The Man on the Middle Floor

by Elizabeth S. Moore

  I was at the bottom of the stairs now, and I went straight to the front door because we were going out. I glanced at the doormat but the postman hadn’t come yet so I would have to sort the letters when I came back. I would have to write all this down, adjusted to my new hours, but I wasn’t sure of them yet. I felt a bit of panic pushing up, so I opened the door, and said hello and started to walk down the path. I had to think of Mother and Grandpa as well, and fit them in. Now that I didn’t have the cat, I would ask if they could come together. I didn’t want Grandpa to come any more by himself, and I had made him leave last week. I had a job now, and he had said lots of times that if I ever got a job he would eat his hat, which he hadn’t done yet. I would ask Mother. Grandpa wouldn’t like it, he always said, ‘I know what you need,’ but he didn’t. Not always.

  I had the picture of Grandpa stuck in my head all the way down the path, and I didn’t even look to see if anyone had taken the cat things away from the pavement. Karen didn’t have a clicker to open her car, so she had to use a key. I waited and got into the front seat. She was talking, but I couldn’t get in and listen at the same time.

  The journey to the hospital was a blur. The radio was on, and Karen was asking me questions, and there was traffic and noise outside. All the things I had hoped wouldn’t happen were happening. It was too much noise and it felt like a dentist’s drill in my ear. I put my hands over my ears and decided I would go in with her, see the job and then go straight home before things got worse. My foot was tapping, she was talking, my hand was rubbing against the opposite arm, and I turned away towards the window, with the noise creeping in through my fingers. My computer had said that the journey would take twenty-eight minutes. It lied. We arrived at 7.50 and it seemed like the whole world had arrived with us. People rushing, greeting, noise, stretchers – this was horrible.

  ‘We are going through Accident and Emergency. You have to know where it is so that you can get back here if you need to collect anyone.’

  I wanted to tell her that I was good at directions, but I didn’t want my voice to add to the noises so I followed her. She had tried to take my arm, which had made me even more determined to get out of there. I didn’t need another mother.

  Karen started to walk through a series of security doors, which opened when she put a card on a pad. A green light beeped every time she did it and we must have walked through eight germ-covered doors. I saw that there were dispensers for hand sanitiser every time you went through a door, and I used it. That was very helpful, as the whole place looked dirty. I didn’t like the beep of the door each time, but the crowds and the noise and the stretchers and the shouting and the sounds of people being sick got less with every set of doors, until it was quiet.

  We took the lift down two floors. Karen kept smiling at me but she had stopped speaking, which was a relief.

  The corridor was long and empty, her shoes on the tiles making the only noise. I was wearing my Adidas trainers and they are quiet. It was cold down here and the feeling of being underground was new. The sign above the long corridor in front of me read MORGUE. She stopped beneath it, so I stopped too, and she looked at me and said, ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. My hands started to sweat. Was I supposed to have prepared something?

  Just behind the doors two men were sitting around a table in a side room drinking tea and eating Hobnobs which I know because they are Mother’s favourite biscuit.

  ‘Morning, Karen, is this Nick?’

  I looked at him, but kept my head bent as far forward as I could. I didn’t like to meet people all at once. I looked up enough to see that he had dark hair, and his ears poked out through it on both sides of his head. His eyes were tiny and he had a pointy chin. He looked like a rat.

  ‘Morning, Pete, morning, Mark. Yes, this is Nick, my neighbour. He’s ready for work and keen to know all about the job.’

  They both stopped what they were doing and looked straight at me. I didn’t like that, so I looked back down at the floor.

  ‘Hi, Nick, welcome. You’ve arrived in the nick of time!’

  They both laughed and I knew it was a joke from the laughing. Karen joined in. I didn’t.

  ‘Right, the best way to get going is to get going.’

  They all laughed again, I was pretty sure I was not even going to make it through the day if things carried on like this.

  The one called Pete was talking at me.

