Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [26]
So, this week had been my first week on call, and the working week evenings had gone by without an emergency. I had actually turned my mobile phone on and off a few times and asked Luke to ring it to make sure it was working properly, which of course it was. From the stories relayed by Clive and Graham, I had thought it was going to be non-stop. This was about to change when Saturday morning arrived, however. The first phone call came around eight in the morning. It was the A&E department to say they had an elderly gentleman who had died in the ambulance on the way to be admitted. OK, I thought to myself, that is not a problem.
‘The trouble is,’ said the nurse on the end of the phone, ‘the family are coming down from Leeds.’
‘That’s fine,’ I replied. ‘What time are they going to be here?’
‘Could be any time. He was pronounced dead an hour and a half ago, we thought they would prefer to see him here, but they haven’t yet arrived and we can’t get hold of them to see how far away they are.’
I knew that this gentleman would probably have been transferred to the mortuary by now. I finished my phone call, left Luke and the dogs in bed and made my way to the mortuary at eight forty-five.
As I arrived, the porters were just bringing the patient over from A&E. I admitted him to our department and began making him presentable for his family. All the tricks Clive had showed me worked to perfection, and by nine thirty Mr Jenner was in the chapel, laid out in the proper manner and awaiting his visitors.
By eleven o’clock there was still no sign of his family. I had rung A&E a couple of times, but they had heard nothing. I had told pathology reception, which was manned until twelve on a Saturday, but they had had nobody wandering around looking lost.
In the time I had already waited, I had admitted a couple of other patients that had come in overnight, chatted with the porters for twenty minutes, drunk a fair few cups of coffee, run barefoot through the biscuit tin and read the local and national news on the internet. I then spent another fifteen minutes chatting to Gramp on my mobile about random stuff, but I could tell he was getting ready to go out and didn’t want to miss his bus, bless him. Luke had rung twice to see how long I was going to be, but I had told him to forget our plans for the day.
At twelve thirty, and still with no sign of Mr Jenner’s family, I decided I would have to ring Clive and take his advice on what to do. I had really hoped I could do this myself, if only to give him a break from the place, but needs must.
‘What do you mean, you’re still there?!’ was Clive’s response. ‘Michelle, put the body away and go home! If we sat waiting for every family that might want to come and visit a relative, we would have to have camp beds installed.’ I felt about an inch tall, my do-gooding had done no good at all for my staff relations. ‘You should always try to get a definite time and speak to the relatives direct. This is what happens when the ward arrange things for the morticians, our time gets wasted. I want you out of that mortuary within half an hour, Michelle. That’s an order.’
I finished my phone call and put Mr Jenner away in the body store. Luke said he would be outside at quarter past one to collect me. As we pulled up outside my house, I could hear Harvey and Oscar barking as they recognized Luke’s car. Just as I placed the key in the front door, my mobile rang. The family had arrived. So back to the hospital for the viewing that was supposed to have been hours ago. I met the family and they could not apologize enough.