Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [36]
Clive said, ‘Just had a phone call from the Coroner’s office. There’s a little girl coming in. Only three years of age.’ He spoke in a low voice and I could see that, despite all the years he’d done the job, he was seriously upset.
‘What happened?’ I asked fearfully.
‘She was staying with grandparents. She went out to play in the front garden with a ball first thing. Granddad went to the garage to get out the car and didn’t see her. He reversed it over her.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Suddenly I, too, felt like crying.
Graham, a grandfather himself, said in a low voice, ‘Bloody terrible.’
Even though it seemed obvious what the cause of death was, the law requires a post-mortem. We don’t normally do children’s autopsies in Gloucestershire – they go to Bristol where a paediatric pathologist does them, because the diseases and problems are so different from the ones in adults and because they require specialized investigations – but in cases of trauma, one or two of the more experienced pathologists in the county are willing to do them; that saves having to move the body and thus cause (if it is possible to imagine) more upset to the family, should they wish to view the child. Clive rang Ed Burberry who said at once that he would do it, so all there was to do after that was to wait for the body.
Lizzie arrived at just after eleven. She was in a pathetically small temporary coffin, like a huge wicker basket, about two and half feet long. A single undertaker carried her in and that only emphasized how small and precious she was; I could see that he, too, was terribly affected by what had happened. Graham took her and carried her straight into the dissection room, returning a few minutes later with the empty basket. The request from the Coroner’s office had been faxed through about half an hour before, and Clive had already booked the case in and prepared all the paperwork for Ed. First Graham, then I, got changed into scrubs and we went into the dissection room while Clive phoned upstairs to tell Ed that we were ready for him. There were butterflies in my stomach as I approached the dissection table and I was afraid that I would not be able to stop bursting into tears when I came up close.
Well, my eyes filled with tears but I managed to sniff them back, although only just. She had been a very pretty girl, with long, pale brown hair that her mum had arranged into bunches, a chubby face and blue eyes that were now clouded. She wore pink dungarees over a white blouse. I knew at once that she was loved and cherished, probably spoilt deservedly by all around her.
There was surprisingly little trauma to see. The right side of her face was badly grazed on the cheekbone and around the eyes, and blood trickled from the side of her mouth; also, it was obvious that her right arm was badly broken from the way that it bent so sickeningly, and that her chest was crushed.
Graham, the seasoned old pro who had seen everything and done most of them, and who could heave twenty-stone bodies off and onto the table without help, undressed Lizzie with surprising gentleness. He treated her with dignity and respect, even folding the clothes as he took them off in case Mum and Dad wanted to keep them. He said nothing while he did this and kept his head down, so that it was only when he had finished and I glimpsed his face that I saw that he, too, had tears in his eyes.
By this time, Ed Burberry had arrived and changed. As a matter of routine he checked the ID, and then carefully charted all the external injuries – the facial grazes, the broken arm, the crushed chest. Having done this, he told Graham to begin the evisceration while he went back to the alcove where the pathologists kept the paperwork and dictated their reports. While he mumbled into the microphone, Graham