In the Shadow of Blackbirds(23)

A gangly man in an olive-green police uniform opened a set of doors just beyond my feet, blinding my eyes with the glare of the sunlight that must have followed the storm.

“Holy—” The policeman’s round eyes widened above his mask. “She’s alive!”

“What?” A plumper male face popped up beside him.

“The girl with no pulse. She’s alive.”

“But—”

“Look at her.”

They stared at me as if they were witnessing a foul and bloated corpse rising from the grave.

The gurgling person beside me gasped once more and then fell silent. A whisper of a breeze shivered across my skin, drifted to the top of the ambulance, and passed through the roof, where it disappeared in a flood of yellow warmth.

“The person beside me just died,” I found myself saying.


TWO MASKED NURSES IN HATS LIKE GIANT ASPIRIN tablets wheeled me on a gurney through the hallways of a stark white hospital. Cots crowded both sides of the passageways—temporary beds for shivering flu victims who curled on their sides and coughed up blood. I saw cheekbones covered in mahogany spots and entire faces an unnatural reddish purple, which, like black feet, signified the end. The scent of antiseptic cleaning solutions burned my nostrils.

The stockier, white-haired nurse peeked over her mask. “Put your head down. You’re lucky to be alive, young lady. Let’s keep you that way.” Fatigue rolled off her body, exhausting me. “We’re in the middle of a plague, sweetheart, and you better heal up quick before this hospital kills you.”

They maneuvered me into one of the examination rooms, but a beady-eyed man in a white coat flailed his arms and shouted, “We’re out of room. She needs to go in the hall.”

“She got hit by lightning,” said the stocky nurse. “It’s not the flu.”

“There’s no room. Put her in the hall.”

The nurses swiveled me out the door and around the corner, and I gripped the sides of the gurney to make sure I didn’t slide and bruise like during my ambulance ride. More flu victims trembled on all sides of me. A rotten flavor lined my mouth. We seemed to travel down those writhing, wheezing, rancid corridors for a good five minutes.

Finally the nurses shoved me in a dark corner. I could see a black foot with a toe tag on a neighboring gurney, but the lack of light kept me from making out the rest of the body.

I grabbed a nurse’s cold hand. “Is my aunt here?”

“I don’t know, dear.”

“Please find her. Her name is Eva Ottinger. She works in the shipyard.”

“I’ll make sure we contact her. Stay here and rest. The doctor will see you soon.”

The nurses pattered away in their soft shoes, leaving me alone with the toe-tagged foot, the darkness, and the macabre chorus of drowning flu victims echoing off the walls.


“WHERE’S MY NIECE? MARY SHELLEY! MARY SHELLEY Black!”

I blinked my eyes open and saw Aunt Eva storming toward me in her greasy work clothes, blond hair flying, glasses shoved up on her nose, flu mask swelling and deflating from violent breaths. Anger radiated from her in pulsating waves, and strangely enough, I could taste her rage—hot, metallic, like a fork that’s been heated in an oven.

She gripped the side of my gurney. “My sister didn’t die bringing you into the world just so you could take yourself out of it. How dare you spit on your mother’s memory?”

“I’m sorry—”

“I’ve spent day and night worrying about you dying from the flu, and then you go and stick yourself in the middle of a lightning storm.”

“Stop shouting.”

“I will not stop shouting. They told me you died for several minutes. Someone at the front desk just showed me your blackened clock-gear necklace and those stupid goggles—”

“Please. Sick people are trying to sleep.” I grabbed her hand with my undamaged one.

The effect my touch had on her was immediate.

The metallic taste faded and transformed into a flavor sweet and light and airy, like whipped cream when it’s reached its point of perfection. Her shoulders lowered. She studied my fingers surrounding her flesh. I could see her hazel eyes watching my hand through her spectacles.

“What is it?” I asked. “Why are you looking at my hand that way? That’s not the one wrapped in bandages.”

“It’s nothing. I …” Her eyelids closed, and a blissful sigh escaped her lips beneath her mask, as if I’d given her a sedative. “I just don’t want you to die.”

I chewed my dry and cracking lip and tried to figure out how to tell her what had happened when I did briefly die.

“Is the library still open during the quarantine?” I asked.

Her eyes opened. “Why on earth are you asking about books? All you should be thinking about is healing.”

“I wonder if there are any books that discuss returning from the dead.”

“You shouldn’t read horror novels at a time like this.”

“No, not a novel, a textbook that discusses what typically happens when people die for a short while like I did. I’m curious if what happened to me is normal.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I need to tell you something, Aunt Eva, but you have to swear you won’t bring up Julius’s spirits.”