Public Anatomy (25 page)

“I can try,” Meg said. “If not, I’ll find out how from the Conch.”

When Eli arrived at the morgue, he found Meg sitting at the computer. She had pulled a white dry-erase board next to her desk, written the names of the three victims, and next to each name their identifying organs:

Bone
Tongue
Stomach

This ID scheme fit with the method used in clinical medicine, referring to the patient by their diseased organ rather than by name:
the gallbladder in room six, pancreatitis in nine
.

Eli turned a chair backward, straddled it, and tilted toward the screen.

Meg greeted him. “Where you been?”

Eli released a pent-up breath. He had driven a straight shot from Henry’s institution, staring absently at the road, preoccupied with the series of murders, trying to discern a pattern.

“I went to see my brother.”

Meg turned toward Eli. He did not look away from the computer screen.

“How is Henry?”

Eli shook his head. “Not good.”

Meg already knew how dedicated Eli was to his brother. Each other’s only close family, Eli was Henry’s sole financial and emotional support.

“You’re doing all you can, Eli. The place may not be pretty, but they will take care of him. They will.”

Eli nodded, confirming her words and moving on.

“What are we looking at?”

Meg slid the mouse and advanced to the next screen. “You asked for the OR log files. You got ’em.”

“The Conch-inator rocks.”

“She has her moments.”

Eli studied the web page and pointed to a section of the screen. “Go to Operating Room Register.”

The next window presented the search options, by
Specialty, Operation
, or
Personnel
.

Under
Personnel
, eight empty fields appeared in which to enter the names of OR personnel.

“What is this database used for?” Meg asked.

“Quality control. Allows you to search outcomes based on different OR teams.”

“Outcomes?”

“Say that the infection rate of a certain procedure starts to rise. They can search for common denominators within the teams. Maybe someone who’s breaking sterile technique—or carries staph in their nose.”

Meg fake gagged. “Hospitals are nasty.”

“Yeah,” Eli said and turned to the white board. “Enter the three names. See what happens.”

Meg started typing. “Any certain order?”

“No, it shouldn’t matter. The computer will search for all operations that have those three in common.”

After typing the third name, Meg looked at Eli.

“Hit enter.”

A prompt appeared asking for dates of inclusion.

“How far back?” Meg asked.

“I don’t know, say, six months.”

A list of operations filled the screen, listed by date, type of procedure, and surgeon. Meg scrolled to the end of the list. Twenty-three operations in all.

“So what does this mean?”

“It means that these three employees, all of whom are now dead,
were assigned to work together on twenty-three operations over the past six months.”

They read through the list. Orthopedic operations such as hip replacements and spinal fusions. General surgery cases, mainly laparoscopic cholecystectomies. And gynecologic procedures including cervical biopsy, D and Cs, hysterectomies.

“How does this help, Eli? They worked at the same hospital, with some of the same patients. So what?”

“We’re looking for a connection, Meg. You got a better idea?”

She gestured toward the sheet-covered lump lying on her autopsy table. “Yeah, I could take care of my customer. He’s been waiting patiently through all this.”

“I forgot about him,” Eli said. “I guess you never get lonely down here.”

“Never.”

Eli turned toward the gurney. “Just a few more minutes, sir. She’ll be right with you.”

Meg turned his face back toward the screen. “Very funny.”

Eli grabbed the mouse, clicked at random on one of the operations listed. A spinal fusion.

The screen gave a detailed account of the procedure. The patient’s name was listed at the top of the page followed by all the personnel involved. Eli found the names of the anesthesiologist, the anesthetist, and the nurse. Also listed were the circulating nurse, orthopedic resident, medical student, and, of course, the attending surgeon.

“That confirms they worked together,” Meg said. “But what does it tell us about why they were murdered?”

“I don’t know,” Eli said, “we’re looking for something unusual.” He read information on the screen that included start and end time of the operation, designation of infection risk, and any complications that occurred. The spinal operation lasted one hundred and thirty-four minutes, was a clean case, no complications.

Eli returned to the previous screen and scrolled up to the top of the page Meg had initially displayed.

“Wait a minute.”

“Wait a minute, what?” Meg asked.

Eli waved the cursor over the most recent operation and underlined the surgeon’s name, Liza French. The operation was marked with a red exclamation point. Eli double-clicked it.

A gray warning box appeared.

“No, I’m not,” Eli said aloud as he clicked a smaller box marked
Yes
.

A second warning box appeared.

“I don’t think they want us to be here,” Meg said.

“Hell, yes. I wish to.”

The patient’s name and list of personnel were arranged similarly to the previous case. Eli found the name of the most recent victim, nurse Virginia Brewer.

He imagined what must have occurred. The calm of an operation coming to a close. A shift into terror. He saw flashes of the anesthesiologist checking the airway, nurses scrambling, Liza watching from the robotic console, her career crashing in a sea of red.

Meg realized that Eli was staring at the screen. “Eli?”

He refocused. Scrolled down to a section labeled
Comments:

Intraoperative death occurred at one hundred forty-seven
minutes. Patient pronounced dead by Dr. French at 10:27 a.m
.

