All too soon they reached the morgue and Seamus realized he could barely remember the walk from the lobby to here. The looked about, the gleaming white of everything almost hurting his eyes and the complete lack of smell was unnerving. But it was hardly something he registered.
There was a hospital worker waiting at the doors, his face carefully blank as if he'd been through this countless times before. Maybe he had. Seamus didn't want to think about it.
Not glancing at Ernie, Seamus took a deep breath and walked through the morgue doors. He could hear someone follow behind him, but Seamus couldn't take his eyes off the sheet-covered body laid out on the table in the middle of the room. They'd been waiting, he thought vaguely as he drew closer with each dragging step.
The morgue worker seemed to appear out of nowhere on the other side of the table and without any preamble, he drew back the sheet.
Seamus stared down into the waxen face of his mother until his vision went blurry. He did realize he was crying until the tight ball in his chest burst from him in a ragged sob. His mother was dead. Just like that, his reality was changed forever.