It’s a definite offense to my surgical sensibilities and I have to remind myself that it doesn’t matter—the woman is dead.
“I think I’ve had quite enough drama for one lifetime,” I tell him.
“No way. You’re an adrenaline junkie. You thrive on excitement. That’s why you liked working at the hospital.” He steps down from the stool he has to use in order to reach the table, kicks it toward the woman’s head, and climbs up again. Then he positions his scalpel just above her right ear.
“There’s really not that much adrenaline in the OR,” I argue. “In fact, it’s one of the tamer areas of medicine, orderly and controlled.”
“True, but you were never happy in the OR. The place where you were happy was the ER. You should have stayed there.”
“I liked the OR just fine,” I argue.
He responds with a look that tells me the alarm on his bullshit detector is screeching. And I have to admit, he’s right. The OR was okay, but I loved working the ER. I loved the surprise of never knowing what might come through the door next. I loved working as part of a synchronized team, rushing against the clock in an effort to save a life that hung on the brink. I loved the people, the pace, and even the occasional messiness of it all. The only reason I’d left it for the OR was so I could be closer to David.
Well, that and the infamous nipple incident.
“Okay,” I concede. “Maybe I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie.”
“And like any junkie, if you don’t get a fix from time to time, you get edgy and irritable.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s PMS, Izzy.”
“So I have an idea,” he says, ignoring my brilliant rejoinder. Having sliced across the top of the woman’s head from one ear to the other, he now grabs the front edge of this incision and pulls the entire scalp forward, exposing the skull. It is shiny and white except for a large clot of blood that clings to the right temporal lobe. From the X-rays we did earlier, I know that beneath that clot we’ll find pieces of broken bone and an indentation in the skull that’s roughly the same size and shape as a hammer—the weapon her drunken, jealous husband used to kill her.
Izzy pauses to snap a few pictures with the digital camera, and then says, “Part of my job is determining the cause and manner of any suspicious deaths in the county, and only part of that is gleaned from the autopsy. There’s also investigative work that needs to be done at the scene of the death and afterward.”
He sets the camera aside and folds his arms over his chest. “You know, your position here can go one of two ways. You can keep working as a morgue assistant, which is basically what you’re doing now, or you can function as a deputy coroner, which combines the morgue duties with investigative work. My last assistant had no training in forensics and no interest in learning it. He simply wanted to do his job and get out of here.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I mutter, eyeing the body before us.
“But you have an analytical mind and a strong curiosity. With a little training, you’d make a great investigator. And frankly, I could use the help. I think you should give it a try, go out with me a time or two and see what it’s like.”
“You make it sound like a date.”
He scoffs. “Yeah, like you would know.”
I scowl at him. “Give me a break. It’s only been two months.”
“And you’ve spent every minute of it hibernating in your cave.”
“I’m healing.”
“You’re wallowing.”
“I am not.”
“No? Then tell me how many pints of Ben & Jerry’s you’ve polished off in the past two weeks.”
“Oh sure, make me measure in pints so the number will sound worse than it is.”
“Okay,” he says, arching one eyebrow at me. “Have it your way. Tell me how many gallons of Ben & Jerry’s you’ve polished off in the past two weeks.”
“Bite me, Itsy.”
There’s one other thing Izzy and I have in common—a fondness for nicknames. Izzy’s real name is Izthak Rybarceski, a mouthful of syllables that even the most nimble linguists tend to stumble over. Hence the nickname, though even that gives him trouble at times. Because of his size there are some who insist on pronouncing it as Itsy, something that drives him up the wall.
For me the problem is just a general loathing of my real name. I don’t know what the hell my mother was thinking when she chose it and even she has never used it. All my life I’ve been Mattie—the only place where my real name can be found is on my birth certificate—and that’s fine by me. Outside of my family, there are only a handful of people who know my real name, Izzy being one of them. So I have to be careful. If I pick on his name too much, he might turn the tables on me.
“I don’t think I’d make a very good investigator,” I tell him, hoping to divert his attention away from my insult.
“Sure you would. You’re a natural. You’re nosy as hell.”
Now there’s a bullet item I can’t wait to put on my résumé.
“At least give it a try,” he says with a sigh.
“But I don’t know the first thing about crime scene investigation. Hell, I’ve only been doing this for two days.”
“You’ll learn. Just like you’re learning here. Just like you learned when you started working in the OR. I’ll send you to some seminars and training programs. You’ll catch on.”
I think about what he’s suggesting. We live in Sorenson, a small town in Wisconsin where the crime rate is low, longevity is high, and the obits frequently tell of octogenarians who die “unexpectedly.” Even with what might come in from the surrounding areas, which is mostly villages and farmland, I can’t imagine us getting that much business. After all, this is Wisconsin, the land of cheese, brown-eyed cows, apple-cheeked people, and old-fashioned values. The only reason we have a medical examiner in Sorenson is because Izzy happens to live here and we are the biggest city within a hundred-mile radius, which isn’t saying much, given that our population is only eleven thousand. So how often is a “suspicious” death going to occur? Still…
I’m about to argue the point one more time when Izzy says, “Please? Will you just give it a try? For me?”
Damn. His pleading face reminds me of what a good friend he’s been to me, especially lately. I owe him.
“Okay, you win. I’ll give it a shot.”
“Excellent!” he says. “Though perhaps a bad choice of words for our line of business.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me and I have to stifle a laugh, though not at his corny joke. At fifty-something, Izzy suffers from that wooly caterpillar thing that strikes so many men as they age. The hairs in his eyebrows are longer than many of those on his head, though there are a few in his ears and nose that look like they might catch up.
Moments later, my humor is forgotten
