But then the whole thing with the frog in Biology happened, and I dropped out before finishing the semester. Yet another shining moment in the life of Angel Crawford.
“This your first time seeing an autopsy?” Dr. Leblanc asked, jerking me out of my brief pity party as he peered down at the body and made notes on a clipboard.
“First time seeing a dead body at all,” I admitted sheepishly. I heard Nick give a low snort of derision, and I could feel my face beginning to heat.
“Really?” Dr. Leblanc said, and to my surprise his expression was one of approval. “I’m impressed that you’re handling all of this so calmly.” His eyes crinkled in a smile. “Nick here lost his breakfast his first day in the morgue.”
I had to resist the urge to grin as Nick went white then sullen. “I had a stomach virus,” he muttered. Dr. Leblanc gave me a little wink that Nick couldn’t see, then quickly returned to his examination of the body.
My tension faded to a more reasonable level. At least if I did end up puking, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“So, uh, how do most people get jobs doing this?” I asked, trying to make it sound oh-so-casual and not full of my maddening curiosity as to how the hell I’d landed this bizarre gig.
Dr. Leblanc shrugged. “Usually people simply come in and apply. It’s a good start for someone interested in forensics or pathology.” He gave a nod toward Nick who gave a proud smile. “But sometimes, the coroner tells me, he’s hired someone—usually as a favor for one of his political cronies or supporters.” His eyes flicked back to me briefly before dropping back to his clipboard. “You came pretty highly recommended.”
I struggled to control the are-you-kidding-me? look I knew was on my face. Highly recommended? Me? How the hell would any of the coroner’s political buddies even know who I was?
I could feel Nick’s eyes on me, no doubt trying to figure out what special connections I had.
Dude, if you figure it out, let me know, I thought. I’m as baffled as you are.
Dr. Leblanc finally put his clipboard aside and picked up a scalpel. He gave me an encouraging smile. “It helps if you try to look at this as ‘interesting’ instead of ‘disgusting.’ And if you do have to pass out, please do so out of the way. Also, all puke goes in the garbage can, please.” His eyes flashed with humor, and I found myself grinning.
“Deal,” I said.
I did my best to keep Dr. Leblanc’s advice of “interesting versus disgusting” in mind as I watched the procedure, but there were some parts that were disgusting, no matter how much I attempted to convince myself otherwise. In particular, the search through the stomach contents was unspeakably nasty, but I was a bit encouraged to see that Dr. Leblanc’s face was twisted in a grimace as well. Apparently some things were always gross.
Yet, shockingly, I still hadn’t barfed. Not even the slightest desire to gag. It was almost surreal. I was the chick with the weakest stomach in the whole damn world, but here I was looking inside a damn body with the organs and guts and blood, and I was . . . hungry? I blinked in surprise as my stomach gave a little nudge that clearly wasn’t nausea. What the hell? Okay, so I hadn’t eaten any breakfast other than that coffee-drink thingy, but this was still a bizarre time to have a healthy appetite.
“Angel, come look at this,” Dr. Leblanc abruptly said, holding the dead guy’s heart in one hand and gesturing me over with the scalpel in his other. I obediently moved to his side, absurdly reminded of a movie where an evil priest ripped people’s hearts out with his bare hands. “That’s how he died,” he continued, using the tip of the scalpel to point to a slice he’d made in a small blood vessel on the outside of the heart. “See the blockage?”
I stared at the tiny yellow glob of what I assumed was fat or cholesterol or whatever the heck it was that blocked blood vessels. “That? But, it’s so small!”
He nodded then set the heart down on the white plastic cutting board in front of him. “I know. A bit humbling to think that something that looks so minor could have dropped this guy like a stone. He never had a chance.”
I stepped back as Dr. Leblanc finished his examination of the heart. And if I’d died from that overdose they’d be doing all of this to me. For the first time today I could taste bile, though it had nothing to do with anything I was seeing or smelling. If I’d died it would be me naked on the cold metal table, sliced open from throat to crotch. . . .
I straightened, eyes narrowing. I knew what was going on. Highly recommended, my ass. This whole job had obviously been arranged so that I could get a little more appreciation for the life I’d managed to screw up so well. Work in a morgue instead of going through stupid rehab. Now that was a scenario that made sense. I found myself smiling smugly, stupidly pleased that I’d figured it out. That’s cool. I can play this game. Hell, so far this was still a thousand times less annoying than rehab. A month of this and then I’d be home free. And this was even a paying job.
I watched as Dr. Leblanc removed the organs to weigh and examine them. Is he in on it? I wondered idly. Did he know I was really a pill-head loser? He probably doesn’t, I decided. There’s no way he’d be so nice to me if he knew.
Dr. Leblanc dropped a fist-sized kidney-shaped thing into a large plastic bag between the dead guy’s legs then picked up a towel and wiped his gloved hands. “Almost done,” he said to me with a smile. He turned and gave a nod to Nick. “You can do the head now.”
Nick stepped up to the table. “At least this body has one. We cut two yesterday and neither had a head. First one was that murder that was all over the news.” He flicked a glance at me. “You heard about that one?”
I responded with only a nod. I wasn’t about to let him know that I’d been questioned about it.
“And then we had one come in who’d been in an MVA—motor vehicle accident. The victim was so mangled it took our guys half an hour to find the head, and when they did, it had apparently been squished by a passing car. They ended up bringing the pieces of skull back in a plastic bag.” He gave a snort of amusement, and I simply stared at him. How could he be so casual about describing something so awful?
“Now pay attention,” he ordered me. “You’ll be doing this pretty soon.”
Resisting the urge to flip him off, I watched in sickly fascinated horror as he took a scalpel and made a cut from ear to ear over the top of the corpse’s head. Once the cut was made he set the scalpel aside, then dug his fingers between scalp and skull to peel the scalp back on top and bottom, exposing the entire top of the skull.
And I still didn’t have even a whisper of nausea.
Unbelievable.
Next he pulled a mask and a face shield on. “You probably want to put a mask on,” he said as he plugged in what I suddenly realized was a bone saw. “This kicks up a lot of bone dust, and you don’t want to breathe it in.”
I hurriedly yanked a mask on as he started the saw, quickly realizing that Nick hadn’t been exaggerating. By the time he finished making a cut around the top of the head there was a fine film of pinkish-white dust covering the area around him. I tried not to think about the fact that I probably had bone dust in my hair. I planned on taking an epic shower after this day was done.