• Snow swirled around the windshield of the car as I drove down the icy highway. My best friend, Tessa, was in the passenger seat chattering away about this girl’s birthday party we’d left about forty-five minutes prior. I had just dropped off a couple other friends of ours at their respective houses and I was on my way to Tessa’s house to drop her off, too. Car-pooling. It saves the planet.

    “I can not believe that they’re together, now. I could have sworn that they hated each other.” Tess slurped at the blue slushy thing we’d all picked up at the gas station just down the street from where the party was. I didn’t get one, since I’m the designated driver. It was raining and dark, and I’d rather not kill myself over frozen blueberry goodness, thank you.
    “As long it as wears a skirt and giggles at anything he says, he doesn’t care who it is. And she didn’t hate him so much as she was annoyed at him for not asking him out sooner.” Tess gave me a rather disbelieving look, and I just barely dignified it with a glance. “What? Psych major, here. I know all.”
    “Uh huh. Sure.” I assumed that when she looked out the window, she was trying to figure out where we were. She wasn’t the type to leave a conversation by dramatically glancing to the right. “I think we’re coming up on the exit, but I dunno. I’m not used to coming home this way.”
    “If it makes you feel any better, I could just drive around aimlessly until we find it.” I glanced in my mirrors to see if there was enough room to get over. It wasn’t so late that there were hardly any people on the roads. In fact, it was kind of crowded. That’s the holidays, for ya. Lots of last minute shoppers that have somehow forgotten how to drive. “Calm down. I know my way around town. We’ll find it. And in time for your parents not to kill you.” The poor girl’s parents were so paranoid it was unreal. We’d been surprised that she could even be out this late, let alone come to the party in the first place. “And if we are late, just tell them that it was the snow’s fault. Say I didn’t want to speed and get us in a wreck, and it’s not a lie. So there.”
    “Gee, thanks. I feel ever so much better, now.” There was a moment of silence, and I do mean that literally. After only about a second and a half, Tess started hopping up and down in her seat as she pouted out into the swirling snow storm. “Ha! There it is. Right? That’s the exit? Awesome! I’m gonna live! I enjoy living!”
    Chuckling as she danced triumphantly in her seat, I signaled to move over into the next lane.

    The next few moments passed in a confused flash of lights, grinding metal, and rubber as my car screeched across the pavement. I think there must have been screaming, too, but I couldn’t tell where it came from. Me? Tess? Neither of us? I had no idea. I had even less of an idea about what happened to cause whatever it was that was happening right then. I was so confused, and the world spinning around us didn’t help at all. I’d say that I was happy that the spinning around and around didn’t last long, but that would be a lie. What stopped us was immensely worse. I was sure that we were both screaming by that point, as we felt ourselves cross over the icy pavement and onto the frozen grass and snow. For one moment, I hoped that we would be able to balance there on the edge, and somehow I had the presence of mind to lean away from the steep hill. But of course I couldn’t change the outcome. If a three thousand pound car wants to fall, nothing is going to stop it.
    “Oh, my God!” Tess screamed and covered her face with her arms. I’d done the same just as we slammed over the edge and started tumbling end over end down the hill. I wasn’t awake when we reached the bottom. At least, I don’t think I was. I remember some of what happened, but everything past this point isn’t much more than vague dialogue and hazy pictures.

    “Ugh… Uh, Samantha… Sam? You okay? Oh, God, you are not okay…” There were some pounding noises, but I didn’t know what they were. “Hey! Help! Help us, please! Help!” More pounding noises. Was she hitting the window? And why did my head hurt?

    Everything hurts…so bad…

    “Samantha, someone’s coming. Stay with me, ‘kay? We’re gonna get help.” I have no idea if I mumbled a response or if I only thought I did.
    “Is anyone hurt?” A stranger’s voice.
    “Yes! My friend is hurt really bad! Get help!” A pause. “He’s calling an ambulance, Samantha. It’ll be alright. Just hang on.”

