Death and the Doctor

Sterile, cold, and loud, Even death hates hospitals.

I landed in a hospital with a sigh, it didn’t look like a battle hospital so I assumed it was a normal hospital many years in the future. My subject was in the back, already taking their final breaths, silently calling to me, accepting their fate.

“Sorry,” said a doctor standing by me, “Family only.” I turned meeting eyes with him, he was no doubt talking to me.

“You can see me?” I asked, very confused as I looked down at myself. I wasn’t the usually misty self like I usually was.

“Yes, don’t tell me this is your first time.” He said with a chuckle.

I stood there like an idiot and blinked. “Do you know who you are messing with?” My voice low and dangerous.

“Well, I am fairly certain I know who you are yes. Unless, I am mistaken.” He said it like a tease, almost waiting for me to tell him.

I scowled, why would this mere human get so cocky with me.Well, my knife was in my boot, what cool weapon would give off death vibes? Reaching into my boot I quickly shaped the knife into a really huge scythe, trying to make myself look as scary as possible. “I am Death.”

“Well, then I am not mistaken.” He said with a smile. “Who are you taking?” He asked very calmly like there wasn’t anything wired about death showing up and talking to it.

“Um, The guy down the corner. Why?” Yeah, someone smarter would’ve sounded scarier… oh well.

“Just curious. I’ll go ahead and fill out the form. Have a nice day.” He walked off, perfectly fine like that was totally normal.

Without any other choice, I went and collected the dead man, I did give him an extra minute because of that conversation. However, it wasn’t until a very long time later that it finally made sense

— 🗡 —

The next time I saw him, he was a lot younger, rarely does death ever meet someone twice in the same day. This doctor could hardly have been ten the next time our paths crossed… according to me.

I landed on destroyed street, almost everything in ruin, houses, the road, everything. There were men and women cleaning up, looking for bodies. Only a few days prior had my visit taken many of the souls, it seemed that two were left behind.

I made my way to a house on the end of the street, once blue from the chipped paint. Under a pile of rubble, there were two souls that were holding on very tightly. Or, someone was holding onto them.

A younger version of the doctor I had met years ago held onto a man and woman’s hands. Tear’s filled with fear and sorrow fell from his little eyes. Watching the scene, my own heart seemed to bend.

He looked up right at me, his eyes gaining just a little bit of hope. “Can you help them?” He asked, looking to his parents. “Please?”

I bit my lip, kneeling next to him. “I’m sorry, but they’re already gone.” with a gentle touch, I reached to both of them, taking their souls in my arms. “I’m sorry child.”

“Who are you?”He whispered, his eyes filled with both awe, and fear.

With a heavy sigh, I stood, holding both souls in my arms. “I am death.”

He paused for a moment, looking at me in confusion. “I always thought death was a boy. Not a girl.”

I laughed at his answer, praying it wouldn’t be the last time our paths crossed. “Yeah, most people do. Goodbye.”

— 🗡 —

Over the next few years, my nightly travels as death took me to the doctor. Most times he was operating on a patient with all kinds of advanced technology I’d never seen. Although, I wouldn’t let anyone poke that many sharp things in me no matter how close to death I was.

Almost every time we met eyes, each apologizing. I never understood him, not for a long time. He had dedicated his life to save people from me, and yet, whenever we met, he let me take them.

Until one day.

I landed in a forest, just a little ways away from a long strip of black, road. A smoking vehicle laid on its side off the road. For a moment it seemed the doctor had might need me, until I listened to the calling closer. It wasn’t him, but someone much closer to him.

Walking to the other side of the car, I saw the only other person, the young boy the doctor was trying to save. His son.

“C’mon, C’mon” He mumbled trying to will his son to start breathing again. He turned seeing me and shook his head, his eyes a furious glare. “Don’t you dare death. Don’t you dare take him.”

Biting my lip, and kneeling next to him studying the young boy. He looked like his father, no more than three years old “I’m sorry.” I whispered to the doctor. “But, I have to take him. Sometimes letting someone go is better then keeping them.”

“How do you know? All you do is take.” He spat out.

“Because sometimes I don’t take.” The counter coming quicker than I thought. “Sometimes, I give into my human nature and I give, letting someone live. Every time that person hates me. Every time they wish they would’ve died. Or, they turn into a tyrant. They are a horrible person, someone that never should have been allowed to live. Would you rather your son be the killer of thousands, live a life no one wants to live? Or would you like me to save him? That is why you let me do my work. You know there is a way the world works.”

