Iglesia………………………………………Episode 53

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode. Previous pertinent episode.

Paul ran down the stairs, trying to catch Iglesia before she left.

He had bolted upright in bed just a moment ago, stunned form sleep by remembering that he hadn’t had a chance last night to tell her that he would be working even later at the Medical Center tonight than usual. It was important, since it was the penultimate day of the peak of her cycle and he was supposed to try to to get her pregnant tonight.

She was going to be pissed enough at him for having to work late. The thought of how pissed she would be if she stayed up to wait for him …and then him standing her up…..well, his balls literally shriveled a little at the thought of that confrontation. Part of ‘the deal’ of their marriage was that he was a receptor for her temper. He preferred it that way, since he could usually deal with the tempest with a certain grace and equanimity, and it beat having her assault random strangers at the drop of a hat.

Their marriage, like many modern marriages, was a series of deals. They didn’t know one young couple who didn’t have some sort of similar deal. The sacrifices you had to make these days to get ahead…hell, to survive, dictated ‘deals.’

She was rising in the police force, and working the odd hours demanded by her calling, he was a resident at the most prestigious research hospital in the country, at the beck and call of his superiors, and often worked shifts in excess of thirty hours and was in effect, permanently on call. Her job called for a somewhat fiery temperament….his for the placid calm needed for the long stretches of study and boredom, and then spasms of life or death excitement as they received a subject that met their criteria of study at the Medical Center….life or death, and the line in between.

The process of death was the concern of his department, the line between them was his line of study, of work. He and his colleagues studied death. They measured and weighed it and observed it. The just before, and due to it’s unpredictability for the most part, mainly the after. They were the fully funded, elite, research oriented medical staff studying the process and act …and trying with every cutting edge technology to prevent it, of the bane of humanity, death itself.

Thus it was that when he bolted from slumber and rushed down the stairs to inform his wife that he would be home late….and found her very freshly dead, not more than a minute dead, on his doorstep….his reaction was considerably  different than most husbands in that unfortunate situation.