- 5 weeks ago
The staff tries to stop smoking; Shonna tries to reconstruct a woman who died in a horrific car-crash.
(Season 1, Episode 2)
(Season 1, Episode 2)
Category
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TVTranscript
00:00Some woman near the Poway-Ramona split went over the guardrail.
00:14Family's desperately wanting to view.
00:17They're expecting the worst, but we don't want them to see the worst.
00:21She's not going to look the way I want her to look.
00:23You ready?
00:30¶¶
00:59Okay, kid.
01:00Feed your turtle.
01:02My mom is an embalmer.
01:05Once a body dies, they take out all the icky fluids,
01:09and if the family wants to see the person who died one more time,
01:14then she has to, like, dress them up and put them in makeup.
01:19Savannah, where's your umbrella?
01:21In here.
01:22All right, let's go.
01:23Get your seatbelt on, please.
01:26Do you have your homework and everything, Savannah?
01:28Yeah.
01:29All right.
01:31This is the best part of my day right here, is taking Savannah to school.
01:35I'm one of the few mothers at work.
01:37A couple more years, it'll be me staying home, hopefully.
01:42All right, let's go.
01:43What's up, Savannah?
01:44What do you got in here, a body?
01:45No.
01:46Give me a kiss, okay?
01:47Be a good girl.
01:48I love you.
01:49When I was young, I thought it was everything to be a career woman.
01:54Bye.
01:54And now I regret that I wasted all these years working instead of taking care of my children.
02:01When I come into the funeral home in the morning, there can be five or ten new human remains, new families that you need to deal with.
02:09As far as everyone's moods in the morning, I can tell just by the way Chuck walks up to the door without even speaking a word to him what kind of mood he's going to be in.
02:20Son of a bitch.
02:21David tends to be a little bit fired up in the morning.
02:27Rock, everything.
02:27I need help right now, please.
02:29Rick's mood, you know, really is determined a lot by if Melissa and Rick are getting along or if they're fighting.
02:37John's pretty happy-go-lucky and easygoing, and I really like that.
02:41Emily's always really in a good mood.
02:43Hello, probably been in a mortuary.
02:46There's days that each of us are just not in the mood to deal with things,
02:49but if you are a caring professional, it just takes over.
02:54I wanted to talk about what's been going on this last week, but I decided to lighten it up a little bit.
02:58I've been thinking about something we all have been complaining about.
03:03I hate smoking.
03:04I don't know why I do it. I don't need it.
03:10You guys want to have a contest to see if we can quit smoking?
03:17Now how are we going to know when somebody gets home?
03:19That they're not popping away.
03:21If you tell me you're going to quit smoking, I have to believe you.
03:23Chuck, you're a sporting man. How would the payout work?
03:26Just get the money to David, and whoever screws up, they're all whoever stays in and split the money with the women.
03:32And the losers don't get anything.
03:33The losers get zip.
03:34All right, so that's the deal. We're going to put up 25 bucks.
03:37I have a little finance problems right now.
03:40Please borrow 25 bucks.
03:41Yeah, Dad.
03:43I already owe him 1,000, but just add it on the bill, Dad.
03:46All right, I'll take care of you.
03:48I don't remember John, 25,000, okay?
03:51Here's the money.
03:52Here, I owe you 5 bucks.
03:55Here.
03:56I owe you 5.
03:57Okay, I think we should have a final cigarette in the garage.
04:02All right, quick.
04:06I saw a picture in Life magazine of a guy with about 50 cigarettes in his mouth at one time.
04:11That's what we need to do.
04:12There's a lot of stress, and that certainly adds to the desire to smoke.
04:16It's a break.
04:18You get out, you have eight minutes to have a cigarette.
04:21It's just time out of the war zone.
04:23We just like coming out here because it's like our little refuge.
04:27This is right.
04:28Just having a last cigarette with Shauna and Emily.
04:30Well, not with Emily, but Emily's not having her last one.
04:33I told myself I would quit smoking on my 35th birthday, so that's nice.
04:37I know I can do it because I've proven it in the past, and when there's money on the table, I'm going to win.
04:44Rick and John, their chances of winning are zero to none.
04:49I think they're all going to lose.
04:52Honestly, I think they're all going to lose.
04:54Wheel power, what's that?
04:56I hope they all will win, but I think they're all going to lose.
05:00I think John could be the first to start smoking again.
05:04I'm going to lose.
05:05Good contest, huh?
