Being Dead Part Ten

Ah, to be reunited with a loved one....

I dared say I had every right to look and feel groggy, what with my recent very varied experiences, but I did manage to assess what Doctor Jones (who I ought to have known seeing as his name rang a bell with me, but didn’t) was hoping to do with his scalpel.
He had that keen focussed look on his face as he stared at my naked chest, which probably explains how he didn’t notice that my eyes were suddenly and unexpectedly open and I was looking rather sternly (I hoped) at him. And being aware of his imminent intentions I felt I ought to intercede.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said in a voice that ought to have been croaky, but wasn’t.
Doctor Jones fairly jumped out of his skin! I’ve never seen shock in another person like it, and such an extraordinary reaction! And to think I ought to have been more shocked than he was, seeing as he appeared to be about to carve me open in order to mistakenly try to discover what malady had stolen my life!
It was a good job that he let go of his scalpel and let it fly in a beautiful arc through the air, over my head and away from both of us.
“Who… what…” he jabbered, then added, probably for his own comfort, “but I know that you’re dead!”
“Not quite,” I told him, “and where’s my tee-shirt?”
“Tee-shirt?” he mumbled as though the very existence of such garments was the height of improbability.
“And I hope you didn’t disturb my shorts,” I added, I must admit quite mischievously seeing his discomfort.
“Shorts?” he grunted.
“And maybe you could tell me why I’m here in the cell of a man determined to chop me open?” I added.
“Dead men don’t talk…” he told himself, trying to pull himself together and give the appearance of a confident pathologist.
“Maybe they don’t, but I do,” I replied, trying to give him assurance that all was well and sane in the world.
“But you’re… the inspector’s John Doe… you’ve been in the fridge for two days and no life could survive that…”
“I thought there was a chill in the air,” I told him, then, “was there a woman with me? A pretty young thing, nice legs, long hair, cheerful smile? Short frock?”
“With you? Where?” he stammered.
“Wherever I was?” I said, sitting up and adding detail to my equiry. I needed to be sure that Megan was alright.
“No,” he said, and my heart lurched. “I tell you what, I’ll fetch Doctor Rogers. She might know more…”
“Doctor Rogers?”
“A new appointment to the force. Megan, we call her…” he gabbled, and made a hasty exit from the room. I could hear voices in an anteroom when he had gone and I was sure I recognised my Megan’s voice, though her surname wasn’t Rogers and we weren’t married, because my surname most certainly is Rogers, sure as anything I know.
Then the pathologist returned just as I eased myself completely off his slab and found that I could stand, somewhat unsteadily and holding onto it, in time for him to notice.
“Doctor Rogers has something important to say,” he told me, “apparently she married a man who disappeared suddenly around two years ago… and she was surprised to see just how like him you looked when she spotted you through the window a few moments ago.”
“Hello Megan,” I said with what I hoped was a winning smile, “I’m glad you turned up in the same universe as I did!”
“I have no idea what you’re gabbling about,” she said rather stiffly, “tell me, what do they call you?”
“We shouldn’t need such formalities, darling,” I said still sure that the Doctor Rogers woman was my Megan, largely because she was her spitting image and even had her voice.
“Excuse me,” she replied, sharply, which shocked me, “but what’s youre name, please? For our records. You do realise that you’re the first corpse who has come back to life in this mortuary, and I can’t call you John Doe?”
“Am I? Can’t you? Well, my name is Peter Rogers…” I began.
“Stop!” she pleaded, “that cannot be! Please be straight with me!”
“I would be nothing else, Megan,” I said softy, “but life and time and all the things that go to make our universe are so confusing and complex… I died several times, you know, and so did you, and each time we found ourselves reunited but in a different but similar dimension. That’s what we called it, though we had no idea what we should, and whatever you call it doesn’t matter…”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe in dreams…” she said, “but only last night… do you believe in dreams, Doctor Jones?” she asked the pathologist, and he looked at her as if anything he dared say would sound wrong, and moved his head in a kind of morphed nod and shake.
So Doctor Rogers smiled at his discomfort and continued. “Well, I dreamed I was in the middle of a crazy village that was being decimated by an outbreak of bubonic plague, I was with my husband who appeared for me out of the blue, and we were both condemned to die as witches…”
“Because we knew about rats…” I told her, “but you were so like my Megan and I was so like your Peter we might have really been them, but the truth is we weren’t. But yet we were. I’ve died several times recently, and each time emerged into a very similar world to the one I left, but not the same one. Like here. I was burned in the same fire as the one in your dream, Megan, with my own Megan, and now look where we are! In the same Earth as each other again. But I never married you because, two years ago or there abouts, you died of cancer. It was wretched to watch you. I suffered along with you. I even tried praying!”
“The rats…” she sighed, “yes, the rats… we told them, or at least I did…”
“Exactly,” I said, “So somehow two or more Megans became one on that field several hundred years ago. And somehow this Peter, the one I’ve always been, found his way through the chaos of death to this Megan…”
Then she looked at Doctor Jones. “Please, doc, would you give me a few moments alone with your corpse…?
He nodded. Whatever we’d been saying must have totally confused him and maybe he was more than happy to retreat to somewhere ruled by sanity.
Then, when we were alone, she looked up at me. “I don’t know the truth of anything any more,” she said, “But you look and sound like my husband… you even wear the same kind of silly shorts… can I tell you… that I love you? Will you be my husband?”
“Megan thought them silly too,” I said, and to my utter surprise I started weeping.
© Peter Rogerson 04.09.24
xxx