6

“MY GOD,” I SAID to myself.

“Aw, shoot,” Romona said softly, in her corner of the room.

“That’s it, folks, let’s bag it,” said Rickles, tossing the paddles onto the crash cart and snapping off the EKG. “Samuels, you do the write-up, and I’ll sign it later.” The intern nodded and started to leave the room, but Rickles called after him, “Time of death, six forty-three. I’ll talk to the wife.”

Everyone but Betty Marder, the anesthesiologist, and I immediately left the room. Ed and Romona left, too, giving a sign that they’d meet me later.

Already the nurse was cleaning up the place, picking up used endotracheal tubes, pieces of paper and plastic, used syringes. It looked like a battlefield. The only casualty lay on the bed, his skin in various shades of red, blue, and gray, his open mouth revealing old yellow teeth. She took the IV. out of his arm, and a drop of blood appeared at the point of entry, at the center of an enormous bruise. A murky catheter stuck out of his penis. On the whole he looked like a battered puppet. The anesthesiologist removed the Ambu bag, but the tip of the endotracheal tube still protruded from Mr. Johnson’s face. This last task completed, she left quietly, apparently still smoldering.

Betty Marder gave me a shrug and continued cleaning the room.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“You can tell one of the aides to get her tail in here,” she said. “You’ll also have to order the death pack and take care of the belongings. I think there’s a watch and wallet,” she continued, pointing at the bedside table. “It’s your job to release them to the family, plus take him downstairs.”

“Downstairs?” I said.

“To the morgue. It’s the manager’s job—there’s no transportation around in the evenings.”

There was a wedding ring on Mr. Johnson’s finger, but Betty was having trouble getting it off. I handed her a packet of KY jelly that was lying on the crash cart. She smeared some on the finger, twisted, and in an instant the ring slipped off. “This goes with the belongings,” she said, handing it to me. “There’s a list inside the death pack.”

“Wonderful.” The ring was surprisingly warm to the touch. I slipped it into the pocket of my tan lab coat and went into the hall.

“You did just swell,” said Romona, “a real classy job.”

“Yeah,” said Ed, envy in his voice.

“Don’t worry, Ed,” said Romona. “You’ll get your chance real soon. You got Neuro Intensive and ENT. There’s a lot of action up there.”

“What’s this about a death pack?” I said.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll order it for you.” She went over to a drawer, took out a yellow form about the size of a traveler’s check, and stamped it with Mr. Johnson’s charge plate. Then she went to the back of the station where the pneumatic tube system was breathing and hissing, picked up one of the clear plastic tubes with leather and rubber to cushion each end, inserted the form, opened a roaring valve, and sent the tube slithering through the pipes down to Central Supply.

“That man’s been through hell,” said Ruth, referring to Mr. Johnson. “Cancer of the spine.” At the end of the hall, Barbara, Mrs. Johnson, and Dr. Rickles made a sad-looking trio.

“Better call the Reaper,” Romona said to Ruth.

“Already done it,” she said, “but that man can smell it on his own.”

“Speak of the devil,” said Romona.

Around the corner came a thin elderly man in a cheap brown suit. He, too, was carrying a clipboard, but he held it like a scroll.

“I understand you have an expiration,” he said to Romona.

“That’s right. William Johnson in 621.”

“Has the family been notified?”

“See for yourself,” she said, pointing down the hall.

“Very good. How about the belongings?”

“We’re waiting for the pack right now,” said Romona.

“And who are these young men? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Norm Cane, Jim Holder and Ed Grabowski. Jim is in charge of the unit.”

“Well, that’s nice, young man,” he said, offering a limp hand that smelled of cigarettes. “Just remember, death is an important event, and we must be judicious in dealing with the family.” He put a finger over his lips when he said the word family, as if it was sacred. His name tag said “Normal Cane, Administration.”

“I’ll remember,” I promised.

“Things to do,” he said, waving his clipboard and turning in the direction of the doctor and Mrs. Johnson. His silver hair, mixed with dirty blond, was shiny under the ceiling lights. Robert Sage, who’d been walking up and down, gave him a little wave as they passed in the hall.

When he was out of range, Romona said, “Now you see why we call him the Reaper. He’s the evening administrator, but there’s nothing to do but release a body now and then. He spends all his time hanging around the corpse’s family, pretending he’s somebody important.”

