The Only Person Who Totally Got Why I Love My Job at the Morgue

The Only Person Who Totally Got Why I Love my Job at the Morgue

(1582 w)

People sometimes ask me why I work in a morgue. I tell them that, being one of seven sisters, I just wanted a job with some peace and quiet; somewhere where the ‘customers’ never complain or give you stress. Not until tonight, anyway.

It wasn’t like one of those cheesy scenes where the cadaver sits bolt upright and there's an ‘B’ movie scream from the helpless heroine that even my deaf Gramma could hear. Nothing like that at all. It just sounded like somebody was on the phone in another room. Or so I thought. Living in a small, mid-west town and working in a community hospital, you soon get to know most people’s voices, but I didn’t recognise this one. Then it dawned on me - it was a radio being switched on and off, over and over. Curiosity and sheer annoyance soon got the better of me, so off I went to track it down.

When I found myself at the morgue lockers, I figured either someone was playing a stupid prank on me - again, or it was what the county Sheriff likes to call an ‘stangow’ - a Stag Night Gone Wrong. Yep, it’s A Thing in this job. Sad, but true.

‘Y’all’l never be outta business with a Casino Bar right next to that there canyon.’ he loves to drawl - like someone in a cheesy Western movie - every time he brings one in. Every damn time. Gotta love Texans. At least this one had come in before my shift, so the coroner’s office paperwork would have already been started. In fact, it would have been a quiet night - if this particular customer hadn’t still been more than slightly alive and – by the sound of it - quite literally kicking.

So, one warm coat later, I psyched myself up, heaved the drawer open, and found the body bag inside wriggling about like a big, black caterpillar. Silently, though, no yelling or cussing – just bursts of radio adverts and twangy riffs of old country music. But no amount of Dolly or Hank was going to stop the next couple of hours being a nightmare; getting him out of there and warmed up and dressed, pacified and off to whichever church he was supposed to be at in the morning!

I can honestly say I’ve seen ‘stangow’ bodies - live ones and dead ones - in all kinds of get-ups. Weird-ass, freaky dream material, most of them - tutus, nappies and nothing more than good ol’ fresh air, but this? This was different again. I tell you, it must have been a Seventies glam rock meets Eurovision stag party, because this guy was in a Spandex bodysuit with hefty platform boots and some kind of bike helmet. But what I couldn’t see, in either of his huge gloved hands, was a radio. Gloves, though, thankfully, so no frostbite to be sued over, at least!

Once I’d checked him over (not too blue, thankfully), I slow-w-w-wly removed his helmet. He had young-ish, vaguely foreign-looking features and a bald head. Bit of a looker, actually, even with the overdone tan that was worse than Donald Trump’s. I might even have given him a second look, if a) we were in a bar rather than a morgue, and b) he didn’t look like he was trying to audition for a Village People tribute band. Long story short, he didn’t speak any English. Not a damn word. Nor Spanish or any of the other languages I knew a smattering of. I also quickly realised that he might be deaf too, coz the guy was waving his hands around like an orchestral conductor with a bladder weakness. Thankfully, my Gramma taught me to sign, God rest her soul. She used to say that two deaf people from different countries are better equipped to communicate than two hearing people. (This, though, from the women who used to turn off her hearing aid at the nightly Waltons-style dinner table.) So, as best I can remember, the ‘conversation’, such as it was, went something like this;

‘It’s ok, you’re safe... Do you know where you are?’

‘No! Where is this? How did I get here?’

‘You’re in a hospital. Do you know what happened? Are you hurt?’

‘I am ok. Not hurt. I fell out of (no clue – I don’t think ‘spinning plate’ was what he meant.). I was … sleeping? I woke here! My group will come for me.’

You had to admire the guy’s optimism.

‘Our Sheriff brought you in.’ I told him. ‘He must have thought you were dead! Did your friends - your ‘group’ – bring you here? Are you a bridegroom?’

