{"id":8834,"date":"2021-05-17T04:43:45","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T04:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/?p=8834"},"modified":"2021-05-17T04:43:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T04:43:45","slug":"the-coroners-assistant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/the-coroners-assistant\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coroner’s Assistant"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.
\n+++++<\/span>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.
\n+++++<\/span>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. \u201cMr. Miller?\u201d He paused. Then a second time. \u201cMr. Miller?\u201d I looked up at him, realizing that he was asking something of me. I wasn\u2019t sure where I had gone. A fog of details. I was lost in the details.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cOf course,\u201d 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\u2019d seen it only peripherally. I was thinking about the gurney\u2014how 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\u2019t 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.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cMr. Miller?\u201d the assistant said yet again. His voice was now behind me. I hadn\u2019t noticed. He had silently moved across the room.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cSorry,\u201d I said. \u201cI was distracted, am distracted.\u201d
\n+++++<\/span>I turned to look at him. He had put his arms behind his back, as though an invisible general had ordered him to \u201cstand at ease.\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s Assistant.
\n+++++<\/span>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\u2019s 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\u2019s lips and cheeks. I\u2019m quite sure it was the only time he\u2019d 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\u2019s Assistant had not used makeup today.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cMr. Miller?\u201d he said again.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cYes,\u201d I said, refocusing my attention.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cCan you identify the victim?\u201d he asked.
\n+++++<\/span>\u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cI can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":314,"featured_media":8841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1462,1362,1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-j","category-jim-woessner","category-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1Zyqm-2iu","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Coroners-Assistant-5.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.close2thebone.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}