Dead Romantic (13 page)

‘The smell of cancer and toasted teacakes don't really mix,' she said.

Three hours we were sitting in the dingy green waiting room, watching the doctors and nurses come and go, reading creased-up tea-stained magazines and ear wigging all the coffee-breathed conversations. I was holding a makeshift tea-towel-ice-bag combo over my non-stop nose. Zoe kept popping out. I thought she had bladder trouble she had excused herself so often.

‘Are you all right?' I asked her, the fourth time she returned from ‘popping out for a moment'. I noticed she was now wearing a white doctor's coat with one of those scopey things around her neck.

‘What are you wear . . . ?'

‘Miss Mabb. Come with me,' she said.

Zoe led me along the busy corridors until we got to a brightly lit area with lots of curtained cubicles and doctors rushing about. She took me right past them all, through a white door which led down another corridor. There were signs showing the way to pathology, oncology, radiology and maternity wards and, through another white door, a smaller sign read ‘Mortuary' and an arrow pointed down a dim passageway.

‘What's a mort-yoo-ary?'

‘It's where they keep the supplies.'

‘What supplies?'

‘Bodies. It's where we can find some new feet.'

It had suddenly become the doorway into Wonderland. ‘Wow. You mean there are real live dead people in there?'

‘Of course,' she whispered nonchalantly, like we had
been shopping for cushions and now, logically, we needed the covers.

‘Oh-kay,' I said. ‘But won't it be a bit suspicious, just wandering into a mort-yoo-ary and lopping off someone's feet? And what if there aren't any feet worth taking?'

‘I've looked already,' said Zoe, pushing through another white door. There was a concrete staircase leading down and at the bottom was a long, dimly lit corridor. The door to the mort-yoo-ary was at the end of it. My clacky shoes echoed loudly on the cold ground as I walked. Zoe peered in through the glass porthole and tried the handle. The door squeaked open.

Inside, the room was large and white and freezing cold and stinky with the bleachy Zoe-smell that always seemed to be in my nostrils these days. At the tops of all the walls were windows and the floor was wet. In the middle stood three really big steel tables, all with pipes attached and plugholes at the ends.

‘Why are there plugholes in the tables?' I asked as Zoe made her way over to the other side of the room.

‘Fluids,' she replied.

‘Oh,' I said, not knowing what fluids she could have meant. ‘Where are the bodies?'

‘In there,' said Zoe, pointing towards a bank of eight large, heavy-looking white doors. ‘There are supposed to be two technicians here at any one time. One is on a call; the other is at lunch. We have twenty minutes at best.'

‘How do you know?'

‘What do you think I've been doing for the past three hours? I've been surveying the hospital of course. Obtaining
eight pints of O negative blood. Locating some more suture thread. Studying lunch rotas. Finding our feet.'

I got a little squiggle of excitement in my tummy. It must be all the death, I thought. And then I realised, it wasn't excitement, it was sick.

‘Zoe, I think I'm going to throw up.'

‘Why?' she said. ‘I thought you said you weren't squeamish.'

‘I'm not,' I said, rubbing my tummy. ‘It must be the fudge.' I breathed in through my mouth, then out through my nose. And then the other way round cos that wasn't working. The bleachy smell was so strong I could taste it both ways.

‘Okay, get some of those bags from down there,' she said, pointing to a box on the floor containing a ream of yellow plastic bags marked ‘For Incineration'.

I grabbed a bunch and tore one off. She opened the clasp on the first door and pulled out a long metal bed,
clangy clink clank.
On the bed lay someone dead, under a green sheet. Their marble-white feet were sticking out the near end.

‘How about those?' Zoe asked.

I read the toe tag. ‘
Peter Simpson, 32, renal failure
. No, he's got a verucca.' I pushed Peter back into the filing cabinet of death with a
clangy clink clank
and heaved out the drawer below. ‘
Michelle Victor, 27, female
, so no.' . . . C
langy clink clank
. . . ‘One leg.' . . .
Clangy clink clank . . . ‘Betty Brundle, 89, windsurfing accident
. . .'
Bang.

