“What brought you to Heavy Metal instead of a fitness center?” Noddy asked.
“I’ve seen you in a bikini, and I can’t envision myself in a group of people all wearing leotards. I’m just not the type.” Harry smiled. “You know the one thing that really bothers me? First of all, I feel guilty saying this, because I really loved my grandmother, but the back of her arms got a little flabby. She wasn’t really overweight or anything, but this little swing of flab. I will do whatever it takes to avoid that. I don’t care if I have to do five hundred push-ups a day.”
“Not that many.” Noddy smiled back. “But if you can work up to one hundred, terrific. Like sit-ups, push-ups you can do anywhere, and I tell you, they work. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you can do one-armed push-ups. I truly believe aging is a disease and you can fight it.”
“I do, too. My horses taught me that.” Harry watched Jim O’Hanran, a beautifully proportioned man, sixty-three, pull down a frightening load of weights on the lat machine.
He wore a bandanna around his forehead to soak up the sweat and terry-cloth wristbands for the same purpose.
Heavy Metal Gym catered to dedicated types. The other gyms in Charlottesville, all good, had tai chi classes, Pilates, all manner of things, as well as special Nautilus cambered weight machines. Again, all wonderful stuff. At Heavy Metal, you pounded York barbells, the best of the best in weights. If a York barbell said twenty pounds, it was twenty pounds, perfectly balanced. One can generally assess a gym by its equipment. Serious: York barbells. Fun and good: everything else.
Five-K winner Mac Dennison labored under the Smith machine. The decades-old Smith machine focuses on quads, a difficult muscle to work, one requiring total concentration and megawatts of energy. Quad exercises could make you puke, they were so tough.
Noddy was intrigued by Harry’s statement. “What did horses teach you about aging?”
“Mother hunted on a dark bay Thoroughbred mare until the mare was twenty-five. That’s old. But Hedy—the mare, Mom named her for Hedy Lamarr—never really aged, because even in the off-season Mom would walk her out, a little trotting. God, how I tried to keep up with my pony, Popsicle. But Hedy never sat down and grew a fat butt. That’s my point.”
“It’s the truth. Use it or lose it. So tell me this, what’s the long-term goal?”
Harry hesitated, for she didn’t want to seem vain. “I turned forty last August. No Botox. No face-lift. Can’t afford it, anyway. But I don’t want to sag. Farm chores don’t work your entire body the way you all work here. I walk, bend, throw hay. If I’m going to fight old age, I need more than that. I’ll live with wrinkles. I won’t live with fat.”
“Harry, I’d love to work with you. We aren’t expensive. This is a basic gym. But will you allow me to call Jennifer? First of all, I like her so much for what she did for Mom. It’d be good for you to talk to her. And I want to make sure I am doing right by you, what medications you might be on, your radiation schedule. Just think what would happen to Crozet if I messed you up.” Noddy laughed.
“Oh, Noddy, as long as Aunt Tally and Big Mim are upright, Crozet is fine. But sure, go ahead.”
Noddy walked to her small office, her trophies on the shelf and plaques on the wall. Harry kept in step.
“I don’t know if you know, but a lot of the doctors and nurses from Central Virginia, Martha Jefferson, and University of Virginia Medical Hospital work out here. I’m sure glad for the money, but with what they spent on construction—especially Central Virginia, since Martha Jefferson and UVA Hospital have run out of land—you’d think they’d build a huge gym for their personnel. Make life easier.”
“Never thought about that.”
“Paula Benton was a regular. Can’t believe she died.” Noddy paused. “She’d come in with Annalise Veronese—who is serious, let me tell you—and Toni Enright. No distractions. Those girls hit the iron. Paula would say she needed the energy boost after working with people all day. Annalise says she doesn’t have that problem.”
• • •
At that early hour, as Harry and Noddy talked, Annalise Veronese carefully cut into the body of an eighteen-year-old man. Cory Schaeffer assisted. While Annalise had staff, she always called Cory if someone requested an autopsy of a patient who died of cancer. Cory, if his schedule permitted, rarely missed the opportunity to study the disease’s effects. Also, to remind himself of how organs looked at different stages of a human’s life regardless of cause of death. Again, abuse was a factor, but an eighteen-year-old man—those organs should be textbook-perfect, healthy.
Annalise expertly removed kidney, liver, heart. Cory carefully packed them in large light blue shipping containers. Each of these organs would save someone else’s life. There was a desperate need for them. People died waiting.
Nothing that could be useful was left. She carefully replaced the skullcap, meticulously pulling the hair over the cut line. The top of a human skull, properly sawed, lifted off just like a cap.
This young man would be traditionally buried, so that line must not be visible. She also put a tiny little thread through each eyelid, fastening it down, for she’d removed his eyes, again something that would help another human in need. But the last thing a family member needed to see was an empty eye socket if for some reason the lid rolled back. Annalise took no chances.
Once finished, she left the body on the table. Her assistants would be in within the hour. They would again wipe him down, put him on the gurney, and deposit him in the hospital morgue. For most autopsies, the corpse was carefully washed down before, as well. If foul play was suspected, this couldn’t be done, nor could anything else be done, until law enforcement people had checked the body. Even so, not being doctors, they could and did miss things—a tiny little needle pinprick, for instance.
Her first year on the job, Annalise performed an autopsy on a healthy man. No apparent cause of death. She found a needle mark at the base of his skull. Someone, with supreme skill, had hit the exact right spot to drive a long, sturdy needle up into his brain.
Annalise was very observant.
As she and Cory washed up, she said, “For the last years—ever since the helmet law was passed and the cops cracked down—we’ve had a hard time. There weren’t enough organs for those in need. Now that kids are doing this car surfing, things are picking up.”
“Yeah. People mourn the kid, of course.” Cory tossed the long rubber gloves into the stainless-steel trash can. “Yet someone else rejoices because they’ve got a chance to live.”
“I guess it’s the old saw: One man’s loss is another man’s gain. Still, you’d think these kids would have more sense.”
“Part of human development. Those crazy years between fifteen and twenty. Sixteen seems to be the worst. Kids, especially boys, take really stupid chances.”
“Never was any good at psychology. Hated taking it, too.” Annalise toweled off. “Not one thing can be quantified, but that’s another discussion. Did you ever think why it’s the boys who die?”
“Testosterone.”
“There’s a convenient explanation, but you can’t prove that, either. Besides, Cory, hormonal arguments have been used for about a century and a half to keep women disenfranchised. Let’s not do the same thing to men. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“No,” he thoughtfully replied. “But three will get you back on the freeway.”
Laughing, they left the room, stepping into the small anteroom near Annalise’s office. She didn’t need another larger plush office, as did other doctors. Annalise’s patients never set up appointments.