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“Bad line, not bad time,” she repeated, trying not to sound as exasperated as she felt. “Hang on.” She took a few more steps and the crackling backed off a little more. “Is that better?”
“Bunny?” Her dad’s voice was much clearer, but still had that strange long-distance quality she hadn’t heard on a phone call since the late 90s. “Can you hear me? Where are you?”
“I’m working,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the souls still circling the light. At least she wasn’t lying. “Why? What’s the matter? Is there something wrong with the results of the autopsy?
Marshall paused so long on his end that she was just starting to think she might have been cut off from the call.
“Not really,” he said at last. His tone was flat, missing the cadence of his usual Southern lilt. As much as Bunny had actively tried to tune-up her accent, she still loved her dad’s drawl. “The results were inconclusive.”
Her heart bottomed out. She had been so certain that going to these lengths would finally get her one step closer to finding out what had actually happened to her mom. How the hell could the results come back as inconclusive? Her heart kicked back in, skipped a beat, and when straight into double-time.
“What does that even mean?” she breathed.
“It means that the official cause of death on your mother’s record will remain listed as a heart attack.”
“But I just don’t understand why they couldn’t tell what killed an otherwise healthy woman!” she argued, her voice jumping in volume. “She had a clean bill of health. She was baking!”
“This is the end of it, Bunny. I did what you wanted, even though it didn’t sit right with me.”
It was then that she recognized the flatness in her dad’s voice for what it really was: the sound of a broken heart.
“She’s going to be reburied tomorrow,” he added. “It’s time we all let her rest in peace.”
Bunny focused on the feeling of air slowly filling up her lungs. It smelled weird here in the Between—like a faint, odd mix of chicken soup and hot cocoa. She forced her mind to think about what she could smell in that moment, instead of letting her own emotions overwhelm her. She didn’t want to say something to her dad that she was going to come to regret.
“Okay,” she said as she began to exhale, fighting to keep her tone as measured as her breathing. “Okay, I understand. I’m sorry, Dad. I have to go. Work. But I love you. And I’m gonna come see you real soon.”
“It’s okay, Flopsy,” her dad replied. There was a slight softness to the edge of his voice, as though he was relieved she hadn’t started up. “I know you’re busy.”
And then, unexpectedly, right in the middle of so many dimensions that she had lost count of them all, Bunny felt her heart admit that it was more than a little bit broken, too.
“I’m not so busy that I can’t make time to see you,” she promised.
* * *
“Bunny!”
“Yeah?” she asked. The urgency in Dana’s voice made Bunny turn around. Seeing what her colleague was carrying sure made her wish she hadn’t.
“Here.” The harried-looking nurse dumped a plastic garbage bag in Bunny’s hands. “Get rid of these for me, will you?”
The outside of the bag had a trickle of liquid, near where the plastic had been tied in a knot. Experience told Bunny that it wasn’t water. Thank fuck she was wearing gloves.
“Nice,” she grumbled sarcastically, holding the bag a little farther away from her body when the unmistakable smell of used incontinence pads permeated her surroundings.
“I can’t stop,” Dana puffed, continuing down the hall away from the scene of her crime. “Mrs. Parker’s had a fall. It’s bad.”
“What, and you couldn’t find a bin on your way down there?” Bunny called after her, annoyed. The end of her question bounced off the empty corridor, Dana having disappeared around the corner. She slowly lowered her gaze to the bag. She would much rather have been holding a sack of venomous snakes at this point in time.
“Ugh.”
Bunny sighed and eyed the corridor. The incontinence supply cupboard was right there, maybe five or six yards away. If everyone else on shift was dealing with Mrs. Parker’s fall, they couldn’t be wondering where she was. Right?
Her shoes squeaked lightly as she entered the room, flicking on the light. The industrial-style metal shelving on both sides of the long, narrow room were packed full to the brim of every kind of incontinence aid known to mankind, with a few bedpans and colostomy bags thrown in for good measure. She stomped on the pedal of the hazardous waste bin just inside the door, deposited her gross cargo, and then gingerly peeled off her gloves and threw them in the trash too.
Having almost depleted her store of souls, it was time to refill her pendant. She glanced down at it as she washed her hands in the small sink, noticing the way the milky-white surface reflected rainbows deep within the stone itself. It really was a beautiful piece of jewelry, and one that she had often admired when her mom had been the one wearing it. Wearing it herself helped her feel closer to her mom now, as she pressed on with trying to solve the strange mystery surrounding her death.
The weight of it was comforting as she turned to the blank wall at the opposite end of the supply room. Bunny took a deep breath, holding the pendant in one hand and pressing the palm of the other to the wall. She visualized the lobby, with its impossibly high, vaulted ceilings and mystical aura. And then, before her very eyes, the doorway began to appear in a blaze of pearlescent light.
