Occupational Hazards

Every job comes with a downside.

This isn't news to anyone. Work is just that... work. Even the best jobs are going to have drawbacks. And no matter how much someone may love their job- there are bound to be aspects of that job that irritate the living hell out of them.

My job is no exception.

Of course, I don't suppose it's a surprise to anyone to hear that being a medical examiner isn't all sexy out-fits and ominous music... no matter what those prime-time crime dramas would have you believe. Though exciting at times, being a medical examiner also comes with a profound amount of drudgery and logistical land-mines. The funny thing is, I'm not really bothered by the things that one would expect. I'm not particularly put off by blood and gore. I cringe to admit it, but dead babies and small children don't really upset me. Notifying the next of kin of a loved one's death barely registers on my radar anymore.... even when they scream and cry and threaten to come burn my house down unless I take it back 

It wasn't always like this, naturally. I had to develop an immunity to the more unpleasant facets of my job. And now that I have that immunity, it amuses me to gross out cops and fire-fighters as much as possible. In fact, nothing tickles me more than drawing vitreous from a the eyes of a dead body while the police are still in the room with me. It's a process that involves jabbing a 2 inch long, 18 gauge needle into the eye of a corpse and sucking the eye-ball-jelly (vitreous-fluid) into the attached syringe. What can I say, it tickles me to watch men with guns stumble around, looking for a place to vomit. Some of the old-school veteran cops will even pull me aside and ask me to do it in the presence of the brand-new, hot-shot rookies... because who doesn't love a good hazing?

Sadly though, even my cast-iron stomach and calloused mind-set cannot protect me from every little sling and arrow that my profession hurls at me. My personal philosophy is that every job turns out to be difficult in ways you can't anticipate. It was true when I was a paramedic, (too much flagrant abuse of the emergency medical system- if you're simply running a fever, you don't need an ambulance, you need an aspirin and a good night's sleep) . It was true when I was a coffee barista, (Are my hands supposed to be shaking this much? I've only had 6 Americano's today) It was true when I worked for that costume shop (random, middle aged guy spent an entire afternoon trying on every women's “sexy-firefighter”, “sexy police-officer” “sexy bank-teller” costume he could get his hands on.)

It's still true now. Even though I love my job and plan to retire from it many many years from now, sometimes... being a medical examiner sneaks up and bites me right in the ass.

Fr'instance, this is a little story I like to call:

"NOTHING SAYS LOVIN' LIKE HOME-MADE SOILENT GREEN"

I'm an okay cook. I don't pretend to be amazing at it, but I can put together a pretty decent meal. I can steam rice, bake a chicken, toast... um... toast, and not to brag, but I'm a BOSS at desserts. So, one day, when I got it into my head to make something stew-ish in a crock-pot that had been given to me, I figured the production would come off without a hitch. I mean, crock pots were supposed to be easy, right? You throw in meats, vegetables, a few spices, turn it on and 8 hours later... you eat whatever is inside. At least, that's what I had been TOLD about crock-pot cooking and I was certain this endeavor was well within my skill set. How hard could it be?

As far as I knew, stew and soups and other substances of such a nature all had beans in them. I'd bought some dry beans from the store and set them on the counter-top to soak overnight... or over a couple of nights, maybe. I really wasn't sure. I'd gotten busy and lost track of how long the beans had been sitting in water. But I figured that a longer soaking time just meant they'd cook that much faster, so I didn't worry about it. Besides, when I gave one of the beans a squeeze, it didn't seem slimy or soft. I took that to signify that my beans were of an acceptable character and would cooperate with my plan.

Next, I tossed in some sliced up sausage... turkey kielbasa to be exact. Having lived in the deep south for a spell, sausage, rice and beans were ingredients intrinsic to virtually every recipe... and southern cooking was supposed to be the best in the world... right?

Speaking of rice, didn't I have half a bag of dry rice lurking in the cupboard somewhere? In it went.

I threw in some canned chicken, some pre-mixed spices, an onion which had been waiting it's turn in the fridge for longer than I care to admit. I stirred the whole mess around a couple of times, took a picture to send to my mother (“See Mom? I TOLD you I could be domestic if I wanted to!”) turned the temperature on “high” and popped the lid on the pot.

Two hours later, giddy with anticipation, I revisited my soup/stew/thing to see what kind of progress I'd made. I wasn't particularly hungry, but my husband had buzzed through the apartment in between work and going out to play cards with his friends. HE seemed utterly delighted about the whole crock-pot adventure and I couldn't wait to present him with a big, tasty, steaming bowl of... well... whatever the hell I was making.

I removed the lid from the crock-pot, took in a long, deep whiff of my creation-

-and nearly vomited.

I remember stumbling back in utter confusion and terror. I slapped the lid back on the crock-pot and gestured wildly at my face as though I was trying to swat away an enraged wasp. This couldn't be happening! How did this happen? What in God's name had I DONE?


My stew smelled like a dead body.

And not just any dead body. My stew smelled like a dead body that had been laying in a sweltering apartment for at least 2 weeks. My stew smelled like decomp.