    Time must have passed, because everything went black and the next thing I knew, I was being pulled out of the car. I couldn’t see Tess. All I could see was white. Lots and lots of white. And some pieces from my car were laying here and there. Great. But white? The sky was gray, not white… Was that the ground?
    “Easy now, it’ll be alright. We’ve got you.” More strangers. I tried to look at them, but it was so hard to focus on anything.
    “H-h…” A few of them told me not to try to talk. I did anyway. “How… bad?” I was strapped in by now. “Where…”
    “Your friend is fine. Mostly minor injuries. She’ll live.” I glanced at him. The only reason I was able too, though, was because he was standing right by my head. I couldn’t look anywhere else. I think they had my neck braced. “You might have a concussion, probably some broken bones… But you’ll be fine.” He nodded emphatically, but his face was rather grim for someone who was supposed to be looking at a definite survivor.
    I drifted off for awhile after that. The words “you’ll be fine” kept echoing through my head, but I didn’t believe any of it.

    The next time I woke up – though I swear that I couldn’t have been sleeping, since I felt far from rested – there was quite a lot of noise going on past the glass walls of the room I was in. It took a few moments to focus on it enough to determine that the sounds belonged to a heated argument. I ignored it for about a minute or so, as I was more intent on figuring out exactly where I was.
    It smelled kind of like antiseptic, or something. The floors were all white tile and the walls were white plaster. Then there was the incessant beeping coming from somewhere nearby. I’d seen this sort of thing on TV. Was in a hospital? Why on earth…? Oh, the crash. I was hurt. Now I remembered.
    As soon as I was conscious enough to remember, the pain began to return, but it wasn’t nearly so bad as before. I assumed I was one some sort of pain killer by now. Maybe morphine? I liked morphine. Morphine was my friend.
    Someone’s yell startled me, and I remembered the argument. I switched my focus to the shapes beyond the pulled blinds near the door. If they’d pulled them shut so I couldn’t see or hear the people outside the room, then they’d failed miserably.
    “…dammit, let us in to see her!”
    “We’re her parents!”
    “She’s my best friend! I was in the car with her!”
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t! Not yet, at least! Please, let the nurses get her taken care of, and then you can see her! You have to wait!”
    “But we’re her parents!”
    Nurses? I glanced around, and sure enough, there were a couple of them getting me hooked up to machines or some other such thing, checking vitals, and doing whatever else nurses do. I’d never been in a hospital before, so since I really had no idea what they were doing – and I didn’t care to know – I just stared up at the ceiling.
    One of them must have noticed that I wasn’t unconscious – or whatever state that I had been in – any more, so she started talking to me. “Hi, Samantha. We’re going to take good care of you.” She sounded perfectly sincere and kind, but I didn’t want that. When I looked at her, there was no room for interpretation on what I wanted. She frowned a little, apparently annoyed that her uselessly kind words were unwanted. “We have your arm in a splint while we’re getting the cast made. I’ll also have to ask you not to move. You fractured a few ribs, so you’ll have to be very careful until they heal. You lost quite a lot of blood, so we’re taking care of that.” After gesturing to something, which I refused to look at, she walked up to stand by the side of my bed. I also refused to look at any of the tubes that I knew were stuck in my arms, and I think that bugged her, too. Knowing they’re there is one thing. Seeing them is crossing a line that I did not want to cross right then. Or ever, for that matter. “I need to ask you a few questions, Samantha. Do you feel dizzy?”
    “A little.”
    “Are you experiencing any headaches?”
    “Yeah. I did kind of hit my head on my car, though.”
    “Mmhmm. Are you having difficulty concentrating or do you have any loss of memory? Do you know how you got here?”
    “I guess, and not really. Am I supposed to?”
    She frowned, but didn’t look surprised. I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Probably bad. “We think you have a concussion, but we won’t know how bad it is until we can get an MRI. Until then, we’ll have to keep you awake, just in case. We’ll check on you every little bit. If you need any help, just press this button.” She pointed one of the few buttons on a little remote and handed it to me. “We’ll be right out there, if you need us.” It seemed like this nurse was only capable of talking in the third person plural. If I was in any other situation, it probably would have annoyed me. Or made me laugh. One of the two.
