Night Blood

by James M. Thompson

  Niemann shook his head, frowning. “I’m sorry, Shelly, but I just realized I’m late for a lecture to the sophomore class on anemia. Could you check with me later?”

  Shelly started back toward the elevator. “Roger, wait a minute, it won’t take long . . .” Then the doors closed and the elevator was gone.

  Shelly turned back to Matt, eyebrows raised. “Well, guess we’ll just have to figure it out by ourselves.”

  “That shouldn’t present a problem, for an expert pathologist like you,” Matt teased, “unless you’ve grown rusty with that cushy job over at Methodist where the most exciting thing you see is a slide of cirrhosis of the liver from too many three-martini lunches.”

  “Hey, rich people get sick too,” Shelly countered. “Don’t be such a snob, Matt.”

  They started down the hall toward the morgue. Matt noticed a very attractive young woman in a clinic jacket, looking at her watch and tapping her foot.

  He whistled under his breath and Shelly nudged him. “Nice, huh? She’s my new associate professor of pathology.” As he saw her look at her watch again, then frown at them, Shelly said, “Uh-oh, she’s pissed. Never keep a woman waiting, Matt, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  She called out, “Yo, Shelly! You coming to this party, or are we gonna have to call an outside caterer?”

  As they walked up to her, she stuck the metal chart she was holding under her arm and put her pencil behind her ear. She was a good-looking woman, and Matt wondered how she could have worked around the medical center without him hearing about her.

  Matt stuck his hand out. “Hi, I’m Matt Carter.”

  She took it and her face became a little more guarded. Probably used to being hit on by every male she meets, thought Matt, who tried to keep his admiration for her looks out of his expression and his eyes firmly on her face and not her chest.

  “Hello, Dr. Carter. I’m Samantha Scott, but I usually answer to Sam.”

  She was about five and a half feet tall and had auburn, almost red hair worn in a page boy style. Her eyes were a bright green and were deep enough to get lost in. Even in a clinic jacket, her figure was obvious, with larger than average breasts, a tiny waist, and well-rounded hips. She was one of those women who wear no makeup, but unlike most of them, didn’t need any.

  “Do you have the woman brought in last night set up and ready?” Shelly asked.

  “Yes, sir, I do. I’ve even got some medical students and a couple of internal medicine residents in attendance.”

  Matt stared at her in disbelief. “How did you manage that?” He looked at his watch, noting it was almost lunchtime, a time when residents traditionally disappeared. “Did the cafeteria catch on fire or are you serving a buffet down here?”

  She grinned. “No, Dr. Hunt brought them down. He said he thought they should see an autopsy as part of their training in medicine.”

  Shelly shook his head. “You are talking about Dr. David Hunt, the famous internist and skeptic?” he asked, with heavy sarcasm. When Sam nodded, he continued, “And Hunt said they should see an autopsy as part of their training in internal medicine?”

  Sam nodded again. “Yeah. In fact, he said, ‘In order to gain an appreciation of the body in health, one must first see the ravages of disease.’ ”

  Shelly and Matt both began to laugh out loud, while Sam tried to shush them. Between laughs, Shelly said, “Why, that old fraud. He just wants to come down here and show off his knowledge to those residents.” He winked.

  As Sam turned to see if the door to the morgue was open and they could be overheard, Shelly said, “I’ll bet before the residents got here he asked to see the chart, didn’t he?” Sam nodded again. “That schmuck was trying to find out the COD from the chart so he could look like a big shot in front of his residents.” Shelly’s lips turned down in disgust. “Well, we’ll just have to see how much he really knows about the ‘ravages of disease.’ ” He started through the door.

  Five

  The morgue at the Taub is a state-of-the-art facility. The main room is about forty feet square and contains eight autopsy tables arranged in two rows of four. The tables, made of stainless steel, have two-inch-high raised sides and a drain at the foot to catch water used to wash down bodies and carry it away. The concrete floors have drains strategically placed to wash the inevitable spills and stains away. The walls are painted institutional white and several banks of fluorescent lights keep the morgue bright as daylight. A large walk-in cooler stores the corpses waiting their turn on the tables. Naked bodies lie on gurneys, with sheets covering them and toe tags wired to the big toes of their right feet. The room is kept very cool and well ventilated for obvious reasons.

