The freezer door made a sound like a dying animal when I pulled it open. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just a rusty hinge and a cold blast of air that hit my face and made my eyes water. I was used to it by now. Three months of night shifts at the county hospital mortuary will make you used to anything except the feeling that you are wasting your life. The body on the table was male, approximately twenty-five years, cause of death listed as drug overdose. No name. No next of kin. Just a number: 247. I pulled back the sheet. His face was peaceful in that particular way that overdose victims always are—their faces relax in the moment of death, as though relief is the last thing the body knows. I did not look at his face for long. I looked at his hands. Clean fingers. Not a流浪汉. Someone who had taken care of himself before the end. "Hey, Jack." I looked up. Old Donovan was standing in the doorway, holding two cups of coffee from the diner across the street. He was sixty, had been running this mortuary for thirty years, and had exactly one philosophy: don't think about it. "Wash, makeup, sew, walk away," he said, handing me a cup. "That's the job. You forget that, you're in the wrong profession." I nodded and took a sip. The coffee was terrible. It always was. "Who is it?" I asked. "Male, mid-twenties. Found in an apartment on 4th Street. Needle next to him. Roommate called 911, but he was already gone. No ID. No wallet. Just a piece of paper in his pocket with a phone number written on it." "Donovan said, tossing a small envelope onto the table. Inside was a slip of paper with a phone number. I stared at it for a moment, then slipped it into my pocket. "Who calls 911 when someone they love dies of an overdose?" I asked. "Could be anything. A roommate. A dealer. Someone who felt guilty." Donovan shrugged. "Doesn't matter. He's a John Doe. We prepare him, the coroner releases him to the county, and the county buries him in a pauper's grave. That's the cycle. Wash, makeup, sew, walk away." I started to work. Wash: warm water, soft cloth. I cleaned his face, his hands, the injection mark on his arm. The skin around the mark was scarred—he had been injecting for a while. Not a first-time user. Someone who had been using long enough to build tolerance, then long enough to exceed it. Makeup: thin layer of powder, a touch of color on the cheeks. Not to make him look alive—just to make him look like someone, not a number. Sew: I closed the injection mark with a few neat stitches. Nothing visible once the sleeve was pulled down. Walk away: I covered the body with the sheet, wrote 247 on the tag, and hung it on the rack. That was the job. Wash, makeup, sew, walk away. Mary left on a Tuesday. She did not pack angrily. She did not slam doors or raise her voice. She packed quietly, methodically, the way she had packed for vacations and weekend visits over twelve years of marriage. She put clothes in a suitcase, toiletries in a bag, the photo albums she wanted to keep in a box. Timmy—fourteen, going on forty—watched her from the top of the stairs. He did not cry. He did not ask her to stay. He just watched, with the blank expression that teenagers wear when they are trying not to show that they care. I came home from the mortuary at seven in the morning and found the house empty. The kitchen was clean. The counter was clear. There was a note on the table: Jack—I'm going to my sister's in Chicago. I love you. Tell Timmy I love him. Don't wait up. Mary. I stood in the kitchen and read the note three times. Then I made myself a bowl of instant noodles, sat at the table, and ate alone. Timmy came home from school the next day and found me in the mortuary, as usual. He did not ask why I was working nights. He did not ask where Mom was. He just sat on a stool in the corner and did his homework while I washed and makeuped and sewed and walked away. "Your dad works with dead people," he told a classmate who had come over for a playdate. The classmate looked creeped out. Timmy did not seem to care. "It's cool," he said. "He makes them look nice." I heard this through the wall. I did not correct him. He thought it was cool. Maybe he thought it was cool because he needed to. Maybe he thought it was cool because the alternative was too painful to consider. I washed. I makeuped. I sewed. I walked away. One rainy night in November, a new body arrived. Male, mid-twenties, overdose. Another John Doe. Another number: 248. I pulled back the sheet and looked at the face. Young. Too young. The kind of face that makes you angry, not sad. Angry at the drugs, angry at the town, angry at the system that had let this kid die alone in an apartment on 4th Street while the rest of Ohio pretended that the opioid crisis was someone else's problem. I noticed something on his wrist—fresh injection marks, but his fingers were clean. Not a流浪汉. Someone who had a life before the drugs. A job, maybe. A family. A name. I checked his pockets. Nothing except a small piece of paper with a phone number written in handwriting that was neat but hurried. I put the paper in my pocket and continued to work. Wash. Makeup. Sew. But something about that phone number stayed with me. Maybe it was the neat handwriting. Maybe it was the way the numbers had been written quickly, as though the person who wrote them had been afraid of being caught. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was everything. I called the number at midnight, when the mortuary was quiet and the fluorescent lights were humming and the only sound was the rain against the basement windows. A woman answered on the third ring. Her voice was tired. Not surprised—tired. "Hello?" "I found something," I said. "On a body. A piece of paper with your number on it." Silence. Then: "Is he—?" "He's dead. Overdose." Another silence. Longer this time. When she spoke, her voice was flat, stripped of everything except exhaustion. "I knew," she said. "I always knew this would happen." "I'm sorry." "Don't be sorry. Be—" She stopped. Started again. "Thank you for calling." I hung up. I went back to the table. I picked up the washcloth. I washed the face of the dead boy, and I makeuped him, and I sewed the injection mark, and I walked away. My hands did not shake. I had no feelings. There was nothing to feel. The world was what it was—a rustbelt town dying slowly, kids dying faster, a wife who had left, a son who thought his dad worked with dead people was cool, and a mortuary basement where the only thing that changed was the number on the tag. Nothing happened. Nothing was happening. Nothing would happen. I came home at seven in the morning. Timmy was still asleep. I made myself instant noodles. I ate them alone at the kitchen table. The house was quiet. The rain had stopped. The sky was the color of concrete. I thought about the woman's voice on the phone. I always knew this would happen. I thought about what she meant by always. Had she known her son was using? Had she known how bad it was getting? Had she tried to stop him? I did not know. I would never know. He was number 248. She was a voice on the phone. And I was a man who washed and makeuped and sewed and walked away in a basement that smelled of formaldehyde and rain. Timmy came home from school three days later and told me his teacher had asked the class to write an essay about their parents' jobs. "What did you write?" I asked. "I wrote that my dad is an embalmer. I said it's important work. She gave me an A." "That's good, Tim." "Yeah." He paused. "Dad?" "Yeah?" "Are you afraid of the dead?" I thought about the question. I thought about the bodies on the table, the numbers on the tags, the cycle of wash and makeup and sew and walk away. "No," I said. "I'm not afraid." "Good," he said. And then he went to his room and closed the door. I went back to the mortuary that night. I pulled open the freezer door. It made the same sound it always made—a dying animal, or something close to it. The fluorescent lights hummed. The rain started again. I washed. I makeuped. I sewed. I walked away. Nothing happened.