Annelise Ryan - Working Stiff

Warm thanks go to Jamie Brenner, my agent, and Peter Senftleben, my editor, for believing in me and making this happen. You guys rock my world. Thanks, too, to Doug Clegg, for keeping my flagging spirits up and pushing for Mattie every time I was ready to give up on her. To my family, thanks for all your loving support and faith in me, for understanding why I sometimes become a social recluse so I can write, and for being my best promoters.

And finally, a hearty thanks to all the family, friends, coworkers, and miscellaneous acquaintances in my life who ever made me laugh, especially those of you who share my warped and occasionally dark sense of humor. Laughter truly is the best medicine and this book is my small way of trying to return the favor.

I m surprised by how much the inside of a dead body smells like the inside of a live one. I expected something a little more tainted, like the difference between freshly ground hamburger and that gray, one-day-away-from-the-Dumpster stuff you get in the discount section at the grocery store. Of course, all Ive seen so far is the freshly dead, not the deadly dead. Apparently the deadly dead can invade your nostrils with molecules of nasty-smelling stuff that clings and burns and threatens to make you vomit for days afterward.

Or so says Izzy, and he should know since cutting up dead people is what he does for a living. And now, so do I. Its only my second day at it, but I can already tell its going to be a real conversation stopper at cocktail parties.

At the moment, we are standing on opposite sides of an autopsy table with a womans body laid out between us, her torso looking as if its just been filleted. Im sure we create a strange tableau, and not just because of the open corpse. Izzy and I are the yin and yang of body typesthe Munchkin and the Amazon. The only thing we have in common is a tendency to put on the pounds: Izzy is nearly as wide as he is tall, and Im cursedor blessed, depending on your perspective and what century you were born inwith the perfect metabolism for surviving long periods of hunger. My body is a model of energy efficiency, burning calories the way a miser on a pension burns candles.

But thats where our commonalities end. Izzy is barely five feet tall, while I hit the six-foot mark at the age of sixteen (though I tell anyone who asks that Im five-foot-twelve). Izzy has a dark, Mediterranean look while Im very fair: white-blond hair, blue eyes, and a pale complexion, though not nearly as pale as the woman on our table.

Izzy reaches over, hands me the womans liver, and asks, So, what do you think so far? He sounds a little concerned, which isnt surprising. This job takes a bit more getting used to than most.

Think? Im trying not to think. I place the liver on the scale beside me and record the result on my clipboard.

Aw, come on. When you get right down to it, is this really all that different from what you were doing before?

Uh, yeah, I answer in my best duh! tone.

How so? You used to cut people open. You handled their insides. You saw blood and guts. Its pretty much the same, no?

Hardly. Though its been a mere two months since I traded in the starched white lab coat from Mercy Hospital that had my name, MATTIE WINSTON , RN , embroidered across the pocket, at the moment it feels like an eternity ago. This is nothing like my work in the OR. There, the patients bodies were always hidden behind sterile drapes and waterproof shields, the field of focus nothing more than an iodine-bronzed square of skin and whatever lay directly beneath it. Most of the time I never even saw a face. But thisnot just a face but the entire body, naked, ugly, and dead. And theres no poor-mans tan here. These people are the color of death from head to toe. Its a bit of a mental adjustment. After twelve years of working to save peoples lives, I now remove their innards after theyre dead and weigh them on a scale like fruit. Not exactly a move up the career ladder.

Well, for one thing, I tell Izzy, my clientele used to be alive.

Live, schmive, he says, handing me a spleen. With all that anesthesia, they might as well have been dead. They didnt talk to you, did they?

Well, no, but

So its really no different, is it? Here, hold this back. He directs my hand toward a pile of lower intestine and sets about severing the last few connections. I dont think its this job thats bothering you. I think you miss Dr. Wonderful.

Dr. Wonderful is Dr. David Winston, who is not only chief of surgery at Mercy Hospital but also my husband, at least until I get the divorce papers filed.

You do miss him, dont you? Izzy persists.

No, I dont.

Not even the sex?

Theres more to life than sex. I utter this with great nonchalance despite the fact that Izzy has hit a sore spot. During the last few months of my marriage, sex ranked just below plucking my eyebrows and cleaning out the toilet bowl on my list of things to do. Now that I no longer have the optionunless I want to don some stilettos and a tube top and cruise the streetsmy libido seems to be growing by leaps and bounds.

Izzy shakes his head in wonder as he hands me a kidney. See, thats the difference between men and women. Men, we always miss the sex.

Good, I say bitterly. I hope David is missing it like crazy.

It doesnt look like hes missing it at all.

My heart does a funny beat, almost as if its echoing the uh-oh that Im thinking. I look over at Izzy but hes studiously avoiding any eye contact. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

He sighs and shakes his head.

Do you know something, Izzy? If you do, spit it out.

You mean you havent seen the woman whos been coming over to yourto Davids house the past few nights?

His quick correction stings, but not as much as his information does. Ive been consoling myself ever since the split-up with an image of David pining away for meregretful, sad, and lonely. The only communication weve had since I left is one long rambling, remorseful note, in which David apologized exactly nine times and swore his undying devotion to me. Izzys suggestion that my side of the marital bed had barely grown cold before someone else moved in to heat it upand I have a pretty good idea who that someone else isbrings tears to my eyes.