Cause of Death

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I sit in a small room in the medical examiner’s office.

I am here to identify a body.

It’s a sterile place made no less sterile by plastic flowers in a plastic vase. Pink and white — the flowers. The vase is a form of gray.

The boxy chamber might have been a waiting room for a doctor with an obscure specialty and few patients. Four chairs, three of them matching.

I pick the odd one. It creaks as I sit.

I’m wearing what I wear most days, a plaid sport coat — today navy blue — and tan slacks. I place my hands on my knees.

A woman enters. She blinks. Perhaps she doesn’t see many people here who’re my age: thirty-three. I stare at her the way one might at an apparition, if one believed in apparitions, though she bears no resemblance to Pax. She is not with the medical staff but a grief counselor. The kindly woman sits and bends toward me, at just the right angle. She’s practiced this. She says many things, in a soft voice, eyes locked onto mine, whether I glance toward her or not. She gives me a card.

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