    I coughed and winced, which got her attention before she got even halfway to the door. So I didn’t have to call her, “hey, you!” I suppose that’s a good thing. More polite, anyway. “I got a question.” She spun, looking excited, friendly, and way too worried all at the same time. “Can my parents and Tess come in?”
    “You don’t need to take visitors until you’re feeling better.”
    “I want to. Please, send them in?”
    Even though the nurse looked rather displeased at my request, she followed the other out the door without any complaints. Together, they interrupted the argument that had barely died down at all in the last few minutes. I couldn’t hear what any of them said now that they weren’t yelling, but I didn’t care. As long as I got to see my family and my best friend, I didn’t care.
    With the supervision of who I guessed to be my doctor, my parents rushed into the room. Tess followed so close on their heels that I worried that they’d trip over each other. All of them were nothing short of shouting my name as they sprinted to my bedside. Between the three of them, I almost suffocated. “Too… much… hugging!” I gasped – half overly dramatic and half actually gasping for breath. “I’m fine, guys. Totally fine. I feel great. You’re making it seem way worse than it is.”
    My mom pursed her lips as she leaned away from me, looking more worried than I had ever seen her. And believe me, that was saying something. The woman would worry over her children if they were walking across a perfectly flat surface, devoid even of leaves and pebbles. Very hazardous, believe me. Bugs - or, God forbid, a bird - might trip over them, which could cause a horrific chain reaction the likes of which we have never known.
    So anyway, my mom looked worried.
    “Honey, you… Oh, dear. You look just…” Lacking the ability to tell me herself, she glanced at my father to silently beg him to be the one to tell me that I looked awful. He only patted me on my unbroken shoulder. In contrast to my mom, he never sweated the small stuff. And geeze, did he look stressed. I slumped in my hospital bed, feeling guilty.
    “Am I really that bad?” They both started arguing right away that I looked wonderful, that I would recover for sure. “Tell the truth.” I interrupted them, which didn’t seem to make them very pleased with me. It also succeeded in shutting them up, which had not been the goal I’d had in mind. So, not feeling very patient, I focused my attention on Tessa. Tired, a little bruised, but she looked okay. “How bad am I?”
    “Um… You don’t… look very good, Sammy.” Such a good friend, she was. Tess always told the truth, even if it wasn’t pretty. “You don’t, err, want a mirror, do you?” Her eyes darted away for a second, then back to me. She looked more than a little disturbed. Maybe at the thought of seeing my face when I caught a glimpse of the damage.
    I shook my head, but stopped right away. It hurt. Apparently, morphine does not solve all problems. Darnit. “Heck no.” I never cursed in front of my parents. Common courtesy. “Can I, uh, just sleep for a bit? I am really tired.” The doctor, who was standing by the door, tried to answer me. My mom got there first.
    “No, honey. Not until they know if you have a concussion or not. And if you do, sleeping isn’t a very good idea.” She patted me on my hand when I groaned. No sleep, then. Fabulous.
    After a few minutes of trying to keep the conversation casual – the operative word there is ‘trying’ – I finally just asked my parents to go get me something to eat. They said they’d go ask the nurses, and left. They dragged the protesting doctor along with them, thank goodness. Tess stayed. I think my parents knew that I was kind of kicking them out to talk to her, but I was glad that they left anyway. Saying I was sorry wasn’t a real talent of mine, and I preferred to do it without an audience. Not that I was never sorry for anything, because I was. I’d made my fair share of mistakes. It just felt kind of awkward and personal. Not something to do in front of a crowd. Maybe that was just me, though.
