Mistake in the Morgue

Posted on Wed Apr 19th, 2023 @ 2:41am by Hale Stratton

1,036 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Bangor or Bust
Location: Millinocket Regional Hospital, Millinocket, Maine
Timeline: 24 August 2010 - 9:00 p.m.

The Millinocket Regional Hospital, serving Millinocket, East Millinocket and Medway, was large enough to have multiple locations and a good reputation in the community. Or so the advertising said but, as it turned out, they were not nearly large enough to handle the sudden influx of patients.

A trickle at first that turned into a steady stream, patients presented with the same symptoms -- dizziness, weakness and fatigue, fever, delirium/hallucinations, chills, nausea/vomiting, pale skin, dilated pupils, soreness, fluid discharge, spontaneous aggression or anger, fainting, hair loss and missing scalp pieces, dehydration, coughing up blood, pale yellow sclera, internal hemorrhaging and organ failure. It was a list that every doctor and administrator knew by heart. Near perfect infection rate always resulting in death.

Until recently, the hospital had been managing but there had been a rash of no-shows in their admittedly overworked staff and that was tipping the balance toward catastrophic. Which meant that members of the hospital administration were nearly always on the phone with the CDC looking for answers and sharing data, and with every hospital within traveling distance, looking for beds to handle their overflow.

The answers were discouraging. The CDC had no guidance to provide for treatment but were in contact with la Biomedicine DDMI and were working to find a cure. For now, all they could offer was the usual -- blood tests and isolation. And to make matters worse, every hospital they contacted was in the same situation and could offer no assistance -- no beds available.

And so, The Millinocket Regional Hospital was on its own and rapidly reaching the point of no return.

[Morgue]

Now into the thirteenth hour of his standard eight-hour shift, Max sent a silent curse toward his no-show relief. Weird that, he thought, as he tossed a now-emptied coffee cup into the overflowing trashcan, and hit 'Submit' on one Hernandez, Carlos, age 32, third shift policeman in Meday, cause of death - unknown virus.

He rose to his feet, sending a silent thank you to the maker of Crocs, genius that he was, and headed toward the next gurney in a line of gurneys. Dressed in rumpled scrubs and a lab coat, Max held one gloved hand in front of his masked face to smother a yawn. Because the manners his mother had instilled in him just never went away. To this day, living alone, he still put the toilet seat down when he was done. Mom, he thought, could teach the military about conditioning and training. But it is weird, James not showing up.

The morgue had a small staff and they all knew each other by name. He and James had fallen into an easily friendship based on their shared love of gallows humor and bad horror movies. Whenever his wife and kids went to visit her mother, James would invite Max over for a night of nachos, beer and movie critiques. So, yeah, it was weird. James, well, he'd always been one of the more reliable ones. Never one to call in sick. Hoarded vacation days because he was planning to take his kids to Disneyworld. Not like him to just not call.

Max paused a second, hand hovering over the sheet draped over the patient, as a thought hit him hard. What if something's happened to Sarah or the kids?

"Okay Lord," he said quietly, shame, for having thought the worst of his friend, flooding through him. "My bad. I take it back. I shouldn't judge before I get all the facts. Forgive me. I'll do the double without complaint. Just make sure they're all safe and healthy."

Like most of the others that had been coming in over the past few days, this one was marked for immediate cremation. Not that immediate was ever going to happen. He turned from the patient and headed back to the desk, punching in the number for the crematorium from memory. No answer. Again. He waited and left his twentieth message.

"This is Max Dorrett over at Milinocket Regional. No one showed up for the last pickup and we're just about out of room in cold storage. Give me a call back as soon as you can." He hung up with a tired sigh and headed back to the body. "Also weird," he said softly. "They've been very good about pickups till now. What is going on?"

He made his way back to the body and read the information. "Alice Carmody, age 67, retired schoolteacher, cause of death - unknown virus." He moved the identifying information over to the desk before moving Alice into cold storage. As terrible as it sounded, he was double stacking them now.

He tried to be as gentle as he could, tried to keep in mind that they were human beings with lives and family, and no doubt, folk crying at home but thirteen hours into the shift, his back starting to ache (again), it was hard. He shifted Alice on top of another patient, also female, and stepped back.

Frozen.

He knew every sound in this room because five years into the job, nothing unusual ever happened. But not this one. It was soft and raspy. The way his grandfather sounded sometimes when he wasn't feeling well, as though it was hard to draw a breath. And the thought slid into his mind ... like someone was laying on his chest.

He waited for the sound to come again and followed it to the back row, the ones that had come in last night. The sound came again. Low, raspy moan and ... did that bag just move?

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and called the nurses' station. "This is Dorrett down in the Morgue. I need a doctor ... stat."

He didn't wait for an answer, just rushed back in to shift the body off because yes, the one underneath was moving. He pulled the body onto the gurney he had just emptied and dragged it out of storage into the main room which was where he was, hand poised over the zipper, when the doctor arrived.

"That's not possible," the doctor said softly as he reached for his stethoscope. "Go ahead. Open it up."

 

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