As the poison flooded his bloodstream his organs shut down one by one. Liver, kidneys, heart. His blood turned to liquid scalding lava. He was resolved not to scream but—he heard himself scream. A young raw boy’s voice. Oh God oh God help me. Oh God. He had been sweating and shivering and his teeth chattering wildly and now his temperature spiked. His heart was racing to keep ahead of the poison. He began to die in quicker degrees. His clenched fingers had turned white and were becoming cold, and his toes and feet were becoming cold. As his fingers became cold and numb they ceased clenching yet spread stiffly like claws. An icy mist crept up his body like a devil’s embrace. He had not given sufficient thought to devils and demons in God’s creation—that had been a failure of his. He had not truly believed in Hell. He had believed in Heaven but not so much in Hell. He was astonished at himself, to think—Am I still alive? And then, he was not alive.
Neurons in his brain were extinguished like lights going out one by one—a string of Christmas tree lights. His most painful memories were extinguished. His birthmark was extinguished as if it had never clung to his cheek like a rabid bat. His happiest memories were extinguished. A very young child laughed into his face and closed its arms around his neck and was gone in that instant. Another cried—Da-DA!—and was gone in that instant. He was being lifted, with care—a woman’s hand gentle at the small of his back, and a woman’s gentle hand at the nape of his neck. A sweet smell of milk overwhelmed him. He was bathed in liquid heat and in blinding light opening his eyes wide, wider to take in such a wonder. Dr. E—— who’d been waiting outside the execution chamber in a private place as was his wont as a thirty-year veteran of Chillicothe not witnessing the horrific execution thus obliged to wait an unconscionable two hours eighteen minutes having to exit the premises to use a lavatory not once but two times though a few shots of whiskey usually slowed urine production, so Dr. E—— was humbled, humiliated and infuriated and totally disgusted, returning then to a further vigil trying not to hear the dying man’s screams of agony through the purportedly soundproof wall and the inane accusations of the asshole COs responsible for the lethal injection blaming one another for the fiasco arguably worse, more heinous and outrageous than the previous execution fiasco several years before; now grimly charging forward into the reeking room to examine the deceased man’s livid body stinking of bowels, blood, chemicals, horror with rubber-gloved hands checking the pulse of the deceased, heartbeat, no pulse and no heartbeat, shining a pencil-flashlight into the unresponsive eye of the deceased to declare time of death 9:18 P.M. and date March 4, 2006, and sign the death certificate in his scornful illegible hand.
If they’d said thank you doctor he would say sure. And fuck you but no one thanked him. He exited.
Shortly then the body that had ceased writhing and was now very still was covered in a white bloodstained cloth of the size of a tablecloth. The red-mottled contorted face with opened eyes and mouth agape as in childlike terror and wonder was mercifully covered.
The gurney bearing the body was wheeled to the prison morgue by the COs who’d administered the drugs. Shame-faced and sullen and swaying on their feet with exhaustion. And their uniforms covered in blood from their myriad mishandlings of the needle. And in the morgue the fevered body began at once to cool. In this place of sudden calm, quiet. A drop in body temperature from 102°F to 99°F and then in inexorable and irreversible decline to 90°F, within an hour 82°F, eventually 60°F, and at last 36°F. which was the temperature of the aluminum gurney beneath the corpse and the temperature of the very still air of the morgue.
Total darkness in this place and not a single reflection of even muted light. Even the faintest eclipse of light, there was none. The darkness on the face of the deep before the creation of light before the first day of creation and total silence, not a breath neither inhalation nor exhalation.
THE EMBRACE
MARCH 2006–MARCH 2010
AUTOIMMUNE
Not yet.”
Waiting for the news. Waiting to learn that Luther Dunphy had at last been put to death.
In this borrowed room in Ann Arbor she’d forgotten where she was. And Darren two thousand miles away in Newhalem, Washington.
Hours they’d been waiting together. Since 5:55 P.M. and now it was 9:18 P.M. and no news had come from Chillicothe and the strain of the vigil was exhausting.
On an arm of the vinyl sofa where Naomi sat stiffly was a mobile receiver set to speakerphone. At the other end of the line was her brother Darren two thousand miles away in a place she could not imagine (for she had never seen it) with a similar phone similarly positioned.
It was Darren who had two phones primed for use. One of them, a landline, was connected to Naomi in Ann Arbor and the other was a cell phone poised to receive a call from Chillicothe, Ohio.
In Chillicothe a journalist named Elliot Roberts who’d known the Voorhees family when they’d lived in Detroit was witnessing the execution of Luther Dunphy in order to write about it for the Associated Press. Roberts had contacted Darren, to arrange for a private call to notify Darren when the execution was completed; but Roberts had to leave his cell phone in his vehicle parked outside the prison facility, for electronic equipment was not allowed inside the facility. Not until Roberts was released from the facility, presumably with other civilian witnesses after the execution, could he call Darren with the news.