Hospital portering: the most disturbing student vacation job ever
Many years ago, and having accumulated a crippling overdraft over the previous year at college, I took a summer-long job as a hospital porter, working on the operating theatre level. Daily duties included collecting patients for their ops, and trying not to appear as the Angel Of Death whilst they were ripped to the tits on pre-med before the anaesthetic gets administered.

But the worst duty was rubbish removal, because occasionally this involved boxed up body parts that had to be taken to the morgue.

The morgue was euphemistically called 'Rose Cottage' so as to avoid upsetting people on the geriatric wards: "Where's so-and-so gone? His beds empty." "He's been transferred to Rose Cottage." Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Well, Rose Cottage was actually a very functional 60's built building just down from the main hospital site. You'd go in and the first room was the freezer room, gleaming steel fridge doors lining the walls. Then through a plastic hospital double door to the work room, where the pathologist would usually be at work. If you were lucky the doors were closed, but if it was a hot day they were wedged open for ventilation, and you couldn't help but see whatever he was up to. That bit in Heroes where Claire wakes up post her own autopsy? Pretty realistic that.

The pathologist was a nice bloke - he was the county forensic pathologist, so any sudden death would go to him for autopsy to see if foul play was involved. He was reputedly so good, he could open up a cadaver neck to groin, lean his face fully into the body, take a deep sniff and declare "arsenic..."

Anyhow, my first bin run on theatres involved the usual stuff - yellow bags for normal waste, sharps boxes and red bags for 'infectious waste' which ran the gamut of tumors to the contents of voided bowels.

And then you had the hastily sellotaped cardboard boxes. See, body parts come in all shapes and sizes, so there's no standard box to put them in - they just find the first available box and stick it in, seal the bugger up. They put them in a bag first, but chances are if it's an amputation, it's been amputated because of gangrene, and tends to be a bit... well, drippy. The bag didn't always work and you'd see a box with suspiciously wet bottom corners.

And there it was: my first box. Quite a small affair, probably a forearm. This needs to be hand delivered to Rose Cottage for proper disposal. Dutifully, I get rid of the main rubbish, and then it's off to the morgue.

Mr pathologist is busy. I shout through the plastic doors to avoid seeing anything horrible, and he just says 'Freezer 3". I open freezer 3, and it's a 3 level affair, all levels occupied. Top shelf and middle shelf have the normal corpses covered with sheets, but the bottom shelf is slightly different: it's a sheet covered corpse alright, but the sheet seems to get to neck level and then... nothing. Except a red stain. Below that, on the floor of the freezer, a box big enough to contain, say, a human head.

I'm staring aghast trying to process this and Mr Pathologist comes out to check on me. "Ah yes..." he says, "motorcyle crash. Awful really."

Gingerly I put my measly arm-in-a-box next to the clearly show-off head-in-a-box and get out as quick as I can. That bit at the end of Se7en where he's saying "What's in the box? WHAT'S in the BOX?" has special relevence for me.

But the worst one was when I had to deliver a larger box - an above the knee amputation. It was heavier (but at least not dripping this time) and as I was walking over to Rose Cottage, something happened. There was a dull thud from inside the box, and a sort of movement.

I nearly shat. I stood stock still waiting for any other 'suprises' and then pegged it as fast as I could into the morgue, my face ashen. After I'd calmed down, Mr Pathologist worked out what had happened. They obviously didn't have a big enough box to lay the leg flat, so they's sort of bent it at the knee joint and stuffed it in that way. As I was carrying it, a gangrene ravaged tendon somewhere had finally snapped, causing what was left of the septic muscle to contract slightly and 'kick' from inside the box.

I left shortly afterwards. And never cleared that bastard overdraft either.

If you got this far, thank you for your patience...
(vertigo, Thu 28 Feb 2008, 14:34, 2 replies)

*shudder*
Fairly grim that, made all to worse for me imagining (albeit for a second or two) that a box containing an "above the knee amputation" was a whole human body, minus the lower legs!
( e.m.m.y. foxtrot uniform charlie kilo india tango, Thu 28 Feb 2008, 15:15, closed)

*click*
dead man kicking
( my_cat_has_no_shoes meh meh meh MEH MEH, Thu 28 Feb 2008, 15:56, closed)