DIENER by Teresa Milbrodt

It wasn’t a glamorous job, though it relied on precision, exactness, and the delicacy of disassembly. Rosalie was accustomed to the interiors of the body, the muted colors not found in an anatomy textbook, the smells that were strong then dissipated. A job hazard. “Diener” was German for “servant,” but she was part technician, part caretaker, and part seamstress. She accepted the body, removed it from the bag, made incisions, and took photographs. Rosalie tried to have a good tableside manner. She talked to everyone quietly, told them she was terribly sorry, and everything would be over soon so she could sew them up.
After the necessary preparations, she tapped on the door to Gene’s office and let him know she was ready. Gene was the medical examiner at the morgue, and said she had a “delicate touch” and “young hands.” It was a nice thought, since Rosalie’s back ached like someone twice her age.
Gene hummed “Dem Bones” while he worked. Rosalie was accustomed to the song. Or Gene. Or the fact that everyone who worked at the morgue had a dark sense of humor. She labeled collection containers and took notes during the autopsy. They hoped for boring results – the person in question had died of natural causes. That was the case with forty percent of their stiffs. Gene reviewed Rosalie’s notes while she sewed up.
“Your stitching is neater than mine ever was,” he said with a nod, but Rosalie felt a responsibility to make everyone look presentable. Gene called the funeral home to let them know there was another pickup, and Rosalie nestled the body back in its bag. Gene said she was the best assistant he’d ever had. All the embalmers in town liked her since she never made a wrong cut. If those in the morgue weren’t careful with incisions and stitching the body wouldn’t be able to hold fluids, and it didn’t make for the best funeral presentation.
Gene was sixty and Rosalie was thirty-seven. She had never been married. He’d tried it once and said never again. Probably. Sometimes he flirted with her in a non-serious manner when they took a break to wait for the funeral home director.
“If only you were twenty years older,” Gene said, then left the sentence hanging in the air between them. Ambiguous remarks aside, Gene was a good boss, a reasonable boss, one who appreciated Rosalie’s work and let her take half-hour coffee breaks with her mortician friend Doug when he came by to pick up a stiff. They had lattes at the coffee shop a block from the morgue, swapping darkly comic jokes and sewing tips. Doug had grown up in the funeral home business – they were often passed down in families – and Rosalie thought his job was more difficult than hers.
“It’s not a career I’d want in a community where I knew everyone,” she said.
“That’s why my brothers didn’t hang around,” Doug said. He was in his mid-forties, had a slight middle-aged-guy paunch, and no girlfriend. He did have a dog. Edgar. A miniature dachshund and yappy pipsqueak of a thing who made up for his size in sonic intensity. Pets were more reliable than people, Doug said. Besides, the nature of their profession made it difficult to date.

Rosalie had lived in the same apartment complex for thirteen years, since she’d moved to town. She felt established there, normal, the curve-backed lady in Number 10 who made smalltalk in the laundry room and needed help reaching clothes in the bottom of the washer. Now that Sarah was living with her that was a bit easier, since they did laundry together on Sunday afternoons. Sarah was studying to be an RN and had taken over the cooking duties, which Rosalie didn’t mind. When she arrived home, Sarah was making stir-fry and asked if they had any interesting cases that day.
“Run of the mill stuff,” Rosalie said, but even if there had been a shotgun suicide, she didn’t always let Sarah know. Rosalie could stomach the sight, but it wasn’t pleasant pre-dinner conversation.
“I’ll visit when I’m studying for the next anatomy test,” Sarah said. “Got any brains I can dissect?”
“Gene may have an extra one lying around,” Rosalie said, easing herself down at the kitchen table. Sarah had grow up in a medically‑inclined family, and Rosalie spent too much time in hospitals when she was a kid, so they shared an unconventional interest in anatomy. The curve in her back was called hyperkyphosis, a medical word for a mythical condition, when the roundness of the upper spine increased past 45 degrees. Rosalie knew everyone thought of her as hunchbacked, a term that didn’t account for the reality of back pain when she sat or stood too long, or the problem of finding clothes that fit well.
