Amber
There was no way on Earth that Heaven could really look the way it appeared to Lawrence Kutner. At first, it looked to him like a small white room, but upon further inspection, he realized that the area was in fact a bus. It had been a while since he'd ridden a bus, but the balance poles and seats made it obvious. It was empty on the side he was facing, so he turned around and looked for other dead people. He was alone, feeling inquisitive, and the bus was not in motion. There were windows that the man could not see out of. There was not feeling of moving. He wondered if this was all death was. He wondered if other people that had died were given their own little white buses. Or was it Limbo? He wondered if he would be there for eternity or if something climactic would happen.
Lawrence knew something about climactic. And he knew a whole hell of a lot more about anti-climactic. He knew what it felt like to know that it was all coming down to one action that he would either perform or back down. And Lawrence had not backed down.
"What were you expecting?" He heard. He turned to look for the origin of the voice, but he saw nothing. "What are you looking for?" The voice responded. It was a woman, her voice sugary sweet and familiar. He'd known the voice.
"I'm looking for you." He spoke back to the voice, expecting a quick answer.
There was a pause.
"Are you God?" He prompted. He'd never believed in God, but if there really was one, then sucking up couldn't hurt his case.
"No." The voice answered. It was coming from behind him this time, and he turned to see a well-known face attached to a body that was sitting comfortably in one of the seats. The placid face of the woman was having a soothing feeling on him, and though he'd just been nervous, he was now feeling well enough to take the seat beside her. She continued to face forward as if his presence was expected. "You remember me, right?" She asked.
This is a dream, he thought.
"Yes." He assured. "It was sort of hard to forget."
She chuckled a little, her voice still not as mean as he'd remembered. "You were a doctor. You dealt with deaths all the time."
"But you were also a friend." He defended.
There was another pause.
"I know what you did." She said.
"Yeah?"
"There was a clock over your head, and I watched it run out." The woman finally looked at him. "It's a hobby of mine, I suspect."
"That's morbid." Lawrence stated. "You just watch people die from up here?"
"Well, there's only so much I can do about it now." Her voice sounded wistful, and Lawrence wondered for a moment why he cared. She'd been a good doctor. Maybe she was a little condescending, and maybe a lot of a bitch, but she did her job well.
"I bet you miss that." He said. It was no attempt at comfort. It was the desire not to be silent.
She sighed, and then followed up with a small grin. "Sometimes"
He wanted to ask if she would have wanted to stop him. He hadn't wanted to be stopped. He'd asked himself if that was all he really wanted, and the answer had been no. That's why he didn't look for help; that was the reason he didn't tell anyone. It hurt to think of all the people he inadvertently would hurt with his actions. He didn't want to be that guy… but he was. "How long ago was it?"
"About a minute ago." The woman said without feeling.
"I barely remember it."
"Isn't it better that way?"
"I think so. Can you remember when you died?" Lawrence studied how his fingers worked. It was the same as always. His movements seemed as fluid as they had always been.
"I remember Wilson. What do you remember?"
"I remember the gun."
There was a pause. "Is this heaven?"
"If this was heaven, where did I come from?"
"I don't know. You tell me. I just got here."
"And do you think someone that killed himself would deserve to go to Heaven?"
"If you want to get technical, you killed yourself, too." Lawrence replied at rocket speed. He was shocked by the innate feeling to defend his decision. He knew it wasn't right. He knew there were other ways. He'd made a point to be rational.
"I hadn't meant to, though." She defended, he voice nonetheless even. "My death was an accident, and yours intentional. If you didn't know, that counts for something."
Pause.
"What's going to happen to me now?"
"What does it matter? You think it's a dream. You think you failed and it's a dream from a coma."
"Is it? I can't tell the difference." He tried to laugh, but it came out sounding less happy that it had when he imagined it in his mind. "I've never been dead before."
"Do you want to see? Or would you rather I just told you?"
Lawrence thought. "You just tell me. If I'd wanted to see, I would have stood in front of a mirror."
The grace of the figure beside him overtook the presence on the bus. It seemed a light had transformed the luminescent place into something impossibly radiant in comparison. She was not moving. She was calm, as if she couldn't even see the light. "You died. I told you the clock ran out. This isn't a dream. This isn't real life. You are dead." She stopped and locked eyes with the figure that could no longer be considered a man. "That's what you wanted isn't it?" With her speech, her tongue stopped curtly on the T's in her sentences.
"I think so. I don't have much of a choice now, do I?"
The other figure leaned over and squeezed Lawrence's hand. "This is going to get harder, Kutner. Get ready for it." The light was gone, then.
Kutner was alone. There was no one to explain it to him. There was no one to tell him death wasn't so painful after all. He'd thought it would be the end. He'd thought that death would bring him peace, and apparently, with her leaving words, Amber had proved him wrong.
