Death Is A Friend

The Art Of Embalming

    "Oh such a stick in the mud, isn't he?" Victor breathed in exasperation. Sherlock blinked, and wasn't entirely sure if he was supposed to agree or not.
"He is acting rather out of character." Sherlock presumed. Victor chuckled a little bit as he took up the block of clay, focusing now on the cadaver even as their conversation continued.
"And what do you think your brother's character is?" Victor wondered almost tauntingly. Sherlock thought for a moment, feeling as if this was more of a family pop quiz than a lesson on embalming.
"I suppose he's quiet, proper...lonely?" Sherlock presumed. Victor chuckled again, but said nothing. Almost as if he felt he didn't need to tell Sherlock that he was wrong.
"Put some gloves on, Sherlock, and watch." Victor suggested finally, walking around the side of the mangled skull all the while tearing a nice hunk out of the clay. Sherlock followed the directions, grabbing a pair of latex gloves and sliding them suspiciously over his fingers. He had never worn such interesting gloves, so thin and so cold. Yet obviously they would be of great use in the morgue, for they were impermeable and therefore able to keep all the suspicious liquids from getting too close to his skin.
"And also an apron." Victor added quickly, as if he had just remembered that little fact. Sherlock nodded, yet he looked around with some confusion. He was almost too afraid to say that he didn't know where the aprons were kept, yet Victor beat him to it.
"Behind the door." Victor said with a little nod towards the back door, a small wooden thing that must lead to a closet of some sort. Sherlock nodded, scrambling to do as he was told and returning just in time to watch as Victor began to smear the clay overtop of the man's shattered skull.
"That doesn't look too difficult." Sherlock decided, to which a small smile appeared on Victor's lips.
"No, not difficult at all." Victor agreed. "Yet all things come with practice."
"Is he embalmed yet?" Sherlock asked eagerly, looking towards the man's cold limbs and wondering just what sort of chemicals (if any) were stored now in his veins.
"No, not yet." Victor said simply. Sherlock nodded, realizing now that this cadaver would be his first project. If of course, Victor was going to let him do anything today. It may just be a learning period, in which Victor did something and Sherlock was simply expected to take mental notes for next time. He rather hoped that some responsibility would be placed in his hands, for he wanted to prove his worth in this morgue. Victor was doing him an unimaginable favor, allowing him some purpose before he died, and he wanted to at least pay him back by being helpful. Sherlock watched with some transfixion as Victor's long fingers patted the clay along the man's skull, filling the gaps with a simple overlap and anchoring the mass to the bits of skull that were still sturdy. His fingers ran smoothly along, not too tough so as to make indents, just enough to create a seamless mold along the skull.
"And now, for dressing it. Poor Mr. Williams can't go with a bald spot." Victor chuckled, taking the fake hair from where it lay on the cart (an uncanny match to the hair which was still clinging to his scalp) and holding it up for size. Sherlock watched a bit glumly as Victor cut the hair to match the size of the clay, for as mesmerizing as the man was, he wasn't being very considerate. Sherlock didn't like to feel unneeded, yet right now he felt as though he was nothing but an ear to talk at. When finally the hair was stuck to the clay Victor stepped away, revealing now a perfectly intact man, lying as if asleep on the silver table.
"He looks perfect." Sherlock admitted, stepping closer to see the seams of where the fake hair met the real. He had to admit, it was hard to tell, even after he had just watched the process happen.
"The art of restoration is a simple one, with the right tools of course." Victor said with a confident little grin, stepped away, peeling off his gloves, and going now for what looked like a tire pump. Yet it had many tubes sticking out of it, one tube with a nasty, long looking needle, and another that was attached to a plastic canister.
"For the blood." Victor said simply, rolling the cart around towards where Sherlock could see properly.
"You need to pump it out, right?" Sherlock presumed. Victor smiled towards him, and nodded slightly.
"Yes, and at the same time, we need to pump the embalming fluid in." Victor agreed. Sherlock now noticed what looked like a massive IV bag lingering next to the pump, with a tube connecting the two.
"And that keeps him fresh?" Sherlock clarified.