While Sarah and Rosalie ate, they discussed their respective days at work and school. Occasionally they paused to listen to the couple next door scream at each other.
“I have a fucking life, sweetheart, it’s not all about you,” yelled the guy.
“I can’t bow down to your needs every time something goes wrong at work,” the lady screamed back. They rehearsed their arguments on Mondays and Tuesdays, and conducted the rest of the week at a relatively low volume.
“Bad roommates are fun as long as you’re not living with them,” Sarah said.
Rosalie never had a roommate before Sarah, but Larry, one of the guys who worked in the morgue, said his niece needed a place to stay after her housing plans fell through. Rosalie said that Sarah could live with her for a few weeks, but that had been extended since they got along well and Rosalie didn’t mind help with the rent. Sarah had been to the morgue a few times and agreed that Gene was more cute than creepy.
“You need to get out a little,” she said, “even if it’s not with Gene.”
“God, no,” Rosalie said. “He’s my boss. And work takes enough out of me.”
“You always say that,” said Sarah.
“Fucking asshole!” the lady neighbor screamed through the wall. A door slammed. Sarah and Rosalie looked at each other and shrugged.
“It’s always true,” Rosalie said. In the evening she wanted to sink into the comfort of her couch and avoid people who looked at her crossways and pretended not to be staring. Her spine had started to curve when she was ten, leading to the diagnosis of Scheuermann’s disease and a back brace that didn’t work as well as it was supposed to. She had surgery when she was fifteen. The surgeons slid pieces of bone between her vertebrae and connected them with a rod, which helped some of the curve, but not enough. Rosalie would need surgery again some day, if her vertebrae started pinching her spinal cord. She know exactly where they would make the cuts.
But the curve was one of many reasons why she preferred to socialize online, where bodies were erased in favor of words. Her e‑friends discussed chronic back pain and physical therapy and whether yoga worked for anything, and they told stories about their cats. Rosalie liked having a social circle with its own orbit. Once or twice a guy she met had suggested getting coffee, but she’d begged off. People were warm and fuzzy when they had an e‑crush, but when the digital self was stripped away and two people met in a coffee shop, they both risked seeing an involuntary cringe.
She didn’t try to explain her job in online communities. It never went well.
Do you think of it like dissecting a large frog, wrote one guy, so it’s not so weird?
No, Rosalie wrote. I think of them as people. If I thought of them as frogs – she paused, considering nuclear explosions, mutations, and post-apocalyptic chaos – those would be some really big frogs.
If they’re on a table with dissecting tools, I’d rather think of them as frogs, he wrote.
Frogs are frogs, not people with kids and spouses and families.
But I like frogs, he wrote. Sometimes more than people.
She told that story to Doug, because she knew they would laugh for the same reason.
“Everyone looks at morticians a bit askew,” he said, “like the only thing we can talk about is embalming.”
“What else is there?” she said.
He grinned. “Coffin size.”
“And makeup tips.”
“You don’t need any,” he said.
“Quit the cute stuff.” Rosalie smirked like she did when Doug flirted.
“You should come over for dinner sometime,” Doug said as they walked back to the morgue. “Bring Sarah. I could show you the embalming room.”
“Maybe,” Rosalie said. She was curious about his profession, even if it wasn’t something she wanted to try. She planned to be cremated, had thought about donating her body to science, but worried she’d have a posthumous career defined by deformity. Rosalie imagined a bunch of med students standing around pretending she was a great learning experience, when they just wanted an excuse to stare.
She was slightly jealous of Sarah’s social life, including her not-a-boyfriend who she went out with on Saturday nights along with other nursing students. Sarah said she didn’t have time for a real relationship. Nobody did. She just wanted to fool around for recreational purposes. A nice arrangement if you could find it. And had the energy for it. Which, Rosalie reminded herself, she did not.

