legends · 4 min read ·
Shift Notes, Mortuary
A mortuary technician's night sheet lists rules, and the twelfth cabinet.
You will be shown the building on your first night. Pay attention to the corridor. It is longer than it looks from the outside.
You will work with one other person, the senior technician, whose name you will be told once. You will be told it quietly. Use it only when necessary.
The night shift is 21:00 to 07:00. Your job is receiving, labelling, filing, and care. You will deal with the dead in an order, a rhythm. A body arrives from the hospital or from the coroner's van, tagged at the wrist and ankle. You check the tags against the sheet. You log the time. You place the person on a tray, in a cabinet, in a numbered bay. You close the door with both hands, as a courtesy.
You will find that you speak to them. Everybody does. Do it softly. It does not matter what you say.
**The rules you will be given:**
1. Check the tags twice. Once when the body comes in, once when it goes in the cabinet.
2. Do not leave a body unattended in the receiving bay for longer than ten minutes.
3. Do not move a body that has not been signed for.
4. If a cabinet door opens by itself, close it with both hands, and say the name on the tag.
5. Never leave by the east door.
You will find these reasonable. You will find the first three dull. The fourth will happen to you in the second week. A small door, bay 9, swinging slowly open, with a creak of the seal. You will close it. You will say the name, a woman's name, and you will hear your voice shake. The door will stay closed.
You will find the fifth rule odd. The east door is the staff exit. It is the door to the car park. It is also the shortest way home. The senior technician will tell you not to use it, and she will tell you not to ask why.
In the third week you will be alone. The senior technician will have been called away. The shift will be quiet, three arrivals, all natural causes. At around three you will go to the bays to do the check. You will count. There should be eleven.
There will be twelve.
The twelfth will be in bay 12, which is not in use. There will be no tag on the door. No sheet. When you open it you will find a tray, and on the tray a body wrapped in a sheet, and the sheet will be freshly laundered, and folded at the corners the way you were taught to fold it, and neat.
You will not sign for this person. Rule 3. You will close the door.
You will go on with the shift. At five, the senior technician will phone. She will ask how it has gone. You will say all right. She will say, "Did you count?" You will say yes. She will say: "Don't count again."
At six the east door will open, with its heavy bar, by itself. It will stand open for a minute, with the grey light of morning in it, and a smell of rain, and the car park beyond.
Something will walk in from outside, quite slowly. You will hear it. Bare feet on the vinyl. It will go past the door of your office, along the corridor, into the bays. You will hear a cabinet door open, and the soft rattle of a tray, and the tiny sigh of the seal.
It will be the person from bay 12. Come back from somewhere. Late, and unwilling to be seen to be late.
You will count in the morning, at seven, before you go. There will be eleven again.
You will walk to the east door. It will be shut. You will take your coat. You will think, only for a moment, about how short the route is.
Then you will go out the front, the long way, round the whole building, in the rain, as the others do. Past the windows. Past the corner where, if you look up, you can see the high small window of the receiving bay and a hand at it, a pale hand, lifted a little in what may be thanks.