Free Down Among the Dead Men by Michelle Williams

together and appeared to complement each other, and I could see that Graham was like me in that he wanted to get the job done. Whatever task was given to
him, he would jump on board.
    By Friday I felt as though I was definitely part of the team and had been accepted. We started to relax fully with each other. And I loved the fact that the atmosphere was nothing like I
imagined it would be. There was a strong sense of companionship, lots of helping each other out, lunches together in the office, jokes and gossip shared and plenty of laughing and high spirits.
Working in a mortuary can be unpleasant; the sights that are brought through the doors are sometimes enough to make you want to turn around, walk out and never return. An attitude of extreme
levelheadedness is important, and the attitude that Graham and Clive had was healthy as far as I was concerned. Although dealing with the deceased every day, they had never forgotten the fact that
they were very much alive and lived each day to the full. The proper respect for the bereaved family and the dead was always there, but sometimes, given the normal everyday conversations and
laughter that would come from the office over coffee, you would never have believed that we were completely surrounded by the dead and all their finery.
    So, this week had been my first week on call, and the working week evenings had gone by without an emergency. I had actually turned my mobile phone on and off a few times and
asked Luke to ring it to make sure it was working properly, which of course it was. From the stories relayed by Clive and Graham, I had thought it was going to be non-stop. This was about to change
when Saturday morning arrived, however. The first phone call came around eight in the morning. It was the A&E department to say they had an elderly gentleman who had died in the ambulance on
the way to be admitted. OK, I thought to myself, that is not a problem.
    ‘The trouble is,’ said the nurse on the end of the phone, ‘the family are coming down from Leeds.’
    ‘That’s fine,’ I replied. ‘What time are they going to be here?’
    ‘Could be any time. He was pronounced dead an hour and a half ago, we thought they would prefer to see him here, but they haven’t yet arrived and we can’t get hold of them to
see how far away they are.’
    I knew that this gentleman would probably have been transferred to the mortuary by now. I finished my phone call, left Luke and the dogs in bed and made my way to the mortuary at eight
forty-five.
    As I arrived, the porters were just bringing the patient over from A&E. I admitted him to our department and began making him presentable for his family. All the tricks Clive had showed me
worked to perfection, and by nine thirty Mr Jenner was in the chapel, laid out in the proper manner and awaiting his visitors.
    By eleven o’clock there was still no sign of his family. I had rung A&E a couple of times, but they had heard nothing. I had told pathology reception, which was manned until twelve on
a Saturday, but they had had nobody wandering around looking lost.
    In the time I had already waited, I had admitted a couple of other patients that had come in overnight, chatted with the porters for twenty minutes, drunk a fair few cups of coffee, run barefoot
through the biscuit tin and read the local and national news on the internet. I then spent another fifteen minutes chatting to Gramp on my mobile about random stuff, but I could tell he was getting
ready to go out and didn’t want to miss his bus, bless him. Luke had rung twice to see how long I was going to be, but I had told him to forget our plans for the day.
    At twelve thirty, and still with no sign of Mr Jenner’s family, I decided I would have to ring Clive and take his advice on what to do. I had really hoped I could do this myself, if only
to give him a break from the place, but needs must.
    ‘What do you mean, you’re still there?!’ was Clive’s response.