Part Two- Chapter 12: The Storm

Henrietta had no obituary but Gey and the people in his lab heard the news quickly. They wanted to get samples from as many of her organs as possible so they asked Day if they could perform an autopsy, this was because it was illegal to take cells from the dead without permission. At first he said no, but when they said it could help his children in the future he gave them permission to do a partial autopsy so her body would still be presentable for the funeral. Mary, Gey's assistant went to the morgue where the pathologist, Dr. Wilbur, took sample from her bladder, bowel, uterus, kidney, vagina, ovary, appendix, liver, heart and lungs and put pieces of the tumor covered cervix in formaldehyde for future use. They determined that her official cause of death was terminal uremia, blood poisoning from the buildup of toxins in the body that should be removed through the urine. The tumors that blocked Henrietta's urethra were so large that they couldn't get a catheter through to empty her bladder. "Tumors the size of baseballs had nearly replaced her kidneys, bladder, ovaries, and uterus. And her other organs were so covered in small white tumors it looked as if someone had filled her with pearls." A couple days after that her body was shipped back to Clover into Lacks Town for her viewing and funeral. Two of her cousins dug her grave next to her mothers tombstone and as she was buried it began to pour. It rained everyday of Henrietta's viewing but when she was put in the ground a storm that ripped trees out of the ground and roofs off of houses started. The family says that Henrietta was trying to tell them something with that storm.