But when they just took him out, it was a mortuary.
We went on, then, and when they stopped they lifted me out. They carried me in, and set the stretcher on a wheel table, and rolled me in a white room.
Then they got ready to set my arm. They wheeled up a machine to give me gas for that, but then they had an argument.
There was another doctor there by that time that said he was the jail physician, and the hospital doctors got pretty sore.
I knew what it was about.
It was those tests for being drunk.
If they gave me the gas first, that would ball up the breath test, the most important one.
The jail doctor went out, and made me blow through a glass pipe into some stuff that looked like water but turned yellow when I blew in it.
Then he took some blood, and some other samples that he poured in bottles through a funnel.
Then they gave me the gas.
When I began to come out of it I was in a room, in bed, and my head was all covered with bandages, and so was my arm, with a sling besides, and my back was all strapped up with adhesive tape so I could hardly move.
A state cop was there, reading the morning paper.
My head ached like hell, and so did my back, and my arm had shooting pains in it.
After a while a nurse came in and gave me a pill, and I went to sleep.
When I woke up it was about noon, and they gave me something to eat.
Then two more cops came in, and they put me on a stretcher again, and took me down and put me in another ambulance.
“Where we going?”
“Inquest.”
“Inquest.
That’s what they have when somebody’s dead, ain’t it.”
“That’s right.”
“I was afraid they’d got it.”
“Only one.”
“Which?”
“The man.”
“Oh.
Was the woman bad hurt?”
“Not bad.”
“Looks pretty bad for me, don’t it?”
“Watch out there, buddy.
It’s O.K. with us if you want to talk, but anything you say may fall back in your lap when you get to court.”
“That’s right. Thanks.”
When we stopped it was in front of a undertaker shop in Hollywood, and they carried me in.
Cora was there, pretty battered up.
She had on a blouse that the police matron had lent her, and it puffed out around her belly like it was stuffed with hay.
Her suit and her shoes were dusty, and her eye was all swelled up where I had hit it.
She had the police matron with her.
The coroner was back of a table, with some kind of a secretary guy beside him.
Off to one side were a half dozen guys that acted pretty sore, with cops standing guard over them.
They were the jury.
There was a bunch of other people, with cops pushing them around to the place where they ought to stand.
The undertaker was tip-toeing around, and every now and then he would shove a chair under somebody.
He brought a couple for Cora and the matron.
Off to one side, on a table, was something under a sheet.
Soon as they had me parked the way they wanted me, on a table, the coroner rapped with his pencil and they started.
First thing, was a legal identification.
She began to cry when they lifted the sheet off, and I didn’t like it much myself.
After she looked, and I looked, and the jury looked, they dropped the sheet again.
“Do you know this man?”
“He was my husband.”