Читать книгу Mortuary Confidential - Kenneth McKenzie - Страница 15

Contributed by a fitness buff

It was June. I remember because my partner and his wife always take the last week of June and go on a cruise. That summer they were in the Mediterranean. While they were being waited on hand-and-foot and sipping tropical libations, I was back home trying to keep the shop running.

Of course, with my usual luck, I received a call that someone had died at our local hospital in the early hours of the morning. Normally, a hospital removal isn’t a big deal at all; one person can do it, except that I have the nasty habit of nodding off while I’m driving at night. I have a form of sleep apnea, and, although I wear a Darth Vader mask when I sleep, I am still prone to napping while driving. The rumble strips have saved my life more than once, and it’s not nearly as funny as when Chevy Chase did it.

Generally my partner, Chuck, will drive us at night or just go by himself, but since there was no Chuck, my wife, Sammy, offered to drive me to the hospital. She stipulated that she’d only do it if she didn’t have to dress up or get out of the van. I gratefully accepted her terms.

We made the long forty-five minute trek to the hospital, which at that time of the night was closed for all intents and purposes. I signed the necessary paperwork at the front desk and then directed my wife around the building to the loading dock where the removals are made. I left her listening to the new Rascal Flatts CD in the van and met the sleepy orderly at the back door.

The orderly led me down the familiar path of twisting hallways and anterooms that led toward the morgue and then helped me transfer the remains. I bid him adieu after giving him a little something for his help and saw myself out through the bowels of the hospital.

I banged against the crash bar to the back door and passed through. It closed with a loud click. Sammy, seeing me coming down the ramp with the body, hopped out of the van, slammed the door, and went around to open the rear panel doors.

They were locked. She ran around to the passenger side to unlock the rear doors, but it was locked too. So was the driver’s door.

Unfortunately, in her zeal to help me she had hit the automatic locking button.

No problem, I told myself, I’ll just call the front desk. I reached for my cell phone and remembered, it’s in the pocket of my suit, which is…in the van. So there I stood with my barefoot wife behind a locked, vacant hospital with a locked, idling van in the middle of the night as we contemplated the body on the cot.

“What do we do now?” my wife asked.

I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t mad at her. She had only been trying to help, after all. But I paused before I spoke to make sure no angry words would come out. She used the pause to ask, “Is there a phone in there?” She gestured to the door I had just exited from. “Perhaps we could call the cops to come and pop the lock.”

I shook my head. “Cops don’t do that anymore. Besides, even if there was a phone inside that door, it’s locked this time of night.”

She shrugged and asked for the second time, “What do we do now?”

Good question.

We talked about calling for a locksmith, but the closest one was in our town, forty-five minutes away, so we nixed that idea. There were spare keys to the van hanging at the funeral home, and we batted around the names of several people we could call at this time of night to bring the keys out to us, but we didn’t want to ask anyone such a huge favor. I had never popped a car lock before but decided this was a good time to try. First I needed some tools.

“You want to come with me to the front desk or do you want to stay here?” I asked Sammy.

“What about the body?” she protested.

“I care more about your safety right now. The body will be fine here alone for a few minutes at this time of night.”

“I can’t let anyone see me like this! I’ll stay here,” Sammy said. And indeed, besides being barefoot, she was only wearing a tiny pair of sweat shorts and a novelty spaghetti-strap top that was a spoof on the milk commercial. It read: Got Formadehyde? I had given it to her as a joke for Christmas; she of course never wore it outside the house. Sammy is the type of woman who would rather (excuse the pun) die than have anyone see her dressed so inappropriately.

“Suit yourself,” I told her and set out to make the long trek around the hospital. It took me what seemed like ages to hike around the sprawling medical complex. Where are those little trams when you really need them? I remember grumbling to myself at one point. During the day the hospital has courtesy golf carts to ferry people around. Not so much at the witching hour.

I was sweating bullets by the time I marched through the front door. The receptionist gave me a surprised look when I strode up to her for the second time and asked politely, “Could I please borrow a metal coat hanger?”

She laughed. “Honey, we ain’t got nothing like that here.”

I explained the situation and the grin on her face got wider. When I finished my saga she said, “Wait here. Let me go see what I can find.” She disappeared and after a few minutes re-appeared with an old fashioned fly swatter. “Here. Try this. It’s the only thing I could find.”

I gingerly took it, thanked her, and made my way back to my van, this time through the hospital. The vehicle still sat idling with the cot resting next to it, but my wife was gone. I looked all around. No Sammy. “Sammy?” I called. “Sammy?”

She came around one of the dumpsters, picking her way delicately through the scattered trash.

“What were you doing?” I asked.

“I didn’t want anyone to see me like this! So I found a chair the employees use during their smoke breaks and was just waiting. Did you get it?”

I showed her the fly swatter, its yellow plastic mesh surface speckled with the mangled pieces of its victims. Sammy grimaced. “Sorry, it’s all the lady at the front desk could find. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

I bent the white wire handle into a hook and jammed it between the glass and gasket of the window and made a motion like I was churning butter. Nothing happened. I twisted the wire. It got stuck. Sweat rolled off my face, as I gave it more elbow grease. I was about to call it quits when I angled the wire down and felt it catch. I gently pulled toward the side mirror and it slipped. I released a stream of language that made Sammy blush; wiped my face with my shirtsleeve and repeated the same procedure. The second time I felt the lock click.

Victory!

I loaded the body into the rear of the van and we drove back to the front of the hospital. I bent the wire handle of the fly swatter back into its original configuration as best as I could and proudly returned it to the receptionist.

My wallet now contains a spare set of keys.