Over the cold, sterile, stainless steel counter-tops of the examining room, Janet watched the young husband at the viewing window. As a medical examiner for the coroner’s office, she’d seen his kind of reaction before. She knew she ought to pity him and wondered if she ought to feel guilty that she didn’t. As his eyes glazed over, she knew he’d sunk into himself, into that tiny black void of denial where nothing else exists. He probably didn’t even notice as his body sank against the window pane. Then the scream came, muffled as it was by the shatterproof glass. His lungs and throat must have been burning, but none of it showed on his face. He was beyond feeling or caring about physical distress.

After giving him a moment, Walt, the old security guard, gently took the young man by the shoulders and hoisted him back to his feet. Janet allowed herself a sigh as the two men turned and headed down the hall toward the front office. A fresh stack of paperwork would be waiting for them. “Death, divorce, bankruptcy…nothing goes better with suffering than paperwork,” Walt would say. He had an odd sense of humor, old Walt did. A couple years ago, cancer had claimed his wife of thirty-five years, and the recession had claimed what was left of his pension. Now he had to work in the morgue to make ends meet. Janet sometimes wondered how he ever managed that wry, self-effacing grin of his. Nevertheless, his dry, sardonic demeanor always seemed to have a leveling effect on the visitors, and that was worth its weight in gold.

Securing the cover back over the fresh cadaver, Janet wondered if she’d made a mistake when she chose this career. It always gave her the tiniest crawling feeling when such a young healthy-looking body came into the morgue. This one had looked like she might momentarily sit up and complain that the table was cold. The woman’s toxicology reports weren’t back from the labs yet, but Janet knew they wouldn’t look as healthy as the smooth, rosy skin and strawberry blonde curls under the gray plastic sheet in front of her.

A flicker of motion at the edge of the window caught her eye. The dead woman’s husband had come back for another look, the classic double-take. They almost always did, but Janet could hardly blame this one. The woman on the table really didn’t look dead. In fact, she was beautiful. She probably wouldn’t look very different lying in bed with the morning sun peeking through the bedroom windows. She hated to admit it, but Janet wished she could look that good. The surrealism of it all just wasn’t fair.