The razor rests on the edge of the bathtub. Jim Rivers has been dead before. His wrists will close.
The work
His number passes from nurse to nurse, through VA chaplains, to families with someone dying. He goes to the bedside and dies alongside them. He walks them across.
"I don't make it easy. I just make it honest."
Coming back
The body repairs itself while he's inside it. Cells, vessels, bone. The sound is like someone chewing with their mouth open inside his skull.
He's done this for six years. He wants the death. Coming back tears him away from what he went there for.
The kitchen
Yellow linoleum. Cherries on the oilcloth. A woman shelling peas into a steel bowl, finishing the pod before she looks up.
Jim knows her better than he knows his own body. He stands in the doorway anyway, trying to make the first second last.
She takes his wrists and puts her mouth where the razor went in. Over here, there's no wound.
Source of record: Cleared. Revised 2026-11-05.