Relic Restorer: The Last Ten Minutes

On the seventh day after my grandfather died, I touched one of his belongings for the first time: a copper coin. The moment my fingertip touched it, white light burst inside my skull, and I saw the final ten minutes of his life. He was reciting seven names. He reached the fifth, then breathed his last. I work as a personal effects organizer. There are three rules in this line of work, and the third is the harshest: memories you see don't count as evidence. Speak of them, and you lose years from your life. But every old object I touch has something to say: fingernail scratches worn into the balcony, my daughter-in-law's fingerprints on the bottom of a sleeping-pill bottle, slippers whose soles have worn through after ten years... I can't speak, so I can only let the evidence speak for itself. A watch worn backward, a missing ring, a pair of slippers: together they reveal the hands behind three "natural deaths." Until I came across page 37 of the funeral home's register. Every one of the seven names belonged to someone who was alive when they were "summoned" to sign a form, then died. And the doctor who signed my grandfather's death certificate... Had died three months before my grandfather.