    I barely waited until the door was shut behind my parents before I blurted out the apology. “Tessa, I’m really sorry. So, so sorry. It was my fault. I wasn’t being careful. I don’t even remember what happened! I mean, geeze…”
    Tess pulled one of the chairs – a spinning one, which had been in front a bunch of monitors – and sat down beside me. “It’s not your fault, Samantha. That guy was drunk and reckless. He did this.” I didn’t know what my expression was, but it apparently prompted her to inform me one what happened to the guy. “He wasn’t hurt too bad. I feel bad for thinking it, but it’s just not fair! You didn’t do anything to deserve this! He’s sitting in his little jail cell and you’re here, hooked up to a hundred different machines that do who knows what… I mean, you’re in the friggen’ hospital!” She shut her eyes and took a slow, calming breath. I wondered if she actually counted to ten. “It’s not your fault, Samantha. Not at all.”
    “But I can’t remember what happened. I know we were talking about getting you home on time, and then everything got all confusing.” I gasped, having realized something, then winced. Gasping hurt, too. “Your parents’ll kill you! Oh, crap. Crap crap crap!”
    “No, they won’t. I called them and told them what happened. They’re out in the waiting room with your little brother. The rest of your family is on the way.” Now I felt even more guilty. It was getting so late, and they were all leaving their cozy homes to come see me… Ugh. “Anyway, don’t worry about not remembering stuff. They said that’s normal with concussions. Normally for a bit before the crash, during, and then a little bit after. Something like that. Sort of a patchwork memory kind of thing.” She spun the chair in half circles, always turning back before she spun too far. “Do you want to know what happened?” I nodded just enough to not cause myself a lot of pain. “Kay. Well, see, the drunk guy had been driving really fast. Like, insanely fast. The speed limit was sixty, you know? We were going, what, forty? The cops said he had to have been going at least seventy-five, eighty. Crazy jerk. So he hit a patch of really slick ice and started spinning out of control. He hit the back of our car, which spun us all over the place, and so then it just became a crazy pileup of about… five cars, I think. Maybe six. There were a few other injuries and, ah, one… death. Some guy. I never saw him. He was in the other car that fell off the side of the highway, though. Someone who had seen it all happen pulled his car over and came to check on everyone. He called an ambulance. I don’t know how long it took for them to get there, but it felt like an hour. We were hanging upside down, you know. It’s where we landed when we stopped tumbling. It was crazy. They said we’re both lucky that we’re alive.” Tess had continued to rock the chair back and forth until the mentioned the other death. Her gaze had fixed intently on a one of the floor tiles at that point.
    I was glad that she wasn’t looking at me, because I suddenly winced in pain. For some weird reason, Tessa looked like she felt guilty. It made no sense. She hadn’t been driving. I had. It was my fault, if anyone’s. Or maybe she was just worried, which was also something I didn’t like. I’d never liked people worrying over me. And since I didn’t want to make her any more stressed than she already was, I kept the pain to myself. I’d just tell my doctor or the nurse the next time I saw them.
    By the time Tess looked up, I’d composed my features as well as I could. She didn’t seem to suspect anything.
    We chatted about completely fickle topics for a little while – both of us pointedly avoiding any serious conversation - but when the pain started to get worse, I made up something about wanting to talk to my parents again.
    Just before she walked away, Tess glanced at me again. She was frowning, which wasn’t a good sign. “You okay, Sam? You look pale. Kind of grayish, actually...” I was sure that she’d have pointed out how short my breaths were becoming, but I’d been working to control them as best I could. I was kind of taking advantage of the fact that Tessa was usually distracted and incoherent when it got too late. Maybe if it had been the middle of the day, she wouldn’t have been fooled.
    “Nah, I’m fine. Really. I’ll talk to you later.”
    “Um, alright. See you in a bit.” Nodding absently, she walked out the door and shut it behind her. As soon as she left, I stopped trying to breathe so slowly. It was really starting to hurt my chest. More so than it already did, anyway. So with that, my increasingly painful headache, and the pain in my chest, I felt absolutely awful.
    I fumbled for the little remote and stabbed at the button the nurse had pointed to. It felt out of my hand after that.
    People rushed in and started shouting at each other.
    “Her heart!”
    “She can’t breathe!”
    “She’s going into shock!”

