The Love of My Afterlife(69)
I gently take the pen and paper out of Mr. Yoon’s hand. I look outside for the doctor. No-one is telling me to get out yet. I hunch over and, without being forced to by anyone, just because I want to, I start to sketch the outline of Mr. Yoon’s face. My shoulders relax with the feeling of it, and I soon lose myself in the lines and crevices, the long earlobes, his thin smiling lips, and the small shaving cut on his friendly round jaw.
I peek at the clock and realise that a whole forty minutes has passed by the time the doctor reappears.
“Ms. Bookham, we have to run some more tests on Mr. Yoon just to make sure we’ve covered everything, but you can come by again in the morning if you like? We will do more tests, as I said, but the likely outcome is that he’ll be discharged tomorrow after a full review from a cardiothoracic specialist.”
Out tomorrow. I nod, expelling the air through my cheeks, placing the paper and pad at the side of Mr. Yoon’s bed table.
“He’ll write down answers to your questions if you need him to,” I tell her. “Took me three years to figure that one out.”
The doctor smiles, glancing down at my drawing. Her eyebrows shoot up. “That is excellent. You’re an artist?”
“God no,” I say, immediately turning red. “Ha!”
I reach down and turn the page onto the one where Mr. Yoon has written that I look alive. The doctor reads it and gives me a curious look. There’s a lurch in my stomach as I realise that not only am I going to snuff it in two days, but I have no idea how it will happen. I mean, there’s no way I’ll let myself choke on a burger again. How will I die? Will it be painful? Will I end up right here, where Mr. Yoon is, being treated by a team of experts trying hard to save a life that has already been reserved for Evermore?
I shove the morose thoughts away. “I will be here tomorrow!” I say brightly, backing out of the room. “You have my number. Please call if anything changes.”
I race into the A&E waiting area to see that Cooper is hunched over, quickly tapping his shiny-shoed foot and flipping his phone about in his hands. I race over to him. He jumps up as soon as he sees me. He still looks panicked.
“Did you not get my text?” I ask.
He looks down at his phone and shakes his head.
“I sent one. The reception must be bad here. Mr. Yoon is okay. He’s going to be just fine.”
Cooper exhales, his shoulders dropping in relief as he pulls me into a hug. He presses his hand against the back of my head. I close my eyes and feel a softness spread through my body, a calming of sorts. All this time when my muscles were painfully tight, my jaw rigid and tense, was the key just another human body pressing itself against mine?
His human body.
I sigh, long and low. Everything would be so much easier if Cooper was my literal soulmate on Earth, rather than just someone to have some fun with. I’ve already kissed him a gazillion times—my life would have been saved a gazillion times over.
Cooper’s forefinger trails absently from my hair to my neck, and I shiver.
I pull myself away from the hug and mentally slap some sense into myself, because having an erotic thought about your downstairs neighbour in an Accident and Emergency department is wrong on so many levels.
“Let’s go.”
When we reach our building, we stand in the lobby like a couple of gawps just staring at each other.
“I…” Cooper murmurs, looking back towards his door.
“Thanks for…” I trail off, shrugging so that a wayward shoulder feather pokes me in the cheek.
“I’m sorry that…”
Mrs. Ernestine’s door creaks open, and she pokes her head around it. She takes a bite of a red apple and munches loudly before tutting.
“If neither of you are gonna finish a fucking sentence, will you bugger off and let me get back to Better Call Saul? Jesus!”
Cooper apologises and smiles his charming smile, but it has zero effect on Mrs. Ernestine’s glare. I see her Never Again tattoo and I wonder if the thing she is reminding herself to never again do is murder someone.
I do not want to find out, so I wave goodbye to Cooper and the pair of us do as she says and bugger off to our respective apartments, a multitude of unfinished sentences hanging heavy in the air.
34
Hi Darling! Sorry missed your call. Things manic here. Hope you’re well!
I hang up Leanne’s dress before diving into the shower, where I find myself fixating on my previous realisation that while I know I will die again in two days, and I know that it will be at 6:00 p.m., I have zero clue how on earth it will happen.
It could come about under any circumstances. It won’t be choking, because since the last time, I have chewed and swallowed my food so slowly and thoughtfully that it’s taken me twice as long to finish a meal. On the flip side, my digestion has improved considerably. I could fall down the stairs. I could slip on a sneaky bathroom floor shower spill. There could be a gas explosion. Or Mum might actually call me back and the shock of it would incite some sort of cardiac event. I’m basically living Final Destination right now.
I step out of the shower with extra care and take tiny, vigilant steps into my bedroom. I could be walking down the street and have an air-conditioning unit drop onto my head. Or maybe I fall down a manhole because I’m too busy thinking about not dying to see that there is a manhole in my path. Fuck. I could get murdered. I could get murdered by Mrs. Ernestine. And then she could find all my library books about how to hide a body, and no-one would be any the wiser.