Robin Cook - Terminal

Janet hesitated. At that point she had the door open and one foot out. As crazy as Sean’s plan was, she felt responsible to a degree. As Sean had already pointed out several times, this whole venture had been her idea. Besides, she thought she’d go crazy sitting in the apartment waiting for him to return. Pulling her foot back into the car, Janet told Sean that she’d changed her mind and that she’d go along.

“I’m coming as a voice of rationality,” she said.

“Okay by me,” Sean said equably.

At Home Depot Sean bought a glass cutter, a suction device for lifting large pieces of glass, a sheet rock knife, a small hand-held jigsaw, and a cooler. After that he stopped at a 7- Eleven where he bought ice for the cooler and a few cold drinks. Then he drove back to the Emerson Funeral Home and parked again in the loading zone.

“I think I’ll wait here,” Janet said. “By the way, I think you’re crazy.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion,” Sean said. “I’d rather think of myself as determined.”

“A cooler and cold drinks,” Janet commented. “It’s as if you think you’re going on a picnic.”

“I just like to be prepared,” Sean said.

Sean hefted his pack of tools and the cooler and went up onto the funeral home porch.

Janet watched him check the windows. Several cars drove by in both directions. She was amazed at his sangfroid. It was as if he believed himself to be invisible. She watched as he went to a side window toward the back and put down his sack. Bending over, he took out some of the tools.

“Damn it all!” Janet said. With irritation she opened the door, climbed the funeral home’s front steps, and walked around to where Sean was busily working. He’d attached the suction device to the window.

“A change of heart?” Sean asked without looking at Janet. He ran the glass cutter deftly around the perimeter of the window.

“Your lunacy floors me,” Janet said. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Brings back fond memories,” Sean said. With a decisive tug, he pulled a large segment of the window glass out and laid it on the porch planking. After leaning inside, he told Janet that the alarm was a simple sash alarm which was what he’d guessed.

Sean reached in with his tools and the cooler and set them on the floor. After stepping through the window himself, he leaned back out.

“If you’re not coming in, it would be better if you waited in the car,” he said. “A beautiful woman hanging around on a funeral home porch at this hour might attract some attention. This might take me a few minutes if I find Helen’s body.”

“Give me a hand!” Janet said impulsively as she tried to follow Sean’s easy step through the window.

“Watch the edges!” Sean warned. “They’re like razors.”

Once Janet was inside, Sean hefted the tools and handed the cooler to Janet.

“Nice of them to leave the lights on for us,” he said.

The two big rooms in the front were viewing rooms. The room they’d entered was a casket display room with eight caskets exhibited. Their lids were propped open. Across a narrow hall was an office. In the rear of the house, extending from one side to the other was the embalming room. The windows were covered with heavy drapes.

There were four stainless steel embalming tables. Two were occupied by shrouded corpses. The first was a heavyset woman who looked lifelike enough to be asleep except for the large Y-shaped, crudely sutured incision on the front of her torso. She’d been autopsied.

Moving to the second body, Sean lifted the sheet.

“Finally,” Sean said. “Here she is.”

Janet came over and mentally prepared herself before looking. The sight was less disturbing than she’d imagined. Like the other woman, Helen Cabot appeared in sleep-like repose. Her color was better than it had been in life. Over the last few days she’d become so pale.

“Too bad,” Sean commented. “She’s already been embalmed. I’ll have to forgo the blood sample.”

“She appears so natural,” Janet said.

“These embalmers must be good,” Sean said. Then he pointed to a large glass-fronted metal cabinet. “See if you can find me some needles and a scalpel.”

“What size?”

“I’m not choosy,” Sean said. “The longer the needle the better.”

Sean plugged in the jigsaw. When he tried it, it made a fearful noise.

Janet found a collection of syringes, needles, even suture material, and latex rubber gloves. But no scalpels. She brought what she’d found over to the table.

“Let’s get the cerebrospinal fluid first,” Sean said. He pulled on a pair of the gloves.

He had Janet help roll Helen onto her side so that he could insert a needle in the lumbar area between two vertebrae.

“This will only hurt for a second,” Sean said as he patted Helen’s upturned hip.

“Please,” Janet said. “Don’t joke around. You’ll only upset me more than I already am.”

To Sean’s surprise he got cerebrospinal fluid on the first try. He’d only performed the maneuver on living patients a couple of times. He filled the syringe, capped it, and put it on the ice in the cooler. Janet let Helen roll back supine.

“Now for the hard part,” he said, coming back to the embalming table. “I’m assuming you’ve seen an autopsy.”

Janet nodded. She’d seen one but it had not been a pleasant experience. She braced herself as Sean prepared.

“No scalpels?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Good thing I got this Sheetrock knife,” Sean said. He picked up the knife and extended the blade. Then he ran it around the back of Helen’s head from one ear to the other. Grasping the top edge of the incision, Sean yanked. With the kind of ripping sound of a weed being uprooted, Helen’s scalp pulled away from her skull. Sean pulled it all the way down over Helen’s face.

He palpated the craniotomy hole on the left side of Helen’s skull that had been done at the Boston Memorial, then looked for the one on the right, the one done at Forbes two days previously.

“That’s weird,” he said. “Where the hell is the second craniotomy hole?”

“Let’s not waste time,” Janet said. Although she’d been nervous when they had entered, her anxiety was steadily increasing with each passing minute.

Sean continued to look for the second craniotomy hole, but finally gave up.

Picking up the jigsaw, he looked at Janet. “Stand back. Maybe you don’t want to watch. This isn’t going to be pretty.”

“Just do it,” Janet said.

Sean pushed the jigsaw blade into the craniotomy hole he’d found and turned the saw on. It bit into the bone and almost yanked itself out of his hands. The job would not be as easy as Sean had envisioned.

“You have to steady the head,” Sean told Janet.

Grasping either side of Helen’s face, Janet vainly tried to keep the head from jerking from side to side as Sean struggled to hold the bucking jigsaw. With great difficulty he managed to saw off a skull cap of bone. He had intended to keep the blade depth equal to the thickness of the skull, but it had been impossible. The saw blade had dug into the brain in several places, shredding the surface.

“This is disgusting,” Janet said. She straightened up and brushed herself off.

“It’s not a bone saw,” Sean admitted. “We had to improvise.”

The next part was almost as difficult. The Sheetrock knife was much larger than a scalpel, and Sean had difficulty inserting it below the brain to cut through the spinal cord and cranial nerves. He did the best he could. Then, inserting his hands on either side within the skull, he grasped the mutilated brain and yanked it out.

After taking the cold drinks out of the cooler, Sean dropped the brain onto the ice. Then he popped the top on one of the drinks and offered it to Janet. Sweat was beading his forehead.