Time of Death

A short story for you, very lovingly adapted from Box, that quantum story that keeps reappearing where it shouldn’t. Enjoy it.

Time of Death

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” – Voltaire

“When in doubt, take a bath.” – Mae West

ONE TIME, IT WENT LIKE THIS.

“Time of death, twelve twenty-three.” He looks again at the head wound. Why can’t he make it make sense? He did not, could not, he still cannot find that bloody bullet.

Entry wound, but no exit.

Now she’s finally dead, it’s tempting to get stuck in. But he’s been here before. The pen-pushers dislike a messy body. But it must be there.

Sod it. The woman is dead.

He peers in tighter, pulls in the light and the magnifying glass.

Now, this is taking the piss. Yes, ‘course he works too hard. Yes, obviously, there are issues. Five-year old twins and frazzled mothers are always exhausting. But this woman, here, now, trumps all definitions of “stress”. He’s breaking the number one rule, for pity’s sake: do not hallucinate in theatre.

He looks around. No-one here. What are you worried for? Just look until you are certain! He bends over her corpse, sneaky, like he’s got a filthy offer to make. First, he winces; the persistent winter sun’s too bright through those blinds. Got to get closer. Into the smell and the colour and shine of an open skull.

He brushes one of her hairs away. There – is that it? The murd’rous metal millimeters? His hand reaches blind for his tweezers, eyes moving close to his prey. Hand fully equipped, he leans right in.

Gotcha!

With a grip on only the slippiest corner, he doggedly eases it out. All jagged mis-shapen, what evil bullet design is this? It’s not properly seeable, with all that blood and all this tissue, stuff that was part of this woman all over it. Not when it’s smeared with bodily matter, the flesh of a busy soul who needed it earlier, to run a life as a- what? A scientist? Writer? That she’s an idiot goes without saying. A depressive, perhaps. A suicide, for sure. He squirts saline on the bullet to clean it up. She needed this bodily matter to run her life as a – a kidder. Because she must be. Because the joke’s on him. Because now, now that he can see it, he’s definitely seeing stuff. This cannot be possible.

Still holding the tweezers that hold the thing that he’s pulled from her brain, and washed her blood from, he sits. Deflated. Everything’s over.

He must tell the shrink and they’ll tell the Royal College. He must take an exhausting sabbatical to recover, with his awful children and furious wife. Or – He could lie. Be a deliberate danger, an unexploded bomb in the heart of the hospital. Because what he’s seeing is not possible. ‘Cos this thing in his tweezers, dragged angry from her wound, which smashed through her skull, made her whole life end, this thing looks unfeasibly like a tiny old car horn. The sort that clowns honk at the circus.

Looks like? It is. Undoubtedly.

PARP PARP.

*

Another time, this.

Outside Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, it’s really, really cold. A Victorian kind of winter, they’re saying; no sun’s broken through in weeks. In this burning cold air, breath and fag smoke bump and grind all over each other. Despite the lack of visible sun, the thick clouds glow eye-hurtingly hard with it, like cotton wool soaked in plutonium. On the ground, huddled feet and hands rub and stamp, just to make blood flow.

Jamie’s mind is a confused kaleidoscope of coiled contradictions which she wraps in soothing Barbie-doll tales. Jim’s mind rests sublimely in awe, as he watches her tits cosy each other, while she pulls on her fag, hugging them, hugging herself. They need each other, he thinks. Just one – even one big, wide one, a monoboob across her chest, would be no good at all. He wonders whether it’s the symmetry that’s important, or cleavage, or both: the gap and the together; both at once.

“It was just too weird. I mean I know we see all kinds of shit. But fucking hell, I’m so freaked out.” She takes a bosom-swelling deep drag. He’s not smoking; just keeping her company. He gets an addictive, painful near-semi when Jamie splurges her words over whoever’s near. It’s brilliant and awful. He feels like a louse stuffing its face in a moist but sterile friend zone.

“So Mike’s just lost the patient, OK? The one who tied herself up like a hostage, shot herself in the head with some remote rifle trigger. And filmed it. She took a fucking age to go, like she’s sat at the airport on strike day- is this her plane? No, she’s stuck here. Is this her plane? No – still fucking here. So after an hour – shit; can I borrow your light?” He always carries a light, but Jim doesn’t smoke. A lousy eunuch in the semi temple.

“So finally, right, he calls it – time of death. At last. Twelve twenty-three. I’ll never forget it. The moment he calls it – I’m scrubs-off an’ I’m walking out o’theatre, and he laughs and – ‘cos he couldn’t find it – we couldn’t see it anywhere, this bullet, but he finally gets the bullet out her head….and the moment he does – Jim, listen! -Her whole body sits up!”

Her words sink in surprisingly slowly, and Jim lifts his eyes from her chest. Raises his eyebrows. This is news. Jamie takes a puff and blows smoke out like magic. “The patient, the woman, she fucking sits up! But she can’t – can she? ‘Cos she’s GONE. We all know she’s gone. The machines are on – and she’s dead! No pulse. No life. The woman’s dead! And sitting bolt upright!”

She looks about six, Jim thinks, remembering in bed. Like an excited kiddy at the circus. “Right up she is, like a chicken with its head off, and I nearly shit myself, and I know Mike’s thinking like, ‘wow, it’s a miracle, I saved her!’ I can see it in his face, and then – get this – the monster corpse speaks! And the machines are all flatlined, every single one, and she says-”

Jamie hangs in mid-air, performance suspended, as she’s sucked back to that moment, reporting live from the scene. An enchanted smile sings in her eyes as she sees it all over again. “And she says – fucking god, I’m not sure I can tell you! She says, right, word for word, I wouldn’t lie, she says, ‘Oh, God! Mike, darling! We did it!’”

