Down Among the Dead Men Read Online Free PDF Page A

and then the undertakers took this monstrosity into the body store.
    I was wondering what was going on, but Clive and Graham both knew and it brought them nothing but depression. I was desperate to find out more, but no one said a word as they manhandled this
mound, with a lot of struggling and no little swearing, onto our hydraulic trolley which then proceeded to collapse to its lowest point, as if giving up all hope. The cover was removed, and in
front of us lay the most obese person I have ever seen in my life. The undertakers began to tell us the whole story.
    Mr Patterson had been complaining of shortness of breath (not surprising, weighing that much) and a doctor had been called but, unfortunately, he had died before the doctor arrived. The family
had rung for an ambulance but the ambulance crew did not have the equipment to cope with the removal of such a large human being. The Coroner’s officer had then been contacted, who had called
in some undertakers for the removal of the body, but not even two seventeen-stone men with hands like shovels and two assistants who were not much smaller could move him. The only solution was to
call on the fire brigade. Mr Barry Patterson had only been removed from his last resting place with the help of several burly firemen and a heavyweight hoist. After that, it took six men to lift
him onto the stretcher using various straps and lifting equipment. I often wonder if the family are present when such a body is being removed from a house; do they feel any embarrassment at the
events unfolding before them?
    The undertakers left the mortuary and I began to discover all the problems that such people bring. Our only decent trolley had a forty-stone body on it, but it was designed to take no more than
thirty-five stone, and had therefore seized up under the weight. Moreover, the mortuary has enough fridge space for twenty-eight bodies, including four larger patients. A larger patient in the days
when the mortuary was designed was probably about twenty-five stone maximum. There was absolutely no way that Mr Patterson was going to allow himself to be refrigerated and so he was going to have
to stay on our trolley at room temperature until a post-mortem was ordered by the Coroner. As it was Friday afternoon, the earliest that that was going to happen was Monday. Since, if a body is not
cooled, it starts to rot, this was what was going to happen to Mr Patterson. A couple of days would not make a lot of difference, but any longer and Clive explained that he would start to become a
health hazard, especially given the fact that it had just turned unseasonably warm.
    Clive rang the Coroner’s office and got through to Neville Stubbs who was dealing with this case. I didn’t know it then but this was not good news; I couldn’t understand why
Clive had such a pained expression on his face as he was explaining the situation. It turns out that Neville is a pleasant man, but not the sharpest tool in the box; he has a habit of typing
post-mortem requests for email (badly) and then forgetting to press the send button, or even sending them to some random person in the histology laboratory. Now that we know each other, though, he
is always pleased to hear from me, but I usually have to listen to a joke or two before I get to explain why I have rung.
    Clive explained the situation to him and asked for the request for post-mortem by the end of the day so we could get this man done and dusted first thing Monday, and then back to the funeral
parlour as soon as possible. Neville said he would get on the case and both Clive and Graham expressed some relief as the phone went down. This was only the start, though, as Clive went on to
explain, because the next problem would be the autopsy – how the hell were we going to get the body on the post-mortem table?
    As we locked up the mortuary that evening, I can’t say that any of us was filled with joy, but, as Clive said, at least we had done as