How long ago had she graduated? She still drew out her guidelines—a blueprint for her work; planning out what would go where instead of jumping in, trusting years of practice. Was that it? She just didn’t trust herself? No. She knew better. It was another step in putting off the inevitable dissection she dreaded. The purple dashed line was all a part of the image; a tool to help her through the job she never wanted but landed fresh out of med school. She had gone through years of hell, promising herself it would all be worth it when she graduated; a nice fat check and a job diagnosing runny noses as the common cold and sore throats as Strep. That’s what she had envisioned-- not this nightmare.
The gleam of surgical steel winked at her in the artificial lighting. It dragged her kicking and screaming away from backing out, throwing up her hands, ripping off her latex gloves and quitting on the spot. It happened every time. She was afraid. She was terrified, disgusted, and far too sane to do this. Leah stared at the scalpel in her hand. It was so sharp. Mirror, mirror on the wall… Who’s the fairest of them all? Leah blinked, the eyes reflected on the scalpel blinked. They didn’t answer her. She was relieved. She couldn’t put it down. Even if she opened her hand, tried to throw it, it would stick there defying the laws of physics. Leah sighed.
The scalpel positioned itself above the dotted line, held in Leah’s hand like a pen ready to write something that would change the world. She pushed the edge down, onto the pasty skin of Mr. #48862. The skin split under her knife like it had been too tight; she could see places never meant for human eyes to know. It’s a seam ripper. You’re just ripping a seam.
It wasn’t the greatest feat of imagination but its what she could come up with; it’s what got her through the workday. Leah smirked at the idea of being a seamstress one day when she finally had “fuck you” money. No, she wouldn’t really be a seamstress; she would quit the medical field and do something that reminded her nothing of this hell. Maybe she would be an interior designer or a wedding planner. No, not a wedding planner—it would be too hard to be around so many people in love. Leah was too selfish to be happy for them. Jake. She inhaled sharply as his smiling face popped up into her mind followed by a whirlwind of half remembered visuals from the night of his accident.
“No!” Leah, startled at the sound of her own voice, was pulled from the nightmare and into another one. Through the dermis, a layer of adipose tissue, the abdominal muscles, and sternum and rib cage, Leah ripped seam after seam, widening the hole to a pocket she couldn’t fit her hand in. She peeled each layer back, noting normality’s and searching diligently for the irregular. So far Mr. # 48862 was no different than any cadaver. She looked down at her work. Leah would start with the heart like she always did—that wasn’t the way they taught her in med school. It didn’t matter now though; no one was watching over her shoulder grading every movement she made. She could do things however the hell she wanted; it’s hard to screw up dead people after all. Sure, these people were definitely dead by the time they ended up on her examining table, but what if they weren’t? What if she cracked them open and their heart was still fluttering? The solution was just to take care of the heart first.
The heart came out, was examined and deemed normal. Lungs, liver, and stomach followed with the same diagnosis. Then it was time for the intestines. Leah reached her hand in, willing herself to believe she was rummaging through an unfamiliar purse or pair of pant pockets. She fought back the whisper of knowledge that someone, in some other morgue had done the same thing to Jake not quite a year ago. Her job had always been unpleasant, but his death made it so much worse. Even through her latex glove she could feel the slippery wetness her fingers maneuvered through. She closed her hand around the folds of sausage links. Kind of a weird thing to keep in a pocket but who was she to judge? She pulled out the slippery pale chain of organ onto the examining table, flipping the contents of the pocket completely inside out.
Leah ran her hand down the snake like viscera with a firm grip, feeling for any blockages or hard areas that could explain Mr. #48862’s mysterious death. Around foot seven of the 21 approximate feet of intestine something didn’t feel quite right. Leah marked the area and finished the inspection. When no other abnormalities cropped up she returned to the circled section and looked closely. She noticed a small rupture in the delicate lining just above the hard mass she had felt.
