Excerpt: Six Feet Over [working title]

Valarie sighs and closes her eyes. "This might come as a shock to you, Mr. Burr—"
He interrupts her by laughing. "After feeling a bullet swim through your shoulder and hit your bones like a pinball, I can't imagine anything more shocking."
"It might come as a shock," she repeats patiently as soon as he's done, "but you're alive."
The laughter mostly disappears from his face, to be replaced by confusion. "Um... why would this shock me? I'm sitting right here. And I sure hope this isn't Heaven, or the other place, because it's not exactly living up to standard... no pun intended."
"You must understand," she continues, gritting her teeth, "the fact that you are not dead is quite an amazing one, if you'd listen to me. See, you bled a lot back there on that road. When your backup got to you, you were out cold and soaked in a puddle of your own blood. You're lucky I have ample amounts of spare B+ blood; if you had a rarer type I wouldn't have been able to transfuse enough into you to be healthy."
All traces of laughter gone now, Carson asks, "I thought that's what hospitals are for?" and she shakes her head.
"Not in this case. They got you back to the hospital, but by then you were all but dead. They removed the bullet and did what they could for you, but you died on the operating table." He's staring at her now, mouth slightly open and eyes wide, but she pays no mind. "So they sewed up the wound and cleaned you up just to be kind to the body, and dressed you for your funeral."
"Dead? Funeral?" he tries to ask, but she cuts him off.
"Your heart was stopped for more than seventy-two hours, at least. You were – are – clinically dead. And so you will remain."
He moves forward again so his legs are now dangling off the bottom of the seat. "Wait. What the hell are you talking about? Are you trying to say that I'm dead?"
"Of course not," Valarie answers calmly. "I already told you, you're fully alive, though it may shock you. You never thought the truth could stun you like a bullet can?"
Abruptly, he tries to stand up, but before he can get his bottom off the chair more than a few inches, he falls back onto it, looking at his legs as if there’s something wrong with them. “So… if I… died… why am I still here?”
Valarie meets his eyes, which are now tinged with something resembling fear, and says as clearly as she can, “Because I brought you back to life.”