As the Cowboy and I made our way down the cold, dimly lit hallway of the coroner’s building, I had no idea what was in store for us that day. My mind was whirling as we walked in perfect rhythm to the distinct clip of his cowboy boots against the cold, tile floor.
“Are you ready for this, Slim?” the Cowboy asked me with a wink.
“Ready as I’ve ever been…..to see a dead person……I guess,” I replied.
“Well, don’t worry, I’ll catch ya… if you pass out,” he said placing his hand on the small of my back. Then he let out a loud, deep laugh. I just rolled my eyes, but in my mind I suddenly thought….oh dear Lord……is there actually a chance I might pass out?
As we reached the end of the hallway, we turned to look at each other one last time before opening the Morgue doors in unison. It was in that moment I suddenly thought……how on earth did we get here?
I was fresh out of college, and had landed my very first job, working as a Community Relations Director for my hometown Hospital. I decided as a means of garnering some street cred amidst my medical co-workers, for whom I was being asked to serve as a community liaison, that I would take an EMT course being offered by the hospital.
I had seen the registration sheet go up in the break room the week prior, and so I boldly added my name to the list. Having some basic medical knowledge, and a more intimate understanding of the inner workings of the place I was representing did seem like a good plan.
The next day; however, on my morning trek through the director’s portion of the admin building, I passed by the office of the EMT Director. She was in charge of the hospital’s entire emergency services program, as well as the instructor for the EMT course.
I’ve always prided myself on possessing an ability to gauge people, but from the day I started that job I found her very difficult to read. In appearance, she reminded me of a slightly older version of actress Katy Sagal. Even more uncanny to me was the personality similarities she shared with not one, but two characters, Ms. Sagal had portrayed on television.
She was a no-nonsense woman with a dry wit not unlike Peg Bundy, the matriarch from Married with Children, and had a commanding demeanor, fierce sense of loyalty, and rode a motorcycle not unlike Gemma Morrow, the matriarch from the Sons of Anarchy gang.
“Hey, Slim! Come in here a second,” the EMT Director billowed out into the hallway while making a sweeping gesture with her arm. No matter what I did the woman kept insisting on referring to me as Slim.
“What’s up, lady?” I replied, attempting to sound cool and collected.
“I see you signed up for my EMT class,” she began, “you do know there’s going to be a lot of arrogant bastards in that class, right? Do you think you are up for that kind of challenge?”
I laughed nervously. “Is this some form of a reverse psychology sales pitch?” I asked.
“It’s just….you seem like a sweet girl,” she replied, “I wouldn’t want to have to feel responsible for any of the people in that class corrupting you.”
Attempting to deflect a little, I asked, “I’m sorry, did I sign up for an EMT class, or a biker gang initiation? What kind of people are taking this class for heaven’s sake?”
The Ambulance Director just smiled and said, “The EMT and Paramedic world appeal to a certain…. type…of individual,” she began. “Occasionally we do get people who enroll in the class because they just like to help people, but more often then not they don’t actually make it once limbs and blood are in play. The rest of the people who take my class are firemen, because it pairs well with the training they already have, and a few adrenaline junkies. The junkies are the kind of people who thrive in high stakes situations, and find beauty in unpredictability. You strike me as more of a ‘likes things to have purpose and order kind of girl,’…. that’s all.”
I may have been having a hard time reading her, but it was clear that she had completely figured me out. She wasn’t wrong. I did like to have predictability and order in my life. I functioned best in a world of lists, clearly defined parameters, and expectations.
“I’m not afraid. We all have to leave our comfort zones from time to time,” I replied, taking a sip from my coffee cup. Well, if her intention was to make me reconsider this whole EMT business, she had succeeded.
The first night of the class; I intentionally arrived a few minutes late in an effort to just slip into the back row unnoticed. As I opened the door of the building; however, it let out a horrific, and obnoxious sound. Creeeaaakkkk! Every head in the room turned to look at me. It was also pretty bright outside so it took a second for my eyes to focus on the faces staring back at me. Men…..it was….all….men.
“Well, Slim, so lovely of you to join us. Gentlemen, this is Slim. Slim these are the boys,” the EMT Director announced. Lovely, I thought. This crowd was already going to be a tough audience to win over, but being introduced by the waif-ish nick-name she had given me was certainly not going to help my cause.
