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has no sense of my motive in doing what I am. He is confused, and frightened. An abyss looms behind him, and he will enter it without what he craves, and will find within its darkness whatever waits for him, be it salvation of the highest order, or damnation without end.
    His lips tremble and curl and make a soundless word. No longer the plea for his soul to be cleansed. Just a very human wondering now in this cold place he cannot understand. Why?
    He seems to expect an answer. When none comes a sadness washes over the part of his face not wrapped with gauze, and his eye tracks lazily off me and rolls toward the ceiling. It fixes there as his chest settles a final time and stills.
    It seems that I stare at him for an eternity as that moment lingers. Watching his death as if it were frozen in time. A freeze frame in some movie whose ending is neither sad nor joyous. And maybe not an ending at all. I might stand there contemplating this, and him, but the shrill squeal of an alarm jolts me to a semblance of awareness as the doctor and nurse rush back in, the curtain flung open behind them. The officers are right behind, standing just outside, watching as the doctor and nurse work to get Eric’s heart started again. I am pushed clear of the gurney and find myself wedged against the wall as the flatlined heart monitor screams. I watch the urgent flurry of activity as more doctors and nurses join the battle to keep their patient alive. Doing their duty without hesitation. Loyal to their calling.
    I shuffle slowly away along the wall, past these would-be saviors, and through the line of protectors just beyond, until I am alone in the hall. The way out just before me. A short walk and two left turns, through officers and staff, all here this night for reasons that are right and true. All who would assume the same of me as I pass.
    But I would know. I would know what I have done. How deeply I have broken the covenant of my calling. I cannot face them, and so I turn away and move toward a door at the far end of the trauma ward. A passage to the interior of the hospital. A way out.
    *  *  *
    A side door lets me into the parking lot. The chill that chased me inside has doubled on itself, the breeze a stiff river of icy air as I weave through the haphazardly parked police cruisers. I reach into my pocket and have my key ready as I reach my car. My hand trembles as I try to slip it in the lock. It slips from my grip and drops to the asphalt at my feet.
    I let it lay there, my body tipping toward the driver’s door until I am leaning against it. My knees slowly buckle, body above folding toward the ground as I slide down the car, the leaden collapse leaving me sitting awkwardly between my car and a cruiser. I force my eyes shut. As if to keep within the tears that do come, because I do not know for whom I am crying. If it is for me I cannot allow that. I am undeserving of so much at this very moment. Pity, particularly, especially if it is of the variety manufactured by the self.
    Still, the tears do come, and after a moment I open my eyes and let them flow. Sobs do not rack my body. I weep silently and bring my hands together and press them against my mouth. It could be mistaken for the act of prayer, but it is not that. Not in the usual sense. Words do rise lightly behind my clenched hands, my own plea, offered in the dark of night, huddled in guilty sorrow on the chilly ground. Selfish words.
    God, help me…

Chapter Six
    Yesterday No More
    I stand at Katie’s grave and stare off over the trees, the new day’s blue twilight creeping toward orange, trickling through their naked limbs. Spindly gray fingers still in the calm before dawn, the loitering air painfully crisp. Stinging my face. Reaching effortlessly through my windbreaker to numb my flesh. My bone. I feel these things, these physical signs of discomfort, and they do register in my thoughts, but only as the most fleeting nuisance. Like white noise. There, but not of