Love You to Death (Part 6)

Connor froze as he stared down at the paper.  Somewhere far beyond him, he sensed hurried movement, probably the paramedics rushing to aid of an already dead heart attack victim, but he was far more focused on what he saw in front of him to pay it any mind.  He just sat there in silence for probably a minute until he heard Kiera say softly beside him, "Connor?"

He looked over at her and frowned in response to her inquisitive gaze.  "We can't go," he said.  "Not yet."  And he showed her the paper.

He closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat.  She ran her hands over her face, then opened her eyes again and looked over at him.  "Is your boss trying to tell you something?  Punishing you?  Does he really want me dead?"  She sighed.  "If he really wants me dead, why give you the heads up?  Why let you keep saving me?  There are... other reapers you said, right?"

Connor nodded.

"Then why not assign one of them to my case, if he really wanted me to go?  Why keep sending you?"

"Maybe it's a test," Connor suggested.

"A pretty shitty one if you ask me," Kiera noted.  She was looking straight ahead when she said that, but then she turned to look at him again.  "What are you going to do?" she asked.

"The same thing I said I was going to do," he told her.  "Keep saving you as many times as I can."  And they sat there in silence for the next two minutes, Connor holding the paper out between them, until the time scheduled for Kiera's death passed, a thin red line was drawn yet again through her name, and nothing else seemed to happen.

Well, nothing else seemed to happen, until Kiera's name faded and another appeared in it's place, an unfamiliar name, but in the same spot Kiera was supposed to die, only four minutes away.

When Connor saw that, he shuddered, and quickly folded up the paper to put it away, but it was too late.  Kiera had clearly other seen.  As she reached out and touched his elbow, he closed his eyes.

"Connor," she said softly.

He opened his eyes and looked over at her.  He saw tears starting to form in her eyes and it broke his heart.

"Connor is this my fault?" she asked.

He shook his head.  "No, none of this is your fault," he assured her.  "If anything, it's my fault.  I, I care about you, maybe more than I should, but I don't regret it, not for a moment."

"But what about..."

That was all Kiera could bear to say.

Connor closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then turned the key in the ignition.  "I have to go do my job," he said.

Kiera opened her mouth for a moment as if she wanted to say something, but then she thought better of it and they drove on in silence.


As they exited the park, they immediately saw the scene of an accident.  Sirens were wailing in the distance, and Connor pulled into a parking lot right near where it had gone down.  "Wait here," he advised Kiera, already knowing that she wouldn't listen.  As he got out of the car and closed his door, he heard the passenger side door close as well, though he couldn't bear to look at her.  Instead, he looked at her watch, which he still had from before, and compared it's reading to the time of death reported for this accident victim.  Apparently the death had not occurred immediately.  Connor looked ahead and saw someone leaning into the passenger side of an open car door, and then he saw that same person reaching for something that appeared to be sticking out of another person's neck.  And Connor had a sudden realization.

"No, don't," Connor shouted running ahead.  The person reaching for what turned out to be a large shard of glass stopped in surprise and turned to look at Connor, a look of terror in the would-be fatal Samaritan's eyes.  "Don't pull that out," Connor urged.  "Wait for the paramedics."

The man who had been about to remove the glass from another man's neck was still looking at Connor in shock, having stopped, for the moment, what he was doing.  Connor persisted.  "Don't touch anything and don't move him.  If you remove anything yourself, he could bleed out in seconds."  Connor felt his own pulse pounding with life as he sensed the injured man's somewhat faded life energy had stopped fading further.  He heard the sirens getting closer.  He checked his watch again.  Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't too late.  The stunned man who had been trying to help looked up at him as if he expected him to do more, so he knelt beside him and looked down at the injured man, whose vacant eyes looked up at him.  "It's okay," he whispered, almost believing it.  "It's going to be okay."

And then, the miracle happened.  In that moment, the moment that man had been supposed to die, the paramedics pulled up, and this time, the man was still alive.  Somehow, he was still alive.  Connor stepped aside and let them do their work, stabilizing the man, and most importantly, preparing to take him off to get the proper care needed for his injuries.

Trembling, Connor took out the piece of paper with this man's name, he assumed, on it, and with a start and a surprising level of relief, saw a thin red line appear on the page, this time through a name other that Kiera's.

Kiera, who had inspired him to try.  Kiera whom he had saved for the third time.  He sensed her presence beside him and held out the paper to show her.  "I think, I think we won," he said softly.  And then he felt Kiera's hand on his and he looked over at her, noticing tears in her eyes, sure there were in his as well, and then he was the one who was opening sobbing and she was holding him and he never wanted her to let him go.


"You have to let me go," her voice whispered.

Connor shot up in bed, a cold sweat overcoming him, and he shivered.  He looked down and looked at her sleeping remarkably peacefully next to him.  He shuddered and then he smiled.  It had only been a dream, a manifestation of his own mind and fears, not something Kiera had really said, not something, he hoped, that she would ever say.  It had been 40 hours since they had tried to save one man and succeeded in saving another.  40 hours since Kiera had convinced him that even if they couldn't save everyone, they should at least try.  And it had all started with him saving her.

He sighed and took a few more deep breaths and tried to lay back down and fall back asleep, hoping against hope that if he was haunted with another nightmare, it would at least manifest as Kiera, and not something much, much worse.