05:07All right, let's go to work.
05:11Poway Bernardo Mortuary.
05:16Okay.
05:17Hi, this is John.
05:18How may I help you?
05:19John just took a first call, and it's a family or a hospital worker calling to report that there's been a death.
05:26Severe facial and head trauma.
05:29We should be there within the hour.
05:31You're welcome.
05:32Bye-bye.
05:32We're going to the county medical examiner's office to pick up a decedent.
05:41It's always a challenge because you never know what you're going to run into, but we'll see.
05:45John worked for a removal service beforehand that made the removals for the medical examiner's office, so he's seen it all.
05:52Hope she's viewable.
05:53Dude.
05:54Yeah.
05:55Want a quasi-smoke?
05:58Sure.
05:59I'm a little concerned about the new case that John's seen this morning.
06:05I had read in the paper some woman near the Poway-Ramona split went over the guardrail.
06:11Well, that's the family that's coming in this morning, so she's in bad shape.
06:15You can work your magic.
06:16Yeah, but like my old buddy Matt used to say, I'm a mortician, not a magician.
06:31She's a viewable, but she's a mess.
06:33Define mess.
06:34She's bleeding all over my van.
06:40Family's desperately wanting to view, and we're soon going to see how possible that is.
06:46Oh, she ain't viewable.
06:53What's he talking?
06:55The whole skull's crushed.
06:58Sure.
06:59The whole side of her face is crushed in.
07:04Oh, John, I can't do that.
07:06Well, they want to ID her.
07:12I'm going to tell her she's not viewable at all.
07:15How about this?
07:15Did she give you permission to embalm?
07:17No, not unless she finds out whether she's viewable or not.
07:20Well, then go call her and tell her she's basically not viewable.
07:22Yeah, I mean, I could put her together, but, you know, I'm not going to guarantee how she's going to look.
07:27So, you know, she could view if she wants to, but it'd be quite a shock.
07:30Our professional recommendation is that we don't.
07:34Are we still doing this no cigarette thing?
07:35Because I'm, like, dying for one.
07:37Why don't you smoke while, and let me finish in here, and I'll be done.
07:40Picked the wrong day to quit smoking.
07:41I personally would not wish to see my own mother in this condition, period.
07:51And I believe in viewing.
07:53I believe in saying goodbye.
07:55I think this would be too traumatic.
07:58Let's see how I say this.
08:00I'm worried about the reaction.
08:03I'm worried about, you know, how delicately I can tell her this and not have her freak out because she's traumatized.
08:20Put him down.
08:27Hi, Julie.
08:29Hi, it's John.
08:30Your mom has suffered severe head and facial trauma.
08:34What I want you to know is we can make her presentable, but she would not be the way that you would notice her before the accident had occurred.
08:47If they do want to see it, they've got to be prepared for what they're going to see.
08:50I mean, it's not their mother.
08:52It's, I mean, it's a pretty awful sight for them.
08:56Okay, what I'll do is she probably won't be finished until tomorrow morning.
09:00So what we'll do is we'll finish out the arrangement and then we'll set her in a room and we'll let you take a look at that point.
09:05I'm just concerned that their expectations are going to be so great that, you know, we may not be able to meet her expectations.
09:13You're welcome.
09:13She says she needs closure.
09:16She's going to come in and see her whether she looks good or not.
09:19So she told us to prepare her and she'll come in and she'll make the judgment call whether they're going to have an open viewing or a closed casket visitation.
09:26So she says she needs to, she needs to see her.
09:30So that means we've got a lot of work ahead of us to go back there and try to make her as presentable as possible.
09:34I should have put a patch on this morning.
09:43I know better than to quit smoking without using a patch.
09:45I think Rick actually has the best chance because he has been the only one that quit smoking.
09:53I quit one time for 10 years.
09:55I think he quit like for, I don't know, 10 months or something.
09:58Shawna's definitely the wild card.
10:00I don't know what she'll do.
10:01I'm hoping that this time I can do it for good.
10:03If she gets serious, I'll put my money on her.
10:07No more.
10:12I can reconstruct pretty much anything.
10:14My concern is the swelling.
10:18Um, you know, that may have helped whatever I just did.
10:21John!
10:23Good news or bad news?
10:25Look what I just did!
10:27She looks better than she did a minute ago.
10:29Well, I glued her mouth, I glued her eye.
10:32That looks good.
10:32Yeah, I know.
10:33It does.
