“Do they really never help?” Piper asked, rolling her own window down. 

“The older officers gave up on helping the funeral homes out a long time ago. The new young guys are usually roided out douchebags who’d rather be off beatin’ the shit outta some homeless guy in the park and are overall shitty that they even have to be in the presence of two women picking up a corpse. Every once in a while you get a baby faced kid fresh outta the academy wanting to prove himself to the big dogs who’ll jump in and grab an arm or somethin’ but usually, you’re on your own. If you really want help, you’re better off to call the fire department.” Nichols shrugged. 

“Wow. That’s actually really shitty.” Piper said. 

“Yeah, it is.” Nichols nodded, hitting her cigarette. 

“You said, two women picking up a corpse. Is it always women doing this job?” Piper asked. 

“If you count out the old white dudes who run every fucking thing beyond embalmings, no. If you’re going off the numbers of people hired in the funeral industry in the past ten years, yes. The funeral industry is becoming female dominated, and hey, I’m cool with that.” Nichols swerved, narrowly missing a teenager on a bike. 

“Was your removal partner before me a woman?” Piper pressed. 

“Uh, yeah. Yeah her name was Tricia.” Nichols nodded.

“Why’d she quit?” 

“Found somethin’ better.” Nichols slowed the van as they reached the funeral home. She backed the vehicle into the parking lot, opening a garage door. Once inside the garage, the two women exited the van, pulled the cot out of the car, and rolled it into the hallway. 

Piper peeled her black blazer off her sweat coated body and threw it over the back of an office chair, trudging into the prep room. 

The prep room is where each embalming and cosmetics takes place. With Vause Crematory and Funeral Services being a locally owned funeral home, the staff was very small. Besides Piper and Nicky there were only two other removal technicians, three embalmers, including Nicky, one dispatcher, and two funeral directors.      

Piper was surprised to find that Nichols not only removed the bodies but she embalmed them as well. As she watched Nichols examine the decomposing body of the man they’d unloaded from the car only moments before, Piper thought back to her first day. It was strange to think that was only forty-eight hours ago as she’d seen and done so many things since those first six hours of her new career. Would she call it a career? Could part-time be considered a career? All she knew was that from the very first moment she laid eyes on a dead body, lying on a metal table, being worked on by Nichols, she was captivated.