He sniffled letting go of his son, tears coming down his cheek. “I just didn’t think this would have to happen to me, again.”

Reaching out a hand to brush a hair out of the son’s face, I took his life gently. “I’m sorry. I really am. I don’t know why you can see me. Most people can’t they just see the product of my work.”

He smiled for a grim second. “You still can’t tell?”

I paused in my thought, looking down at the little boy. No name came to mind, memories and faces but no names but “Mommy and Daddy” He was too young to know more than that. “No I can’t.” I told the doctor.

“Well, I guess I won’t ruin it for you.” The grim sadness returned to his eyes as he spoke

I nodded with a sigh coming out “that would be good, but man is that annoying. I will see you next time.”

“Goodbye, Red.” He said as I left.

I didn’t realize it at first, but it soon hit me. I never told him my name. He only knew me as death.

— 🗡 —

After that night, the dreams stopped. I didn’t see him hardly at all for years. So long, he became nothing more than a memory in my mind.

Until I saw him in the middle of a ballroom.

Ok, not exactly. I saw his father and pregnant mother in the middle of a ballroom.

What I was doing in that very ballroom is a story for another day, but all you need to know, is I was there as a guard.

Watching from my assigned corner, everything started to become very dull. The ballroom was being used as a boring meeting room for the poor who needed medical help from the King and Queen.

Rubbing my eyes, I checked my watch for the hundredth time, the convention still had an hour left.

“Excuse me, ma’am” A simple voice asked.

Looking up, my eyes did a double take, the man looked almost identical to the doctor I once knew. Same kind eyes, the stumble on his beard almost the same. Then only difference was the pointed nose the father carried. My doctor must get his softer nose from his mother.

After a moment their waiting eyes clued me in that they had asked for directions. “Yes, sorry sir.” I said befuddled. “The pregnancy ward is to your right, down the hall a bit. There should be some signs.” I watched them leave, the father keeping a hand on the back of his expecting wife.

I couldn’t be sure that was the doctor she carried, but something told me it was.

The only strange thing was that those two were not the couple I’d taken all those years ago. The couple I had once assumed to be the doctor’s parents were not the one’s I’d just seen.

— 🗡 —

As time progressed, the doctor popped back up into my dreams. Sometimes he was a doctor on duty, letting a patient go. Some days he was a kind soul, staying with an elder for their final moments.

Once he was a teenage boy, getting in trouble with his friends. I remember showing up in the middle of the night, a soul falling into my arms, still surprised at the sound of a gun shot. Turning, I met eyes with a younger doctor, one of his friends the one holding the gun.

No matter how I met him, we always met eyes, and every time I did my job. Never spoke a word to each other, just nodded in silence.

Sometimes, I’d peek into a room, feeling just an almost call for one of his patients, sometimes I let the doctor do his job, knowing that the man or women he was working on’s time was not up.

Never did his name come up. No doubt should our paths cross in the living world, we would know each other, but it had yet to occur.

As always, my life went on. I lived, did the flow of things, and one step after another lead to a war. This was only years after meeting his parents.

Everything kept going as usual, I did what was expected of me, lived life and fought whatever was thrown at me. Eventually, most of the world’s population ended up in a safe zone, the world as we knew it torn apart by radiation and chemicals no one understood.

I was a leader at the time and stayed behind to finish the war, try and make peace with our oppressors, and find a way to contain the radiation.

That’s when I started seeing another side of my dreams with the doctor. He was much younger, it was before he had his son, before he was a normal doctor. Here, he was in training.

The tools he used during dreams were just like the ones in a normal hospital. Sometimes I even knew his patients.

My dreams with him and reality slowly became one. I’d sleep and see him on a battlefield I’d just read about. Sometimes he would be transporting wounded from a battle that would happen in a few days.

I always kept an eye out for him, just in case we ran into each other. However we never found each other like that. It was always in my dreams, I took his patients, he often looked at me with frustration.

One night, I landed on a battlefield filled with dying men. He was there, doing everything to combat me.

“Not that one.” I said as he knelt down to try and save a life I was there to take.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” He mumbled making his way to a different man.

Just like that, we worked almost hand in hand. He’d stop me from someone he knew he could save, I’d take those who were already falling into my arms.

