“It’s time to remove the bowel.” With a teasing smile, she digs her hands inside his body and starts cutting. “It shouldn’t smell too awful, since he’s so cold, but still…” She lifts the organ as though to unravel it. “It’s where the body stores waste. We can’t expect it to smell of flowers.” Reaching blindly to her right, she snags a large silver bowl and drops the bowel in with a wetsplat.
“It’s like you’re playing with a jigsaw puzzle.” I press a hand to my stomach and command my body to stop sweating. “But you’re dismantling it instead of assembling.”
“I gave you ample opportunity to escape,” she singsongs.
Setting the bowl aside and straightening her back, Minka stretches her limbs out long, but her eyes remain laser-focused on the inside of her patient’s chest. “Heart remains,” she speaks for the record as though on rote. “Lungs. Though cancerous-like abnormalities are particularly notable.”
Lowering her hands again, she gently grabs the flap of skin that covers Thomas’ neck. Peeling it back, she lays it on his face and brings a warm wave of nausea higher in my stomach. “I’m leaving the remaining abdominal organs for a moment, and moving to Mr. Thomas’ chest.”
Grabbing her knife once more, she brings the blade beneath his jaw and starts a slow slice, following the line of his existing bone structure around to the other side of his face. When she’s done, she digs her fingers into the gap she just cut, grabbing the man’s tongue and dragging it down through the hole like some kind of grotesque peep show no one but a freak M.E. would pay to see.
She glances up with a smile, proud of her work. “This is the—”
“No, I’m good.” Swallowing, I shake my head and break away from the table. “Don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know.”
“Wait!” Laughing, she pauses her work to taunt me. “Archer! Where are you going?”
“Away.” I yank the door wide with numb fingers and gulp down a lungful of oxygen that doesn’t taste like Neil Thomas’ asshole. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
“But, Archer!” she giggles. “It was just his tongue. You already saw way worse!”
I clamp my lips shut, then I close my eyes and concentrate on beating back the stars that float in my vision. Instead, all I see are Neil’s ribs snapping under Minka’s strength. His lungs, blackened and rotting. His small intestine, swirling and spinning and inflamed with bad choices.
I escape the autopsy room and turn right to charge toward Minka’s office, but where I hoped for privacy, I’m left wanting when Aubree sits at her desk, smirking and snickering under her breath.
“Shut it.” I draw a heaping breath and hope to keep my lunch inside my stomach.She peeled his neck back and turned it into a second face!“Not a single fucking word.”
“Don’t be ashamed, Detective.” Sitting back in her chair, she giggles at my expense, just like her boss. “We all blow chunks our first time.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I slam my palm to Minka’s office door and stumble past piles of storage boxes stacked high. Then I charge toward the attached bathroom, hidden behind a faux wall that appears, to onlookers, to be where the room ends. “You people are sick,” I bite past the bile in my throat. “Disgusting! How the fuck does she peel a man’s skin without breaking a sweat?”
“It’s beautiful, no? Only the truly badass can remove a man’s ribcage and eat a burrito for dinner right after.”
“Hrgh—” My chest heaves as my stomach rebels. “Stop!”
“You hungry? Archer?”
MINKA
Iremove Thomas’ esophagus, trachea, and gullet in one fast sweep, then working my way down, I disconnect the muscle, and continue to the lungs and heart. I take everything, all the way down to the bladder, and, setting the lot on my dissection table, I make sure to keep my laughter trapped deep inside my chest, rather than free to be recorded and stored for the next hundred years.
Archer was squeamish before my first cut; I knew it, he knew it. He’s unwell and tired, so it was best he bowed out at the tongue, instead of relying on pride to get him through, and eventually vomiting directly into my patient’s mouth.
I might’ve enjoyed his torment on his way out, but my end goal remained honorable.
Sort of.
“You grossed him out.” Aubree moves through the door in her white lab coat and a heavy apron strapped across her front. Giggling under her breath and finishing tying the laces at her back, she comes around to stand on the opposite side of the table to take stock of where I’m up to. “You went hard and sent him running to the bathroom.”
“It had to be done.”
Lifting my hands from my patient and turning toward the recorder, I add, “Doctor Aubree Emeri has joined the autopsy of Neil Thomas.” Then I look to the table of organs I’ve already removed. “Chest and abdominals are empty. I haven’t cleaned the chest cavity yet, in case you’d like to do that.”
“I got it.”
Aubree moves to my tray of instruments, but unlike the fancy tools that outsidersassumewe buy for the job, my tray is made up of several standard household items. Bread knife. Hand saw. Soup ladle. Kitchen sponge. She snaps on a pair of gloves while perusing her options, then she selects the sponge and peeks inside.
I say nothing, because I don’t want to skew her findings. But when she purses her lips and frowns, I know she sees the cancer too. “He was dying already.”