Necrosis.
Ardy
Published by Ardybooks at Smashwords.
Copyright 2012
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and you did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Andy Simon woke up that Friday morning with an extremely sharp, nearly crippling pain in his chest. He had never felt such pain. He had never used the word agony before, but in his mind there was no other way to describe it. For a moment there was nothing in his world but the pain and he sat up in his bed trying to scream and only managing a high pitched wheeze. His first thought was that it was a heart attack, but even in his agony he knew that heart attacks were felt on the left side of the chest and in the left arm. This horrible sensation was on his right side,  and way too high to be his appendix, which, he would remember later, he had had removed years ago.
“Oh, God!”
“Honey, what’s wrong?” His wife Rebecca had also sat up and had gone completely pale at the sight of her husband holding his chest and making a futile attempt to scream. “Honey? Andy! What’s going on?”
Andy could hardly hear her, and there was no way he’d be able to answer. She reached over and grabbed him by his trembling shoulders and the pain immediately subsided to a dull throb. Both relieved and terrified, Andy gasped for air in big, satisfying gulps.
“Andy?” Rebecca asked. “Are you alright? What happened?”
“It’s my chest,” Andy croaked. “I don’t know what it was, but it felt like someone stabbed me right below my right shoulder. It was like a heart attack or heartburn from hell or something.”
“Really?” she asked. “That sounds terrible!” She looked more than a little concerned.
“You have no idea, Bec,” he told her. “I thought I was going to die.”
“How’s it feel now?” She was pushing his sweat soaked hair from his brow and looking worriedly into his eyes.
“Better,” he said. “It’s just a dull throb now.”
“Do you think we should call the doctor, Andy?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll just take some aspirin and see if that helps.”
“An aspirin?” Rebecca asked. “I think this sounds too serious for an aspirin!”
“I’ll be fine,” Andy said, doing his best to cover up the fear he was feeling. “It hardly hurts anymore. And if it comes back, I’ll call the doctor. I promise.”
“If it’s as bad as you said it was,” she said, “you’d better call 911.”
Andy glanced over at the clock by the bed. It read 8:55 a.m.. Hadn’t his alarm gone off? He was supposed to wake up at 7:30.
“Damn it! I’m late for work!” he moaned.
“What do you mean you’re late?” Rebecca asked. “You’ve got plenty of time.”
Andy looked at his wife and said, “It’s almost nine, Bec!”
“It’s seven twenty-nine,” she told him. Andy was about to argue with her that he had seen the clock and he was more than capable of telling time when the blaring beep of the alarm interrupted him. Instinctively, he turned and hit the snooze button and then looked in confusion at the digital readout. It said 7:30.
“What the hell?”
“What is it?” Rebecca asked.
“I could have sworn it said eight fifty-five.”
Rebecca put the back of her hand against Andy’s forehead. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? Andy, you’re scaring me.”
Andy looked at the clock for a long moment. He was certain that it had read 8:55, yet there it was just now turning to 7:31. Between the clock and the pain that had awakened him, this was shaping up to be a strange morning. Sighing and praying that the pain wouldn’t return, Andy got out of bed.
“I’ll go make you some breakfast,” Rebecca said.
“I’m not hungry,” he said, heading towards the bathroom.
“Pop tarts and coffee, Andy? You’ve got to be hungry enough for that.”
“Fine,” he said, thinking that if the throbbing in his chest didn’t go away soon, he wouldn’t be able to eat even that. “Thanks, hon.” While Rebecca went down to the kitchen of their townhouse to start up the coffee pot and toast a couple of pop tarts, Andy went to the upstairs bathroom to shave, shower, and get ready for work. But the first thing he reached for was the bottle of aspirin on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. Even the throbbing was becoming unbearable. He struggled for a moment with the childproof cap and the popped it open and poured two pills into his hand. Then, feeling the throb spike for a moment, he took out two more.
The pills seemed to work. It may have been the placebo effect, but by the time he had lathered his face with shaving cream be barely felt any pain at all. Humming absently to himself, he proceeded to shave. After a few strokes with the razor he noticed that the shaving cream he was rinsing off the blades was tinted pink. He was bleeding. He never cut himself shaving. He hadn’t felt a cut either. When he was done shaving he checked his face for nicks and couldn’t find a single one.
