I stepped inside. The steel door closed behind me. The rectangular room was the definition of stark. Stainless and concrete. A dozen shades of gray. A gurney with a sheet-covered body had been rolled to the center of the room. A nondescript man in a white lab coat stood to one side, motionless.
+++++I walked to the gurney. The metallic clicks and echoes of my footfalls made the room seem even larger than it was. Next to the gurney was a small steel table with an array of chrome-plated instruments neatly arranged. Scissors in various shapes and lengths. One delicate enough to cut rose petals. Another designed to snip small bones in two. There were knives, I suppose you would call them scalpels. At least a dozen. A saw, hammer, and chisel. A power tool, the sort that a hobbyist might use to make finely-crafted woodwork.
+++++I watched the assistant lift the cotton sheet reverentially from the face of the body. When it was just below the chin, he folded the edge into a neat, wide band across the shoulders and pressed out the wrinkles with his hands. He then took two steps back, clasped his hands across the front of his white coat, and bowed his head. After a moment, he said my name. “Mr. Miller?” He paused. Then a second time. “Mr. Miller?” I looked up at him, realizing that he was asking something of me. I wasn’t sure where I had gone. A fog of details. I was lost in the details.
+++++“Yes,” I said. “Of course,” I said. I was standing in front of an obligation, although I had yet to look at the body lying on the table. That is to say, directly at the body. I’d seen it only peripherally. I was thinking about the gurney—how stainless steel is misnamed, how it is rarely stain-less. There were lines of rust forming in the welds of the fittings. I wondered how much chromium and nickel had been added to the carbon steel to prevent corrosion. Ductility versus tensile strength. Metallurgy had become a bit of a hobby. But then the entire room was curious in that way, full of distractions. I had already noticed that the white wall tiles weren’t perfectly white, that there were dark stains in the grout between the tiles. And the scrubbed, shiny, epoxied concrete floor was discolored in several places. Blood and bleach, I supposed. One wall had interior-facing windows that looked gray under fluorescent light. The opposite wall had three rows of steel doors, more than a dozen, each one the size of an oven door.
+++++“Mr. Miller?” the assistant said yet again. His voice was now behind me. I hadn’t noticed. He had silently moved across the room.
+++++“Sorry,” I said. “I was distracted, am distracted.”
+++++I turned to look at him. He had put his arms behind his back, as though an invisible general had ordered him to “stand at ease.” There was a slight smile on his lips. I assumed it was a polite gesture of understanding. This business was strange for me, obviously routine for him, one he had performed dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. I wondered about the training required to be a Coroner’s Assistant. Perhaps he was a doctor. Certainly he had extensive knowledge in anatomy, not to mention forensic science. And people skills. People skills were essential, I assumed. He had to be precise, considerate, professional. I speculated that it must have taken years to become a Coroner’s Assistant.
+++++I turned back to face the gurney and finally look at the inanimate object lying there. Almost colorless, a light shade of gray. The lips slightly darker, bluish. Uncombed hair, almost amusing the way it stuck out in all directions, although I was embarrassed at the thought of anything being amusing in this circumstance. I recalled the only other time I had seen a dead person. It was Uncle Albert, my mother’s uncle. I was eleven. The entire family was at the funeral. I went up to the open casket, looked in, and found it funny that the funeral director had put rouge on Uncle Albert’s lips and cheeks. I’m quite sure it was the only time he’d ever worn makeup. I tried to stifle a laugh and told my father that Uncle Albert was wearing lipstick. He scolded me for not being more respectful. I looked at the body laying in front of me. The Coroner’s Assistant had not used makeup today.
+++++“Mr. Miller?” he said again.
+++++“Yes,” I said, refocusing my attention.
+++++“Can you identify the victim?” he asked.
+++++“Yes,” I said. “I can.”

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Jim Woessner

Jim Woessner is a visual artist and writer living the idyllic houseboat life on the water in Sausalito, California. This comes after a long career in engineering and a short one teaching creativity. He has an MFA from Bennington College and has had poetry and fiction published in both online and print magazines. Additionally, two of his plays have been performed in community theatres.

Latest posts by Jim Woessner (see all)

• Broken Glass - August 6, 2021
• The Coroner’s Assistant - May 17, 2021
• Spilt Coffee - March 5, 2021