Page 28 of Veil of Death and Shadow

Until it wasn’t.

Eventually, Frank’s upward swing shifted focus, moving just as dramatically in the opposite direction. He stopped coming downstairs altogether, handling the bookkeeping and work from his apartment upstairs.

One day, a few months ago, he marched downstairs, announced that he’d be moving into the med center, and told Sora and I to take over his apartment, as he wouldn’t be back.

At first, we didn’t take him seriously, both of us convinced this was just another of his strange whims.

Two days later, he slipped into the first coma. His vital signs remained steady, and whatever tests we could find and afford came back fine, but he still didn’t wake up. For weeks, we had no idea what was wrong with him.

Until one day, two weeks into it, he opened his eyes.

Only then did he see fit to offer any explanation.

Apparently, just before The Undoing, he’d been diagnosed with a rare cancer. One that he’d stubbornly told no one about, and one that had been transformed by whatever magic lived in the world now, fueling him somehow. He was fine for a few days, got some of his affairs in order, and then fell into a coma again.

After that, every few weeks, the timing impossible to predict, he’d simply wake up. As if nothing had happened. He would remain lucid and like the old Frank for a few hours—once, an entire day—with enough energy to hang out in the diner, visit with his friends, critique our new dishes, and reminisce about the Before. And then, just as suddenly, he’d fall back into a sleep, even deeper than the one before.

When he was first diagnosed, his doctor had given him less than six months to live, but whatever power had been unleashed in the world had sustained him far longer. He thought of everyday beyond that prognosis as a gift, but I couldn’t help feeling like his disease was a ticking time bomb.

No one fully understood the effects this new world had on the human body, especially since it seemed to affect everyone so differently. Would we have Frank for another month or another decade? Would he get better, these deep sleeps his body’s way of healing? Or would he simply fall asleep so deeply one day that he simply would never wake up? There was no way of knowing.

I stopped outside of his door, my fingers trembling as I fought for the strength to open it and see him for myself. The memory of every patient I knew who’d occupied this room before him filtered to the top. They were all long gone now.

Years before Frank took up residence here, before Jo and the other volunteers even, back when this was just a run-of-the-mill hospice, I volunteered a few times a week. For a while, it had seemed the obvious place for me.

If I was going to be haunted by Death, why not spend my time in the place where Death was most welcomed—desired, even?

It was difficult, at first—getting attached to people, knowing my time with them would always be cut short.

Sometimes, I swore I could feel it, would know within a day or two when someone would surrender to Death’s grip, their breath a rattle in the shape of his name.

Eventually, the more time I spent here, the more I started to understand that in some cases, death could be a form of grace. That sometimes there was peace in the quiet of it, in the absence of a pain that couldn’t be otherwise silenced.

But I had never known the people in the hospice—who they were before they stepped into this building, before they desired that specific kind of peace. They didn’t take shape in my life outside of these walls, I didn’t cling to them in the way that I did to people like Sora.

And as much as I desperately tried to keep everyone but her at a distance, Frank had long ago weaseled his way in. Become family.

People had a way of doing that, no matter how hard I fought against it. One moment, they were acquaintances—sometimes, like in Frank’s case, one I didn’t even particularly like much—then, one day I’d wake up to find they’d become an essential figure in my life.

It was infuriating and heartbreaking all at once—and each time it happened, it was like the protective walls I’d built had all been for nothing. They’d have to be restructured and reinforced to account for the new liability just waiting to rip my heart out all over again.

Other than Sora and Amto Amani, Frank was the longest fixture in my life. And while this place was no longer one meant to house people as they waited for death to deliver them to whatever came next, I still struggled to shake the feeling each time I walked inside.

Like I carried the stench of decay in my skin.

My world had become inseparable from Frank’s, even more so since The Undoing. I worked in his restaurant, I lived in his apartment, I fed his community.

Like I said, he’d weaseled his way in. And that meant that every day, I woke up petrified that whatever had been holding death back would let go, that whatever strange gift Frank had been given in the form of added time would be stolen—permanently.

It may have been greedy to demand more, to want Frank to have more time, but I couldn’t help it.

I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t want to lose anyone else.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. I waited until I was steady, and then I opened his door, silently praying thatwhatever strange sense I had was wrong. Distorted. Just this once.

The room was white, as plain as it had always been. Frank didn’t have much taste for knick-knacks or decor. His apartment had been equally plain before Sora and I moved in—nothing but the essentials, though many of those were missing, too.

The familiar, gentle whir of beeps permeated the room, the machines scattered around the bed blinking their usual lines and numbers. We had a few generators, but the med center hadn’t experienced power issues in the last year or two—almost like the building itself protected the people here.

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