Then he got into the shower. About a minute after the water started pouring over him he thought he heard the sound of sirens blaring nearby. That wasn’t unusual in this neighborhood, even at this time of day. Their townhouse was nice enough, and in a gated community, but just outside that gate was a dangerous intersection and a lower class neighborhood where the police showed up on an almost daily basis. But there was something about these sirens that bothered him. For one thing, they sounded close, as if they were right outside the townhouse, and it sounded like there were multiple sources; cops, ambulances, fire trucks. He turned the shower off for a moment to better hear them, but as soon as the water was off, the sirens stopped. He waited for a few seconds but heard nothing. Finally, shrugging, he turned the shower back on and finished up. He didn’t hear sirens again.
When he got back to the bedroom he flipped on the thirteen inch TV on the dresser to check out the morning news while he got dressed. Even though he turned the news on every morning, he rarely gave it more than a passing glance. It was usually just background noise. The first thing he saw on the screen did grab his attention though. The words “Breaking News” were flashing boldly across the bottom of the screen and the pretty young reporter that he’d always had a little crush on was standing outside what looked like his office building.
“A tragedy at the corner of North Street and Fourteenth Avenue this morning,” she said, revealing that it wasn’t his workplace but it was only a few blocks from it. “A car accident took the life of one man and sent another to the hospital. Police aren’t releasing any names at this point, but we can tell you that a white Dodge pickup truck crashed head on with a green Toyota sedan at the intersection. The driver of the pickup was killed instantly and the other man was rushed to Saint Mary’s Hospital. No word yet on his condition.”
Andy hoped that nobody he knew was involved. And, to add to the strange events of that morning, his own car was a green Toyota sedan.
The news then shifted to a human interest story about third graders writing letters to soldiers overseas and it was as if they hadn’t just reported about a man’s death. Andy went ahead and got dressed and by the time he was done straightening his pinstriped tie he was more worried about any traffic problems that the accident might cause than about whether he knew either of the victims. He flipped off the TV and went downstairs.
The smell of coffee pleasantly filled their small kitchen and two lightly toasted pop tarts sat on a plate on the table. Rebecca had made herself two fried eggs and some wheat toast and she was halfway through her own breakfast. Andy, who wasn’t much of a breakfast eater anyway, wasn’t sure if could even eat the pop tarts. He wasn’t hungry and for some reason the thought of eating made him a little nauseous. He got himself a cup of coffee with cream and three sugars and sat down in front of the pop tarts anyway.
“Feeling better, honey?” Rebecca asked him.
“Much,” Andy said, barely remembering the sharp pang that had awakened him. “Was there an accident or something? I heard sirens.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” she told him.
“Really?” he asked. “It sounded like they were right outside the house.”
“Nope,” she said. “But I did have the radio on while I was cooking. Maybe the music drowned out the sirens.”
“Yeah,” Andy said, forcing himself to take a bite of his pop tart. “Maybe.” But Andy thought that those sirens had been so loud that there was no way the radio would have drowned them out.
He had almost swallowed his pop tart when he realized that it had absolutely no taste whatsoever. He gagged and forced himself to swallow it anyway, but he found the tastelessness somehow more disgusting than if the pastry had actually had a bad flavor.
“Oh, yuck!” he said. “What kind of pop tarts are these?”
“They’re apple cinnamon. Why?”
“They’re disgusting!” Andy said. “Don’t buy this flavor again!”
“You didn’t complain yesterday,” she said, sounding a little offended.
“I ate these yesterday?” he asked. She nodded. “Well they didn’t taste like this.”
“Maybe you got a bad one,” she suggested.
But wasn’t about to try another bite, so he took a sip of his coffee instead. He almost expected the same odd blandness from the drink and was relieved when he found that it tasted like regular coffee. He downed the cup quickly and threw the pop tarts in the garbage. While he was getting his coat and grabbing his car keys from the hook by the door, Rebecca got up and began washing the dishes.
Andy paused to look at his wife for a moment. She was as beautiful today as she was on the day he’d married her four years ago; even more so now that she was six and a half months pregnant with their first child. Even with her auburn hair still in curlers and her face unmade-up, she was still the most beautiful person he knew. He realized again how lucky he was and how underappreciated she was. Well. He’d work to remedy that when he got home that night.
“What are you gaping at?” she asked him, stopping her dishwashing.
