“Hel…hello, Dr Comrade.”
Siri looked up. “Good morning Mr Geung.”
Geung stood unsteady, staring. “You’re here.”
“I know I am.” Siri understood the problem. Geung was always the first to arrive. He’d never walked in to find the doctor at work this early, and it threw him out of kilter. He needed order and consistency. Despite the illogic of it, Siri asked, as usual, “Any customers today, Mr Geung?”
Geung laughed and clapped. “No customers today, Doctor.” Reoriented, he put his rice basket on his desk and began the morning clean. Siri stooped back to his work.
“Well! Did you lock yourself in the morgue last night?” Dtui was at the door smiling at him.
“It isn’t unknown for me to be here early, nurse.”
“No. It’s not unknown for snow to fall in Vietnam either. But it still makes the front page of the newspaper.” She noticed the freezer door open. “She out jogging?”
Siri laughed. “If I’d known you were so funny in the morning, I’d have come early every day. Her husband took her home last night.”
“How romantic.”
Dtui also went to the office to deposit her lunch on her desk. She bumped into Geung in the doorway.
“Good morning, handsome man,” he prompted.
“Good morning, handsome man,” she said.
“Good morning, beautiful woman. Joke?”
“What has two wheels and eats people?”
“Don’t know.”
“A lion on a bicycle.” Geung laughed so enthusiastically, she found herself joining in. Siri in the next room got caught up in the merriment. He felt a sort of fatherly pride that his staff got along so well together. This was obviously a morning ritual he never got to see. He doubted whether Geung got all Dtui’s jokes, but he knew he’d still be able to recite them verbatim six months later.
He stared at the brain on the glass tray in front of him. He hadn’t given it sufficient time to set properly. It sprawled like a blancmange. But he didn’t want to wait; for his own peace of mind he had to know. He used his longest scalpel and cut carefully through the brain with one neat slash. He repeated this action several more times until the brain sat in slices like a soggy loaf of bread. He gently separated the sections and used a large magnifying glass to inspect each one.
Dtui, with a surgical mask over her face against the dust, was sweeping in the storeroom.
“Dtui, bring me the camera, will you?”
She looked at him with her brow furrowed. “The camera?”
“Yes, please.”
“Well…”
“What’s wrong?”
“There are only three exposures left on the film.”
“That’s enough.”
“Doctor, Sister Bounlan’s wedding party is tonight. I was…”
“I sympathise with her. But this is more important. Believe me.”
¦
Once he’d saved and labelled the samples, Siri announced he’d be going out for a while. He collected a plastic bag full of liquid, and some vials, and left. He didn’t say where he was going.
He walked out of the morgue and past his old crippled motorcycle. It had lain collecting dust and cobwebs in the cycle park for three months. He couldn’t afford the new carburettor it needed. He was about to check to see how much money he had on him for the taxi
“Dtui.”
“Oh, my God. Don’t do that. You scared the life out of me.”
“Then don’t do things you’d be scared to be caught doing. How did you get here today?”
“Eh? Same as every day. On my bicycle.”
“Good. I want to borrow it.”
“What for?”
“What for? What do people usually use bicycles for?”
“You aren’t going to ride my bike.”
“And why not?”
“I’d never be able to forgive myself if you…well, you know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Look, Doctor. You aren’t a young man.”
“Are you suggesting I’m too old to ride a bicycle?”
“No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“That over the age of seventy, the odds of having a heart attack rise forty per cent every year.”
“God, so I’m already at 120 per cent. They aren’t good odds.”
“Okay. Maybe I got the figures wrong. But I don’t want my bicycle to be the cause of your death.”
“Dtui. Don’t be ridiculous. I swear I won’t have a heart attack. Just lend me the bike.”
“No.”
“Please.” His green eyes became moist. That always melted her.
“All right. But on two conditions.”
“I’m sure I’ll regret this, but what are they?”
“One, that you ride slowly and stop if you feel tired.”
“Certainly.”
“And two, that you train me to be the new coroner.”
“What?”
“Doctor Siri. There you are begging the Health Department to send someone to train in Eastern Europe and not getting anywhere.”
“No.”
“Whereas here you have a young intelligent nurse, absorbent as blotting paper, enthusiastic as a puppy, resilient as a…a…brick, already in place, eager to be your apprentice.”
“No.”
“And then you could say you have this bright girl who already trained as a coroner and she’s ready to further her education in Bulgaria or some such place.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You aren’t the type.”
“Because I’m a girl?”
“Because you read comics and fan magazines.”
“I need stimulation.”
“I can’t believe you’re even asking. You’re a bubblehead. When did you suddenly develop an interest in pathology?”
“I’ve always been interested. But you don’t give me a chance to do interesting things. You treat me like a secretary.”
Geung walked in on them with a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other.
“Are you h…having a fight?” He smiled.
Siri grabbed the bike key from Dtui’s desk. “No. We aren’t having a fight. Nurse Dtui is just trying to extort three years of free education and a tour of Europe out of me in return for twenty minutes on her bicycle. That’s fair, don’t you think?”
Dtui stormed out the door. “Take the damn bike.”
¦
