This is a flashback from another fanfiction I´m working on, in which Magda recalls the dreadful day of David´s death.

It had been a strange day already. With David taking off - for the second time - without even a word to her, and her remorse of not having talked with him the night before when she had the chance... And now there was the determination to go after him, of which she had been thinking whenever there was a second of spare time in between two patients. The determination to go after him, to get at least a definite answer as to his returning her feelings or not. And if nothing else: to get a proper explanation about his leaving.

But to be able to go after him, she was in need of some time-off. So with the purpose of getting a week´s holiday - no matter what it cost - she had gone to see Geoff at the base that afternoon during coffee-break.

But Geoff hadn´t been there. Only Clare.

"Where´s Geoff?" she had asked the elderly lady.

Clare had looked up from the radio. "He´s out on an emergency-call. From David."

A cold hand closed around Magda´s heart. "David?! Is he hurt again?"

"No, not David. He´s with a man who had fallen down a cliff. Broken leg. No, David´s allright."

Magda heaved a quiet sigh of relief. "Will he be coming back with Geoff then?"

Clare had shrugged. "I don´t know. I don´t suppose it´s necessary. Kate and Geoff can handle a broken leg by themselves, I think." She had cast a mischievous glance at Magda. "Still, it´s funny to see how he gets himself into such things over and over again, even now that he wants to quit medicine."

Magda couldn´t help chuckling. "Once a doctor, always a doctor, Clare!"

She had pulled up a chair. Now that she couldn´t go and see Geoff yet, she might as well pass her break in pleasant chat with Clare instead of listening to Guy´s annoying boast.

After a while Guy had come in though. With a lot of noise as usual. "So here you are! May I remind you, dr. Heller, that you´re on duty in the hospital?"

Magda had merely glanced at the clock on the wall. "And may I remind you, dr. Reid, that it still is my coffee-break? Or does your clock go ahead, too, when you have your breaks?"

"My clocks do not go ahead," Guy had started indignantly, but Clare interrupted him with a determined: "Stop it, you two! Can you please bury that hatchet? For everybody´s sake?! There is no need to fly at each other at every turn! I´ve had quite enough of it!"

Her outburst was followed by a long silence. Then Magda put her hand on Clare´s arm. "I´m sorry, Clare. I´ll try to better myself."

Guy snorted and turned away. "Sorry to upset you, Clare," was all he grunted.

At that moment a call from the Nomad had come through. "Mike Sierra Foxtrot to Victor Charlie Charlie." It was Geoff. But he sounded somewhat funny, and in the background they heard faint crying.

"Victor Charlie Charlie, go ahead, Geoff," Clare answered.

It took a moment before they heard Geoff again. And he sounded so strange, that even Guy turned back to the radio with interest.

"We´re on our way. E.T.A. about two hours. The patient is okay; apart from the broken leg just some cuts and bruises. But..." They heard him take a deep breath. "Clare, could you please get in touch with David´s parents? When he tried to loosen the stretcher, he sort of slipped... He fell down the cliff. And he´s... he´s dead..."

Clare´s face turned livid. And Magda felt a cold shiver going down her spine. David dead?! He couldn´t be!

She backed away a little from the radio in disbelief. Her mind tried to comprehend what she´d just heard: slipped, fallen down a cliff, dead... But it seemed her brain couldn´t quite grasp the connexion between those words and David. Her feelings for him were so very much alive... how could he be dead?

"Whoa..." she heard Guy utter quietly behind her. It was the first time she heard him really impressed.

Clare had finished talking with Geoff over the radio, and for a moment she buried her face in her hands. Magda saw how Guy bent over her and kindly asked whether she was allright. Clare looked up and nodded. "Just a bit shocked; that´s all." There were tears in her eyes, Magda noticed. It was strange. It was like she wasn´t really part of what was happening around her. It wasn´t real to her. Like Guy and Clare and even Geoff were putting on a play, and she was nothing but a spectator. She saw and heard very clearly what happened around her. But she had no part in it.

She saw how Clare got up and went to get a file. She saw how she leafed through the folder and sat down again with a sigh. She saw how she slowly dialed a number. And she felt how Guy´s hand gently took her by the shoulder. "Come on, we´ve got to get back to work. There is nothing more we can do here. Are you allright?" he asked.

She looked up to him. Calm, almost cool. "I´m fine." She got up and followed him outside, back to the hospital.

Guy was quiet for a change. A blackbird sang, beautifully clear. The sun was grilling hot. The grass in front of the base seemed to be more yellow every time she passed it. A cat sat and dozed in a window-pane. Everything was so clear. So normal. It couldn´t possibly be for real that David had fallen off a cliff and died. So back at the hospital, she put on her white coat and got to work. Everything was normal, so why shouldn´t she?

But a few hours later, Guy had come to get her. "They´re here," was all he said.

Indeed: the ambulance was coming up the driveway to the emergency entrance. The word about David´s presumed death had obviously got round, for quite some shocked town´s people had come to watch.

The ambulance stopped and its back door was opened. Geoff climbed out, pulling a still crying Kate with him. There were two stretchers in the car. One had a young man on it with a cast on his leg and a shattered look on his face. The other one had a human shape, covered by a white sheet with a few bloodstains on it. The second one was offloaded first, and got everyone´s attention. Guy and one of the ambulance-brothers carried him inside, and everyone followed: Nancy, Vic, Clare, Jim, Jackie... A sudden gust of wind blew away the sheet from the dead person´s face. But Magda, walking next to the bier, got hold of it immediately and pulled it back in place again. One, maybe two seconds she had seen the person underneath. Stiff. White. Still. It was David; no doubt about that. But to her, it was all still not for real. Every step she took beside that bier, she sort of expected him to thrust aside the sheet with a mischievous grin, chuckling: "Fooled you!" And everybody would be laughing.

