What were you supposed to do with a body, Alexander wondered to himself. A still warm body, whose blood soaked your once white shirt, whose head lolled back, unconscious, unfeeling, as your wife wrapped her arms around it as tight as she could, her anguished screams subsiding into quiet sobs? What were you supposed to do with a body that used to be a person- a body that used to be your son?
A decades old memory resurfaced as an answer, filtered through the drug induced haze of the scene- his mother Rachel being carried out of their home on St. Croix, his brother James weeping. At the time he was too sick to understand what was happening, but he remembered attending the funeral several days later- the church had refused to bury her, seeing as she was a "filthy whore" who'd had children out of wedlock. Alexander never did find out what they did with her body.
Philip, of course, would be buried with the dignity Rachel was not afforded. Only the best for his son, in life and in death. He wondered how he was to express how much he'd loved Philip in so few words as to fit on a tombstone.
Some small part of Alexander was still in denial- this couldn't have happened, not to his family, not to his son. If they could just call the doctor back in, maybe it wasn't too late, maybe they could still stitch him up, maybe... But the fact of the matter was he couldn't feel a heartbeat, and as hard as he tried to refute it, he knew Philip was gone.
Eliza was crying- deep, ugly, racking sobs that turned her face red, tears streaming down her face and neck. Alexander himself hadn't cried yet, but he figured it was only a matter of time. His eyes felt abnormally dry, as if they hadn't been shut for hours. He put a hand on Eliza's shoulder in a futile effort to calm her, but quickly withdrew, realizing that that hand had been the one he'd clamped over the bullet wound in a fruitless attempt to keep Philip alive. When he'd removed his hand, more blood had spilled out to stain Philip's clothes, though no heart beat to pump it out.
Alexander looked from his bloody hand to the gory wound in Philip's side to the crimson handprint on Eliza's heaving shoulders and began to cry.