It was an otherwise normal Tuesday when Rosalie arrived at work and noted there were two bodies to prepare for Gene. She read the first name on her clipboard. She read it again. And again. It didn’t change. Miss Evelyn Yarrow. She hadn’t thought Miss Evelyn was still alive, but apparently she was until three days ago. Ninety years old. Suspected malnutrition. Rosalie tottered to her office and plopped down on her desk chair, clipboard still in hand. Miss Evelyn had been her two-houses-down neighbor and best friend when she was a kid, but she hadn’t seen Miss Evelyn in twenty years. Rosalie did something she never did at work. She called her mother.
“She moved to an apartment in the same town as her niece some time ago,” Rosalie’s mother said slowly, as if remembering these events herself. “She couldn’t take care of her yard and that house anymore, but I’d forgotten where her niece lived.”
Rosalie’s mother had never been good at dispensing bad news, so she’d “forgotten” to tell Rosalie a lot of stuff, like when she had the biopsy to check for breast cancer, when one of her cats got hit by a car, and when Rosalie’s father totaled his car and had to stay overnight in the hospital to make sure he didn’t have a concussion.
“Can someone else do it?” her mother asked when Rosalie explained the morning’s task. Rosalie tried to keep her voice level, but it came out shaky anyway.
“I’ll be okay,” she said. A funeral director wouldn’t have a problem with this. But she wasn’t a funeral director. And this was Miss Evelyn, who was in her front yard digging in her flower beds the day Rosalie walked home from fourth grade crying. Kids had been teasing her at school about the curve in her spine, so at recess she was surrounded by hunchbacked Igors. Rosalie babbled the story to Miss Evelyn, who clicked her tongue while she shepherded Rosalie into the house and gave her cookies. Gingersnaps.
Miss Evelyn prided herself on the fact she was crazy for her time. She never married, fled to Washington, D.C. after high school graduation, attended a business college, and learned how to do secretarial work. She was employed in an administrative office at a university for forty years, then moved back to town for retirement.
“I was ready for something quiet,” she said, “and I’d collected a fair share of stories.” Her tales were mostly anecdotes about famous people who’d lectured at her university – who was kind and who was snippy and who had peculiar demands about lunch. Miss Evelyn didn’t drink, but blamed her forty years in the district for her smoking habit. It had turned her skin yellow and given her a nasty cough. Often she paused their conversations so she could have a cigarette, lecturing Rosalie from the back porch.
“It’s a nasty habit, never take it up,” she said, facing into the wind so plumes of smoke blew away from the house. She wanted to know about Rosalie’s studies, what she was reading, and what tests she had at school that week. She almost lived with Rosalie in the hospital when Rosalie had back surgery and spent four groggy days feeling like shit, and two more weeks recuperating. Miss Evelyn read books to Rosalie, held her hand, and excused herself every two hours for a cigarette.
“I have an addiction,” she announced before leaving. She came back ten minutes later, coughed twice, and resumed where she’d folded over the last page. Her voice sounded like she’d swallowed a Brillo pad, but that was Miss Evelyn, and Rosalie loved her for it. Rosalie visited once a week until she went to college to study biology. Miss Evelyn sent cards, and sometimes Rosalie remembered to send one back, then she found a job further from home and Miss Evelyn fell off her sliding social circle.
But now Rosalie had to see her again. What had happened to Miss Evelyn in her little apartment, if that’s where she’d been living? Did the niece think to drop by and make casual conversation or read to her and take her out to dinner on occasion? Did she know to buy wheat bread, not white, and remember that Miss Evelyn liked green bananas?
Rosalie thought about calling Doug, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She might cry before she made the first cut. Sarah was a better option, someone who Rosalie would allow to see her teary. Sarah answered her cell phone on the second ring, and Rosalie tried to explain the story in a level voice. She did a better job than she had with her mother.
“I think I’ll be okay,” Rosalie said, “but I’d like someone . . . here.”
She imagined Sarah nodding. “Can I come by in a half hour?”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Rosalie said. She hung up the phone and sighed with relief. And panic. What had Miss Evelyn looked like when her niece or some neighbor found her in that apartment? Was she lying in bed or sitting at the kitchen table? Had she lingered for days in a pile of her own shit? That thought alone was horrific – the perennially neat and tidy Miss Evelyn who kept bowls of potpourri in every corner, reduced to resting in feces. Rosalie shuddered, and cursed herself for not staying in touch. Why hadn’t she asked her mother about Miss Evelyn? How could she have been in town for so long and Rosalie didn’t even know?