They entered the mortuarium together. They just stood about while Geoff in short sentences told them more precisely what had happened. Kate kept crying against his chest, and Geoff himself looked rather shattered, too, Magda noticed. She looked at her other colleagues. They all looked shocked. Shattered. Upset. No one else seemed to understand that this wasn´t for real. Or who knows: perhaps they were very good at acting?

Hesitantly Guy drew back the sheet. There he was. Still and white. Blood on his clothes and in his neck. Guy only looked at the wounds and stated emotionally: "He must have been dead immediately."

Geoff nodded. But suddenly he looked up. "The organs! David is probably registered as organdonor!"

Guy looked at him. Almost frightened. "I don´t think I could do that, Geoff."

"No, we´d have to get a team from Broken Hill. And fast. I don´t want any of us to do a thing like that on a colleague."

Magda stared at him in horror. He couldn´t be serious, could he!? Taking out David´s vital organs?! They couldn´t do that! This wasn´t for real, was it!?

Carefully Guy searched through David´s pockets till he got hold of his wallet. And indeed: the wellknown sign of donorship was on his driver´s licence.

"Clare, get on to Broken Hill and tell them to send over a special team. And fast!"

Clare nodded. She couldn´t speak, and seemed only too happy to be able to leave.

They all followed her out of the room, with a final quiet farewell to their colleague and friend. Geoff took Kate home, and Guy and Magda continued with their usual tasks. Both of them were extremely quiet, though for different reasons. Guy was struggling with the fact that young people could die, too. Including himself. To Magda on the other hand, the whole thing still wasn´t for real. David couldn´t be dead. She just had to find a way to prove it before those Broken Hill butchers would come and cut him up. Perhaps, if this was genuine, if he wasn´t fooling everyone, perhaps he had come under some kind of magic spell? To sleep for a hundred years, like the Sleeping Beauty? Or something had got stuck in his throat, and he had simply lost consciousness? Like Snowwhite? Everything was possible. But not death. Her mind simply refused to take that option ino consideration. He couldn´t be.

As soon as she had a quiet moment therefore, she sneaked back to the mortuarium. There was no one around; she could enter unseen. But first she listened at the door. Was David in there, waiting behind the door, to scare her with a sudden "boo"? But all seemed quiet, and carefully she opened the door ajar. The room was but scarcely lit, and she could barely make out something. At least David seemed not to be hiding behind the door to scare the wits out of her.

Slowly she pushed the door open till she could go in sideways. And quickly she shut the door behind her; least of all she wanted to be disturbed now.

She tiptoed towards the bier. Everything seemed to be exactly the way they had left it: the still human figure, covered by a white sheet. Carefully she pulled back the sheet. There he was, unnaturally pale in the vague cold light. She looked at his face. So familiar, so dear it was to her. Its shape, its lines, its expressions... She caressed his face with her eyes, as she had done sometimes before, when he hadn´t been aware of her looking at him. Somehow she didn´t see the wounds, nor the blood. She just saw her dear David, her dear flying fisherman, and it looked like he was just sleeping. She still remembered that time he had fallen asleep in the Nomad. He had looked exactly the same that time. She remembered how she had been tempted to kiss him at the time. Or to caress his cheek. Or just to stroke through his hair. He was so sweet. So innocent. So dear to her. But she hadn´t dared to, afraid that he might wake up and... She had just kept looking at him, caressing him with her eyes. Like she was doing now.

Time stood still. She just stood there, waiting for him to wake up. But slowly she started to realize that indeed it was a bit odd the way he was lying there, without moving a single muscle. And in that cold room, somewhere outside reality, there seemed to be only one logical explanation: obviously, David was suffering from a similar problem as Snowwhite and the Sleeping Beauty. Which meant there was but one way to save him: the woman who loved him would have to kiss him.

Lovingly she caressed his cheek and his forehead. It seemed weird to just bend over him and kiss him on the mouth. Instead, she let her fingers run through his hair, and back to his face, stroking his eyebrow and his other cheek. There was no reaction as yet. And he felt rather cold. Well, no wonder in a chilly room like this one. She let her fingers get acquainted with his ears. His jaw, towards the chin. And then his lips. Still no reaction. She had to kiss him; it was the only way!

Carefully she bent down over him. It was now or never! Her face so close to his...!

For one more moment she hesitated. She had to say the magic words first. Of course; how could she forget?!

"David," she whispered at but a few inches from his face, "David, lieber, lieber David... I love you..."

No reaction yet.

"I love you so very very much... I believe I have loved you from the very first day I met you..." She stopped to look at his dear face. His eyes were still closed. "David, please forgive me for being so stubborn yesterday...? For I really love you. I do. I love you!" That last ´I love you´ came out as a whispered jubilation. And with eager tenderness, she bent down and kissed him on the mouth the way the princes used to do with Snowwhite and the Sleeping Beauty.

It felt strange. Stiff. Not that she had much experience with that kind of kisses, but somehow she felt something wasn´t right. She pulled back and looked at the still pale figure lying there. What was wrong?

And all of a sudden the doctor in her revived. She felt for a pulse. But there was none. No heartbeat. No breath. He was just lying there, cold and stiff, with a ghastly wound in his neck. Not responding to any stimulae. There was but one possible conclusion: David, the man she truly loved so dearly, was dead.

And she fled.

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Back to Magda´s Diary, ep. 171-173

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