The morgue room was cold and quiet.
Three steel tables ran along the back wall, and on each table lay a body covered head to toe in a clean white sheet. The fluorescent ceiling lights buzzed overhead.
A tall black man in a long white doctor's coat stood at the foot of the first table with a clipboard in one hand and a stethoscope around his neck.
"Ah, the old folks. It happens every heatwave."
He took the corner of the sheet on the left table between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it back in one rapid movement.
"Okay, people. Out of my freezer!"
A bald old man, who the black man recognized as Homer's dad, was uncovered as the sheet fell. He blinked up at him angrily. He was one of the three who were covered by the sheet.
"But we're hot and elderly," he protested.
"I'm sorry. These are reserved for the recently deceased."
The old man grumbled and sat up and worked his stiff legs around to the side of the table. He was followed off the middle table by an old man with a long white beard. The third man, in a bright red shirt with a fringe of gray hair on the sides of his bald head, shuffled off the right table on his own. They began moving toward the door in a slow uneven line, led by the man who first protested.
A couple of steps behind the line, a fourth man hobbled along on his own. He was very short, very old, with thick round glasses that magnified his watery eyes to twice the size of his head. He had no hair and his mouth had no teeth. He was wearing a crisp white dress shirt, a blue tie, and green pants belted high up on his ribs.
The black man, who was a doctor, watched the short old man hobble past.
"Hmm." His eyes followed the short man all the way to the door. "Don't you go too far."
Apparently, he would soon be back.
The white coated man laughed. The laugh rolled up out of him in three round syllables.
"Heh-heh-heh"
He waited until the room was empty, flicked off the fluorescent lights, and stepped out behind the slow-moving parade of the recently undead.
That was when he noticed the new face in the waiting area.
…
Leo was sitting on a chair against the wall, holding his side at the angle that hurt the least. Edna's bouncing last night had made whatever injury he had worse again.
Four old men in a slow line walked past Leo on their way out the front door. The second one — an old man with a long white beard — was familiar to him. Leo recognized him as the same old man who had gotten his beard caught in the pencil sharpener that one afternoon at the elementary school.
'It's like everyone here is a recurring character from a show. You could take a picture of a place and be like "Hey, that's so and so." Shit, maybe I'm one of them too.' Leo hoped not.
When they were finally out, a man wearing a white doctor's coat came through the door. The two men's eyes met.
Hibbert gave him a quick professional look up and down.
"Mm-hmm." He tilted his head. "Right-side pain. Lower ribs. Probably the eighth or ninth. The way you are sitting tells me lower lats and lower calf is involved. Yes?"
Leo looked at him for a second. The man had not even shaken his hand yet.
"You can tell all that just from me sitting down?"
"I have been doing this for twenty years, son. Step into that room over there and we will get you patched right up."
He laughed with a three-beat laugh, the exact same way he did in the dead body room.
…
The exam room was small. Leo sat on the reclining chair and worked his shirt up over his head. The doctor, who had introduced himself as Dr. Hibbert, took one look at the bandage from the night before and laughed.
"Oh, that is the work of a very enthusiastic amateur."
"She tried."
"She tried with feeling, but my goodness, son, this is held together by what I can only describe as wishful thinking." He was already snipping at the wrap. "Breathe in. Out. In. Hold it."
'Poor Edna. Catching strays and she's not even here.'
Leo held it. Hibbert pressed three places along the ribs.
"Mm-hmm. Hairline crack in this lower rib here. Contusion runs the length of the latissimus. Deep tissue bruise."
Leo slowly nodded in understanding. 'I don't really get what's going on, but I'll pretend like I do.'
Hibbert put his hands on Leo and went to work.
He worked the new bandage under and around Leo's lower back.
Leo watched in curiosity as he pulled out tools he had never seen before. One of them looked like a small chrome corkscrew with a tiny rubber duck on the handle. At one point, he even pulled out a three-foot object that looked like a Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Canon. He looked at it for a second before putting it back into storage, shaking his head.
Twenty minutes passed. Then the wrap was tied off with a neat little hospital knot, and Hibbert was sitting back on his small wheeled stool wiping his hands on a paper towel.
"Ice in the morning. Heat at night. Ibuprofen with food. No lifting anything heavier than twenty pounds for ten days. No twisting at the waist."
The door opened without a knock.
"Julius?"
A woman stood in the doorway with a small white takeout bag in one hand and her purse in the other. She was a stunning Black woman in her early forties. She radiated voluptuous beauty. The tight purple dress clung to her like it had a mind of its own, hugging the heavy swell of her full breasts and the flare of her wide, heart-shaped hips. The dress stopped several daring inches above the knee, showcasing long, toned legs that ended in matching purple heels. A gold beaded necklace rested against the smooth skin of her cleavage, and matching gold earrings swayed as she moved. She had short natural curls cut close at the sides, longer on top.
"Bernice! My love."
"I am not staying, Julius, I am on my way. The society meeting is at the community building this time, two streets over, and I thought I would drop your lunch in on the way. I picked it up on the drive. I made sure they put the carrot sticks in."