Her words shock Jim. Not the words themselves – he can’t take them in yet – but that Jamie spoke in a pitch-perfect American accent. As though another person is living inside her. He didn’t know she could do that. He stumbles a little before he speaks.

“ – What? But – How did she know his name?”

“Yeah right, I know! How weird is that? And then he actually replies and says – which he shouldn’t – the poor bloody woman, her last experience on this earth – and he says to her, get this, he says –

‘I’m sorry, do I know you?!’

“Jesus fuck? See what I mean? And it’s fair enough, I mean, what can you say? But, God, I actually saw her mind crumble. And her final electrical impulses jammer out absolute chunterish, ‘cos she looks like she’s about to cry, poor hen, and she says, ‘Decoherence?? No!’ – then – boompf. Dead. Again!….I hope.”

“What’s decoherence?” says Jim.

“No bloody idea. In-coherent! And you know what he does, bless him? Cool as you like, he just calls it again: ‘Time of death, twelve twenty-four.’

“And he says to me, he says, ‘Jamie, can you check this patient’s records for me?’ and I’m like, ‘Sure, Mr Brown,’ but he’s so busy and actually – I think he’s going to propose tonight ‘cos he’s booked us a table at Monique’s and it isn’t my birthday for a month, so – yeah! Got time for another fag, haven’t we?”

Jim nods. There’s just so much to take in.

*

Third look, another time.

It’s a particularly sad end to his day this today. Consultant surgeon Mr Michael Brown stands over his patient. In spite of valiant efforts, he honestly couldn’t save her. Why did she take so long to pass? How did she battle to live like that, even beyond -? Well. Well beyond what the monitors said. Beyond machinery. Beyond measurement.

He feels disproportionately sad. Sinkingly sad, he notices. That’s what daily meditation does. Makes you notice. Makes you notice the loud loneliness of single in a world of couples, makes you notice the lies you easily tell to get out of this wedding or christening or birthday or dinner; makes you notice that ‘uncle’ is the closest you’ll get to being anything to anyone in the future. Makes you notice here and now. The here and now that swells like a lead balloon’s been born in your chest and is quickly falling to another unfathomable dimension inside you you didn’t know was there. Notice you feel like an over-weepy lava lamp full of love that’s got nowhere to go. He frowns. No – he absolutely doesn’t know her. The patient. He didn’t.

As they cleared the theatre, not too long ago, his team all gave him the ‘what more could you have done?’ look. An A&E staple, but not for men like him. One or two even hovered, almost daring overt sympathy. But they didn’t; who risks that famous anger? Nonetheless, he was – he noticed – incredibly grateful for some fellow feeling.

Now, he feels inordinately drained. And alone. It is only six o’clock.

*

Fourth time.

And first time.

Both.

Two miles away, a woman almost completely identical to the patient – the same looks, same name, same address and who was even the same person just this morning (but now she’s not the same, obviously, because this one is alive) – peers with a sigh into her video camera.

The room she’s in is pretty bare. Not completely. There’s a wooden chair with its back to the wall and on the wall hangs a tarpaulin. Facing the chair is a tripod that holds a rifle. Next to the door is her video set-up, to film the chair, the tripod, the rifle and the tarp.

Earlier today, Alison conducted an experiment. And now it’s over. Nothing happened. This is a bad thing and a good thing. She rewinds the film of her experiment and watches the nothing happen.

On the left of the tiny screen, Filmed-Alison sits on the chair in front of the tarp facing the rifle. In her hand, Filmed-Alison holds a clicker attached to a cable that runs along the floor to the rifle. This is a remote trigger. Remote, but connected.

Living-Alison takes notes while she watches the film. Filmed-Alison turns to the camera and in a softening American accent tinged with Scotland says,

“You can’t see the most important thing in this room. It’s a spinning quantum particle. A quark in the gun’s trigger mechanism. When I pull the trigger, the quark will be measured. If the quark goes clockwise, the bullet will fire. If the quark goes anti-clockwise, the bullet will not fire.

“But remember: this quark is a spinning quantum particle. Which means – I believe – that everything that can happen, does happen. This is what we’re here to test. I believe the quark will go in both directions, because it can.

“That means the rifle will fire and not-fire. I will get shot and I will get not-shot. But because I measure it, with my consciousness, I will only see one ending. And so – dear viewer – will you! Death and life will both result, but we’ll only see one of them – we won’t see both.

“My apologies in advance to the 50 per cent who get the gore!” She winks at the camera.

“Jeez.” Real Alison, watching, screws up her face, mutters, “I can’t use this. I sound like a comedian.” Film-Alison smiles out at her – like she knows that’s what’s going on out there – and takes a piece of cloth from her pocket, ties it over her eyes, takes a gentle breath –

“Bye!”

– and presses the button attached to the cable attached to the trigger and the quark and the mechanism and the bullet. And before you know it, the rifle fires.

For a moment, Filmed-Alison doesn’t move. Then she throws back her head. And laughs. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.” She pulls off the blindfold, not too fast, blinks in the light, takes a very deep breath, gets up and walks to the camera. No smiles.

The screen goes black.

Her own sigh overlapping with her earlier self’s, dissatisfied, and unsure why, our Alison looks out the window into the street. People, couples, dog walkers, bikes, taxis, an ambulance. The 6pm train crosses the bridge. She rubs her forehead and leaves the room. Obviously, this Alison is not-dead.

(c) Gill Kirk, 2026