Chapter 3 - The Ghost at the Funeral
The St. Jude’s Memorial Chapel was a masterpiece of mid-century gothic architecture—soaring granite arches, stained-glass windows depicting biblical healers, and three-hundred-year-old oak pews that smelled of lemon oil and old money.
On Thursday morning, the chapel was packed to capacity.
Every major figure in the state’s medical and political establishment was present: the Board of Trustees, the Dean of the Medical School, the Chief of Police, three state senators, and the entire senior attending staff of St. Jude’s.
At the front of the altar stood the closed casket.
It was crafted from solid polished mahogany, adorned with a massive arrangement of white orchids and lilies—the exact flowers Cameron had always bought me when he forgot our anniversary or cancelled a dinner date to stay late with his residents.
Cameron stood at the pulpit.
He wore a bespoke black wool suit, a black silk tie, and a small silver lapel pin shaped like the St. Jude’s crest. He looked every inch the grieving, heroic widower—a man bearing the crushing weight of tragedy with stoic, noble grace.
Sophie sat in the front pew, wearing a modest black dress, her head bowed, a lace handkerchief pressed to her nose.
Beside her sat Dr. Richard Croft, the Chairman of the Hospital Board, his hand resting reassuringly on Sophie’s shoulder.
Cameron cleared his throat, adjusting the microphone. His voice echoed through the high stone arches with practiced, tragic resonance.
“Amelia was not just my wife,” Cameron began, his voice trembling slightly on cue. “She was the heart of our Emergency Department. A brilliant physician. A devoted partner. A woman who gave everything she had—including her very life—to bring our son into this world.”
He paused, lowering his head, dabbing at his eye with a white linen handkerchief.
A soft, sympathetic murmur passed through the three hundred guests in the pews.
Poor Cameron, they whispered to one another. Such a tragic loss. He did everything he could to save her.
“In her final moments,” Cameron continued, lifting his chin, looking out over the crowd, “Amelia made me promise one thing. She asked me to ensure that our son, Arthur, would grow up surrounded by the highest standards of care, guided by the brilliant team here at St. Jude’s. She specifically requested that Dr. Sophie Miller—who stood by her side through those grueling hours in the delivery room—be appointed as the primary clinical liaison for our family’s newborn care initiative.”
In the front pew, Sophie looked up, her eyes wide, shedding a single, perfect tear.
It was a masterclass in institutional maneuvering.
In three sentences, Cameron had cleared himself of all clinical fault, secured the board’s sympathy, and elevated his mistress into a permanent, highly paid administrative position within the hospital’s foundation.
“We may have lost a Chief of Emergency Medicine,” Cameron said, his voice rising toward a grand, emotional climax. “But we have gained an eternal guardian angel. Amelia, my love... rest in peace.”
He bowed his head.
The audience began to stand, preparing to offer a collective moment of silence.
CLACK.
The heavy, nine-hundred-pound iron-reinforced oak doors at the back of the chapel swung open with a resounding thud that echoed off the granite walls like a cannon shot.
A blast of cold, autumn rain rushed into the warm, incense-scented air of the sanctuary.
Every head in the chapel turned.
Standing in the center of the doorway, framed by the grey rain and the flashing strobe lights of an idling emergency vehicle parked on the plaza outside, was a figure in a tailored charcoal-grey pantsuit.
Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight, severe bun. Her face was pale, thin, but her eyes—large, cold, and burning with a terrifying, absolute clarity—were fixed straight down the center aisle.
It was me.
A collective, high-pitched gasp tore through the three hundred guests.
Three elderly board members stumbled backward into their pews. One nurse from the ER fainted outright, her head striking the wooden bench with a loud crack.
“G-G-Ghost...” a voice whispered from the middle rows.
“Is that... oh God, is that Dr. Grant?”
Sophie froze in the front pew, her lace handkerchief dropping from her fingers onto the floorboards. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her eyes bulged as if she were looking at a corpse rising from the ocean floor.
At the pulpit, Cameron took two steps backward.
His hand slammed into the wooden podium, knocking the microphone off its stand. The microphone hit the stone altar floor with a deafening, metallic screech that made the entire room flinch.
FEEDBACK SCREECH.
Cameron’s face did not just lose color; it turned the translucent, greyish-green hue of rotting meat. His knees buckled, his thighs hitting the edge of the altar rail as he stared down the three-hundred-foot aisle.
“A... Amelia?” he choked out, his voice picked up by the secondary room sensors. “No... no... you’re... you’re in the box...”
I didn't speak.
I walked down the center aisle.
My heels made a slow, deliberate, rhythmic sound against the stone floor.
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
With every step I took, the crowd parted like water before a bow. People pressed themselves against the high oak pews, gasping, weeping, ducking their heads as if they believed touching my clothes would bring a curse upon them.
I stopped at the foot of the altar, ten feet from the polished mahogany casket covered in white orchids.
I reached out with my right hand—the hand bearing the thick black sutures along the palm—and pushed the orchid arrangement off the polished wood.
The heavy flowers fell to the stone floor with a soft, wet thud.
Then, using my bare hand, I slammed my palm down onto the brass latch of the casket and flipped it open.
The crowd screamed.
Inside the satin-lined interior lay the high-density synthetic anatomical cadaver—a blank, featureless grey silicone torso weighted with lead shot to match my seventy-kilogram mass.
May you like
I turned around slowly, looking up at Cameron, who was now clinging to the wooden pulpit for support, his chest heaving as if he were suffering a massive coronary event.
“You always were terrible at anatomy, Cameron,” my voice boomed through the high stone sanctuary—clear, resonant, and entirely alive. “Did you really think a piece of research silicone could replace the wife you left to bleed to death on your delivery table?”