Sarah breezed into her office thirty minutes later, giving Rosalie the hug she did and did not need.
“Are you sure you have to do this?” she asked in a low voice. “Nobody else could?”
Rosalie shook her head. “I’ll be okay.” Her back was aching and it was only nine o’clock in the morning. But this was her job. And if she couldn’t do it . . . Well, she could do it. Sarah was there. Rosalie pulled on her lab coat. She tugged on plastic gloves. She walked back into the morgue and pulled out the drawer where Miss Evelyn’s body lay. She closed her eyes, unzipped the body bag, and opened her eyes again. She blinked.
This wasn’t the Miss Evelyn from her childhood, a slightly plump woman with overly rouged cheeks. The past two decades had whittled her down to a pale figure, one who Rosalie wouldn’t have recognized in a crowd. But was that because of the slow passing of time, or the slow progress of neglect? She scanned the body carefully – there were no bruises, no signs of trauma, no smells that were particularly different than the usual odors. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, though a few gray wisps had escaped. Her nails were trimmed and painted pink, but the polish was chipping. Her mouth had a trace of lipstick, and there was a hint of rouge on her cheeks. Rosalie relaxed her shoulders a tiny bit. There were signs of care. She folded her hands and nodded.
Then she made the first cut.
Rosalie still had to pretend. This was not Miss Evelyn. It was someone older, frailer, more forgetful, but cherished enough to have paint on her nails. As Rosalie worked she told Sarah stories about Miss Evelyn – afternoons picking raspberries in her backyard, making gingersnaps in her kitchen, how Miss Evelyn helped her study for a chemistry exam even though it took a long time because she wanted Rosalie to explain everything.
After an hour she slid Miss Evelyn back in the drawer and peeled off her gloves.
“You did well,” said Sarah.
“I need caffeine,” Rosalie said. They had silent coffee in the break room. Sarah hugged Rosalie before she left, then Rosalie prepared the second body and knocked on Gene’s door. During the autopsy she was her quiet professional self. She took notes. She held jars for samples. When he was finished, she readied the needle and thread. Her stitches were perfect and even. Gene chatted the whole time about . . . something she couldn’t quite remember. He didn’t notice her rapid blinking. She was professional, not a basket case, which she only found disturbing when Gene called Doug about the second body, the one that was not Miss Evelyn. Rosalie leaned against the wall and pretended to review her notes. Miss Evelyn had almost certainly died of a stroke, according to Gene. She was thin, but that was not likely the cause of death.
Rosalie flexed her still-aching fingers. How had she managed that autopsy without emotion? How could she smile after Gene hung up the phone and joked about the weather being so cold that if the power went out their stiffs would have been fine? Their stiffs were people. And they were stiffs. Rosalie wasn’t sure how they changed so quickly from one to the other.
When Doug came to collect not-Miss Evelyn, he asked if she wanted a cup of coffee. Rosalie nodded, needing caffeine. And a couple pain pills. She eased down in a chair across from Doug at the coffee shop. If you were as old as you felt, she was about one hundred fifty. They chatted like usual. It was cold for March. Business had been slow for Doug, but it came and went in cycles. Sometimes everyone decided to die at once.
“We should have dinner,” Doug said. “I could bring over pizza.”
“How desperate are you for a date?” Rosalie said with a half-smile. She was sometimes too honest when she was tired. She meant to be funny, but Doug was quiet.
“My place,” she said. “Pizza is great as long as you can deal with me being a bitch.”
“You’re not a bitch.” Doug was smiling again.
“Am too. And I’ll pay for half the pizza.”
She wanted to take the potential date aspect out of the occasion, and called Sarah to tell her not to make dinner. When Rosalie got home, her roommate was studying in the kitchen.
“How are you?” Sarah asked, glancing up from her textbook.
“I’m okay,” Rosalie said, though mostly she felt dazed.
Sarah didn’t get squeamish when discussing postmortem matters, so at dinner she asked Doug if he’d had any interesting cases lately. He said not really, though he’d started to embalm the parents of people who were in his graduating class.