Now for the more important question: Why did it tear in the first place? Leah set the portion of intestine on a separate rolling table. She closed her eyes for a moment, reestablishing her pocket façade. Exhale. Scalpel once again in hand, unzipping an invisible zipper, Leah cut into the intestine over the hard lump. The whispering scrape of metal against razor sharp metal made her cringe. She didn’t want to look, couldn’t look. Exhale. Don’t taste the air. Her fingers danced through the small slit, tentatively touching the anonymous piece of metal lodged in the dead man’s intestine. She trapped a cold rock between her index and middle finger and scooped out the treasure on to the steel-examining table. She didn’t want to look but after the initial clang of solid metal hitting metal, a curious hissing sound made her open her eyes.
It was badly tarnished from the stomach acids, covered in slime and grime from who knows what kind of food and white blood cell attacks but still intact and horrifying. The silver heart shaped locket lay open on the examining table; whatever picture had been inside it was long destroyed, the slender silver chain was knotted and twisted and full of kinks. Leah grabbed some gauze to wipe away the bodily residue. Why would someone swallow a locket? Coroners rarely got the back-story on their subjects and Mr. #48862 was no exception. She didn’t know where he was found, what he had been through, or where he had come from. But what good reason could he have to eat a piece of fine jewelry? Leah looked down. It had cleaned up fairly well from the little attention she had given it. It somehow seemed familiar to her despite being relatively average. She flipped it over in her latex clad hand and noticed an inscription. Her eyes rolled over the pretty cursive script as a chill crept up her spine and spiked the hairs on the back of her neck,
“Love is watching someone die.”
Leah was very hot, her palms sweating inside her latex gloves. Her head was light and the room was fuzzy as it swirled around her in blurs of color. She heard the locket fall. Did she drop it? It sounded like it hit the table, but maybe it was the floor. She steadied herself on the table, eyes closed, breathing through her mouth. A slide show of memories whooshed past her closed eyelids at lightening fast speed. A smoky bar, a guy with a drunk smile and laughing eyes even after a smack across the face for one inappropriate comment too many. A pretty afternoon, cherry trees blooming, her and the guy with laughing eyes hand in hand. A candle lit dinner, a velvet box, a locket from her lover. She remembered thinking the inscription on the back was strange but was too thrilled with the gift to question it. Their street, two cars spread over the entire intersection, ambulances, fire trucks, police cars. With a grimace Leah opened her eyes. She couldn’t think about Jake right now.
Opening her eyes had been a terrible idea. Leah was face to face with the locket and a mass of mangled intestine. It took her brain about a half a second to process it, decide it couldn’t handle anymore: sensory overload. Her stomach emptied. She pulled her hand away from the table to wipe her mouth with her sleeve. Deep breaths. The smell of Mr. #48862 assaulted her. Too much. Far too much. Even with her eyes closed, terrible thoughts rushing her in arrays of color, Leah could feel the room spinning. It didn’t spin for long before it turned completely on its side.
Leah didn’t feel herself fall to the ground. Leah didn’t hear the solid thud of her head hitting the linoleum floor. She didn’t know how Mr. #48862 had acquired her locket, much less why he had eaten it, but she didn’t care. She was happy to be away from it all, floating in an empty space inside her head walking in the park of cherry trees in bloom with Jake.
The memory of tossing the locket into Jake’s grave at his funeral floated in slow motion through her mind. It was a pretty locket, but not valuable enough to dig up a grave over. Leah’s brow twitched at the thought of someone vandalizing Jake’s grave like that. The movement lit a fire inside her head and burned away her train of thought. She struggled to open her eyes against the blinding artificial light in the morgue. Leah’s head pounded; she remained on the floor trying to remember what happened. It came back to her in pieces. The locket was easy, but how had it gotten back to her? The dead man-- the dead man had eaten it? That didn’t seem right.
She sat up slowly, the room threatened to start spinning again. Leah was relieved that it decided not to. She looked around her, at the cadaver lying open on the largest examining table. The locket had definitely come from inside him—she hadn’t hit her head that hard. Leah considered calling the front desk for help. She diagnosed herself with a concussion at the least; a CT scan would confirm any other damage. Leah stood, walked slowly over to where the locket had fallen and picked it up off the floor. She held it in her hand and stared at it for a moment before dropping it into the pocket of her lab coat. Sure. It was evidence, but it was her locket. Leah walked over to Mr. #... she had to look at the toe tag to remember his number. She should call the front desk for help. Instead, the weight of the locket in her pocket made her pick up her scalpel and return to her work. There had to be more.
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