“It’s over, Pat.”
I felt a sting, a deep sense of finality and regret. “No, we’ll talk about it later. Maybe when I get to DC later this week we can-”
“No. Please. It would be too hard for me.” Her voice wasn’t harsh, but it was firm.
A long pause followed her words. I had no idea what to say.
I tried to formulate the right words, but they escaped me, “So then…”
“Yes.”
I arrived at the hospital’s automatic sliding doors, and they whisked open. I was barely aware of myself stepping inside.
On a better day, either Lien-hua or I might have found something helpful or healing to say before we ended the call, but on this day, neither of us did. A few thick moments of silence fell between us until at last she said good-bye and I said good-bye, and then the conversation was over. Long before I was ready for it to be.
The sliding doors closed behind me, and I stood staring blankly at the phone until I felt Cheyenne’s presence beside me.
“Everything all right?”
“Yes,” I lied.
I slipped the phone into my pocket, and it felt unusually awkward and uncomfortable. I pulled it out and jammed it back in, harder.
She looked at me with understanding and concern. “No, it’s not.”
“I’m all right,” I said, but I didn’t look her in the eye. “Let’s go.”
A few minutes later we were being escorted down the hall by Lance Rietlin, a fidgety man in his late twenties who spent the walk telling Cheyenne how much he appreciated being able to work under someone as experienced and respected as Dr. Bender, but I wasn’t really listening. Instead, I was trying to convince myself that Lien-hua and I could still be friends, that we would be able to put aside the deep feelings we’d had for each other and move back to the way things were before we started going out-because that’s what you tell yourself at times like this.
You tell yourself those things, you hide inside naivety, because the truth is too painful to admit.
And the truth was: from now on it would be difficult to work with Lien-hua; I would be jealous of the attention she gave to other men and I would always wonder if we-I-could have done more to salvage our relationship.
Lance led us down a set of stairs and into the hospital’s lower level past a series of custodial supply closets and the physical therapy room. “They’re doing some kind of maintenance on the elevators,” he explained as we passed the “out of order” signs taped across the doors. “They’re supposed to have ’em up and running in an hour or so. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
As my thoughts wandered back to Lien-hua, I realized that getting things out in the open was somewhat of a relief-even though going our separate ways was something I’d never wanted.
We arrived at the morgue and Lance unlocked the door. “Pretty full in there this week. Dr. Bender and I have been… Well.”
He didn’t need to say more.
“Have at it.” He swung the door open. The overly sharp smell of hospital disinfectants filled the air. “Eric should be by in about ten minutes.”
I noticed Cheyenne glance at her watch.
“I’ll be upstairs,” Lance said. “Unless you want me to stay?”
“No,” I replied. “We’ll be fine.”
He gave me a small nod. “If you need anything, just call the admitting department. They’ll page me.” He told me the number, I thanked him, and after he’d stepped away Cheyenne and I entered the sterile white chamber where death is dissected and studied.
The room looked like most of the morgues I’ve visited over the past fifteen years: stainless steel counters, bright fluorescent lights, microscopes, scales, sanitary disposal units, trays of instruments. An empty gurney.
And, of course, the vibrating electric Stryker saws for cutting through skulls without destroying the tender brain matter inside, Hagedorn needles for sewing up body cavities, skull chisels, bone saws, rib cutters.
Tools of the trade.
The gurneys that bore the dead would be in the freezer.
As I crossed the room, I thought about how we design morgues to be as impersonal and institutional as possible. Despite how messy and nauseating dead bodies are, the place where we probe them is sparkling and clean and carefully sanitized to cover up the smell of decay.
Maybe it’s our way of dealing with death, of helping us forget the laughter and tears and smiles of the people we’re dissecting.
Maybe that’s a good thing-being able to forget.
We reached the freezer, and I stared at the door for a moment.
“OK,” I said softly. “Let’s have a look at the governor.”
25
I unlatched the door to the morgue’s freezer. Swung it open.
A swirl of cold air nudged out and encircled me. I could see five gurneys inside.
Dead lips whispering to me, “Why? Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you come sooner?”
On each gurney, a cadaver. I recognized the faces of three of them as the victims from earlier this week. Strangely, none of the bodies were covered, and two of the corpses were headless-two, not one. Not just Sebastian Taylor’s.
What’s going-?
And then as I took my first step into the freezer, I saw her. A woman, seated against the far wall, with the missing sheets from the bodies draped across her shoulders and arms. Her eyes were open.
I rushed toward her, Cheyenne beside me.
As I bent over the woman and felt for a pulse, I realized I’d seen her before at one of the coffeehouses I visit regularly. I didn’t know her name, just her face, but somehow, recognizing her made things all the more urgent. Her skin was cold to the touch. Her lips, bluish, cyanotic, but she was still breathing. I found a faint heartbeat. “She’s alive,” I said to Cheyenne.
“Thank God. Let’s get her out of here.”
“Ma’am,” I said. “We’re going to help you.” She moved her lips but made no sound. I noticed that she wasn’t shivering, which meant she was in the advanced stages of hypothermia.
Cheyenne reached for one of her armpits to lift her.
“Careful.” From my rock climbing trips I knew that moving people with severe hypothermia can jar them, cause them to go into shock or cardiac arrhythmia, but I didn’t want to say that within earshot of the woman. “I’ll get her.”
As gently as I could, I lifted the woman. She had a slight frame, but still I felt a twitch of pain in my side where Grant had driven the axe handle into my ribs the day before.
I carried her to the empty gurney in the exam room, and Cheyenne ran ahead of me, pressed the intercom button, and called for a doctor to report to the morgue, stat!
I eased the woman onto the gurney. “We’re going to get you warmed up.”
As long as she remains conscious, she should be all right.
“It’s going to be OK,” Cheyenne said, but she must have realized how serious the woman’s condition was because she whispered, only for my ears, “I’m not sure we can wait for a doctor.”
“She’ll be all right.”
But as I was evaluating whether or not we should wait for a doctor or go looking for one, I saw the woman’s eyes roll back. Cheyenne slapped her cheek firmly to keep her awake. “Stay with me,” she said. “Stay with me!” But the woman’s breathing was becoming choppier. Cheyenne called, “Pat-”
“I know.”
The woman shuddered. Cheyenne slapped her cheek again, but this time she didn’t respond.
I grabbed the end of the gurney to push it into the hall. “We have to warm her. Now.”
26
As I passed through the door I remembered that the elevator on this level was out of service.
No!
In the wilderness you’d remove someone’s clothes and lay beside her to share your body heat, but I figured we could do better than that here at the hospital.