  ‘I’m a pathologist, and my friend here is a mortuary technician. I should tell you straight away that you will be seeing very little of us. You need to be able to work independently, once you know what you’re doing.’

  This cheered me up quite a lot. Then Karen said she would see me later and if I wanted a lift she would be outside by the car when I had finished, and drive me home in her lunch hour.

  ‘If I don’t like the job then I will get the bus.’

  Everyone laughed again and my hand started rubbing my arm again. The patch I was rubbing was getting sore. Then it was just us, Pete and me. Mark stayed at the table.

  ‘Follow me, Nick.’

  We walked down a long corridor and came to a small seating area, with curtains in the middle of a wall.

  ‘This is where relatives wait before they identify a body. We’ve got capacity for thirty in the fridges, and then extra capacity in the freezer area, but we rarely need that much space. It’s actually surprising how few people die in hospital; it mostly gets busy during flu epidemics or a big road accident.’

  I hoped I wouldn’t be here for a big road accident. I didn’t say anything though and he just carried on talking.

  ‘This curtain covers a window that looks on to the viewing area, and when relatives are here we pull the curtain back so that they can do the identification. All the bodies have to undergo post-mortems unless they are old and die of something obvious or natural causes. We can only do three a day down here due to space and the number of available pathologists, so we are sometimes against the clock. You’ll be a massive help, as long as you’re happy to muck in and get your hands dirty.’

  He chuckled again, and I waited. I had been told you had gloves and that I wouldn’t get my hands dirty. I hoped that Karen hadn’t lied about the job, just to get me here. Pete kept walking, round the corner, and pointed out another room. ‘This is the drying room. People sometimes get brought to the hospital in an ambulance after an accident and are DOA, covered in blood, or water from ponds or rivers, and this is where we dry the clothes and personal effects. Over here are the fridges.’

  Pete walked towards a metal wall, with labels on, and handles. It looked like a giant drawer unit. He pointed at the front of one of them.

  ‘This label has the name of the deceased, the date of birth if we know it, and contact information, again if we know it. We also write cause of death once the PM has been done.’

  I began to think that this was much too much information to be giving me all at once. My head was still too full from the journey and noise to take most of it in, and I was missing my routine. I was beginning to think I should have started a week later, when I had got over the previous week and all its problems. I decided to ask about the gloves, but Peter didn’t really give me any gaps to talk, and he was walking fast again down the corridor.

  The next room held two shiny steel trolleys, and each one had a showerhead at the top and a row of knives and ladles and saws next to them. It was all very clean and smelt like my bathroom after I had bleached everything. It was empty and quiet, which I liked, until suddenly Pete beeped, loudly. He looked at a box in his pocket then started talking again.

  ‘Nick, I have to pop back to the relatives’ area for a minute. Wait here. I’ll bring Mark and he can show you the ropes.’

  I was glad when he had gone, and I waited. It was so quiet and so metallic. There was nothing here that wasn’t needed. I felt as if the world above with its chaos and its shouting was gone, and I started to feel at home. I decided that this might be a
very good job as long as I could avoid Pete and Mark, and wear gloves, and I walked over to the instruments to have a closer look.

  Pete didn’t come back; Mark came. On his own. He showed me the fridges again, and the freezer room where bodies were kept if they weren’t identified and stayed for a long time. There was even a scanner which could scan a body in thirteen seconds. Mark told me about a man who had died and no one knew why so they scanned him and a bullet had been in him near his spine for twenty-two years, and it moved so he died. It was all very interesting but I wished I had brought my recorder. I had got it for my birthday and it would have been useful today and Mother would have been pleased.

  Mark took me over to the freezers and pulled out a drawer. Inside was a bag, a black bag, with the shape of a body. I thought it was nice, the way it was neatly put into a drawer, out of the way, and the bag had a label on the side of it. It couldn’t get lost, because it was in a plastic pocket which was sewn into the bag. You really couldn’t fault it, they had thought of everything. There was even a body-lifter which was for people to get lifted on to the slab for a post-mortem. Mark showed me how it worked, but without a body.