10:33Now, if you look at her picture on Chuck's desk, she's got a round, like, heart-shaped face anyway.
10:40Okay?
10:41Any embalmer that's worth a salt will really want to try the challenge of restorative art.
10:47See, now I'm wanting to do this.
10:50If the family is happy and grateful that we're doing this, then it's worth it.
10:56If the family comes in the room and gets upset or gets angry with us, then it's not worth it because nobody understands what you have to go through except the embalmer that did the task.
11:11We're here today because, unexpectedly, my mom passed away in an automobile accident.
11:17From what we know, apparently, she had some physical problems while she was driving and whatever it was caused her to cross the lanes of traffic and go off the road and run into a boulder.
11:30Thirty minutes before someone talked to her, so thirty minutes before she was happy, she'd been planning for a trip.
11:36She was going out of town to visit some friends.
11:38She was a very happy lady, according to John.
11:41You know, the family's great and sweet, and I just regret that, you know, this happened to her because it sure would have been nice to have been able to present her, you know, in a good way.
11:56Okay, this is our selection room.
11:59Any of the wooden containers on this side is suitable for cremation.
12:03Or we could go with the cardboard box.
12:06Oh, yeah.
12:06It's only $60.
12:08Everybody's laughing now, trying not to cry.
12:12And we get to see her on Monday, right?
12:13Yes.
12:14Do you think for sure?
12:17You know, worst case, Monday, if you don't feel like her face is okay, we can always maybe cover her.
12:23I just want to hold her hand and tell her goodbye.
12:27Okay.
12:30Because I didn't do that part to be over.
12:33So if, um, if you don't want me to look at her, then that's okay.
12:37Well, no, that's not it.
12:39It's just she's not ready yet.
12:42She hit so hard that it shattered everything in her body.
12:48I just wonder if we bit off more than we can chew here.
12:51I think the makeup is going to make a significant difference, too, because she has a lot of dehydration.
12:57And then, uh, Kayla form her, and then put her in the cooler.
13:01I think she should have at least 24 hours like that.
13:04I want time with her.
13:10What are you smoking, eh, boy?
13:12I broke down and had one.
13:15I'm going to empty out all these cigarette butts.
13:17Because I don't believe Rick hasn't smoked.
13:19I walk in here and see three different types of cigarettes after it's cleaned out.
13:22Then I'm going to know that somebody smoked, isn't I?
13:24I think they're all cheating.
13:26At least I had the integrity to tell them.
13:29Rick will win because when he's under pressure and his willpower's at stake, he just will have to prevail.
13:38I think I'll win.
13:40But I may be close second.
13:52I'm really hungry this morning.
13:53It's eating as a substitute for the oral fixation of, uh, smoking.
13:58I quit when I want to quit.
14:00Not because there's a contest.
14:03John just told us he caved in on the smoking bid already.
14:06So I took the other $5 he owes.
14:08And I'm holding it to give it to the winner.
14:11And if there's no winners, I'm taking it.
14:13I haven't had one since, but I cracked.
14:17Why ask the people to quit smoking now when everybody's under a ton of pressure?
14:23The pressure's on.
14:26They need to view today on this table.
14:29Show us dressed up.
14:30I know some embalmers, unfortunately, that would just say, can't do it.
14:35Close the casket.
14:36Zip the bag.
14:37It's over.
14:37Walk away.
14:38You know, I couldn't zip the bag and walk away because I knew in my heart I could do something.
14:43I need to tape this finger just to stop the leakage.
14:53They're expecting the worst, but we don't want them to see the worst.
14:57So it puts a lot of stress on Shana to make her look presentable.
15:01I'm trying to place wax on this lady's face to make it look the way it did.
15:08It's not really going to be very easy, but I'm going to do the best I can.
15:13Shana?
15:16What's the problem now?
15:18Is it a problem?
15:20It's a body family.
15:21We're here.
15:22You mean the family's here now?
15:30It's a family.
15:31They want to know when they can see mom.
15:32They said John said sometime today.
15:34What can I tell them?
15:35What if we say 2.30?
15:363 o'clock.
15:37John's got to deal with it.
15:39All right.
15:393 o'clock?
15:41Still working, but 3 o'clock.
15:43All right.
15:44Because, yeah, there's still people who want open part of the time, so I've got to decide
15:49that today.
15:52She's not going to look good.
15:53She's not going to look the way I want her to look.
15:57It's a roller coaster.
15:59It's a roller coaster, but isn't that life?
