Book excerpts:

Welcome to the Dead Body Guy's captivating excerpts! Get a sneak peek into the intriguing world of mortuary and coroner's office removal work. We hope you find these excerpts entertaining.

From Chapter Seven (Dynamics of Convalescent Home Pick Ups) comes… “Not Me—Not Yet!”

Waking up a soundly sleeping person is rude, even downright unkind. Waking someone up while representing a mortuary, wearing a mortuary uniform, is next-level rude. I swear I never meant to scare anyone, but a dead body guy often encounters a quandary: Old people sleeping in a care center sometimes look dead.In the perfect-case scenario, step four involved getting directions to the deceased’s room and bed directly from someone on the facility’s staff. Staff weren’t always available when I needed them, though.

Obtaining nursing assistance could be difficult; sometimes I had to insist on help. Often, a nurse would hand me the deceased’s patient binder so I could accomplish step three—complete paperwork—and then they would quickly dash back to work, leaving me to suss out the patient’s location using clues in the binder. Sounds simple, right? Not always. All too often, prolonged wear and tear of the binder’s spine had rendered the room and/or bed number illegible. Sometimes this information was missing entirely. 

Armed with incomplete or inaccurate information on the deceased’s whereabouts, I more than once approached the bedside of the wrong person—a living person. From a sound sleep, this resident would soon sense my presence. Their eyes would flash open wide, and once they gave me the once-over and gathered who I was, their reaction would be some version of, “No, not me—not yet!”

This interaction happened so many times that I began stopping at the foot of patients’ beds and started watching for signs of life at a distance. A good indication of life was the rising and falling of the chest. Or the movement of an arm, a leg, a hand, or a foot. Perhaps barely perceptible rapid eye movement beneath the lids. I’d wait and observe for as long as three full minutes. If extended observation from the footboard didn’t confirm or negate a person’s demise, I’d initiate a gentle yet deliberate shaking of the footboard and bed frame for a reaction.

This action didn’t always produce accurate information, but it often enough solicited anger or annoyance from patients who weren’t dead. As time went on and I gained experience, I learned to more fully investigate a deceased’s location before entering a room. Honestly, considering how many men and women I unwittingly frightened, it’s a miracle not one of them—nor I—ever grabbed their chest and succumbed.I remember these moments clearly. One day, as I was entering a room, ready to claim my client, a living resident whose curtain had not been properly closed took a look at me and quickly clutched her bed quilt, a look of fear emblazoned on her face. Again, I didn’t mean to scare anyone. I immediately stopped in my tracks, displayed a stoic face, and slowly backed out of the room.

Then, I solicited a nurse to calm this patient’s nerves. I think it’s safe to say that frightened care facility residents took some comfort in my slight, non-threatening physicality—the same physique Mr. Pickett noticed during my Pierce Brothers interview. In other words, I wasn’t a gothic-looking old geezer from the facade of Notre Dame.

From Chapter Twenty-Two entitled “Film At Eleven”;

Caution: contents are graphic.

The time had come to remove Nancy. Pulling at my gurney’s grip handles, I lowered the device to floor level and covered it with Gwen’s clear, thick coroner wrap. Gloves on. Lifting and maneuvering Nancy presented a new and different kind of challenge. Remember, Nancy was discovered lying on the linoleum, face up, halfway in and halfway out of the restroom stall, legs out. Her arms, which were outstretched, spread-eagled, and stiff with rigor mortis, were the tricky part.

Gwen and I had to work against the effects of rigor mortis and force Nancy’s arms to her sides to get her past the stall’s floor mountings and her body out of the stall. As I bent Nancy’s right arm, I heard bone and cartilage crunching within her shoulder. I’d dealt with rigor mortis numerous times in my career, but never with someone who’d been murdered. Contrary to how I imagined her attacker felt, I experienced a sense of regret. It felt like I was re-injuring Nancy.

 

We ultimately placed Nancy on the gurney, and as Gwen wrapped her in the plastic, I continued forcing her arms to her sides. After securing my gurney straps tightly around Nancy, I covered her with my gurney tarp, the same as I’d done just days earlier with Max. We were ready to exit the building.

Gwen assumed control of the gurney’s front end, and I the rear. Only then did anticipation come calling. I’d been so involved with Nancy’s removal that I’d forgotten about the photographers outside. In the hallway, Gwen spotted two officers who both scored high on the tall and brawny scale and recruited them as ramrod bank-to-body-wagon escorts.Turning to me, she said, “Are you ready for this? The camera guys are gonna be all over us!”

Although her emphasis was crystal clear, with Gwen along for the ride, I felt no apprehension or intimidation regarding the spectacle that lay ahead. Before we reached the bank’s rear doors, she drove her point home. “OK, I need to stress something to you,” she said. “When those doors open, move quickly! Don’t stop for anything! And when we get the body in your car, jump in and slowly drive away from the area. Don’t race. Got it? These guys will lead the way.”

“Yes, we will!” the taller of the two officers chimed in. “We always enjoy a little photographer tossing.”