"Bernice. I have told you about my feelings on the carrot stick."
"And I have told you about my feelings on that cholesterol number from last month, Julius. One of us is a doctor… and one of us is right. Eat the carrots."
"…Now, Bernice."
"Eat the carrots, Julius."
She set the bag down on the corner of the desk and turned to go. That was when she noticed Leo on the chair.
She paused. She tilted her head and looked at him with a hint of curiosity.
"…Oh. And you are? Let me guess. Leo?"
"That's me?" Leo wanted to know how she knew. Leo waited for the next line but got distracted.
'God, she's stunning.' The tight purple dress was really squeezing her nicely.
"Helen Lovejoy has mentioned you."
"…Helen Lovejoy?"
'Who the hell is Helen Lovejoy?' Leo had never heard of the woman before. He wondered how she even had heard of him. He needed to find out. "I hope good things?"
Bernice smiled, then laughed once, low and knowing, behind closed lips.
She did not actually answer the question.
"Mr. Depp. You are new to town."
"Yes."
"And you have not yet joined any of our local societies. You should come to the Horticultural Society. I'm actually going there now. It's not just about plants, Mr. Depp, although there are plants. It is mostly about the city. What is working. What is not. What needs improving. We talk about the gazebo project. We talk about the river walk. We talk about which of the streetlamps on Main are due to be replaced and which ones the city council is pretending it has already replaced. The kind of people who come to our meetings tend to be the kind of people who can move a small needle if they want to. I think you would fit in very well with that kind of company."
"…Huh."
"We meet again next Saturday afternoon, two o'clock, at the center park plaza. There will be a guest speaker from the state arboretum, and refreshments, and Helen Lovejoy, will be leading the proceedings after."
"I don't know anything about plants."
"Neither does my husband." She lifted her hand to her husband. He let out the same laugh again. "You will fit in beautifully."
"…I'll try to drop by then."
'Well at least I know where to find this Helen Lovejoy.'
"Wonderful. Saturday. Two o'clock. Wear something nice."
She turned to go. Her butt bounced. Leo enjoyed her back profile.
But suddenly, near the end of her turn, the purse on her shoulder swung wide on the turn and the corner of it clipped a small ceramic tray on the edge of the desk where Hibbert kept his pens. The tray tipped over the lip of the desk. Half-dozen pens went rolling in three different directions.
"Oh, for —"
She bent down to pick it up.
The purple dress was skin-tight, and the moment she bent at the waist the fabric stretched obscenely across the curve of her ass. The short hem rode up even higher, exposing the smooth skin of her black thighs and the lower curve of her behind.
'Black women really do have some thick fat butts.'
He let himself, for one second, imagine the purple dress puddled on the floor. In his head she was stripped down to nothing but a tiny purple string bikini — one that barely contained her heavy tits and left that fat, perfect ass almost completely exposed. He saw her bent over exactly like this, hands planted on the floor, back arched deep, huge round ass pushed high while the thin thong disappeared between her cheeks. The image shifted — her bent even more. Her forearms all the way on the floor, while she had her feet on tiptoes, ass presented like an offering, bikini top dangling so her heavy breasts swayed beneath her. Another flash: her bent forward with hands on her knees, looking back over her shoulder with that same knowing smile, thick ass cheeks spread and glistening under the lights.
[Images in discord: https: // discord.gg/fvqxBp9RG ]
He blinked.
She straightened with the ceramic tray and the pens in her hands, set them back on the desk, hooked the purse strap back up where it belonged, and walked out without looking back at either of them. The door swung shut behind her.
Hibbert clapped his hands once.
"Right! Where were we."
"…Was that your wife?"
"That was my wife. Now hold still. I want to check this wrap one more time."
He pressed two fingers in three places. The third place, which had been the painful one before, was not painful now. The whole side of Leo was registering at a lower volume than it had been five minutes ago. He could take a deeper breath. The deep breath did not stab.
"…Doctor."
"Yes?"
"I actually feel better."
"Of course you do."
"No, I mean… this injury was pretty bad. It is supposed to take weeks to even start dropping. This is —"
"Twenty years of medical school, Mr. Depp, and the willingness to put my hands where they belong." Hibbert laughed. "Drink water."
Leo eased off the chair, worked his shirt back on over the wrap, and stood up slowly. The bruise was sitting at half the volume it had been at half an hour ago. He could turn at the waist a a lot of degrees without flinching. He thought about saying thank you and then, before he could, Hibbert was already turning toward the small wheeled cart beside his stool. He picked up a printed slip from the top of a small stack and held it out.
Leo took the slip.
He looked at the number at the bottom.
He looked at the number again.
The slip said, in a neat printed line:
$6,000.00
"…What." He re-read it a third time. "This says six thousand dollars."
"Front desk, son. They take all the major cards."
"…"
As he walked out, Dr. Julius Hibbert's laugh rolled out exactly as it always did.
"Heh-heh-heh."
"What the fuck."