“Well, everything seems to be here.”
Should he try for Nurse Penfield or not? It had been six weeks now, and at the age of twenty-seven six weeks was a long time to be celibate. Penfield was more than averagely attractive, probably thirty-two, young enough to be interesting, old enough to have long since shed innocency. She was intelligent, friendly; good figure too. He could see a slip beneath the white uniform; in the heat she probably was not wearing much else. Roger McNeil calculated. He would probably have to take her out a couple of times before she came through. Then that settled it; it couldn’t be this month—money was too short. Save it for me, la Penfield. You’ll be back; other patients will die and bring you here.
“Thank you, Doctor.” She smiled and turned away. It could be arranged; he was positive of that.
He called after her. “Keep ’em coming! We need the practice.” Again the timeworn jest, the defensive levity in face of death.
Elaine Penfield followed the attendant out. Her journey was done, tradition honored, the extra, unasked service given. She had gone the second mile; now her duty lay with the sick, the living. She had a feeling, though, that Dr. McNeil had come close to suggesting something. But there would be another time.
While George Rinne slipped a wooden headrest under the neck of the body, arranging the arms at the side, McNeil began to lay out the instruments they would need for the autopsy. Knives, rib cutters, forceps, power saw for the skull . . . all of them clean—Rinne was a conscientious worker—but not sterile, as they would have to be in the operating room four floors above. No need here to worry about infection of a patient on the table; only the pathologists need take precautions for themselves.
George Rinne looked at McNeil inquiringly, and the resident nodded. “Better phone the nursing office, George, Tell them the student nurses can come down now. And let Dr. Pearson know we’re setting up.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Rinne went out obediently. McNeil, as pathology resident, had authority even though his hospital pay was little more than the janitor’s own. It would not be long, though, before the gap between them would widen. With three and a half years of residency behind him only another six months separated McNeil from freedom to take a post as staff pathologist. Then he could start considering some of the twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year jobs, because fortunately the demand for pathologists continued to be greater than the supply. He would not have to worry then about whether he could afford a pass at Nurse Penfield—or others.
Roger McNeil smiled inwardly at the thought, though he did not betray it on his face. People who had to deal with McNeil thought he was dour, which he often was, and sometimes lacking in a sense of humor, which he was not. Actually he did not make friends easily with men; but women found him attractive, a fact he had discovered early and turned to advantage. When he was an intern his colleagues had found this puzzling. McNeil, the gloomy, brooding figure of the common room, had had uncanny success in whisking a succession of student nurses into bed, frequently where others who fancied their ability as paramours had failed.
The autopsy-room door swung open and Mike Seddons breezed in. Seddons was a surgical resident, temporarily assigned to Pathology, and he always breezed. His red hair stood up in odd places as though a self-created wind would never leave it static. His boyish, open face seemed creased permanently in an amiable grin. McNeil considered Seddons an exhibitionist, though in his favor the kid had taken to pathology a lot more readily than some of the other surgical residents McNeil had seen.
Seddons looked over at the body on the table. “Ah, more business!”
McNeil gestured to the case papers and Seddons picked them up. He asked, “What did he die of?” Then, as he read on, “Coronary, eh?”
McNeil answered, “That’s what it says.”
“You doing this one?”
The resident shook his head. “Pearson’s coming.”
Seddons looked up quizzically. “The boss man himself? What’s special about this case?”
“Nothing special.” McNeil snapped a four-page autopsy form onto a clip board. “Some of the student nurses are coming in to watch. I think he likes to impress them.”
“A command performance!” Seddons grinned. “This I must see.”
“In that case you may as well work.” McNeil passed over the clip board. “Fill in some of this stuff, will you?”
“Sure.” Seddons took the clip board and began to make notes on fee condition of the body. He talked to himself as he worked. “That’s a nice clean appendix scar. Small mole on the left arm.” He moved the arm to one side. “Excuse me, old man.” He made a note, “Slight rigor mortis.” Lifting the eyelids, he wrote, “Pupils round, 0.3 cm. diameter.” He pried the already stiff jaw open, “Let’s have a look at the teeth.”
