"You want to stay? Oh. Well, I don't mind if you don't mind. Mr. Porter, any objections? Yeah. I didn't think so. I think she's pretty, too. No, no, sir, I do not think she's judging you for not ever having that tummy tuck your wife wanted you to have. I don't think I would have done it either. Not---for that reason."
Charlie winced a little as Mr. Porter lapsed into a diatribe about how it was utterly a womanfolk thing to get their tummies sucked in by some quack who called himself a surgeon. He let the man ramble for a while until he ran out of steam. His face changed from animated with self-righteous anger to bewilderment as he looked at his body on the table. It was a hard thing to do: stare head-on at one's own death. Charlie had done it himself. It wasn't an experience he would recommend. He put his hands in his pockets as he waited for Mr. Porter to calm down enough, come back to him enough to answer some basic questions about how he wanted things done. Sometimes they had requests Charlie couldn't fill, but most of the time? It was all easy enough. He had gotten good at taking care of whatever needed to be handled.
'Charlie, huh? That's a good name. Short for Charles? My wife and I wanted a boy. Never managed to have any children. She blamed me. My weight. I think it was more likely God's will. Do you think it was my fault? Us never having children of our own?'
Medical questions were hard for Charlie to answer. He couldn't think about medicine without flashing back to the back of the ambulance to the moment he realized they weren't working on Sam anymore. His ears would ring with the sounds of himself screaming for his brother; once Charlie had even lost consciousness floating back to that day in time. If he had to face his own dead body again or relive the moment he knew he'd killed his baby brother, he'd stare at his own corpse for eternity. Some things a man shouldn't have to live with in his life. Some things a man should never have to experience even once. Not ever.
Swallowing, Charlie grinned at the doctor and asked, "Do you know if Mr. Porter showed any signs of fertility problems? He and his wife never had children. It's bothering him to think he might have been the reason for that. Would you know that? Something like that, I mean, from your autopsy?"