“There was another last week. The mother of a guy who was in pre-calc with me in eleventh grade. I didn’t know him that well, but it’s strange to have them in my office going over arrangements.” His words trailed off as he peered into his glass of beer.
The three of them fell into the almost-quiet rhythm of chewing, then before she could stop herself, Rosalie was talking about Miss Evelyn.
“She looked so different. I distanced myself, but I don’t know how you do that when it’s someone you know.” She wished Miss Evelyn could have said something. Confirmed that her last few years had been pleasant, that she’d had company, conversation, hugs.
“When you grow up in the profession you learn how to leave work at work,” Doug said. “My dad was good at that. I probably stress too much over facial reconstruction. It’s not sexy like forensics. I just make people look pretty.”
“It’s an art,” Rosalie said.
“I’m a sculptor, you’re a scientist,” he said with a little smile. He’d been giving her those more often lately. Rosalie wasn’t sure what else to say, so she asked if anyone wanted another beer. She needed a few easy questions.

There were no stiffs the next morning at work, though Gene said they’d be getting someone later that day. Rosalie spent a few hours in her office trying to review medical journal articles that Gene wanted her to read, but she was thinking about Miss Evelyn. Rosalie had considered her a role model who proved that a woman could be single and happy, but now she needed to know more about the end of Miss Evelyn’s life and only had the text of skin, bones, muscles, hair, and teeth.
Rosalie didn’t know the niece’s last name, or if the niece was still in town. She wanted to send a sympathy card to the family in care of the funeral home, but who would read it? How would Rosalie explain who she was, or the shared history with Miss Evelyn, or that she was eternally grateful to the niece, or maybe angry, she didn’t know. Why weren’t they having a memorial service? Would there be a private one for family that wasn’t listed in the paper? Rosalie had checked for an obituary for the past four days and found nothing. Did the niece think no one would care?
Rosalie cared. And she had been a lousy friend. Yes, friendships had a life cycle, and sometimes a friend could be the most important person in your life for a few years running, then you moved on, drifted away, found other people. But that didn’t excuse her neglect. When Rosalie was in junior high she’d told Miss Evelyn all the stuff she couldn’t tell her parents – how she worried that boys wouldn’t like her, how she worried the surgery wouldn’t work and she’d get an awful infection, how she liked dissecting stuff, which seemed weird for a girl.
Miss Evelyn told Rosalie to get educated, learn interesting things, and go to interesting places, because now women could have real careers.
“Everyone thought I was out of my mind when I said I didn’t want a family,” Miss Evelyn said, “but we’ve made progress, and people only look at you like you’re half crazy if you say that. Take advantage of the times, honey. Use your brain now that people will admit you’ve got one.”
But Miss Evelyn was not a prude. When Rosalie was “of age” as Miss Evelyn termed it, she told Rosalie about the “nice gentlemen callers” she’d had while living in the city.
“Sometimes a body gets lonely,” Miss Evelyn said. “I liked my privacy too much to have been a good wife, but when company was over I had a pleasant time. We weren’t quite as stuffy as you might think.” She gave Rosalie a sly, almost conspiratorial smile. Rosalie giggled nervously. Miss Evelyn showed her photo albums, including Fourth of July celebrations with friends from work.
“He was a very nice man,” Miss Evelyn said when she pointed out certain white-shirted male friends. It was a code, Rosalie assumed, that he and Miss Evelyn had known each other on some intimate level. But Miss Evelyn also had family, a brother in Illinois and his kids, people who had hopefully been there at the end of Miss Evelyn’s life. Blood ties didn’t always hold, but family was less fickle than friendships, or even lovers.
“Don’t believe the stuff about ’til death do you part,” Gene told Rosalie more than once, usually after receiving a wedding announcement from some niece or nephew. “Romance ebbs and flows. The best wedding gift I can give is to send a check and not show up.”
“How practical,” said Rosalie.
