u/Alias--TommySteele

People ask me how I do this job.

I always give them a stock answer: that it’s important work, and eventually, you get used to the guts and congealed blood. A heart is a heart, even after it goes cold and still. Then there's the fact that every cut can lead to putting bad guys away.

And all of this is true.

But as for how I’m able to do it so easily?

Honestly, death never bothered me. I watched my grandfather die of a heart attack when I was seven. I called 911 and did all I could, but he lived too far away from the hospital. He was gone long before the ambulance arrived. I sat beside his remains for over twenty minutes until the EMTs got to him.

Maybe it was trauma. Perhaps it was my way of coping with losing my favorite family member.

After he passed, I felt a strange sense of calm as I sat with the body. Cardiac arrest isn’t pleasant to witness at any age, and it was obvious his last moments were of pain and unimaginable fear.

Then it was over.

He was at peace. The agony was gone as suddenly as it began. What happens after death is anyone’s guess, but the calm stillness of final rest is undeniable. My parents immediately enrolled me in grief counseling, of course, though nothing in those sessions changed my mindset regarding death.

In hindsight, it’s no surprise I ended up in this field.

After college, I moved back to my tiny hometown, into the same house my grandfather had died in. I ‌inherited the property during my senior year after my mother left this world as well. Kenzie, whom I had met at school, came with me.

She never quite understood my indifferent views on death, but she happily accepted my proposal all the same. 

When I became the county coroner, Kenzie shook her head.

“I still don’t know how it doesn’t get to you,” she said. “But there’s not a soul better for the job.”

And that was my life over the next two decades. Kenzie and I had two children, a boy named Joel, and a girl we named Caroline. I was lucky enough to have plenty of time to raise them, unlike a big city coroner. Though I did miss the occasional event with a late night of untangling a cause of death.

And although I treated each body that came across my stainless steel table with respect, to me they were only remains. A shell left behind by the departed soul.

At least until that night.

I was finishing up my report on a recent motorcycle fatality. Alcohol in the system, helmetless rider. Pretty open-and-shut examination. I just hadn’t filled out all the paperwork yet.

As I closed the folder, my phone rang. A glance at the caller ID showed it was Sheriff Davis. No doubt this was about the unfinished documentation.

“Yeah, Nick,” I said. “I just finished with him. The report will be on your desk in the morning.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Robert,” he said. “It’s… it’s something else.”

“Are you saying we’ve got another one? I’ve already been here all day.”
 
I heard a heavy sigh.

“I really wish I didn’t have to tell you this. I’m so sorry. It’s Kenzie. She’s… Well, she’s gone.”

At first, what the sheriff said didn’t even register as I sorted my paperwork.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your wife is gone,” he said. “Your neighbor saw her through the window when they stopped by. We found her at the bottom of the stairs.”

I froze, folder still in hand.

“No. No, there has to be some kind of mistake.”

“Do you really think I would’ve called you if we weren’t sure?” asked the sheriff. “I’ve known you both for a long time. It’s her.”

My hands shook. I dropped the folder and nearly the phone along with it. There was a long silence as I processed what I had just heard.

“I want to examine the body,” I said. “This can’t be right.”

“Come on, Bob,” said the sheriff. “You know you’re not allowed to do that. Someone else has to do the autopsy.”

“I don’t fucking care,” I snapped back. “List her as a Jane Doe, use her maiden name, whatever you have to do. I will be the one to do this.”

Again, there was a long pause.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Do you really want to do that to your wife? We can take her to another county.”

“I’m sure,” I said without hesitation.

“Alright,” he replied reluctantly. “I’ll have her brought to you. For the love of God, don’t tell anyone that you asked me to. We could both lose everything.”

“Understood.”

I hung up and put my hands on my temples. I didn’t believe Nick. My wife had her moments, but she had never been especially clumsy. I set about preparing every instrument needed to perform an autopsy, my hands moving robotically and without thought. I had just placed the last tool beside the steel table when there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I said without looking up.

Behind me, the double doors slowly opened, disturbing the tense air in my morgue. The soft squeak of the gurney wheels approached, but my gaze remained fixed on the table before me.

“She’s here,” came Nick’s voice from behind me. “You sure about this, Bob? You don’t have to be the one to do this.”

“Thank you, Sheriff,” I said without turning around. “I can take it from here.”

I heard a heavy sigh from behind me.

“Alright. Just leave the report on my desk when you’re ready.”

The footsteps slowly faded down the hallway. Once the men were gone, I turned around. A body bag sat on the gurney before me. I grasped the zipper, but hesitated.

What if it really is her? I thought. How am I gonna tell the kids?

I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath as I slowly unzipped the bag. The sound of the zipper seemed entirely too loud in the near-silent room, easily drowning out the ticking of the wall clock.

I pulled the bag open.

There, cold, pale, and tinged with blue, was the face of my wife. Her eyes were wide open; the lively brightness of her green irises was long gone, replaced by the redness of burst blood vessels. The fracture of her neck was obvious, as her head hung at an unnatural angle. 

My body began shaking. Within moments, dizziness overwhelmed me, and I collapsed into my chair. The tears started as I buried my face in my hands. I thought of our kids. I thought of her parents. All the horrible phone calls I would have to make. Poor Caroline was supposed to make the drive home from college tonight. If she hadn’t stopped in Atlanta to spend the night with a friend, she would have been here when it happened….

