She stood under the water, grabbed the soap and began scrubbing her face. At first, she was just trying to get rid of the smell, but the rubbing grew more forceful as she tried to wash away the last year of her life. When that didn’t work, she threw the bar of soap, and crumpled to the ground.

Hugging her knees to her chest, she sat and wept; cursing how she ended up here, broke, alone, and crying, naked, on the bathroom floor of the county morgue. How could fate be so cruel? She begged to be her old self again, a professional, someone in charge. Her patients trusted her because she knew how to take care of them. Right now, she couldn’t even take care of herself.

The water made a loud gurgling sound as it swirled around the drain. The throaty echo caused her to look down. She watched for a minute. As the water circled, it distracted her from the misfortune that had become her life. She had a choice. Sit here and cry about the past or suck up her pride and get up and do something about her future. Val grabbed the faucet and pulled herself up, concentrating on everything she’d achieved. She had overcome obstacles before. She certainly wasn’t a quitter. Everything she had in life, she earned, struggling to get to the top. She could do it again. And the way to do that was waiting for her back in the decomp room.

Val got out of the shower, grabbed a fresh set of scrubs and headed back to the morgue, dressing herself without instruction this time in a white jumpsuit. When she opened the door to the decomp room, the first thing she heard was the song, “Rolling on the River”. Val saw Howie had the song playing from his cell phone.

“Don’t you think that music is a little inappropriate?” she asked. “That poor man died in the river.” As soon as she inhaled, her stomach grew queasy again. The mask filtered most of the odor, but not all of it.

“I play “Burning Down the House” when we have fire victims,” Howie said matter-of-factly.

The sheer bluntness of the statement made Val laugh. She put her hand over her masked mouth, and looked at Howie, ashamed.

“It’s okay. It’s called morgue humor. That’s how we cope with what we do. To some it might sound morbid, but it helps get us through this. There are days when it’s easy and others where there’s that one case you can’t get rid of. It’ll eat away at you if you let it. You’ll get accustomed to most of this and it’ll become routine. Now, you need to get to work.” He handed her a box of X-ray film.

“Do you think he committed suicide?”