“You,” he told her. “You’re beautiful.”
“And if you keep standing there,” she said smiling, “you’re gonna be late for work.”
“Screw work,” he said. “I’d much rather be here with you.”
“Well,” she said, turning off the sink and coming across the kitchen to him, “as much as I would love that, if you stay home with me, you’ll be fired and we’ll be raising our daughter under a bridge.”
“Or our son,” he said with a smile. They had opted not to learn the sex of the baby. He opened his arms and she stepped into his embrace. He kissed her, not minding that her breath smelled like fried eggs and coffee, and held her tenderly for a moment that he hoped would never end.
The she looked up into his eyes and seductively whispered, “Don’t die on me, Andy. Please don’t do this to me. I need you. Our baby needs you.”
Shocked, Andy took a step back and stared at his wife. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard and the look on Rebecca’s face betrayed no emotion but love. At that moment he felt the pain in his chest spike for a second and then it faded away to the dull throb again.
“What is it?” Rebecca asked.
“What did you just say, Bec?” he asked her.
“I said, ‘you better go or you’re gonna be late,’” she said. “Andy, are you sure you’re alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“I’m fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “It’s just… I thought I heard… Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. I’d better get going.”
As he was filling his cup with more coffee for the road she went back to sink.
“Don’t forget your promise, Andy,” she called back over her shoulder. “If that pain comes back, you get some help right away.”
Not bother to mention that the pain was returning, he reiterated his promise. He went over and kissed his wife on the cheek, patted her pregnant belly, and went to the door.
“Bye, hon,” he said. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Andy,’ she said back. “Good-bye.”
Andy thought that he heard something ominous in his wife’s good-bye, as if she thought she’d never see him again, but he pushed the thought out of his mind and went out to his parking space.
It was a dank, cloudy morning, which was strange because the weatherman had predicted a sunny and cloudless day. But weathermen were almost never right, were they? The clouds looked more pregnant than his wife and Andy expected it to rain at any moment. He hurried to get to his car before he was caught in a downpour. 
For some strange reason, he was almost sure that his car wouldn’t be in its usual spot, but it was there, right where he had parked it the night before. In the dim light of that dreary morning the green car looked more black, and for a moment he was afraid to go near the vehicle. Like something out of a cheesy horror movie there was a loud clap of thunder that startled him and caused the throbbing in his chest to spike again.
Maybe I should just call in sick, he thought.
But he knew he wouldn’t. He had gone to work sicker and with worse aches and pains, two or three times with a hangover, and a little pain in his chest wasn’t going to keep him home.
When the rain did start, only a drizzle, but with a promise of a whole lot more, he finally headed to the car. He was planning on just getting in and driving away, but what he saw stopped him in his tracks. There was a rather large dent in the driver’s side fender and a large crack in the windshield. The car hadn’t been damaged yesterday. It looked like it had been in an accident, but it was parked in Andy’s space right by the curb. If another vehicle had hit his car, it would have to have been driving on the sidewalk. The only other thing he could think of was that someone had vandalized his car during the night with a baseball bat or something.
“Damn kids,” Andy muttered as he stood in the rain surveying the damage. It didn’t look too bad, and the car would probably work properly, but it would cost a few thousand to fix at least. Making a mental note to call his mechanic as soon as he could when he got to work, he got into the car.
It started up fine and Andy was sure that the damage was merely superficial. Before pulling out of this parking space he turned the radio on.
“More news on that fatal accident downtown,” a news reporter’s voice filled the car. Andy was about to reach down to change the channel but something stopped him. He had the feeling that the crash was somehow important and he was still concerned about traffic. Between the accident and the weather he was afraid he would be late for work.
“The names of the accident victims have still not been released,” the reporter said. “We were able to confirm that the vehicle driven by the man who was rushed to the hospital was indeed a Toyota Corolla. That man is undergoing emergency surgery right now. We will have more information as it comes to us.”
The station began playing some light rock ballad and Andy pulled the car out of the parking space. He sipped at his coffee as he drove and hoped he wouldn’t be late. On a good day the commute into town was half an hour long, but with the rain and the accident it could easily turn into forty-five minutes to an hour. He could be cutting it real close.
He pulled up to the gate that separated the Fairview Estates from the rest of the world. The metal gate was closed and the gatekeeper, an older Hispanic man named Joe, was at his post in the control booth as he was every day but Sunday. He smiled amiably as Andy pulled up, stopped the car, and rolled down the window.
