Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [35]
‘What do I say to them?’
‘Just tell them what we do. That’s why they’re here.’
‘What about Graham?’
‘I’ve just sent him off to the wards to collect cremation forms.’
I didn’t feel that I was totally qualified for this task but took a deep breath and went out to the nurses. I led them into the dissection room – now clean and tidy – so that we were out of the hurly-burly. ‘This is not only a hospital mortuary but also a public one, so we receive bodies from the community as well. They come here if there is a possibility that they might need a Coroner’s post-mortem.’
A young girl with tinted hair, too much make-up and a double chin asked, ‘Does everyone get a post-mortem examination?’
I was giving a speech I’d heard Clive give a few times before; when he did it, it came out fluently, but I thought I sounded hesitant and unsure. ‘If a doctor can issue a death certificate, then it doesn’t need a post-mortem; if he can’t, it’s referred to the Coroner who will ask a pathologist to perform one.’
I knew exactly what was coming next. ‘When can’t they issue a death certificate?’
‘If they don’t know the cause of death, or if the cause of death is unnatural – accident, or suicide, or industrial disease.’
‘And murder?’
I had quickly learnt from listening to Clive when he did these talks that they always wanted to know about murder. I said, as if I had been doing the job for fifty years, ‘If it might be murder, it becomes a forensic post-mortem, which is slightly different.’
And so they got on to forensic post-mortems, as they always did. It was forty-five interminable minutes before I could get rid of them and, by then, I was ready to lie down on a trolley and be put into the fridges with the rest of the deceased.
NINETEEN
A few weeks later and I was again sitting in the pub with Luke, Mum and Dad, plus Michael and Sarah. Around the table the banter was flowing backwards and forwards as it always did, the beer doing its job and doing it well, but for once I wasn’t taking part. Dad noticed first and asked, ‘Something up, Michelle?’
I looked at him and smiled. ‘Bit under the weather.’
Mum, bless her, said immediately, ‘It’s not a hangover, is it? You haven’t been overdoing the wine, have you?’
With a tired grimace I said, ‘No, Mum, it’s not that. It’s probably the start of a cold, or something.’
She looked suspicious but didn’t say any more. Luke, who knew the real reason for my quiet, said, ‘There’s something going around, she’ll be OK soon,’ hugging me round the shoulder and shaking me in an affectionate manner as he spoke.
And that was that, as far as the family were concerned, but it wasn’t like that for me. I had to live with what I had seen that day.
My parents are aware that I’m not a particularly maternal type. I don’t see the pleasure in green, dirty and damp nappies, in sick down my back and piles the size of superheated plums hanging out of my rear end. Each to their own is what I say; for me it’s evenings of easy friendship and chat, undisturbed nights and late mornings that float my boat. Ankle-biters are all very well in their place, but my life isn’t that place.
Yet that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to go home and cry when we had finished dealing with the sad death of little Lizzie Dawes.
When I had arrived at the mortuary that morning, I could tell at once that something was different. The atmosphere was quiet, almost like a church, and Clive and Graham sat in the office with their coffee talking in subdued