“The only marriage advice I have for anyone is not to do it.” Gene gave her a hard smile, but he, too, had ample family. Four siblings still lived in‑state, two of his nephews were in town, and he saw them a couple times every month. Rosalie didn’t have brothers and sisters, just a retirement plan and long-term care plan and no-resuscitation order. Paperwork, precious paperwork, because she had to put her faith in something. Her parents were trying to downsize and not be a bother. They kept their lives conscientiously tidy, thinking about their deaths so she didn’t have to. At least that’s what her mother said. Rosalie didn’t think about death that much, not in a way that was loss. Death was mostly other people. Maybe that was how Doug felt, too. He hugged those who were mourning, he listened, he wore an emotional raincoat. Things slid off because they had to.
And Doug might be interested in her, which was flattering and confusing and perhaps an illusion. She had lingering suspicions that she didn’t want to entertain, since boys had always seemed to evade her. In high school she was plagued by teen movies and magazine articles that assumed her life focused on dating and kissing and dresses for prom. In college she was plagued by guys who looked over her head when they passed on the sidewalk. Rosalie wanted to grit her teeth and forget fantasies of ever being hugged, much less loved. It was best to roll them into a bright pink ball, drop it in a gutter, and let it swirl down so she could get on with her life. But Doug never sent one of his workers to get a body. He came himself. Rosalie didn’t want to read anything into that, because it would be silly. She didn’t really need someone. Not right now. She had her job. Most days she had her health. She had Sarah for another year and a half. It was enough.

Three days after her good-bye to Miss Evelyn, Rosalie sent a card to the funeral home. She explained that Miss Evelyn had been her friend when she was younger, that she was a very special person, and she expressed her sincere condolences for their loss.
It was horrible. Sterile. The sort of thing anyone could write. But Rosalie had spent forty-eight hours composing seven different letters in her head, and they were all awful. She ended up saying too much, explaining painful details, asking questions the family wouldn’t want to answer. Best to keep things short, send the card to an anonymous niece, and hope she cared.
Rosalie tried to forget the note. There were stiffs who needed her attention, e‑friends to chat with about their anxiety medications, and Sarah’s chemistry lab partner who was selling cosmetics and begged to give Rosalie a makeover. Sarah said she needed practice. Rosalie relented. An hour and a half later, Sarah and the lab partner pronounced Rosalie beautiful and said they should go out on the town.
“Maybe next time,” said Rosalie, whose back hurt from sitting down so long. She didn’t like the mascara-lined woman in the mirror, waited until Sarah and her lab partner left, and washed everything off. Makeup was for stiffs, and people who wanted to pick up other people in bars.
The next day she received a card from an anonymous member of Miss Evelyn’s anonymous family, thanking her for the kind note. They included a recent photo of Miss Evelyn, one who looked similar to the woman she had seen at the morgue, but she was smiling, lipsticked and rouge-cheeked and cheerful. There was no return address. Rosalie leaned the photo against her desk lamp, and tried to smile back and reassure herself she had learned enough of the story. It was as much as she would get.

“I thought I could bring over Chinese food for you and Sarah tonight,” Doug told her two weeks after their pizza dinner, when he was back for another stiff. Rosalie nodded. After she and Gene helped Doug load the body into the hearse and waved good-bye to them, Gene raised an eyebrow.
“Is this a professional relationship or something else?” he asked.
“We’ve traded sewing tips,” Rosalie said.
“Sounds serious,” said Gene. Rosalie couldn’t tell if his voice held a hint of curiosity or jealousy, despite his anti-marriage lectures. A few days earlier he’d mentioned having coffee with “a nice woman” from his high school graduating class. A widow. Maybe she was proof that marriages could be happy until someone died.
Doug came that evening with the promised Chinese food, and Sarah said she’d take him up on his offer to tour the embalming room. Rosalie agreed that would be an interesting field trip. They didn’t set a date, but Doug rubbed Rosalie’s arm and said he’d see her again soon. She wasn’t expecting the call from him three days later on Saturday afternoon.
“How are you?” he said.
“How are you?” she asked, skipping a response because he sounded tired.