"Yes." Victor agreed. "Come around here, Sherlock. I'll let you inject him." Sherlock nodded, eagerly rushing around the table to join Victor at the other side. The man was standing poised overtop of the corpse, with his blue eyes soft as he looked down upon the deceased. He didn't seem to be afraid of death, yet in some instances Sherlock suspected he did pity it. Certainly it's impossible to regard these dead bodies as just things, Victor had to realize that every man, woman, and child he injected had family members somewhere who were mourning a loss. Certainly Victor had to realize that whoever lay on his table was once a human being, separated from the living by a bout of uncontrollable pain. Victor took up the tube with the needle and handed it to Sherlock.
"He's already been prepared, I'm sorry to admit that you missed that part. Yet if we finished Mr. Williams here, we'll be able to begin another before you leave." Victor promised, in such a careless fashion that it was almost morbid.
"Prepared how?" Sherlock wondered, twirling the needle absentmindedly in his hand and the while Victor pulled the IV bag closer to the table.
"Oh the usual, he's been shaved, his eyes have been closed, his mouth sewn shut. Does he not look peaceful? They always say I've got a knack for the lips. Funeral homes always admire how natural they look." Victor said proudly, now running his fingers along the carefully arranged lips. Now that Victor mentioned it, Sherlock realized that the man did look rather peaceful. He had thought nothing of the expression before, yet he realized for a moment that most men don't usually die while looking so at ease.
"Yes, he could be sleeping." Sherlock agreed quietly.
"Which is precisely the goal." Victor boasted proudly, now tilting the man's head back so as to expose the carotid artery, the one which flowed through the neck. Sherlock gulped a little bit nervously, yet he was surprised just how at ease he was. Certainly this entire process may be nauseating for most; however it almost seemed to be normal. Victor's presence helped with the ease of it all, for he had seen so many dead bodies that they may very well be more common to him than live ones. When Sherlock was around Victor he felt as though he could do anything in the world, including embalming this poor, dead man.
"Now then, see the blue vein there?" Victor asked, pointing to a large vein which ran up the course of the man's neck. Sherlock nodded a bit obviously. "Stick the needle there." was Victor's final instruction. And Sherlock did as he was told, pressing the tip of the needle into the vein as gently as he could, running it through until the entire needle the lost in the mess of skin and tissue.
"And the other, we will put through the jugular." Victor explained quietly. "It's a bit more difficult, because you cannot see it. Therefore, watch closely." He took up the second needle, and with surgical precision stuck it very near the jawbone. He pressed it as far as it would go and then nodded, obviously very pleased with himself, and turned to the machine. He flipped a switch, and the machine began to hum loudly, doing its job as it pumped in and out. Suddenly the tubes which attached the cadaver to the machine became alive, filled now with either the darkest of red blood or a light, chemical formula. It was impossible to tell which direction they were both going, however Sherlock knew the process. The blood was being drained and filled into that canister, while the chemicals were being pumped into the veins from the large IV bag.
"It's formaldehyde, mixed with a handful of other substances. Borax, phenol, water, glycerin, alcohol." Victor explained, seeing now that Sherlock was looking rather mystically at the chemicals flowing from the bag. He nodded sharply, and although none of that meant anything to him now, he knew that in the future he too would become an expert. He would someday be as knowledgeable as Victor was, that is if he didn't end up getting embalmed himself beforehand. He watched for a moment as the blood started to fill its respective container, he watched in horror as slowly the man's humanity was replaced with chemicals, and as his lifeline was replaced with a mixture that would merely keep him looking alive for the necessary amount of time. It was actually quite inhumane to think about.