  In spite of that, the odor of formaldehyde and pine-scented antiseptic was strong enough to make Matt’s eyes water and his nose itch. He shivered as he and Sam followed Shelly into the autopsy suite.

  Shelly paused, just inside the door, as a thin man with dark hair sauntered up to him and mumbled a few words, his eyes on his shoes.

  Shelly frowned. “Speak up, Gregory. What did you say?”

  The man looked up, but still avoided Shelly’s eyes. “I said, the room is set up and ready for you, Dr. Silver.”

  Shelly looked closely at him. “Are you all right? You don’t look well.”

  Gregory blinked twice, slowly like a reptile, then nodded and walked over to the tray of instruments and folded his arms. Matt silently agreed with Shelly; the man didn’t look well. His skin was drawn and so pale and translucent Matt thought he could see the veins beneath his skin. He appeared to have lost weight recently and his scrubs hung on his body. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was sweating in spite of the coolness of the room.

  There were several other autopsies in progress, and Matt recognized four or five faculty members standing around, with medical students and residents, observing.

  He bent and whispered to Sam, “I didn’t realize you guys were so popular down here.”

  She looked around as if noticing the crowd for the first time. “Yeah, I guess so,” she said. “Since this is a teaching hospital, quite a few of the professors and town docs bring their interesting cases here for the students to learn from.”

  Matt saw Dr. James Goddard, Houston’s gynecologist to the rich and famous, as well as a heart surgeon second only to Dr. DeBakey in fame and two other surgeons known for their work in transplant research. He shook his head. “It’s like a who’s-who of Houston medicine here.”

  “Even the most famous docs have their failures,” Sam said, “and we get most of ’em.”

  Matt turned his attention to the table next to him. The body of the young female he worked on the night before had already been positioned on the stainless steel. Matt tensed. He had often heard the old saying that people went into medicine because of their own fear of mortality, hoping to gain some mastery over death. He felt no mastery here today, only a sense of his own failure.

  Shelly paused and seemed to gather his authority around him like a cape. Here in the morgue, the pathologist was the undisputed champion of the dead. Shelly slowly looked at his small audience of three medical students, two medicine residents, and Dr. David Hunt. “Gentlemen, good morning,” he said, and shed his clinic jacket and handed it to Gregory to hang up. Then, like a matador putting on his suit of lights, he allowed Sam to dress him in his autopsy jacket.

  Watching his performance, Matt hoped he had the good sense to keep the jacket with its various ingrained stains and odors in the morgue. Shelly slipped on a surgical mask and cap and motioned for the rest of the observers to do the same. He explained to the students that masks were always worn when the COD was undetermined, to keep the examiners from catching something exotic from the corpse. Some of the younger pathologists dressed in surgical attire resembling space suits, fearing secondary exposure to the AIDS virus. Shelly, however, was of the old school, trusting his own impeccable technique to protect him from infection.

  He walked to the right side of the
table and pulled back the sheet covering the corpse. The rest of the group arranged themselves on the other side of the table, and there was a muted, almost subliminal moan from the audience as the body and its wounds were seen for the first time.

  For Matt, it wasn’t the wounds so much as the realization that this lifeless shape of torn and rendered flesh had, just yesterday, been a living, breathing woman with all the hopes, aspirations, and dreams that young women have. Though he hadn’t known her personally, she had been his patient, even if only briefly. In his mind, he uttered a silent apology to her that he hadn’t been able to do more for her, wondering if this young girl’s relatives were somewhere crying over their loss or if those present at her autopsy were to be the only ones mourning her death.

  When he heard the almost inaudible moan from across the table, Shelly looked up. “Gentlemen, I want you to remember that this was a human being, and during the autopsy, we shall give her the same respect we would any other patient. Now, let us begin.”