I opened the next door and pulled out the first of the drawers in there. ‘
Martino Lugosi, 97
. . . aww, that's the old man from the pizza parlour!'

Martino's head twitched.

‘AAAARRRRGGGHHH!' I shrieked, grabbing onto Zoe. ‘Oh my God. He's alive! He's alive!'

Zoe shook her head. ‘No, he's not. It was a muscle spasm. I should have warned you that kind of thing sometimes happens with cadavers. It doesn't mean anything. I promise you, this man is very definitely deceased.'

I nearly was too. My heart was going so fast I didn't think the beats were ever going to catch up. I stood there and panted for a while before I could think about opening any of the other drawers.

Zoe was having none of it. ‘Come on,' she said.

I swallowed down my fear and tried to concentrate on the job at hand: finding feet for my future husband. I pulled open another drawer, my hands shaking so much I couldn't see them properly. ‘
Frederick Benjamin, 74
. Ugh, yellow toenails.' . . .
Clangy clink clank . . .
‘
Samuel Popplewell, 49, RTA
. Ooh, no legs or feet.' . . .
Clangy clink clank . . .
‘Oh, these ones are nice . . .'

‘They're black,' said Zoe.

‘Don't be so racist.'

‘I'm just saying black feet on a white boy are not going to be the best look.'

‘They're still nice. He's got a better body actually, too . . .'

‘No,' Zoe sang-sighed, like my Mum did when I'd been keeping on for money.

I banged the drawer back in and pulled out the next one down. ‘
William Pratt, 17
. . . Ooh, Zoe, here we are. These are perfect.'

‘Really? You sure you want those?' she said, looking at
the tag on his toe.

‘Yeah,' I said, looking at the name on the toe tag again. ‘I know that name. Why do I know that name? Of course! He's in our Biology class. Oh my . . . when did he die?'

‘Must have been very recently,' she said, turning to a tray of sharp implements, and then to a table on which lay what looked like an electric carving knife, like the one my dad used to slice up the Sunday roast.

‘That's so sad,' I said, again and again.

‘Why?' said Zoe.

‘Because I knew him . . .'

‘Did you like him?'

I thought hard. ‘Well, no, not really. He was a bit of a . . . he was one of the ones filming me in the poo pool on freshers' night. And he laughed. No, I didn't like him much at all actually.'

‘Well then,' said Zoe, plugging the electric knife into a socket on the wall.

‘I wonder how he died.'

‘Tombstoning, I believe it's called,' said Zoe, starting up the buzzing meat slicer. ‘I've seen them up there before at the top of the cove. Another world beater in the brains department.' She pointed to the toe tag. ‘Rock fall. Now move out of the way, I've got fourteen minutes left to bag these.'

‘But hang on, Zoe, we can't take these. We knew him. Don't we have to mourn and stuff first? It wouldn't be right.'

‘You didn't mind us using the lifeguard's body and you knew him.'

‘Yeah but he was older. William is, was, our age. He had so much more life left to live.'

She turned off the electric saw. ‘Yes, well, his spirit can live on in his feet, can't it?'

She was so cool about it. So calm. So . . . doctor-like. She didn't care that she had probably walked past him at college or spoken to him or paired up with him for an experiment. She just didn't care. But I did. I really did, even though I knew nothing was going to stop her now.

She barged past me with the meat slicer and began sawing, just above the ankle to where you'd pull a sock.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz nnnnnggggggggggggggggg
.

‘Wow, there's quite a lot of blood, isn't there?' I said. My mouth was so dry. Zoe said nothing. ‘Not like chicken,' I said. ‘It's really bloody, isn't it?'

I watched Zoe at work – in awe at her concentrating face, the buzzing, gnashing sound of steel sawing through cold bloody meat, through bone.

Nnnnnnnnnnnnzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz gnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
.

The sight of the frozen red flesh, the first foot as it came away . . .

 

 

 

 

I
woke up to whiteness and the sound of rattling. Wheels rattling. Tube lights flashing by on a long white runway. I was on a hospital trolley. Windows and walls were passing me at speed. I looked over to the side and saw Zoe was pushing me along.

‘Zoe?' I croaked. I looked towards the end of trolley. My body was covered in a sheet. My feet were sticking out the end. They were big. And they were most definitely not mine.

‘Zoe!' I cried.

‘Shh! You're fine.'

‘What's . . . did you saw me up? Please don't say you sawed me up!'

‘Keep still. We'll be out in a minute.'

‘Out where? Where are we? And what's wrong with my feet?'

Zoe leaned down to speak into my ear, pushing the trolley along all the while. ‘We're still at the hospital. You fainted in the mortuary. Just as well you did, because one of the technicians came back and I had to pretend I was a junior doctor and you were a patient that had been brought down by mistake. I always find if you say something with enough conviction, people will believe it. And they're not your feet.'

‘Where are my feet? What have you done with them?' I cried.

‘SHH!' she said, all cross and speaking into my ear again. ‘I haven't touched your feet; they're further up the trolley a bit. Just concentrate on being dead so I can get us out of here.'

It took me a minute before I realised the feet poking out of the sheet were the ones Zoe had just chopped off William Pratt. ‘Oh my God. I think I'm going to be sick.'

Zoe flopped the end of the sheet over my face and wheeled me through the waiting room. I thought I heard someone call my name. I wondered if I really
was
dead and Zoe was just trying to be nice. I wondered if she was taking me to God. I did feel very cold all of a sudden. I could hear birdsong and the sound of my name on the wind. The trolley wheels on concrete, then softness – grass? – then concrete again. My name was called again.

‘We've been seen,' said Zoe's voice. Then she yanked the sheet away and tipped me off the trolley. ‘Right, help
me with all of this. And hurry.'

We were at the back of the car park behind the bins, where we'd parked the van. Underneath the trolley, balancing on a tray, were some of the yellow incineration bags, a large picnic box marked ‘Blood For Transfusion', some spools of transparent thread, a stethoscope and some bottles of clear liquid with labels with long words on them.

‘You've been busy,' I said, scratching my head, and I started helping her load it all into the van. The fire was in her eyes again – the fire that showed she was happy, which made me happy. I did still feel a bit fuzzy-headed from the fainting, but I felt part of something again and that felt great. Mucho mucho great, in fact.

‘Camille!' I heard my name again, this time clearer, and I could tell it was a boy's voice. I looked around to see Louis Burnett running across the car park towards us. He was still in his suit trousers and shirt from last night, except the top buttons of his shirt were undone and there were blood smears on it. ‘Oh thank god, I thought something had happened to you. I saw you being wheeled along and then I saw Zoe and I thought . . . well, I didn't know what to think. I'm just . . . I dunno, glad you're okay.'

‘Louis, what are you doing here?' I said, suddenly all flustered and not quite knowing what to say or do. Zoe was folding up the trolley into the back of the van.

‘Damian had an accident last night,' he puffed. ‘Someone tried to run him over as we were leaving my mum's party at the Chinese.'

I gasped. ‘You're kidding! Is Damian okay?'

‘Yeah, he's fine,' said Louis, rubbing his eye until it
looked red. ‘His ego's a bit bruised but there's nothing broken. He rolled over the bonnet and everything. It looked quite cool.'

I saw the blood smears again on his shirt collar and I felt my chest clench. ‘You were hurt too?' I said.

‘No, I'm fine. This is Dame's blood. He's bruised and he's got a cut on his face, but he'll be all right. He's in there chatting up two of the nurses so I don't think he's been damaged beyond repair.'