Робин Кук - Mutation

“Yup,” Victor said.

“They were assigned to Dr. Shryack. He’s probably doing them now.”

“All right if I go look?” asked Victor.

“Suit yourself,” he said, checking the clipboard. “It’s amphitheater three.” Then as Victor was about to leave, he asked, “You did say you were a medical doctor, didn’t you?”

Victor nodded.

“Enjoy yourself,” Dr. Burghofen said, returning to the typewriter.

The pathology department, like the rest of the hospital, was new, with state-of-the-art equipment. Everything was steel, glass or Formica.

The four autopsy rooms looked like operating rooms. Only one was in use and Victor went directly inside. The autopsy table was shining stainless steel, as were the other implements in sight. Two men standing on either side of the table looked up as Victor entered. In front of them was a young child whose body was splayed open like a gutted fish. Behind them on a gurney was the small, covered body of another.

Victor shuddered. It had been a long time since he’d seen an autopsy and he’d forgotten the impact. Particularly when viewing a child.

“Can we help you?” the doctor on the right asked. He was masked like a surgeon, but instead of a gown, he wore a rubberized apron.

“I’m Dr. Frank,” Victor said, struggling to suppress nausea. Besides the visual assault, there was the fetid odor that even the room’s modern air conditioning could not handle. “I’m interested in the Hobbs baby and the Murray baby. Dr. Burghofen sent me down.”

“You can watch over here if you like,” the pathologist said, motioning Victor over with his scalpel.

Tentatively, Victor advanced into the room. He tried not to look at the tiny eviscerated body.

“Are you Dr. Shryack?” asked Victor.

“That’s me.” The pathologist had a pleasant, youthful voice and bright eyes. “And this is Samuel Harkinson,” he said, introducing his assistant. “These children your patients?”

“Not really,” Victor said. “But I’m terribly interested in the cause of their deaths.”

“Join the group,” Dr. Shryack said. “Strange story! Come over here and look at this brain.”

Victor swallowed. The child’s scalp had been cut and pulled down over the face. Then the skull had been sawed around the circumference of the head, and the crown lifted off. Victor found himself looking at the child’s brain, which had risen out of its confinement, giving the child the appearance of some sort of alien being. Most of the gyri of the cerebral cortices had been flattened where they had pressed against the inside of the skull.

“This has to be the worst case of cerebral edema I’ve ever seen,” Dr. Shryack said. “It makes getting the brain out a chore and a half. Took me half an hour with the other one.” He pointed toward the shrouded body.

“Till you figured out how to do it,” Harkinson said with a faint Cockney accent.

“Right you are, Samuel.”

With Harkinson holding the head and pushing the swollen brain to the side, Dr. Shryack was able to get his knife between the brain and the base of the skull to cut the upper part of the spinal cord.

Then, with a dull, ripping sound, the brain pulled free. Harkinson cut the cranial nerves, and Dr. Shryack quickly hoisted the brain and placed it in the pan of the overhead scale. The pointer swung wildly back and forth, then settled on 3.2.

“It’s a full pound more than normal,” Dr. Shryack said, scooping the brain back up with his gloved hands and carrying it over to a sink that had continuous running water. He rinsed the clotted blood and other debris from the brain, then put it on a wooden chopping block.

With experienced hands, Dr. Shryack carefully examined the brain for gross pathology. “Other than its size, it looks normal.”

He selected a carving knife from a group in a drawer, and began slicing off half-inch sections. “No hemorrhage, no tumors, no infection. The NMR scanner was right again.”

“I was wondering if I could ask a favor,” Victor said. “Would it be at all possible for me to take a sample back to my own lab to have it processed?”

Dr. Shryack shrugged. “I suppose, but I wouldn’t want it to become common knowledge. It would be a great thing to get into the Boston Globe that we’re giving out brain tissue. I wonder what that would do to our autopsy percentage?”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

“You want this case, which I think is the Hobbs kid, or do you want the other one?” Dr. Shryack asked.

“Both, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I suppose giving you two specimens is no different than giving you one,” said Dr. Shryack.

“Have you done the gross on the internal organs yet?” asked Victor.

“Not yet,” Shryack said. “That’s next on the agenda. Want to watch?”

Victor shrugged. “Why not. I’m here.”

VJ was even less communicative on the ride back to Lawrence than he’d been on the ride into Boston that morning. He was obviously mad about the whole situation, and Marsha wondered if he would be cooperative enough to make psychological testing worthwhile.

She parked across from her office. They waited for the elevator even though they were going up only one floor because the stairwell door was locked from the inside. “I know you’re angry,” Marsha said. “But I do want you to take some psychological tests, yet it’s not worth your time or Jean’s unless you cooperate. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” VJ said crisply, fixing Marsha with his dazzlingly blue eyes.

“Well, will you cooperate?” she asked as the elevator doors opened.

VJ nodded coldly.

Jean was overjoyed to see them. She’d had a terrible time juggling Marsha’s patients, but she’d managed in her usual efficient way.

As for VJ, she was really happy to see him, even though he greeted her without much enthusiasm, then excused himself to use the bathroom.

“He’s a bit out of sorts,” Marsha explained. She went on to tell Jean about the neuro work-up and her desire to have him take their basic battery of psychological tests.

“It will be hard for me to do it today,” Jean said. “With you out all morning the phone has been ringing off the hook.”

“Let the service handle the phone,” Marsha advised. “It’s important I get VJ tested.”

Jean nodded and immediately began getting out the forms and preparing their computer to grade and correlate the results.

When VJ returned from the bathroom, Jean had him sit right down at the keyboard. Since he was familiar with some of the tests, she asked him which kind he wanted to take first.

“Let’s start with the intelligence tests,” VJ said agreeably.

For the next hour and a half, Jean administered the WAIS-R intelligence test, which included six verbal and five performance subtests. From her experience she knew that VJ was doing well, but nowhere near what he’d done seven years previously. She also noted that VJ tended to hesitate before he answered a question or performed a task. It was like he wanted to be doubly sure of his choice.

“Very good!” Jean said when they’d reached the completion. “Now how about the personality test?”

“Is that the MMPI?” VJ asked. “Or the MCMI?”

“I’m impressed,” Jean said. “Sounds like you have been doing a little reading.”

“It’s easy when one of your parents is a psychiatrist,” VJ said.

“We use both, but let’s start with the MMPI,” Jean said. “You don’t need me for this. It’s all multiple choice. If you have any problems, just yell.”

Jean left VJ in the testing room, and went back to the reception desk. She called the service and got the pile of messages that had accumulated. She attended to the ones that she could and when Marsha’s patient left, gave her the messages she had to handle herself.