Kathy Reichs - Break No Bones

Draining my coffee, I wondered.

What unknown world was I about to enter?

The remainder of the day passed uneventfully.

At the site, I explained to my students what had taken place following their departure the previous day. Then, while I logged last-minute photos and notes, they refilled open trenches. Together we cleaned shovels, trowels, brushes, and screens, returned our carts to the landings building, and boarded the Aggie Gray for her six o'clock crossing.

That evening, the group ate shrimp and oysters at the Boat House at Breach Inlet. After dinner, we reconvened on Anne's veranda for one final class meeting. The students reviewed what they'd done, and double-checked cataloging on all artifacts and bones. Around nine, they redistributed equipment among their vehicles, exchanged hugs, and were gone.

I suffered the usual post-collective experience letdown. Sure, I was relieved. Field school was concluded without any disasters of note, and now I could focus on Emma's skeleton. But the students' departure also left me feeling dismally empty.

The kids could be exasperating, no question. The unending hubbub. The clowning. The inattention. But my students were also energizing, bursting with enthusiasm, and lousy with youth.

I sat a few moments, enveloped by the silence in Anne's million-dollar home. Irrationally, I felt the stillness as ominous, not calming.

Moving through the house, I extinguished lights, then climbed the stairs to my room. Opening the glass doors, I welcomed the sound of waves on sand.

By eight thirty the next morning, I was roller-coastering the Cooper River Bridge, a soaring postmodern structure linking Mount Pleasant and the offshore islands with Charleston proper. With its colossal struts and arching backbone, the thing always makes me think of an impressionistic triceratops, frozen in steel. The bridge rises so high above terra firma, Anne still white-knuckles it every time she crosses.

MUSC is in the northwestern part of the Peninsula, halfway between the Citadel and the historic district. Continuing on Highway 17, I found Rutledge Avenue, then wound through campus to the parking deck Emma had indicated.

The sun warmed my neck and hair as I angled across Sabin Street to a massive brick building known simply as the main hospital. Following Emma's directions, I located the morgue entrance, climbed the ramp, and pressed a buzzer beside a rectangular speaker. In seconds a motor hummed, and one of two gray metal doors rolled up.

Emma looked awful.

Her face was pale, her outfit rumpled. The bags under her eyes looked big enough to hold several changes of clothing.

"Hey," she said quietly.

"Hey." OK. It sounds odd. But that's how we Southerners greet.

"Are you all right?" I asked, taking one of Emma's hands in mine.

"Migraine."

"This can wait."

"I'm fine now."

Emma hit a button and the door ground down behind me.

"I'm not leaving town," I said. "We can do this when you feel better."

"I'm fine." Soft, but allowing not an inch of wiggle room.

Emma led me up another concrete ramp. Where the floor leveled, I could see two stainless steel compression doors that I guessed led to coolers. Ahead was a normal door, probably giving access to the more populated side of the hospital. ER. OB-GYN. ICU. Those working for life. We were on the flip side. The death side.

Emma chin-cocked one of the metal doors. "We're in here."

We crossed to it, and Emma pulled the handle. Cold air whooshed over us, carrying the smell of refrigerated flesh and putrefaction.

The room measured approximately sixteen by twenty, and held a dozen gurneys with removable trays. On six were body bags, some bulging, some barely humped.

Emma chose a bag that looked piteously flat. Toeing the brake release, she wheeled the cart into the corridor as I held open the door of the room she had selected.

An elevator took us to an upper floor. Autopsy suites. Locker room. Doors leading to places I couldn't identify. Emma said little. I didn't bother her with questions.

As Emma and I changed from street clothes to scrubs, she explained that today would be my show. I was the anthropologist. She was the coroner. I would give orders. She would assist me. Later, she would incorporate my findings into a central case file with those of all other experts, and make a ruling.

Returning to the autopsy room, Emma double-checked paperwork, wrote the case number on an ID card, and shot photos of the unopened body bag. I booted my laptop and arranged work sheets on a clipboard.

"Case number?" I would use the Charleston County coroner's labeling system.

Emma held up the ID card. "I coded it 02, undetermined. It's coroner death two seventy-seven this year."

I entered CCC-2006020277 into my case form.

Emma spread a sheet over the autopsy table and set a screen over the sink. Then we tied plastic aprons behind our necks and waists, secured masks over our mouths, and gloved.

Emma unzipped the bag.

The hair was in one small plastic container, the isolated teeth in another. I set them on the counter.

The skeleton was as I remembered, largely intact, with only a few vertebrae and the left tibia and femur connected by remnants of desiccated tissue. The disarticulated bones had been jumbled in transport.

We began by extracting all visible insect inclusions and placing them in vials. Then Emma and I cleaned the dirt as best we could from every bone, collecting it for later inspection. As we progressed, I arranged elements in anatomical order on the sheet.

By noon the painstaking process was done. Two tubs and four vials sat on the counter, and a skeleton lay on the table, hand and toe bones fanned like those of a specimen in a biosupply catalog.

We broke for a quick cafeteria lunch. Emma had a large Coke and Jell-O. I had chips and a very questionable tuna sandwich. We were back in the autopsy suite by one.

While I inventoried, identifying bones and separating right and left sides, Emma shot more photos. Then she disappeared with the skull, jaw, and isolated teeth to make dental X-rays.

I was turning my attention to gender when Emma reappeared. I suspected the victim was male, since most bones were large and carried robust muscle attachments.

"Ready for sex?" I asked.

"Got a headache."

Yep. I liked this woman.

Picking up a pelvic half, I pointed to the front.

"Pubic bone is chunky, its lower branch is thick, and the subpubic angle is more V than U." I turned the bone and ran my finger inside a hollow below the broad pelvic blade. "Sciatic notch is narrow."

"You're thinking Y chromosome."

I nodded. "Let's see the cranium."

Emma handed it to me.

"Large brow ridges, blunt orbital borders." I rotated the skull. It had a large bump at the midline in back. "Occipital protuberance is large enough to require a zip code."

"All boy"

"Oh, yeah." I noted "male" on my case form.

"Age?" Emma asked.

Generally, the last of the molars appear during the late teens or early twenties, about the same time the skeleton is wrapping up its act. The final skeletal growth center to fuse is a little cap at the throat end of the collarbone. Combined, clavicular fusion and wisdom tooth eruption are good indicators of adulthood.

"All the molars out?" I asked.

Emma nodded.

I picked up the collarbone.

"Medial epiphysis is fused." I lay the bone on the table. "So he's no kid."

I returned to the pelvis. Again, I was interested in the belly side, this time the face that had kissed the face of the other pelvic half during life. In young adults, these faces have topography like the Shenandoah, all mountains and valleys. With age, the mountains wear down and the valleys fill in.