Thank you both for coming today, Señor and Señora, and God willing, you will see that I did everything I could to follow the law – even when that meant rising above it, rising like a hot air balloon at the October fiesta, a brand new helium-hybrid, have you seen how they float high above the pack, because that’s what we Catholics do, isn’t it? We believers unite in higher purpose; I bet your beautiful daughter Mercedes clicked ‘print’ with the same love for Jesus and Mary as I do when wiping down an engorged scrotum with antiseptic fluid … Sorry, Señora? Of course, no problem, the day of the incident. Before I clock in at the morgue at ten p.m., I stop at Del Taco for my go-to, the Carne Asado Burrito Plato, and that evening was no exception. When I woke that afternoon, my condition was acting up so I didn’t eat lunch, my condition, I should say, is currently undiagnosed, though we’d have a diagnosis – even a cure – if hospitals did more autopsies, but for now I live with a heated thawing sensation in my kneecaps and my right breast, and yes pins and needles are unpleasant, but everyone’s got issues, don’t they? I watched three episodes of Siempre Bruja, I usually only watch two, but Estella had followed Julio to a nightclub thinking he was two-timing her and I wanted to see how it turned out, which I’m glad I did because his mistress ended up being his newly discovered half-sister, but it meant I was starving once I pulled in to Del Taco. Sometimes I eat in my car but there’d been a rattle under the dash, like a snake’s hiss and I’d called Ron, my mechanic, but he was in Texas, plus the AC was busted, so I wasn’t going to eat in a steaming coffin with snakes nesting in the engine, and in late May the pollen is lethal – I’m on medical grade antihistamine as it is. So I ate inside, the cool vents dried the sweat on my neck while I chewed pork and cumin beans and thought about what Dr Santorino might say when he returned from his training to check in at the morgue; it helps my condition just knowing I have ten chilled hours bobbing in formaldehyde before me. After dinner, I parked behind the hospital, went in through the steel back door, and there was Charlotte, the lanky new addition, scalpel grey eyes, she’s in charge of internal autopsies but spends the day texting; you see, everything changed when the higher-ups restructured the hospital a few years back, gone were the moonlit nights when it was just myself and David, two partners-in-crime, and don’t think I’m speaking out of turn, back then I called him David, now it’s very ‘Dr Santorino’ but that doesn’t bother me, I was more stung by the changes to autopsy regulation, some very poor decision-making up top, I mean, I used to handle ninety-five per cent of the process, start to finish, from slicing to sewing, weighing each organ onto the scale, noting its colour, any inflammations, cysts, or haemorrhaging. David stepped in for trickier cases, anything criminal, or crushed or mutilated bodies, we made a great team, he’d stick the organs back in the correct orifices, tenderly place his hand on the small of my back and whisper, ‘Time to seal the deal, Tina,’ and there’d be that green twinkle in his eye, and I would seal it, which meant to pad the skin with tissue so the organs don’t look lumpy, and once all was smooth I’d suture the body back together, wipe it down, inject embalming fluids and humectants to give the skin a warm life-like flush. One shift, exhausted after we’d reassembled a four-car pileup, David tilted toward me and said, ‘No one buttons one up like you,’ so I guess he admired the way I handle a body, but like I said this all changed a couple years back when the suits made state-wide legislation stating you need a two-year mortuary science diploma to do autopsies and in pounces Charlotte. Boy did that hit me hard. On days off I’d be in El Super weighing pomegranates on the metal scales, noting the weight and any discolouration on my palm, and there was nothing I could do, I wasn’t cut out for college, wasn’t brought up in a house with a pool and a pantry like Charlotte, I was raised south of the freeway to balloon people who made their own hooch, but look, you can’t blame others, it’s the hand God dealt. You know, I could tell by the way Charlotte gagged the first time Kambi, our intake-outake guy, been there years, rolled one in, a fresh one too, still warm, not some grandad