"I hope you don't mind working my shift tonight?" The
middle-age, obese nurse smiled besettingly down at Marie.
"We don't want you thinking that I'm taking advantage--just
because you're still in training."
Marie smiled up at the RN. "No--not at all. I suspected
I'd be doing some of this, anyway."
"How smart of you, child," the older woman said.
"Honey, if you have any problems-any problem at all, jus' call me at home. One thing
about this duty, your patients don't complain." The RN
laughed.
Marie didn't smile.
The nurse turned off her laugh like a kid turning off
the six o'clock news. She opened her purse and produced a
set of keys dangling from a rabbit's foot. "We'll see ya'." She smiled and turned.
Marie watched her waddle like a giant penguin across
the waxed tile floor of the lobby and exit through two
wooden swinging doors. Outside, a concrete ramp led down to
the asphalt surface where service vehicles backed up to load
and unload their cargoes. "Old bitch," Marie sighed, glad
the nurse was gone. She preferred the morbid company of
those in the room on the other side of the stainless steel
door to her right. She looked at the woodgrain plague next
to the light switch alongside the door. It seemed so dull
and blunt a word: MORGUE.
The digital clock sitting on the desk in front of Marie tolled one o'clock a.m. with a lifeless click. She reached down with one hand and opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a small battery operated radio she'd sneaked in. She set it on the desk and turned it on. A whir of gibberish erupted. Marie quickly adjusted the volume so no one in the main section of the hospital would hear. The night promised to be long. She opened her biology book and began to read the assigned chapter. At times she glanced up at the clock; it seemed an eternity before eight thirty would come and she could go home.
A swishing sound drew her from the biology chapter. She looked up, expecting to see someone standing on the opposite side of the counter, but no one stood there. Polished tan tiles spread across the lobby floor to the wooden doors across the room. Overhead, a half dozen rectangular fluorescent lights hummed. Had she really heard anything? Marie glanced at the clock. Its white numbers with black background illuminated by a reddish-orange light conveyed two forty-four a.m. She stood and crept around the corner of the counter, expecting to find a friend who had come over to play tricks. She'd heard the nurses joking with each other about how imaginations ran wild while on the "cold meat" shift.
But no friend smiled back from the other side. Marie looked around. To her left were the two stainless steel swinging doors that opened into the long dark corridor leading to the main section of the hospital. To her right waited the single door of the morgue.
She moved toward the door and stopped. The door challenged her to enter. Someone was pulling a joke--probably her co-workers, and she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of screaming down the hall as they expected. She approached the door and stopped, her fingertips touching the cold handle. But what if some weirdo picked this night to pull a scene here at the morgue--some screwball who likes to do things with the dead? "You're stupid," she said to herself and pushed the door.
She stopped at the darkness within the morgue. The light switch was outside. Marie leaned back, stretched to one side, and flipped the switch. Something thumped behind her.
She spun around. Across the lobby, one of the exit doors silently returned to its closed position.
That wasn't my imagination! She rushed to the door, hoping to catch the prankster. Marie didn't hesitate but burst through the doors and stopped. One overhead light, encased in a bullet- shaped glass, illuminated the ramp. She stopped under the light. Her eyes scanned down the concrete surface of the ramp, the rust-red metal railing, and then the interface where the ramp met the asphalt of the parking lot.
Something moved--skitted. Marie looked up. She couldn't be certain. She saw what looked like the obliterated outline of a person--nude--disappearing unbelievably fast into the dark extremities across the parking lot.
She stood on the landing several minutes before turning back into the lobby. She hesitated as she entered, looking suspiciously at the door to the morgue. It was still ajar as she had left it. The light from within shined weakly out into the stronger overhead lights of the lobby.
Before her courage could fail her, she rushed across the lobby and into the morgue. "I've had enough of this . . . ." her voice trailed off as she realized no one was in the morgue--no one alive. She looked around the room. In the wall to her left and at the opposite end were the vaults where the dead lay stored. In the center of the room sat an autopsy table. A large surgical light hung over the table. Next to the autopsy table was a stainless steel utility table, the large black rollers at the base of each leg turned this way and that. The room was clean--nothing seemed out of place. Marie left the morgue, closing the door and turning off the light.
Back at the station desk, the digital clock conveyed three o'clock. She sat, nervously opened the biology book, and tried to read. The night remained silent.
At six thirty, something bumped. She snapped her head up almost in terror.
"Take it easy," a tall, well dressed man said. He'd made the bumping noise when he entered through the swinging wooden doors. "I'm the assistant coroner come to do a few tests on the stiff from New Symrna."
"I'm sorry." Marie had grabbed her throat and sat smiling a smile of both apology and embarrassment. "I guess I've got the creeps."
"Well, the sun's breaking through outside and things will come alive around here, now." He smiled and walked to the morgue door. He reached over casually and turned on the light before entering.
A few minutes passed. Marie had gone back to her book. She felt at ease with the assistant present; she could hear him moving about inside the morgue.
"Nurse!"
She looked to the door.
"Nurse! Get in here! Now!"
She rushed into the morgue not knowing what to expect. The assistant stood at one of the vaults. He looked down at the slab inside the vault and back to her. The vault door blocked her view of the slab so she walked slowly over and stood opposite the man. A hospital sheet lay in a rumpled pile on the slab. Her eyes slowly raised and met the questioning gaze of the assistant. "I don't know anything about this," she weakly said.
Two hours later she had told her story to police and hospital authorities. She told of the sounds in the night and how she'd investigated and that she saw no one enter or leave between the time the regular nurse left and the assistant arrived. They accepted her story: "After all," one hospital official said, "what possible use would you have for a corpse."
Things calmed down and Marie was allowed to leave at eight thirty. She left through the double swinging wooden doors.
As she walked down the ramp her eyes lifted and stopped on the other side of the parking lot. A vacant field, overgrown with knee-high scrub palmettos and on its far side a dense woods, stared back at her. Something strange as hell had happened last night. The bodies within the vaults were nude and she couldn't help but wonder what she'd seen--a nude form running into the darkness. They'd think I'm crazy for sure if I told them that little part of last night's events, she thought. Yes, they'd think I'm crazy as a loon.
Overhead, A blue sky and bright morning sun caused the incident to seem, for the moment, ridiculous.
As she unlocked her Volkswagen and slid onto the driver's seat, she admitted one thing to herself: If a nude body is missing from the morgue and I saw someone nude running away, then something strange--very damned strange--has happened.
The Volkswagen's motor fired and sputtered to life. Marie forced the gear lever into reverse and backed out of the parking space. "One thing," she said aloud as she rammed the lever into first gear, "it'll be a cold day in Hell when they see me on this duty again."