Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [43]
Two days before his death, the Reverend had returned to the GP, this time extremely unwell and apologetic that he was once more wasting his time, but the pains were worse than ever. Within an hour he was in A&E and within a further two he was in the ITU. None of the tests they did had indicated what was wrong with him; they had been able to keep him alive for four days, but he had deteriorated gradually over all of this time and eventually the inevitable had happened.
Our first look at the Reverend Samuelson told us that he must have been very, very unwell indeed, because he was bloated with fluid and bright yellow in colour due to jaundice. He had so many tubes coming out of him, he looked like a puppet whose strings have been cut. He was thin, unshaven and, when we removed his clothes, the skin on the front of his abdomen was starting to turn green, which sometimes happens, even when the body is refrigerated straight after death.
Ed beavered away over the autopsy for over an hour, a long time for him and a sure sign that it wasn’t straightforward. He took swabs of the lungs and the bladder mucosa, as well as a blood sample for microbiological tests, then asked for Clive to get some more blood for toxicology although, as he said, he didn’t think it would help much. Eventually, he looked up from the dissection bench and said to Clive, who was sewing up, ‘Well, I know why he ought to have died . . .’
‘Why’s that, boss?’
‘Leptospirosis.’
Both Clive and Graham nodded, but it was a new one on me, so Ed explained. ‘It’s a bug that’s carried by rats and excreted in their urine. Normally, the only people who are at risk are sewage workers and farm labourers, people in those kinds of jobs; in a flood, though, it’ll get washed all over the place. It causes liver failure, like the poor Reverend here has.’
‘Nothing else wrong with him, then?’ asked Clive.
‘Yes, and that’s the trouble. He just looks rotten. His heart looks knackered, his kidneys are falling to bits and his lungs are manky, none of which should happen.’
He stood at the dissection bench staring at the organs before him for a long time, a sure sign that he was flummoxed, then abruptly peeled off his gloves and his other protective clothing and went to the phone. He rang the ITU and was deep in conversation with the consultant there who had been looking after the Reverend. When he put the phone down, he looked no happier. ‘They don’t know why he died either,’ he sighed, then added, ‘Bugger.’
The likely cause of the Reverend Samuelson’s death did not become clear for several weeks, and in the meantime another flood victim came into the mortuary . . .
Paul Collins lived on an estate with not a very good reputation. He was well known by all who lived there as a heroin user, and had been the main suspect for many of the robberies on the estate, although no one had yet proved his guilt. On the night before the floods, Paul had just scored with his dealer, then found an unoccupied Wendy house in a secluded corner of someone’s back garden. As it was late and dark, he went unnoticed, and it was perfect shelter from the rain for him.
He injected himself and fell into unconsciousness. The rain continued to fall, and the occupants of the house began to move their furniture upstairs as the levels started to rise in the garden; all the time, they were unaware that Paul was in a comatose state huddled up in their young daughter’s Wendy house.
Unfortunately, in his stupor Paul failed to wake, and so high did the water rise that the Wendy house could hardly be seen. It took a few days for the water levels to go down and even then the householders had plenty of other things to attend to before trying to retrieve garden furniture and assessing the damage done outside.