  I decided I wanted to stay. This was peaceful, and I was going to be good at this. Mark gave me my own set of tools, which held a comb, and scissors, and glue, and various types of make-up, but thicker than normal make-up, and Mark asked me to touch it and it felt more like putty and I asked for some gloves, which was better, then I asked whether Pete was coming back.

  Mark told me that Pete was dealing with relatives, doing an identification of a road-traffic accident victim, and he was going to start to show me how to prepare a body. He closed the drawer he had opened, and pointed me in the direction of the steel trolley behind me. He pulled back the sheet and there was an old man there, his mouth slightly open, and he seemed quite peaceful. He was wearing pyjamas. I hoped someone had checked that he was actually dead, then I remembered it was a hospital so they would have. I waited until Mark spoke again.

  ‘Right, I’m going to go and give Pete a hand. If you could go into the scrub room, put on some Wellington boots and a robe and give your hands a good wash, I’ll be back. This old boy needs a wash down – put the pyjamas on the side here – and his beard and hair combing. You alright to do that? I hear you’re not squeamish.’

  I had to sign a form to say that I would keep the identity of the bodies confidential and never talk about what happened at the morgue outside it. This was the last thing and then Mark had gone and I was on my own. On my own and surrounded by quiet and peace and people who weren’t suddenly going to ask me questions, or make me anxious. I started to take off the pyjama top, and my hands were shaking a bit, but I soon realised that he wasn’t going to move or react and I calmed down. I was very good at personal hygiene, and Mark had pointed out the antibacterial body wash and the cloths. I filled the bowl with steamy water, and liquid soap, and I started to give him his last wash. His face came up really nicely, although the eyes wouldn’t stay shut and the mouth kept coming open, but I kept going. He stopped smelling like a person who hadn’t washed and started smelling like soap. Better. Cleanliness is next to godliness, Grandpa says.

  I was happy when Mark came back, pulling another trolley. He was impressed, I could tell, and told me I was the first mortuary assistant who had shown bloody initiative. I knew that was good; Grandpa was always telling me to show some and now I had.

  Mark did the bottom half of the old man, and I was glad as I didn’t really want to do that, and I concentrated on getting his hands really clean, and his arms and chest. His family would probably see his hands. Dignity, that was what Mark said. I cut his nails, without being asked, and combed his hair and his beard and trimmed them.

  ‘You aren’t scared, are you?’

  Mark chuckled again, which spoiled the mood and my feeling of being at peace had a ripple in it for a minute. We turned the old man over, and soon he was washed on both sides, and smelling good, and in a gown, and in a bag and in the fridge. It was organised and quiet and I read out the details we had to Mark, and he wrote them on the label, and on the door, and then he read them back to me.

  ‘Usually, when we get a new bloke down here, they tiptoe around for weeks, jumping at their own shadow. Once, when I was new, I was bringing a body down in the lift and she sat straight up under the sheet. Nearly shat myself. It can happen. Nerves are funny things.’

  I didn’t think I would like that. If it happened I might not come back. Otherwise I would be fine, and at least he had told me it was nerves.

  Mark turned towards me. ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’

  ‘I don’t like tea.’ It was eleven o’clock and it seemed better to keep working. Mark asked if I wanted to come and sit in the coffee room while he took a break, but I didn’t. I remembered what Karen had said: always try and be helpful. Ask what you can do.

  ‘Is there anything I can do while you have your break?’

  Mark pointed me towards a huge bucket of instruments. They had been used. He showed me how to work the autoclave; it was a bit like my microwave. You wash the instruments, then put them in there and steam sterilises them. I wished I had one at home; you would know all the germs were dead when you used one. Mark had put strawberry Vaseline under his nose, but I didn’t want any. How could you tell when someone was clean if you couldn’t smell? I could smell strawberries now when Mark was close, explaining the autoclave, and it made me feel sick. It smelt like the sweets Grandpa used to give me when I had been good, when I lived at home. I shuddered, not from the bodies but from the sweet strawberry and the way it made me feel.