I lowered my hands from my face and stared at the bag.

I had to know. There had to be something on or in her body to explain this. Kenzie had struggled with alcohol in the past, but she had been sober for over a decade. At least, as far as I knew.

Slowly, I got to my feet. After washing my hands and donning fresh gloves, I removed my wife from the body bag and gently placed her on the cold steel table. I placed my recorder beside me and turned it on. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

I made the first incision. Then the next.

Once I had finished the “Y” incisions, I began peeling back the skin to expose her rib cage. I flinched at each snap of the ribs as the shears did their grisly work. As I lifted her sternum from her body, I couldn’t help but notice her lungs remained partially inflated.

She hadn’t died instantly. The fracture had caused her to suffocate.

“The subject has suffered near complete separation of the spinal cord,” I said out loud for my records. “Preliminary cause of death suspected as asphyxiation."

The moment I’d finished speaking, I turned away, suppressing the urge to vomit. After turning back, I carefully turned her head to have a better look at the points of breakage. However, the movements finally cleared her airway.

While I had witnessed this phenomenon many times in my career, nothing would have prepared me for hearing the trapped air of Kenzie’s last breath pass through her larynx. The haunting groan caused my entire body to shudder violently. 

After a moment to regain my composure, I began dissecting the structures within her neck to fully expose the spine.

“Subject displays obvious fractures of the C3 and C4 vertebrae, lending credence to my previous hypothesis.”

One by one, I began removing Kenzie’s organs, carefully weighing them and setting them aside for further examination.

As I progressed, the familiar routine of my work gradually set in. If I didn’t glance at her face, I could ignore the fact that it was my wife strewn about the steel bins beside the table.

Soon, only the heart, lungs, and select segments of her neck remained. Normally, I would have removed them earlier in this process, but I wanted her heart to stay with her as long as possible. She once told me that while the kids owned that property, I would always have a home there.

I sighed deeply, closing my eyes to brace myself for what I was about to do. As I stood motionless, the steady rhythm of the clock became the only sound in the room once more.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick.

The room went utterly silent.

I opened my eyes, and looked at the clock, seeing the time as 2:07am. The second hand had stopped just shy of the 6 o’clock mark.

Although I stared at it for several seconds, it did not move.

That’s when I heard it. The sound was so soft, I never would have noticed over the steady ticking of the clock.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

I looked back down at the open body of my wife and felt my eyes widen in horror.

Her exposed heart was beating.

Before I could react, the corpse of my Kenzie snapped bolt upright at the waist. A horrid rattling sound echoed as her lungs drew breath once again. Her head - though still hanging limply - suddenly turned to face me.

“Robbie,” the body said in a raspy voice.

I couldn’t move. My mind was entirely blank, unable to so much as rationalize this as a nightmare. I could only stare as the exposed organs functioned against all laws of nature.

“It was Paul.”

My mind snapped back to the present upon hearing that name. Paul had dated our daughter in high school and had not taken it well when she moved out of state for college.

“What about Paul?” I asked without thinking. “Is Caroline okay?”

“He was in our house,” said the remains of Kenzie. “I found him in her room. He attacked me.”

While the sight of my reanimated wife was terrifying, it was the thought of that man inside our home that finally made my blood run cold.

“Kenzie…,” I said. “What happened?”

The dead, bloodshot eyes of my wife locked onto mine and focused.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “He was waiting to hurt Caroline.”

“What can I do?”

The corpse shuddered once again, looking as though it would fall over at any moment. Slowly, methodically, and with unnatural stiffness, her arm moved until she reached inside her mouth. Her rigid fingers pinched something behind her teeth before reaching out to me.

“I bit him,” she said.

I reached out to accept the object from Kenzie’s hand.

A small piece of blue latex. The exact color and material of disposable gloves.

“Get his DNA,” said the corpse, although her voice was now fainter. “Please… Protect our little girl.”

I stared at the fragment in my hand for a moment before looking back at Kenzie. The bright shimmer of life had returned to her eyes.

But it was fading rapidly.

“Kenzie,” I said in a shaking voice. “I love you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to stop him.”

The lopsided head of Kenzie smiled sadly.

“You’ve been everything I ever wanted,” she said. “I don’t regret a thing.” 

The corpse shuddered, nearly falling off the table.

“I love you, Robert,” it said in a fading voice, barely above a whisper. “Take care of the kids. I’ll be waiting for you when the time comes.”

And with that, the exposed heart ceased to beat. The lungs deflated. And the body of my dear wife fell to the table with a soft thud.

Tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

The clock had restarted. I was once again alone in the morgue with the body of my wife.

But I knew what I had to do.

With great care, I swabbed the small piece of latex. From there, the lab successfully extracted a DNA profile. And from a casual statement of family history from yours truly, police investigated Paul Montgomery, eventually obtaining his DNA via court order.

In his isolated farmhouse, they found restraints, sadistic tools, and on his computer, a manifesto detailing every gruesome detail of what he intended for my daughter.

Per her wishes, the remains of my wife were cremated after my examination, and now sit on our mantle in an ornate urn. It was the least I could do for her.
 
Kenzie may be gone, but I know one thing:

She will always be watching over us.