How does that even happen?
Well, I’ll tell you.
Friday night, 11pm, 29 year-old female funeral director, a dead body needing removal, a snowstorm, a massive nursing home.
That’s about all you need. Now let’s get started:
It’s one of those snowstorms that seems perhaps worse than it is because it started at night so nothing has been shoveled. Plus when you head out into said weekend snowstorm it feels like you’re the only sober one on the road (because you are) and it becomes exponentially worse. Of course I’m on call and am required to do a removal at a nursing home that’s not too far away but that I have never been to.
What’s a removal?
Exactly what you’re thinking: picking up a dead person.
You’re going alone? But you’re just a girl!
I’m well aware of this. Yes, I’m going alone.
Going to a new nursing home is never much fun because they all have their own quirks and directions for where to park the van, how to be incognito, which back elevator to use, how not to let the memory care residents outside, etc. Generally these instructions are given to you by a nurse or nurse’s aid who speaks poor English and thinks you’re taboo or cursed because you handle the deceased. “Park by the dumpster” or “there’s a sign” or “go around the back” are all great examples of non-specific advice that are impossible to apply to most locations.
In this particular case there is a sign and it is around the back. The sign says “Funeral Home Parking Only.” How sweet. I feel a little VIP. I back into my special spot and walk around to open the back of the van. Here’s the issue: the sidewalk has at least 4, maybe more like 5, inches of snow coverage so not only am I soaked to my ankles, I have to push a cot on rickety wheels from the van to the door of the building.
I press the buzzer and am let inside without anyone inquiring who I am. This can’t possibly be a good sign. I wander around some overly quiet hallways wondering if anyone actually works here before locating a nurse who can sign out the body and direct me to the room. Because I am a complete idiot I forgot to pay attention to anything around me upon entering the building so although I may have been walking in circles for quite some time, I have no idea how many circles or which direction is back or forward. Per usual all the hallways look the same and when I comment on this to the night nurse she says “Yes but they’re all painted a different color.”
To which I respond: “Oh, but they’re all painted the same different color.”
She looks at me like I’ve just dropped a metaphysical bomb on her. BOOM!
I get to the room (I have no idea how) and load up the body. This may sound like the difficult part but in reality I’ve got this down to a science. Wrap him in a sheet, lower the cot to the edge of the bed, pull as hard as I can to get him on the cot, strap him in, cover him up, raise the cot. In the end it looks like a huge, lumpy, mobile kidney bean:
And we’re off.
Oh wait.
HOW THE FUCK DO I GET OUT OF HERE?
No joke, I walk the halls of this place for at least 25 minutes. I pass several doors that seem familiar-ish but then upon peering through their tiny slice of a window I determine that my van is not in fact right outside. During this time I pass exactly zero people. Yes it’s late at night but I have not seen one aid, one resident, one nurse, one janitor, no one.
I’M LITERALLY TRAPPED INSIDE A NURSING HOME.
I begin to think I’m just going to have to become a resident. I wonder if maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Someone to cook for me, clean up my room for me, cable, free coffee, adult diapers, drooling, pills, dead people….WAIT! There’s the door. Oh thank god.
Hang on a sec. This isn’t the right door. Unfortunately I’ve discovered this after exiting the building and am now locked outside in half a foot of snow hanging on to a cot carrying a dead person what could be a full city block in any direction away from where my van is parked. Meanwhile my phone is ringing in my pocket — no doubt another removal I need to go on — but I can’t answer it because I’m hanging on to this cot with dear life (*all life/death puns fully intended).
So I weigh my options: I can try to walk around the building from the outside and find my van. In my head this scenario ends in a news headline: TWO DEAD BODIES FOUND OUTSIDE NURSING HOME: One previously dead, the other just a fucking idiot in a JCPenny suit. Okay, I have to get back inside. I find another mythical buzzer and press it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. However after having only encountered two people here thus far, one of whom is dead, I have very little faith.
Then there’s a click and the door opens. I’m back in!
Wellllll shiiiiiit. I’m back in. What’s the next most logical thing to do? Yell.
“Hellllooo? Hellooo? HELLLLLLOOOOO. GODDAMMIT.”
And as if by magic a nurse’s aid appears. He seems to have come out of the wall itself. I begin to wonder if this is what the Third Man Factor is all about. I’ve manifested this guy in a time of crisis to get me through. Then he speaks in some non-specific language we’ll call “english” and I realize, nope, this is very real. All I really get from the sentence is “miss” and “lost?”
No this is just my fucking hobby. Yes I’m fucking lost.
“Yes, I can’t find the door where I came in.”
This is what he does: he laughs. He laughs at me. And he points. HE POINTS. Oh no, I am not taking a point in a general direction for an answer. I’ve been in this nursing home for what must be a full five-day work week by now and I want someone to actually show me the door.
“Where?”
He walks ahead of me chuckling the whole time while I mutter “mutherfucker” quietly to myself.
“Here.” He opens a nondescript door I’ve surely passed 60 times by now and sets me free.
Jesus Christ.
I trudge back through the fucking winter wonderland and load up a very snowy, very heavy dead body. I kick the snow off my Clarks and hop in the van. Just then another funeral home van pulls up for a removal (rough night, I guess). We glance over at each other through our car windows and all I can think is: poor sucker, he has no idea.
Good fucking luck.
