The Quiet Room
The Coffin Door

3. What I Found In His Coat

August 25, 2026 · Part 3 of 10 · 2 min

The viewing is tonight. The burial is tomorrow morning. In between, somebody has to bring my father's coat to the dry cleaner because Mom can't stand the smell of the hospital still clinging to it, and that somebody is me.

I go through the pockets first, the way you're supposed to before dry cleaning, and my fingers find a folded, crumpled sheet of paper stuffed deep in the inside pocket — hospital letterhead, St. Anselm's Medical Center, printed in that ugly dot-matrix font old machines still use.

It's a lab report. Glucose panel. I don't understand half the numbers, but I understand the timestamp, because I've read it four times now to make sure I'm not imagining it.

**Collected: 6:40 p.m.**

Forty-eight minutes *after* the phone call telling us he was dead.

My hands are shaking so hard I have to set the paper down on the kitchen counter. Someone drew blood from my father's body almost an hour after a doctor declared him gone. You don't run labs on a corpse. You run labs on a patient.

I hear Roman's car pull into the driveway — he's been staying with us "to help with arrangements," which mostly means making decisions before Mom can ask questions. I fold the paper and shove it in my jeans, heart slamming, and by the time he walks in I'm pretending to load the dishwasher.

"You okay?" Roman asks, studying my face a beat too long.

"Fine."

"The car for the church comes at nine tomorrow. Don't be late." He pauses at the doorway. "And Micah — leave the casket closed tonight. For your mother's sake."

He says it gently. Too gently. Like a man who's rehearsed the line.

I wait until his footsteps fade upstairs, then I pull out my phone and type *St. Anselm's Medical Center billing department* into the search bar — not because I expect to learn anything, but because I need to do *something* with my hands that isn't screaming.

What comes up first isn't billing. It's a local news headline from eleven months ago, half-buried on page three of search results:

**"St. Anselm's Faces Third Malpractice Claim This Year Amid Staffing Crisis."**

Continue the story Part 4: 4. Rehearsed Grief →

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