“What a bizarre character,” I said.

“I kind of liked the guy,” protested Ed.

A red light started flashing near the nursing station. Ruth got up and opened the silver doors of the dumbwaiter, and there was the death pack wrapped in plastic.

“You take it,” she said, handing it to me. “These things give me the creeps.”

“Actually, it’s a scam,” said Romona. “There’s only a couple of sheets in there, some safety pins, an ID tag for the big toe. That and the valuables list. And we charge the insurance company seventy-five bucks.”

I opened up the pack, and she was right. It was like opening a present and finding only empty boxes, one inside the other. There was only one thing she hadn’t described, a large pad of some kind with gauze strings attached.

We took everything into the room, where Betty and the nurse’s aide were giving Mr. Johnson a bath. They had him turned on his side, just like a living patient, but his limbs and mouth gave him away. On the whole, he looked much better. The catheter and endotracheal tube were gone, and his hair was combed. Much of the equipment was back on the cart, properly washed.

“What’s this thing?” I said, holding up the mysterious gauzy object.

The nursing aide thought this was very funny.

“It’s a diaper,” said Betty Marder without a trace of humor.

“Come on,” I said, “what is it really?”

“It’s a diaper, honest to God. We put them on the expirations so they don’t shit on themselves.”

I didn’t believe it.

“It’s true,” said Romona.

“It’s the anal sphincter,” said Ed with seeming expertise. “We get them like that all the time, like they was babies.”

“Huh?” said the nurse.

“Never mind,” I said. “Here’s everything you need.”

We watched while the body was dressed. The ritual was overpowering: the ablutions, diapering, binding, and wrapping. There were no preservative powders or eucalyptus leaves, of course, only a couple of worn-out sheets with “Chicago Laundry Company” stamped in ink on a corner.

“Romona, Ed, and I watched them put on the diaper, and it did look like a baby’s. Then they tied the ankles and wrists together with gauze, in order to make the handling of the corpse more manageable. The wrists crossed over the chest, palms down, like old statues of saints. One ankle rested on top of the other. The ID tag, which had been stamped with his name and patient number, was tied to a big toe. Finally, they wrapped him in his cut-rate shroud, which was laid out under the corpse like a diamond. When all the ends were wrapped tightly and secured with safety pins, Mr. Johnson looked like a handmade cigarette. Using safety pins, they attached two more name tags to the outside of the shroud. Now the job was done.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” said Romona.

“What?” said the nurse.

“What if the wife wants to see him? He’s all covered up.”

“No problem,” she said, neatly unwrapping only the head, so the face peered out of its bunting, serene and distant.

“How’s that?” she said, stepping back to inspect her work.

“Beautiful,” said Ed.

“Let’s get the things together,” Romona said, “then we’ll see the wife.” There was an atmosphere of preparation and care, as if a party were being planned. She opened his locker, which was set into the wall, and pulled out the clothes. They were old sturdy things: black tie shoes that would never wear out, a white dress shirt that was a little frayed at the collar, and a blue suit styled in a forgotten fashion. The jacket was surprisingly heavy, as if there was sand in the lining, and the seat of the pants was shiny. We lay the clothes on a neighboring bed.

“How do we know if this stuff is his?” I said.

“It’s his, all right,” said the aide. “Don’t you worry about that.” She reached into the bedside table and pulled out a watch and wallet.

“Let me see that,” said Romona. She started to go through the limp old wallet, which smelled of sweat and age. There was a five-dollar bill and three ones, and a faded photograph, now very much wrinkled, of Mr. Johnson and an attractive brunette. It must have been the forties, since he was wearing an army uniform. It wasn’t clear to me if the woman was Mrs. Johnson, but it might have been. She was standing up very straight and smiling into the camera brightly. There was an orchid pinned to her dress that opened toward her face.

“Sad, isn’t it?” said Romona, holding it for me to see. Ed, meanwhile, was efficiently listing everything on the bed. One blue suit, one white shirt, two black shoes, eight dollars in cash, two packs of Camels, a toothpick, a pair of white socks. Everything had to be listed, even the lint in his pockets. The hospital wanted proof in case the family claimed something was missing.

