Page 18

F uck fuck fuck.

She knew this.

chewed on the end of her pencil, feeling Murdoch’s eyes boring into her profile as she hunched over a desk in the front row. Apparently, it would be her desk if she managed to keep this TA position.

She didn’t do wonderful under pressure. It was more that she didn’t do well off-schedule. That was a stupid, stupid thing to be—the woman who can’t roll with the punches—but she’d already missed two assignments for classes because Murdoch had her books in his office, and now she was missing another entire lecture because she’d agreed to take a stupid quiz.

Oh, no. How had she just realised her class schedule collided with Murdoch’s? Oh, god.

pulled air in through her nose and blew it out slowly through her mouth. If she didn’t have this position, she wouldn’t have any classes to attend, anyway.

Focus on the task at hand.

Once she managed to calm herself down, the quiz was a cakewalk.

If a patient dies of hemorrhagic complications, which should be performed first?

marked B: take photographic documentation prior to blood drainage

The pancreas is marked in dark blotches resembling a pattern. What is the correct deduction?

D: Autolysis

What method should be used for heart dissection if there is suspicion of inferoseptal myocardial infarction?

C: Removal of the inferior wall of the right ventricle

flew through the rest of the answers, confident she missed—at most—two, and turned her paper in at Murdoch’s desk.

“Stick around after class,” he told her quietly without looking up from his book. She noticed it was the same one he’d had in his office and her desire to know what had him so captivated pulled at her once more.

A few moments later, he told the students they had only one minute left to finish marking their answers. When the time was up, he rose and flipped through the papers before he proceeded to throw them all in the rubbish save for one, which he left facedown on his desk. Murdoch moved to address the confused class of about fifteen students and .

“This is not secondary school. I will not be giving any other quizzes or tests aside from the final, which, in this course, is to perform a full autopsy on your own with the parameters given. We’ve gone over enough prerequisites and it’s time we dive into the true material of this course.”

A pasty lad with sandy blonde hair raised his hand.

“Mr Murphy, do you raise your hand to interject your thoughts into a conversation with your peers?”

The lad blinked at him. “No, Professor.”

“Then let us be intellectual peers here as well. That's the aim, anyway.” Murdoch walked a slow line in front of the class, one hand cutting the air as he spoke. “The first two weeks are meant for introductions and syllabi and all of college’s damned requirements. Now that we have that shite out of the way, I want this to be akin to supervisions more than lectures. When we don’t have our arms elbows-deep in cadavers, this course will be conducted as small group, intensive discussions.” He stopped pacing and nodded at the lad who’d raised his hand. “Now, Mr Murphy, go on, then.”

Everyone turned to look at him and his cheeks developed splotches of crimson. “I only meant to ask why we took the quiz at all if you were just going to toss them out.”

“Because the order in which you turned your answers in, is the reverse order of who will get their hands dirty first.”

All the students looked at one another sheepishly, and Murdoch went on. “Those whose hubris or over-studied minds led them to turn their quizzes in the quickest need to understand they don’t know everything. That there is much to be deduced by observation and employing an irritating level of patience.” He clasped his hands behind his back and took up pacing again. “Those who took their time or perhaps had no knowledge of the material, well, they need the most exposure to corporeal subjects and a chance to be thrown to the wolves to knock the apprehension from their bones.”

Something in the air changed. It felt charged with that distinct dopamine hit unique to academics at the height of study.

could see it then, why he had been granted such accolades before the age of forty. How this professor was so gifted to teach, such a powerful lecturer, even if all his pupils were frightened of him. Professor Sonder Murdoch was the cliff-jump that terrified, the majestic wolf that captivated, the risk you knew might kill you, yet you couldn’t pass it up.

Murdoch began writing on the board, his handwriting the sloppy mix of tight cursive and adolescence that indicated either a certain level of genius or psychopathy. When he moved out of the way, he’d listed the students in order of who had, assumed by his explanation, turned their answers in last to first.

Her name was absent, as she’d expected considering she wasn’t one of his students, but a thread of disappointment still knotted in her stomach.

“Read chapters 17-20. If you have something against standard-issue surgical gowns, I suggest you bring your own to class and don’t wear your pretty shoes. Now, fuck off, the lot of you.”

The students filed out, and was left trying to determine if she should sit at her desk or stand. Sitting made her feel too much like a fledgling fresher, so she stood.

Murdoch reclined on the corner of his desk, one foot swaying as he looked over ’s answers. He scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw as he did so and looked away, trying not to fidget.

“You missed number eight.” It seemed to her that his voice was deeper when he spoke to her. Far less charismatic and more guarded. “Petechiae are minute haemorrhages. After asphyxiation, they can be found not only in the heart and other organs but in the eyes and even areas like the scalp.” He handed her the paper. “But our deal was to pass. And you did.”

“I can do more than observe, then.” She didn’t form it like a question. “Prove I can do more.” They’d had a deal after all.

“I will not have the integrity of my course jeopardised by your involvement or need to prove something to yourself.”

“A deal is a deal,” she ground out.

