The Idler

Morgue Madness

A summer job working at a local mental hospital was supposed to be a bag of laughs. I had envisioned chatting therapeutically to slightly confused older folk over soothing cups of tea, but no.

As I was the new recruit - worse, a student - the hardened old lags of orderlies gave me a series of amusing tasks to see how I would cope.

On my second day I was told to take a trolley from a ward to the hospital morgue. The trolley was occupied by a patient who had snuffed it in the night. She was covered with a sheet, so I thought, OK, this is not so bad, I can manage this.

As we trundled along the depressing dingy green corridors, though, I noticed that my “passenger” had a peculiar lump on her chest. It didn’t quite fit the outline of a human body, somehow. Worse, it seemed to be loose and was wobbling about alarmingly as we went along. I found I couldn’t look away from it, until I bumped the trolley over a ramp and
the bulge slipped off its resting place and crashed to the floor. It was the patient’s false teeth.

I was slightly hysterical when I reached the morgue, where the
attendant, an overalled skinhead with a very dodgy grin, whipped the sheet off my passenger, nodded at a bin bag full of cotton wool and said, “Ok, now stuff her.” Cotton wool goes in all the body cavities, you see, to prevent leakage.

I do mean ALL the cavities, though at least my crop-headed colleague allowed me to do her upper end, taking care of
the sub-navel area himself with more enjoyment than I thought strictly necessary. I got the impression that he was one of those lucky people whose job is also their hobby.

The task I did most of that summer was launder bedding. A number of the patients were doubly incontinent, so every morning there were trolley-loads of rank sheets to be wheeled to the basement where huge front-loading washers and dryers ground endlessly on. At first I just piled the trolley loads in and slammed the door, but I learnt the hard way to inspect the foul piles first for anything that needed hosing off:
the sight of a totally solid turd knocking rhythmically through the soap suds against the round porthole of the washing machine is one I’ll never forget. In a strange way it was symbolic of the whole experience.

Sarah Walker