    There was more, but I’ll keep the details to myself. You don’t need to be bothered with any of it.

    They tried to help me. Really, they did. If I hadn’t been so focused on trying to breathe and other such things, I’d have paid enough attention to what they were doing to actually re-tell the story properly. But as it was, I lost consciousness. I didn’t wake up for a long time. And when I finally did, I felt great.

    My eyes opened to an empty room. Softly beating monitor. Tubes attaching me to machines. Drawn curtains. Same as before. But the pain was gone. Maybe they’d put me into a coma. I’d heard they did that sometimes, with people who were in too much pain. So I was healed, then? Fabulous.
    After about a minute, I felt that it was safe to try to sit up. When I didn’t double over in agony, I tested my ability to climb out of bed. Again, no pain. I’d been asleep for awhile, then. But not too long, since the cast was still on my arm. It didn’t hurt, though, so maybe that was almost healed, too.
    The floor felt cold on my bare feet, but it didn’t really bother me. As I walked across it toward the door, I did a quick once over of myself. I was still wearing one of those ridiculous wrap around hospital gowns. I rolled my eyes, but what could you really do about that sort of thing? Maybe they’d give me back my clothes if I asked, though. That’d be nice.
    The hallway wasn’t completely deserted, as there were a few people wandering around, or nurses going from one room to the next, but it felt deserted. Too dreary. I guessed hospitals were just like that.
    Since no one had objected so far, I left my room and slowly made my way down the hall. Just imagine how happy everyone would be when they saw me up and out of bed! I know for a fact that they’d all thought that I was doomed to die, but medicine could do wonders these days. I’d actually made it through.
    The waiting room was easier to find than I had thought it would be, and a lot of the people I knew was there. My parents, my little brother, Tess and a few other friends, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins… All of them were focused on the doctor that was talking. A few of them looked grim. Some were crying. My grandpa, who thought everything in life was some sort of conspiracy, was furious.
    I took in a deep breath, smiled, and walked up to them. “Hey, guys.” I looked around, expecting them to gasp in shock, jump up and hug me, or something. Now, I’m not a fan of attention. Not at all. But I did kind of expect for them to show a little bit of emotion when they saw that I was fine and out of the coma. But there was nothing. They didn’t even look up. I must have been too quiet. I took a few steps closer. “Guys?” Nothing. “I’m over here.” Still nothing.
    What was wrong? Why couldn’t they hear me? Was something wrong with my voice? I walked up to my mom and put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t stop crying. I think that was when I really started paying attention to the doctor.
    “I’m so sorry. We did what we could.”
    …What?
    More people started to cry. My grandpa was raving about a lawsuit. My dad hugged my mom. My little brother – he was only eleven, and he was small for his age – had just been sitting alone and crying until Tess moved to sit beside him. He hugged her, she hugged him, and they cried.
    What was going on?
    “No. No, no. No way. I’m here. I’m right here!” I yelled, but no one looked up. The doctor’s shoulders sagged as he walked away from them. I dropped to my knees. “No. I can’t… I can’t be…”
    “Dead?”
    The voice startled me. My head snapped up and I frantically searched the room for the family member who had finally, finally seen me. None of them had. I sat on my heels. I couldn’t cry. I should be crying right now, I thought, but I just couldn’t. I felt… strangely numb.
    “Yes, because you’re dead.”
    The voice again! I spun around as best as I could from my sitting position. I don’t know who I expected to see, but some blond guy in what I guessed to be his upper twenties, dressed in khakis and a dark blue t-shirt was definitely not it. I frowned. “Who are you?”
    “Michael.” He remained leaning against the wall, watching me.
    “Why are you the only one that can see me? And hear me?”
    “I already told you, Samantha. You’re dead.”
    That startled me. I got to my feet. “How do you know my name?”
    “Because I am Michael.”
    “Yeah, I get that. But how do you know my name?” What was wrong with him? Did he not know how to answer questions properly?