“Morning, Mr. Simon,” Joe said. Despite the gloomy weather, Joe was usually cheerful self.
“Good morning, Joe,” Andy replied.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” There was no sarcasm in his voice as he looked up at the heavy ray storm clouds.
“Yeah,” Andy said, trying not to sound sarcastic himself, “lovely.”
Joe pressed the button that would open the gate and as the mechanized iron-barred contraption opened, he would say the same thing he said every morning: “Have a nice day, Mr. Simon.” Like Old Faithful, Joe could always be counted on for a friendly smile and a kind word. He did smile that big grin of his, but the words that came out of his mouth weren’t his usual warm farewell.
With a grin and a cheery tone, Joe said, “Sure is a shame, isn’t it?”
Andy almost just waved and drove on, half hearing what he’d expected to hear, but then Joe’s words sank in. 
“What’s that, Joe?”
Still grinning and with a cheery tone Joe said, “He was so young. And his poor wife! It’s a terrible tragedy!”
Andy gaped incredulously at the gatekeeper. Joe was speaking of some tragedy, but his expression said that he was commenting on nothing more than the weather. Feeling a strange sinking feeling in his gut, Andy just nodded, rolled up the window, and drove through the gate. He glanced back through the rearview mirror and saw just what he was expecting to see. The gate was closing behind him and Joe was waving goodbye.
“What the hell is going on today?” Andy asked himself as he left the Fairview Estates behind. 
The rain was coming down harder now and he turned on the windshield wipers as he pulled out onto the street. He reached for his coffee cup to take another sip when another bolt of pain hit his chest, this time traveling right through his right arm to his extended fingers. He winced and took a deep breath, praying that he wouldn’t crash his car as the pain subsided.
His chest still throbbing, Andy took a sip of the coffee. Instead of the bittersweet flavor of sugared coffee, his mouth was filled with what could only be blood. He spit the coppery tasting fluid out of his mouth and almost threw the cup at the crack in his windshield. The stuff that he spit onto his steering wheel and dashboard looked like regular coffee, as did the liquid in the cup, but his mouth still felt like it was full of blood.
He flipped on his emergency blinkers and pulled the car over. He pulled down his sun visor and looked into the vanity mirror. He opened his mouth wide looking for some sign of a wound or the red tint of blood he may have unknowingly coughed up, even though he couldn’t recall coughing that whole morning. There was nothing. He looked down at his coffee cup and the light brown liquid inside it looked perfectly fine. He took a tentative sip and found two things. First, it tasted like coffee, not a trace of blood in it. Second, he had lost his appetite for coffee that morning. He rolled down his window and poured the stuff out onto the street, letting the rain wash it away.
Before pulling back out onto the street, Andy seriously considered just turning around and heading back home. The pain in his chest was really bothering him, and he was becoming increasingly frightened by the strange goings on of that morning. He’d tell Rebecca that he wasn’t feeling well, maybe he’d even call the doctor like she’d asked him to. Andy wasn’t superstitious, but all the bizarre occurrences since he had woken up seemed to be telling him that he should not go to work. Something was terribly wrong and nobody seemed to notice it but him.
Instead, Andy told himself that he was crazy and decided to head on to work. He put the car in gear and drove back onto the street. The rain was really pouring now and he had to set his wipers on the highest setting just to be able to see the street in front of him. As a precaution, he turned on his headlights as well. But it seemed that he was the only driver on the road taking that precaution. None of the other cars he passed had their lights on. In fact, in the brief glimpses he could catch of them between the swipes of the wipers, it looked like most of the cars didn’t even have their wipers on. Oh well. The first thing his father had taught him while teaching him to drive was to assume that every other person on the road was a moron who had gotten their license out of a cereal box.
The radio reception was surprisingly clear, considering the weather. Usually in rain this heavy he would be hearing thick static and little else. One of his favorite songs came on. He had the words memorized and would usually sing along. He didn’t feel like singing this morning, but he was more than happy to listen. After the second chorus there was a musical bridge that lasted nearly a minute and featured some excellent guitar playing. It was his favorite part.
But this time he heard something he had never heard before. Barely audible under the music, Andy heard the screech of tires on asphalt and then a loud bang, followed by breaking glass, horns honking, and people screaming. Maybe he was picking up another station at the same time, which did happen from time to time, but whatever the other station was playing was incredibly bizarre. 
