Part of her wanted to vomit and run away back into the arms of Larry. Tell him he was right and this job was in fact too gross. The other part wanted to attach to Nichols’ hip and watch every tiny detail of her work. She was gliding around the room in a blue surgical gown, using this sharp tool, and that sharp tool to cut an incision into the dead woman’s neck. Digging deep into her flesh to find an artery and begin flowing embalming fluid through her discontinued system. Nichols had looked up from the body she was working on, cigarette hanging from her bottom lip. 

“What’s up?” She asked, nodding her chin to the timid Piper. 

“Hi…I uh, I’m Piper.” She introduced herself, sounding like a scared little girl. 

“You’re the new chick, huh? Removal tech?” She took a gloved hand and ashed her cigarette into a neatly placed ash tray on a shelf a few feet away from her. 

“Yes. Can you smoke in here?” She asked. 

“It’s a locally owned business baby. You do what you want when you haven’t sold out.” Nichols chuckled. She grabbed a rubber hose attached to a metal sink in the wall and began streaming water over the dead woman’s face, washing away dried blood trailing from her nostrils. 

“Go ahead and have a seat. I’m ‘bout done with this one and I’ll give ya the tour.” 

Piper continued to stand, watching closely as Nichols inserted, pulled out, and reinserted a large pair of triceps into the woman’s neck at a fast pace. This caused multiple large blood clots to spill out onto the table. The rubber hose pouring water flushed the blood away in a fast stream down the table and into a large circular hole at the end of the table that flowed into a drain in the floor. It had never dawned on Piper that embalmers simply flushed human fluids down the drain and into the ocean. Surely, they had some super special, environmentally healthier option? In fact, none of this had ever dawned on Piper at all. The fact that people saw and touched dead bodies all day every day. Stuck metal things into their necks to drain them of their insides and filled them back up with carcinogenic chemicals. Then she thought about her Nana. Her Nana had been on one of these metal tables. She’d been flushed down the drain into the ocean. Piper started to breathe heavier.