Three Days Later

I ris was asleep when she heard the voice again. She hadn't moved much in three days, only going from the chair, where she'd stare into the open space of the room, hoping for the voice in her head to return, to the bed, where she'd sleep for a few hours after crying until her body could no longer remain awake.

"Iris," Daphne said.

Iris rolled over in bed, half-expecting it to not be real again, but there was her beautiful love, standing at the side of the bed they used to share, wearing the same dress she'd worn that night, and she was smiling at Iris.

"Daphne?" she whispered.

"Yes, sweetheart. I'm back."

"How long?" she asked, choosing to give in to herself as she sat up in bed.

"I don't know. But I need to tell you something, and you have to listen closely."

"Are you a ghost, or are you in my head?"

"I don't know what I am. I suspect I'm an entity of some kind, but, Iris, I'm not in your head. If I were in your head, would I know that I bought you a ring? It's in the blue box on the top shelf of the closet. Would I know that my parents thought it was a pair of your shoes, so they left it here without opening it?"

"A ring?" Iris asked groggily.

"I know we can't marry… couldn't marry." Daphne looked down at the floor. "But it's a wedding band. It's just gold, with no stone, but it would have been suspicious if I'd gotten you a ring with a diamond. I thought you could wear it on your other hand, and I'd have one, too."

"There's no ring in that box," Isis said. "I went through everything after your parents left."

"It's on the bottom of the necklace box. The necklace I got you for your birthday. Open the blue box, find that box from the jeweler, and lift the section inside. You'll find it."

Iris got up and walked over toward Daphne, wondering what had taken her so long to do this. She reached for her and leaned in, needing to feel Daphne's body pressed against hers for the first time since she died, but when she did, she touched nothing. She felt nothing.

"I can't feel you."

"I'm not alive, my love," Daphne replied and reached for her cheek.

Iris could see her cupping it, but she couldn't feel it, even though she leaned into it herself, praying that she'd feel something, anything of Daphne's skin.

"I miss you."

"Please check. The ring is in there. You need to believe this is real before we can move on. You have to trust me."

"Move on from what?"

"Iris, please. Quickly, sweetheart."

Iris moved around Daphne then, even though she didn't need to, walked to the closet, the one they used to share, and opened it. There were only her clothes hanging in there now. Daphne's parents hadn't asked her any questions about why Iris's clothes were in Daphne's closet, but Daphne had told her years prior that they suspected she was a lesbian, and it was something they'd all silently agreed not to talk about. Iris found the box, pulled it down, and removed the felt box the necklace had come in. She opened it and pulled out the white display section, revealing a gold band beneath. Her free hand went to her mouth as she gasped.

"I'm not in your head, Iris. I'm somewhere floating on a different plane, and I think I know how to get back to you."

"Can I put this on?" she asked, looking into Daphne's eyes.

"Of course, you can. It's your ring."

"Why didn't you give it to me?" She slid the ring onto the proper ring finger, not caring if anyone noticed it when she left this apartment.

"I was going to give it to you on our anniversary."

"Which one?"

"The one-year anniversary of us moving in together."

Iris's eyes welled up with tears again, and she said, "We never got that."

"No, but maybe we could," Daphne suggested.

"What do you mean?" Iris dropped the box on the bed.

"The project I worked on was for the US government. It was top-secret for a reason."

"I know. You mentioned that it was important. "

"We were working on a device that would bring people back from the dead."

"You were what ?"

"I know… It all started with them wanting a specific person to come back to find out what happened to them. They'd been murdered, and the government needed to know if they'd told any secrets to the Soviets, so they asked us if it would be possible to bring someone back to life for a few minutes. We started working."

"You were working on a device that could bring people back to life?"

"It started as a concept," Daphne explained. "We ran into a lot of issues, as you can imagine, and we kept the body frozen while we worked out what a device could do. In the end, we found something that would work. It took so much energy; we blacked out the entire city."

"That was you ?" Iris asked as she sat back down on the bed, holding the hand that now held her ring tightly to her chest with her other hand.

"It worked, Iris. We brought him back for three minutes. He told us what happened, and the government was able to arrest the Soviet spies. Then, they asked us to keep going."

"You brought a man back from the dead?"

"Only for three minutes at first."

"But… I can't have you for only three minutes."

"Sweetheart, we know how to bring people back permanently. My team does. We didn't tell the government, and we destroyed the device."

"You destroyed it?"

"We didn't know what they'd do with it, and the man in charge from the CIA was very interested in what we were doing. He said if we could find a way to lengthen the time and maybe have it work on non-frozen bodies, we could bring back anyone who had recently died."