“I should know,” Meg said. “I did the autopsy. It was awful.”

She had Eli’s full attention.

“And Liza French did not agree with my findings or the cause of death.”

“Yes, I remember.” Eli said. “A vascular injury, right?”

“Aortic laceration. Right at the bifurcation. Likely from a misplaced trocar. They opened her, tried to repair it, but she was gone.”

Again, Eli saw flashes of the operating room. He sensed that stomach-to-the-floor feeling of a bad complication. But he’d never had a fatality in the OR. Eli read the names of the victims again. He thought of the other personnel in the operation as survivors. At least for now.

For the first time there seemed to be a link between the three murders and this operative death. Only he could not imagine how.

“Maybe it’s just coincidence, Eli. These three people died
and
they happen to work together.”

“Not just died, Meg. They were murdered. Bones and tongues cut out, stomachs put on display.” Eli realized that he’d raised his voice, was almost shouting. But he kept on. “And not just worked together but were assigned to the same operation during which the patient happened to die.”

Meg said nothing while Eli calmed down somewhat. Then she pointed at the screen. “Are we looking at the names of the next victims?”

“Put it this way,” Eli said. “I wouldn’t want my name written on this page.”

They stared at the screen in silence until Meg asked, “What’s this?” She pointed to another
Comment
at the bottom of the page.

This operation was broadcast live on the Internet until the complication occurred, at which time SurgCast terminated the transmission.

“SurgCast?” Meg asked.

Eli knew of operations webcast in real time, but he’d never seen one.
Why didn’t Liza tell me about this?

“That operation was an unfortunate choice to post live on the Internet,” Eli said.

“No kidding,” Meg agreed. “Why did the hospital do it?”

“Reality surgery on the web. It’s great advertising.”

“Maybe I’ll just start filming my autopsies. I could use some extra cash.”

“It’s being done, I’m sure.”

Meg shook her head. “I could’ve filmed this woman’s autopsy. That way,” Meg explained, “the viewers could have seen her die in the OR, then watched her postmortem exam. Bet that hasn’t been done.”

“Probably not,” Eli agreed. “Hang on to that one for sweeps week.”

At eight o’clock in the morning, The Poplar Avenue Free Clinic felt like a sauna. By midday, the temperature would be nearly intolerable, with a predicted high of 103. Not a good day for the clinic’s single air-conditioning unit to quit.

Cate discovered this when she arrived at seven a.m. to prepare for the day’s patients. Out of habit, the first thing she did was turn on the window unit. Straight to high. When she flipped the switch, only an electric hum emanated from the aged machine. The fan did not blow at all. Not even hot air. Cate turned it off, then back on again, stopping at the low setting this time, saying a desperate prayer.

Nothing.

She had run the unit on high each day, nonstop, all summer. Single-handedly she had killed it.

The patients would start showing within the hour. She could open the windows. That would help for a couple of hours. But then—

The care basket of snacks from her brother sat on the table in the break room. She had given most of the goodies away. She reached in the pocket of her white coat and felt for her cell phone tangled up in the rubber tubing of her stethoscope.

She called her brother. He was good at fixing things. Had the touch, as they say. She looked at her chipped fingernails, at a long scratch on the back of her hand that she had clumsily scraped on the counter’s edge in her apartment. Funny that
he
was the one born with the hands of a surgeon.

Her brother said he would be there in an hour. Fifty minutes later, he pulled his black Trans Am to the back of the clinic. An air-conditioning
unit bulged from the open trunk which was held down with a piece of rope.

Cate was busy dressing a diabetic foot ulcer. By then, Mary and her shopping cart had arrived and she helped with the procedure by opening packages of sterile gauze. When her brother walked in, Cate was so happy to see him she wanted to hug his neck.

He tested the air conditioner with the same dead result. While Cate wrapped the final bandage around the patient’s foot, she watched her brother unscrew the bolts on the front panel. He wore a sleeveless black T-shirt.

Mary watched him as well. She approached him as he strained against a rusty bolt, reached over and pinched his flexing bicep.

“Cate, your brother’s got rats tattooed on his arm.”

He said nothing.

Cate glanced at her brother’s tattoo, a crest of three slender animals drawn one on top of the other.

As usual, Mary wouldn’t let it go. “Why’s he got rats on his arm?”

“They’re weasels, okay?” He pulled away from Mary. “And don’t touch me again.”

Mary backed up. “Sorry.” Then under her breath. “Rat man.”

He finished removing the panel and returned outside.

When Cate opened the door to call in the next patient, she was surprised to see her brother standing out front near the patients. While he admired Cate’s work with the indigent population, he preferred to have no interaction with them. But there he was, talking with Joey the Flicker. By the way her brother motioned with his hands, he seemed to be explaining something to them. Joey took a step back, and for once stopped flicking his lighter, as though surprised himself at the interaction with this man.

Cate closed the door and watched them through the window. By then, Foster and the Meatman had become curious and moved to stand beside Joey. The three men stepped closer. Cate watched her brother open his wallet and hand each man what she thought was a twenty dollar bill. Then he led the men around to the back of the clinic. Cate called in the next patient.