Page 49 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. V #7

Jane laughed. “Don’t think of friendship as a transaction! Besides, I enjoy your company. That’s all. I’m not after anything from you. I know you have a thing for Martha Hightower.”
“Can’t I just be a friend?” asked Jane du Lac. “I’ve weighed you up so. Surely Martha wouldn’t mind? Martha’s too strong-minded to be completely pos- sessive in matters of friendship. And I don’t make friends easily, as you know.”
The student blushed again. “That’s what makes it so bad of me to accept things from you. It makes me feel—”
The student looked at Jane du Lac. He still felt uneasy.
“Unfaithful?”
The student said nothing.
“Would you like Martha and me to discuss it?” asked Jane du Lac.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” said Jane du Lac. “You have a strong sense of morality, and that’s a fine thing. I have no expectations of you. Apart from friendship. And gentle companionship. Maybe the three of us can walk in the country. I’d like that. The simple pleasures of thoughtful com- pany.” Her voice was low and meditative. “Please turn on the fan.”
“That might be for the best. I don’t want to lose Martha. She’s a strong-minded woman, as you say, and we get on very well. I am in love with her, you know. I don’t think she knows it yet.”
The student turned on the fan.
“Of course she knows it. What woman wouldn’t? How did you meet?” Jane du Lac was opening the bladder. “Bladder: normal-appearing trabeculated interior; ureters unremarkable. We’ll move on to the brain,” she said. “With my training and given an appropriate history I always like to fix the
They walked back to the postmortem table. Jane du Lac bent over the body. She inspected the co-
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eliac axis and took the pancreas.
“The corpse-smell was quite strong;
bile and gut-contents; oddly sweet. Animal.”
Using a pair of short-bladed scissors Jane du Lac slit the aorta upwards from the iliac bifurcation— which was somewhat calcified: you could hear it crack with each application of the scissors —and drew out the moulded postmortem blood-clot. She wiped the inside of the aorta with a wad of cotton-waste. “Severe atheroma, particularly round the origins of the renal arteries. Consider- able bleeding into the plaque. Some calcification: unusual in one so young.”
duodenum internally unremarkable: jejunum and ileum ditto. Colon ditto. Rectum ditto.”
She took the adrenals. “Left, 6.5 grams. Right, 6.5 grams. Normal appearance.” She took the right kidney, weighed it. “153 grams.” Then the left kidney. “155 grams.” She sliced the kidneys, one after the other. “Kidneys: interior unre- markable on gross inspection. Normal ratio of medulla to cortex.”
In the next room Mr Farge, the mortuary techni- cian, was cleaning instruments. He knew that Dr du Lac liked to be alone with the student as her amanuensis while she carried out her postmor- tems. He stood rather in awe of Dr du Lac.
“When I begin my house job at Frenchay I’ll repay you, Jane,” said the student.
The student wrote this down. He was uneasy.
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