bubbling in his putrid gases, sure, you slice into one of those, the scent has you doubling over, but a fresh one isn’t any worse than a gym bag and there was Charlotte gagging away, so maybe mortuary science is all theory, no practice, if you get me. You can tell a lot about a person from how they act around the dead. First time Charlotte heard a corpse groan her face went chalk white, tears galore and she was off like roadrunner to phone her fiancé. On the other hand, take Kambi, a real master, his first hyper-adrenal was a sight to be seen, a cold one, a woman, flat on the gurney and Kambi wheels her up the ramp and all of a sudden with a whooping crack, up shoots the woman’s torso, and with the agility of a ninja Kambi sucker punches her in the face and … Señor? Oh right, sure, I’ll get back to that night. So I walked into the morgue, Charlotte was leaning against the sluicing sink spooling surgical thread, ‘Any new bats in the cave?’ I said, more to Kambi, and his guttural goose laugh chimed off the stainless steel walls of the main freezer room, where we do the autopsies, ‘Never enough bats Auntie, but too many bodies, two new ones today,’ he said and pointed to a blimp with track marks and then to Mercedes, your daughter, so I blessed myself, as I do, unless it’s a well-known rapist or murderer, ‘See you Auntie,’ Kambi was out the door; he was on shift the next morning, Mondays are the most popular day for funerals in New Mexico, most people wouldn’t know that but I think it’s useful to know when the dead are most alive. Charlotte tried to make conversation, but I kept it short and did my stock take, new supplies had come in, not the usual gallon bottles of dark chilli-tinted liquids, but pint size bottles with rosy tangerine fluids, a brand called Ecobalmer, I thought this had to be a mistake, we’d been using Frigid Fluids for over a decade, so I asked, ‘What’s this eco-crap?’ and without looking up Charlotte said, ‘Santorino asked me to order it,’ which was strange because David was away at his mandatory doctor training course last week during our stock-take, so he must have phoned it in. ‘Embalming fluid without formaldehyde? Oh sweet lord,’ I said, ‘It’s 60% essential oils. This couldn’t preserve a dried-out armadillo,’ and Charlotte just shrugged like preserving bodies wasn’t our livelihood, like carrot juice would give a gangrenous corpse a life-like glow, but I dropped it and asked, ‘Do either require an internal?’ pointing to the new bodies, she sauntered over to check the charts and said, ‘Just external,’ and I said, ‘Well, the big guy is yours after break,’ and I decided to start on your daughter, Mercedes, myself. For an external autopsy, I begin by photographing the body; the sheet gets pulled off and I take a few snaps, I take more when a full autopsy is ordered but these days there are so few, apart from sudden death or foul play, I can’t believe how incurious people are and, of course, no doctor would suggest an autopsy, it can only expose their error. Anyway, like most chokers, Mercedes’ chin was tilted up; I bagged clippings of her hair and nails, mandarins, her hair smelt like mandarins, I put that in the notes, you might have read them; next I unrolled her clothes and placed them on top of her body, this isn’t state protocol but I like to get a sense of a person’s life, makes the job more personal. Mercedes wore a navy polyester blazer and trousers; David told me he loved a woman in a suit, but I have to disagree with him there, a blazer loses power without blood pumping through the veins – believe it or not the most stylish corpses are criminals, gnarled with tattoos, piercings and scars, their skin becomes a shrine to a life well lived – so it pleased me when I bagged up Mercedes’ clothes, rolled her over and found the tramp stamp on her back, the dolphin with a mischievous eye wearing a bandana, maybe she led a doublelife after work, the girlfriend of someone like Ramon, mafia boss in Serpente Encantada, I thought about that while I swabbed her in alcohol head to toe until she was ready for an X-ray on Floor 6. Charlotte got back from her break not long after, reeking of tuna, and I went into the back to do some paperwork, printing out Corpse Head First signage, because staff were always placing bodies in the freezer feet first and who wants to open a door and see an oozing brain-bashed skull after you’ve splurged on guacamole