    He smiled a little bit at my response. Just the faintest smile though. So faint that I couldn’t tell for sure if I’d imagined it or not. “I know your name because you’re in my book, here.” He held up a small black notebook, then began aimlessly flipping through it. Or, at least, I thought it had been aimless. That is, before he started reading aloud some of what it read. “Samantha Allison Reed. Death, 11:03 PM. Car accident. Excessive internal bleeding.” He looked up. “There’s more. Would you like to hear it?”
    I didn’t know whether to be afraid, angry, or annoyed. I think I felt a mixture of all three. “No, thanks.” I muttered half sarcastically and half I-didn’t-know-what. I looked at the book. “Where’d you get that?”
    “Long story.” He put it away. “Well, let’s get going, shall we?”
    “What do mean, get going?” I took a small step away from him, toward my hospital room.
    “Well, you can’t think that you’ll be staying here. You have to move on, Samantha. Everyone does.” His eyes followed me as I moved away. “Doesn’t matter where you go. Death is a fact of life. Sad, but true. You have to come with me.” I shook my head, moving farther away. “Just be happy that Samael wasn’t the one to come for you.”
    “The angel of death?” I frowned at him, glanced at my room, and back at him. I don’t know why I retreated that direction. I should have been moving toward my family. But none of them could see or hear me. They weren’t any kind of shelter. So I deduced that this had to be a dream. Maybe that was why I was going back. Some unconscious attempt at waking up, perhaps?
    “Yes, one of them. I am the other.” His hint of a smile returned. “Don’t you recognize my name?”
    “Michael…” That time I stopped and stared blankly at him. “You’re trying to tell me that you’re an archangel?”
    “I am.” He continued to barely smile. I have no idea why, but that annoyed me more than a blank look or an actual grin would have. This just made him seem so irritatingly amused, it was just… annoying. “The good angel of death, as it were. He, however, is what most people consider to be the grim reaper. So be grateful that he isn’t the one standing before you. Though admittedly, he’d have dragged you off to a very unpleasant place before your spirit had a chance to even realize what was happening.” He watched me in silence for a few moments as I started back toward my room. I kept my wary gaze on him. “What you’re doing right now is returning to the place of your death. Not everyone does it. Just those who can’t accept the reality of it. They don’t even realize that they’re doing it until they’re right there beside their body.”
    “I told you, I can’t be dead! When I woke up, I was hooked up to machines, and they were beeping for my heart-rate and everything, and… I just…”
    “What happened to the tubes that you had been hooked up to? Wasn’t there one in your arm?” He pointed to my right arm. The unbroken one. I looked down at it. It was devoid of anything medical. “Do you remember actually coming out into the hall? Touching the door and actually, physically, opening it? The cold of the tile on your feet is a memory. As was the beeping on the monitors, and everything else.” I took a step away. “The human mind is amazing, but it is also stubborn. Quite frankly, it’s only an echo of your mind that’s keeping you aware right now. But that echo is capable of rejecting death and filling the void with memories to make the body think it still exists in the world. That’s why you heard the beeping and felt the cold tile. Those were both memories of how things had been in the recent past. However, once the reality of the situation is pointed out, the mind is unable to keep up its fabrication of life and accepts the inevitable. Look at your left arm, Samantha.” I hesitated, then looked down. It hung loose at my side. No cast. I didn’t look back up at him. “I’m very sorry, but you died. You will need to come with me.”
    I shook my head, still not looking at him, and turned to walk back down the hall. I needed to see it for myself. I didn’t want to, but I needed to. When I reached for the handle on the door, he startled me by speaking. Michael was standing right beside me, though I hadn’t heard him coming. “Don’t bother with the handle. Just walk right through.” I glowered half-heartedly, but did so. I passed right through the door, choking back a sob as I did. He stopped just inside the door, patiently waiting, as I slowly walked up to my bedside. The monitors were blank. The bed sheet was pulled over the pillow, concealing what was beneath. I stopped beside the bed, unsure of what to do. I looked at him. Wordlessly, he came to stand on the opposite side of the hospital bed and reached to lift the covers.