  I stood still waiting for Mark’s footsteps to disappear into silence, and stared at the bucket of instruments. I had half an hour, all on my own, and I breathed out. I picked up the bucket to move it to the sink and autoclave area, and as I did I caught the corner of the sheet covering the body Mark had wheeled in from the identification. I had been expecting another old person, but the face that was now half uncovered was young, and pure, and beautiful. Blonde hair was spread out behind her on the pillow, and she looked as if she was asleep.

  I pulled the sheet back and realised I was holding my breath. She was wearing a flowery dress, and she had a light tan as if she had just come back from holiday. The sheet had knocked a lock of hair across her face, and I gently pushed it back into place. She looked like Meg from my computer: pink lips that were slightly parted, and white teeth just showing. I stroked her cheek, and then ran my fingers over her lips. She was perfect, like a wax model. This was how I had always imagined my perfect woman and here she was, quiet and soft to the touch. I was calm and happy; the feeling of being in charge came over me again and I ran my hand over her, just her neck and then for a moment my hand cupped her small cold breast. I had never felt so much or wanted anyone like this before. I put my finger just inside her lips. Even her mouth was dry – no saliva, no nasty words, just softness.

  I went to put the sheet back on her, and as I did my hand brushed over her stomach and I jumped. There was a hard line of stitches all the way down her middle. I covered her up, and picked up the bucket, but the smell of her hair and the feel of her lips stayed with me. I wondered if this was what it was like to be in love. I spread the sheet back over her, and it made the outline of her body. The whole time I was autoclaving she just lay there quietly with me, and I felt content and as if I had found my place in the world. Find your place in the world and you will be happy was written on a sign in the coffee shop near my flat, and I had never thought it made sense until now.

  The morning went much too quickly, and I walked behind Karen, who had come to collect me at twelve-thirty. We went to the canteen because it was lunchtime, and we got food on trays that you had to choose, and I didn’t like how people in the queue were so close, and decided I would bring a healthy sandwich. I needed to have lunch and everyone was wearing gloves, even the people who handed out the trays, so I managed to push down thoughts of germs. I had ch
icken and vegetables and water and yoghurt. I was going home on the bus and I was glad; Karen had to work the whole day but I was doing half-days. Now that I was back in the noisiness of the world I wondered if I could change my mind and work all day instead. I would ask after I had actually got the job permanently. Karen had explained I was on a trial.

  We ate lunch at the same table. I noticed that the tables were cleaned with the same spray as I use at home, so at least ninety-nine per cent of all the germs would be dead. We sat in silence for a bit, then I had finished and decided to go. I thought I should tell Karen, so I said, ‘I am going to the bus now. I don’t want a lift. Thank you for telling me about the job.’

  ‘I hope you stick at it. I know it’s a tough place to work but Mark and Pete both thought you did really well.’

  ‘It’s very clean at the morgue.’

  ‘You like things being clean?’

  ‘Yes. I have a schedule, at home. I have a routine and a schedule and I am going to put my work on to it now. Cleaning and putting out the bins is on the schedule.’

  I was keen to go home. Work was finished. But Karen wasn’t.

  ‘How old are you, Nick?’

  ‘I’m twenty-four.’

  ‘How long have you lived on your own in Staverton Road?’

  ‘I have been there four years. My mother bought the flat for me.’

  This was ruining my morning. Everything had gone really well at the job, and now I was getting annoyed. I stood up.

  ‘Well, see you back at the house,’ Karen said. ‘If you want a lift in the morning just let me know. Is this your first job?’

  I tried to remember the list – make eye contact, be polite – but I was too tired so I just said yes.

  Karen looked at me and I realised that I was almost hopping from foot to foot. ‘I understand that completely, I like being on my own too.’

  ‘Why would you have children, then? If you have children you should be with them, shouldn’t you?’