Cadaver Comfort

Paige sat at the counter with a toe tag in one hand and a Sharpie in the other. The tag was for a Jane Doe, which meant the name line stayed blank until Records called back, and Records never called back before two in the morning. She wrote the date and the intake number, drew a little star next to them, because why not, and stared at the tile wall.

Forty-four years old. Two years a widow. Fourteen years a morgue technician at Mercy General. She knew every pipe drip in that basement by heart.

The door clicked shut behind her.

"Delivery from the fourth floor," Max said, holding up two paper cups. "One black, one pretending to be coffee with six creams."

Paige turned on her stool. Max was thirty-one, tall, sleeves rolled, hair pushed back like he'd done it in the elevator. He'd been helping the night shift for three years now. Heidi had dragged him over to meet Paige at last year's staff party, said something like "you two are both night people," and then got called away and left them standing there with nothing to say.

That was months ago. Nothing had happened since. Nothing except Paige thinking about it a lot more than a grown woman probably should.

"You're a lifesaver," she said, taking the creamy one. "It's dead down here."

Max looked at her. She looked at him. Then he cracked up.

"Dead. Down here. You make that joke every week."

"And it kills every time."

They drank their coffee. The fluorescent tube over the sink buzzed the way it always did. Paige smoothed the toe tag flat with her thumb and thought, okay, Paige, either say it or retire the fantasy.

"So here's a question," she said. "And you can laugh at me."

"Those are my two favorite things. Questions and laughing."

"How come we've been doing this coffee thing for all these months and we still just... drink coffee?"

Max set his cup down on the counter. Very carefully. Like it might go off.

"Because we work together?"

"Because we're chickens," Paige said. "That's the actual reason. I'm forty-four, I've been a widow for two years, and I am so tired of going home to my cat and my crossword and nothing else. I like you, Max. I've liked you since the party. And I keep thinking, what is even the holdup here?"

"The holdup is we're standing next to a freezer full of people," Max said, but he was smiling. He was definitely smiling.

"So we go somewhere else."

"Where? Eugene watches the elevator bank like a hawk. You know that. He caught Renee from lab taking one (1) donut off the third-floor tray and she still hasn't lived it down."

Paige chewed the cap of her pen. Then she said it. She'd been saying it in her head for months.

"The cooler."

Max's coffee went down the wrong pipe. He coughed for a solid ten seconds.

"The body cooler," he wheezed.

"It's empty in bay four. That whole unit's been down for maintenance. Cold, private, nobody on this earth goes looking for anything in a morgue cooler. It's statistically the most private room in the hospital."

"You are out of your mind," Max said. "I love it. I hate it. I love it. God, Heidi would kill us."

"Heidi doesn't have to know anything. And it's just a kiss to start. If it's weird, we go back to coffee and I never mention it again. Deal?"

Max looked at the door. He looked at the cooler. He ran a hand through his hair.

"If Eugene comes down here..."

"Then we act normal. We're two professionals. We look at a clipboard."

"Okay," Max said, and his voice cracked a little on it, which made her feel about twenty feet tall. "Okay. Deal. Just a kiss."

She took his hand and led him across the tile. The cooler handle was cold under her palm. Bay four had no trays in it, just the empty rack, and the light inside was that pale blue-white that made everybody look like a photograph of themselves. She pulled him in and shut the door and the cold hit her bare arms.

"Just a kiss," Max said.

"Just a kiss."

She reached up and put her hand on the back of his neck and he bent down and oh. Oh, it had been so long. His mouth was warm, which sounded obvious until you were standing in a forty-degree room, and he kissed her like he'd been thinking about it too, slow and then not slow. Her hand fisted the front of his scrubs. He made a small noise against her lips.

"Paige," he said, pulling back an inch. "Okay. Not weird. Extremely not weird."

"No," she agreed. "Horrible. Terrible. Do it again."

He laughed and then he did it again, and she was just getting a hand up under the hem of his shirt when somebody hammered on the outer door of the morgue.

"Ms. Paige!" Eugene's voice. "Ms. Paige, you in there? Got a delivery slip for a transfer, needs your sign-off!"

Paige and Max froze like a pair of sculptures. Max had his shirt half up. Paige still had her hand on his stomach.

"Sign-off," Eugene hollered. "I know you're down there, I seen the light!"

"One minute, Eugene," Paige yelled, and then whispered, "shirt, shirt, shirt," while Max yanked his scrubs down and tried to fix his hair with two fingers. She buttoned nothing, because she hadn't unbuttoned anything yet, thank God, and dragged him out of the cooler by the wrist.

Eugene was standing at the counter holding a clipboard, sixty-two years old and wide awake, which was honestly the most anyone could ask of him at this hour. He squinted at them.

"You two look flushed."

"It's cold in the cooler," Max said. "Then it's warm out here. Thermal... contrast."

"Science," Paige said.

Eugene looked from one to the other. He'd been doing nights for ten years and he'd seen everything, or thought he had. He held out the clipboard.

"Sign there. Third floor wants their transfer by six."

She signed it. Eugene nodded, said "night, folks," and shuffled off toward the elevator, and the second the doors closed Paige and Max looked at each other and dissolved.

"Thermal contrast," Paige gasped.

"Shut up. Shut up, you almost gave me a heart attack. Where were we."

"Break room," Paige said. "Cooler's compromised. Eugene's got the elevator bank for another hour. Break room's empty, coffee machine's loud enough to cover the door."

The break room had one flickering fluorescent and the dented coffee machine and a table with a mysterious sticky spot nobody had ever claimed. Max shut the door. Paige pushed him gently against the little fridge and kissed him, and this time there was no pretense about it being just anything. His hands were on her back, then lower, then she was pulling her scrub top over her head and he was fumbling with her bra clasp like it was a safe combination.

"Sorry," he muttered, "sorry, it's been a while, I'm rusty."

"You think I'm not rusty? I'm a vintage machine, Max. Turn the crank slow."

He got it. Of course he got it. Her bra dropped and he made a sound like a man finding money on the ground and she was laughing and pushing his scrubs down off his shoulders and he was saying, "can I, is this okay, tell me to stop," and she was saying "don't you stop," and then his mouth was lower and her head hit the fridge door with a thunk and the light flickered like it approved.