The Husband and Wife

As I watched the man lay there, choking on a turkey bone, I realised that Thanksgiving was the busiest time of year for me.

And I did not know why.

I watched his face turn from red to blue to a pale purple, his fingers clawing at his throat, with all the impassiveness of an accountant and all I could think was why?

Not why this man in his late twenties was laying on the dining room floor, his nice, pressed shirt covered in flecks of cranberry sauce, turkey meat and, strangely, an almost perfect circle of wine stain over the stomach. I knew the reason why he was dying.

It was his time.

No, I was thinking why was Thanksgiving so busy for me?

Thanksgiving was for giving thanks, not for giving life. Yet every year I found myself busier than usual. I guess it was part of this thankless job no one wanted.

Not even me.

I kind of fell into it, it just happened one day, and I never looked back. It was a lonely job, I had an office the size of a janitors closet, but I am hardly ever there. In my business there is hardly any time to sit down.

Of course it goes unnoticed. I do my job and that’s that. My bosses never patted me on the back. Never told me well done, and they certainly never gave me a pay rise. I’ve been doing this for a long time. A long, long time. 

I’d like to move on. Do something else, but I wasn’t sure what. Or how. I’d hit the ceiling and there wasn’t exactly a lateral move to make either.

Nope, this was it.

Behind me the door crashed open, and two paramedics rushed in, carrying medical bags. The man’s wife shouted at them, screaming at them to help her husband, as if they needed to be told why they were there. What they needed to do. 

What would a paramedic know about saving people?

I stepped back as they knelt beside the husband and did their work. I’d seen people dying before, many times in fact, and I was kind of numb to it now. I was more interested in the reactions of their loved ones.

Some of them were hysterical; like the lady beside me. They were newlyweds, he was an office worker, and she was a teacher. They honeymooned in Bora Bora for a week, and she wanted to get pregnant immediately before going back to work while he wanted to wait a while. He wanted to build a nest egg.

While others were calm, calculating. They were the interesting ones. They were the ones where you didn’t know whether they were cool under pressure or whether they poured something naughty in their eggnog and bided their time for the house and the car and the bank accounts.

But the wife wasn’t one of them. She loved him.

Neither of them had any family. Any brothers or sisters they had were long gone, living in a different state, or in her case, a different country.

Three of the four parents were dead. Two to cancer, one to a car accident.

All died well below the average life expectancy for their respective genders.

And the way it was going it looked he would continue the tradition of dying too young.

Death ran in this family like acting ran in the Hemsworth’s.

The wife, tear-streaked and hysterical, was held back by one of the paramedics while the other worked, trying to dislodge that turkey bone. She looked at me, wide-eyed and pleading, as if she saw me as some sort of benevolent God who could snap his fingers, and everything would be fixed. The husband would cough up the bone and give an embarrassed laugh, crack some joke about his eyes being bigger than his stomach and acting like it was no big deal while he would think about that moment for the rest of his life.

If he survived.

Which he won’t.

Unless…

I tried to click my fingers, but they slipped off each other. I tried a second time, the thumb and middle finger slipping off each other, lacking the grip to create friction.

The third time they gave a bony rattle as they snapped, like cracking branches

Nothing happened.

Well that answers that question. I am not a benevolent God.

I must admit I was kind of saddened. The ability to decide who would live and die would make my job a bit more interesting. It would be easy to say good people live and bad people die, but if only life were that black and white. What if the good person was driving home and lost control on an icy road, ploughing into a group of people? What if the bad person was a dictator whose successor would be even worse? 

Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t make these choices.

The wife’s screaming reached a crescendo, rattling the dining room windows where snow sprinkled the panes. Snow was rare in this area, and even rarer at this time of year.

Some would say it was a miracle.

Others would say it was climate change and we should be worried.

The wife...she would call it an omen. Something she should have known. She was wiccan, liked to call herself a witch, and practised spells. Harmless spells they were. Spells of protection, to try to make things better. Keep the negative energy out.

I’m guessing she tossed in an eye of newt into the cauldron instead of a crystal one day because this is entirely the opposite of what she was going for.

“Help him!” The wife screamed. I don’t know if she was talking to me, but she was staring at me. Looking at me with fury in her tear-soaked eyes like this was all my fault. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t the one tossing newt eyes into a cauldron. But I couldn’t. She’s stressed, worried, panicking, her entire life was crashing down before her. The love of her life was doing his best eggplant impression on the floor while two strangers were trying to ensure he didn’t die surrounded by turducken and tears.

None of this was my fault. I was just doing my job. I had no control, as my clicking fingers proved. If I could change it, I would. 

Maybe. 

I took a step forward, my arm twitched, like I was trying to reach out. 

Some people deserved it. 

Some people fell to fate.

Really, what right did I have to change any of it?

I stepped back and let the paramedics do their work. I watched them, working with a surgeon-like precision, ignoring all the external influences, namely the hysterical wife but as time moved agonisingly slowly, we all felt the shift of hope turn to dread. I saw the paramedics glance at each other, I saw the imperceptible shake of the head. 

The wife didn’t see it, but she felt it. The hope was slipping, the tears falling, running streaks through her makeup.

Then the hope was gone. 

And the husband stood up, as if nothing had happened. The turkey bone gone, his clothes free of crumbs and sauce. He saw me and his eyes narrowed as if trying to place me.

Then they widened and he pointed a finger at me. 

“You!” he rasped, jabbing his finger at me, like a fencer with a foil.

Anger. 

I shrugged, “Yep.”

What else could I say?

“But…how? Why?”

“Turkey bone.”

His face fell, “Oh.” Then, “Did I do something wrong?”

I shook my head, “No.”

“But I wasn’t a bad person, was I?”

“Nope.”

“Then let me go back. I can be better. I’ll start the family she wanted. I’ll go to church. God will understand, won’t He?”

Bargaining. 

I merely shook my head; words wouldn’t be enough. 

The finger dropped; the shoulders slumped. “But this can’t be it. I’m 23.”

“Lots younger than you have gone in worse ways.”

He sighed. I’d done this a thousand times, maybe a million. Centuries of deaths, through wars, famine, plagues, car accidents, murders. You name it I was there. 

But I never had the right words to say. Did the right words exist?

Probably not. 

“So what happens now?” he asked.

Acceptance was always the strangest part when a person died. I always expected them to argue more, to be stubborn. Not able to accept it, even with the five stages. 

“We go to the afterlife.”

“Can I say goodbye?”

“She won’t hear it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I gave him all the time he needed to say goodbye. It was hard, his words drowned out by her sobbing and screaming. Going through her own five stages.

When he was done, he turned and walked towards me. “Alright, let’s go then.” And as he passed, he whispered, “Asshole.”

I tried to explain this wasn’t me, it wasn’t my choice. I tried to say I wasn’t the cause, just the shepherd guiding the spiritual flock.

But he wouldn’t listen. None of them ever did.

I sighed, being Death was a thankless job.