simple twist of fate

by red-starshine

part two: one of the millions

Chas flailed inside the plastic bag for a second, not realizing where he was. He banged his elbow against the metal wall of the morgue's refrigerator, and he swore loudly. The jangling pain radiating from his elbow made him stop to figure out where he was while trying to clamp down on the panic that was steadily building. Chas felt the thick but flexible plastic material encasing him between his fingers, and quickly realized what it was - a plastic body bag.

He'd been dead. Now he wasn't. John had brought him back to life, given him a second chance.

Unfortunately, John hadn't sent him back fast enough to keep his dead body from being recovered from the remains of the bar and taken to the morgue.

Chas sighed. It was a minor inconvenience considering he'd been a cold corpse only a few short minutes ago, but he wished John'd revived him before he'd been put into the morgue's refrigerator.

He felt for the body bag's zipper, and found the harder plastic teeth of the zipper running down the center of the bag. Chas picked at the zipper, quickly creating a gap large enough to snake his hand out of and yank the zipper pull down to his abdomen.

There wasn't much room to maneuver around in to free himself from the bag. The refrigerator was about as spacious as a casket, and the thought of waking up not inside a morgue cooler but in a coffin already buried underground was terrifying. The chill of the refrigerated air worked its way into his body as he pulled his feet out of the body bag. As far as he could tell in the darkened refrigerator, he still had his clothes on, although they stank of smoke and plaster.

With his feet free, Chas carefully pushed himself down the metal slab he was lying on until his shoes hit the metal door. The nerves in Chas's hands were screaming from the cold bite of the metal wall against his bare skin, but Chas ground his teeth and braced himself against the metal chamber. He kicked down as hard as he could, and the door to the refrigerator flew open, banging loudly against the next row of refrigerators.

Chas froze. When no one started screaming at one of the corpses in the morgue refrigerators freeing itself, he let out a sigh of relief and began to slowly slide himself down the slab until his feet finally touched the floor. He dropped out of the open door, landing in an ungainly sprawl on the tile, shivering and disoriented

"God, being dead sucks," Chas muttered to himself.

The morgue was deserted, the light from a hallway outside just enough for Chas to see by. Besides the bank of refrigerators behind him, there was only a rolling metal stretcher, a large plastic bin, a sink, and a small metal desk with a laptop buried underneath a stack of manilla folders.

Chas slowly stood up, the joints of his knees rigid and popping. He felt stiff all over, and spent a minute just stretching out his arms and legs. He wouldn't get very far if his legs gave out on him when he was trying to sneak out of the hospital.

The door creaked open, a sound that made Chas's heart plunge down.

"Oh, bollocks," swore John behind him.

Chas snorted and turned around. John was standing next to the desk, looking at something in one of the folders.

"Nice of you to show up," said Chas, reaching into the refrigerator and pulling out his body bag. He wadded it up and dropping it into a large bin. "What're you looking at?"

"The x-rays of your body," said John. "Apparently you were next in line for an autopsy when the medical examiner called it quits for the day." John made a face. "Glad I got to you before she did; wouldn't fancy having to stuff your organs back in. I'd probably put your pancreas in the wrong way."

Chas reached over and pulled the x-ray from John's hands easily. Noticing a lightbox on the wall, he flipped it on and held the x-ray in front of it.

There was a vague outline of skin in the general shape of a body, but the mangled remains of his crushed skeleton was the most noticeable. His arms and legs were broken and pointed in ways that made his stomach drop at the sheer wrongness of it. It didn't look like a human body, more like a sack of skin that someone had filled with cement and bits of a human skeleton.

"I'm not sure what the autopsy would've been like, but that still looks pretty bad," said Chas, feeling slightly sick. How had John brought him back from that?

"Most people die in fires from inhaling the smoke," said John, hovering near Chas's arm. He pointed at the throat in the x-ray. "You were breathing carbon monoxide and cyanide instead of oxygen, and smoke that hot burns you from the inside out." He grimaced slightly. "Nasty way to go, although having a roof fall on your head isn't much better."

Chas's throat went dry. "The roof collapsed?" It would explain why his corpse looked like a squashed insect in the x-rays, but there'd been so many people still stuck inside the bar when he'd lost consciousness. Had any of them gotten out before the building caved in?

John was quiet for a long moment. "It came down just after you died."

There were still too many people trapped in the bar when he'd passed out. Chas took a deep breath and asked the question he didn't want to ask: "How many others died?"

John sighed and shook his head slightly. "Not counting you, forty-four already dead. Three more've been hanging on but won't make it through the night. Forty-seven all together."

Forty-seven people dead. Chas felt something drop in his chest. It still seemed like a bad dream, unreal.

"It would've been worse without you, Chas," said John.

It didn't make any sense. Why had he been granted a reprieve from death, but not any of the other casualties? "If you're bringing people back from the dead, why not resurrect all of them?" said Chas sharply, gesturing towards the bank of morgue refrigerators behind him. Each one held someone who was just as deserving of a second chance at life at he was. It wasn't fair that he was the only one brought back from the fire.

John stood in front of him, his face unnervingly blank for a moment. He took a step towards Chas, his face cold but barely-contained fury boiling just underneath. In spite of the other man's smaller size, Chas had to stop himself from taking a step back. "You think I can just snap me fingers and poof, everyone's alive again? That's not how this works," hissed John. "And even if I could bring everyone back, you don't think someone would notice if forty-seven extremely dead people just got up and buggered off? Fuck me, it's going to be hard enough trying to figure out a way to explain you."

Chas's stomach dropped. "Explain me?"

John gave him an almost pitying look. "You died, mate. I wasn't able to get your body healed fast enough to keep them from starting the process of declaring you legally dead." John pulled out a piece of paper from the folder and held it in front of Chas's face. "Look, here's your death certificate."

His face paling, Chas snatched the paper from John. His full name was at the top, and next to that was the date of he'd died. Some parts of the certificate weren't filled in yet, and his cause of death near the bottom wasn't named, only that it was pending investigation.

John tapped the certificate somewhere in the middle. "This part here's the kicker."

Chas quickly glanced to where John was pointing to. His brows furrowed in confusion. "What funeral home my body'd be going to? Why would that matter?"

"Because it means your family's already been told you were dead. See, they've made arraignments for your burial once the ME's done with you," said John. "It's a little late to go 'oops, clerical error, I'm really alive' when you're already on ice and your family's put the downpayment on your bloody casket."

"Oh." That would be a problem. "How long was I dead?"

John gave a strained smile. "Five days."