From the corridor outside there was the sound of feet. Then the autopsy-room door opened, and a nurse, whom McNeil recognized as a member of the nursing school’s teaching staff, looked in. She said, “Good morning, Dr. McNeil.” Behind her was a group of young student nurses.
“Good morning.” The resident beckoned. “You can all come in.”
The students filed through the doorway. There were six, and as they entered all glanced nervously at the body on the table. Mike Seddons grinned. “Hurry up, girls. You want the best seats; we have ’em.”
Seddons ran his eye appraisingly over the group. There were a couple of new ones here he had not seen previously, including the brunette. He took a second look. Yes indeed; even camouflaged by the spartan student’s uniform, it was obvious that here was something special. With apparent casualness he crossed the autopsy room, then, returning, managed to position himself between the girl he had noticed and the rest of the group. He gave her a broad smile and said quietly, “I don’t remember seeing you before.”
“I’ve been around as long as the other girls.” She looked at him with a mixture of frankness and curiosity, then added mockingly, “Besides, I’ve been told that doctors never notice first-year nursing students anyway.”
He appeared to consider. “Well, it’s a general rule. But sometimes we make exceptions—depending on the student, of course.” His eyes candidly admiring, he added, “By the way, I’m Mike Seddons.”
She said, “I’m Vivian Loburton,” and laughed. Then, catching a disapproving eye from the class instructor, she stopped abruptly. Vivian had liked the look of this redheaded young doctor, but it did seem wrong somehow to be talking and joking in here. After all, the man on the table was dead. He had just died, she had been told upstairs; that was the reason she and the other student nurses had been taken from their work to watch the autopsy. The thought of the word “autopsy” brought her back to what was to happen here. Vivian wondered how she was going to react; already she felt uneasy. She supposed, as a nurse, she would grow used to seeing death, but at the moment it was still new and rather frightening.
There were footsteps coming down the corridor. Seddons touched her arm and whispered, “We’ll talk again— soon.” Then the door was flung open and the student nurses moved back respectfully as Dr. Joseph Pearson strode inside. He greeted them with a crisp “Good morning.” Then, without waiting for the murmured acknowledgments, he strode to a locker, slipped off his white coat, and thrust his arms into a gown which he had taken from the shelf. Pearson gestured to Seddons, who stepped over and tied the gown strings at the back. Then, like a well-drilled team, the two moved over to a washbasin where Seddons shook powder from a can over Pearson’s hands, afterward holding out a pair of rubber gloves into which the older man thrust his fingers. All this had been accomplished in silence. Now Pearson shifted his cigar slightly and grunted a “Thanks.”
He crossed to the table and, taking the clip board which McNeil held out to him, began to read it, apparently oblivious of everything else. So far Pearson had not even glanced at the body on the table. Watching the performance covertly, as he, too, moved across, it occurred to Seddons that it was like the entry of a maestro before a symphony. All that was missing was applause.
Now that Pearson had digested the case history he, too, inspected the body, comparing his findings with the notes Seddons had written. Then he put the clip board down and, removing his cigar, faced the nurses across the table. “This is your first experience of an autopsy, I believe.”
The girls murmured, “Yes, sir,” or, “Yes, Doctor.”
Pearson nodded. “Then I will explain that I am Dr. Pearson, the pathologist of this hospital. These gentlemen are Dr. McNeil, the resident in pathology, and Dr. Seddons, a resident in surgery, in his third year . . .” He turned to Seddons. “Am I right?”
Seddons smiled. “Quite right, Dr. Pearson.”
Pearson continued, “In his third year of residency, and who is favoring us with a spell of duty in Pathology.” He glanced at Seddons. “Dr. Seddons will shortly qualify to practice surgery and be released upon an unsuspecting public.”
