It smelled like shit.
Well, maybe not shit exactly --
"Blargh," Tong Mei said.
The contents of her stomach quickly purged themselves from her body, hitting the cement floor in spurts of sickening splatter.
"She's awake!"
From all around her, Tong Mei could hear cries of startled people and the beeps of heart monitors ringing painfully in her stuffy ears. Blindly, she outstretched her arms to block a pair of hands wandering across her bent midriff --
"BLARGH..." she choked on a bit of vomit. Her voice broke through mid-retch, forming some kind of croak that she was certain only a hoarse frog could sympathize with. "S-stop, just let m-me puke..."
The hands ignored her, simply pushing her back onto a flat surface and righting her posture so that she was sitting on what appeared to be a metal slab. As Tong Mei weakly leaned on the incline of the metal slab, someone stuck a bucket next to her gaping mouth, which she gratefully yet violently threw up into. Her throat contracted uncomfortably as the acid from her stomach began to churn once more.
"Gods," whispered someone to her left. "How is she still alive?"
Tong Mei frowned; why did it sound like he was so surprised? She was just puking her guts out, it's not like she was an actual corpse or anything. She felt fine! Feebly, she internally ordered her limbs to move and was satisfied to feel that she had all ten fingers, all ten toes, two arms, and two legs. Her head was still attached to her neck, so that was something, wasn't it?
"She was declared dead by two senior doctors at the prison," said another. "I don't suppose it's impossible, but it is strange... When I put her on the stretcher to take her to the morgue, she was cold and didn't have a pulse!"
"But she's clearly alive now!" replied the first, jabbing a scalpel in the direction of her puke bucket. "Very alive!"
Tong Mei would have been offended if not for the fact that she was distracted by yet another wave of nausea.
Ugh, she complained in her mind. Death said it would be a 'difficult' experience, but she didn't think it meant that she would be throwing her soul up into a rusty old bucket!
Oh gods, Death.
DEATH.
SHE WAS DEAD.
"So, she's been alive this whole time and we were about to perform an autopsy on her," continued the first medical examiner. "Thank the gods -- this would've just been asking for a malpractice suit if we'd actually cut into her..."
THANK THE GODS?
If that weirdly vivid dream was right, then the gods were why she was in this whole predicament!
She supposed her vomit and the medical examiners' conversation were proof enough that she was really revived from death and that her bizarre meeting with Death wasn't just a crazed hallucination she'd cooked up. Tong Mei was certain she wasn't that insane yet, though she was probably walking the line thinly every day of her existence.
When her crusty eyes finally settled into the dim lighting, she squinted at a particularly shiny sparkle on her left middle finger. Its unfamiliar weight on her skin gave her a sense of alertness that helped to funnel her vision to focus on it better...
A plum blossom ring?
"Yo... are you okay?" asked the second examiner as he gingerly prodded at her with gloved fingers. "Doctor Liu said your head got busted up - can you see us?"
Sourly, she nodded.
"Do you remember what happened?"
She shook her head.
He suddenly started guffawing. "Hahaha! It's probably better if she doesn't remember; I would rather stay dead than have to relive something like that again!" Sniggering rudely, the man continued, "Doctor Liu said that no one's ever gone out like that at the prison!"
"Excuse me?"
"No one's ever died like you did in the ENTIRE prison's history... and that's like two hundred years," snorted the examiner. "Not a great or infamous death either, little girl, it was just sad -"
"Xiao Yu, this is not the time or place for this!" exploded the first examiner. "She's alive and we've got her down here in the morgue! Contact the main prison's medical office immediately! She's a prisoner who's supposed to be dead and they've already filled in paperwork for that! I refuse to refile all that, it'll take weeks!"
Tong Mei couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding.
With her physical strength slowly recovering, she subtly placed a shaking hand on the back of her head before flinching when she struck a nerve somewhere. Retracting her fingers, she realized that they were coated in a discomforting liquid, sticky and viscous.
"I'm having problems locating her case in the database," muttered the grumpy examiner as he scrolled furiously through numerous entries displayed on a flickering monitor. "Anyone remember her ID number?"
"It's probably easier if you search for 'head trauma,' 'nude,' 'women's showers,' and 'soap," said Xiao Yu, the slightly peppier ME, helpfully. "It's her first day and she died before even getting assigned a permanent number."
Tong Mei frankly did not recall anything from those words, but she simply couldn't put it past herself. It did sound likely that she perished in the most undignified way possible and in the most undignified place. After all, she had plenty of experience slipping on freshly waxed, puddly, or simply normal floors - death was a new thing, though.
Despite her aching head, she tried to sit up from her prone position on the metallic table. Plastic rustled around her from her movements and slightly tickled her bare belly.
"GYAAAH!" she suddenly shrieked, seizing the plastic body bag around her protectively, subconsciously looking for a zipper to enclose herself safely again.
The examiners flinched at the sharpness and shrillness of her abrupt scream, unaccustomed to such loud, high-pitched, and emotional outbursts from a subject in their place of work.
Annoyed, the first examiner shot her a disdainful look. "What is it now? We're trying to get you fixed up and out of here!"
"WHY AM I NAKED??" she instantly exploded, curling into the depths of the plastic. The body bag was thankfully quite roomy. "AND DON'T LOOK AT ME! I CAN SUE YOU FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT, SICKOS!"
His disdain was evident in his response: "Look at what? You were dead a few minutes ago." To emphasize his utter lack of interest, he snorted. "And there's literally more to look at on a chicken."
Offended but helpless, Tong Mei huddled into the body bag.
"..."
Xiao Yu observed her movements. "Doctor Liu recently made some budget cuts and so we've started reusing body bags for certain corpses. Are you sure you wanna do that? Yours was the first."