“I need help with the dog,” Doug said. Edgar had a tumor on his shoulder. It was twined around bone and muscle, and the vet couldn’t operate. Now the cancer had spread. “He isn’t eating, and just licks my hand. I have to let him go.” Doug exhaled a long breath. “I wanted to do this on my own, and I had an appointment at the vet a couple weeks ago, but I backed out. That was stupid. But I won’t be able to drive to the vet’s office on my own. Or drive home. I was hoping you could take me.”
“When?” Rosalie asked.
“Now,” he said.
“Now?”
“Or I’ll find an excuse not to do it.”
She understood. Doug had never mentioned that Edgar was sick, just that he was getting old, but when she got to his house, Doug was standing in the front yard with Edgar wrapped in a plaid blanket in his arms. He slid into the passenger seat, still justifying what they had to do.
“I should have kept the first appointment,” he said. “But he seemed to be enjoying meals. And watching TV with me. He’s sixteen. That’s ancient for a dog, even a small one. He had a good life. Maybe I should have gone ahead with the surgery.” He paused. “But I don’t think it would have changed what needed to be done.”
“No, probably not,” Rosalie said. Doug was a foot taller than Rosalie, but in her car he was small and bent. Rosalie shifted in her seat, turning sideways to scratch Edgar’s ear. The tiny dog was shivering, even in the plaid blanket. Doug rested his chin on Edgar’s head. Rosalie twisted back to face the windshield and her duty to drive.
In their profession they needed to be hardened, but Rosalie was not surprised when they got to the vet’s office and Doug didn’t move. She took the keys out of the ignition and slipped them in her pocket. Doug closed his eyes and leaned over Edgar who whimpered once. Rosalie rested her hand on Doug’s shoulder. She couldn’t be the first person to get out of the car.
“Okay,” he said after several moments, unfolding his body and opening the door.
Rosalie pressed the button on her keychain to make sure everything was locked, and kept her arm around Doug’s shoulders as they walked into the vet’s office. It had a strange almost chemical smell that reminded Rosalie of going to the dentist. Cats meowed, dogs barked and whined, Edgar was silent. Doug shuffled to the receptionist’s desk, and nodded when asked if he had an appointment.
“Edgar,” he said, barely a whisper.
Rosalie escorted him to the orange plastic chairs. Waiting room chairs were never comfortable; she had to sit on the edge and keep her hand on Doug’s arm, but she needed to be a presence. When the nurse called Doug and Edgar’s names, she glanced at him.
“You want me to come?” she asked. He nodded. Rosalie had expected, dreaded, the request, but followed Doug through the open door. The vet was waiting in the exam room. Doug laid Edgar on the metal table, uncovering the dachshund. Rosalie saw the shoulder cyst, red and raw, probably from Edgar’s licking.
The vet scratched Edgar’s ear. “Hey, old boy,” she said softly.
Edgar whined. A thank-you? A good-bye? A soft protest of pain? Rosalie never had a dog and couldn’t translate. She kept her hand on Doug’s forearm.
“Do you need a moment?” the vet asked Doug. He shook his head. She turned toward a metal table against the wall. Doug closed his eyes. Only Rosalie and Edgar saw the syringe. She tried not to tighten her fingers around Doug’s arm, and closed her eyes, too.
“There,” said the vet after seconds, or perhaps years. “He’ll go to sleep. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Doug wrapped Edgar in the blanket and cradled him. Rosalie rubbed his back gently, tiny circles. She felt his warmth through his shirt, felt him tremble slightly. Doug hugged Edgar and closed his eyes.
He carried the small box to her car. Rosalie tried to think of something to say that wasn’t obvious and stupid, like “Will you be okay?” or “I’m sorry.” Instead she opened the passenger door and closed it gently, then slid into the drivers seat and rested her hand on Doug’s hand for a moment, his fingers slim and cool. They both had slim fingers. She hadn’t thought about that before. Slim fingers were good for their kind of work. Doug exhaled. She turned the key in the ignition.
Back at his house she helped dig a hole beside the rose bushes, or rather she stood beside Doug and held the box while he dug so he could tell Edgar stories and not break down crying.