"Why would he want to do that?"

"Imagine if soldiers were killed on the battlefield, but you could revive them and send them back into war… If a president was killed, like Kennedy, we could just bring him back to life without the public even knowing."

"Kennedy was shot in the head. Does the device fix bullet wounds? "

"No. But maybe doctors could have repaired some of the damage. And people knew he was shot, so they would've expected him to have scars. It's not perfect, and it wouldn't work on everyone, but he wanted to try it, and we weren't willing to let him walk around with a world-changing device, just waking up anyone he wanted. It would've been too dangerous."

"We buried you, Daphne." Iris sniffled. "You're in a coffin, and you're six-feet–"

"I'm not there," Daphne replied.

"What?"

"Sweetheart, I don't know how much time I have this time, but I'm not there. Because of the project I was working on, I asked the team to keep my body frozen if anything happened to me. We all did. It was a fail-safe in case something happened to us. We knew our CIA contact couldn't be trusted. They changed out my body with another one, and there was no open casket."

"You're not where we buried you? I cried over your grave, Daphne. Your parents–"

"I never thought I'd die, sweetheart. I'm… I was forty-three years old. I thought that if the project was scrapped, they'd leave us alone. But I died, and my team put my body in a freezer until they could rebuild the device and bring me back."

"This is wrong, Daphne… You're not supposed to be dead, but you're not supposed to come back to life, either. As much as I want you here, as much as I want you to hold me, I–"

"My love, I wasn't supposed to die this way. This can't be how it was supposed to go for us… I know everyone is against us because we're two women who love each other, but we were supposed to have time. We can fix it."

"And how would we do that? People know you died, Daphne."

"We'd go. We'd leave. We'd never contact anyone else here again, and I'll change my name, too. We'll figure it out. And it'll just be the two of us, how we've always wanted it to be."

"You're talking about coming back to life, and I still don't know if it's all in my head."

"The ring," Daphne reminded. "You didn't know about the ring."

"No, but maybe one night, I was tired and saw you put it in that box, and I just didn't remember or didn't put two and two together."

"That's not what happened, and you know it. Iris, I need you to bring me back to life. "

"You said you destroyed the device."

"We're going to make another one."

" We ?"

"I'm going to tell you what to do, what to buy, and where to get it."

"Oh," Iris let out and looked down at her feet.

"What?"

"I have no money. I lost my job, and I only had enough money to afford the rent this month. I'm barely eating."

"I know. I've been watching you," Daphne said. "And I am so sorry, my love. I thought having the will would help. The money I saved should be yours."

"I'll move back in with my parents and find another secretary job. I just haven't been able to work. I haven't been able to move."

"There's money in my drawer. Bedside table." Daphne nodded toward the table that was still on her side of the bed. "Bottom drawer. The nest egg was with the bank, yes, but the emergency fund is in the bottom drawer. I should've told you about this… I should've told you so much more… I left you unprepared, and I'll never forgive myself."

Iris rose and pulled out the bottom drawer, finding another shoe box.

"Under the piece of cardboard I put there so that no one else would find it."

The box had a few random objects in it: a pack of cards, a cigarette lighter, even though neither of them smoked, and some change. Iris lifted the piece of cardboard that looked like the bottom of the box and found more money than she'd ever seen in her life.

"Oh, my God…"

"It's enough. Maybe, if we do this right, we'll have a little left over to get us somewhere else."

"I had no idea you had this."

"The government paid us well for our work, and I still had my main job, so I've been putting a little away for the past several years. Some at the bank and some here. It was for us, for whatever we might need in the future. I didn't know this would happen."

"No, I mean… I had no idea you had this. I've never seen you put money in this box. I didn't even know this box was here. So, how do I know now?"

"Because, Iris, I'm not in your head. I am real. I'm as real as I can be in this state. And if you can rebuild the device, I can come back to you."

"Your team can build it. I can ask them; give them this money."

"I can't risk it."

"They saved your body. They must have thought about bringing you back. You all probably did."

"I don't want to risk them, Iris. If they work in the lab, someone will find out. If you work here , no one will know. No one would suspect you of being able to do anything like this. It's safer. All you have to do is build it and get it near my body."

"How will I–"

"One thing at a time," Daphne told her. "I don't have long. I can tell. I feel like I'm being pulled back. Go to the hardware store on Fourteenth Street tomorrow. Ask them for the same order I placed when I was in there last. They'll have a record of it. Tell them we needed more, if they ask. I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can, but bring it all home and hide it in the closet. I love you, Iris. I love you so much."

Then, Daphne was gone.