“That’s about it,” said Ed.

We put everything in a large brown paper bag and attached another name tag to it. Romona attached one copy of the valuables list to the top of the bag. “All done,” she said.

Outside was a patient who’d been ousted from the room in the commotion. “Can I come in now?” he said. “My wife’s supposed to call.” He looked to be in his fifties, and was wearing a bathrobe from home with little blue anchors on it.

“Not yet,” Romona said. “It’ll be about an hour.”

“I guess he died, didn’t he?” said the roommate.

“I really can’t say,” Romona said, closing the door behind us.

“Too bad,” said the man. “He was a nice fellow. White Sox fan, like me.”

There wasn’t much we could say to that.

“You come back in about an hour,” Romona repeated.

“Fine, fine,” He turned back toward the lounge, where another patient was waiting for him, looking up expectantly. They shook their heads back and forth, as if to say, “Now, isn’t that something.”

Barbara, Norm Cane, and the wife approached. Ed handed the bag to me. He and Romona stepped to the side.

“I understand you have something for me,” the wife said tensely.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, holding up the bag. “There’s a list of belongings we’d like you to sign.”

She eyed the bag as if it contained a trick of some kind.

I started to read from the list. “There’s one blue suit, two black shoes, two packs of Camels…”

“Never mind all that. Where do I sign?” She seemed enormously tired, and signed the form jerkily, as if she might not finish. I studied her face to see if she was the one in the photo; but if she was, age and worry had disguised her.

“I’ll take these things for you,” Barbara said, picking up the bag. They started toward the patient lounge, but Cane said, “Wait a minute. We have to make sure of the money. How much was there, young man?”

“Eight dollars,” I said.

“Does that sound about right, Mrs. Johnson?”

“I really don’t know,” she said. “Bill never carried much money.”

“How about a watch? Was there a watch?”

I said there was, and Cane checked the list to make sure.

“There’s always a watch,” he said. “How about a wedding ring?”

You couldn’t have knocked me over with a sledgehammer. A great force had fixed me to the floor. Barbara looked at me funny, as if my face had done something acrobatic.

“There was a ring,” I said. “I have it here somewhere.” Nervous fingers a mile from my shoulder reached into my pocket and pulled out a perfect circle of gold. I held it up for Cane to see, then handed it to Barbara. I was afraid if I gave it to Mrs. Johnson she might start crying again. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but in the rush of things I forgot to include it.”

“This looks very bad, young man,” said Cane.

“Oh, shut up, Norm,” said Romona.

Mrs. Johnson thanked us and dropped the ring into her purse. She seemed more relaxed than before. It was as if, by having the belongings, she had attained some understanding.

“Would you like to visit the room?” said Romona.

“Do I have to?” said Mrs. Johnson, looking at Barbara.

“It’s up to you,” she said.

With Barbara holding her arm, she headed toward the room. Romona joined them, refusing to miss the visitation she herself had suggested. Betty Marder and the nurse’s aide would still be there, standing discreetly to the side.

“It’s a touching moment,” said Cane in a voice like organ music.

“Yeah,” agreed Ed.

“I guess we’ll need a cart,” I said, “to take him to the morgue.”

I walked to the service side of the elevators and found a gray cart with a two-inch pad on top. Two straps hung down at the sides, like the seat belts in cars. I wheeled it around by the front of the station.

“You have to take off the pad,” said the Reaper, “in case there’s any drainage.”

Ed and I removed the pad and stuffed it into a small supply room next to the station. Then we pushed the bare cart over by the wall where it wouldn’t look too obtrusive when Mrs. Johnson came out. Pretty soon she appeared, crying worse than before, and Barbara looked a little angry, as if the visit was a bad idea. Romona followed them, beaming with satisfaction. They went straight into the lounge. Romona came back and joined us.

“The tough part,” she said, “is getting the body out of the room and into the elevator without anybody seeing what’s happened, but first we’ve got to get him on the cart.”

Cane went to the rear of the unit, where Samuels and Rickles were working on the chart, but they completely ignored him, so he sat down by the station clerk, who shifted away.