“And I’m not going back on that. I’m merely ensuring that you know the parameters of this arrangement. I will ban you from my classes if you interfere and I don’t see that going well for you.”

A couple of hours ago, she would have thought him an arrogant prick for saying such a thing, but now she saw it for what it was: a professor protecting his students.

“Professor Murdoch,” implored him gently, “I don’t want to jeopardise the integrity of your classes. But I do want to do more if I’m here. If you just want me to fetch tea, fine, but I’d like to prove to you that I can do more if you’ll grant me the opportunity.”

He was close enough that the smoke and spice scent of him cloyed with her senses again, but she stood her ground as he regarded her, brows pinched. It was the most expressive she’d seen his face to date.

Murdoch rose from the corner of his desk. “Get your coat.”

“Pardon?”

He was already walking toward the door and she jumped to grab her things.

“Wait, where are we going? I have class in thirty minutes.” She followed him out into the corridor, nearly having to run to keep up with his long, purposeful strides.

“It’s my understanding that you won’t have any classes at all if this partnership doesn’t work out, so keep up.”

His choice of phrasing struck her as odd, but she supposed he was right.

Their shoes made a quick tattoo on stone steps as they descended deeper and deeper below the Medical Building. Eventually, they were spit out into the belly of it, surrounded by stone and iron, metal and cold. A veritable castle dungeon.

had never partaken of hard drugs when everyone else had in the 70s and 80s, but she was nearly certain that zing felt very similar to the one that coursed through her as she took in the stone autopsy table standing in the middle of the room like a sacrificial slab; masonic, medieval.

She was still standing there, mouth agape, when Murdoch strode to the chill chamber wall of cadavers and pulled open a metal drawer. “Help me get it on a gurney.”

pulled her attention away from the morgue of her dreams.

She appreciated that he didn’t expect her to have a delicate constitution or need to work up to handling a corpse so readily. Perhaps he actually believed her. Or maybe he was testing her. Maybe he knew she was essentially a glorified grave robber. laughed inwardly at the thought, though it was short-lived. She knew she was worse than even a grave robber. They only stole replaceable, earthly things, not the corpses themselves.

For science , she reassured herself as she heaved her side of the body onto the metal gurney.

Murdoch wheeled the body over to the stone table. He did not ask her for assistance in getting the cadaver onto it from the gurney, and assumed he’d only been testing her vitality rather than in need of actual assistance.

With the corpse laid out, he removed the sheet with a flourish to reveal a naked woman. Or what used to be one. Young, brunette, thin, her hip bones protruding.

Captivated as always by the personhood of the deceased, the spirit that once wielded the bones, approached slowly, acutely aware of the scuff of her lace-up boots against the rough stone floor. Of Murdoch halting his movement at a set of metal drawers to watch her. Of the remaining shell of a woman, prostrate on a cold table. Who used to be a child, then a girl, then a woman whose life was cut short. By what? The Plague? No, her body would be at Achilles House or in a morgue with a quick turnaround if that were the case.

She walked slowly around the woman’s body, examining, taking it all in.

Someone had loved her once.

She had postmortem bruising around her wrists and ankles. On her cheekbone.

She’d loved someone once.

Her index fingernail was torn past the quick.

She’d laughed and enjoyed meals once.

There was antemortem bruising on the sides of her palms, her far-right metacarpal showing signs of fracture.

She’d read books, watched movies, listened to music once.

Her ring finger had an indention where a wedding band must have been.

She’d been married once.

looked up at Murdoch, who was regarding her intensely, his hands in his pockets as always. “How did she die?” she asked him in a small voice. But it wasn’t fear or intimidation softening her. No, this was her world . It was the sadness that made her feel hemmed in. Not trapped or entangled, but focused. Like the tragedy of someone else reminding her of what was truly important.

Murdoch dipped his chin toward a tray he’d laid out, laden with surgical instruments. “You tell me.”

“I’ll need a notebook,” she said, her spine straightening, her mind cooling with the process, the protocol and sanctity.

“Of course.” Murdoch moved to a desk off to the side and produced a clean, empty notepad and a pen.

donned paper booties and a surgical gown, then gloves. The instruments were pristine, like new. They felt good in her hands and all faded away, even the looming professor as she cut into the cadaver and began her work.

She was around halfway through her process when a voice broke into her void of focus. “Tell me about the class you’re missing to do this.”

paused, scalpel poised over the heart and looked at Murdoch. “That’s off-topic.”

He shrugged, one corner of his mouth almost twitching. “I’m only trying to help.”

“Or are you trying to see if I can avoid distraction?”

He failed to stop the twitch that time, and a spark shot up her chest at the sight. “You’re clever, I’ll give you that.” His tongue ran over his lips to moisten them and looked back at the ribcage splayed before her. “Let’s say it’s both,” he said. “So tell me what it is you were learning.”

Lips pursed, she jotted down a few notes concerning the cadaver and moved on to her inspection of the lungs. “The class I missed today is studying the interactions between biological, physical, and chemical environmental components.”