16:01Life's a roller coaster.
16:03I'm tired.
16:03I can't leave well enough alone.
16:07I've got to try and keep making it better and better, and I've got to just stop.
16:12Stop, stop, stop.
16:13Right now.
16:14She looks 100 times better than she did when she came in here.
16:17You think that?
16:17Yeah, I do.
16:18At least you can recognize her.
16:20You can?
16:21Yeah.
16:22You don't think so?
16:23She's presentable.
16:26It's not what the family really wants to see, but it'll give them the closure that they
16:30need.
16:31I've seen some things that I wish that I've never seen before.
16:39When someone passes away in a horrific or unusual manner.
16:44Yeah, I mean, you know, we can't really do anything more for her.
16:47I dwell on that and think, why did they die that way?
16:51Why weren't they able to die peacefully in their beds, surrounded by their loved ones?
16:59Ready?
17:01Are you okay?
17:03Yes.
17:03It doesn't look like her.
17:32Not really.
17:34But she's gone already anyway.
17:46Okay.
17:47Mm-hmm.
17:51I'm done.
17:52I think I will have the coffin closed.
18:01Okay.
18:02That was our recommendation.
18:04And again, she doesn't look the same way she did before.
18:07But I'm glad I saw her.
18:08Exactly.
18:09I would have been sad if a week ago, you know, if a month went by and I said, I wish I had.
18:14I'd like to meet Shauna if I could.
18:16Okay.
18:16Julie, this is Shauna.
18:20Hi.
18:21How do you do?
18:23Excuse my appearance.
18:24That's okay.
18:25Thank you for all your help with this.
18:28I wish that the circumstances would have been different.
18:30She's a beautiful lady.
18:32She's very beautiful.
18:33And we did the best that we could.
18:36No, you did a great job.
18:37You needed to see her and you made that possible, so thank you.
18:40Okay.
18:40You're welcome.
18:41Thank you, John.
18:42You're welcome.
18:47I couldn't do this with Christine in here because she would have been more upset.
18:51Like I said, I wish the circumstances would have been different.
18:55You know, she lived her life and it's over now and she's doing something else.
19:00That's right.
19:01She's waiting for us.
19:02That's right.
19:02That's right.
19:04All right.
19:04Well, I just wanted to let you guys know I'm very thankful.
19:07That's wonderful to hear.
19:10Take care.
19:10Can you put me at work?
19:12Are you a nurse?
19:13I'm a labor and delivery assistant.
19:15Oh, my gosh.
19:16Oh, no.
19:17Well, then you bring life into the world every day then, right?
19:30She's the lady that had the tragic accident.
19:32Family's gathering here tonight for visitation.
19:36I understand a rosary starting at four.
19:38She looks as good as I can make her.
19:40I did my very best, really.
19:43If there's one person that takes the brunt of the straws, it's Shauna.
19:49Shauna has the weight of this entire mortuary on her shoulders.
19:54That's shut.
19:54She has to make the deceased look wonderful, and that is very stressful.
20:06Death comes when we least expect it.
20:09We can never quite be ready.
20:11I personally feel that a large majority of people do not realize what they had until it is gone.
20:18I know that person would be me, too.
20:22You know, my mom has always told me, you know, stop and smell the roses, Shauna.
20:26But the part of me that loves a challenge and all my hard work, it's got to mean something, so let's do it.
20:33And it came out great, and it really made all the hard work worth it.
20:38And life goes on, right?
20:39Right.
20:39Is everything going okay?
20:43Yes.
20:43Everything went really well.
20:46That's good news, huh?
20:47Yes, it's great news.
20:49Rick won the bat.
20:51I just lit my first cigarette for the day.
20:54So I'm going to call Rick and tell him he's the grand winner.
20:57Okay.
20:58Adios.
20:58Yesterday was a bad day to start this bat because I just wasn't mentally prepared to do it.
21:11Every time you do one of these cases, it takes five years off your life.
21:15But I'm just glad it's over and we were able to pull it off.
21:18And that's all I care about at the end of the day.
21:22Can I have two boxes of Marlboro Reds, please?
21:26It's kind of disgusting.
21:28I need to go to some clinic in Arizona or someplace where they lock you up for about six months and don't let you smoke.
21:37Okay, ready for the next round.
21:38Bye.
21:38Bye.
21:39Bye.
21:39Bye.
21:39Bye.
21:40Bye.
22:02Bye.
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