Exert from The Man Who Reads Obituaries by Diane Lynn McGyer
The drone from the machinery sealed my eyelids, enticing me to linger in the weightlessness of sleep. Time passed peacefully there, with dreams that confirmed I still breathed…still lived. Urges existed in dreamland; urges to eat, urges to copulate, urges to explore…things I no longer possessed while conscious.
I missed my body’s impulse to urinate; the nurses had even denied me of that primitive need. I imagined the clear tube stretching from my limp penis to the rubber bag dangling beside the bed, and I wondered about the nurse’s reaction if I removed it to feel the urge to pee one last time.
Footsteps disrupted my thoughts, and clicking shoes entered the room. Without opening my eyes, I knew it to be young Maggie Mac…something, a young woman gifted with beauty but not tolerance for the dying. She stopped near the bed. A whiff of her perfume permeated the air as she leant forward, checking to see if the devil had claimed me yet.
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Diane McGyver 