We were all sitting around; xray and lab techs, labor and delivery nurse, admissions clerk and ER nurses, talking, listening to the scanner, laughing and eating. One of the nurses in labor and delivery who was married to a cop who also worked the night shift called and instructed him to risk his life to drive to their house and get a leftover tray of Subway sandwiches from a party they'd had over the weekend, and bring them to the ER for us to eat. And even with the weather like it was, I promise you, the morons would have still been flocking to the ER with their non-emergent bullshit if they could have done so but it just so happened that the hospital was safely positioned on high ground, just above a big dip in the road which was full of water. So a good time was had by all.
Around 8:30pm we get a call that an ambulance has been dispatched to an extremely remote area of the county on a man down. On a summer day with the sun shining, it takes a good 35 minutes to travel the 12 miles of snaky, gravel road with sharp drop-offs and no shoulders. On a night like this? Forget about it. He was dead as fried chicken (stole that line from a paramedic I used to work with). They had to park in the long driveway and nearly float the gurney to the house, wading through knee-deep water. Did CPR despite a brief attempt to reality orient the hysterical family. By the time the ambulance got to the ER, the guy had been down way over 2 hours. He was pronounced about 30 seconds after he hit the door.
The thing about a code is that it's all fun and games when it's going on but as soon as it's called, everybody splits and the ER nurse is left to clean up the room and the body by herself. In this particular ER, there were double doors without windows, separating the trauma room from the rest of the department which increased the sensation of isolation. If there were family members waiting, they would then be allowed into the room to see the patient, provided with chairs, Kleenex and pats on the back before the coroner was called and the body released to the funeral home. This night, of course, there was no waiting room packed with grieving family members, friends and clergy people like only a waiting room in the south can be. Instead, it was just us and the dead guy. And that was back in the good ole days when we didn't have to call the organ recovery team on every death which greatly simplified things. So I cleaned up the mess while the rest of the crew continued the "hurricane" party in the next room without me. About 11:15 I called the coroner and left a message to call the ER regarding a death.
Here's the problem: At least in our county, the coroner is usually the owner or an employee of one of the two funeral homes in town. He has to come out on every death and release (or not release) the body before it can be removed by whichever funeral home the family chooses, hoping it will be his own own. But this particular coroner, owned the least popular establishment of the two and was repeatedly called out on deaths, only to release the body to his competitor, which visibly pissed him off. On the night in question, the local elections had just taken place a couple of weeks before and the incumbent coroner, and owner of the least sought-after funeral home, had been voted out which only added to his pisstivity. Still, he officially held the office and was expected to do his job, albeit reluctantly or, as in the case of this wet night, not at all. I called and I called and I called and I left messages and he didn't come and he didn't come and I left more messages that didn't get replied to.
By this time, it was up into the night and the doc had long since gone to the doctor's sleep room to take advantage of the lull. The noon to midnight nurse had gone home and the labor and delivery nurse had wandered off to visit in another department and the lab and xray techs had gone back to take a nap, or watch a movie or something, leaving me alone with the admissions clerk who was reading a novel in the room to my right, and the dead guy in the room to my left.
What I haven't told you about me is that I'm a pretty good sport when it comes to vomit and blood and feces and urine and gaping wounds and draining abscesses. But dead people? They freak me slap out. One of the few things that kills my appetite dead in its tracks is a dead person. Can't even watch Funeral Boss and drink milk at the same time, it's that bad. So I start getting this real, sick sort of feeling of wrongness the longer I'm basically alone in this close of proximity with this dead person, and I've been stuck with him so long by now that I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I should start claiming him on my taxes as a dependent, when I get a call from the little, newly elected, female coroner who happens to work at the more popular funeral home. Turns out, the current coroner had decided that at 2 am on this wet night with two-thirds of the county currently under water, that this would be a good time for her to orient to her new position and she cheerfully announces that she'll be along just as soon as she can get there.
About 3am, here she comes, all apologetic and sweet and little in this big, dark night that I offer to help her, which is really a stretch for me, considering my aversion to the newly deceased, but pity got the best of me and I screw my courage to the sticking place. I help her get him in the purple velvet body bag and zip it up and move it to her stretcher and then I make the fatal error (pardon the pun) of asking if she needs help getting him into the hearse.
So, down the long, empty hall we go, soberly rolling the gurney with what was beginning to feel like my conjoined twin on it, turn and go out the oversized back door to the extra dark, very wet, slick and chilly night. The whole scene had a oddly Boris Karloff-like feel to it what with the dead body at 3am in a storm, and all. We roll the stretcher to the hearse and my companion pulls open its back door. Did I mention that it was raining and there was lightening flashing over our heads?
These stretchers have two sets of legs with wheels on them and they fold back as the stretcher is pushed into the hearse or ambulance or whatever the case may be. So the little, sweet, new, female almost-coroner aligns the stretcher with the back of the hearse and we begin to reverently push it in through the open door. The front set of legs folds back as designed and the stretcher continues to roll back. But when the back set of legs reach the vehicle, they don't break down. We roll it out a little and try it again. Still won't fold up. Maybe if we hit it going a little faster. Still nothing. Maybe a little harder. They don't budge. What does happen, however, is that with each, subsequent push, the front part of the stretcher advances a little more into the back of the hearse but, because the back legs won't fold down, they just sort of slide up, pushing the foot of the stretcher higher and higher in the hearse until the stretcher is at a near 45 degree angle with the bed of the vehicle and the patient's feet are sticking out the top of the door. I mention in passing the possibility of bungee cords to hold the door closed and it was about then that we lost our shit.
Fear, panic, stress, emotional release, call it what you want, we fell victim to that kind of orgasmic laughter that turns taut muscles suddenly flaccid and saps every drop of control right out of two, grown women. We were holding our stomachs, tears running down our faces. We repeatedly tried to regain our composure and reattempt the introduction of the stretcher into the hearse only to crumple, once more, like ragdolls, weakened with hysteria, fresh waves of laughter piercing the inky night.
I'm not sure how long it continued but when it stopped, we somehow manage to get the back legs of the stretcher to behave and shut the door, the corpse's feet safely INSIDE the hearse. Once our task was completed, we stood sniffing back snot, wiping the tears from our faces and straightening our clothing. And then the now serious coroner turns her face toward mine.
"You can't ever tell anyone about this," All signs of merriment absent from her face.
"I won't," I lie. "I'll never tell a living soul."
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