Stiff

It's usually not so difficult to get a body in a body bag. You just tie the wrists and ankles together, roll the person over, slide the bag under them, tuck one side of the body in the bag, roll them back the other way, finish wrapping the bag around them and zip them up. It takes maybe five minutes.

The body I was stuck with had been lying around for a good six hours. It was in full rigor mortis. Ever try to tie the wrists and ankles together of a stiff dead body, splayed out in a bed? It was a coroner's case, so I had to be careful not to damage the body. Pushing the legs and arms together so that they could be tied was a challenge. It was more than a challenge, it was impossible. The only way it could be done was to break some bones. There were so many reasons why it would be bad to do that, so I left the person as is.

When I rolled the body on its side, blood came pouring out the nose and almost landed on my shoes. The same thing happened when the body was rolled to the other side, only this time I was prepared and stayed clear of the head. I had never seen a person this dead before. I have no idea if its normal for dead people to bleed like that.

The body was also tall. It was longer than the zipper opening. Normally, I would simply bend the body's legs to fit through the opening, but again, the body could not bend. In my effort to make it fit, the bag broke and the feet ended up poking through the bottom. Good enough. I just tucked the bag around the feet.

Perhaps I should have started over with a new bag, but I had had enough. My back hurt and I was sweating. It's not easy working with a four hundred pound dead body. I was starting to understand why the previous shift had allowed the body to lie around so long. After wrestling with the body, I asked for the full story of what had happened.

Emotionally, the nurses were wiped out. The code blue and gone badly. The patient was young, reasonably healthy and hospitalized only for routine knee surgery. She had taken her first step with her new knee and was elated. By the second or third step, she began gasping and collapsed to the floor. Patients often faint the first time they get up after surgery, so her nurse opened a vial of smelling salts under her nose. There was no response. The nurse broke another eight vials of smelling salts, one after the other, waving them under the patient's nose.

Another nurse asked a doctor, who happened to be on the floor, to look at the patient. He quickly determined that she had no pulse. I'm wondering why it took a doctor to make that observation, but I'm trying not to pass judgment. The code blue started. There happened to be several doctors around at the time, so there was plenty of help. They worked on her for forty-five minutes before pronouncing her dead.

The coroner will have to figure out why she died, but our best guess is that she suffered a pulmonary embolism. Either a blood clot or perhaps some bone marrow or fat traveled to her lungs. When that happens, there isn't much anyone can do. I was happier when it was just a body. Knowing the story behind the death took all of the sick humor out of the situation.