Then the expected static did come, drowning out the song and whatever else was coming through. Sighing, Andy reached down and hit the tuning button. All of his presets were out, which was highly unusual, so he pressed the seek button and found that the only station that he could pick up was a Christian one on which some old sounding man was preaching in a dry monotone. Andy wasn’t a religious man but he would rather hear the preaching than drive in silence. He hated driving without some sort of audio stimulation.
Barely hearing the preacher, he drove on. The pain in his chest seemed to grow with every beat of his heart and he made a mental not to stop at Stan Moore’s desk when he got to work. Stan was a classic hypochondriac and he had a virtual drug store in his cubicle. He was sure to have something that would help this… whatever is was.
“Let me ask you a question,” the radio preacher was saying, his toneless voice never changing. It was like listening to a drugged up robot. “What if today was your last day? Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whether you are at home, at work, driving in your car, would you be prepared? If God suddenly called you home, would you be ready to face him? You see, you are not guaranteed tomorrow. You are not even guaranteed the remainder of today. You could die in a car accident before even getting to work and never see it coming.”
The preacher’s words were a little too untimely for Andy’s taste, and the dry monotone was a little creepy, so he reached down to turn off the radio. As he pulled his hand back, relieved by the silence in the car, he suddenly had a sharp pain in his forehead, right over his left eye. Wincing, he put his hand to the spot and was shocked when he pulled it away to find his fingers stained with blood.
“What in the hell?” he almost screamed. He pulled the car over again and again pulled down the sun visor. Looking in the vanity mirror he saw that there was no visible wound. But then where had the blood come from? He looked back at his fingers and saw that they were clean. There was no indication that there had been anything on them at all, let alone blood.
Something strange was definitely going on. Andy was nearly terrified. The pain in his head and the disappearing blood on his fingers were the final straw. He wouldn’t be going to work. He wasn’t going home either. When he started driving again, he would go straight to the hospital, although part of him thought that instead of the emergency room, he would end up in the psych ward. Before heading there, he would make two calls on his cell: one to work and one to Rebecca to tell them what was going on.
He called Rebecca first. The phone rang four times and then he got the answering machine. Rebecca hadn’t been planning on going anywhere that day so she was either in bed, in the shower, or something unexpected had come up. After the outgoing message, Andy spoke.
“Bec, you there? Pick up if you’re there. Hello? Anyway, I’m not going to work today. I’m not feeling good at all so I decided to go to the hospital and get checked out. I’m sure everything is fine. I’ll call you from there to let you know what’s up. See you later, hon. I love you. Bye.”
Then he called work. 
“Archer Industries,” Michelle, the receptionist answered. She sounded distant.
“Yeah, Michelle, it’s Andy Simon,” he began. “Listen, I’m gonna…”
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are,” Michelle interrupted, “but you are one sick son of a-”
“Michelle?”
“Look, you asshole,” Michelle snarled, “if you think you’re being funny, you’re wrong!”
“Michelle, wait!” Andy said, flustered. “Just give a message to Mr. Archer for me!”
“I’m calling the police if you don’t hang up right now!”
“What?” Andy asked. Then quickly, “Tell him I’m sick and not coming in today!”
“You’re sick, alright!” Michelle yelled and then she hung up.
“What the hell?” Andy said, staring in awe at his phone. He considered calling again and trying to find out what had angered the receptionist so, but a sudden peak in the pain in both his head and chest changed his mind. Praying he’d make it there safely, Andy began his drive towards Saint Mary’s Hospital. The trip would take him past the intersection of North Street and 14th Avenue and he hoped that the accident there had been cleaned up so he wouldn’t be stalled by traffic.
He approached the intersection slowly and saw only one police car with its lights flashing, two tow trucks, an ambulance, and more than a few lookers on. By the side of the road lay a body covered with a white sheet. The white pickup had been pulled to one side and sat there, a total loss, like its driver. Blood was streaked across the hood and the windshield was completely gone. But it was the Corolla that caught his eye.  If Andy hadn’t been driving his own car, hw would have sworn he was watching it being towed away from the scene. It was identical to his own, right down to the dent in the rear bumper where Rebecca had backed into a pole in the grocery store parking lot. Had Andy left for work an hour earlier that could have indeed been his car, and he’d be the man in intensive care.
