thought, maybe the garage door. No, the door wouldn’t move unless the catch on the electric opener was released.
He realized her shadow was gone. He looked back at the door and waited. He ran over to the dining room window that looked down on the alley behind the condo. No one seemed to be approaching the garage door. In fact, someone from the down the street drove by on their way to work and never hesitated. Maybe she had gone away.
But what the hell was she doing here at all?
He raced up the stairs to the bedroom and grabbed his phone. He needed help.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
“WHERE ARE YOU?” Livvy whispered, looking down at the etching of Marduk. “We could really use a hand.”
She picked up the book where it lay open on the floor, closed it, and put it on top of the clothes and sundries she’d stuffed in a paper bag. Running from one hiding spot to another, she had sneaked back to her apartment like a thief. She’d succeeded in making it in unseen by the landlord or her neighbors, but now she needed to get back out. Then, a trip to see Mamacita.
As she lifted the bag, she couldn’t help but look at the black spot on the floor where Sunny had died. She hadn’t remembered the white chalk outline. It showed her head, torso, and feet, but no arms.
Livvy puzzled over it until she imagined that Sunny might have had her hands resting on her stomach. If that were the case, they would have burned. She put a hand to her mouth and looked away.
As she exited the building, her shoulder bag bulged at her side, and she struggled with the overstuffed paper bag. At the bottom of the steps, she finally looked up. On the other side of the iron gate, three young men were waiting. She stopped when she realized they were staring at her.
“Where you think you’re going?” said the one in front. His crooked smile revealed a gold-capped tooth.
It was one of the guys from the alley–waiting, in broad daylight. Livvy clutched her bag of belongings tighter.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, smirking.
He jerked the gate, making the metal clatter all along the sidewalk. Even though the gate held, her heart pounded. She shifted the bag over to one arm and reached in her jacket pocket for her phone.
The guy grunted a short laugh.
“You think anybody is gonna come help you, shaman?”
She turned the phone on. The police would come. She dialed 911, but then the door behind her opened and someone from the building passed her. She vaguely recognized him as someone who lived on a different floor.
“No, don’t open that!” she said.
The man stopped and looked back at her.
“Don’t open that,” she said and looked at the three men beyond the gate.
He looked back at the three guys outside.
“She’s a shaman, bro. We got no beef with you.”
The man turned back to Livvy with a look of fear and anger mixed on his face.
“You’re the one,” he said and looked up to the third floor and then back to her.
Without losing eye contact, the man reached out his hand, slowly closed it on the knob, and opened the gate, smiling at Livvy.
“No, don’t!” Livvy pleaded.
“Right on,” said one of the other guys.
Livvy started to back up the steps.
“Got you now,” said the first one.
She dropped the paper bag as she tried to get back in the building, but he grabbed her from behind and jerked her backwards, down the steps. Her phone went skittering across the cement path. As she whirled around, she saw the neighbor glancing back as he hurried down the sidewalk.
Someone was crossing the street, even heading in her direction. She was about to yell for help, but all three of the punks were on her in seconds, trying to force her to the ground. A switchblade in somebody’s hand snapped open.
“Let her go,” said a voice from somewhere behind them.
“Beat it,” said one of the guys.
“I said, let her go,” said the voice again. It sounded like a woman.
“Oh hell no, you ain’t gonna use that,” said one of the guys, but the hands slowly released their grip on her.
“Come on, old lady, you ain’t gonna use that.”
As space cleared around her, Livvy saw the Nahual. She was wearing the same outfit Livvy had seen before. Then, she saw the Nahual’s enormous handgun.
“Use what? Use this?” said the Nahual. “My little old Colt Python, .357 Magnum, loaded with Dum-dums?”
Everyone stared at the gun, and the smile on the front guy’s face disappeared.
She cocked the hammer.
“The smoothest action in the history of handguns,” she said, hefting it in her two hands. “With the hammer cocked, the trigger pull-weight is a little less now, but I know exactly where the break is when I squeeze.”
Livvy watched as her index finger tightened.
“Take it easy,” said one of the guys in back.
“She’s a shaman,” said the guy in front, pointing at Livvy. “She’s only getting what she deserves.”
Apparently her attackers didn’t recognize a Nahual in the traditional outfit of her region. Thank the gods for that. Although with that gun, it probably wouldn’t have mattered.
“I will tell that to the police when they ask me why I had to kill all of you,” the Nahual said as she moved the gun across them. The guy on the right flinched.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said. “The old woman is crazy.”
The guy in the middle made a move toward her, and she leveled the gun at his chest.
“You have never seen what an expanding bullet can do,” she said, almost sounding excited. “I know that because you moved.” She smiled. “Fool. It will be a lesson for your friends.” She took aim.
The guy on the left pushed the one in the middle toward the gate. The other guy was already through it.
“I’ll get you,” he hissed at Livvy. Then he looked at the Nahual as his friends dragged him down the sidewalk. “I’ll get you both.”
The Nahual followed them with her gun but didn’t say a word as they headed down the sidewalk and crossed the street to the other side.
“Are you all right?” she finally asked as she slowly released the hammer.
“Yeah,” Livvy said, getting up. “I’m getting used to this.”
The woman lowered the gun. “Get your things, we must go.”
Livvy had already started putting everything back in the paper bag but straightened up slowly.
“What do you mean ‘go? Go where?”
“We are leaving here, now.” With that, the woman opened the gate and looked up and down the street. “My car is over here,” she said, ushering Livvy through. “This way, quickly.”
They crossed the street and got in an SUV, a big one. Both of them had to climb up. The Nahual locked the doors, started the engine, and took off, paying no attention to the seat belt.
Olivia Lawson Techno-Shaman Books 1 -3 Page 25
