Page 57 of The Sin Eater
Intuition my ass. If my heart knew what it wanted, I’d be in a much better place. Even as those words float through my brain, though, I can hear the lie. I want Damon, my big, strong security guard. I want him to bring me coffee and tell me what to do in bed because in both situations, he’ll get my order right. He didn’t seem too put off by the idea that I’m psychic, so maybe, if I’m a very lucky girl, I’ll be able to keep the rest of it a secret.
I doubt it, though. Something’ll happen, it’ll come out, and then it’ll be Bumfuck, Arkansas, all over again.
Makes me sick to my stomach.
My phone’s chirp is just louder than the hiss of the steamer. It’s Bob, wondering when I’m coming back. The rehab floor sent us a new patient, and the on-call pathologist wants to start the post in an hour.
Jett must hear me grumbling, because they set a cookie on top of my coffee cup. “I only ordered a—”
“Hush. It’s oatmeal, and I can tell by looking at you that you haven’t had breakfast. You’ll be nicer to the dead people if you’ve got something in your belly.”
I have to blink back some suspicious moisture before I can respond. “I’m always nice to the dead people. It’s the only thing I can do for them, and they don’t talk back.”
“And this is something I can do for you.” They slide the cup and the cookie across the counter. “Besides, it’s so quiet in here the cookies’ll go stale before I can sell them.”
For a second we simply grin at each other. “Thanks,” I say, and tap my bank card on the white reader. “I hope business picks up for you.”
“And I hope you listen to your heart.”
I grin through the groan I can’t stifle. “What are you? A Hallmark card?”
We’re both laughing as I head to the door. I can’t stop for a cigarette, so I snuggle into my jacket and make the trip to the hospital as fast as possible. My tentative good mood shatters as soon as I hit the morgue. The corpse’s plea for help hits me before I get the door fully open.
What the fuck is happening to me?
The wailing only gets louder once I’m inside. This person—I still don’t know if they’re a man or a woman—didnotexpect to die, and they’re flat-out terrified of facing whoever they expect to face without having begged for forgiveness.
While it may or may not be the devil talking to me, somebody is.
And it fucking freaks me out.
Except I’m at work, so I can’t have a meltdown. Instead, I channel all that energy into annoyance. Not only am I going to have to extend my stretch of penance, now I’m going to have to put the lovely oatmeal cookie Jett gave me on the chest of a dead person and I won’t be able to eat it until later. “Damn it.”
Bob glances at me from his workstation. “We needed some action today. I’ve only got so much patience for you and your shitty attitude.”
Despite his grin, I can tell he’s not entirely joking.Whatever. “Do you want to assist or to play secretary?”
His grin goes sly. “Secretary.”
“Sure.” I down some coffee and head for the autopsy room. Dr. On-Call is rattling around in the supply room, which is my territory and doesn’t bode well for the rest of the procedure. Perhaps I should have scanned the patient’s chart to make sure they don’t have any extra limbs or weigh four hundred pounds or something.
It turns out, Dr. On-Call was simply unfamiliar with our system, so I spend a few minutes getting him oriented. There’s nothing anatomically unusual about the patient; he’d been in his fifties, with a long-term neurologic condition, and as a result of the autopsy, we are able to confirm that he’d had a massive stroke.
Once the case is complete, I send Dr. On-Call and Bob off to write their reports and I pull the cookie out of my pocket. It’s a little crumbly around the edges, and I break off a chunk—like, half—for myself before putting the remainder on the corpse’s chest. Then it’s simply a matter of finishing my own charting and fabricating a reason for hanging around after Bob and the doc leave. I spend the time debating whether I need to restart my penance clock or if I can double up one day since I had to eat sin twice in close succession.
I’m leaning toward whatever’s shortest, tbh.
Neither Bob nor the on-call doc questions my flimsy excuse. Once I’m alone, I dim most of the lights and simply... sit. For reasons I don’t want to consider, I feel the need to ask my heart what it thinks about all of this.
Jk. After eight hours of a wailing corpse and Bob’s low-level antagonism, I just want some quiet. My heart is keeping its opinions to itself.
Mostly.
Ever since tangling with James Smith, I approach sin eating with more nerves than I used to. All afternoon, I’ve been telling myself that nothing bad will happen, as if I could make myself believe it. I should have said, “Most likely nothing bad will happen,” or “Odds are, nothing bad will happen,” or anything that would have given fate some wiggle room.
Instead, I think about god and about Damon, not necessarily in that order. God, because the corpse’s faith is so absolute he’s making me doubt my own lack of belief.
Damon, because I’d rather think about Damon than just about anything else. Good thing we don’t have plans for tonight and I’ll be done with my penance before the next weekend, read date night. Grabbing my ’nads, at least metaphorically, I tug the gurney out of the cadaver cabinet and unzip the corpse.