Scutwork by CJ Lyons
The dead guy was a skinny old fart who didn’t have the good sense to have a Do Not Resuscitate on file. He’d spend his last few years at a nursing home, decaying from a plethora of old-timers diseases. Diabetes, hypertension, strokes, kidney disease, cataracts, pneumonia, broken hip. After surviving all that, Mr. “I’ll live to be a hundred and don’t need a DNR” finally succumbed to food poisoning from the nursing home’s egg salad.
What a way to go-covered in shit and no family left to give a damn. But the dead guy’s bad luck was just the break Andy needed.
As an emergency medicine intern, Andy was usually assigned the most boring cases: peri-rectal abscesses, drunks who needed to detox, screaming babies with earaches. He was expected to perform all those piddling tasks that the nurses and techs were too busy for, like art gases and IV sticks and blood draws-scutwork.
Andy was destined for greater things. Scutwork was for fools, not future chief residents.
Yet, here he was, performing the ultimate in degrading scutwork: pushing a “death box”-the gurney equipped with a sealed steel box containing the fresh remains of a deceased patient-down to the morgue. And loving it.
Andy had been waiting for this opportunity all night long. Thanks to the kinky Goth chick he’d met last night at Diggers, the bar across from Angels of Mercy’s cemetery.
Syrene was her name. “Think gy-rene,” she’d told him while bending forward to rack the pool balls, giving him a glimpse of come-to-papa cleavage. “But instead of
Yeah, no points for intellect, but when she tilted her head to give him a full wattage glimpse of her baby blues highlighted with contact lenses to an impossibly brilliant shade, he’d found himself sighing.
Her hair was dyed jet black except for one sapphire streak that matched her eyes. Her eyebrows, ears, nose, and tongue were pierced. Celtic knots and intertwined flowers were tattooed on her lower back, a glimpse of one thorny rose peeked up from the black lace edge of her camisole, and an intricate Hindu pattern extended from her left ring finger across the back of her hand and up under the black leather biker jacket she wore over the peek-a- boo lace camisole. Completing her outfit were a pair of skinny jeans form fitted to her curves along with some heavy-duty shit-kicking Doc Martens.
And she was all his for the asking. Only he hadn’t had to ask-all he had to do was hint at his profession and suddenly her tongue was in his ear, her hand down his pants, and she was whispering things he’d only dreamed of.
The rest of the night was spent at her place, time fractured by sweaty groans and moans and shrieks. He hadn’t slept at all; she’d kept at him all night and most of the day until he reported for his shift at seven P.M.
Now at three A.M., he was wrecked, barely functioning. But it was worth it. The heavy gurney squeaked to a stop as he paused, sighing so hard it emerged as a whistle echoing from the steam pipes overhead. Man oh man, was it worth it.
He couldn’t wait to see what she’d do for him after tonight. After he brought her the corpse.
All she’d asked for last night, her black lipsticked mouth pursing into the cutest pout this side of Hollywood, was a glimpse at a “real live dead guy.”
She’d do anything for that, she’d said, rubbing her body along his. “Anything you want, baby.”
Andy pushed the gurney faster, its squeaky wheel emitting a soprano wail.
Oh yeah, this was going to be
He turned the final corner leading to the morgue. He’d seen no one the entire journey through the tunnels-no surprise, at three A.M., security would be busy in the ER with the after-hours bar crowd. Besides, there was nothing of value to bring anyone down here.
He punched in the code to unlock the main door to the morgue and the lights came on. Behind him, Syrene stepped forward from the shadows, wrapping her arms around his waist, her fingers greedily kneading the flesh below his bellybutton. He’d called her before he left the ER and told her how to get to the morgue. She’d made good time.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, her breath hot against his neck.
He shoved the flat-topped gurney into the cavernous room with a single push that sent it ricocheting off an empty autopsy table. Then he turned to Syrene.
She was all in black again, except for white eye shadow that made her look more like a corpse than the dead guy. Before he could say anything, she wrapped one leg around him and snagged his hair in her black-taloned fingers, pulling him into a kiss. The smooth roundness of her tongue stud danced along the inside of his mouth, in and out, mimicking the motion of her hips pulsing against his.
Syrene rocked back and forth, pushing him into the room and spinning him until he had his back against the wall behind the open door. She released his hair, her fingernails biting into his flesh as they scraped down his body, until she finally untied his scrub pants and slipped her hand inside to tease him.
She tightened her grip. Andy closed his eyes, his head banging against the door as he arched back. Just as he was about to come, right there in her palm, he smelled a curious mix of stale beer and cigars. Cold steel nudged the side of his neck.
“Time to get to work, bi-itch,” a man’s voice sang out, accompanied by a cackle of laughter from Syrene.
“Who the hell are you?” Andy grabbed his pants, fumbling them closed. “You can’t be down here.”
“Oh no?” The stranger smiled, revealing gold-capped teeth with skulls chiseled into the metal. “You gonna tell me what I can and can’t do?”
He stood a head taller than Andy’s five-ten, with muscles that screamed steroids, and was either a light- skinned black man or a dark-skinned Hispanic, Andy wasn’t sure. What he was sure about was the big, black gun in the man’s hand. Pointed at him.
Syrene stood on her tiptoes and gave the man a languorous kiss. The man locked eyes with Andy over her head, one hand caressing her butt, his aim never wavering. Andy was trapped in the corner behind the door, nowhere to go, no choice but to watch.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded, using the sharp tone that usually worked on nurses in the ER. “I have to get back to work.”
Syrene broke away from the man, melding her body into his side and watching with a Cheshire grin, one black- taloned finger tapping her lips. The man shoved the gun under Andy’s chin, leveraging his head up, the gun barrel pressing against his larynx with bruising force.
“You ain’t going nowhere, honeybear.” The man’s dark eyes dilated as he watched Andy squirm, trying to relieve the pressure on his throat.
“Don’t hurt him, Dutch,” Syrene crooned. “We need him.”
Dutch? The guy sure as hell didn’t look Dutch, but who was Andy to argue. Hell, Andy could only hope it wasn’t the guy’s real name-he didn’t want anyone worried about him remembering little details like that. Worrying about the gun jabbed into his throat was more than enough.
Dutch released the pressure a microfraction. Enough for Andy to breathe and find his voice. “What do you want?”
“Nothing you’ll miss. Just a body.”
Andy yanked the drawstring on his scrub pants tighter and tied it into a knot. Christ, he was going to get killed by a couple of freaks who wanted to screw a corpse. “So take one, what do I care? I’m going back to work.”
He stepped forward, trying to brush Dutch’s hand aside. No go. The arm was as rigid as a steel I-beam, not going anywhere. Just like Andy.
“Did you bring my stuff?” Syrene asked, ignoring the standoff between the men. Ignoring Andy like he wasn’t even there, like they hadn’t spent the night and most of the day together. Guess since he wasn’t cold and dead, he hadn’t really turned her on.
Dutch shrugged his shoulder, releasing a black messenger bag. Syrene hauled it to an autopsy table and dumped the contents. Large colorful dart shaped objects spilled out. Then she removed something shiny and