at Del Taco? I went to affix the signs and saw Pam had arrived to start the late shift, wearing the usual dollar store bangles and her cheetah print dress, heels clanking on the tiles. Pam is in her mid-forties, heavy smoker, does the make-up; she was showing Charlotte her daughter’s recital on her phone, and soon both of them started dancing, wiggling the table so the big guy’s foot tapped along, I slammed the rib cutters down on the steel table-top, maybe the dead guy was Mennonite and against dancing, who knows, but I don’t tolerate post-mortem humiliation, as a manager and also as a Catholic, so I said, ‘Charlotte, could you suture up the big guy now please?’ she sighed and Pam went into the backroom to put on her scrubs. I went back to my paperwork, and when I came out, Charlotte had left, and Pam was dusting the big guy with powder. ‘I need you to help me wheel the office worker upstairs,’ I told her, pointing to Mercedes and she said, ‘Sure thing, actually I was thinking she looks a bit like you’ and I must have looked surprised, because her glittered nails patted my arm; ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘Is it bad luck to compare the living to the dead? She’s a nice-looking woman, Tina, no bruising or signs of dehydration, and gorgeous thick hair like yours, almost a younger version of you,’ I hated when she addressed me by my first name, but she was right, your daughter was a looker, with the bone structure of Teresa in La Reina Del Sur, David loved her, especially when she was kidnapped in the jungle and made to wear slinky dresses, so I took the compliment. ‘Thank you Pam,’ I said, ‘but yes it is offensive, both to the living and to the dead.’ Since Pam’s new, it’s up to me to show her the ropes, be understanding, well, as much as I can be given her previous employment, which is make-up on movies, but who knows what kind of movies; David told me the suits upstairs needed cash and wanted to offer the full embalming package with moratorial make-up, so in floats Pam with her wispy red hair and cat eyeliner and bam, she’s hired, despite no experience with the dead. I was saying before about hyper-adrenal response? Well, shortly after Pam started two teenage boys were killed in an accidental shooting and I was showing Pam the procedure for externals, we were wiping down their toned bodies to fill the cavities, she’d taken the real hunky boy with almost no acne, and as she rubbed the alcohol swab over his right hipbone, he started to get an erection, not a real erection, desire dies with the pulse, but young boys are bursting with mojo and it’s not the first time I’ve seen it happen, nothing to do with Pam but that didn’t stop her turning pimiento, I had to say to her, ‘Don’t flatter yourself Pam, the boy’s dead’ and if I had any doubts about what sort of movies she was hitherto involved in, they ended then and there … Señora, do you have a headache? I get those too, real terrible, anyway Pam and I wheeled Mercedes out of the morgue to Floor 6 for X-rays. If the body’s under investigation – murder, rape, even just fraud – we need hospital security with us, otherwise just two of us go; Pam took front right, steering, and I rolled up my sleeves and took the bulk, we got in the elevator and Pam pushed 6, which is shared with maternity – a horrific place, with ghostly wailing and violent women in pastels, like they’re saints for giving birth, I mean, how hard could it be? I could extract semen off a warm one, insert it and be up there myself in nine months, nothing to it – but don’t get me started on Floor 6, I could go on all day. Anyway, I was relieved when two elderly nuns embarked on Floor 3 speaking Spanish, ‘Buenas noches mis Monjas,’ I said, and when Pam didn’t cross herself I whispered, ‘Bless yourself,’ and she did but it was half-hearted, she was in the middle of a story about this guy she was seeing who kept an iguana so she mixed up the father and the holy spirit, ‘I don’t like the way Iggy sits there waiting under that lamp the whole damn day. He barely blinks,’ she said, ‘It’s like, I don’t know, like I’m not exciting, like I’m boring the iguana or something,’ and I consoled her, ‘You are no dull woman.’ I smiled at the sisters, ‘Excitement drips out of you like blood from a bullet-wound, Pam,’ one of the sisters coughed, the doors pinged open and we were back on the front line of Floor 6, suffocated by florals and cooing, with the X-ray flashing at the end of the corridor; you would not believe the disorganisation up there, come to think of it, I’m sure you heard about that scandal a few years back – older woman gave birth, they took the baby, never came back, the woman haemorrhaged and died, dreadful story, and not the worst of them; anyway, down the corridor we went, dodging interns, ultrasound machines, and as we passed, I peered through a window and thought I saw David, recognising his salt and pepper hair and the muscular protrusions of his neck, but he’d told me he was away in Santa Fe on training, so I guess I was surprised, ‘An iguana isn’t the worst,’ Pam was saying, ‘It could be a venomous cobra, oh my god, can you imagine?’ I nodded but the man who looked like David was rubbing his palm over the back of a nurse in coral scrubs, and then a breeze of medical students in cactus green coats rushed by, and one of them must have tripped over my foot, I didn’t see, I was looking backwards at the window, you see, Carolina in Corazón Salvaje thought her husband was doing the dirt but it turned out it wasn’t her husband, just an accountant who looked like her husband, so mistaking people’s identity can cause big trouble, then the muscular protrusions twisted and David turned and our eyes met. It was him alright, he even winked but kept his hand where it was. I don’t know about you but I think it’s disgraceful to abandon one’s responsibilities, no matter if they are to one’s family, to God, or to the morgue where you are lead pathologist. It must have been especially hot on Floor 6 that night, because pins and needles took my legs and even Pam stopped talking iguana and said, ‘You look hot, Tina,’ but I steadied my hands back on the gurney and pushed us down the corridor towards X-ray; when we stopped outside the door, Pam screamed bloody murder and scared the life out of me, ‘Shh,’ I said, ‘What is it?’ and through sucks of air she said, ‘Oh my god,’ and paused in an overly dramatic way, like the twisted step-sister in Mirada De Mujer before they locked her up; ‘She moved,’ she pointed to the fingers sticking out from under the sheet on the gurney and I said, ‘The dead office worker?’ and she nodded, well at this point I thought Pam had altogether lost it, until I noticed the body did look bonier, Mercedes was a meaty woman, voluptuous, like myself, but the flesh seemed to have melted off her and there was no ink traces on her fingers. I peeled the sheet back. The corpse fluttered her lids open to give us a feeble smile, Pam screamed again, which made me jump back and knock my head against the door, ‘Shh, quiet,’ I said, gaining my composure, ‘Is she resurrected?’ Pam asked and I laughed, because once you die, you die, no reruns, except Himself – ‘Pam this isn’t the office worker,’ but Pam was rubbing her forehead like she was in labour, her blue eye shadow smudged down her cheeks, and amid the racket, the nurse in the lab came out and asked, ‘You after tests?’ I felt Pam’s nervy bile churning and answered for both of us, ‘No, no we don’t need them, after all,’ the nurse sighed and shut the door; ‘Pam,’ I said, ‘Pam, get a hold of yourself, that’s an order,’ I signalled to her to wheel the elderly woman on the gurney up the corridor – see what I mean about Floor 6? – so once we got into the thicket of nurses and pacing men in suits, I slammed on the brakes, crossed myself and parked the woman there – she wasn’t critical – and I grabbed Pam by the arm and whispered ‘We need to find the body,’ and the two of us scoured the busy corridor for unattended gurneys, passing by the sisters again, this time Pam blessed herself without me asking, and then, like an oasis in the desert, we saw it, a sheet-draped gurney and Pam gives me this look, like, this has to be her, and I walk up and skin the sheet off the gurney, and my heart sank, it was stacked with bedpans and syringes, and poor Pam, barely blinking, said, ‘We’re gonna get fired, Tina,’ and I was about to tell her to perk up, we’d keep looking, but then I saw that salt and pepper hair again out of the corner of my eye with his arm around her, and my condition flared up, terrible timing, I couldn’t breathe, and without knowing what I was doing I pulled Pam into the elevator and pushed B. Once we were back in the cave, Pam started pacing around the big guy, ‘What do we do?’ she threw her hands up in the air, ‘We have to go back and find her, I need this job Tina, I got two girls to feed,’ and I said, ‘Calm down, Pam,’ and pumped cool disinfectant soap into my palms, funny the things you remember, isn’t it? I remember the minty tingle as Pam shouted, ‘Is she being buried or cremated?’ while flipping through Mercedes’ chart, ‘Kambi’s delivering her to the Holy Spirit Church at eight a.m.,’ she lit a cigarette and added, ‘That’s in two hours Tina, it’s six a.m. now,’ when I couldn’t take it any longer – smoking among the dead– I said, ‘Butt that out Pam, give me a goddamn minute to think,’ but she kept smoking, so I walked over and plucked the cigarette from her dried-out lips and heard it sizzle when it landed in the sink. I heaved the big guy into the freezer, slammed the door and motioned for Pam to follow me; ‘It’s a corpse, it has to be up there,’ I said and again, there we were, in the chaos of Floor 6, Pam and I walking down the corridor, both peering into rooms, fondling gurneys, we did at least ten laps until by chance I looked into a deluxe private room and gasped, Mercedes was no longer on the gurney but in a hospital bed, and a nurse was hooking her up to all sorts of tubes. ‘What?’ Pam croaked, ‘Wasn’t she dead?’ and I was confused too, thinking maybe we’d managed to save her life by bringing her up there, and then I heard that hoarse voice say ‘Tina?’ and I turned around and there was David, ‘Well, hello Dr Santorino,’ I said coolly, ‘How’s training in Santa Fe?’ but he answered my question with his own, ‘You getting X-rays?’ and I said, ‘Yes David, someone has to look after the morgue,’ and I noticed his badge said Obstetrician-In-Training, which is weird, and he smiled which makes the muscles in his neck flare up like a blood vessel about to pop; I have always had a weakness for protrusions and thick teeth. ‘Tina, you are doing such a fantastic job running morgue operations, I’d be lost without you,’ and then he lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘Management keep dragging me up here, I miss you,’ and I nodded, I had been doing a good job, I was about to ask what he thought about Pedro being arrested in Siempre Bruja, but then the nurse hooking Mercedes up to tubes screamed, ‘Santorino, quick, there’s no pulse!’ and David winked goodbye, and soon a swarm of doctors and nurses surrounded Mercedes, trying to revive her, while Pam and I tucked into the elevator stiff as rigor mortis. Back in the morgue there was no calming Pam, mascara gooped around her eyes, her hair was a tumbleweed, I shook her to bring her back, ‘It’s a dead body, Pam, the worst has happened, I mean, she’s dead, isn’t she? Tubes and a defibrillator can’t harm a corpse, worst case scenario she comes back to life,’ Pam sniffled and then laughed, ‘Yeah, I guess she is dead,’ and I said, ‘We need the body to give the family peace, that’s all, think about it, if there’s a body floating around the hospital where do you think it’s going to end up?’ and when she didn’t answer I said, ‘In the morgue, Pam. Right back to us, and we can’t do anything about Floor 6, not our fault, it’s a carnival,’ and that seemed to comfort her because she stopped crying and started pacing, eyes on the floor, and then asked, ‘What time is it?’ and I told her seven a.m. and that I was about to call the family, you Señor and Señora, but Pam intercepted me, ‘No, don’t,’ she said, ‘Why not?’ I asked, ‘They’ll sue us!’ she had a rapacious look in her eye, ‘What height are you Tina?’ I told her I was 5'6 and she snatched the chart from my hands, ‘And your weight?’ I had no idea what she was getting at but I told her the number, ‘Tina, like you were saying, our job is to give the family peace, right? That’s what Santorino wants,’ and I agreed, ‘Don’t you see Tina? You’re a lot like her, bit of make-up, and you could be her twin. Thinner eyebrows, and you don’t really have much for cheekbones but it’s nothing a little contrast blush and lip liner couldn’t fix,’ and I said, ‘What are you saying?’ and she said, ‘Tina, if you want to give the family peace, you got to stand in for the dead girl,’ and I said, ‘No way!’ but then she said, ‘We’ll be fired Tina, all of us, even Santorino could be fired,’ and I remembered what David had said, about me doing a fantastic job, and I knew Pam was right, I had to see the bigger picture, consider the future of the morgue, and Pam put her hand on the small of my back and told me to lie down, and a strange sensation landed in me, I’m not sure it can be expressed in words, there’s a good chance it was divine, the holy spirit maybe, I knew I should listen to Pam and act in for Mercedes; ‘If you’re going to do it,’ I said, ‘Do it properly, with the wipes and all’ because actors can cake on all the make-up in the world but you can still tell when they haven’t marinated in their character long enough, and Pam grunted, ‘Yeah, fine, lay down, close your eyes.’ I stripped naked and mounted the moratorial make-up trolley, the wax paper sticking to my clammy hands. When Pam turned around, she drew back; ‘I’m only wiping where the make-up goes,’ I closed my eyes and gave myself over to Pam, the way thousands of corpses had given themselves to me, an offering I guess, to Mercedes, to God, to the Fernandez family; my purpose was to give peace to the loved ones of the recently departed. Pam began with a long juicy swipe from the forehead down the nose to my neck, bitter antiseptic fluid squeezed between my lips, then she patted me down with paper towel, the cool air sent an electric wave along the baby hairs on my neck, ‘Stop smiling – you’re supposed to be dead,’ she said, but her stroke was steady and unrushed. I heard her dig around in her make-up, ‘I’ll do a bit of primer, Tina, just to cover the scars, I’d do it on the dead girl, nothing personal. Oh and take this,’ she popped a pill in my mouth, ‘It’ll make you real still.’ I swallowed, falling under the spell of powdery brushes, David’s words of praise dissolved into formaldehyde, each syllable of I-Miss-You dyeing my veins a deeper red, flushing my tissue to life, then I thought of Mercedes at the photocopier, her cup of black coffee, clicking copy, her hardened lover, Ramon, the white flash off the machine, blinding, like sand in the desert, and I was in the clouds, light as a brand new helium hybrid, chambers full of air, floating up to the divine. And that was it, that’s the end of the story – The End, well, I mean, I don’t remember the events after that. I can tell you what I heard: how Kambi rolled me from the hearse into the Holy Spirit Cathedral, he had no idea it was me, completely convinced I was Mercedes, he wheeled me inside and placed me in the casket where the funeral director made me presentable before you came in, Señor and Señora Fernandez. You know, I like to imagine when the casket opened for the first time, that the whole family gazed at me and felt peace, could sense a godly essence in me, well, in Mercedes I guess, it didn’t really matter which at that point, and I mean, if I’d have known the church was going to be overflowing with white lilies, and there was no way I could have known because the shrivelled-up chapel I went to growing up was never graced with more than a wilted agave, and no air conditioning either, that should be state regulation in churches, all those chafing hot bodies; I heard, too, that attendance was over capacity, standing room at the back, and that’s a nice thing, I think we’d all like to have that at our funerals, I sure would, but the heat must have set off my condition, I recall organ music, distant and thin, and it brought on those thawing prickles, and of course I’d missed my morning dose of antihistamine. And so, as I imagine it – the sneeze – it was quite a shock. I heard the crowd gasped in terror and the priest began to stutter, but what more can I say other than that Pam should have upped the dose on the stillness drugs or administered my antihistamine. I was right about the body, too, it made its way back, didn’t it? Shame Charlotte was there when it arrived, but never mind, and again I do hope you see I did this for you – oh, I’m sorry about your sister Manuela fainting and throwing out her hip, I meant to say that earlier – but you know, maybe the sneeze was what the good Lord wanted, it might have been His will to inspire awe, to remind his believers that Jesus rose in the Resurrection, didn’t he? We forget, but the dead aren’t far away. Your daughter Mercedes isn’t far away. They say He works in mysterious ways, and I hope you see that I kept the family’s interest at heart, wanting peace and solace for each and every member of the Fernandez family. So, in closing, from the depths of my Catholic heart, I hope you understand my actions were divinely inspired and consider dropping the charges.