Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [30]
You’d think that anyone with that nagging voice in their ears would be incapable of any mistakes, but you’d be wrong. The local Mrs Jones had already been released when the funeral director arrived to take the second; as they had come from Wales, they had already had quite a drive and they still had two hours’ return journey to come. I happened to be the one releasing the body, because Clive was busy booking in PMs for the next day and Graham was dealing with a viewing. I pulled Mrs Jones out of the fridge and received the paperwork the undertakers had brought with them. As per instructions, I checked this with the identification tag on the wrist, and was horrified to see there the address of a local Gloucestershire village. It was with a sinking feeling that I turned to the tag on the foot only to discover that it, too, bore the Gloucestershire address. It could only mean that the Welsh Mrs Jones was with the wrong funeral director.
This was a disaster, one that could prove very embarrassing. I knew that the family of the Gloucestershire Mrs Jones were due to go to the funeral directors that afternoon for a viewing, to say their last goodbyes. They were going to walk into a viewing room, probably feeling emotional, and when they looked into the coffin, they would be looking at a Mrs Jones who had no resemblance to their family member; then, quite rightly, they would want answers as to how it had happened. If they made a complaint, there would be a Trust inquiry, perhaps disciplinary action. What do you say to people? This makes us look like a shambles, a complete cowboy set-up. I could see that the Welsh funeral directors were none too impressed. I knew that I hadn’t released the wrong body, but that didn’t make me any less worried.
I called out to Clive, who came at once. When I explained what had happened, he frowned and sighed, but remained calm. He asked the Welsh undertakers to wait in the office and told me to make them some coffee, then at once he rang the local funeral directors who, luckily, were only a five-minute drive up the road; even more luckily, the family had yet to arrive and no one knew of the mistake.
Within an hour, the two Mrs Joneses had been returned to the appropriate funeral directors and were on their way to the right funeral homes. It turned out that it was Graham who had made the mistake. Clive didn’t go mad, but he did make it quite clear that this was unacceptable. I could see that Graham was very upset and contrite as Clive stressed once more that it didn’t matter how many years you did the job, you always checked, checked and then checked again.
SEVENTEEN
The one thing that confirmed I really was part of the team, now that I was regularly doing viewings, eviscerations and reconstructions, was when Clive announced that we were going to have a works outing on the Friday evening. I imagined he was talking about a large do, perhaps including the pathologists and even the Coroner’s officers and the rest of the histology staff from upstairs in the lab, which would give me a chance to meet a few more people and maybe sneak off with Maddie mid-evening, but it turned out that it meant just the three of us, not even wives and boyfriends. As Graham pointed out, ‘We’re the department, no one else really.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘Three morticians on the town; hope you can hold your ale, Michelle.’
We finished work at four o’clock on the Friday and headed for our first stop, the local watering hole – the one that is in every town and looks the same wherever you are, the local cheap-but-cheerful chain pub with no character and, more importantly,