Chapters (70)
- COVER PAGE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- DEDICATION
- PROLOGUE
- PART I BIRTH
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- PART II LIFE
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- PART III DEATH
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I look down at the face of an elderly lady and feel a twinge of sadness. She’s been found by a neighbour, dead on her lounge. This is how it all ends. With me, an ineffectual junior doctor, standing outside the hospital morgue while I check her off as ‘dead’.
Death is an abstract concept, even for doctors. It’s not until I find myself standing there, staring down at the dead face of a woman I’ve never met and who no one will ever meet again, that I stop to think for a moment—this is life, playing out in front of me. The end of a life. The enormity of the concept hits me, hard, and then it’s gone.
‘Some doctors yell out their name,’ the death van driver says helpfully.
‘EVELYN!’ I yell at the corpse, wondering why I’m trying to elicit a response from somebody who’s clearly not going to respond.
‘I think her friends called her Evvy,’ the death van driver offers.
I look at him. ‘EV—’ Halfway through yelling out her nickname I realise how ridiculous this is. Evelyn isn’t going to suddenly wake up and say hello just because I use her nickname. Evelyn—nickname Evvy—is dead as a doornail and it doesn’t matter how many anecdotal forms of address I use, Evvy isn’t coming back.
I listen to Evvy’s chest—no breathing sounds. I listen for her heart—no heartbeat. I shine a light in her pupils—fixed and dilated. ‘Ah, yep, dead too,’ I say, awkwardly, signing the form.
The contractors who drive the death van pack up their grisly cargo and vanish off into the steaming Wingabby summer afternoon. Out of habit, I quickly cross myself. I sort of hope even as a person of science that the dead have a safe passage somewhere into their next journey. I wish for a moment we were like the ancient Greeks, where every dead person had a gold coin placed on their forehead, to give to the boatman to take them across the river and away from Hades, but there are no gold coins and no boatman waiting. Just the death van, a steel slab, and a half-unzipped body bag.
I remember, out of nowhere, one of Mum’s more fatalistic quotes, a biblical reference that she liked to toss around when I bemoaned the misery of studying and life generally.
Remember man that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.
‘There was this one time when the doc certified the wrong body.’ The morgue attendant is back, hovering next to me.
I jump up, out of my thoughts. ‘What?’