He was quiet for a moment, but she ignored it.

“Intriguing. And do you think those interactions play any role in the Plague?”

stilled at his question. Did they? “No,” she said after a moment. “I really don’t.”

He might have asked her more questions, but she didn’t hear if he did, because she’d determined the cadaver’s cause of death.

“All right.” finally stepped back, removing her gloves and wiping her hands with a towel from a stack of them—coarse, hospital-grade.

“Ready to report your findings?” Jesus, he looked bemused, a glitter in his eye.

As soon as she started speaking, his demeanour sobered. “She was killed. By her husband.”

“Ah, ah.” Murdoch stood and came to her side. “It is not the job of even a forensic pathologist to make assumptions like that.” He peered over her shoulder at the cavity where a heart had once beat. Despite their surroundings, she was acutely aware of how close he was standing to her. “Tell me your concrete medical findings and that is all.”

Murdoch stepped back, and continued, beginning with the swelling of the cadaver’s vocal cords, down to the heart with signs of pulmonary oedema, the antemortem and postmortem injuries the woman sustained, and the damage to kidney and liver.

“My conclusion is that this woman sustained injuries prior to her death that were not directly related. Cause of death was prolonged carbon monoxide exposure, leading to poisoning.” She took the booties off her shoes and threw them in the rubbish bin. “And a bastard husband.”

Murdoch’s lips quirked to one side. “I’ll bite. What is your non-professional theory there, hm?”

sighed, looking at the poor woman one last time before she covered her with the sheet. “The indention on her finger, firstly. Yes, all of her personal effects were removed when she passed, but there is something about the indention that leads me to believe she’d already removed the wedding band—fairly recently. The bruises on her arms are consistent with domestic abuse, but it was the metacarpal fracture in the right hand that got me. She was trapped somewhere for quite some time, banging on a wall or door. Trying to get out. That explains the swelling and tearing of her vocal cords as well.”

“But what if she merely found herself trapped somewhere, she wasn’t forced there?” Murdoch challenged, all serious, all professor.

considered that for a moment. She couldn’t very well quote a woman’s intuition, though that was the root of it. “The postmortem bruising on her ankles and wrists.” shook her head. “What grieving widower or anyone else who may have found her would tie her ruthlessly like a hog? It screams of ill-intent.”

Murdoch nodded once and stood upright from where he was leaning on a stool. “Very good, .”

A flurry of moths tumbled around in her abdomen when he said her name. Praised her.

“Do you smoke?”

“No, I don’t. Seen too many charred lungs.”

Murdoch chuckled, a low sound that rolled like thunder in the night. She suppressed a shiver. “We all have to die some way or another. Come with me.”

hated that, currently, she might follow him anywhere despite being the antithesis of that kind of woman. She had self-respect, and he was—sort of—her professor, for Christ’s sake.

Alas, she followed the man out a back door that led them to a little courtyard of stone and iron.

Murdoch leaned against the rough side of the building and handed her a file folder. “Take a look.”

While she opened it and made sense of what she was looking at, Murdoch pulled a cigarillo out of his shirt pocket, struck a match, and lit it. He puffed on it, filling the chilly courtyard air with a spicy, sweet scent she would forever associate with him. At least it didn’t give her a migraine this time.

The file he’d given her was a Garda report, detailing the homicide of one Patricia O’Malley.

“Christ,” cursed on an exhale. She slid down the wall, sitting on the cold concrete. “She was only twenty-six.”

Murdoch hummed a note of acknowledgement. “She had her whole life ahead of her.”

read on. She’d been right. The woman was separated from her husband. She’d filed three reports of violence against him. Look what that had gotten her. The opportunity to die and be cut open by a girl trying to prove herself in the academic world she didn’t even belong in.

After her third report, Patricia O’Malley was locked in a pantry, the kitchen gas on for ten hours. She was discovered one morning by a neighbour who was walking her dog near the woods and found Patricia bound by her ankles and wrists. Upon questioning, Patricia’s estranged husband admitted to killing her, tying her up, and dumping her body to make it look as if she’d been kidnapped.

Eyes misty, read the last line of the report aloud. “Cadaver donated by the deceased’s family to Medical College, Morbid Anatomy Dept., Trinity College Dublin.”

She closed the file and set it on the ground beside her. She could feel Murdoch’s eyes on her, smell the scent of his cigarillo.

“Why are you here, ?”

She looked up at him. Felt something shift.

Things kept shifting.

“Why are you at Trinity?” he pressed quietly.

“Is the pursuit of academic excellence not enough?”

He smirked, and she hated it. Loved it. “No.” He dropped the cigarillo and twisted the ashes into the concrete with the toe of his shiny brown shoe. “Not when you make postmortem diagnoses and forensic deductions like you do and yet choose Botany for your postgraduate studies.”

The clock tower bells rang in the distance as she looked at him and he at her. Then gasped.

“Fuck!” She stood up, running a hand through her hair. “How is it 5 o’clock? I’m supposed to be at work!”

Professor Murdoch said nothing as she ran off.