"Not much of a bedside manner," Quinn said after he'd hurried off.
"Must have had a bad day," Nurse Bennett said. "Usually he's very easy going."
Not today, Quinn thought. Today he's downright defensive.
As she left the Towson Nursing Center, she noticed the small print on the entry plaque: Owned and operated by Kleederman Medical Industries.
KMI is everywhere, she thought. I guess I'll be pretty well connected after I graduate.
She wondered why she took no comfort in that.
She pulled the folded copy of Dorothy Havers' obituary from her pocket and reread it.
"There's no one left to remember you, is there, Dorothy Havens," she said softly. "Tell you what. I'll remember you, with gratitude, for the rest of my life. And maybe I can get someone else to remember you too."
*
"Well, now. Look at you."
Quinn glanced up from her dissection of the Accessory Nerve to see Tim peering at her from the other side of their cadaver. He'd just arrived, late as usual.
"What's the matter with me?" she said.
"Here she is, the gal who was turning three shades of green out in the hall before her first An Lab last month, and look at her now: Having lunch with her cadaver."
Quinn paused. Tim was right. She hadn't given it any thought, but she had come a long way since that first day when she'd feared she was going to toss her cookies as soon as she stepped into this room. She hardly noticed the smell anymore, and here she was, barely a month later, sitting with her nose in her dissection of the rhomboid muscles, a Pepsi to her left by the cadaver's shoulder, and a half-eaten Twinkie to her right by the hip.
"A testament to the human organism's adaptability, I suppose," she said.
"And how."
Quinn watched him open his kit, pull the damp cloth off his dissection, and sit down. Only his head was visible on the far side as he got to work. She'd been debating how to broach a certain subject with him and figured now was as good a time as any.
"I've been thinking," Quinn said.
"Careful. That can be dangerous. Habit forming, even."
"Seriously. I want to name our cadaver."
Tim glanced up at her. "Yeah? Well, why not? Kevin and Jerry named theirs Auntie Griselda. We can name ours Skinny Minnie."
"No. I mean give it a real name. A person's name."
He went back to his rhomboids. "Any particular name in mind?"
"Dorothy."
"Dorothy...like Dorothy of the Oz variety?"
"Exactly."
"Should we scare up a little dead dog and name it Toto?"
God, he could be annoying at times. "I don't know why I even bothered."
Tim must have tuned in to her tone. He glanced up again. "Okay. Dorothy it is. We can call her Dot."
"No," Quinn said firmly. "Not Dot. Dorothy."
"Why is this suddenly so important?"
Quinn had hoped he wouldn't ask that. She couldn't tell him, That's her name, and she wasn't sure how to answer otherwise without sounding like some sort of wimp.
"I've got my reasons," she said. "But you're going to think they're corny and sappy."
Tim set down his instruments and leaned forward. "Try me."
"All right." She took a deep breath and rattled off her rationale: "I want to call her a real name because she was a real person when she was alive and I think it's only fair that we think of her as a 'she' or a 'her' instead of an 'it.' And as we whittle her away and she stops looking like something even remotely human, maybe we can still think of her as a person if she's got a person's name. Dot isn't very human. It's like a punctuation mark. But Dorothy sounds pretty neighborly and very human—even without a dog."
Tim's lips were struggling against a smile as he stared at her. Finally it broke through.
"You're right," he said. "Those are very corny and sappy reasons. But if it's important to you, then it's a done deal. From now on, our friend on the table is Dorothy. Do we want to give her a last name?"
"No." God, no. The first name was already too close to reality. "Just Dorothy should do fine."
She'll like that. I hope.
Tim was still staring at her.
"What?" she said.
"Dorothy's her real name, isn't it. How did you find out?"
She was stunned. How did he know? "Tim, you're nuts. I—"
"Truth, Quinn: How'd you find out?"
She hesitated, then decided he should know. After all, he was dissecting her too.
She told him everything, from finding the toe tag to Dr. Clifton's cool response to her questions.
Tim grinned. "Probably afraid you were some money-hungry relative fishing for a hint of malpractice. I hear it's a jungle out there."
Harrison walked up then, his teaching-assistant smirk firmly in place.
"Late again, Brown?"
"Was I?" Tim said. "I didn't check the clock when I came in."
"I did. And you were late—the third time this week. You're batting a thousand, Brown." He pointed to Tim's dissection. "Let's see what you've learned here. The Accessory is which cranial nerve?"
"The twelfth," Tim said.
"Name the other eleven."
Tim rattled them off.
"Okay," Harrison said. He withdrew a pointer from his pocket and poked at Tim's dissection. "Identify these tissues here."
Tim scorched through them without a miss. Quinn knew he was comparing his dissection to his mental photographs from the pages of Gray's.
"Well, apparently you've learned something from this, although I don't see how. Looks like you've been working with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel. Where is your technique, Brown?"
"I think I left it with your tact," Tim said with his little-boy smile.
Harrison stood statue-still for an instant, as if not quite sure that he had heard correctly and listening carefully in case it might be repeated. Then his smirk curved into a reluctant but genuine smile.
"One for you, Brown." He turned to Quinn. "By the way, Cleary. Dr. Emerson asked me to tell you to stop by his office in the faculty building after lab."
The words startled Quinn. "Me? Did he say why?"
"Something about a job."
Harrison strolled away toward another table.
"There he goes," Tim said in a low voice, "leaving a trail of slime as he—"
"He almost seemed human there for a moment," Quinn said.
"Almost. What do you think Emerson wants with you?"
"I haven't the faintest."
"Got to watch out for these old guys."
"What do you mean?"
Tim winked. "Wear an extra pair of pantyhose."
Quinn almost threw her scalpel at him.
*
Walter Emerson sat in his oak-paneled faculty building office, poring over the latest print-outs on 9574. The new data were good, better than he'd hoped for. This compound was going to revolutionize—
"You wanted to see me, Dr. Emerson?"
He glanced up and saw the slim young strawberry blonde standing in his doorway, exactly as she had last December when she'd arrived for her interview. And looking no less apprehensive now, as well might any first-year student who'd been summoned to the office of one of the professors.
A sight for sore eyes, he thought. That is, if you don't mind cliches and have a weakness for slim young strawberry blondes.
"Miss Cleary. Yes. Yes, I did. Come in. Have a seat. Do you want some coffee?"
She shook her head as she seated herself in the leather chair opposite his desk. "No thanks."
"Just as well," he said. "By this time of day, the coffee's not fit for human consumption. Even the lab rats won't touch it."
She was gracious enough to smile politely at his weak attempt at humor.
"Harrison mentioned something about a job," she said.
"Yes. I need a research assistant. The pay is modest, to say the least, but it's respectable."