Michael Baden - Remains Silent

He led her through the morgue door, which swung shut behind them.

“Oh my God!”

The autopsy room was far smaller than the one Jake was used to, but it had the same look. A metal table stood in its center, the foot end over a sink and a black body bag on top of it, one that was clearly inhabited. Two white body bags, equally occupied, lay on stretchers against the wall.

“What’s the matter?” Jake asked.

“There are dead people in those bags, just lying around.”

He gave her a look. “It’s a morgue.”

“And that smell!”

“Formaldehyde used to preserve biological specimens.”

“It’s awful. Is it safe?”

“Some people think it can cause cancer. I’ve been breathing it for twenty years, and it hasn’t done me any harm yet.”

“But have you tried to have children?”

Another look. “Very funny. Let’s check on the body.” He grasped the zipper pull of the black body bag, which bore a heavy paper tag that read ALESSIS, THERESA, along with an identification number. “Right corpse. Time for us to get changed.”

“How come those other bodies are in white bags?” Manny asked.

“White’s used in hospitals up here. The bodies are probably waiting to be shipped to a funeral home. They won’t be autopsied. Come with me.”

They left the room and went a few doors down the hall to a small locker room, where he handed her a set of green surgical scrubs. “Put these on. We can change behind the lockers. I won’t peek if you won’t.”

She eyed them, shapeless things that looked like pajamas from a prison camp. “No way.”

“Trust me,” he said. “You’ll be glad you did.”

“Can’t I just put something over my suit, like an apron?”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“Don’t tell me what I want to do.” Petulant. Unbecoming. Who cares? Anything to delay going back into that room.

“Fine.” He handed her what looked like a white plastic kimono, with cropped sleeves and a hem that went to her ankles. “One size fits all,” he said.

She rolled up her $2,000 sleeves so they wouldn’t appear beneath the plastic and then donned her armor. He wound the plastic belt around her waist, tying it snugly at the back. The gesture felt oddly intimate.

“Manny, are you there?” He waved his hand in front of her face. “You’re supposed to faint when we cut the body open, not before.”

“Sorry. I was thinking about-” She stopped in the nick of time.

He gave her a pair of blue paper booties. “Wear these, unless you don’t mind having those shoes spattered with blood and other body fluids.”

Blood? Body fluids? Her slingbacks- twin four-inch-high works of art in multicolored red suede with contrasting purple and red-checked pony-skin heels- deserved better.

“You don’t want to go tramping blood and bacteria over your living room rug,” he added, eyes twinkling. The son of a bitch is having fun. He’s enjoying himself. I hate him! Her stomach acted up. The tiramisu that had tasted so delicious going down was on the verge of coming up.

He changed into scrubs and she followed him back into the autopsy room, girding for the moment when he exposed the corpse. Apparently, though, he had some setting up to do. He pulled over a small metal table holding a square of brown corkboard and arranged an assortment of instruments: clamps, knives, forceps, oddly shaped scissors, scalpels, extra blades, rulers, and a soup ladle.

“That looks like a steak knife,” she said, pointing to an instrument with a wooden handle and a six-inch blade.

Jake grinned. “I had a colleague who gave two of them he took from an autopsy room to his wife as an anniversary present.”

“How romantic. Didn’t he ever hear of Tiffany’s- little blue box, pretty white ribbon?”

He handed her a pair of latex gloves. “Put these on. And this.” It was a paper face mask. Goodbye, makeup. His gloves and mask were already in place.

“Isn’t this primitive for you?” she asked. “You must be used to all sorts of fancy equipment in the city.”

“It’s not much different in the city. MEs have been using the same instruments for a hundred and fifty years, ever since autopsies were made legal. And I’d rather work in a place like this than in a modern building, where you can’t see a darn thing. Somehow the ceiling lights are never over the autopsy tables.”

He strode to the table and unzipped the body bag. Manny took a step back. The corpse wore floral pajamas. Jake gently removed the clothing intact. Manny felt gooseflesh on her arms. Theresa Alessis lay completely naked now. Her mouth was ajar, her skin drying. Not a body that had been prettied with makeup and posed in a facsimile of sleep, as in a funeral home.

Manny felt a wave of sadness. Mrs. Alessis seemed pathetic, a hunk of sagging skin. No one in her right mind would ever want to be so diminished, so exposed. I’d best die in my sleep, she thought. No autopsy, please. She made a mental note to go back to the gym. “My God,” she said. “The smell!”

“It gets to everybody at first,” Jake said. “You’ll be fine.”

“It’s like rotten eggs, only worse.”

“Decomposition; the human body breaking down. Corpses emit intestinal gases such as hydrogen sulfide. It’s a natural process- from ashes to ashes. God’s way of recycling.”

“Very comforting. I’m a lawyer, Dr. Rosen. I’m supposed to be lawyering. I do not belong in this morgue. I want to go home!”

He was smiling. Enjoy yourself. Have a good time. Torture Manny. What fun. She expected a lecture on why she should have changed into scrubs, but all he said, very politely, was, “If you want, I’ll put some VapoRub inside your mask. It’ll cover the smell. Ever since The Silence of the Lambs, when Jodie Foster used it, half the cops and DAs slather it under their noses at postmortems. I think the effect’s more psychological than physical.”

“No. Thanks. If you don’t mind, I’ll just sit for a minute.”

“Sure.” He indicated a chair. Meanwhile, he pulled a metal stool next to the autopsy table and used it as a step to haul himself up so he stood straddling the corpse. Then he took a camera and began shooting photos of the body. “When I attended my first autopsy, the ME had a cup of coffee in one hand and was poking through the decedent’s organs with the other. Disgusting! I couldn’t understand how someone could be so callous and insensitive. A half-dozen autopsies later, I was doing the same thing.”

“That’s a charming story,” she said. “Thank you for sharing.”

“I was trying to make you feel better.” He got down, turned the body over, and climbed back for another round of pictures. “I’ll need your help now.”

She rose wobbily to her feet. “At your service.” You monster.

He retrieved a long wooden stick from the corner of the room and handed it to her. “Align the bottom to the heel, then measure the height at the top of the head.” He picked up a notebook and pen. “What’s the measurement?”

She stood with the ruler and tried not to look at the body. “Um… sixty-four inches.”

“Weight?”

“God knows. Am I supposed to guess?”

“That’s how it’s done. If there’s no body scale, we estimate.”

“That’s crazy. Okay… I’d say one hundred sixty-five and a half pounds.”

“Very good. My thought exactly, though it’s hard to tell about that half pound. Maybe it’s the Krispy Kreme she had for breakfast. When we open the stomach-”

“Please!” Sadist. “Do you get the weight wrong a lot of the time?”

“We do, for various reasons. But the most disputed statistic is height. Family members read an autopsy report and swear it isn’t their relative. Know why?”