Godfather: Part Three
She was seven again. She had hidden an injured rabbit under her bed. It had been hit by a car, but she had done her best to patch it up and take care of it. One night he showed up and sat at the head of her bed. Wendy had cried how she didn’t want to die, and he told her he wasn’t there for her. He told her to go find the flower. She told him, her mother said the flower wasn’t real. She sobbed herself sick, but when she reached out to hold his hand, he didn’t shy away like her mother said he would. Her mother is terrified that one day Wendy would touch Death, and he would take her with him.
Marie didn’t think anything of the pains down her right arm, or the cold sweats. She had been lifting bags full from shopping earlier, and she did have a double shot after dinner. Wendy wasn’t asking her to get in the car, she was demanding it. Death held down the fort as Wendy convinced Marie to go for a car ride. Marie didn’t understand, till Wendy was ranting how her face was changing colors. Marie was going to argue more, but then her fingertips went numb. She then agreed, something was wrong.
When the babysitter showed up, the girls were shaken but seemed to be ok. They clung to the teenager like drowning cats. The man in the suit rushed to leave, and told the teenager to stop feeding her hamster spaghetti. It would choke to death if she didn’t.
At the hospital, Wendy used her connections to get Marie in a little faster. She hated the system, but she knew how to break it when she needed to. Just as they were walking across the threshold, Marie collapsed in Wendy’s arms. Wendy was screaming, doctors rushing. Everything blurred by, and before Wendy knew it, Marie was stable, but still blacked out. Wendy just kept standing at the end of her bed. When Death appeared, he stood beside her for a moment.
“You know how I told you I had another Godchild before?”
Wendy could only nod. She was fighting the urge to scream. Only tears were escaping.
“He was a doctor, because it paid well back then. I would stand at the head of the bed when a patient was going to be healed by a special herb. If I was at the foot of the bed, they were going to die. He took that information and used it. Wrongly. He saved the life of a king by turning his bed around at the last moment. Since I am bound by promise, I couldn’t break my word. I told him that was wrong to turn the bed when he did. He would only get to do that once. Then he saved the Princess from the same fate. She didn’t marry him, there was no reward. A life had to be taken.”
“Can you….take me for her?” Wendy choked on a sob.
“I can’t. I can stand at the head of the bed, and my Goddaughter can go outside and finds said herb in the bushes. And if she puts it in her wife’s mouth, then I am bound by promise to heal her.”
“Only once,” Wendy vowed.
“Only once.”
When she found it she held it gently, with both hands around it. She could swear it pulsed to the beat of her heart. When she closed the curtains and put the flower in Marie’s mouth, she held her breath. Marie sighed, but continued to sleep. Death put a hand on her shoulder, and without thinking Wendy pulled him close and hugged him tight.
Wendy didn’t know he had a heartbeat. She didn’t know he was warmer up close, or smelled of ceder body soap. That he had stubble on his head, that one ear was slightly higher then the other. She noticed all the things that made him look human up close. She wondered if these were things the dying noticed in their the last moments.
If her mother could see her now, she’d drop dead.
In the morning, two Deaths met for coffee. The one who went by Mortis would give a rain check to his fellow reaper every time he was asked, but this morning it seemed important. One was a tall black man in a business suit, just slightly wrinkled. The other an older Middle Eastern man in a plush velvet vest and silk undershirt. His slacks were tailor made, and his pocket watch had the traditional symbols of a skull inside a circle of bones. His opera coat, complete with tails and shining brass buttons, rested on the back of his chair.
“Well, it happened. I’m a godfather,” the velvet death mused.
“Mine just used her gift.”
“Just now? Isn’t she in her forties?! How did she go so long and not use it?”
“A respect for death, I suppose.”
“Well, is she the reason you decided to take me up on coffee?”
“Partly. She worries about me.”
“Well, isn’t that sweet? Mine is just a babe. I don’t know if I should get my hopes up.”
“I think you should. Life can surprise you.”
