Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [18]
At this point, Ed came back into the PM room and sniffed the air. ‘Eau de peritonitis, I think,’ he said cheerily. ‘Hang on.’ Having put on an apron, a cap, a mask, plastic sleeves and gloves, he came to stand beside me. ‘Forget about removing the intestines first. Just take it all out in one.’ Normally, we tie off and remove the intestines before taking out the rest of the organs, but delving around in that horrible mess would have been vile and probably done more damage than good.
Even so, it wasn’t easy, what with having to reach down so far into the body that I was almost falling in, and with having to avoid splashing. Eventually I got everything out of Mr Chandler and Ed helped me get it all across to the dissection bench. While he set to work, I scooped out the rest of the pus from the abdomen, trying hard not to fill my own mask with vomit, and then set about taking out the brain. Every so often Ed swore loudly (which I tried not to laugh at) as the intestines, made fragile by the inflammation, tore and spilled contents over the dissection table. Usually he could take all the organs out in ten minutes but this time it took him closer to thirty. As I was weighing the organs, he said suddenly, ‘Ah!’ and he beckoned me over, waving the brain knife in my direction.
‘There,’ he said, pointing with the scalpel at the underside of the liver. I couldn’t see anything for a moment, then made out some stitching that was embedded in pus. ‘See how loose that is?’ he asked. As he spoke, he gently pulled at one of the stitches with forceps and it came away easily. ‘Bile’s leaked out into the abdomen from that and, hey presto, this is what happens.’
I asked, ‘Does it happen often?’
Ed shook his head. ‘No, not often, thank God.’
‘Should it have happened?’
He hesitated, then said neutrally, ‘That’s for the Coroner to decide.’
TEN
Easter was here before we knew it, and Mum wanted us all to do our normal bank holiday stuff. This consisted of a night in with a takeaway on the Saturday at their house, then up early on the Sunday, and ready to catch the bus into town at eleven thirty for a pub crawl, in our Sunday best, with bank holiday Monday to recover. This was the whole family – Mum and Dad, Michael and his girlfriend Sarah, myself and Luke. These Sundays nearly always turned into a long day, so my first task was usually to find a sitter for Harvey and Oscar; being German shepherd crosses, they can be a bit of a handful. I had happened to be having lunch with Maddie mid-week, on one of the rare occasions when we both managed to escape the pathology building at the same time. I was telling Maddie about the dogs needing a sitter, and she jumped at the chance. ‘I’m not going home, as Mum’s going away; anyway, I love your house, and it’d be nice to cosy up with the dogs. Better than being in the flat on my own all weekend.’
Maddie almost glowed as she was saying this. Luke and I really appreciate such offers, and take advantage of them when they come, which is all too rarely. We arranged that Maddie would arrive on Good Friday afternoon and stay over till bank holiday Monday.
On Thursday evening, Luke and I went out and bought Maddie all the goodies we could think off, including a supply of her favourite cider (not forgetting the blackcurrant to go with it), a bottle of vodka with a few cartons of orange juice, and treats and food for the dogs.
On Friday morning, Luke and I woke early, got Harvey and Oscar into the back of the wagon and drove them out to the local hills surrounding Gloucestershire. Luckily for us, the rain stayed away, and it was perfect dog-walking weather. It was a bit cold for us humans, but perfect for canines; for an hour and a half they ran about like animals possessed, so were pleasantly sleepy when Maddie arrived at one o’clock. Luke and I were then shoved out the door by Maddie at about two o’clock after I’d spent sixty minutes trying to organize her.