Jody Shields - The Winter Station

He took his pulse. It was elevated, but not dangerously. The laboratory was silent and the door was unlocked. He pulled a cloth from his satchel and swabbed the water on the floor from his boots.

Inside, he stuffed the wet cloth along the bottom of the door to block the light. He swiftly removed his thick sheepskin coat and draped it over a chair. For a moment, his eyes charted the surfaces in the room, the bulky dark shapes of desks and tables, thin reflected light from glass cabinets. Two cautious steps and his foot nudged a bucket, splashing a liquid across the floor. Water? This puzzled him until he realized there was no plumbing. A laboratory without running water.

The odor of formalin was traced into the adjoining room, where the laboratory was located. He switched on a table lamp, and light struck a wall of shelves lined with small covered glass specimen containers. Closer, he saw that each one was methodically numbered and labeled with a schoolboy’s precision: JAPANESE FEMALE, NO. 5 KOREYSKAYA STREET, KHARBIN. The last line: DR. WU LIEN-TEH. The doctor had collected the body of the dead woman. Blood sucked from her heart with a needle, skin sliced thin as paper, guts opened and sampled, bones sawed. The fortress of the body destroyed by scalpel and knife, flesh pressed into petri dishes, slivered into containers, flattened on glass slides, divided under numbers and letters.

He was surprised by his tenderness for the woman’s remains. The glass containers scraped against the metal shelves as he gently pushed them aside one by one, uncertain what he was searching for, using a pencil to avoid contaminating anything or leaving a fingerprint.

His sleeve brushed against a test tube in an upright stand, knocking it at an angle. He automatically reached to straighten it, then stopped his hand and awkwardly nudged the test tube back into place with the pencil. The drawers in the laboratory desk contained neatly packed equipment, all of it new: empty glass containers that softly chimed as they rolled against each other, pipettes, metal instruments, gauze, pencils, fountain pens, brushes, paper, ink pads. Innocent supplies. He turned to the immense cabinets lined with rows of leather-bound books, their spines tooled in gold. Before opening the door of a cabinet, he carefully examined it for trick devices. His professor in St. Petersburg had tied small bells to the bookshelf doors in his library to prevent students borrowing books without permission. This policy ended when the students brought tiny bells to class, hidden in their pockets. On cue, jingling filled the lecture hall, their mocking laughter unnerving the professor more than the bells.

He pulled a random book from the shelf and opened it. It was blank. He angrily rifled through book after book, all of them identical, blank, to be filled with Wu’s future research. He began to understand the way the man’s mind worked. A book slipped from his hand, slammed flat on the floor. The sound seemed loud enough to blast the pages loose and send them flying. His head swung toward the other room as he waited for footsteps, the twist of the doorknob. Ten breaths. Silence. His fingers slowly unclenched.

In this calm state, he recognized a wish to avenge the dead woman. To humiliate Dr. Wu, prove his research incorrect, false, dangerous. Should he sweep his arm across the shelves and destroy the evidence? No. He’d respect the process. He was a witness who’d take only information, disturb nothing. Only his gaze would tamper with the order in the laboratory. His investigation was a precautionary measure, an extension of his work as chief medical officer.

Where were the autopsy results? Where was the diagnosis? The cause of the woman’s death? The lab logbook?

He stood still, his awareness fanning out across the room. His hand shaped a curve; his arm described a wider curve.

Two thick black books were discovered in the drawer of the desk in the front room. He congratulated himself until he noticed his sweating palms had smeared the covers. The first book had only a few lines of cramped handwriting in English, an unrelated case history. The second book was written in Chinese and English.

Autopsy of a Japanese Woman. The District of Fuchiatien, Kharbin, Heilongjiang Province, Manchuria, China. November 1910.

Female corpse, thirty to thirty-three years old, well nourished, found on earthen floor in an inn. The room was cold. The woman’s chest was cut open with little loss of blood. Death estimated ten hours previous to examination of body. Cartilaginous area / joints removed. Syringe (wide-bore) inserted into right auricle. Blood sample taken. A second long vertical cut exposed internal organs, lung and spleen. Sample taken with platinum needle. Two-inch-square pieces cut from lung, liver, spleen, and stored in 10% formalin solution. The remaining organs replaced in body cavity. The flaps of cut skin on torso sewn together. Corpse sponged clean and redressed in kimono.

The most recent entry dated three days ago:

All specimens from female Japanese corpse stained with Loeffler’s methylene blue. Results confirmed after examination under microscope. Bacillus pestis. Plague.

His hands shook and he leaned against the desk to steady himself against the vise of this terrible discovery. An accident, a spill, and plague would free itself from the fragile jars and devour him.

Back in the lab, he stood before the shelves of glass specimen containers, the remains of the woman’s body. He sensed something bright, an intelligence reflected back at him. Something with multiple eyes, like a hall of mirrors, a fractured consciousness watching him. A hypnotic command gripped him. Was it Medusa?

Frightened, he shouted to drive the vision away. He stepped back and spontaneously made the sign of the cross.

“God help us, we’ve been blind fools.”

The Baron stood in Messonier’s office, his open sheepskin coat dripping melted snow on the floor. Messonier urged him into a corner chair and the Baron slumped in the seat, water puddling off his boots. “It’s plague.”

Messonier stared at him, uncomprehending, his tortoiseshell spectacles dangling forgotten from his fingers.

“The bodies of the dead on the street were hidden because they were evidence. It’s a plague outbreak.” His fingers tugged at his hair. “Have you vodka? Yes? Good. I don’t have enough courage for tea.”

Messonier quickly retrieved a bottle from the cupboard. “Who told you?”

“I entered Dr. Wu’s laboratory. Without permission.” He described the unsecured laboratory, the preserved specimens from the Japanese woman’s autopsy. “Results of the Loeffler’s test on the woman for plague were documented in Wu’s logbook. They were positive.”

Messonier stood in the middle of the room, holding the vodka bottle.

A sense of foreboding filled the Baron’s head like music. “Like an idiot, I entered the laboratory without proper protections.” He kept talking, reassuring himself, perhaps braiding a noose. “The Japanese woman was the only confirmed plague death. But everyone at the inn could be infected. And those who handled her body. Who knows how contagious it is? I trespassed but it was critical to know the truth.” Was it his imagination or did an expression of fear flicker across Messonier’s face? There was an invisible presence in the room. “I wouldn’t be here if I believed it was a risk for you. I touched nothing that could put me in danger. Everything in the laboratory remained just as I found it. I didn’t handle the specimens. I only read the logbook.”

Vodka was poured and Messonier handed a full glass to the Baron. Then he fished a thermometer from a jar of disinfectant, held up the tiny silver wand, his expression a question. “This is probably overly cautious,” Messonier murmured. He inserted the thermometer in the Baron’s mouth and waited, counting under his breath, scrutinizing his face. “Time is up.”