The Things That Stay

Chapter 1

 Chapter 1

In which Holly dents a rosebush and has a

brief and unusual conversation

 Holly tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, staring idly ahead at the trees passing outside her windscreen. The sound her fingers made against the leather was rather muffled, considering she had been biting her nails more often as of late. It was a habit she had been desperately trying to shake since childhood, but like an irritating relative dismissed after the holidays, it would always return eventually.

While stopped at a traffic light, Holly opened her notebook for a moment and leafed through the pages, recalling the names and conditions of her past clients. When she was honest with herself, she would admit that their passing didn’t vex her greatly, though if they had been genial company, she would sometimes miss them. After a while, however, the feeling would pass and she would simply move onto the next job. One would think that her lack of experience would make it harder for Holly to handle it all, and yet she was usually just as unperturbed by the constant conveyer belt of death as the other agency veterans. She had found that mortality was something she would have had to get used to, and after quite a time of dealing with death, Holly had since accepted that it was an inevitable and reoccurring factor of the medical trade and of life itself.

Edgar Shillings had been her first client—ninety-eight years old, a widower who never had children and the last living of his friends and siblings. Holly had been called in just twenty minutes before his heart gave out. She most vividly remembered his hands—they were so wrinkled. His skin had been nearly transparent, the veins cold and blue as they wound up the length of his wrist like electrical wires.

Ruth Wonnacott’s hands had been small and delicate—terribly twitchy and chilly, and she had held Holly’s fingers so tightly that it hurt. The brain tumour took her a few hours later, and Holly had felt it very disconcerting to watch them strip the hospital bed and tow away the IV drip afterwards.

Shirley Todd Emund had been frightfully obese and vivacious, her fingers thick and warm and friendly. She insisted upon playing her opera every night, and hers was the first client’s funeral that Holly attended.

Tilda Klasson had been younger than the rest—her hands were far less wrinkled. They were large and hardy, rough from work. She had told Holly stories from her childhood in Sweden before her fingers went limp.

Holly would always stand up and regard the room after they left her—she would try to see where the life went, hoping to catch a lingering glimpse of it as it spiralled away. She didn’t like to think whether it went up or down: that was a matter of preference and generally impractical. She didn’t know where it went, exactly—that was all a bit too abstract for her. She pondered it often, but intangible things like heaven always remained outside her reach, which was what she preferred, in all honesty.

Just then, an impatient honk from a car behind awoke Holly from her reveries. She slammed a foot on the accelerator and her yellow Volkswagen Bug lurched forward at a shockingly intense velocity. It took her a moment to take charge of her vehicle once more, for the asphalt beneath the wheels was quite wet, not to mention Holly’s already inadequate driving skills. She truly hoped that one-day—one sweet day something would click into place in her brain, relax her lead foot and smooth her sharp, jarring turns.