I suddenly had a flash back to my fourth grade year, when I begged my mother to let me sign up for soccer. This was in the days before they had separate gender-based teams. So in our town, if a girl wanted to play soccer, it simply meant you joined the team.
Thinking back on it, I have no clue why I was so insistent on pursuing this sport. I’ve never been a naturally athletic person, and none of my friends had signed up for it, so I couldn’t even use that as a reason. I just got it into my head one day that I wanted to try soccer, and so I did. I’m stubborn like that, and so I refused to be ruffled by her slightly jabbing introduction.
As I truly looked around the room, I found myself amused by the cast of characters before me. A few of the highlights included an individual resembling a line backer, a tall cowboy, a local orchardist, a handful of firemen, a couple of nineteen year old adrenaline junkies, and randomly the pastor of my childhood church. My lungs were almost burning from the overwhelming stench of bravado that was floating through the room in that moment. Humorously, I wasn’t sure who now seemed more out of place…myself…..or the Pastor.
Over the twelve week course, I did began to earn the respect of my classmates. It wasn’t easy, but through the use of humor and my trademark quick wit, I broke them down. Even more surprising was the fact that I was very much enjoying the whole experience.
Half way through the course, our instructor thought a little healthy competition might be in store as it was becoming clear from the tests that some of the guys had been doing poorly.
So the EMT Director offered up a little extracurricular field trip as a prize for the top two scoring students. The two students with the highest cumulative testing scores at the end of the class would get to participate in an autopsy.
So, on that cold January morning, the Cowboy and I made our way down the hallway towards the Coroner’s office in order to claim our…. prize.
I found the Coroner to be a squatty, balding man with deep-set eyes. I also observed his movements were very fidgety, and he possessed many of the nervous characteristics I would expect to find from an individual who spent the bulk of their days surrounded by isolation and death. The Coroner just stared at us in silence for what felt like an awkward eternity before he finally spoke.
His tone was gravely, and his speech pattern was slow as he said, “So. You’re….who she sent, huh.” It felt more like an insult rather than a question.
“Is every one in your class…..so…..tall,” he finished, scanning both of us up and down.
The Cowboy and I were undeniably tall. He was around six and a half feet when you factored in the hat, and I was just shy of six feet myself. Still, I wasn’t expecting the most awkward part of our field trip that day to be our encounter with someone with a pulse.
Sensing the tension, the Cowboy quickly tried to refocus the conversation by saying, “ So….we are really excited to be here today. Thanks for letting us shadow you.”
“Well….you know. I owed her…a favor,” he stumbled over his words. I chuckled under my breath at the evident irritation in his voice as he drew out the word, her. What kind of favor could this man possibly owe our EMT Director?
He cleared his throat “Eh…hum,” and then said, “why don’t you guys get into your gowns, and glove up. Then my technician will bring you into the exam room.” He gestured towards a door half way down the hall.
As we were getting dressed the Cowboy turned to me and asked, “Do you think they have one of these elastic hair nets big enough to go over my entire hat?” I just smiled. Since the first session of our class I suddenly realized I had ever seen the man take off that hat.
“Let’s make a deal. I won’t laugh at what I’m going to assume will be some horrific hat head, if you promise not to laugh at me if I… pass out,” I replied. I felt like I was getting the better end of this particular bargain.
“It’s a deal! What happens in the room, stays in the room!” the Cowboy enthusiastically replied.
He turned to hang his hat on a nearby wall hook, as we followed the seemingly agitated technician towards the autopsy room. I had a feeling they didn’t get many living visitors there, and she was less than thrilled to find that tour guide was falling under “other duties as assigned” on her job description.
The door barely closed behind us before we heard the Coroner drone, “What we have here is a 42 year old female, health education teacher. Her husband went to bed last night. He left her grading papers at the kitchen table. When he came down in the morning, he found her unresponsive. Cause of death: unknown.”
The very first thing that struck me, apart from the woman on the table of course, was the smell. Death has a smell. This was not the formaldehyde smell I had recalled from high school science class. Nothing could interfere with the autopsy we were about to preform. So what I was smelling in that moment was just death.
The autopsy process itself is one of tremendous precision. It’s truly an art and a science. I was most impressed by the predictability within the human design. Abnormalities of any kind are catalogued. Every discoloration offers insight. Every infection leaves a mark. Every irregularity tells a story.