“This was his favorite place to sniff,” Doug said as he spaded dirt. “He liked to pee right over there. I guess that means it was a good spot.”
“Makes sense to me,” Rosalie said. The box was lighter than she expected, but being appointed to hold it felt like a strange kind of honor. She’d felt acutely aware of their bodies all afternoon. Maybe this proximity to the end of life, part of the process they didn’t normally see, made Rosalie more conscious of the bounds of her skin. Doug’s hands grazed her fingers when he took the box. An intimate touch, not romantic, but one that lasted a moment longer than needed.
After the interment, Doug asked if she wanted to stay for a bit and order sub sandwiches. Rosalie said sure. Sarah would be with her nurse friends and not-a-boyfriend, and Doug needed someone to sit beside him on the couch. When Sarah was away for the evening, Rosalie had started to notice quiet in a way that bothered her. After years of being fine with her solitary self, she’d become accustomed to the shuffle of someone else. Her apartment didn’t allow pets, just dramatic neighbors. In small moments she remembered that someday she might need surgery again, meaning someone to live with her or at least look in on her while she recuperated. She was reminded that her independent life was perfectly fine, perfectly suitable, until it wasn’t.
“You did the right thing,” she said to Doug as they ate. He was quiet, mulling over the new silence in the kitchen. Their knees grazed under the table. She shifted away, not sure how much she should be touching him, or if touch was the most appropriate thing.
“I know,” he said after swallowing.
“I wish we extended the same courtesy we allow pets to people,” Rosalie said.
“Yeah,” he snorted. “I’ve seen too many who might have appreciated that option.”
“My mom says she doesn’t want to linger any longer than she has to,” said Rosalie. “She and my dad have long-term care plans and no-resuscitation orders.”
“It’s nice of her to take care of those details,” Doug said. “Too many grown children end up dealing with that shit because their parents didn’t want to.”
“I guess,” Rosalie said. Her mother had the right to be vigilant, and Rosalie was bothered by it anyway. She wanted her parents to count on her. And she didn’t want them to count on her.
“You’re a planner,” Doug says. “You’ve told me that. Your mom is the same way. We have to do those things for our own peace of mind. And whoever we may be with at the time.”
“I’m not the marrying type,” she said.
“I’ve never made a formal declaration about it,” he said.
“Sometimes people wonder that about me,” Rosalie said in an airy and all-too-clumsy way like she got proposals every day. “I’m used to being alone.”
“Me, too,” he said, “but sometimes . . . don’t you worry about stuff that could happen when you’re by yourself?”
“No,” she lied.
“I appreciate you driving me to the vet,” he said, “and being a friend.”
“No problem,” she said. Rosalie was aware of the ache in her back and the small electric field that existed half an inch above her body and shifted when Doug moved closer to her, though he was just reaching for a napkin. She felt guilty for those moments. They were supposed to be mourning.
Doug asked if she wanted to stay and watch a movie, so he and Rosalie lazed on his couch and watched a sci-fi film, a really bad one from the nineteen-fifties with horrible actors, but Rosalie thought those were the best kind. She and Doug wondered aloud how many hearts and lungs and livers this particular species of humanoid fish might possess. Rosalie turned herself slightly toward Doug, sitting in a way that didn’t bother her back. It was nine-thirty and she was kind of tired. Doug yawned, but didn’t suggest she go home. The bad movie wasn’t over. And maybe there would be another one after that. She wondered how long they could sit watching humanoid fish with an indeterminate number of internal organs. Maybe it was because she was exhausted, or maybe it was because her hand and Doug’s hand were inches apart on the couch and seemed to keep getting closer, but she thought they could fall asleep there, leaning against each other, and she didn’t mind that idea.

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Teresa Milbrodt is the author of two short story collections, Bearded Women: Stories (ChiZine Publications, 2011) and Work Opportunities: Stories (Portage Press, 2018); a novel, The Patron Saint of Unattractive People (Boxfire Press, 2013); and a flash fiction collection, Larissa Takes Flight: Stories (Pressgang, 2014). Her stories have appeared in Nimrod, TriQuarterly, North American Review, The Cream City Review, and Pleiades.