Wheeling the cart ahead of us, we headed for the room. Mr. Johnson’s face was now covered, and he looked like a mummy. We shoved the cart right next to the bed, which the aide had raised so it was slightly higher than the vehicle. It’s hard enough to lift a body; you want gravity on your side, not working against you. The technology was all worked out. The nurses had also placed a doubled sheet under the body. Each of us was to grab a corner, and on the count of three we were to lift and swing the body over onto the cart. I stood on the far side with Betty; Ed and the aide took the cart side. The only problem was, the body was distant from us, and we couldn’t get leverage. The first heave failed, and Mr. Johnson landed on his side, half on and half off the bed.

“Shit!” said Betty. “We’ve got to get on the bed.”

To Ed’s great amusement, the nurse and I climbed onto the bed and stood on our knees in order to get a better hold on the sheet. The next attempt was easy. The body floated over the cart and landed as smooth as fog. The aide strapped the body down, in case we took a corner too sharp, then covered it with another sheet.

Betty and I climbed back down from the bed, blushing. When we were on the bed, a fierce sex static had passed between us, and we looked at each other differently now.

“You two looked good up there,” said Ed with a stupid grin.

“Get lost!” said Betty.

Romona gave me a knowing wink. “OK,” she said. “Time to call the elevator.” Picking up the patient phone, she dialed three numbers and talked directly to the elevator operator.

“Bud?” she said. “Romona. Got a live one for you. Sixth floor.”

Betty and the aide went back to their work. Romona and I waited with the body, just inside the door, while Ed closed all the doors on the hall, as well as the doors to the patient lounge. The idea was to prevent anyone from seeing the body. Then, on Romona’s instructions, Ed stationed himself in the hall where he could see the service elevator. It only took a minute, and he waved to us furtively, like a convict inviting his buddy to dash across a prison yard. Romona and I, one on each side of the cart, sped out of the room and down the hall, glancing in each direction. Robert Sage stood at the door of his room as we sailed past, but nobody minded him, and he looked straight through us. The operator, seated on a stool, was a very old man whose right hand trembled. “Where to?” was his mumbled, apparently standard joke. Romona rolled her eyes, the doors slid shut, and we descended in one long motion into the cool basement.

It didn’t matter who saw us there, since only employees were allowed in the area. Anyone who worked near the morgue had to expect a body to cruise around the corner every now and then. A maintenance man walked by, dressed in workman’s green and wearing a belt full of tools. He gave Romona a friendly wave and continued on his way. Robert Holiday, a well-dressed young black man who supervised the maids in Housekeeping, stepped out of his office and smiled.

“Hi, Bob,” said Romona. “How’re you doing?”

“Oh, pretty good,” he said. “How about you?”

“They’re dying like flies up there,” she said with mock drama.

“Well, you tell them to stop that, Mrs. Fisk.”

“Got a bed needs making up,” she said. “Room 621.”

“His?” he said, nodding at the body. “You need the Bomb?”

“No,” she said. “It was only cancer. Just wash the bed like usual.”

We went around the corner to the morgue. Romona inserted her key, and pushed open the door. It didn’t look like much, but Ed was excited. He entered eagerly and gawked at the walls. There were only two small rooms, not what you’d expect from a large hospital. The one we were in was painted gray and kept very chilly. On one side was a row of doors with the same kind of locks you see on trucks. There were twelve of them all together, four rows of three, but the top ones were pretty high, at the level of my shoulders. Only two of them had cards on the door, meaning they were occupied, and all those were on the middle row. They often used the bottom ones, Romona said, for left-over specimens, but I didn’t ask what she meant. She pointed at a vacant one in the middle row, and I snapped open the door. It was empty, all right. Cold sick air came out of it and struck us in the face.

“Pee-yoo!” said Romona. “Let’s get this over quick.”

I pulled on the freezing metal handle, and the slab came sliding out. It was about six inches deep, and in one corner there was congealed blood and plasma. We pulled the cart next to the slab, as we had with the bed, but this time the slab was higher. We were going to have to lift, and conditions were awkward. On the count of three, we heaved on the sheet, but we’d forgotten to lock the wheels of the cart. It slithered away as the body brushed against it. Now we were holding the full weight of the body. Ed made a second desperate effort, which caused Mr. Johnson to roll up my arms, right into my face. I was virtually holding him by myself. Seeing the emergency, Romona threw her weight under the body, lifting it over the edge of the slab. The head and shoulders struck with a thud, and the legs dangled. There were going to be bruises on the body that would surprise even the undertaker.

