[ WP ] Everyone knows the exact time and date of their death . Your date has passed , but nothing happened .

I knew my date as long as I could remember, like everyone else. I do n't know when I found out; my parents must have told me, when I was very little. But I do remember the day I found out what the date *meant. * I was five, innocently playing doctor with my best friend. He was the patient in my toughest case yet and, despite my best efforts, `` died'' on the operating table. Panicked, and desperate to preserve a thread of truth in our child's game, I ran to Alex's older brother John and breathlessly asked him, `` How do you cure death?!'' He turned to me and laughed, in the condescending way that older people laugh at young children. `` You ca n't cure death, stupid. It's the end. We all know when we'll die, and no doctor on Earth can do a thing about it.'' I ran home crying, begging my parents to say it was n't true. Their words were half-assurances. `` You've got a long time before your day, honey,'' my mom whispered. `` You'll do great things with the time you have,'' my dad assured me. 
 
 That was the day I resolved to fight like hell. For myself, and for everyone that would have their life stolen from them. I had seventy-five years in front of me, but not one day did I forget that my day, that everyone's day, was coming. True to five-year-old self's aspirations, I became a renowned surgeon. However, as I performed more and more `` life-saving'' surgeries on desperate people whose days had come, I noticed a disturbing pattern: the surgery would go miraculously well, yet the next day I would be told that the patient died just hours post-op. Perplexed and suspicious, I began scheduling just one surgery a day, and covertly following the patient after their operation was complete. Sure enough, I would hear the droning beep from their heart rate monitors that signaled their passing from this world. They would be hurried out of the room by a cloud of hospital attendants, down a dark and mysterious corridor. 
 
 As a doctor, the sudden passing of so many patients seemed suspicious. I began to research death dates, scouring shady corners of the internet and dealing information in dark corners of old bookstores. There was a theory, rooted in mystery and hearsay, that people do n't really die on their death days. Those that believed this claimed that the `` dead'' were merely secreted away when no one was looking, and brought somewhere well out of the cities, where they would n't contribute to the growing population and ever more congested urban areas. The more research I did, the more the evidence for this seemed overwhelming. At the age of 45, more than halfway to my own death day, I joined the ranks of secret activists, and rededicated myself to exposing the government for the lies they told us about our ultimate demise. For decades I helped terrified citizens, slated for `` death,'' escape the city. I watched my fellow doctors `` die'' one by one, and watched my fellow activists flee. Much as the latter always promised to report back, they never did, leaving those of us who remained with the small thread of uncertainty: *what if we were wrong? * 
 
 My death date dawned, bright and cold. Though slowed from eighty long years on this Earth, and the last one remaining of anyone I cared for, I still spent each day fighting for the lives of others. My plan, then, was not to run or hide, as so many had done before me. I would stay in the public eye all day, and when they came for me, I would fight like hell, like I fought for my patients, like I fought for my clients. I had what I needed to make a scene. I was ready. I sat out in the park, an elderly woman in the midst of millions half my age. I scanned the world around me, looking for the thieves who came to take me away from my life. At midnight, the clock in the city center chimed. I was puzzled. It was my day. I could show them all the truth, if only they would come for me. Exhausted, cold, I returned to my humble apartment, the same one I bought when I was a young resident. I closed my eyes, peacefully, silently thankful that I had n't had to fight a war that day. And as I drifted off, I saw them: the faces of every patient, every runaway I had saved. They stood open armed, smiling as they welcomed me, finally, into eternal sleep.
