It was raining when I woke up. I stole a blanket to cover myself as I ran back to the apartment I shared with Lydia and young Henry.

              “Mom!” exclaimed Lydia when she answered the door. She crushed me to her chest. “The police said you died in a drive-by shooting.”

              I held my head as my thoughts scrambled to arrange themselves. “I…” I remembered the sound of gunfire and the pain of the bullets tearing through my body. “I think I was shot.” I looked at my daughter. “Was anyone else hurt in the shooting?”

              “Andrew Diaz.”

              Tears streamed down my face at the news. He was a good man, my friend. It was a red-letter day when the police finally apprehended his killer. I do try to pay his grave a visit at least once a year.

              “Who did it? Do they know?”

              Lydia shook her head. “No. The detectives think it was gang violence.”

I keep a special diary filled with the names of the victims who crossed my examination table. I remember every one of their names. I know their ages. I know how they lived their lives and how they lost them. It’s one of the reasons why I am so good at my job.

___

              “Morning Nan!” calls Melody as she jogged down the steps of our shared penthouse apartment. She hugged me from behind as I stirred the scrambled eggs.

              Nan. There were worse names to be called, I guess. It would feel weird for her to call me “granny” or “grandmother” when I looked old enough to be her elder sister. My great-granddaughter was not familiar with my peculiarity. We had agreed when Henry got custody of her from his ex-wife that we would tell her the truth about me when she turned eighteen.

              “Hi, kiddo. How’d you sleep?”

              “Pretty good.” She sat down at the bar and poured herself a glass of orange juice. Melody was a bright, pretty girl with a good head on her shoulders. She provided a great deal of sanity to my daughter's and grandson’s bohemian lives. “Do you have another appointment with Dr. Grace today?”

              “Nope, just another day with the dead.”

              “You have the coolest job in the universe,” Melody exclaimed. “Can I do an internship with your office?”

              “I thought your school didn’t do internships until your senior year?”

              “I’m an advanced student!”

              “Good morning, ladies,” greeted Henry, coming down the stairs. “Don’t you both look extra lovely this morning?”

              “Dad?” asked Melody. “Can I do an internship at Nan’s office?”

              Henry froze. “Are you sure? She works with dead people every day.”

              “I know. It’s totally badass.”

              “Language,” I scold.

              “Nan is making a name for herself in a male-dominated profession. Why shouldn’t I want to be like her?”

              “That’s sweet.” My phone vibrated. “I got a body. I’ll see you guys later.”

___

              Two body bags were laying on the examination tables when I came into the morgue that morning. I frowned. A double murder.

              “Good morning, Dr. La Montaigne,” greeted Hannah, my assistant of two years and autopsy nurse. Her strawberry blonde hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail. There was a smear of strawberry jam on her chin.

              I gestured to her chin. She wiped the jam away with a tissue. “Good morning, Hannah. Double murder?”

              She nodded. “They were brought in a half hour ago. Oh, I think you should know. Detectives Bell and Reid were assigned this case.”

              “Oh.” The detectives were twenty-year veterans of the New York Police Department homicide division. While intelligent and capable detectives, they possessed the subtly of a foghorn. The pair frequently treated Hannah and me as if we were no more than glorified case files instead of trained medical professionals. “Well… Maybe they won’t stay long today.”

              I unzipped the first body bag and froze. My mouth went suddenly dry. I knew him. “Olly?” My voice was barely a whisper. His honey-blond hair was matted with blood. The left side of his face was swollen and bloody. Tears welled in his eyes. “Oh, my sweet Olly.”

              “Dr. La Montaigne, are you all right?”

              “Yes,” I sniffed. “I’m… fine. Could you leave me alone for a moment, Hannah?”

              She looked at me suspiciously. “Sure thing, doc. Do you want a soda from the machine?”

              “Sure, grape soda, please.” When I looked down at the body bag again, it was empty. “Olly?”

              I scanned the morgue. Oliver could have disappeared anywhere. I caught a glimpse of blonde hair through the window into my office. I hurried to my corner office. “Oliver?”

              “Ivy?” He looked up at me stunned for a moment, before grabbing a throw pillow from the sofa to cover himself. “Hi…”

              “Hi.”

              “Do you have something I could put on, sug? This office is a might cold.”

              “Yes, of course.” I returned to the office with a pair of scrubs. “Put this one. They should be your size.”

              “Much obliged.”

              It felt strange being in the same room again with Oliver. I had given up hope of ever seeing him again. Eighty years was a long time to wait. Looking at him was like remembering a thousand wonderful memories all at once.

              He shook me gently. “Ivy, honey, did you hear what I said?”

              “I’m sorry, no.”

              “I asked where we were.”

              “The morgue. You were brought in in a body bag with that other gentleman.”

              He read the embroidered tag on my scrubs. “You’re a medical examiner?” I nod. “I always knew you’d become somebody amazin’.”

              “What happened to you, Oliver?”

              He tugged the scrub shirt. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

              Aside from our shared gift of immortality, Oliver and I also share a particularly unfortunate side effect – memory loss. The effect was always temporary but could last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days.

              “It’s all right. Um…” I looked through the glass window. I could hear Hannah’s familiar singing voice coming down the hallway. “My assistant will be back soon.”

              “Ivy, we should talk.”

              “I’m sorry, Oliver. I must get back to work.”

              “Ivy!”

              Hannah looked around curiously. “Is it safe to come in? What happened to the other body bag?” I glanced back at my office, catching a glimpse of Oliver’s shoulder through my office window. “Is there someone in your office, Doc?”

              I shook my head. “Let’s get to work, Hannah. We mustn’t doddle.” I point to the remaining body bag. “Our victim has much to teach us.”

              She looked curiously at the now-empty body bag on the other autopsy table. “What happened to the other victim?”

              My face contorted into a phony smile as I tried to come up with a plausible excuse for what happened to the second body. Fortunate smiled upon me when the phone rang.

              “I’ll get it,” said Hannah.

              “Thank goodness.”