Origin Story?

The first time I died, obviously I didn’t expect to wake up from it. The car came rushing at me too fast, a blur of screeching sound and cobalt blue metal. I just stood there in the middle of the street, headphones half hanging from my ears, staring death in the face like an idiot. Moving didn’t even occur to me.

I don’t remember the impact. No pain either. One second I was crossing the street and the next, nothing. Nothing but darkness, like going to sleep. Like a dream I couldn’t quite recall. And then I opened my eyes.

The first thing I saw was the bindingly bright fluorescent light overhead. Blinking black spots away, I shifted my focus to the room around me. Everything was very clean and orderly. Beside me was a long, lumpy shape covered in a white sheet on a metal table. On the other side was a tray holding several delicate instruments. A scalpel, a pair of tweezers, a rounded saw.

I shivered and for the first time realized I was naked. A white sheet covered me too, from the waist down, but other than that, I wasn’t wearing anything. Black marks dotted a vague Y shape over my bare chest. The table beneath me was just starting to warm up, as though I’d laid back on it only moments ago.

I'd seen enough crime shows to know where I was, and it made me want to throw up. I was just glad I'd woken up before they started the autopsy. Again, the scalpel drew my gaze. I had to get out of there. Gathering the sheet around me, I searched for my clothes but to no avail. I would’ve settled for scrubs, even a hospital gown, but all I had was the sheet.

My bare feet slapped against the linoleum floor as I staggered out of the morgue. Bare all except for a tag around my left big toe that read: Pierce, Anden, J. My legs felt tingly, like they’d fallen asleep and blood was just starting to flow back into them. The sheet kept slipping off my shoulders where I'd bunched the excess so I could walk without tripping. I held it tightly against me, the only thing that was solid, that I was sure of in what I prayed was the trippiest, most messed up nightmare my weak imagination could come up with. Of course, I wasn’t that lucky.

The hallway outside the morgue was empty. There was a set of double doors about halfway down the hall and a sign indicating a staff locker room down at the end. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or more distressed. Some irrational part of my brain screamed that if I was found, they’d insist I was dead. They'd drag me right back to that room to cut me open. It was crazy, but I couldn’t completely shove away the fear of being discovered. The rest of me was desperate to find someone, anyone, who could tell me what the hell was going on.

Maybe I hadn’t died at all. At least, not for more than a minute or two. Like Nikki Sixx. He was pronounced dead, wheeled down to the morgue, and then sat up, right as rain. Well, aside from the heroin addiction, that is. But waiting around long enough for them to prepare an autopsy to start breathing again seemed pretty unlikely. At this, I was acutely aware of the constant whoosh of air every time I inhaled. I studied it, maybe worshiped it, for a few moments.

I was also very aware that I had no injuries. I checked my arms, legs, chest, head. Nothing, not even a scratch. That pretty much ruled out the “hadn’t actually died” hope once and for all. Being miraculously resuscitated was one thing. Walking away from being hit by a car at all, let alone unmarked, was quite another. Add waking up in the morgue, and I was pretty sure something beyond the ordinary was going on here. I just didn’t know what.

Before I could ponder my own mortality (literally) any further, a nurse finally entered the hall where’d I’d at some point stopped walking. I looked back and realized I’d only made it a few yards from the doors to the morgue.

“What are you doing down here?” she asked briskly. Apparently, teens wandering around the basement wrapped in sheets wasn’t a daily occurrence.

“I, uh, I don’t…” What could I tell her? That I’d risen from the dead. She’d think I belonged in the mental ward, even without the sheet. Risen from the dead sounded so horror movie. God, I hoped I wasn’t a zombie or something. When I’d checked myself for wounds, my skin looked normal, tan rather than pale and decomposing.

“Young man, which room are you supposed to be in? And why did you take your bed’s sheet?” The nurse clearly didn’t feel like waiting for me to give a more coherent answer, provided I could have actually come up with one.

“I’m uh, here for my appendix,” I made up. It was the first medical procedure I could think of. “I think I got a little lost. I don’t know my room number.” I said it slowly, like I was confused and maybe a little high on pain-killers. Hopefully that would excuse my odd behavior and wandering where I wasn’t supposed to. It wasn’t that hard to fake, as I was barely refraining from freaking out about everything that had transpired in the last few minutes. Or days? I wasn’t sure how long I’d been “out.”

