‘Her son said he’d pick them up on Friday when he comes backup for the funeral. I’m so sorry about the mix-up. You can see her now; If you’ll come this way.’
We took the lift up and walked the length of the corridor before taking another lift down to the basement. On the way the nurse commiserated with Agnes. ‘I don’t know if it helps but it was very peaceful. There was no pain. She just stopped breathing.’
We turned left through double doors: the pathology department. The nurse led us to a door on the right. She opened it and we filed into the small anteroom. In the centre, on a trolley, lay Lily. Her face was soft in death. They’d removed her glasses, folded her arms across her chest. She wore a white hospital gown, a sheet covered her from the chest down and a towel was tucked round the back and sides of her head. There was no sign that they’d started recovering bits from her body. Thank God they hadn’t been halfway through removing her eyes or something.
I looked again at her arms. The arms that had held her daughter, Olive, in birth and death. The sentiment caught me unawares, tears prickled my nose. I swallowed hard, touched Agnes on the arm. ‘I’ll wait outside.’ This was her bereavement.
There was nowhere to sit in the corridor so I paced up and down for a bit. Double doors at the end led to the pathology labs and adjacent double doors to an outside yard, delivery area and wheelie bins. Presumably this was where the vehicles came to take bodies away to the funeral parlours. I was leaning against the corridor wall when the doors from the lab swung open. A young man in a white coat swept through and out of the doors to the yard.
I followed. I caught the whiff of tobacco smoke. He inhaled deeply, leaning back against the brick wall. He looked a little startled when he saw me, straightened up.
I smiled. ‘Hi! They ought to give you a smokers’ room.’
‘They have,’ he dragged again, ‘it’s miles away.’
‘And too smoky?’
He laughed. ‘Right.’
‘Do you work in the lab?’
He nodded, blew out smoke.
‘I’ve brought my neighbour in to see her friend, died last night. They’d already moved her down here. Bit embarrassing really. She’s an organ donor. When you do that do they use everything?’
He shrugged. ‘Depends. Some organs go for transplants, kidneys and that. They take those in theatre. Or there might be some research going on so there’s a demand for something particular. Like last year there was someone doing some stuff on livers, they wanted lots of whole livers.’
‘Do they do it here, the research?’