I retreated to the living room, surrendering my kitchen to the strange substance that was lurking in my hand-me down crock-pot. Mentally rewinding the evening's events, I tried to reconstruct my hap-hazard, impromptu recipe in my mind. Sure, I occasionally kept blood samples in my 'fridge when I'm on shift and I haven't had a chance to send them in to the main office for toxicology. But I didn't recall dumping any test-tubes in with the sausage and onion. Maybe it was the onion, I thought to myself. That onion was probably bad... it was sprouting roots, after all. Or maybe it was the beans, maybe I left the beans to soak for too long and they started to rot or something...

At any rate, it didn't matter now. And I have to admit, this wasn't the first time such a thing had happened to me.

As most existentialists and emo teenagers can attest to... everything is dying- all the time. And if something isn't dying, it's because its already dead... and rotting. On a biological level, absolutely nothing is on it's way to becoming MORE alive. Every second that passes is simply marching every thing and everyone further down the road to death and decay. (except for maybe Styrofoam and Hostess Twinkies)

 

After sitting in my first autopsy, I walked around my world for a day and a half, marveling at how the atmosphere positively simmered with the scent of putrefaction

It isn't a fun thought, which is why most people probably don't think it very often. A medical examiner, on the other hand, can hardly avoid thinking it. The smell of decomposition, especially human decomposition, is unforgettably distinct. Once someone's olfactory nerves have encountered the odor of a rotting cadaver, the imprint of that experience is forever seared into their mind. They may recover from the isolated incident that first introduced that smell to their brain-stem, BUT, on a fundamental level, they will NEVER be able to forget that smell. Moreover, if they ever smell it again... or anything like it ever again, their subconscious will buck like an angry colt, screaming: “That smells like DEATH!” 

 

It's happened to me before.

And that's exactly what was happening to me now. Something in that stew, some combination of molecules and chemicals was just close enough to make it smell as though there was a ripe, hacked-up corpse mixed in with the kielbasa.

I grabbed my phone and my lap-top and stumbled out onto my apartment balcony, narrowly avoiding gagging as I did so. I've never thrown up on a scene before, even on the most juicy, grotesque scenes imaginable- the kind that would be rated NC-17 if someone caught them on film. But something about this scenario writhed in my stomach like a Kansas tornado. Perhaps it was the fact that I had been planning on eating whatever came out of the crock-pot... and what was in the crock-pot made me, irrevocably, visualize a fleshless skull... covered in maggots.

I dialed Henry's number as I fought to keep my stomach from inverting.  I figured he, of all people, would understand what I was going through. My trusty co-worked had been a medical examiner for over 20 years. His entire world had to be so mired in disgusting sensory parallels by now that he probably had to have sustenance pumped into his body via I.V. After the stories he'd told me, it was a wonder the man could stand to breathe.

“Hello?” he answered on the first ring... See? Trusty.

“Henry? I need you to come over here right now and smell my stew!”

No response.

“Henry? Did you hear me?”

“Um... yeah, hey... Grace, look... uh, is this some kind of euphemism, because you know I'm a married man...”

“No, goddammit! For some horrible reason, the stew I just cooked smells exactly like a rotting corpse- and I don't know how I managed such a thing, but you're the only person who can reliably tell me whether or not it's just my imagination!”

“What?”

“I'm serious!” I was on the verge of bawling. “I don't know WHAT combination of ingredients did it, but you know how it is... it smells just enough like a dead body to make me physically ill. For fuck sake... I'm on my balcony, hiding from my dinner. I'm afraid it's gonna crawl out of the kitchen and attack me or something. It's stinking up my entire house, what the hell just happened?”

Henry was laughing too hard by that point to be of much help. On the upside, he did offer to take me to Kentucky Fried Chicken for a consolation dinner in the event that my appetite EVER returned.

Nor was my husband particularly sympathetic. When he called later on that night to tell me when he would be home, I relayed the whole sordid tale to him and his reaction was less than ideal.

“Well, don't throw it out, “ he said. “I might still eat it.”

So I was trapped in my home with that stench for another 4 hours until he could come home and discern whether or not he found my abomination appetizing.

Turns out... he did.

Despite my protests that the stew smelled like Bubonic plague, my husband insisted that he had no idea what dead bodies smelled like and consequently, the stew smelled just fine to him.

“See! It's delicious!” He chirped at me as he shoveled spoonful after spoonful into his mouth. I don't know if he thought he was being compassionate and supportive by eating the stuff, but if that was his game it completely back-fired. I refused to kiss him for a week.

Later on, I discovered that both beans and human decomposition produce copious amounts of the gas methane, which may or may not have been what I was smelling. Either way, the crock-pot went back into the cupboard and likely will not be seen or heard from ever again. The memory is just too painful.

Moreover, I'm thinking I might petition Oswald county for some kind of compensation. I'm hoping I might be able to get them to fund an all-fresh, all natural super vegan diet for me. After all, because of my job, my world is quickly turning into a really disgusting place....

… and a girl's gotta eat.