CHAPTER 22
When the doors opened, the young man pointed. “Down the hall and to your left.”
“Thanks,” Sidney said as she and Derrick exited the elevator and walked the fluorescent-lit hallway.
Peach tiles lined the walls and the smell of bleach and high-school chemistry lab filled the air.
Her heels echoed as she walked, loud clanking that reverberated from the sterile tiles around them.
She looked down at Derrick’s feet and saw that he wore tennis shoes, quiet as a ninja.
“At least, they’ll know we’re coming,” Derrick said. “May even raise some of the dead bodies down here.”
Sidney gave him a sarcastic smile. “This place creeps me out.”
“Really? I feel right at home.”
They came to a set of boxed windows, the blinds of which were open to offer a voyeuristic view into the morgue.
Twelve tables stood in symmetric rows of three.
Shiny metal hoses hung from ceiling spigots over each table.
Stainless-steel tubs lined the walls. Dr. Cutty stood with two other physicians around one of the tables.
She was clearly in charge of whatever was happening, evidenced by the animated way in which she was organizing the scene.
One of the doctors spotted Sidney and pointed at the window. Dr. Cutty turned and waved her in.
“Roll?” Derrick asked.
“Oh, yeah. This has to be good.”
“Creepy as hell, anyway,” Derrick said as he set the camera onto his shoulder, flicked his thumb, and adjusted the focus as he peered through the viewfinder.
He followed Sidney into the morgue. He didn’t need her direction.
After three documentaries together, he knew what she wanted.
He angled the camera so the back of her head took up the foreground and in the distance, over Sidney’s shoulder, the three doctors, garbed in long coats and standing morbidly around an autopsy table, were blurred and ominous.
As Sidney approached, their images hauntingly came into focus.
It would make for a great intro shot, or even a “next time on The Girl of Sugar Beach” teaser.
“Sidney,” Dr. Cutty said. “Good to see you.”
“You too. Thanks for having me down.”
“Of course.” Dr. Cutty opened her arms. “Welcome to my office. It can be a little drab down here, and when it’s empty, we get some echoing. Hope that doesn’t hurt with your video.”
“Derrick is a master. He’ll edit everything down so it sounds perfect.”
“These are Drs. Schultz and Tilly, the other pathology fellows here in Raleigh.”
Handshakes all around as Sidney tried to ignore the autopsy tables on each side of them, and the white sheets that covered in lumpy fashion the bodies underneath.
“I told Dr. Schultz and Dr. Tilly about your request that I have a look at the Julian Crist autopsy. I asked for their help. All three of us reviewed the autopsy—the photos, the reports, the analysis, everything. We all came to the same conclusion.”
“Which was?”
“Somebody screwed up.”
Sidney slowly looked to the corner of the morgue where Derrick was filming. He gave a thumbs-up; he was getting it all.
“And you can prove this?”
“The autopsy report and photos are ten years old, but we’ve combed through them very carefully. Yes, we think we can show without doubt that the conclusions in the report are incorrect.”
Sidney nodded slowly. Tomorrow night’s airing would put her three episodes in, ratings were thin, and the audience was growing at a slower clip than anticipated.
She needed an explosive installment. She needed an “aha moment” that caught viewers off guard, and made them talk about the documentary with friends and coworkers.
“Which conclusion?” Sidney asked.
“The one that suggested Julian Crist’s skull fracture was caused by a boat oar. It was not.”
“How were you able to determine this? And how can you prove it?”
“Here’s the deal,” Dr. Cutty said. “Our one-year pathology fellowship runs from July fifteenth last year to July fifteenth this year. That’s a few days from now.
So the three of us are all but finished with our training.
We’ve written our boards, we’ve reached our autopsy numbers, and we’ve each accepted job offers.
That means we’re stuck here for two more weeks and we’re bored as hell.
The only thing we have left to complete is our end-of-year projects, which require each of us to conduct an experiment to prove or disprove a theory common to forensic pathology.
We’ve all started researching our own projects, but, frankly, none of us has very good ideas.
Typically, this end-of-training exercise is a way to kill the last week or two of fellowship and no one, including our chairman, takes it particularly seriously.
But after you and I spoke, and we all had a look at the Julian Crist autopsy, the three of us figured we’d take a stab at changing that.
We’re going to conduct an experiment to show that it was impossible for the boat oar in question to have caused Julian Crist’s skull fracture.
In exchange, you agree not only to give it a prominent place in the documentary, but also to give each of us face time through interviews.
Plus, list us as consultants in the credits. ”
Sidney lifted her chin. “Better than being published.”
“We’re already published.”
Sidney shrugged her shoulders. “Agreed. Depending on what, exactly, you can show me. And what theory you’re trying to prove or disprove.”
“René Le Fort created classifications of skull fractures. We’ll use his theories as our guide to refute the conclusion in Julian Crist’s autopsy.
” Dr. Cutty lifted her hand to the autopsy table.
“We did some experiments on our own to reproduce Julian’s skull fracture.
We’ll do them again now, and we’ll show you why that boat oar theory is complete nonsense. ”