"We've got a moment's wait." Victor promised quietly, sitting back against one of the counter tops and flexing his fingers in his gloves. Sherlock nodded, feeling quite helpless to do anything except try to occupy himself with something other than his new boss. He didn't want Victor to be his only source of entertainment here, especially when the man would know if he was transfixed. Victor seemed the kind of man to know the interworking of everyone's minds, and if he started to suspect Sherlock of being fascinated with him, well what sort of power did that give him? What sort of man was victor Trevor, if he knew he was being admired? Yet all the same, Sherlock didn't know how much time it would take to replace this man's blood with formaldehyde, and in the meantime he knew that he was almost helpless to do anything but make small talk. There was the obvious topic of conversation, the one that had been prying on Sherlock's mind ever since it became known to him- Mycroft. Yet all the same, he knew that conversation was already exhausted on Victor's end, the man had told him all he thought necessary. Sherlock didn't know much about Victor, yet he knew enough to assume that he was as stubborn as would be expected from anyone with a walking stick and a permanent smirk. Nothing more would come from his lips than he allowed, and he seemed to like it when Sherlock was in a state of confusion. And so, what else was there to talk about but the focus of their new profession?
"Is it scary, sometimes, to be in here alone?" Sherlock asked quietly, glancing now at the cadaver (who seemed to be twitching just a little bit, from the tug of the needles).
"No of course not. The dead are much more harmless than the living. Mere objects now, with no incentive to hurt, or to kill. I would be more frightened in a shopping mall than in my morgue." Victor said confidently. Sherlock nodded, for that was more or less the answer he had expected.
"You don't believe in the supernatural then?" he clarified, once more setting himself up for an ever so obvious answer. Victor was a man of science, that much was for sure.
"I don't believe in anything I can't explain." Victor said quietly.
"That's a very broad topic range. People can't explain a lot of things, like conscious thought, or...or unsolved mysteries of the world. Do you believe in the Great Pyramids?" Sherlock asked quickly, feeling as though he needed to one-up Victor intellectually. However he sounded like quite a fool, and realized as soon as Victor turned an eyebrow at him that he was taking things too literally.
"I believe in the Great Pyramids, simply because there are theories to prove it. No one knows which tactic was used, yet it can be explained. It's fathomable." Victor said finally, to which Sherlock felt his face heat up in embarrassment. "Yet reanimated corpses, how could you even begin to explain that? Life coming back to the stilled body, breath coming back to the deflated lungs. I've seen death, Sherlock. I've seen it happen. You can see as the soul leaves, you feel intensity, a stillness. Silence. That feeling in the pit of your stomach, of consciousness, memory, and feelings, all floating in the air and getting scattered by the wind. You know it can never return, not the way it had left. And no volt of lightning, or medical miracle, can rearrange those wasted breaths and stick them into the body. It's stilled, and gone. Beyond a doubt." Sherlock was left without his own breath, which may have been a reaction to Victor's story, yet more likely it was just another day with this stupid disease. He couldn't respond, he merely turned his head and coughed for a moment. That was all it took to remind them both that death, no matter how permanent or changeable it was, was inevitable. Death would be the reason Victor came to stand here alone in the near future.
"I've never seen death before." Sherlock said a bit obviously.
"But you're closer to it than I ever could be." Victor responded almost immediately, taking a sharp breath and observing Sherlock with those fiercely blue eyes. Sherlock didn't feel threatened, in fact he almost felt as though such appreciation was flattering.
"That's not a privilege, it's a curse. To never know when..." Sherlock shook his head in exasperation, feeling as though he shouldn't describe his feelings to Victor. He felt as though the man would ridicule him for being a coward, as if it was his fault entirely that he was afraid. But he wasn't, well he hadn't been at least. This process wasn't frightening, in fact it seemed as though Victor handled the corpses with more care than Sherlock had ever been offered when he was alive. Yet for once in his life, Sherlock suspected that death would bring about an abrupt ending to everything he was starting to enjoy. He hadn't been afraid of death simply because he never had anything to live for. The two were interchangeable.
"To never know when you were going to die." Victor finished quietly, with a twitch of a smile upon his lips. "And does that make you special, you think? Does it alienate you?"
"It doesn't make me special. We all don't know when we're going to die. But it's frightening these days, to never know which coughing fit will be my last. To try to mentally prepare myself for the end, every time I double over and hack." Sherlock explained quietly. "It's terrifying."
"It's humbling. Most of us forget we are just humans, in the end." Victor corrected, looking as though he wanted to take a step forward...looking as though there was a sort of emphasis which was being neglected by their space apart.
