Off to the Morgue.

I had just returned to the office from a service call in the south part of the city. My boss had a look of hesitation on his face. "I'm going to ask you if you want another service call, but I'll understand if you say no."

I've never been one to shy away from anything. I can tell you with an incredible amount of certainty that I have seen more than my share of weird and disturbing sights. This however, took not only the cake, but the entire bakery.

"It's at the medical examiners office. Their garburator is broken and in need of repair, You want it?"

I remember thinking that it was rather strange that my boss would let me off the hook for a garburator repair. In this line of work, a garburator is what we like to call in the industry, "riding the gravy train".

"Sure."

He then went on to warn me that bodies would be present, but not to worry, they would all be covered up and I wouldn't see anything. Wait, he did say garburator didn't he?

Just short of an hour later I arrived at the morgue. I hopped out of my van and walked up to the service doors around back. There was a buzzer and a camera pointed in my general direction. I pushed the button and waited with tools in hand.

The door opened up and a somber looking fellow greeted me with a handshake. Some brief introductions and into the morgue I went. We walked down a short hallway and stumbled into what I can only assume was the "receiving" area. I was greeted with the sight of three or four badly decomposed bodies laying on gurneys. My tour guide made mention of averting my eyes if I didn't want to see any of that. Nice move. Something he could have mentioned perhaps BEFORE entering the room. Hell, I can can close my eyes almost a year later and still see that one body missing the arm. Yikes.

After we walked from that room, which by the way, felt like a freaking eternity, We continued down a hallway. I asked where the coffee room was. He pointed in one direction down another hallway while we walked in the opposite direction. What the hell?

Now before I continue, if I come to your home and ask to see your garburator, I make certain assumptions. Like, oh, I don't know, for example, it's in your kitchen, and its serves as a waste disposal appliance for your dinner waste. Not the case in a morgue. In the morgue, the only thing that goes through a garburator is your old neighbor Bob. I wondered if it was too late to change my mind. God hates a coward.

There were three garburators in the autopsy room. Two smaller units for the fiddly bits, and one huge mother of all garburators in the middle of the room for the larger parts. I'm making certain assumptions at this point so if you work at a coroners office, please excuse my ignorance and lack of better judgement.

Sad to say the silver lining in all this was that I had to work on the smaller unit. It was still far larger than your typical garburator. I kept expecting to see "Kenmore" or "ISE" written on the side of it. Not the case. I started taking apart the unit without a clue as to how the thing worked. I once again, drew conclusions that a garburator was a garburator, regardless of who or what was run through it.

As I removed the last mounting screws from the mounting bracket (I am making this part up as I had no idea if that's what those were for) the unit slipped from my hands and fell to the floor dumping it's contents all over my shoulder.

Justifiably, the only picture I was allowed to take.

If you have ever watched the T.V. show "Lost" you may find this funny, if not then you're probably still stuck on the part where this job has just become a whole lot more disgusting. There is a scene in an earlier episode where the main characters head inland to go to see this ship called the "Black Rock". Their purpose is to remove some sticks of dynamite from the hold of the ship without getting killed. One characters name is Arnst. Arnst is the resident expert on dynamite and of course, ends up getting killed when a stick blows up in his hands and parts of Arnst are all over everybody. At the end of the scene, Hurley (the big guy) turns to another character and said "Dude, you've got some Arnst on you"

Swear to God, this is what was playing through my head as I flicked pieces of what looked like teeth off of my shoulder. (I was wearing a haz-mat suit in case your wondering, which by the way is a lot like picking up your dogs crap and justifying it with the fact that you're wearing a glove.)

I finished up the job as quickly as I could. Turns out when they recently painted the floor with an epoxy resin, some of the paint went into the housing causing the cooling fan to rub on the paint. This is what was making it sound like it was about to explode.

I like scotch, I like the taste of it and I don't ever drink to get drunk. Not my style. Hate losing control. With one exception.... The day I worked at the morgue. I drank that night for the sole purpose of taking the edge off. Can you blame me?

Happy Halloween.