Tough job

   The body arrived at the morgue very late at night. Doctor Smith was there to receive it and check it before anyone else. It was one of those cases that she hated to attend: a suicide. The victims were often very young, kids that hadn’t even known love or anything in life, all the good things that she knew came up later in life, during college or when you started to live as an adult. Doctor Smith was still young, or so she like to think, so the see those young people on her table was beyond heartbreaking.

 She had the obligation to check the body in order to give a proper statement of what had happened, no matter how many witnesses were there. Insurance companies were to blame in this case, because most people would never want their children or parents being opened up only to check something that was already known. But it was part of her work and she just had to do it and in those dark hours of the night, which didn’t really make things better. She just put on her gloves and started working.

 The body had multiple lacerations, deep cuts in the wrists and even some smaller ones in other parts of the body, as in the chest, the face and the thighs. She took pictures of all of it, putting special attention to the smallest incisions, which she believed had been caused by a razor blade. A knife would never be that exact or cut in that way. Besides, she knew perfectly how different cuts looked. She had too much experience with things like that, so she tried not to overthink this when checking a body.

 After taking the pictures, she started checking for other marks on his body. She only found one big lump on her head, probably caused by something hitting that point a while ago. It hadn’t fully healed but it was there and it was still noticeable. She took pictures of the head, carefully tilting it to one side and to the other. Touching their faces was always overwhelming, and she had a technique for it: she looked straight at them and thought of her children, her family and every happy face she had seen recently.

 Sometimes she cried in silence when she checked the bodies, but it was always for a little while. She would then dried her tears with a tissue and move on with her work. But that time, her phone rang when it never did. It was too late at night and her bosses would never call at that time. She wished, but she would often get up to their calls, in the afternoon. It was the worst thing to have to sleep at odd hours and then be awakened by them, calling to ask things that she had already reported on thoroughly. But as with everything, she had grown accustomed to it.

 That time, it was one of her bosses who had been awakened himself by a call. Apparently, the body Doctor Smith had on her table was not only the body of a victim of suicide, but also the one of the son of a prominent government official. They were calling every single person in the city that could help cover up what had happened, at least for a little while. Apparently, the man was part of a very religious cult that had been growing in reconnaissance all over the country and he had gained his post because of that.

 To the doctor, it all reeked of corruption and she hated to be part of things like that. She had been asked to do things like that before but she had always been saved by her bosses at the very last minute. This time though, there was no way someone would save her from doing something she really didn’t wanted to do. She told her boss she hadn’t finish the autopsy, so that he should call her later in the day for when she had completed the whole thing. From then on, they could discuss the delay of the final report, not before.

 The man was about to talk further but she hung up and he didn’t call back. She had been clear enough and she had a job to do. Her hands were shaking, because all of those attitudes made her really mad, but she tried to clear her head and move on to more pressing things. She started opening the body a while after she had hung up. Everything inside of the boy was normal, nothing was out of place except some strange abnormalities that she didn’t recognize at first, and so she decided to do some tests.

 A thorough blood test would take a long time in a regular hospital but in a morgue it was a little bit faster. It would take an hour or so, time she spent checking the rest of the body and having something to eat. After all, she hadn’t eaten one bite for a long time. Her husband would often pack some things to snack on at work, because he knew very well she missed meals because of her work. In spite of it all, she loved what she did and really thought she made a difference for the rest of the world.

 She ate a yogurt, a banana and when she was in the middle of a cookie, the blood test was completed by the computer. She finished eating while reading the information and she was shocked to see what was on the screen. She looked at the body and looked at its surroundings. She put on a new pair of gloves and checked carefully for blood on the table and on herself. She used a mirror that was always there, unused, to see if she was safe. It was horrible to think like that but she knew being careless was unforgivable. HIV was not something to take on lightly.

 How a seventeen-year-old kid had been infected with that various, she did not know. And suddenly she realized why they wanted everything to be covered up and delayed. It wasn’t the fact that the kid had committed suicide but that he had HIV and maybe even that he was gay… That was too much to assume, because drug addicts were also prone to the disease, but she had checked the body carefully and there were not traces of injections on his arms or anywhere else on his body. She checked again but the results were the same.

 Doctor Smith closed the body and left it as untouched as she could. She finished late or very early, however people may have thought about it. She expected another call from her boss soon, as her shift was not very far from ending. However, he did not do that but decided to get there in person, which was highly irregular. What was even worse, was the fact the child’s parent was also in the building, apparently waiting for his cover up to be confirmed. Her blood was boiling once again.

 She explained the case to her superior and he just listened to everything she had found. When she finished reporting her results, he asked if she had written it all already. And she nodded; she had finished only minutes before their arrival. She had printed out a copy and put the digital version on a portable device. The man grabbed both and then told her it was very important that she understood that no part of that information could leak out of the building. He then announced the man was going to see the body.

 Before she could protest the man and his bodyguards were there. She asked the armed men to leave, stating that they had to respect the bodies that were stored in that room. So they left and only the doctor, her boss and the parent stayed there in silence. She looked at the politician as he looked at his son. She tried to decipher what that look on his face meant, but it was too hard. The man was an expert already; he had learned to use that same face in his political life and had found a way to use in his personal one.

 The man left a few minute afterwards. Her boss took the information away and reminded her of shutting her lips, as saying anything could endanger all of their posts and even their lives. The man had grown too powerful and it was necessary to know not to talk until they knew exactly what to say.

 Her boss left too and her shift finally ended. She was tired and her head was spinning. She thought it was criminal what was happening but she had no say in the matter, her voice had been silenced in a second. It was good to leave for home though, and enjoy that life that seemed so far away from her work.