By Jurgen Stahl

Three bodies today. Not too bad after a long weekend. The stiffs tended to pile up after they had been wheeled to the place that didn’t receive many visitors.

Harsh fluorescent lighting made up for the lack of natural light. One of the lighting tubes had been faulty for at least a year; its flickering light reflected on the scrubbed vinyl floor.

At dinner parties, Peter described this workspace as an oversized public bathroom with the toilets missing. Not that his friends really wanted to know about his job. Not that he was invited to many dinner parties anymore. Not that he cared. His wife did, even more so now that after the last of their many arguments, calls from their only son had dried out. Of course, she blamed Peter. What was said had to be said, and he’d felt justified at the time. But now, their son was gone.

One sentence too many, one harsh word that should have remained unsaid.

The more daring asked, “How can you do what you do?” Then he dished out the details, including the unique mix of bleach, formaldehyde, and sweet-sour odour of dead organic matter.

The conversations typically dissipated into an embarrassed silence, nervous sipping from wine glasses, and desperate looks for escape routes.

“Quite an uncouth statement, Doctor, wouldn’t you say?” a desiccated old lady had scolded him the night before at a charity event.

“My Dear,” he would have liked to say, “this is what life comes down to in the end. A lump of disintegrating carbon on a steel table. That’s all there is to it.”

Greyish-white ceramic tiles covered about half of the wall’s height. The untiled area consisted of yellow-tinged concrete. Four large stainless-steel tables were perfectly aligned. Three carried a customer under white linen with a plastic sheet over top. A few dark spots, especially around the head of the tables, remained resistant to scrubbing.

The shrill howl of the bone saw startled him.

“How’s it going?” Les, the mortuary attendant, peered through safety goggles, his hands on the bone saw. The face of his patient had been pulled forward like a hoodie to reveal the glistening skull.

“All clear-cut cases. Nothing of interest to the coroner,” Les said.

An easy day, then. Out of there before lunch.

The first body laid exposed, an empty red cavity and two large flabs of skin and fat overhanging its edges. The rest lay in one continuous package from tongue to rectum in a metal tray on the cut-up bench, awaiting his attention.

“Have you seen his face?” Les pulled back the skin over the half-opened skull.

The confused tone in the mortuary attendant’s voice surprised Peter. They both had seen everything in here; nothing should confuse them anymore. He glanced at the rearranged face, shook his head, and looked again, closer now.

Surely not.

“The guy had metastatic pancreatic cancer in his liver, lungs, bones, you said?” Violent bouts of vomiting, excruciating bone pain, body falling apart before his eyes—and the corpse had a smile on his violated face that radiated something totally inappropriate for this cruel place. Happiness perhaps? Or something more.

“It’s in the notes,” Les said, back to his matter-of-fact tone. “And I found this—” He fished a round silver plate, half the size of his palm, out of his pocket. “He clung to it. Had to peel it from his hand.”

Les let the disc drop, and it clung to the steel table.

“Magnetic? A medallion or something?” With some effort, Peter pulled it from the table.

It was nothing special. Worn edges, with a different design on each side, a burnt-out candle surrounded by circles, and a sun with rays shining inwards on the reverse. The disc looked like the kind of cheap, pseudo-spiritual toy his wife wasted his money collecting.

“And some guy wants it back,” Les said.

“Which guy?” Something about the cheap toy unnerved Peter. Maybe its weight, its magnetic property, or the ethereal smile of the patient despite his ravaging cancer.

“The one in the viewing room.” Les nodded towards the exit. “Shall I go and—”

“No,” Peter interrupted. “I’ll go. You finish off here.”

The man in the viewing room was one of those ageless people, bald, smooth, lightly tanned skin, a silk shirt with a ridiculous, flowery design hanging over this belt.

Peter held up the medallion. “What is this?”

“It can be yours for now, if you need it, but it works only once.”

“Need it for what?” Peter turned to go.

“A simple piece of bronze only. But it will change a single thing you said. Make it unsaid. Unheard.”

Nonsense. Peter swallowed the sarcastic comment that lay on his tongue, but something about that man made him stay.

“Don’t wait until the last minute.” The man nodded towards the mortuary. “It was almost too late for him.”

“I don’t understand.” Peter’s voice cracked. He’d seen, felt, and smelt it all over twenty-five years of mortuary service. Nothing could surprise him anymore. Nothing. And yet—

“You don’t have any regrets then?”

Regrets. Make it unsaid. Unheard. The cold of the mortuary crept under Peter’s thick gown and up his spine. That one sentence, the one word he had yelled at his son. A few seconds that destroyed so much.

That face of the patient—his body cannibalized by cancer, but smiling still, relieved. Happy even?

Peter examined the medallion, running his fingers over the design.

Peter weighed the disc in his hand. Pseudo-spiritual garbage that had no place in his world. And still—

One sentence too many, one harsh word that should have remained unsaid.

He held onto the medallion. Maybe it was not too late?