"If you would like my disease instead I would gladly hand it over." Sherlock grumbled, feeling almost as though Victor wasn't taking this seriously enough. Did he not realize that his young assistant may very well be shoved in that refrigerator in the next few days? Yet Victor simply chuckled, shaking his head as if he couldn't imagine asking for such a thing.
"No of course not, Sherlock. I would never want to deprive you of all that makes you special." Victor whispered, a sparkle in his blue eyes that made shivers go down Sherlock's spine. No one had ever called Sherlock special before, and never in such a positive connotation with his disease. Did Victor actually consider cystic fibrosis to be a gift, rather than a curse? Before Sherlock could investigate farther he was interrupted with a startling sound from behind, the sound of the machine as it tried to such up nothing but air. Victor sighed heavily, taking a great stride towards the corpse, prodding the needle a couple of times to make sure it really was finished, before switching off the machine and pulling both needles from the man's corpse. There was nothing different about it, he didn't look remarkably inhuman at all. If Sherlock hadn't watched the blood being drained he might have guessed that the man was still just sleeping. Yet now he was farther from sleep than he's ever been, with his veins emptied of his life source and replaced instead with chemicals. So artificial now, a hunk of flesh being maintained by the inside by the works of science.
"And now the cavities." Victor declared with a great sigh, as if he was slightly worried about the effect of this step. "We are going to have to drain the body in all sorts of places to drain fluids. If they're left inside they...well they don't make for a pleasant funeral, let's just say that."
"We're going to cut him open?" Sherlock asked in horror, looking over at Victor and then back at the body. He hadn't known that he would get a lesson in internal anatomy. Yet victor chuckled, shaking his head an unearthing what looked like a surgical suction tube. It was a simple tube with a pointed blade on the top; its purpose was of course made obvious simply by taking a close look.
"A trocar." Victor explained. "We'll puncture the stomach, intestines, lungs, and bladder. We'll drain all that's left inside, and fill it instead with some more formaldehyde."
"That's um...distasteful." Sherlock decided quietly.
"Yes, but poor Mr. Williams asked for this directly in his will." Victor explained carefully, all the while assembling the trocar to a pump which looked very much like the one used to draw blood. This tube was instead hooked to the wall, yet where the body fluids ended up Sherlock didn't want to know.
"I won't let you do this one quite yet. If you miss it can get...well it can get messy. Legally speaking, I mean." Victor said with a shrug.
"Legally?" Sherlock clarified. "I didn't know the law cared about anything going on in a morgue."
"Well they usually don't. Yet if there are signs of desecration, or any sort of imperfection or whatnot, they send the lawyers after me." Victor said with a groan.
"You've gotten sued?" Sherlock clarified with a gasp. Victor merely chuckled, as if he found Sherlock's amazement to be somewhat comical.
"Yes I have, twice actually. Yet I learned from my mistakes, and the bodies are always shipped off in perfect condition. No signs of tampering at all." Victor breathed, looking a bit thoughtful as he positioned his hands onto the body's stomach, prodding about into the flesh to find the right entry point.
"I'm too young to be sued." Sherlock said quietly, yet it seemed as though Victor was too preoccupied with the task of embalming that he hadn't heard what Sherlock said.
"It's a science, this part. You need to get the stomach just right, or else you cause it to puncture and leak everywhere. Now that's a mess in both the literal and legal sense." Victor grumbled. He finally paused, with his fingers pressing the skin about a quarter of an inch down towards the internal organs. Had Mr. Williams been alive that surely would've hurt. Yet Victor expertly traded his fingers for an even more lethal object, and he shoved the pointed tube straight into the stomach. He felt around for a moment before nodding, taking a deep breath of relief, and flipping the switch on the pump. This process was a silent one, simply because Sherlock felt close to throwing up whenever that tube began to suck. After the stomach was drained Victor filled it with formaldehyde, and after that the other internal organs followed. Thankfully this tube was colored, and so Sherlock could see only the shadow of the liquids as they ran to and from the body. All the same it was a little bit unnerving to see a tube sticking out from underneath a man's rib cage. Sherlock wondered just how much fluid would be drained from his lungs when he died, as that would be his cause of death. Poor Victor would be here for days just trying to suck up what his body could never get rid of.