Welcome to Case Closed. You're listening to every time I go on vacation, Someone Dies, by Catherine Mack, narrated by Elizabeth Evans. Let's pick up where we left off last time.

Chapter 9. It Tolls for The Thing No One Tells You About Dying is that your life doesn't flash before your eyes like you're watching a movie. There's no white light enveloping you while bucolic scenes scroll by. You on a bike with your dad, you at the park with your mom, your first kiss, first time,

the last time you felt truly happy. Not when you can't breathe. Instead, your life closes in

like a pinhole camera, tighter and tighter as you try to cough up the small bone that's lodged

in your airway. Your hands go up

reflexively to your throat, like you're trying to choke yourself out, and all you can think is

not like this as fear floods through your body. But it doesn't end like this, not this time,

because Oliver is the hero of this chapter. Right before it feels like I'm going to

pass out, he bounds around the table and grabs me from behind, his hands on my solar plexus. Then he

pushes in and up until the bone dislodges and, poof, I can breathe again. I take in three

slow, ragged breaths, and the camera lens widens.

The entire cast is standing in front of me.

Harper, with tears on her cheeks, Alison and Emily clinging to each other in shock,

Guy standing at the ready to do something, who knows what,

shake with his phone to his ear,

trying to explain to the emergency operator in broken Italian that I'm not going to die after

all. Conner and Isabella standing hand in hand with expressions I can't read. Connors might be

relief, but it might also be joy.

I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it.

And finally, Oliver, whose hands are around my waist, my back pressed against him.

It feels so familiar to be in his arms that it dissipates the fear and makes it feel like a memory.

I can't believe that worked, Isabella says, with wide-eyed wonder.

...