They loaded the litter into the waiting hearse. Before Johnson cut the hanging rope, he untied Jessica’s hands and feet. She tired to beg the assistant executioner to give her just a few more days to live. “What an awful thing to do to someone,” thought Jessica, “I take this to mean that my body will hang on the gallows for an hour to make certain that I’m dead!” The next passage covered the removal of the patient to a post-procedural care facility (the morgue, she assumed) for examination and washing of the patient. She looked down and shook her head. As the noose tightened slowly, inexorably, her windpipe inevitably closed off completely, throttling her to complete silence. On the Monday before her final day, she visited the town’s largest Cemetery and purchased a gravesite for herself. The state borders were now tightly controlled frontiers with armed militias keeping intruders out and citizens in.