But the intersection had been cleared and traffic was running almost normally, so Andy went on through, trying not to stare at the twin car being towed away. Just looking at it made the strange pangs spike. He felt like vomiting.
Finally, he pulled into the hospital parking lot and parked right outside the emergence room entrance. He stopped his car and got out, hurrying through the rain, which none of the other soaked people he passed between the car and the building seemed to notice, and went into the hospital. He knew that it would be busy, with the accident and all, but the pain was getting worse and he was scared. He went to the front desk. There was a pretty looking young receptionist sitting there reading a magazine. She didn’t look up. There was a ring for service bell and he rang it. She still didn’t respond. He rang again. Nothing.
“Hello!” he said loudly. It was as if she couldn’t hear him. He was about to reach over the desk and grab the girl when a familiar voice stopped him. He hadn’t noticed the woman before, but now he couldn’t miss his wife standing at the receptionist’s desk.
“Excuse me,” Rebecca said. She was crying and sounded very scared.
“Rebecca?” Andy asked. “You got my message!”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” she said again. The woman behind the desk looked up and smiled.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes,” Rebecca said. “I was told my husband would be here.”
“I’m right here, Bec,” Andy said. “Don’t bother talking to her. She’s a-”
“What’s his name?” the receptionist asked.
“Andy Simon!” Andy said angrily.
“Andrew Simon,” Rebecca said. “He was in a car accident.”
The receptionist’s face immediately softened and Andy’s grew pale.
“What?” he asked, but neither woman seemed to hear him.
“Of course,” the receptionist said. “I’m sorry. He’s on the third floor in ICU. I was old to let you right up, Mrs. Simon. Do you need an escort?”
Before Rebecca could answer, a uniformed police officer and a doctor were at her side, helping her towards an elevator. Andy ran after them.
“Bec, wait!” he shouted. “I’m right here! I’m fine! Bec, where are you going?”
Rebecca and her escorts got into the elevator and Andy followed, though it was becoming clear that nobody could see or hear him. Things were beginning to fall into place. As impossible as it all was, everything was starting to make sense and Andy was terrified.
“How is he, doctor?” Rebecca asked as the elevator crept upwards.
The doctor and the policeman exchanged glances. The doctor cleared his throat and reluctantly reported:
“He’s in critical condition, Mrs. Simon. He was impaled through the chest by a piece of metal from the other vehicle. He has lost a lot of blood and he has a concussion from where his head hit the windshield. If he hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt, he would have been thrown through the windshield and we would be having a different conversation right now.”
Andy put a hand to his chest, where the pain was getting increasingly worse, and then to his head, where his hand once again came away covered with blood. The doctor was still talking, but Andy could barely understand him. He couldn’t have been in an accident. He didn’t remember any accident, and he was there, wide awake, healthy, and…
“Oh, God, that hurts!” He fell to the elevator floor on his knees. Clutching his chest, he stared up at the face of his weeping wife. 
“Tell me honestly, doctor,” she said, “what are his chances?”
The doctor hesitated, but as the elevator doors slid open he quietly said, “Not good. I’m very sorry.”
Andy somehow made it to his feet and was able to follow the three of them down the hallway. They passed a pair of swinging doors with the words “Intensive Care Unit. Authorized Personnel Only” printed on them with bold red letter. They paused outside the door to one of the rooms. Rebecca took a deep breath to calm her nerves.
“Mrs. Simon,” the police officer said, “are you sure that you want to go in there? You don’t have to.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion, “I do.”
For a moment, Andy was sure that Rebecca would tell the cop that a mistake had been made and the man lying on the bed in the room was not her husband.  But he followed her in and saw for himself. There, lying in the hospital bed and attached to half a dozen machines, lay Andy Simon. His exposed chest was bandaged, as was his head, but the face was unmistakable. Andy had been shaving that face for fifteen years.
“Andy!” Rebecca wailed. “Oh my God!”
She ran to his side and grabbed his hand, squeezing it tightly. The lifeless body gave no response. She was sobbing uncontrollably and the doctors, nurses, and the police officer all stood back respectfully, allowing her this moment. 
Andy couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Standing back a ways, he was able to hear the two nurses’ hushed whispers.
