Prologue: Death (s)

If you were to ask about me, I'm very well sure that the first thing they'd tell you about my life were the circumstances of my death, or perhaps the more appropriate term is deaths. How; on one cloudy and solemn night I was smiling with the rest of them, and then suddenly gone. I imagine my family took years to get over the trauma of their sick daughter - I only wished I could have lived normally for them.

Tonight was that night, except at the time I did not know it. I lay in my hospital bed oblivious and serene - even as the minutes for my existence ticked away. But I knew better even if I did not directly acknowledge the thought, I always died before my 25th birthday. Always.

I had very little regrets. I suppose that's all you could ask out of a life.

This life anyway. I didn't know which existence came next.

~ ~ ~

I played a rhythmic tap tap tap on my table with my pen, the papers piled before me in a great cluster of responsibility. I didn't even know where to start, and yet when I glanced at the clock the hands had already met midnight. The tired sigh escaped my lips even before I collected the thought.

"Today was tough." my words were met with empty air and a moonlight silhouette. Leaves rustled outside my office window as I placed my head in my hands. I could feel the blood burning behind my eyelids, signaling a migraine that was to come.

Working as a general surgeon in the trauma unit of Saint Michael's hospital was no easy task, and every day was hard in its own unique way. There were rarely off days, and if there were, the off days consisted of paperwork or further study.

The memories stayed with me long after the patients were put to rest, and all that blood never left my mind at waking hours. As a high functioning insomniac I thought myself immune to the siren calls of sleep, and yet when I was faced with days such as this: sleep seemed to be the only antidote to my overthinking.

I rubbed my face, exasperated at my own complaining. "Pull yourself together Emeline."

My name is Emeline.

Or should I say, was. I died in that life and was reborn into the next, and then the next. For what reason, I had never found out. In a cruel twist of luck or fate, the memories of my past existence had never left me, and the scars never faded. I never healed from the life which was Emeline, and her gruesome death haunted me in my dreams.

In this life, my name is Rose Anderson. I work as a trauma surgeon at Saint Michael's intensive care unit during the day, and work as a professor some nights to would-be doctors. This year I had taken my second apprentice, but with my workload, I was growing increasingly aware that I might have bitten more than I could chew.

"Your mother was a workaholic too."

The voices rang in my ear as I gathered up my papers and slipped my car keys into my coat pocket. Twenty-eight years later, and Emeline's father's voice had never left. My father.

I miss them.

It was greatly ironic that in this life I was a doctor when in my last life I had been a patient. Did fate think it funny to burden me with the memories of the lives I lived before? Did the universe find it amusing to torment me with the loss of a family that existed once, but never again?

This was my third cycle, and I was very tired.

But maybe Emeline's crimes were just too great - maybe they took lifetimes to atone. I suppose I had only myself to blame.

Rose Anderson the surgeon and Emeline the tyrant are one and the same, as well as Alice the hospital patient who died of cystic fibrosis, and whichever name came next in the cycles of existence.

But that is life - in the end, it ends. And good beginnings are often in short supply.

~ ~ ~

"Emeline Cordelia Vandergust, you are hereby sentenced to death for your crimes against the nation and crown."

"Please! Spare my daughter! Have mercy!"

The fire did not care for Emeline's white dress or lace, nor did it care for her lineage, nor her case against the crown. What it knew was to consume, and the fire did - laying waste to the body of a girl no older than eighteen.

"I'm so sorry, Father."

~ ~ ~

Rose Anderson died that night in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. It was the eve of her 25th birthday.