Robin Cook - Shock

"You're right!" Joanna whispered back. "It is too easy. She's being too gracious. I don't like it. If it were up to me, we'd leave now!"

"Oh, for God's sake," Deborah complained. "Always the cynic! Let's enjoy our good fortune, find out what we can, and then split."

After passing through several rooms of proportions and contents similar to the first room, they came to a room considerably larger. Behind a row of incubators was a bank of more than fifty aged wooden doors, each about three feet square with heavy latches like meat refrigerators. Deborah hesitated. "Excuse me, Cindy." She pointed toward the timeworn doors. "Are these what they look like?"

Cindy stopped on her way into an even larger room beyond. She followed Deborah's pointing finger. "Are you asking about those old ice compartments?"

"Was this area the morgue in the building's former life?" Deborah asked.

"It was indeed," Cindy said. She walked back and with a bit of effort rolled one of the large incubators to the side to expose the doors. She opened one and slid out the wheeled, stained wooden tray. "It's interesting, isn't it? They had to load the ice in the other side. I wouldn't have wanted to be down here if they ever ran out of ice. Can you imagine?" She laughed uneasily.

Deborah and Joanna looked at each other. Joanna shuddered. "Let's get this visit over with."

"Would you like to see the rest of the morgue?" Cindy asked. "The old autopsy theater with a grandstand is still intact. Back in the nineteenth century it must have substituted for entertainment out here in the sticks." She laughed again, this time more hollowly than anxiously. "In those days it took a whole day to get to Boston by carriage, and there wasn't much for the staff to do when off duty. Let me show you."

Cindy took off in a direction opposite to the way she'd originally been heading. Deborah followed after her vainly trying to get her attention. Joanna took up the rear, not wanting to be left behind.

"Cindy]" Deborah called, quickening her pace. "We'd really rather see the organ room!"

Undeterred, either not hearing or just ignoring Deborah, Cindy continued on to a set of leather-covered double doors with small oval windows. Pushing one open, she leaned into the darkness and snapped on a light switch. The sound was a low-pitched thud and large, old-fashioned kettle drum – shaped lights came on. They were high in the ceiling and acted like spotlights to illuminate an old metal autopsy table.

Joanna, who'd come up behind Deborah, took in the scene and caught her breath. The setting with the rows of spectator seats rising up into the gloom was even more like the gruesome anatomy-lesson painting than the operating room upstairs where she'd had her procedure.

"This is very interesting," Deborah said with a sarcastic overtone after taking a quick gander into the room. "But, if you don't mind, we much prefer to see the organ room."

"How about checking out the old autopsy tools?" Cindy questioned. "Myself and a couple of the other techs were joking the other day about sending them out to Hollywood for a horror movie."

"Let's see the organ room," Joanna stated flatly.

"Fine by me," Cindy said. She turned out the light and started along the hall again. She glanced at her watch, a gesture Joanna noted but Deborah didn't. It was the third time Joanna had seen the woman do it. Deborah was busy, looking back the way they'd come.

"Isn't the organ room the other way?" Deborah called out to Cindy who was a dozen paces ahead.

"We can get to it either way," Cindy said over her shoulder. "But this route is shorter."

As Deborah caught up to the others she saw ahead a pair of horizontally oriented doors like dumbwaiter doors in an opening the size of a small garage. As the group walked past, Deborah asked about them.

"That's the old freight elevator," Cindy said coming to a stop. "The dead bodies used to come down in it from the upper floors."

"That's a cheery thought," Joanna commented. "Let's keep moving!"

"It's actually been handy for us," Cindy said. She tapped the doors appreciatively with her knuckle. "We've used it to get most of the equipment down here. Would you like to see how it works?"

"We'd prefer to see the organ room," Joanna said. "I think we know how a freight elevator works."

"Fine by me," Cindy said again.

After passing through a twenty-foot-long, narrow vaulted passageway which, Cindy explained, penetrated the foundation support for the building's Italianate tower, the women found themselves on the threshold of the largest room they'd seen in the subterranean complex. It was at least one hundred feet long and fifty wide. In it were row upon row of voluminous Plexiglas aquarium-like containers approximately six feet long, three deep, and two wide. Each contained multiple glass spheres approximately a foot in diameter that were submerged in fluid. From the top of each sphere sprouted a tangle of tubes and electric leads. On the surface of the fluid floated a continuous layer of tiny glass spheres.

For a moment the women just took in the spectacle. Although the walls of the room were still exposed brick, the scene was more like what they had expected when they'd first passed through the stainless-steel door. Even the ceiling was higher in this space than in the other rooms due to an absence of the overhead piping and ductwork. The lighting was also less harsh, but with the addition of an apparent ultraviolet component.

While Deborah was transfixed by the vista, Joanna caught Cindy again checking her watch. What made the repeated gesture remarkable to Joanna was the woman's otherwise apparent hospitality. If she were so concerned about the time, as suggested by her constantly looking at her watch, why was she spending so much of it with them? It was a question for which Joanna had no immediate answer, but it progressively bothered her.

"What exactly are we looking at here?" Deborah asked.

"This is the organ room," Cindy explained. "These tanks are constant-temperature water baths. The small floating spheres are to keep the bath water from evaporating. The larger spheres hold the ovaries."

"So," Deborah commented, "you're able to keep entire ovaries alive by, I assume, perfusing them etcetera."

"That's pretty much the story," Cindy said. "We've mimicked their accustomed internal environment with oxygen, nutrients, and endocrine stimulation. Of course removing waste products is also important. At any rate, when we do it right, the ovaries are constantly ovulating mature oocytes."

"Can we see closer?" Deborah asked.

Cindy gestured ahead. "By all means."

Deborah walked down an aisle between two rows of the tanks and stopped to gaze within one of the spheres. The contained ovary was about the size of a flattened walnut with a ragged, pock-marked surface reminiscent of the moon. Tiny perfusion cannulas were connected to the major ovarian vessels. Various sensing wires were attached at other points on the small organ.

"We have more traditional cell cultures of oogonia as well," Cindy said. "I can show you them if you'd like."

"Some of these spheres contain two ovaries rather than one, Deborah said.

"That's true, but most are single, as you can see. How about we move on to the oogonia room?"

"What does it mean when there are two ovaries?" Joanna asked.

"That's Dr. Donaldson's department," Cindy said. "I'm just one of the many technicians who monitor and take care of them."

Joanna and Deborah exchanged one of their signature glances. As familiar as they were with each other, each generally could tell what the other was thinking.

"I see each sphere is labeled alphanumerically," Joanna said. "Does that mean you know the origin of each ovary?"

For the first time during their visit Cindy appeared clearly uncomfortable with the question. She hemmed and hawed and again tried to change the subject back to the oogonia cultures, but Joanna was insistent.