Still no response. It had lon-n-n-ng night written all over it.

‘Where are you staying? Can I call someone for you?’

He pulled this odd expression, with his dark, Disney-wide eyes.

‘Where are you FROM? I asked.

That’s when he started to emulate a ninja fighting off a swarm of bees. I kid you not.

“I’m sorry, fella, but I have two tenths of no idea what you’re trying to say.” He gave a grunt and pointed to the door, and eventually I followed him outside.

Now, you know how cold nights in New Mexico can get, and this guy was in nothing much more than a trapeze artist outfit, so he should have been shivering in his great, big, platform boots, but instead it was like standing next to one of those big patio heaters at Blanche’s Diner. He just kept turning around and around, squinting at the hills on the horizon and tilting his big, bald head like an eagle on a telegraph pole, with swirls of desert dust dancing around him in the midnight breeze, shaman style. Then he lifted his arm and pointed repeatedly at the farthest, moon-silvered mountain range. But the only buildings over that way are a disused military base, and an ancient trapper’s shack in a canyon that the wind whistles through and makes this weird, unearthly wail. Parents, grandparents and babysitters have, of course, long appropriated the legend with bogeyman stories, to keep their kids from getting too close to trouble. I gave him an exaggerated shrug in hope that he’d get the body language.

He gave a deep sigh that was clear in any language.

‘I am from there... that way…far away… I receive an invitation’

‘Not a groom, then. A guest? Or … a tourist?

‘No - I hear about this place – my group come to see how wars are stopped. Many wars here. We learn, go home, stop our wars.’

‘Oh, so you’re not a wedding guest? You’re a student? … a journalist? A… writer?’

More blank looks. I was running short of rational questions.

‘Who invited you?’ I tried.

He scanned the ground before picking up a long stick. My feet acted more sharply than my brain and took a few paces back. What was he up to?! To my relief, he started drawing circles and lines in the sandy dirt. A map, maybe? A flag? What the hell was it?

I held my arms wide and shook my head.

‘Sorry, pal, I don’t understand you.’ Unless … he was from the Sanitorium over the border? It was all I could do not to groan aloud. Much as I fully sympathise with anyone with mental health problems, I didn’t fancy being alone with a potentially unstable patient twice my size carrying a big ol’ stick, while my panic alarm lanyard is back on my desk.

Anyway, there he was, pointing at the scrawls on the ground, then again at the horizon, but I couldn’t see squat. Then it dawned on me that it wasn’t the mountains he was pointing at, but the sky.

‘Did you come on a plane and they … LEFT you here?! I don’t think much of these friends of yours!’ His shoulders slumped, and he looked down at me with those beautiful, big black eyes, and I got the feeling that he was younger than he looked.

‘Do you know anyone here?’

‘No – my group come back soon – they will take me home’

From the look on his face, I didn’t need language to tell he wasn’t enthused by the idea.

‘Are you … scared to go back?’

‘No, but I don’t want to go – home is very crowded and noisy.’

‘Oh, I hear you, buddy, I do. In my home, I’m one of seven!’ I held up seven fingers and waggled them emphatically.

I looked at the scrawls on the ground, desperate for clues, but it was a lousy map - it looked more like a cartoon spider!

Then there was this weird, scoffing noise, and when I looked up the guy was convulsing! Whether he was laughing, belching or choking, I really couldn’t tell, but what happened next nearly made me choke. I honestly thought I was hallucinating! He was taking off his gloves and – as I watched – his big ‘hands’ unfurled into a squirmy mass of TENDRILS – like fat spaghetti waving out of his sleeves - Spandex Goliath was calmly and nonchalantly holding up literally dozens of ‘fingers’, whilst beyond him, low in the desert sky, a ring of lights raced toward us. As I started to lose grip on consciousness and the ground suddenly seemed much closer, I could see him signing.

‘On my home, I am one of seventy. I just wanted a job with some peace and quiet!’

--- END ---