Anne Frasier: Play Dead

Thanks to my brother, Pat, for introducing me to the beautiful city of Savannah.

A very special thanks to the amazing members of the SavannahNOW forums. You taught me that Southern hospitality exists even in cyberspace.

At night I dream. I dream that I am more than I am. That I am strong. That I have a secret life. And in that life, I do things. Secret things.

Savannah medical examiner John Casper believed in what some scientists termed the cluster effect. Toss a bunch of anything down-seeds, flower petals, cards- they always grouped together.

Same thing with dead bodies.

They never came one at a time, but in bunches. The latest bunch had been large, leaving doctors and assistants working around the clock to process an unusually high volume that had their cold storage overflowing.

Almost caught up, people had headed home complaining of headaches from lack of sleep and too many hours spent inhaling formalin fumes.

Willy Claxton, the one remaining assistant, hovered nervously in the doorway of the main office, just off the autopsy suites. "Storm's blowing in from the Atlantic," he said. "They been talking about it on the radio."

John pushed his paperwork aside and leaned back, chair creaking. "Why don't you go home?" Even in the isolation of the morgue, his head had the heavy feeling that came with a dramatic drop in barometric pressure. "Before the storm hits."

"What about the last body?"

John glanced through the decedent's file. "Pretty straightforward. Looks like a heart attack."

John stood and stretched. He'd been there for over twelve hours. His joints ached, and his skin had a prickly, tight feel from too little sleep. "Help me get him on the table and you can take off."

Willy wheeled the body from the cold unit, then pushed it into an autopsy suite. The room smelled of disinfectant. He locked the wheels; then the two men heaved the corpse from the gurney to the stainless steel table. John noticed the zipper on the body bag hadn't been pulled tight-there was a gap of about two inches.

"Thanks, man," Willy said, snapping off his gloves and tossing them in the biohazard bin. "I need to get home. My wife's afraid of storms."

John nodded, allowing the man his dignity. Everybody knew Willy grew uneasy when darkness came. A lot of people were like that, even some of the other medical examiners. John found it interesting that modern man still suffered from ancient fears left over from a period in history when humans lived in the open and darkness was a real threat. These days, it wasn't the darkness that would get you-it was the people in that darkness. You didn't work in a morgue without coming away with that lesson well learned. Homicides had doubled this year, and the city was feeling as uneasy as Willy.

After Willy left, John suited up in a gown, mask, goggles, and latex gloves, then put on some tunes. Had to have autopsy tunes.

He unzipped the bag and leaned back, waiting for the stink to hit him.

Nothing.

Sometimes bodies didn't smell. Then again, when you worked around dead people as long as John had, your olfactories shut down. The brain finally decided, Hey, I've smelled that before. Smelled that a lot. No cause for alarm.

He spoke into the Dictaphone. "Decedent's name: Truman Harrison. No middle initial. Body belongs to a fifty-one-year-old African-American male with a history of heart disease."

He photographed the body, then removed and bagged the clothing-not easy without an assistant. He examined the cadaver externally, surprised to find no outward signs of rigor mortis or livor mortis. The guy must not have been dead long before being put on ice. And he chewed the hell out of his fingernails, John noted, lifting a hand to examine it more closely.

Outside, the storm was raging, but the autopsy suite within the heart of the morgue was silent. John had almost forgotten about the weather when the unmistakable sound of a lightning strike penetrated the thick walls, rattling glass containers in nearby cupboards. The room was plunged into darkness. Seconds later, the emergency generators kicked in and the lights flickered on.

Everything under control.

John continued with the autopsy. He placed a rubber block under the cadaver's neck, then positioned the scalpel for the Y incision, beginning at the right shoulder, below the collarbone. One inch into the cut the dead body let out a long sigh.

The scalpel slipped from John's fingers, clattering to the stainless steel exam table. He stared at the dead man's face, searching for signs of life.

A decaying body rapidly formed gas, and it wasn't unusual for a dead person to appear to exhale. Some bodies even moved as the gas shifted around looking for an escape route.

"Son of a bitch." John let out a nervous laugh.

He retrieved the scalpel and poised his hand to continue with the incision. He was shaking. "Shit. What a fucking baby. Calm down. It was just a little gas, that's all:"

Too late, he remembered the Dictaphone. With his slipper-covered foot, he shut it off with the remote switch, then stood there, breathing hard. The down-draft fan was humming.

He tossed the scalpel on the instrument tray, then picked up the dead man's wrist and felt for a pulse.

Nothing.

He felt the carotid artery in the neck.

Nothing.

He pulled out a miniature flashlight and checked the pupils.

No reaction. No reflex. No eye movement.

He turned the head from side to side.

"Some skin discoloration." Due to lack of circulation-a fairly significant sign of death. Lips were purple. Fingers and nails, purple.

He rolled the body from one side to the other, checking the back and buttocks. "No lividity."

He let the body drop to the previous position.

In the adjoining scrub room, he rummaged through the cabinets until he found a stethoscope.

Back in the autopsy suite, feeling foolish and glad nobody else was around, he turned off the downdraft fan and placed the stethoscope against the dead man's chest.

Was that something? A faint sound? A gentle lub… lubl Or was it his own heart beating frantically in his head?

He pulled the stethoscope from his ears, then began another search, finally finding what he was looking for. A mirror. Round, eight inches in diameter. With a paper towel he rubbed it clean, making sure there were no smudges or fingerprints on the glass. Then he held it to the dead man's mouth and nose.

Primitive but effective.

Keeping an eye on the clock, he waited a full minute before lifting it away.

On the surface of the mirror was a small cloud of condensation-a cloud that gradually vanished as John stared at it in horror and disbelief.

This couldn't be happening.

Not again.

In the Savannah Historic District, Elise Sandburg pulled orange juice and milk from the dark refrigerator while lightning flashed and thunder rattled the windows of her old Victorian house.

"I was going to make French toast." She closed the refrigerator door with her elbow and placed the cartons on the antique table where a hurricane candle burned in front of her thirteen-year-old daughter.

Audrey stared straight ahead with bleary eyes, her shoulder-length curly auburn hair tangled from sleep.

"Guess we'll have to settle for cold cereal," her mother said. "A substation was hit, which means we might not have any power until tomorrow."

Audrey didn't care. Tomorrow she would be home again. Her real home. French toast wouldn't have made everything suddenly wonderful. Why did her mother think that? She wasn't a little kid anymore. French toast wasn't going to make staying at her mom's any better.