He feels Kate like a breath on his neck, similar to when she was in the room with him but out of sight. He can't see her.
He does, however, see himself being wheeled away. He sees a look in Peter's eyes that he's never seen before. It brings him sadness but in a detached way. He feels the shadows creeping in on him, has a striking clarity that he is dying. He is dying, and Peter is crying for him, and Peter is a good man.
He imagines his body decaying and melting into the gurney. His mind recalls the phenomenon after death when the deceased's blood settles, a patchy mottling of skin, causing a horrifying yet beautiful discoloration. What had Kate called it? Death's kiss—bruised purples and pinks, a farewell firing sunset fanning out on a corpse. Funny, he thinks, that Kate, cool Kate, was blasted into the nothingness. Neal wishes he could have kissed her one more time. No more kisses for sweet Kate, not even in her death, as fire quickly obliterated her smooth skin. Funny… only it isn't.
He sees his own face. Muscles, he knows, relax after death, and eyeballs tend to sink back into sockets. Eyelids creep open. Neal thinks of a dead fish floating in the river, washing up on shore. He can picture its glassy eyes, receding and decaying slowly—eyes which were never a window to anything, but rather, a clump of very useful cells, open as though aware. Eyes that people marveled before, a deep blue promising the world yet concealing a drowning man.
He's still dying, and this introspection isn't going to save his life.
Something in him snaps and everything begins to fade. He falls backwards, not unlike a wounded bird falling from the sky.. faster, faster now. He imagines the sounds a ghost would make as it fell.
Darkness is what he knows. Neal is dying. Neal needs to tell Peter something, but before he can think of what it is, he's gone.