Ed thought it was very funny. “You should have seen your face,” he snorted, doubled over in a laugh.

Romona couldn’t conceal her smile. “It’s tough the first time,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.”

We put the legs onto the slab, and I tried unsuccessfully to push it back into the wall. Apparently the weight of the body had bound the metal track. On Romona’s advice, I lifted and pushed at the same time, and the slab sailed in smoothly. Ed suavely flipped the door shut and put yet another ID tag inside a slot on the front of the door.

“Want a cigarette?” Romona asked, lighting up a Lucky Strike.

“No thanks,” I said. “How long are we going to stay here anyway?”

“What’s the rush?” she said. Blue smoke from the cigarette rose slowly through the cold air.

“Hey, look at this!” Ed said. He’d wandered into the neighboring room, and we followed. The walls were lined with shelves containing various organs. It looked like they were mostly brains, and they were tilted in many directions, like people at a ball game. There were other fleshy objects, but you couldn’t tell what they were, probably kidneys and livers. He walked from jar to jar, reading the labels with intense fascination.

A damp coldness came out of the cement floor and walls, but it was nothing compared to the chill created by the stainless-steel table at the center of the room. Designed like a trough, it had a drain at its center, and at the head, laid out neatly, were several instruments, the most dramatic of which was a compact power saw. Romona said the pathologist’s assistant, known as the Diener, used this to cut the body open from the crotch to the chin. Then he would lop off the top of the head. After they spread out the ribs a little, the doctor would search inside the body, detailing what he found on a tape recorder. This explained the microphone attached to the side of the table by a gooseneck extension. It made the table look strangely like a pulpit, and what a church it was. The choir was always in attendance, including a row of fetuses with large beautiful heads, one of whom had its back turned like a recalcitrant deacon. While the doctors would vary from day to day, the Diener and congregation were always the same. Romona said the Diener was a tall black guy with sunken cheeks whom everyone knew as James. Nobody knew if that was his first name or his last, and nobody asked. Whenever he entered the cafeteria, wearing his long white coat, the place got very quiet.

Ed asked if he could see an autopsy someday. Romona said sure, she’d seen lots of them. The worst part, she said, was the smell of bone when they cut through the skull.

That was it for me. The smell of formaldehyde, the sense of being watched by the bottled fetuses, and all this talk: it was too much. I grabbed the cart, threw open the outer door, and left. Romona and Ed caught up with me in front of the elevator, still gossiping about the morgue. My breathing was fast and shallow, as if there wasn’t enough room in my lungs, and my throat was so tight it was hard to swallow. This was the first time I’d ever felt this way, but over the next couple of years it would come back of its own account, for no apparent reason.

Bud, the elevator operator, mumbled angrily as we got on. It had something to do with red ripe tomatoes. I noticed one of his arms was lame, as if he’d had a stroke.

Back on the sixth floor, we put the pad back on the cart. Then we remembered we’d missed our dinner. The three of us joined Barbara in the cafeteria, where the assistant head of Food Service, Ulysses Thomas, a former football player who looked like a muscular Buddha, arranged for us to get new trays of food without extra charge. We ate in silence at first, then Romona started to tell her hospital stories. There was one about the rich woman on Nine North who had kept a stack of five-dollar bills on her bedside table to tip the orderlies and nursing aides. The strategy proved so effective that aides were lined up in the hallway outside her room; they came from all over the hospital, hoping to get a chance to serve her. If someone took her to X-Ray, she gave them five dollars going down and another five coming back. Romona said the rest of the hospital nearly shut down for lack of help. Alma Pinson and Malvinia Graven, the powerful nursing supervisors, flew onto the unit in a rage, but the aides were too quick for them. They disappeared like spirits into patients’ rooms, and the supervisors failed to get the goods on a single employee. When Pinson and Graven went into the woman’s room, she offered them each five dollars to take her off the bedpan.

We stayed in the cafeteria for almost two hours, and I realized we were less Romona’s employees than her new audience. She didn’t care if we got back to work, and we were glad to stay. In no time at all, our first day on the job was over.