The process of preparing a body for the actual autopsy will forever leave a vivid picture in my mind. There is a snapping sound that echoes over the slab floor as you crack open a rib cage with pruning sheers. There is a smell of singed hair as you take a reciprocal saw to the top of someones head in order to access their brain. There is the visual horror of watching a person’s face pulled down with surprising ease, only to come to a rest on their chest for the remainder of the procedure. The oddest moment; however, came as I watched the technician pull a black plastic yard bag out of a nearby drawer, and set it next to the body. I didn’t really want to dwell at this point on why that might be happening, but it made me nervous.
Over the next several hours we systematically watched the Coroner remove each individual organ, and place them onto a secondary table. Everything was weighed and measured. Each organ was filleted so he could inspect them for any anomaly. Each abnormality was labeled and placed into individual containers for further assessment. A chunk of a healthy portion of each organ was also placed into their own containers for purposes of comparison.
The remainder of the organ material was, well I should have seen this coming but shockingly did not, tossed back into the plastic trash bag that now lined the empty body cavity. There was an actual mash up of organ bits forever residing together in the core of this woman’s body. At the end of the entire process, they simply tied a knot in the top of the bag, and then closed her back up.
At one point, the Coroner looked up from his clip board and stated,”Our body tells the story of our lives. Each time you have an infection or surgery your body leaves a scar or physical record. For example, how many kidney infections a person has had over the course of their lifetime can actually be tallied and identified post-mortum.”
The Coroner was even able to note evidence of future, yet to be discovered, illnesses during his exam. In this woman’s instance, he observed a discoloration on her brain stem, that was predictive of Lupus patients. He told us that it was very unlikely that it was in any way connected to her death, and was not even something that she would have been aware of for several years.
When it was over, I felt strangely connected to this woman. Early on in the day I found myself looking in her direction each time I weighed one of her organs, as if I was seeking her approval in some way. Over the course of the morning however, I detached myself from the person and simply became fascinated by the process. I can only imagine the Corner had to distance himself every day in this same way in order to remain unaffected.
At the close of the procedure, the Cowboy and I walked in silence back to the staff room. I think we were both still processing what we had just encountered.
Once we headed in the direction of the Cowboy’s silver, Dodge truck, he finally broke the silence and said, “Good for you, for not passing out in there, Slim.” I just laughed.
“I won’t lie…..I had a couple of moments there where, I thought you might need to be the one propping me up, Slim,” he finished.
“What?! You?!?” I said giving him a hard time.
“Well, that face thing was kind of creepy, right?” he asked.
“Um, yes! That was so creepy!” I agreed. “What I really found myself fascinated by though was the idea that every mark in our body tells part of our story by leaving a little scar,” I said.
The cowboy nodded and replied, “Scars aren’t always bad things sometimes they can even be the best parts of our stories.”
I smiled. “You’re pretty deep…..for a cowboy,” I joked.
“It’s the hat. It disguises just how big my brain really is,” the Cowboy replied.
We were quiet for the remainder of our drive home. Of all the things I had seen that day, the one thing I could not shake was the truth that our physical bodies tell our story after we are gone. It caused me to consider the impact of the relational scars we might make in people’s lives. It would seem that our scars echo through time, and have the power to be our greatest legacy.
I wondered briefly at what my own future story might hold. Heading off to bed that night, my mind rested on a quote by Maya Angelou which says, “I’ve learned people will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Even now I can still hear the cowboys philosophy of echoing scars whispering to me. At the end of my story….what kind of mark will I leave?
This story is dedicated with fond memory to Darlene Gottschalk (1952-2008) long time Ambulance Director of the Quincy Hospital and a woman I was privileged to call my friend.
Summer Smith is a speaker, writer, and motherhood blogger. She and her family are currently navigating the suburbs of Northern Virginia. As the mother to four young children, Summer maintains her sanity thanks to her sense of humor, copious amounts of coffee, and Amazon Prime. Maya Angelou once said, when reflecting on her childhood, that her mother left an impression like technicolor stars in the midnight sky. Influenced by these words, Summer blogs at her website Motherhood in Technicolor, and can also be found on her Motherhood in Technicolor Facebook page.