two months would have the same catastrophic effect as a one-hour burn
sustained in a suicidal session of sun worship.
My parents had impressed upon me, from a young age, that the
consequences of a single irresponsible act might appear negligible or
even nonexistent but that inevitable horrors would ensue from habitual
irresponsibility.
Even with my head tucked down and my cap visor blocking a direct view
of the egg-crate fluorescent panels, I had to squint against the glare
that ricocheted off the white walls. I should have put on my
sunglasses, but I was only seconds from the end of the hallway.
The gray-and-red-marbled vinyl flooring looked like day-old raw meat.
A mild dizziness overcame me, inspired by the vileness of the pattern
in the tile and by the fearsome glare.
I passed storage and machinery rooms.
The basement appeared to be deserted.
The door at the farther end of the corridor became the door at the
nearer end. I stepped into a small subterranean garage.
This was not the public parking lot, which lay above ground.
Nearby were only a panel truck with the hospital name on the side and a
paramedics’ van.
More distant was a black Cadillac hearse from Kirk’s Funeral Home. I
was relieved that Sandy Kirk had not already collected the body and
departed. I still had time to put the photo of my mother between Dad’s
folded hands.
Parked beside the gleaming hearse was a Ford van similar to the
paramedics’ vehicle except that it was not fitted with the standard
emergency beacons. Both the hearse and the van were facing away from
me, just inside the big roll-up door, which was open to the night.
Otherwise, the space was empty, so delivery trucks could pull inside to
off-load food, linens, and medical supplies to the freight elevator.
At the moment, no deliveries were being made.
The concrete walls were not painted here, and the fluorescent fixtures
overhead were fewer and farther apart than in the corridor that I had
just left. Nevertheless, this was still not a safe place for me, and I
moved quickly toward the hearse and the white van.
The corner of the basement immediately to the left of the rollup garage
door and past those two waiting vehicles was occupied by a room that I
knew well. It was the cold-holding chamber, where the dead were kept
until they could be transported to mortuaries.
One terrible January night two years ago, by candlelight, my father and
I had waited miserably in cold-holding more than half an hour with the
body of my mother. We could not bear to leave her there alone.
Dad would have followed her from the hospital to the mortuary and into
the crematorium furnace that night-if not for his inability to abandon
me. A poet and a scientist, but such similar souls.
She had been brought from the scene of the accident by ambulance and
rushed from the emergency room to surgery. She died three minutes
after reaching the operating table, without regaining consciousness,
even before the full extent of her injuries could be determined.
Now the insulated door to the cold-holding chamber stood open, and as I
approached it, I heard men arguing inside. In spite of their anger,
they kept their voices low; an emotional note of strenuous disagreement
was matched by a tone of urgency and secrecy.
Their circumspection rather than their anger brought me to a stop ‘just
before I reached the doorway. In spite of the deadly fluorescent
light, I stood for a moment in indecision.
From beyond the door came a voice I recognized. Sandy Kirk said, “So
who is this guy I’ll be cremating?”
Another man said, “Nobody. Just a vagrant.”
“You should have brought him to my place, not here,” Sandy
complained.
“And what happens when he’s missed?”
A third man spoke, and I recognized his voice as that of one of the two
orderlies who had collected my father’s body from the room upstairs:
“Can we for God’s sake ‘just move this along?”
Suddenly certain that it was dangerous to be encumbered, I set the
suitcase against the wall, freeing both hands.
A man appeared in the doorway, but he didn’t see me because he was