The Cool Room by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 8

She entered the program with the idea that working with the dead meant staying clear of the living. After all, the dead are not prone to baseless opinions or grotesque expressions of ego. Emily was one of those rare people that although quite young quickly grew to hate people and went out of her way to avoid them. For her, there were no parties and only a small number of close friends. Studying at a large university in Albany, New York offered the additional benefit of anonymity – something she enjoyed thoroughly. Fending people off was simple, informing anyone who got too close that she was studying mortuary science. This brought to mind images of the dead laying splayed open stainless steel table with technicians standing round – their gloves and garb running with blood. Of course, word of such things travels fast, even on a campus of sixteen thousand students. There were, however, one or two who seemed to have a morbid fascination with the field she was preparing herself for and asked for a tour of the mortuary lab. This was certainly not going to happen as several state laws prohibited such things and violating them could result not only in expulsion but arrest and likely incarceration.

To say that time flies when one is having fun would not necessarily apply to Emily’s education, but she did find the curriculum not only interesting but highly satisfying. She worked with her professors, a lab partner and at some point, a donated cadaver. It contained far more embalming fluid than a real world client, grossly affecting its appearance. But this was not the real world. Emily and her fellow students were simply working towards it. Her only weakness was the idea of working with children. In her mind, death was not a place for a child, but reality dictates the reaper, acting with discrimination, comes for everyone regardless of their age or circumstances. Although it is inevitable, the passing of any child was something Emily could not wrap her mind around, and she loathed the day when her profession demanded the preparation of a child’s body. Simply put, no child should ever die. The pain was magnified by age and felt by too many.