The Home Visit

I'm visiting the ailing and confined in a grey industrial town. The elderly, the bed ridden, the halt and the lame, all high on my list. A hard sleet drives needles into my skin as I duck my neck inside my coat collar then rap on the paint peeled door. No answer, wait shivering in the cold. Silence. Tricky. Should I enter, call the police, call for a help? The doorknob turns easily in my cold hand. There she is; back bedroom, bundled under dirty sheets. The smell of decay is overpowering. I don't want to do what I must do, cold reluctant fingers pluck the sheets away. The corpse is maybe five days old or more. I need to vomit, the dark brew I drank last night rises as a burning in my throat. This is my calling, this unwrapping of death, and not the first or the last cadaver I shall uncover. Once more I wonder just who appointed me to be an Angel of Death in this world? Too late I remember I have surgical gloves in my bag, anyway, nothing anyone can do for her now. I hope the dead help me live with their burden for a little while yet, for I am sick of God and his party tricks.