Mortuary Confidential

It wasn’t unusual to receive middle-of-the-night phone calls, and it wasn’t until my husband sat up and exclaimed, “Oh, my God! Where? When?,” that I knew something was terribly wrong. Anthony scribbled something on a scrap of paper and said, “Thank you, officer. Please pass along to the family that we’ll be there as quickly as we can.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. There was a knot in my stomach, though I didn’t know why.

“Marie,” he said. His face was white. “There’s been a terrible accident. Jim and little Jimmy are dead. Grace and Phoebe are in intensive care.”

I felt like I had been punched in the gut. Jim and Grace Brewer are close friends of ours. Jim and Anthony had been friends in high school and when Grace and Jim had started going together shortly after Anthony and I married, we had double-dated a lot. Their son and daughter were exactly our son and daughter’s ages and they went to school together.

“How?” I managed to get out.

Anthony put his glasses on, got out of bed, and clicked the light on. “On their way back from Jim’s parents in Chicago, they got into a car wreck. That’s all I know right now.” His voice was unusually tight. “Get your clothes on. I’ll call my mom and see if she can come over and watch the kids.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you’re going.”

“What? Why?” I was confused, and scared.

“Your friend’s husband is dead and she’s laying in a hospital somewhere. She needs you. We’ve got to go take care of our friends.”

I got out of bed and mechanically put my clothes on. I felt like Tom Hanks in the movie Saving Private Ryan when he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day; sounds were muted and everything moved in slow motion. It took me forever to put my clothes on and brush my hair back into a ponytail. By the time I got downstairs Anthony had every light in the house blazing and was gone.

I sat at the kitchen counter. Anthony and his mother and father pulled up simultaneously, Anthony in the hearse, and his parents in their Buick. “Hi Mom. Hi Dad,” I said automatically as they trooped in. Anthony’s dad was still in his pajamas and his mom in her nightie. They had obviously been roused from a deep sleep.

His mother rushed over and gave me a giant hug. “Oh, Marie!” she said. “We’re so sorry. Jim was such a nice boy!”

“You okay here?” Anthony asked his parents. He was all business.

“Of course, Tony!” his mother said. “Go, go.”

“Get the kids up and off to school. Bus comes at ten of seven.”

“Where should we tell them you’ve gone?” his mother asked.

“I don’t know, Mom,” he said. He sounded tired all of a sudden. “Make something up. Marie and I will tell them about the Brewers when we get back. No sense you having to do that.”

We said goodbye and Anthony and I got in the hearse.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Looks like it’s going to be a four or five hour ride from here. Hopefully, traffic won’t be that bad this time of night.”

I looked at the clock. It read 11:49.

“How are you going to get two bodies into the back of this thing?” I asked, craning around to peer through the little window partition separating the cabin from the bed of the hearse. It looked like there was only one cot in the back.

“Reeves cot.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a collapsible cot that folds up. Like a reinforced yoga mat, I guess.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll put the boy on that. They’ll both fit.”

I noticed how he didn’t call Jimmy by name, but “the boy.”

“Okay,” I said, still numb.

As we drove up through Kentucky, Anthony and I were both silent. I wracked my brain for something to say to Grace. Anything. I couldn’t think of any words of encouragement or sympathy that fit this situation. Her husband and child were dead! Dead. For the longest time I just sat in silence, thinking, but not thinking. The tension built in me as I searched and nothing came. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and blurted out, “What am I supposed to say to her, Ant?”

He kept his eyes glued to the road. “What can you say? Say something from the heart.” He fell silent again.

“What are you going to say?” I asked him. My words issued like gunshots in a library.

“Dunno.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose and cleared his throat. “I’ll think of something, I imagine.”

I shut my mouth. The silence descended back over the hearse. When we passed from Kentucky into Indiana, Anthony and I had not broken the silence and I was still drawing a blank. There was nothing I could say. We passed Indianapolis in silence and still I could think of nothing to say to my friend.

Anthony consulted a map stored in the door pocket a couple of times and a scrap of paper several times over the course of the next hour before we pulled under the portico of the hospital.

“Here we are,” Anthony announced. “I’ll go check things out. Wait here.”

The interior light of the hearse flicked on and then off; I was left again in darkness.

I was alone with my empty mind. The hot engine ticked loudly. I began to panic. We had driven over five hours and I hadn’t thought of a single thing to say! I hoped I would be spurred into some deep thought or philosophy to share with Grace, but the panic just compounded my mental block. I could think of nothing but my friend and her little girl lying upstairs with tubes and monitors attached to their broken bodies while her husband and son lay on slabs in the morgue. I shivered and clenched my fingers so hard in my palms I drew blood.

So engrossed was I in my thoughts that when Anthony swung the hearse door open, I jumped.

“Marie, everything all right?” he asked.

He had a concerned look on his face, but I could tell his mind was elsewhere.

“Sure. Fine,” I said quickly.

“Okay. Why don’t you go on in.” It was a command not a question. “The lady at the reception desk will tell you where to go. I’ve already told her our situation. It’s not normal visiting hours, but she’ll let you go up. I have to take the hearse around back and park it. This will save you from having to trudge through the basement.”

I nodded and got out of the hearse. Anthony dropped it in gear and roared away. I put my arms around myself and walked through the front door of the hospital.

It was worse than I thought it would be. Grace lay propped up in bed with tubes and wires covering every inch of her body. I couldn’t imagine a human was under all the bandages and dressings. Her head was half covered by a giant bandage. The gauze had a giant brown spot of dried blood on it.

The room held the pungent smell of hospitals: powerful disinfectants and fear. Grace’s room was dark save the glow of the monitors. One of the machines gave off a constant beep beep sound. The sound, marking the passing time, was maddening.

To my relief, Grace was asleep. I dragged a chair next to her bed and laid my hand upon her tube-covered hand. She stirred. I’m not sure if she could see me as her face was so swollen, but she could certainly sense me. She tried forming words around the tube going down her throat.

I swallowed and tried to speak, offer my sympathies, something, but my words sounded clumsy so I just finished with, “Anthony and I are here for you and Phoebe. Just rest. We’re here for you.” I made quiet shushing sounds and just stroked her hand until she seemed to drift off again.

After a bit, Anthony strolled into the room. “How is she?”

“She knows we’re here.” I looked at him. “That’s all that matters.”

“I stopped and checked on Phoebe. The nurse told me her prognosis is much better than her mother’s.”

“That’s good,” I replied. It didn’t feel like it was me speaking the words. I felt so disconnected.

We stayed for a couple more hours until it was time for Grace’s first scheduled surgery of the day. Anthony loaded Jim and Jim, Jr., into the hearse and we began the long trek back to Tennessee. The return ride was just as