A set of double doors looms ahead withMORGUEstenciled across them in no-nonsense block letters. In an office next to it, a white woman with steel-gray hair twisted into a bun hunches over a computer.
DJ knocks. “Excuse me?”
The woman looks up.
DJ waves. “Hi. We’re here to watch the autopsy of the two homicide victims who came in three days ago.”
“Nobody told me about any research team.”
“Really?” DJ asks. “Richard Rossi from our department would have sent you an email. Should be in your inbox.”
The woman makes an irritated sound and clicks through her computer with the enthusiasm of someone forced to troubleshoot their printer.
Sure enough, she finds it and makes a phone call. In a couple of minutes, a guy in scrubs appears and leads us through a series of hallways that all look the same. He hands us disposable gowns, masks, and gloves, giving us a very stern lecture about not touching anything before leading us to an autopsy room.
A petite Japanese woman stands near two examination tables, already covered head to toe in blue disposable material. Her dark eyes assess us over her mask as we enter.
“Dr. Kimura,” our escort says. “Research students here to observe.”
I step forward, but Dr. Kimura’s voice cuts across the room before my foot hits the ground. “Behind the yellow line.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, shuffling backward.
Dr. Kimura pulls back the first sheet, revealing a pale man with light brown hair and closed eyes. Greg. It feels strange to see him in person after seeing him in so much detail during the team meeting. Almost like a sad version of seeing a celebrity in real life.
I wonder if that’s how people feel when they recognize me.
I knew people go still when they die, but nothing prepares you forhowstill they become. Dr. Kimura confirms he’s dead with an EKG, which seems redundant given the circumstances, but I guess it’s good to be thorough when you’re about to cut someone open.
Dr. Kimura slices from the shoulders to the center of the chest, then down the middle in a Y-shape. The sound is wet like tearing fabric.
I swallow hard against the acid burning the back of my throat. Some stranger in scrubs laid my family out on tables like this one, and they would’ve made the same cuts and pulled back the skin in the same way. I can almost feel the scalpel digging into my own chest, the cold bite of metal finding bone.
I reach for the dog tags, but they are so deeply buried under layers of disposable material that I can’t get to them. Cold sweat beads along my hairline, my pulse hammering against my throat like it’s trying to punch its way out.
Stop it. You’re okay.
“Evidence of ante-mortem amputation of the right pinky finger,” Dr. Kimura dictates into the microphone hanging above the table.
I glance at DJ, whose eyes have gone wide behind her mask.
Dr. Kimura looks bored. I wonder how many bodies it took before she stopped seeing bodies as people and started seeing them as meat and bone to be inventoried, before she could talk about severed fingers without her voice shaking.
I move closer to DJ, trying to barely move my lips as I ask her, “How are you going to get closer?”
“I’m trying to figure that out.”
I scan the room, looking for anything that might help. I can’t let us leave here without something to show for it.
I can hear something… not exactly a sound, but more like a vibration, like that hearing test I used to do at the pediatrician, when the tone was so high-pitched I could feel it more than hear it.
Wait.
Could it be a death echo? Could the ability to talk to ghosts allow me to hear death echoes better than DJ can?
Maybe this is the one useful thing I can do for these people. I’m not smart like Benji or Zoey. I can’t fight ghosts, at least not yet. But I can listen.
I take a step over the yellow line.
