David Nickle - Eutopia

“You must have enough to do,” said Andrew.

“Oh,” said Annie, “it’s not so busy. We have a new mother and her baby staying the night, but they’re resting fine. Other than that, there is just a certain doctor who is recovering from an unjust beating, yet prone to wandering… .”

She stuffed the cloth into the laundry bag and hung it on the peg outside the examination room door. The whole time, she did not take her eye off Andrew.

“Now what can I take off your hands, Dr. Waggoner, to get you back to bed any sooner?”

Andrew sighed and looked in her eyes and, reading the expression there, he made up his mind.

“All right,” he said, “you can go into the autopsy. You can light up the lamps in there, and you can pull out Maryanne Leonard’s remains and set her on the table. Then you can go up to my room, and you can set up another cot for Jason, and leave the two of us to our work for a moment,” he said. Annie’s eyes widened and she prepared to say something else, no doubt to point out some other damning aspect of Andrew’s obvious infirmities, but he pre-empted her.

“ That is how you’ll get me back to bed the quickest.”

“Why do you want to look at that lady’s body?” asked Jason as they made their way slowly down the corridor to the autopsy. “Why now?”

“The truth is, I want to find out as much as I can before I talk to Dr. Bergstrom next. I have my suspicions about what has been transpiring here all this time—and I want to see, so I can get some good answers from him. You want to wait outside, I understand.”

Jason pondered. “You don’t get on with that Dr. Bergstrom either, do you?” he said finally.

“No. I guess not.”

“Well then, I got stomach for whatever you’ve got to do. It’s not like I ain’t seen a dead body before. And you still look like you could use some help.”

“All right, then.”

As they came upon the door to the autopsy, Annie Rowe emerged. Seeing her gave Andrew pause. She looked older, the lines in her cheeks standing out in sharp relief, and the shadows around her eyes deep. Those eyes were wide, though—not this time with disapproval. She looked at Andrew and gasped, started to say something, then shook her head.

“Annie?” Dr. Waggoner leaned on Jason’s shoulder. “What—”

“I did what you asked, Dr. Waggoner,” she said. “I brought her out. But—”

“But?”

“Just go do what you got to do,” she said. “But leave that boy out of it.”

Then she turned and fled into the shadows at the end of the hall.

Andrew and Jason looked at one another. “I think you’d better wait here,” said Andrew. “I’ll go see what has Nurse Rowe so upset.”

Jason nodded. “Just don’t cut yourself. I’m not so good at stitching as you are.”

“I’ll be mindful.” And with that, Andrew let go of Jason and headed into the autopsy.

Andrew had been impressed with the Eliada autopsy from his first visit. The fact that there was a hospital in a place this remote was enough in itself; but the Eliada autopsy was also set up with tables like a surgery. The tables were on rollers, and exactly the height of drawers in the wall where the bodies of the deceased rested and there was at hand a full surgery of equipment for the purposes of examination. But for the absence of electric light, the autopsy here would not have been out of place in New York or Paris.

Annie had set things up for him as he’d asked. She’d lit the kerosene lamps that hung from the ceiling beneath big conical reflectors, and placed the table underneath them. And on the table, she had placed what Andrew assumed were the remains of Miss Maryanne Leonard.

They were under a sheet—but without even drawing it back, Andrew could see what got Annie so upset. It draped like a covering of attic furniture—tenting high where the body’s face and shoulders lay, and over the up-pointing toes, and the knees. But in the middle, where the hips and belly should have made an impression—there, the fabric held closer to the table. Because there, Andrew realized, there was practically nothing at all. He stepped up closer and drew back the cloth.

Maryanne Leonard had been butchered. The flesh of her chest, her ribcage, everything down to her pelvic bone—it was all removed, nothing but a yawning, blackening space. Looking down at her, he could see her spine, the ribs of her back that shot from it, lying empty. Her viscera had been scooped out; she had been gutted, cleaned like a fish.

Except she was no fish. She was a young lady. As if to give evidence of that, her face floated with the unblemished serenity of the dead above the emptiness of her middle.

Delicately, Andrew drew the sheet back over her face.

Bergstrom must consider the discussion closed, thought Andrew, now that he had so tidily carved away the evidence. Andrew turned around to call Jason in—but saw the boy standing at the door.

“How long have you been there?” asked Andrew.

“Long enough to see,” said Jason. He swallowed and shut his eyes a moment. “Where’s the rest of her?”

“Why don’t you sit down,” said Andrew. “Look away. Let me see to this—”

Jason held up his hand. He opened his eyes and stared hard at Andrew.

“No sir. You think I’m upset like a girl or a baby or someone from a city, because there’s an awful thing here. Well, I ain’t. I’ve seen awful things already and this is another one. You think we should start looking for the rest of her? Can’t be far.”

Andrew drew a breath. This boy had depths to him—he was no baby or girl or city person, that was true. “Yes,” he said. “I think we should. And I’ve got an idea.”

“You need a hand walking?”

“No,” said Andrew. “I better get used to doing that on my own.”

Jason stepped aside. “I’m here if you need it, Doctor.”

Andrew smiled as he started across the room. “Someone raised you well,” he said, and pointed to a door at the far end of the room. “Fetch a lamp, then. We’ll check here.”

The door led to the closest thing one could find to a cellar to this place. The nurses called it the root cellar, because it was cool and tight, and probably could keep a good store of potatoes and carrots until winter if that was what the place was for.

But there wasn’t room in this cellar and anyway, the shelves here were full of things you wouldn’t want next to your supper.

“What’s the smell in here?”

“Formaldehyde,” said Andrew.

“Smells like pickle juice,” said Jason.

“You must be used to some awful pickles to say that,” said Andrew. “But it works the same as pickle juice—preserves things that left to themselves might rot away. Come on down, bring the candle.”

Jason brought the candle down the steps. The space in here had been dug out of the ground and lined with fieldstone and timber. The ceiling was a low, whitewashed arch. Air circulation was bad in here, and the few times Andrew had been down before, he’d always had the uneasy sense that he was about to suffocate.

“Sure are a lot of jars here,” said Jason.

“This is where the hospital keeps its specimens,” said Andrew. “Someone’s foot gets amputated—we pull out some kidney stones—even if we cut out an appendix. It all goes here in a jar.”

“Every time?”

“Not every time.” Andrew squinted at a line of jars filled with stones of various sizes. Thin sheets of effluvia drifted in the yellowish liquid. “But when there’s something remarkable about it. Something worth writing down. Then yes, we keep it.”

Jason looked hard at the jars. “Should be a lot of jars like that around here. They’re labelled and everything. What’re we looking for?”