“It’s a real shame,” one said. “He was five minutes from work and now…”
“And his poor wife,” added the other. “It’s a tragedy, that’s for damned sure.”
“No!” Andy yelled. “No! That’s not me! That’s not me! I’m right here! Can’t you people see me? Damn it, I’m standing right here! Bec…”
One of the machines that Andy was hooked to started to beep frantically and the medical personnel moved in.
“Something’s wrong,” a doctor said.
“What? What’s going on?” Rebecca asked.
“Stand back please, Mrs. Simon,” the doctor said gently, but firmly.
She moved back a step and watched the doctors and nurses surround her husband. Andy moved to her and put a hand over her shoulder. He didn’t know if she could feel him, but he could feel her, and even her trembling sobs seemed to bring him comfort. But even so, he kept yelling.
“I’m here! I’m here! I’m here, DAMN YOU!!!”
“He’s going into cardiac arrest,” a doctor said.
“Oh no,” Rebecca cried. “No, Andy, no!”
Andy could feel pain coursing through his body, but he held tightly to his wife’s shoulder as he kept trying to get the attention of those in the room. The more  he yelled, the more he hurt, the louder the machines beeped, and the more frantic the doctors became. Finally, he could hold onto his wife no longer and he fell to the cold floor, staring in agony at the feet of the people around the body.
“I’m right here,” he whimpered. “I’m right here.”
“He’s flat lining!” he heard a nurse say. A few seconds later he heard someone yell, “Clear!” His body was jolted with a tingling heat and both the Andy on the floor and the Andy on the bed jerked violently. “Again. Clear!” The pain rocked him again.
“Don’t die on me, Andy,” Rebecca sobbed. “Please don’t do this to me! I need you! Our baby needs you!”
But it was no use. With every ounce of strength in what Andy was now sure wasn’t his body at all, he reached up and grasped his wife’s hand. The hand of the body on the bed closed as if gripping something. Then both hands released their grip and Andy Simon died.

Rebecca Simon nearly lost her baby and had to be rushed to a hospital room of her own where both she and the baby were stabilized. She stayed there for a few days to recover. In fact, the first time she left the hospital was for Andy’s funeral. Andy’s brother Terry handled the arrangements and he was the one who brought by a dress for her to wear and took her to the church. 
The only thing that had kept her going through those days was the strange sense of peace that had come over her as she watched her husband die. It was as if he was there, holding her hand and comforting her as the life drained from his body. 
Terry took her back home to the Fairview Estates after the funeral. She hadn’t been there since leaving a week ago for the hospital. The townhouse seemed so empty, as did she. Terry told her to change and shower and then sit down to rest while he went to the kitchen to cook her a good meal. She agreed and went to her bedroom while he went to the kitchen. It was her bedroom now, not hers and Andy’s.
She noticed that the answering machine on the phone in the bedroom was blinking with numerous messages. Andy had insisted that the machine be placed in the bedroom so that they could screen any calls without having to get out of bed. She saw that there were twenty-seven messages, which meant that the machine’s memory was most likely filled. Most were probably calls of condolences from family and friends, which she didn’t feel like listening to at the moment, but for some reason she placed the play button anyway.
Andy’s voice suddenly filled the room.
“Bec, you there? Pick up if you’re there. Hello? Anyway, I’m not going to work today.”
Rebecca stared in silent awe as the message played, not believing her ears. When Andy ended the message with, “I love you. Bye,” the machine informed her that message had been left at 9:15 a.m., Friday the seventeenth, twenty minutes after the accident. What that message had been left Andy was in an ambulance on his way to the hospital and she…
…and she was on the phone talking to a police officer.

Author’s note: I wrote this story a few years back and found it in a drawer. I always loved this little piece of strange fiction. It’s not exactly horror, but parts of it gave me goose bumps even as I was writing it. The Fairview Estates exists in my mind as a place where strange and sometimes terrifying things often happen to its residence. Andy Simon isn’t the first one either. Although I don’t mention the gated community in the story, Little Janie and her mother Angela in “Mommy, there’s something under my bed.” also live in the same community. I hope to revisit Fairview soon. Hope you will too.
Thanks for reading and thanks for buying this story, even if you got it for free thanks to the Smashwords.com summer deals. If you liked it, check out my other works.
Have fun reading, and if you get scared by some of my stories, then I’ve done my job.