  He glanced at Dr. Hunt and inclined his head toward the corpse. “Doctor, would you like to give the opening statement of the observations apparent from the gross condition of the body?”

  Dr. David Hunt was of average height and tended toward the rotund, with dark, wavy hair and skin that looked as if he had it massaged daily with milk. Though he had to be in his midforties, he didn’t look a day over twenty-five, Matt thought. Hunt’s fingers were long and thin, like those of a concert pianist, and they continually fidgeted with his small moustache.

  Hunt seemed to puff up and get a little taller with this recognition from Shelly and he stepped closer to the table, glancing at the medical students to make sure he had their full attention. Matt was reminded of a peacock, spreading his tail feathers and strutting for his mate.

  “Certainly, Doctor,” Hunt said. He leaned over and repositioned the woman’s head on the wooden block in order to get a better look at her face and neck.

  Shelly reached up and turned on the microphone hanging directly over the table. He explained to the students, “This microphone is attached to a voice-activated tape recorder that will record all that is said for later transcription for the formal autopsy report.”

  Dr. Hunt held his face close to the patient’s, staring first at her face and then letting his gaze drop to her breasts as if he knew her. Matt had the horrible thought for a moment Hunt was going to kiss the cold, dead lips; then the internist began dictating in the stilted, formal tone some people use when their remarks are being recorded. “The subject is an Anglo female, apparently in her early to midtwenties.” He referred briefly to a chart hanging on a hook on the side of the table. “She is sixty-five inches tall and weighs one hundred and twenty-five pounds. She was brought into Ben Taub Hospital at about nine P.M. and was pronounced dead approximately twelve minutes later.”

  Hunt paused and looked up at Shelly for his reaction. When Shelly nodded in approval, Hunt seemed to swell even more within his jacket and smiled slightly as he prepared to go on with his report.

  The door to the morgue opened and Dr. Niemann strolled in. He looked around at the group and gave a little gesture with his hand. “Shelly, I changed my mind. If you still want my help . . . ?”

  Shelly’s eyes widened; then he motioned for Gregory to hand Niemann a lab coat and a mask. “Of course, Roger, come on in. You’ll see why I asked you here in just a moment.”

  Shelly led him over to the table. “Go on with your presentation, David. I’ve asked Dr. Niemann to join us and give us the benefit of his expertise in hematology.”

  Hunt seemed somewhat irritated at the interruption. He dismissed Niemann with a curt nod and turned his attention back to the body. “The subject was found in a vacant lot near the downtown area and appears to have been partially devoured by animals, probably while unconscious from her wounds.” He fingered her hands, which showed many tiny teeth marks where the pads of her fingers had been partially eaten away, and examined her ears, which also showed signs of small bites, with tooth marks indenting edges of tissue that had been ripped and torn away in chunks.

  As Hunt pointed out these wounds, Matt blushed behind his mask. He hadn’t noticed the wounds and bite marks on her fingers or ears. Being occupied with trying to keep her alive was no excuse. It had been sloppy of him and he was embarrassed at his oversight. The wounds suggested she had lain unattended for some time before being discovered. Not a pleasant picture, Matt thought: her lying there, her lifeblood draining out, perhaps calling weakly for someone, anyone to come and help her. He shivered and forced his attention back to Hunt.

  Hunt continued, “She apparently suffered numerous rat bites and there is a large area of her neck that has been torn or ripped, probably by a large dog or cat . . .”

  “Excuse me, Doctor,” Shelly interrupted. He reached up and turned off the microphone so his statement wouldn’t be recorded and typed into the official report. “I’m afraid you’re straying from observation and into interpretation of what you see. . . .”

  Hunt’s forehead flushed crimson over the mask. “What do you mean? Everything I’ve said is observation, I haven’t interpreted anything yet!”

  Matt couldn’t see Shelly’s expression behind his mask, but the pathologist rolled his eyes theatrically and looked over at Sam, whose eyes crinkled. Matt figured she was smiling behind her mask. Shelly said to her, “Dr. Scott, even though you’re a lowly associate professor, barely out of your residency, and hardly know enough to diagnose death, much less its cause, I need your help here.” He inclined his head toward Hunt. “Will you kindly tell this internist what even your inexperienced eyes can see?”

