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.
