Working Stiff: Two Years, 262
Bodies, and the making of a Medical Examiner
Judy Melinek, M.D. and T.J.
Mitchell
2014
Scribner
New York
What happens to the dead? I don’t mean their souls, I mean
their bodies. Our squeamishness about death, decay, and corpses is a perfectly
reasonable aversion, but in every society, somebody has to deal with it.
This most taboo subject is the pith of Judy Melinek’s
memoir. She takes us along with her from her student days as an aspiring
surgeon to her introduction to forensic pathology, moving on to cover her
fellowship at the New York Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Throughout her
training, she encounters deaths accidental and natural; homicides and suicides;
and the horrors of 9/11 and the crash of Flight 587 in Queens two months later.
Throughout the work, and her co-author Mitchell leaven the
gruesome details with a broader portrait of Melinek and her growing family,
giving us insights into the workaday world of people who make a career out of
examining the dead. There is a strong through-line here, too, as Melinek
relates her father’s suicide when she was young -- and surmises that part of her
calling is an attempt to heal that wound. There is plenty of (grim) humor, too,
and deflation of the myths that TV has instilled in us – no, not all medical
examiners are hot, full of witty repartee, instant and accurate judgments, and
sporting deep décolletage.
The faint-hearted need not pick this book up. “Working
Stiff” is a clinically precise, no-holds-barred description of the profession
and case histories that will make you gasp. However, this is far more than a
catalog designed to satisfy morbid curiosities. Medical examiners provide
closure for families, provide answers for criminal investigations, and add to
our knowledge base about mortality and disease.
For those who would like to know facts about the stories our
bodies tell after our deaths, this text is absolutely invaluable.