I knew it was her. The second I saw her sitting on the end of my bed, I knew she was the one. From her dirty-blonde hair to her everyday black slip-on shoes, I knew it was her.

I swallowed hard and parted my lips, suddenly embarrassed by the tubes in my nose and the constant beeping of the heart monitor.

“Hey,” I said. Maybe I should have introduced myself right away . . . but she proved she already knew a lot about me. She smiled meekly at me and stayed sitting.

“Hello, Lucian,” Death said to me.

I returned the weak smile, making an attempt to sit up a little straighter.

“Don’t, just sit still,” she said, this time standing. She moved with grace no one else could master, and I felt heavy and clumsy, even lying down.

“So—am I going to die now?” I asked, looking at her evenly.

“You’ve been dying for six months,” she pointed out gently.

“I know. But am I really going now?”

“Do you want to?”

I thought about it for a second, staring down at my arm where the IV’s sat in my veins, dripping into my weak bloodstream. I didn’t want to know what I looked like now. All I remembered of my last appearance was that my hair had gone from black to all white, and I was only twenty-six. No one knew how much longer I was going to live, but the odd glint in my doctor’s eye every time he smiled and said, “Don’t worry. We’re doing our very best,” made me think it wasn’t very long at all.

“No. Not yet,” I replied, looking back up at her again. She just raised her eyebrows and nodded her head, looking surprised. “What? Do I not have a choice?”

“No one really has a choice,” she said, pulling up a chair next to me. “And you’re not going to die this very instant. I was only curious.”

“Were you waiting for me to freak out and cause my own heart to fail? Then you wouldn’t have anything to really do,” I laughed weakly. “I’m a fighter.”

“I know you are. Don’t worry, I notice things that go on in life, too. It’s not just death.”

“Must be one helluva job.”

“I try not to think of it that way.”

There was a quiet knock on the door and my nurse of the day walked in, smiling when she saw I was awake.

“Feeling all right?” she asked. I glanced at Death by my side, noticing how she leaned back in her chair, waiting. The nurse didn’t seem to notice her.

“Yeah I’m all right,” I replied. The nurse began to write down all of what the machines said about me.

“Did you ever want to die an old man, Lucian?” Death asked me. I looked at her, then at the nurse, who was still taking notes. I silently shrugged and thought about it.

I could never really see myself as an old man. As a kid I was on the go all the time, running and falling and never pausing to remember to cry. Sitting too long made me antsy and impatient. In college I was the guy running across the parking lot at top speed, launching myself over the orange and white construction barrels just for the hell of it. I would have been one of those old men that tried to stay in touch with the young crowd, keep up on the times. I had never wanted to be one stuck in his house for the rest of his years, only journeying outside to walk down the path and get the mail. Then again, I’d never wanted to die young.

The nurse asked me if I needed anything, and I replied with a no, just wanting her out so I could talk freely without being labeled as ‘crazy’ as well as ‘dying’.

“I heard what you were thinking,” Death said as soon as the door shut.

“Yeah? Do you do that to everyone?” I asked, looking at her.

“No. But you’re a special case, I guess,” she shrugged. I just looked at her for a few seconds, marveling at how normal she looked.

“Do you have a name?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“Culture, the individual.” She raised her eyes to me. “What do you think it is?”

I thought for a second, surveying her carefully before answering, “Ophelia.”

She wrinkled her nose and sat back in the chair. “Such a proper name.”

“I think it suits you,” I shrugged. There was silence and I glanced up at the heart monitor and all the numbers. I had gotten used to sleeping through the noise, but sometimes I listened to it too long and too hard and it nearly drove me insane.

“If you’re not here to take me—away—why are you here?” I asked evenly, still looking up at the green numbers.

“Do you know the expression ‘my life flashed before my eyes’?” Ophelia Death asked me. I shrugged, figuring everyone did. “Is your life flashing now?”

“No. Should it be?”

“When did you know about me for the first time, Lucian?”

“About you?”

“Death.”

I thought back to when I had found out, when I had comprehended the term for the first time. It had to be very early on since it was a prominent theme throughout my life.

I got it. Yes I understood that my first pet at five, a canary, was never coming back after the neighbor’s cat got to him. I knew what it meant when someone was taken to the cemetery in the Magician’s Box, as my mother called it. But I became obsessed with death when I was nine when my mother’s father died suddenly of a heart attack on his sunny spread of a golf course over in Boston, Massachusetts. I don’t think he ever really liked me much due to my excessive reclusive behavior, but he was the one who gave me the best and worst moral standards. And I was at his funeral, too.

“Donald, right?” Ophelia asked, squinting slightly to remember.

“Yeah,” I replied, confirming my grandfather’s name.

“Would you like to start there?”

I shifted a little out of nervousness. “Where?”

“At his funeral. You’ve got to start looking back at some point,” Ophelia shrugged. “Unless you’ve got a stronger memory from before that.”

“None that come to mind right now.”

“Then there wasn’t anything hugely important. So we’ll start there.” She stood up and sat on the bed next to me. I didn’t know what to expect, and she paused. “Just close your eyes.”

I did as she said, taking a somewhat difficult deep breath, and tried to relax. I listened to the whistling of my breath mixed with the oxygen, and I could almost hear the slow dripping of the fluids held in the bags next to me. The heart monitor clicked out its beats like a metronome following the slow march of my life. I curl my hand around the edge of my sheets, looking at the color inside my eyes; pale reddish-pink and flesh tones. I could feel Ophelia watching me.

“So is this the scary part?” I asked, my eyes still closed.

“I like to think of it as the best part,” Ophelia said. I felt her hand on my arm, fingers cold, and started slightly. She said to relax again, and I felt a cool breath on my forehead. It cleared my thoughts instantly, and I felt the breath leave my lungs. I suddenly felt very light, and the metronome of my heartbeat slowly faded into the silence where I knew Ophelia was waiting.

So it turns out that being in college is the school you don’t want to be in with your best friend 1,000 miles away REALLY sucks. So I came up with this. Yes, don’t worry I am trying to work on other projects like City Morgue and Ballad De Suburbia. I’ve just had the worst depression/writers block, and this finally came through. I figured I’d post it…so, please review!