Tess Gerritsen - The Bone Garden - A Novel

— Lying atop the bowel, — said Dr. Sewall, — is a caul of tissue called the omentum. I have just sliced through it, releasing the intestines, which you now see cascading from the abdomen. In older gentlemen, especially those who have indulged too heartily in the pleasures of the table, this caul can be quite dense with fat. But in this young female subject, I find rather sparse deposits. — He lifted the sheet of almost transparent omentum and held it up in bloodied hands for the audience to see. Then he leaned over the table and tossed the mass of tissue into the waiting bucket. It landed with a wet plop.

— Next, I shall clear away this bowel, which so thoroughly obstructs our view of the organs beneath. While any knacker who's butchered a cow or horse is well acquainted with the voluminous mass of intestine, new students attending their first dissection are frequently astonished when they encounter it for the first time. First I shall resect the small intestine, slicing it free at the level of the pyloric junction, where the stomach ends… —

He leaned in with his knife, and his hand came up holding one severed end of the bowel. He let it slither over the side of the table, and Edward caught it with his bare hand before it could splatter onto the floor. In disgust, he quickly dropped it into the bucket.

— Now I shall free it at the other end, where the small bowel becomes large bowel, at the ileocecal junction. —

Again he reached in with his knife. He straightened, holding up the other severed end.

— To illustrate the marvels of the human digestive system, I should like my assistant to grasp that end of the small bowel and walk up the aisle, as far as he can go. —

Edward hesitated, staring down in disgust at the bucket. Grimacing, he reached into the mass of entrails and came up holding the severed end.

— Go on, Mr. Kingston. Toward the back of the hall. — Edward started up the center aisle, pulling his end of the bowel. Norris caught a foul whiff of offal and saw the student across the aisle clap his hand over his nose to mask the stench. And still Edward kept walking, dragging a coil of intestine behind him like a stinking rope until it finally lifted from the floor and stretched taut, dripping onto the floor.

— Behold the length, — said Dr. Sewall. — We are looking at perhaps twenty feet of bowel. Twenty feet, gentlemen! And this is only the small intestine. I have left the large bowel in situ. Contained within the belly of every single one of you is this most marvelous of organs. Think of it as you sit there, digesting your breakfasts. No matter your station in life, rich or poor, old or young, within the cavity of your belly you are like every other man. —

Or woman, thought Norris, his gaze not on the organ but on the gutted subject lying on the table. Even one so beautiful can be dissected down to a bucket of offal. Where was the soul in all this? Where was the woman who once inhabited that body?

— Mr. Kingston, you may come back to the stage, and the bowel can go back into the bucket. Next, we shall see what the heart and lungs look like, nestled within the chest. — Dr. Sewall reached for an ugly-looking instrument and clamped its jaws around a rib. The sound of snapping bone echoed through the hall. He looked up at the audience. — You cannot get a good view of the thorax unless you look straight into the cavity. I believe it might be best if the first-year students rise from their seats and move closer for the rest of the dissection. Come, gather around the table. —

Norris rose to his feet. He was closest to the aisle, so he was one of the first to reach the table. He stared down, not at the open thorax, but at the face of the woman whose innermost secrets were now being revealed to a room full of strangers. She was so lovely, he thought. Aurnia Tate had been in the full bloom of womanhood.

— If you'll gather 'round, — said Dr. Sewall, — I should first like to point out an interesting finding in her pelvis. Based on the size of the uterus, which I can easily palpate right here, I would conclude that this subject has quite recently given birth. Despite the relative freshness of this corpse, you will note the particularly foul odor of the abdominal cavity, and the obvious inflammation of the peritoneum. Taking all these findings into account, I'm willing to offer a conjecture as to the likely cause of her death. —

There was a loud thud in the aisle. One of the students said, alarmed: — Is he breathing? Check if he's breathing! —

Dr. Sewall called out: — What is the problem? —

— It's Dr. Grenville's nephew, sir! — said Wendell. — Charles has fainted! —

In the front row, Professor Grenville rose to his feet, looking stunned at the news. Quickly he made his way up the aisle toward Charles, pushing through the students crowded in the aisle.

— He's all right, sir, — Wendell announced. — Charles is coming around now. —

On stage, Dr. Sewall sighed. — A weak stomach is not a recommendation for someone who wishes to study medicine. —

Grenville knelt at his nephew's side and patted Charles on the face. — Come come, boy. You've just gone a bit light-headed. It hasn't been an easy morning. —

Groaning, Charles sat up and clutched his head. — I feel sick. —

— I'll take him outside, sir, — said Wendell. — He could probably use the fresh air. —

— Thank you, Mr. Holmes, — said Grenville. As he stood up, he himself looked none too steady.

We are all unnerved, even the most seasoned among us .

With Wendell's help, Charles rose shakily to his feet and was helped up the aisle. Norris heard one of the students snicker, — It would have to be Charlie, of course. Leave it to him to faint! —

But it could have happened to any one of us, thought Norris, looking around the auditorium at the ashen faces. What normal human being could watch this morning's butchery and not be appalled?

And it was not yet over.

On stage, Dr. Sewall once again picked up his knife and coolly eyed his audience. — Gentlemen. Shall we continue? —

The present

JULIA DROVE NORTH, fleeing the heat of the Boston summer, and joined the weekend stream of cars headed north into Maine. By the time she reached the New Hampshire border, the temperature outside had fallen ten degrees. Half an hour later, as she crossed into Maine, the air was starting to feel chilly. Soon her views of forest and rocky coastline vanished behind a bank of fog, and from there northward the world turned gray, the road curving through a ghostly landscape of veiled trees and barely glimpsed farmhouses.

When she finally arrived at the beach town of Lincolnville that afternoon, the fog was so dense she could barely make out the massive outline of the Islesboro ferry docked at the pier. Henry Page had warned her that there'd be limited space aboard for vehicles, so she left her car parked in the terminal lot, grabbed her overnight bag, and walked onto the vessel.

If there was any view to be seen out the ferry window that day, she caught no glimpse of it during the crossing to Islesboro.

She walked off the boat into a disorientingly gray world. Henry Page's house was just a mile's walk from the island's terminal— — A nice stroll on a summer's day, — he'd said. But in thick fog, a mile can seem like forever. She stayed well to the side of the road to avoid being hit by passing cars, and clambered off into the weeds whenever she heard an approaching vehicle. So this is summertime in Maine, she thought, shivering in her shorts and sandals. Though she could hear birds chirping, she couldn't see them. All she could see was the pavement beneath her feet and the weeds at the side of the road.