“What’s your name?” the nurse asked, walking toward me.

I don’t know why I was suddenly trying to hide the fact I’d been dead not long ago when what I really needed were some answers. Perhaps it was a good thing that all went to shit when, like a moron, I told her my real name. “Uh, Anden. Pierce.” Not that it mattered much. A moment later, she was close enough to see the toe tag.

“What the hell?” She tugged at the sheet enough to see I wasn’t wearing a gown or shirt. She saw marker on my chest. “Kid, if this is some sort of sick joke…”

Her anger was more than I could handle. Give me a break, I’d just died. I was fragile. “No, please. Ma’am, I swear I’m not screwing around. I just woke up down here and I, I…” My eyes started watering and I bit my lip. My throat was too tight to say much more. “Please help me,” I whispered.

“You are seriously messed up. Just stay there,” the nurse told me. Her bedside manner was for shit. She stepped back a few paces and took a walkie talkie from her waist. “Alert the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side, I think they’re missing a patient,” she muttered. The way she said it made it clear she thought I’d escaped the mental ward. Exactly what I’d wanted to avoid. She looked back at me. “Come on, kid. Let’s get you back upstairs.” She spoke softly, but it didn’t have the calming effect I’m guessing she was going for. Maybe because I wasn’t crazy. Hoped I wasn’t crazy.

“Uh, I’d rather not,” I said. She started coming closer again, and I backed away. There was no way I was letting myself get tossed in a padded cell. “Leave me alone!” She didn’t answer and didn’t stop, so I turned and ran.

“Code Green. Basement level, outside the morgue. Code Green!” the nurse called into her walkie behind me. I wondered what “Code Green” meant but didn’t linger to find out. On the opposite side of the hall from the door the nurse came through was a stairwell entrance. I burst through it, running up the steps two at a time.

I skipped the first few floors, sure security would be on high alert near the main exits if the nurse’s overreacting was any indication. I hesitated on the third floor before remembering that’s where the mental ward was. Nope. I put a few more floors’ distance between me and that place and wound up on the seventh floor. It was also the top floor. Not a tall hospital.

“Code Green” was called over the intercom, summoning security guards and orderlies to all entrances and exits. Then I heard, “Converge on floor seven. Patient spotted past the seventh-floor nurse’s station.” I swung around and noticed the wide desk I’d just run past. No one was there. Maybe whoever snitched on me ducked out of sight. I didn’t exactly look safe and inviting. Then another thought occurred to me. Cameras. Duh, this was a hospital. Of course there were security cameras everywhere. I spotted one in the corner over my head, staring at me. How the hell was I supposed to avoid those?

I may have been overly paranoid, perhaps a delayed reaction to coming back from the dead less than half an hour ago, but I could have sworn I heard footsteps sounding on the stairs. All I wanted to do was crawl away and hide somewhere, but adrenaline was pumping through me now. I jumped behind the nurse’s station, searching for anything to defend myself with. Ah ha! A pair of scissors.

Please, don’t ask me why I thought this was a good idea. It seemed like what cornered patients always did on TV, so why not? Following that logic, I really deserved what happened next. In retrospect, it never worked out for the guy with the weapon on those shows.

Two security guards ran over from the direction of the elevators. Guess I was hallucinating guys on the stairs. I backed up toward the roof access door, but one of the guards spotted me.

“Hey, stop!” Like that was going to happen. They had stun guns. I was not in the mood to be tazed. I dashed up the last flight of stairs, scissors still tightly gripped in one hand. The late afternoon air hit my face, cooling the sweat there. Apparently, I hadn’t been dead for too long. I’d been hit that morning. Unless more than one day had passed.

There was really no cover on the roof, nowhere to go. If the last few minutes were any indication, I was not at all thinking clearly. I’d run myself right into a dead end.

“Put the scissors down, kid,” the same security guy ordered. Both men had their stun guns drawn and pointed at me. I wondered if they were worried I’d hurt myself or go all slasher on them with office supplies.

I just backed away, hands raised. “I, uh, I’m not…” Another example of my eloquence. All they saw was my raising a weapon, even if I was moving back. My legs scraped against the rough concrete ledge at the edge of the roof.

