Page 18 of Run Omega Run
But that explanation felt hollow when I remembered the way she'd looked at me. The trust in her eyes when she'd accepted my offer to help with her mother's care. The vulnerability she'd tried to hide behind fierce independence. This woman wasn't just a compatible scent signature that triggered biological responses. She was complicated and strong, beautiful and broken in ways that called to every protective instinct I possessed.
I'd spent years perfecting the art of emotional distance. Had to. In my profession you couldn't restore dignity to the dead if you fell apart every time a family grieved. You couldn't help people navigate their worst moments if you couldn't maintain clinical objectivity. I'd built my entire adult identity around being the calm presence in chaos, the one who handled what others couldn't face.
But Heather made me want to be something different. Made me aspire to be the kind of man who could offer comfort instead of just competent service. A man who could hold her while she cried instead of just preparing final arrangements. The type of man who could love her instead of just analyzing the biological mechanisms of attraction.
When I arrived at the nurses' station, I shielded my eyes from the computer screens casting blue light across the ward. The early hour was late for the staff still working, you could tell by the drawn-out expressions decorating the nurses faces. They were exhausted from the night shift and how they functioned on little sleep, I’ve never quite understood. I approached the central desk where charts were filed, my mortician credentials hanging from my neck like a key that opened doors most people preferred to keep closed.
"Evening, Cole," Margie said without looking up from her keyboard. She'd been working nights at Shaker City’s hospital for twelve years, and had processed enough of my requests that she no longer questioned my presence in places most people avoided. "Need access to records?"
"Room 314," I replied, keeping my voice neutral despite the urgency building in my chest. "Family requested consultation regarding final arrangements."
It wasn't entirely a lie. Families often asked funeral directors to review medical records to better understand the circumstances of death, to help them process what had happened. The fact that Heather’s mother was still alive was a technicality I chose not to elaborate on.
Margie's fingers flew across the keyboard with practiced efficiency. "Poor thing. She needed care weeks ago." She pulled up the digital files, then gestured toward the terminal reserved for medical consultations. "You know the drill. Everything's logged; nothing leaves the ward."
I settled into the chair and opened the file. The screen filled with numbers, dates, test results; it was the clinical architecture of a life slowly ending.
Her vital signs from admission this morning painted a picture that made my jaw tighten. Blood pressure elevated at 160 over 95, pulse rapid and thready at 110 beats per minute. But it was the oxygen saturation levels that made my hands pause over the keyboard: 85 percent on room air, dropping to 78 percent with minimal exertion. Dangerously low. The human brain needed oxygen levels above 95 percent to function optimally. Anything below 90 percent showed severe respiratory compromise.
I scrolled through the pulmonary function tests, my trained eye parsing data that would look like gibberish to most people. Forced vital capacity reduced to 40 percent of predicted values. Peak expiratory flow rates barely registered. The numbers described lungs that were drowning in their own fluid, airways constricted by inflammation and scarring.
The imaging results were worse. Chest X-rays showed progressive white clouds spreading across both lung fields like spilled milk. CT scans revealed the ugly truth in high-definition detail: extensive bilateral infiltrates, pleural effusions, mediastinal lymphadenopathy. The radiologist's notes used clinical language to describe what I recognized as a body losing its war against itself.
But it was the pathology report that stopped my breathing entirely. Stage 4 adenocarcinoma of the lung, with metastatic spread to the liver, bone, and brain. The cancer had been discovered too late for surgical intervention, too advanced for curative chemotherapy. The oncology notes recommended palliative care only, with an estimated survival time of only weeks.
I stared at the diagnosis, my mouth dry as dust. Heather’s mother was dying, and doing so with an aggressive competence that wouldn't allow time for gradual acceptance or extended goodbyes.
What struck me as odd was the smoking history section: never smoked, no secondhand exposure documented. Lung cancer in never-smokers was less common, usually linked to genetic factors or environmental exposures. I pulled her address from the demographic information and cross-referenced it with Shaker City's industrial maps stored in my memory.
