You learn the body quickly in this work. Not in the medical sense — I'm not a doctor — but the practical sense: you learn what the body is and isn't, after. You learn the textures and temperatures and what they mean, and you develop a relationship with death that is professional without being cold. You respect it. You handle it with care. You learn not to be afraid.
I've been doing this for eleven years. I have prepared over two thousand bodies. I have sat with families in their worst moments and I have done the work with precision and reverence and I have gone home afterward and eaten dinner and slept.
The woman came in on a Thursday.
Her name was Helen Maris. She was sixty-two. She had been found in her apartment by her building manager after two weeks — the smell had become noticeable, which is what happens after two weeks, which is why we know it had been two weeks. The medical examiner had certified death. The paperwork was in order. She arrived in our care at approximately 9 PM.
I was preparing for the embalming. Part of this preparation — the first part — is the external examination: condition of the body, position of limbs, temperature, any visible irregularities that need to be noted before work begins. I have done this examination thousands of times. It is routine.
I touched her hand to reposition the arm.
Her hand was warm.
I will tell you what I know and what I am certain of and where those two things diverge. What I know: she had been dead for two weeks. The ME had certified this. The condition of the body was consistent with this — the color, the tissue changes, everything that two weeks produces, which is unmistakable. What I am certain of: her hand was warm. Not room-temperature warm. Warm the way a living hand is warm. Warm the way my hand is warm when I press it to another person's hand.
I took a temperature reading.
Ninety-eight point four degrees Fahrenheit.
I stood there for a long time. I have never stood still in a preparation room for as long as I stood still that night. I rechecked the thermometer. I rechecked it twice. I took the temperature under the arm, at the wrist, at the neck. The readings were consistent. The body of a woman who had been dead for fourteen days had a core temperature of ninety-eight point four.
I called my supervisor. He came in. He stood where I had stood. He did not say anything for several minutes.
We documented everything. We contacted the ME. The ME came back and re-examined her and could not explain it and expanded the certifying report to note the anomaly and stood in our prep room looking at his thermometer with the expression of a man who has just encountered the edge of his professional vocabulary.
The embalming proceeded normally. Afterward, she was cold.
I have looked for explanations. Thermogenesis in decomposition, certain bacterial processes, chemical heat — I've looked at all of it and none of it accounts for a body temperature indistinguishable from a living person's. There is no biological mechanism I can find.
Here is the thing I haven't told my supervisor, the thing I haven't put in any report, the thing I've been sitting with for eight months:
When I took her hand, before I registered that it was warm, before any of that —
I registered that it squeezed back.
Not hard. Not dramatically. The slight, automatic pressure of a hand encountering another hand. The kind of thing a person does without thinking when someone takes their hand.
I told myself: involuntary muscle contraction. I told myself: reflex. I told myself all of the rational things.
I still hold my breath when I enter a preparation room. Just for the first second. Just until I'm sure.