CHAPTER THREE: 3 MONTHS (EXACTLY) SINCE HAMEL DISAPPEARED
The phone broke the silence and surprised Hamel’s wife. It rang while she was in her family room, arranging dried flowers in a vase, and wondering if she should get the carpets cleaned. It startled her at first — she did not receive many phone calls these days.
She hesitated, looked around the room to see if her wireless phone was in sight. The call had reached its fifth insistent ring before she found it, tucked between two pillows on her sofa.
“Hello,” she said, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t find the phone.”
Hamel’s wife realized that she was doing it again, apologizing when there was no need, though she seemed unable to avoid that these days.
“Can I help you?” she asked. The voice on the other end was not clear; there was some kind of commotion in the background, loud voices arguing. Struggling to hear, Hamel’s wife closed her eyes and concentrated. She did not get every word, but she heard the important ones: “Police department. Missing person report. Body of unidentified male matching description of your husband.”
Hamel’s wife listened to the ever so slight quiver in her voice as she responded to the caller. She had steeled herself for this moment, always felt that eventually she would learn something about Hamel’s disappearance. No one, she’d thought many times, just evaporates into thin air. Not in this day and age.
“I’m Hamel’s wife,” she said to the caller. “Did I hear you correctly? You want me to identify the body? Today?”
Hamel’s wife could feel a tenseness overtake her. What would it feel like to stand in a morgue, surrounded by people she did not know, with someone in a white coat sympathetically looking at her, then lifting a sheet so that she could look into Hamel’s face and nod?
Hamel’s wife had seen too many TV shows with that identical scene: the thought of herself in that role made her slightly nauseous. Yet, simultaneous with the dread, there was an undeniable eagerness Hamel’s wife felt about going to the morgue. She was uncomfortable with the feeling, but it was real. What she wanted, what she needed, was a singular moment of clarity about what had happened to her husband. After so many weeks of ignorance and uncertainty,Hamel’s wife felt that somebody — the police department, the city, God, Life, somebody? — owed her that much. She wanted to know.
“Yes, I’ll come right away,” Hamel’s wife heard herself say. She was pleased with the sound of her voice. It was steady and clear.
Hamel’s wife was met in the lobby of the hospital by a serious-looking young man. He mumbled his name, and extended his hand to greet her. He showed her identification, a card with his photograph and bold type that read Coroner’s Office. He spoke in soft tones, as if they were in church, as he led her through hospital corridors to an elevator and then down to the basement of the building.
The morgue itself was less intimidating than she expected: clinical and sterile, yes, with spotless stainless steel wherever she looked. But she expected hospital smells, and there were none. She expected to be cold, but the temperature was merely cool, not uncomfortable
.
There were two other men in the room when she entered, one from the hospital, an orderly perhaps, dressed in blue scrubs, and the other in a dark suit and tie with an official look about him. They introduced themselves in the same muted tones as the man from the Coroner’s Office. Hamel’s wife wondered why. Is that the way they spoke all the time, or was it for her benefit?
She looked directly at the three men and spoke in her normal tone of voice. “Could someone please tell me who’s in charge here?”