  The compliment was so convoluted that it took Sam a minute to realize that Shelly wanted her to take over presenting the case. She gave him a look, her eyes flat, that made Matt glad it was directed at Shelly and not at him. Before she stepped up to the table to begin, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves and put them on.

  Matt noticed Hunt look down at his own unprotected hands, then over at a nearby table where he had laid the gloves Gregory gave him without putting them on. His face paled at the thought of what this body might have exposed him to. Matt grinned behind his mask, knowing that Hunt had a desperate desire to go and immediately scrub his hands. Though the body displayed none of the stigmata of AIDS, it was a constant concern of doctors treating patients in the Houston area, particularly prostitutes and IV drug users.

  Evidently sensing some drama unfolding, Dr. Goddard and one of the two transplant surgeons, a tall, thin man named Joe Bloodworth, ambled over to stand behind the group, their hands in the pockets of their lab coats, craning their necks to get a better view.

  Sam began her examination of the corpse as she talked. “I concur in what Dr. Hunt said, up to the part about the neck wound.” She took a small retractable tape measure and placed it next to the wound in the throat. “There is a 3.5- by 4.3-centimeter jagged wound in the anterior portion of the neck, directly overlying the right carotid artery. There are what appear to be tooth marks on the edges of the wound.” Sam looked over at Shelly. A look Matt couldn’t interpret passed between them as he gave an affirmative nod, his eyes showing approval of her observation.

  She glanced at Hunt, who was impatiently shifting his weight from one foot to the other and looking bored. Dr. Niemann was staring fixedly at the neck wound, his eyes slitted against the bright light directly over the autopsy table. Matt thought to himself the internist probably didn’t see too many trauma wounds like this in his office-based practice.

  Hunt, as if unable to stand not being the center of attention, said, with some irritation, “So, just what does all that jargon mean?”

  Sam explained to him, “The throat wound wasn’t made by a dog or cat. It was probably the cause of death, and it was apparently made by a mouth resembling that of a human being.”

  Matt saw her look at the group standing around them. Her eyes stopped on Dr. Goddard, whose gaze left the wo
und and fixed on her. After a moment, Sam shuddered and forced her attention back to the body.

  That’s strange, Matt thought; for some reason Dr. Goddard frightens her.

  The others all began talking at once, while Matt tried to sort out what she meant, until Sam held up her hand. “That’s not all.”

  “What do you mean that’s not all? What else have you discovered to enlighten us?” Hunt asked sarcastically.

  “It also appears that most of her blood has been removed from the body.”

  Everything in the room came to a standstill; even the sink seemed to stop dripping, adding to the shocked silence. Hunt stuttered a couple of times, the students and residents looked from Sam to Shelly, then at each other, but the other doctors observing the autopsy continued to stare at Sam.

  Finally, Hunt found his voice. “Of all the stupid, ill-conceived theories . . .” he began, shaking his finger in Sam’s face.

  Shelly stopped it all with a simple “She’s right.”

  Hunt’s eyes opened wide. After a moment he collected himself. “What do you mean, she’s right? Is she right about the wound and the cause of death, or is she right about the body being drained of blood?”

  Shelly stepped over to the table, donned a pair of surgical gloves, cracked his knuckles, and looked into Hunt’s face with an unflinching stare. “It appears to me that she’s right about both.”

  Dr. Goddard, who had a reputation as something of a martinet and considered himself to be the best surgeon in Houston, moved one of the medical students to the side and stepped up to the table. He leaned down and closely examined the neck wound for a moment, prying the edges apart with a silver Cross ballpoint pen he took from his pocket. After poking and probing for several moments, he looked up. “Shelly, I’m afraid I don’t agree with your associate’s rather fanciful evaluation.”

  Sam’s face blushed crimson above her mask, and Shelly stared at Goddard, as if by questioning his judgment the doctor had made some terrible social blunder. Goddard stirred the edges of the wound with his pen for a moment, then stared at Shelly.