“Exactly,” Laurie said. She closed her eyes tightly and breathed deeply. After getting reasonable control of herself, she added: “Well, I’m glad I brought it up, as hard as it was. Yet just talking about it is helpful. It’s been in the back of my mind since the MRI.”
“I can only imagine,” Jack said. “I can’t believe you managed to work all afternoon with that on your mind. How could you concentrate on anything? And how the hell were you able to do that overdose autopsy with Miss Congeniality?”
“Your sarcasm is on the money,” she said, managing a mirthless laugh. “It wasn’t easy. Dr. Aria Nichols might be the most unappealing resident who has ever rotated through the OCME. At least in my experience.”
“I’m amazed,” he said, latching on to the change of subject. “That means her behavior, at least to Chet, wasn’t just predicated on his making a pass at her.”
“I don’t think so,” Laurie said. “But there is still room for doubt. According to her, Chet floated the idea that they have a drink sometime when he first met her in his capacity as the director of education at the OCME.”
“There you go,” Jack said. “So, I wasn’t totally off base.”
“Maybe not,” Laurie said. “And I’m afraid I will have to say something to Chet about making sure his off-hours persona isn’t brought in-house. But getting back to Miss Congeniality, she’s a strange bird who might even be sociopathic to some degree. She doesn’t seem to have much empathy or care what other people think of her. She said her father was sociopathic. Do you recall if that has a hereditary aspect?”
“Not offhand,” Jack said. “So, she’s that bad?”
“I believe she is,” Laurie said. “Knowing your sensitivities, you’d be appalled at her vulgar language. In her defense, according to her, she had a difficult childhood and was abused physically by her true father, who committed suicide when she was a young teen, and then abused sexually by her new stepfather.”
“My word,” he said. “You learned all this doing an autopsy with her?”
“She’s remarkably up front,” she said. “But who’s to know where the truth is. According to Chet she openly lied to him.”
“She certainly wasn’t very gracious to me when I introduced myself down in the pit.”
“I wouldn’t take it personally,” Laurie said. “She doesn’t like men in general and said as much.”
“Good grief,” Jack remarked. “She’d better stay clear of me and my openness.”
Laurie laughed in spite of herself. “You are so right. You and she would get along like oil and water. But to give her some credit, she is smart, and Dr. Henderson mentioned she has a gift for surgical pathology. She’s only been here at the OCME a little more than a week and has picked up a rather amazing amount of forensic knowledge from just observing a handful of autopsies. On top of that, she’s a talented prosector. I was impressed with her professional capabilities.”
“What about you? Did you enjoy doing the autopsy even if you found working with Dr. Nichols trying? I know how much you’ve been missing the nuts and bolts of forensics.”
“Very much so,” she said.
“When I was in your office and asked you why you were doing an autopsy when you had made the general decision not to do them, you said you were doing it to evaluate Dr. Nichols but also for political reasons. What did you mean by that?”
“I was doing the autopsy to evaluate the resident,” Laurie said. “But the particular case I was doing as a compromise for NYU.”
“What do you mean?” He picked up his fork and tried a bite of the pasta.
She explained as briefly as possible the circumstances surrounding Kera Jacobsen’s overdose and Dr. Henderson’s and the medical center’s CEO’s subsequent concerns about the media getting wind of the autopsy. Jack whistled.
“Well, I hope you don’t get inundated with requests to do autopsies because you agreed to do this one,” Jack said.
“I hope so, too,” Laurie said. “Not too many people here in the OCME know I did it. With most everyone upstairs in the afternoon conference, I thought I could sneak it in. I told Marvin and Vinnie to keep it to themselves.”
“Good try, but something like this is not going to remain a secret,” he said. “But, be that as it may, was the case successful in accomplishing what you wanted?”
“Very much so,” she said. “First of all, I enjoyed it. Just getting away from all the headaches of being chief of the OCME for an hour was a professional delight. Second of all, it turned out to be a much better case than I expected for changing Miss Congeniality’s appreciation of forensics. It wasn’t such a garden-variety overdose case. Although there was a positive rapid test for fentanyl on the fluid in the syringe, there was little pulmonary edema and no cerebral edema. And there was a surprise finding: the patient was pregnant. About ten weeks, from the looks of it.”
“Why would a pregnancy have that kind of an effect on our sociopath?”
“It has to do with her mistrust of men,” Laurie said. “Since the patient wasn’t found for several days and wasn’t discovered by the father of the child, she’s convinced the father had something to do with the drugs.”
“That’s quite an assumption,” Jack said.
“I felt the same,” she said. “But I could tell she was truly interested in investigating the case further to make sure of the manner of death. Before the autopsy, she told me that she thought forensics was a waste of her time. Now she’s truly motivated. Who knows, maybe I’ve been responsible for a new convert to forensic pathology.”
“God forbid with her personality,” Jack said. “Would you have her here as a fellow?”
“Not on your life,” Laurie said with a laugh. “She told me she hates patients, which was the reason she went into pathology: to avoid them. Little does she know how often we have to deal with bereaved families. They are our patients, not the corpses. She’d make a terrible forensic pathologist.”
“How is she going to investigate the case?” Jack asked.
“I’m assuming she would do it just the same as you or I,” Laurie said. “She’ll talk to all the people involved, like the woman who found the body, probably the patrolmen who answered the nine-one-one call, maybe the neighbors, and maybe other friends she can find. It will be interesting if she finds the father to get his side of the story. Then when toxicology is back, we’ll know a bit more about the cause of death and that can be added in to the equation. My hunch is that the fentanyl level is going to be really high to explain the lack of pulmonary edema. Kera Jacobsen didn’t suffer with a progressive suppression of her breathing like usual. She died very rapidly.”
“That’s enough about this sociopathic resident,” he said. He pushed away his bowl of pasta. “I’m sorry, but I’m not hungry after hearing about what happened today at your screening. I think you should seriously consider the definitive solution. I feel even stronger than I did ten minutes ago.”
“I appreciate your thoughts,” Laurie said. “I’ll sleep on it.” Although she was generally a night person who normally got a second wind sometime during the evening, tonight was different. Just mentioning the word sleep made her feel like she might have trouble getting up to the bedroom. She pushed back from the table and stood up on mildly wobbly legs. “I’m not even sure I’ll be able to stay awake to take a bath.”
“You go ahead,” Jack said as he, too, stood. “I’ll clean up here and see you upstairs. But first I need a hug.”
She welcomed him wrapping his arms around her. After giving her a gentle kiss, he leaned back, still holding her tight. “You are the most important thing in my life. I want you to know that.”
“Thank you,” Laurie said. “This isn’t easy for me, but I’m glad we have each other.”