She lived at the orphanage. I pursed my lips, tapping my fingers on the desk. I thought that place had shut down. It sat in the heart of the old manufacturing district, where factories had belched smoke for sixty years before the earthquake restructured the city's industrial landscape. Even after the plants closed, the soil remained contaminated with heavy metals, asbestos, and chemical residue that created dust clouds with every strong wind.
Then, the earthquake had made everything worse. When the buildings collapsed, they released decades of accumulated toxins into the air—asbestos from old insulation, lead from paint, industrial chemicals that had soaked into concrete and steel. The cleanup efforts had been focused on structural damage and immediate safety hazards. Environmental remediation had been a distant second priority, leaving residents of areas like hers breathing poison-laced air for months.
I thought about the children living in that home, about Heather breathing the same contaminated air every day while trying to hold everything together. The same environmental factors that were killing her mother could be affecting all of them.
The additional chart notes confirmed my suspicions about the severity and timeline. Dr. Patterson's most recent evaluation estimated she had days to weeks remaining. The morphine dosing schedule indicated pain levels that would soon require continuous sedation to maintain comfort. Notes from the nursing staff described increasing episodes of respiratory distress, confusion from decreased oxygen levels, and the kind of rapid decline that preceded final organ failure.
I leaned back in the chair, processing what this information meant for Heather. She was about to lose the only family she had left living in a building that might be slowly killing her. The insurance information showed coverage that would expire upon her mother's death, leaving medical bills that could bankrupt them.
Everything was falling apart at once, and Heather didn't even know the full scope of what she was facing.
My professional detachment cracked as I imagined her reaction to learning her mother had days rather than months. The woman who'd stood in that hospital waiting room radiating fierce protectiveness despite her obvious exhaustion deserved better than watching a person she loved disappear. Deserved better than facing an uncertain future alone.
The clinical side of my brain noted that Eleanor's rapid decline was actually merciful in some ways. Extended suffering benefited no one, and her current medication regimen would prevent the worst of the pain and breathing difficulties that characterized end-stage lung cancer. She would drift away peacefully rather than fighting for every breath.
I closed the file and logged out of the system, my hands steadier than they had any right to be given the magnitude of what I'd discovered. Tomorrow I would need to find a way to prepare Heather for what was coming without destroying the hope that was clearly keeping her functional. Today, I needed tofigure out how to help her face what no one should have to face alone.
Room 314's door stood ajar, allowing me a narrow view through the small safety-glass window of the woman whose medical file I'd just closed. She lay motionless against white sheets that seemed to emphasize her pallor, her breathing shallow but steady in the rhythm of medicated sleep.
I pressed closer to the glass, studying her features for any resemblance to her daughter. The same stubborn chin, perhaps. The same delicate bone structure beneath skin that had grown translucent with illness. Eleanor's graying hair spread across the pillow like silver threads, and her hands rested peacefully on the blanket.
My reflection stared back from the window, superimposed over the dying woman like a ghost haunting the living. Dark clothing, a serious expression, the face of someone detached. But tonight, the professional mask felt heavier than usual, as if it might crack with what I'd have to tell Heather. I just hoped that her doctor would be honest with her.
How do you tell someone that their entire world is about to collapse? That the person who'd been their anchor, their strength, their reason for fighting had days rather than months left? I'd delivered similar news hundreds of times to grieving families, had perfected the careful balance between honesty and hope that helped people process unthinkable realities.
But this was different. This was Heather.
I rehearsed different approaches in my mind, testing each against my professional training. The direct approach: "I've reviewed your mother's records, and I'm afraid the prognosis is worse than you might expect." Too clinical, too harsh for someone already hanging by a thread. The gentle lead-in: "Sometimes patients appear to improve before..." No, that would sound patronizing to someone as intelligent as Heather clearly was.
