LITMIR.BIZ

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      I could have changed into my street clothes, slunk out of the hospital and never come back. But then I thought of my dead father and remembered one of the rare pieces of paternal advice I’d ever received from him.

      “If you’re afraid of something, face it. Fear is irrational. The only way to conquer your fear is to put yourself next to it.”

      Just as quickly as it had come, my self-doubt subsided. This was a test of faith in myself. I wasn’t going to fail.

      I got onto my feet and made my way through the packed E.R., blind and deaf to my coworkers and the patients that crowded the cubicles around me. I left the emergency and trauma ward altogether, pushing through the doors that led into the central part of the hospital.

      The offices I passed were closed, their windows dark. The main lobby was empty, with the exception of one custodian who leaned on the deserted information desk, idly reading an old newspaper while his cleaning cart sat neglected in the middle of the room. He barely glanced up as I elbowed the cart in my reckless flight and knocked a stack of paper towels to the floor.

      I continued to the elevators, pressed the button impatiently and tapped my foot. After what seemed like an interminably long time, the dull metal doors slid open and I entered. I pushed the button for the basement.

      An irrational determination took me down the long hallway to the morgue. I had only been through there once, during my orientation tour. It was a simple route, though, and I located the unlabeled door again without much difficulty. I ran my hospital ID through the badge reader and heard the sharp click of the releasing lock.

      I grabbed the handle and stopped, wondering for the first time what I intended to prove to myself. I feared I was a bad doctor, and I had come to confront my fears and view John Doe in all his mangled glory. What if I couldn’t handle it?

      Terror gripped me at the thought that his body might not be as damaged as I remembered. I recalled Amy Anderson’s horrified face as she’d held the wriggling earthworm in her palm, her fear making the harmless thing a monster. Had my panicked brain exaggerated John Doe’s wounds?

      No, you weren’t hysterical. You know what you saw. I entered the cool, antiseptic room before I could change my mind.

      Hospital morgues are much different from morgues in the movies. They aren’t cavernous spaces with stark lighting. In fact, the morgue at St. Mary’s was small and cluttered. The on-duty attendant had left a rumpled fast-food sack on the desk, a reassuring sign of life in a room devoted to the indignities of death.

      Before I approached the task at hand, I walked the perimeter of the room. I examined the cabinets, the plastic tubs of all sizes that held murky shapes of organs preserved for further study, and the autopsy tables. I avoided the one that appeared occupied.

      “Hello?” I called. I winced at the volume of my voice. The room was so quiet you could hear the buzzing of the fluorescent lights. The phrase “wake the dead” sprung unpleasantly to mind. I expected to see an orderly emerge from one of the back rooms, but no one came. The lucky SOB was probably on a smoke break. I would have to do the dirty work of locating John Doe myself.

      The morgue freezer held six gurneys. With the high volume of patients today, it would be full, maybe even sleeping double. Not a pleasant thought.

      I stepped into the cooler and immediately wished for a jacket. The thermostat on the outside read thirty-five degrees, warm compared to the temperature outside, but it hadn’t occurred to me just how cold thirty-five degrees really was.

      Shivering, I looked over the six shrouded gurneys before me. They all faced the same direction, their occupants’ feet pointed at the back wall. I glanced down at my shoes and saw a dark stain on the sticky, unwashed floor. My skin crawled as I speculated exactly how long it had been since someone disinfected this room. Not that these particular patients were in any danger of disease or infection.

      I started with the body farthest to the right, not bothering to uncover them to search for their toe tags. I opted instead to read the more detailed tag on their shrouds.

      The first body was a female, age sixty-eight. The second was male, age twenty-three. So it went, each tag displaying the one thing I wasn’t looking for: a name. I didn’t see any bearing the big, red “unidentified” stamp, and it seemed that my field trip would prove useless.

      I rubbed my hands across my face, stretching tired skin as I pondered my next step. Where had he gone? It was unlikely that the medical examiner would have come at night for an autopsy that could wait until morning. Even if they had identified him, they couldn’t have released the body before the police finished with it.

      He has to be here somewhere. But as I doubled-checked, I had to accept the fact that he was gone.

      I would have to go back upstairs and face my embarrassment much to the delight of my colleagues. I’d missed the opportunity to confront my demon, but life would go on, as it always had. With the same resolve that brought me there, I left the cooler without a backward look. Someone would make a snide comment, or even pity me no matter what I did. I’d had enough experience with criticism that I could shoot down my detractors without actually having to go through the experience of looking at what was left of John Doe’s body.

      My hand was on the door handle when I stopped again. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the sheeted figure on the autopsy table.

      For all my bravado, I’d felt some relief upon finding John Doe’s body missing. To look or not to look. It had been an easy call with no body to see. An uneasy feeling crept over me as my initial relief fled. There was no doubt in my mind that John Doe lay beneath that sheet on the autopsy table.

      If you leave now, you’ll always wonder, a tiny voice nagged from the back of my mind. For a fraction of a second, it seemed the gnawing fear would win. I would just walk out of the morgue and forget the whole incident ever happened.

      But my father’s words and Dr. Fuller’s hurtful evaluation of my abilities bounced around in my brain. I didn’t want to be the failure I’d been in my father’s eyes. The failure I’d become in Dr. Fuller’s. It spurred me toward the table.

      I was no coward.

      Before I gave myself a chance to change my mind, I whipped the sheet completely off the cadaver.

      Every second passed in slow motion, frame by frame. The very instant I pulled the covering off the body, I saw a brightly colored sole of an athletic shoe poking from under the sheet. There wasn’t time for this to register as I ripped away the shroud, revealing hospital-issue scrubs and the face of the morgue attendant, his features frozen in terror.

      I didn’t scream right away, either from shock or the fact that the scene didn’t make sense. John Doe was supposed to be here, not this young man. The sight transfixed me.

      His neck had obviously been broken. The flesh of his throat had been torn the way it would look after a dog attack. Extreme blood loss left his dark skin ashen, though the table and most of his clothing were spotless. His eyes were open. One was missing.

      I saw the telephone perched on the gleaming steel counter, but it seemed miles away as I ran to it. My hands shook so badly that I could barely punch the numbers to issue a code blue. But no reassuring calm came over me when I hung up. I was still stranded, still isolated in this weird nightmare. I picked up the phone again.

      I was dialing the number for the night security office when something brushed my shoulder. The touch was so light I barely noticed it, but I wound up inexplicably on my back.

      The force of my landing knocked the wind out of me. Confused and frightened, I scrambled to my knees, but that was as far as I got.

      In the next instant, I was airborne again. Shattering glass crashed, the consequence of my impact against the cabinets. I had flown into the glass with enough momentum to break it and splinter the wooden doors. Pain ripped down my spine. The shelves collapsed and the plastic tubs within slipped to the floor, overturning and spilling their contents. I fell to my hands and knees in a mire of

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