The hospital was like all the other few hospitals I had been in with my sister before her death: it was too brightly lit and smelled like hand sanitizer, disinfectant, and air freshener as well as the slight odor of sweat that permanently hung in the air. People milled around, waiting, trying to distract themselves, just as I had done when I was waiting for my sister. Waiting for her to die, knowing there was nothing that I could do to stop it. Daisy and I wandered up the stairs into the first ward and room on the left.
"How do you know which rooms to go in?" I whispered to Daisy right before we entered the room. She smiled and held up the necklace from underneath her shirt. It was glowing bright red. I gave her a thumbs up and we drifted through the walls of the room. What we found was a grim scene. One the right side of the room lay and old man, sleeping. On the other side of the room, shielded with little privacy from the small curtain that divided the room, lay a small elderly woman, hooked up to about four different beeping machines. Three people were gathered around her, whispering desperately and one praying with all her might. I watched in horror and sadness as the machine's beeping slowed with her heart, and eventually stopped making noise all together. The people huddled around her sobbed uncontrollably, stoking the old woman's face and praying about her coming back to life. In my head, I thought that's never going to happen. You've lost her, and had to fight the urge to cry more as a fat tear slid down my cheek.
"I have to take this woman's soul?" I asked Daisy, speaking through the lump in my throat. She nodded slowly at me, looking down at her tiny feet that had been shoved into little white lace boots.
I took a shaky breath as she unfastened the necklace form around her neck and handed it to me. My hands were shaking as well, and so I fumbled with the necklace, almost dropping it several times. "What do I say?" I looked at Daisy, awaiting her answer.
"Anima. It means 'soul' in Latin. You have to call to the soul, and it will not only answer, but it will come to you, and you will be able to trap it in the necklace. Don't worry, you'll be able to release them later, where they'll be free."
"Happy and free?"
"Free, maybe not happy, but free."
"Alright." I took another shaky breath, trying to focus on the dead girl and not the not the fact that she was dead. Or that she had crying people surrounding her. "Anima," I whispered into the necklace halfheartedly. No soul came to me, and Daisy shook her head. "You have to say it forcefully. You have to mean it."
"How do I do that? There's a dead girl five feet ahead of me."
"Welcome to life."
"I think you mean death," I corrected.
She nodded, half-smiling. "I do this every day, and you'll have to soon, too."
I held my grasp on the necklace tighter and once again said "Anima," with all I had in that moment. The woman shook for a few seconds, and a little white orb, like the woman in the car crash's soul, flew towards me and into the necklace. Daisy gave another one of her half-smiles, and she took the necklace from me.
"How did they not notice her shaking?" I asked, referring to the people gathered around the woman.
"They can't see it. They're alive, and we're dead."
"Huh. That's odd"
"Yeah. You'll get used to all of this, don't worry." She offered.
I didn't think that I would, if I became the new Death.