“Hey death!” He called at one point. “You know why I can see you?”

I shook my head, taking a soul and guiding him to heaven. “Nope, do you?”

He chuckled, and nodded. “Yup, just seeing if you know everything I do.”

“Wish I did Doc, at this point I think you know more about this than I do.”

“Well, let me know when you do Red.”

I turned to him before heading to the next soul. “How do you know my name? I’ve never told you it.”

He full on laughed as he packed up his medical bag. “Red, you are the general of the army, your face is plastered everywhere with the technology we have. Who doesn’t know who you are?”

“And you’re not suspicious that you’re quite literally following death?”

He shook his head even before I finished my question. “No, if anything, I feel like you’d know what to do. Leading an army just seems up your ally, like you’ve done it before.”

“True.” I headed off to take my last soul.

I didn’t tell him that the last time I was in charge of an army, we lost and all my men died. Just a minor detail.

— 🗡 —

A year and a half later, a story filled only with heroics made its way back to me.

It went something like this:

A young field doctor risked his life to save many trapped men. These men were trapped behind enemy lines, possibly in radiation territory. This young doctor, single handily snuck through enemy territory, and risked being poisoned by radiation to rescue those men. He didn’t lose a single man.

His name soon ended up on the front of every news article, Julian Hittchaiason-Catalwy.

I couldn’t help but smile at seeing his name, no wonder he could see me. He was the descendant from a cult leader. One who worshiped death… and accidentally tried to kill me. But that is a story for another day. I have no power, and am not something to be prayed to.

So, as punishment for their evil worship, the One who does have power over everything cursed their descendants to know death.

I’d met many Hittchaiason’s over my time since then. Many met me at a young age, others saw the deaths of anyone they loved. Most I felt sorry for, others their curse drove them to extremes that led to their own deaths. Those one’s I might’ve laughed at.

It had seemed that Julian’s form of the curse included something I’d never seen before. The chance to know death.

Nevertheless, Upon hearing the news, I hastily invited him to the grand base, promising him a medal of bravery.

With a proud heart, I presented him a small medal, a token of his bravery. We both shared a hidden look. One of laughter, and a relationship that had been forged where no one saw.

After the long, boring service was over and the world had retired to their rooms, I snuck off determined to make the most of my meeting.

“So, doctor.” I said slipping into his room. “You’re a Hittchaiason. What strange thing have you done to turn your curse into this?”

Julian laughs, offering nothing more than a shrug. “I’ve no idea Red. None of my family can explain it either.”

“Those weren’t your parents I took.” I said thinking back to the second time I met him. “Adoptive?”

“Something like that.” He said nodding his head. “My family said my birth parents left me, and think they left each other.” He paused for a moment, before looking into my eyes.

Every person who knows who I always gets the same look before they ask if I’ve met someone yet. That look that mixes hope and fear into an emotion that can not be named.

“No, I haven’t” I said before the words left his mouth. “Not as death at least. As Red, yeah. And you look exactly like your father.”

Julian smiles, the hope in his eyes coming back. “Thanks, that’s what everyone says.”

“Well, are you going to continue to follow death into a hopeless war?” I asked with a slight chuckle

“Planning on it. Why?”

“I’m leaving soon. Unlike the other immortal I know, I don’t exactly age. I’m stuck looking like a teenage girl. People start to catch onto that after a while. I’ve over stayed my time here. I doubt we’ll meet again in person. However, you shall see me in the future.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He stood, opening the door for me, “Tell me one thing, Do I stop doing this? Saving lives?”

“No. In fact, you do a pretty good job at it.” I nodded goodbye, clueless that was the last time I’d see him for three centuries.

— 🗡 —

“Well if it isn’t my old doctor.” I said with a grin, approaching an operating table. This time, he was the one on the table. Everyone in the room was scrabbling around, playing with different things, freaking out because they had just killed a legend. The cause, a simple miscalculation.

With a small grin, I took the doctor in my arms, carrying him up into heaven.

“You’ve got to be kidding me Death.” He mumbled. “It was such a simple surgery, one I’ve done countless times.”

“You mean a open heart surgery?” I said before I placed him in the throne room of God, “That is far from easy.”

“I suppose to some.” He replied. “That wasn’t so bad, travailing with you.”

“No.” I shook my head laughing, turning away as I spoke.

“Death is rarely the hard part, it’s living that gets hard.”