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"There was a mark, I'm seeing a mark or a scar, I'm not sure which, on the lower abdomen. It was a
mark or something which you would have referred to in a light manner, something you would have
mentioned in a moment of lightness. I don't want to say love-making, but in a moment of lightness
you would have noticed it and made mention of it."
I hadn't thought about Lona's stretch marks since the last time I'd seen them. They were the sort of
thing that soon slipped from one's memory. I realized, though, that Lillian had once more been
accurate. Lona and I had joked about the marks, referring to them as the proof of our love for each
other.
I took the next slide and held it up to the light; it was of Lona's face. I turned away for a second, but
knew that I was going to have to examine the slide more closely. I looked again and realized that the
expression on her face was one I knew. It was the expression I'd worn each time I'd attempted to
communicate with Lona's spirit. I'd always thought that those strange facial contortions were simply a
by-product of the altered state of consciousness, but now I recognized them in Lona's dead face. I had
seen her face as it had been after the accident with my own.
I looked at the slide for a while, then set it aside, taking up the next one. It was a photograph of Lona's
heart lying in DiLorenzo's hand. The image brought to mind the comments about a problem in the
chest area that all the mediums had made. They had also all called attention to a problem in the area of
the neck. I couldn't believe that they had been correct on every count.
The final slide in the pile was one I hadn't noticed the night before. It was of Lona on the stainless-
steel table I had seen the day before in the autopsy room at the hospital. I couldn't believe what I saw.
There was a large, distinct bruise on Lona's upper arm, as close to the shoulder as the foot to the toe.
"I don't know if you know of this," Lillian had said. "But I'm getting a bruise or a mark of some kind
on the shoulder. I see a fall, and there's this bruise or mark of some kind."
It hadn't made any sense to me at the time or to Elek or to Dr. DiLorenzo. There was no mention of it
in the autopsy report, and the day before, I had specifically asked the coroner about it.
"If there was a bruise on the arm, given the nature of the injuries, would you bother mentioning it in
the autopsy report?" I had asked.
"Normally I would," he had told me.
But there had been no mention of the bruise in the autopsy report, and here it was on the slide.
I sat, stunned, in the office as the darkness began to fall. It was late - I could hear other people in the
building leaving for the day - and my tea had gone cold. I got up to leave and realized that there was
still one more slide left.
She was on the autopsy table before the procedure had started. She was still in the jump suit, which I
had never really noticed before. The jump suit was blue with green racing stripes on the side, exactly
the green and blue that had been swimming past my eyes since the day the chills had first started.
I was ready to go home.
It had been an extraordinary journey through an inner world. I felt like a long-distance swimmer who
has finally made it to shore, exhausted, but at the same time exhilarated. I had done things that I'd
never done before, had seen new landscapes in a new world, and had come back to describe the trip
for others.
It hadn't been the easiest task in my life. There had been many moments when I would have been
happy to abandon the project, but at a certain point it had assumed a life of its own.
It nearly seemed that the book had written me, rather than the other way around.
Lona had survived. She was alive and well and able to communicate.
But now it was time to go.
Each time I left my grandmother after visiting, I'd say, "Good-bye," and she'd correct me.
"Don't say good-bye," she'd tell me. "Good-bye means I'm never going to see you again. Say 'so long.'
That means we'll see each other again."
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