    “So you can move stuff, but I can’t?” This offended me, for some reason. Much more than it should have.
    “I’ve never actually been alive, so I’m not limited like you are. But people who are alive can’t see me, so I’m only allowed to affect the world when they aren’t around.” He looked at me, his hands gently clutching the blanket, ready to pull it back. I swallowed hard, then nodded. He pulled back the blanket. Gray with death, there I was. I staggered away from my corpse.
    Like I’d said before. Seeing is a lot different than just knowing.
    “Oh, dear God…” I buried my face in my hands and fell to my knees. I heard the rustle of the covers as he pulled them back over my body. Normally, speaking in the third person would have amused me, and I’d have made some joke about it. Not now. I didn’t think I’d ever joke again.
    I gasped out a sob when I felt his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t look at him.
    I was dead. I am dead. Oh, my God, I’m dead…
    “Yes, I’m very sorry.” He’d already acted like he could read my mind a couple times before. Maybe he could. Or maybe he just really knew people. Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised. It was the very least of my concerns.
    I sat there for awhile. I don’t know for how long. I never did shed a tear. I don’t think dead people can. That bothered me, too. Stupid, how some the little things seem to be especially awful when others don’t.
    When I looked up, it was another one of these little things that sparked a question. I don’t know why I felt obligated to ask, but I was just really curious. Maybe I just wanted to keep my mind off my… my death.
    I’d stared at his plain t-shirt for a few seconds before I spoke up. He’d gone from looking concerned to concerned and curious at whatever it was I was doing. “Why… are you wearing a t-shirt and jeans?” I looked at his feet. “And tennis shoes.” That almost made him really smile, I think. Maybe. “Sorry, just… curious. It seems weird to me, that a… um…”
    “That an angel of death would be dressed so casually?” He smiled, just a bit. Again. I guess spending so much time around depressed dead people couldn’t do much to keep him in a good mood. “I learned rather quickly that it was more calming for people to see me dressed like one of them, rather than in my usual attire. It bothers them less, at least.” He got to his feet, and held out his hand to help me up. I accepted, then uselessly dusted myself off. “Are you ready to go?”
    “Almost. Wait just a minute.” He watched as I hurried back out the door to the waiting room. Most everyone seemed to have cried themselves dry. My grandpa was done ranting, and was now sitting in a chair with his head in his hands. My brother was sitting on my mom’s lap, and she was cradling him. My dad hugged them both.
    Normally, I despise clichés. But right then, I didn’t mind it. One by one, I went around the room and said my goodbyes. I wished my family and my friends well, and for them to remember me fondly. I kissed some of them on the cheek. Others, I hugged. I hugged and kissed my parents and brother good-bye. I thanked Tess, and hugged her. Not one of them reacted, but I hadn’t expected them to. “Bye, everyone. You’ll all be fine without me, I’m sure. See you on the other side.” I was starting to choke up again, so even though they couldn’t see me, I waved good-bye. Michael stood about ten feet behind me, watching in grim but polite silence.
    “Not just yet.” I told him as I passed, heading for the stairs. I knew he was following without having to look back. As I ascended the stairs, I considered how amazing it was that I’d gone from completely rejecting reality to accepting it as it was. The sky is blue. The grass is green. I am dead.
    When I got to the roof, I just stepped right through the door – literally – and trotted up to the edge of the building. Again, Michael stopped a few respectful paces behind me. “Not a dramatic sunrise, or sunset. No last glimpse of the sun.” I looked up. “Not even the moon. Just the clouds.” I searched the sky for a bright spot, where the moon would be. I found it. “But it’s still snowing, so that’s fine.” I held my hand out and watched as the flakes passed through it. I smiled, but didn’t laugh. “I really love the snow.”
    I sighed, waited just a moment longer, then turned to face the good angel of death. “Alright, Mikey.” The side of his mouth twitched. “I’m ready, now. Let’s go.” He nodded, gestured for me to join him, and I did. With him in his blue jeans and t-shirt and me in my stupid hospital robe, I let him lead me out of this world. I never looked back.