Steven James - The Knight

As my thoughts wandered back to Lien-hua, I realized that getting things out in the open was somewhat of a relief-even though going our separate ways was something I’d never wanted.

We arrived at the morgue and Lance unlocked the door. “Pretty full in there this week. Dr. Bender and I have been… Well.”

He didn’t need to say more.

“Have at it.” He swung the door open. The overly sharp smell of hospital disinfectants filled the air. “Eric should be by in about ten minutes.”

I noticed Cheyenne glance at her watch.

“I’ll be upstairs,” Lance said. “Unless you want me to stay?”

“No,” I replied. “We’ll be fine.”

He gave me a small nod. “If you need anything, just call the admitting department. They’ll page me.” He told me the number, I thanked him, and after he’d stepped away Cheyenne and I entered the sterile white chamber where death is dissected and studied.

The room looked like most of the morgues I’ve visited over the past fifteen years: stainless steel counters, bright fluorescent lights, microscopes, scales, sanitary disposal units, trays of instruments. An empty gurney.

And, of course, the vibrating electric Stryker saws for cutting through skulls without destroying the tender brain matter inside, Hagedorn needles for sewing up body cavities, skull chisels, bone saws, rib cutters.

Tools of the trade.

The gurneys that bore the dead would be in the freezer.

As I crossed the room, I thought about how we design morgues to be as impersonal and institutional as possible. Despite how messy and nauseating dead bodies are, the place where we probe them is sparkling and clean and carefully sanitized to cover up the smell of decay.

Maybe it’s our way of dealing with death, of helping us forget the laughter and tears and smiles of the people we’re dissecting.

Maybe that’s a good thing-being able to forget.

We reached the freezer, and I stared at the door for a moment.

“OK,” I said softly. “Let’s have a look at the governor.”

I unlatched the door to the morgue’s freezer. Swung it open.

A swirl of cold air nudged out and encircled me. I could see five gurneys inside.

Dead lips whispering to me, “Why? Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you come sooner?”

On each gurney, a cadaver. I recognized the faces of three of them as the victims from earlier this week. Strangely, none of the bodies were covered, and two of the corpses were headless-two, not one. Not just Sebastian Taylor’s.

What’s going-?

And then as I took my first step into the freezer, I saw her. A woman, seated against the far wall, with the missing sheets from the bodies draped across her shoulders and arms. Her eyes were open.

I rushed toward her, Cheyenne beside me.

As I bent over the woman and felt for a pulse, I realized I’d seen her before at one of the coffeehouses I visit regularly. I didn’t know her name, just her face, but somehow, recognizing her made things all the more urgent. Her skin was cold to the touch. Her lips, bluish, cyanotic, but she was still breathing. I found a faint heartbeat. “She’s alive,” I said to Cheyenne.

“Thank God. Let’s get her out of here.”

“Ma’am,” I said. “We’re going to help you.” She moved her lips but made no sound. I noticed that she wasn’t shivering, which meant she was in the advanced stages of hypothermia.

Cheyenne reached for one of her armpits to lift her.

“Careful.” From my rock climbing trips I knew that moving people with severe hypothermia can jar them, cause them to go into shock or cardiac arrhythmia, but I didn’t want to say that within earshot of the woman. “I’ll get her.”

As gently as I could, I lifted the woman. She had a slight frame, but still I felt a twitch of pain in my side where Grant had driven the axe handle into my ribs the day before.

I carried her to the empty gurney in the exam room, and Cheyenne ran ahead of me, pressed the intercom button, and called for a doctor to report to the morgue, stat!

I eased the woman onto the gurney. “We’re going to get you warmed up.”

As long as she remains conscious, she should be all right.

“It’s going to be OK,” Cheyenne said, but she must have realized how serious the woman’s condition was because she whispered, only for my ears, “I’m not sure we can wait for a doctor.”

“She’ll be all right.”

But as I was evaluating whether or not we should wait for a doctor or go looking for one, I saw the woman’s eyes roll back. Cheyenne slapped her cheek firmly to keep her awake. “Stay with me,” she said. “Stay with me!” But the woman’s breathing was becoming choppier. Cheyenne called, “Pat-”

“I know.”

The woman shuddered. Cheyenne slapped her cheek again, but this time she didn’t respond.

I grabbed the end of the gurney to push it into the hall. “We have to warm her. Now.”

As I passed through the door I remembered that the elevator on this level was out of service.

No!

In the wilderness you’d remove someone’s clothes and lay beside her to share your body heat, but I figured we could do better than that here at the hospital.

I glanced down the hallway, reviewing the rooms we’d passed on the way to the morgue.

“The PT room,” I mumbled and began to wheel the woman down the hallway as fast as I could.

“What is it?” Cheyenne caught up with me.

“Physical therapy, we passed it on the way here. They’ll have a whirlpool.”

Cheyenne hurried ahead of me and held open the door. I eased the gurney inside. “We’re going to help you,” I told the woman. “It’s all right.”

Gently, I took her in my arms.

He locked her in the morgue.

The killer tried to freeze her to death.

The sadistic, merciless nature of his crimes stunned me, nauseated me.

No one else was present, but I saw Cheyenne motion toward me from the far side of the room. “The whirlpool’s over here.”

The pool had been built into the floor, and as I descended the steps and entered the warm water, I saw Cheyenne reach for the control panel. “Leave the jets off,” I said. “It might be too much of a shock to her system.”

“Right.”

Supporting her weight, I carefully lowered the woman into the water, but she began to shake, weak quivers running through her body. I lifted her a little, then lowered her again, more slowly, while Cheyenne spoke to her, comforting her, reassuring her from beside the pool.

A few moments later the woman coughed and blinked her eyes rapidly. The color was returning to her face.

“He…” She was speaking softly, but at least she was speaking. “He left me in…”

“I know,” I said. “Who was it? Who did this to you?” She shook her head. She didn’t know. “What’s your name?”

She gasped. Took a breath. “Kelsey.”

“We’re going to get you warmed up, Kelsey. You’ll be OK.”

She gave a small nod.

Moments passed. Curls of warm steam rose from the water and meandered around us.

Kelsey’s breathing began to grow more normal, more steady. Then I heard running in the hall.

“It’s the doctor,” I called to Cheyenne, but she was already heading for the door. A moment later a man in doctor’s scrubs, a nurse, and Lance Rietlin came hurrying into the room. “Over here!” I yelled as I lifted Kelsey from the water and carefully stepped out of the whirlpool.

“Let’s get her on the gurney,” Lance said, then helped me lay her down. He touched her hand lightly. “What’s your name?”

“Her name’s Kelsey,” Cheyenne said, then brushed some wet hair out of Kelsey’s eyes.