Down Among the Dead Men_ A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician - Michelle Williams [82]
Maddie and I nodded and made the right noises, like we dared say anything else.
Clive’s annoyance had come about because of the death of Mr Lionel Helmond who had been found collapsed in his garden. The information from the Coroner’s office had been straight to the point and authoritative:
Mr Helmond, 78 years old, had told his wife that he was going to mow the lawn. She heard the mower going for about twenty minutes, but then it stopped. She assumed that he was having a rest and thought nothing of it for fifteen minutes or so, but then after shouting from the back door to see if he wanted a brew, which brought no answer, she became concerned. She found him lying dead on the lawn.
According to his general practitioner, Mr Helmond had a history of colonic cancer cut out in 2002, gout, high blood pressure and had recently been suffering chest pains.
It is likely that he suffered a heart attack.
No one had thought any different. After all, we have people of seventy-plus coming through the double red doors all the time, and probably half of them have died of heart disease. The exertion of mowing his lawn had quite likely done for Mr Helmond, so there was nothing to make anyone think anything else. The question might have been resolved a little earlier, though, had the post-mortem not been performed by Dr Zaitoun.
It was Maddie who was working in the dissection room that morning, as Clive was at a management meeting with Ed and other managers. After Maddie had stripped the body and made out a chart on which she put all the external abnormalities that she could see, she eviscerated the body. Dr Zaitoun came down about twenty minutes later and did what he always did, which was to dive straight in and hack things around a bit, then decide that death was due to heart disease. Maddie was busy sewing up the organs in the body when Clive returned. Being Clive, he took an interest in what was going on.
He asked Dr Zaitoun, ‘COAD, was it?’
To a doctor, COAD means Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease, which is things like chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Dr Zaitoun looked up from writing his notes. ‘No. He died of ischaemic heart disease.’
Clive shook his head. ‘No, it was definitely COAD.’
Dr Zaitoun frowned and opened his mouth. Before he could argue, Clive said, ‘He certainly Came Over All Dead, didn’t he?’
Maddie laughed into the silence that met this remark; Dr Zaitoun paused, then said again, ‘But it wasn’t COAD.’
Clive shook his head in disgust saying, ‘Forget it,’ under his breath and turned away. He spent the next few moments examining the body; in particular, he became very interested in the hands which were clenched tight into fists. After a while, he called out to Dr Zaitoun, ‘You sure he died of heart disease, doc?’
Dr Zaitoun said, condescendingly, ‘Quite.’
Clive paused, then asked, ‘This bloke was mowing the lawn, wasn’t he?’
‘I believe so.’
‘What kind of mower was it?’
Dr Zaitoun was becoming increasingly irritated, coming out of the alcove where he had been writing his notes. ‘What does that matter?’
‘Bet it wasn’t a petrol mower.’
Dr Zaitoun thought about this. ‘It was probably a push mower. The exertion might have been the final straw.’
Clive pursed his lips as if he were a car mechanic presented with a particularly tricky and expensive repair job. ‘You sure about that?’
Dr Zaitoun was now rattled. ‘Of course.’
‘You’ve looked at his hands, then?’
Dr Zaitoun said, ‘Yes,’ but he said it after a small pause and he said it uncertainly.
Clive said simply, ‘Good,’ and left the dissection room.
Maddie had followed Clive out. ‘What’s going on?’
He would say only, ‘Wait and see.’
Dr Zaitoun had finished and had, as usual, gone without even saying goodbye. As Maddie sat