Page 46 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. V #7

She stood by the frosted-glass window in the changing room of the hospital’s mortuary, and, taking off her dark tan court shoes, she stepped into a pair of tall green rubber boots. “When they need something they are all over you,” she said, as the male student tied the tapes of the white gown at her back. He then handed Dr Jane du
Lac a long, enveloping apron of green rubberized cotton which she put on. This he also tied at her back, his manner assiduous. “And it’s all ostensi- bly genuine,” continued Dr du Lac. “They believe themselves. You would think that you were their greatest friend. Then, having secured whatever they want, physically or emotionally, that’s the finish. Most men are naturally faithless. So I have found.” Her voice echoed in the bare, white-tiled room. She drew on a pair of latex gloves.
Who Shall Have the Choir Seat?
They passed through the door and stood together in the postmortem room.
Jane immediately smiled at the male student. “Naturally faithless. You are the exception,” she said, cutting through the sparse fat of the abdo- men; she made a neat slit in the peritoneum, no more than two inches long, just below the xiphi- sternum, deftly slipped the fore and index fingers of her gloved left hand into the abdominal cavity, splayed them, and lifted the anterior abdominal wall. She was thus able to continue and conclude her incision without risk of damage to the viscera beneath. “One day I shall lose your company and then I shall be sad.”
She looked a little wistfully at the smudged shapes of the wintry trees beyond the high, frosted-glass North window. The sky was overcast and grey. Beneath this window—incongruously— stood a tall upright piano.
The solitary male student looked at her; he said nothing.
“My predecessor as registrar left it here; he used to practise at night. Gentian Villa is rather isolat- ed from the rest of the hospital so he disturbed no-one.”
The student, standing on the other side of the slab, looked at her handsome face, her large, down- ward-gazing amber eyes, her prominent cheek- bones, her small, well-set ears. She had her long, light-brown hair up and neatly out of the way.
The technician, Mr Farge, entered the room and placed a tray of instruments on a low stainless- steel table which rested on the glazed ceramic slab just clear of the bare legs.
Jane du Lac began to separate the overlying mus- culature, fat and skin from the ribs. She took up a heavy pair of rib-shears and cut through the ribs to left and right, opening the pleural cavity. She severed the diaphragm and then the mediastinum. She disarticulated the clavicles from the sternum. She removed the sternal rib-plate and laid it to one side. “I’ve taken the liberty of buying two tickets
“Thank you, Gilbert,” said Jane du Lac, over her shoulder. She turned to the student. “Examine the skin. A thin subject. He looks worn for his years.” She inspected the surface anatomy of the cadaver. “Look at the chest. A tattoo over the praecor-
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dium. Old, faded, and done in his youth. A dagger through a heart. Accurately placed. Who knows what it meant or why he had it done. Perhaps he regretted it in later years.” Her voice was slightly rueful. She compressed her lips. She sighed. She carefully examined the pale hands with their cal- louses and chipped nails, her manner gentle and composed. “A life of manual work.”
Then the postmortem began.
Jane du Lac took a broad-bladed scalpel and broke in upon the body’s intact form by making a long, firm, midline incision from laryngeal promi- nence to pubis. She would not speak while the technician was in the room; he sensed that she wished him to leave and this he did.
david Wheldon