“Stop now!” the second guard shouted. His eyes were wide. I was too close to the drop. They scooted toward me very slowly. Suddenly, I was so tired. It had been a long day. So what if they chucked me in the looney bin? With any luck, they’d realize I wasn’t nuts. Or at least call my mom. Maybe she’d be so relieved I wasn’t road kill that she’d spring me. My stomach sank. My mom… what was she going through, thinking I was dead? I started to lower the scissors, but the second guard must’ve been twitchier than his partner. He lunged forward and I flinched back, bracing for the burning electricity. Instead, I just lost my balance and toppled off the roof.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

I’d like to say my seventeen years flashed before my eyes in a dramatic montage scored by John Williams or someone, but mostly I just screamed my voice raw.

I’m not sure what I expected. The whole miracle revival had to be a one-time thing, right? Guess not. Much like the last time, I didn’t remember the actual event. Only emptiness, faded shades of black that I couldn’t focus on.

I sucked in a deep breath, for a moment sure I was still falling. My eyes were open, but it was still dark. I sat up and slammed my head on metal a few inches above me.

“Damn it!” I muttered, reaching out around me. There was cold metal on all sides. Claustrophobia set in as I realized how much worse this was than waking up on the slab. I was in one of those chilled drawers where they stored bodies. Immediately, I started frantically kicking the door at my feet. It didn’t budge at first, but they weren’t exactly built to withstand being forced from the inside. Eventually, it popped open and I took deep, relieved, formaldehyde-tainted breaths.

This time, I knew I had to ditch the sheet. But before I left, I searched around the ME’s office connected to the morgue for my files. Checking the clock on the medical examiner’s desk, I saw an entire day had passed since I’d been hit by that car. I decided to take my death certificate, marked for my first death (oddly, there was only one - perhaps because I'd only died once with any form of ID on me), just in case anyone came looking for proof I shouldn’t be alive.

Then I crept as carefully as I could down the hall toward the staff locker room I’d noticed the last time I'd walked out of the morgue, praying another annoying nurse didn’t decide to show up. Most of the lockers were locked, but one unlucky person’s hadn’t closed completely. What looked like the corner of a shirt had fallen in the way. Unfortunately, the owner of the locker was a woman. Ignoring the bra and panties, I tugged on a snug pink top. Thankfully, the girl had worn jeans to work today and I, not the biggest guy by any means, figured they’d fit. Still, wearing women’s skinny jeans commando was something I never wanted to do again.

Resisting the urge to constantly adjust the crotch area, I squished my size ten feet into her size eight boots and tried to walk as normally as possible to the elevator, stolen files tucked under my arm.

I walked slowly passed the front desk, keeping my head down. Only seconds away from the wide automatic doors, a voice called out. “Excuse me, sir? You'll have to sign out before you leave, please.” I turned back to see a young guy working at the front desk. He studied me for a moment, likely taking in my bold fashion choice.

I smiled casually. “Right, I forgot. Sorry.” I approached the counter.

“Okay. What were you here for, sir?” he asked, returning the smile. He took a paper from a drawer and slid it toward me to start filling out.

“Appendectomy,” I told him, recycling my earlier story. I guessed that if I had said something too serious or say, a psych hold, which wasn’t far off, he’d be reluctant to let me go.

“Has your doctor given you the okay to leave?”

I hesitated. “I’m electing to leave against medical advisement.” It was something I’d heard on TV.

The guy frowned. “Alright. Could I see your ID please.” Crap. I didn’t have any of my stuff. Besides, I probably had to be eighteen or something to sign myself out.

“Uh, about that… it’s in my other pants?” I know, cliché much? The guy glanced at my jeans again, but this time I got the feeling it was more of an admiring look. They were pretty tight. Maybe I could work with this.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t sign out without your ID,” he said.

I leaned on the desk, bringing our faces closer. He didn’t pull away. “Couldn’t you make an exception, just this once,” I read his name tag, “Bryan?” I shot him another grin and winked.

Bryan blushed. “We really aren’t supposed to—” but before he finished speaking, I rushed forward and kissed him. His peach fuzz tickled my lips, something I’d never thought about before, having never kissed a guy. I hadn’t exactly planned to lay one on him, but it was clear talking my way out wasn’t working. While he was distracted, from what was either a great kiss or basically sexual assault, I signed my name on the discharge paper and bolted for the door.