Page 19

12 October 1993

T he next few weeks were a blur of lectures, assignments, cadavers, fetching Murdoch’s coffee, watching his students butcher their autopsies and one unfortunate trip to Achilles House.

“It’s all I’ve fecken got,” she’d groused at the Gold Stitch.

“I need one with flora . I thought I made that clear.”

“I’m not a dunce. I heard you, but I can’t make it happen.”

The leaves had all gone crimson and russet, the candles and confections cinnamon. Walking around campus was a fever dream of autumnal wonders and still, nearing the middle of October, she knew the charm had only just begun.

Professor Murdoch, on the other hand, had lost all of his charm.

“You marked these incorrectly.” He tossed a stack of essays at her.

curled her lip at him but looked over the essays. She’d marked everything exactly the way he’d laid out in the extensive notes he’d given once he finally agreed to let her help look over students’ work.

“This is exactly what you told me to do.”

He finally looked at her, most likely due to the insolence in her tone more than because of what she’d said. “You used a red pen.”

She blinked at him. “Red is the standard pen colour for making corrections.”

“Not in my courses.”

She looked at the anatomical rendering of a heart in front of him where he was correcting a student’s labelling. “You use blue.”

“They have enough harsh lines in their lives, Miss Morrow. They don’t need any more. It does nothing but discourage.”

Fine. He hadn’t lost all of his charm. She wished he’d take those damned glasses off though. No one had the right to look that alluring with nerdy glasses and a sullen attitude.

“Can I help you with something?” It wasn’t until he spoke that realised she’d been staring.

“What? No. No.” Shaking her head too many times, she noticed the Dublin Paper on his desk next to a mug of stale coffee. “HPSC recruits professors at TCD for—” she read, but he cut her off, standing.

“That’s enough. Finish those marks by class.” And he shooed her out of the teachers’ room.

Most afternoons with him went by similarly, him brooding, her irritated. It had taken some time to work out her class schedule with Murdoch’s, but he’d given up on her observing all his lectures and missing her own rather easily after a time. It gave an odd sense of pride that she’d at least proven herself enough to keep the position.

Most of her shifts at Gallaghers’ had grown slow and boring. When she asked Siobhan about it, she gave a noncommittal shrug, but there was worry etched in the lines of her worn face. She was quieter than normal. Reserved and reclusive.

“Are you all right?” asked her one evening. “You don’t seem yourself.”

“Something’s brewing, pet. I can feel it in my old bones.”

“How do you mean?” she ventured rubbing at her arms that had gone dotted with chill bumps.

“Don’t be worrying, now.” Siobhan stood, looking older than had ever seen her. “I don’t think we need you on tonight, pet. Go on home, I’ll be having a pint and lockin’ the doors.”

swore she heard a childish giggle on the wind as she walked between the park and the Medical Building to Briseis House. She couldn’t make out much in the dark, but there were glimmers of lights, little bursts of iridescent shimmers floating about in the park.

* * *

“What’s going on out there?” asked Emmy over breakfast one morning. There were loads of workers traipsing through campus, enough that had noticed from their suite window overlooking New Square.

Emmy, curious, set down her tea and came to the window. “I don’t know.”

Gibbs burst through the door, carrying a crumpled copy of Trinity News. “Have you heard?”

Emmy and exchanged a look before shaking their heads in unison.

He rushed over to the coffee table and spread out the paper. “They’re shutting down a section of the park.” He pointed to a black-and-white map of College Park, where it backed up to a row of trees bordering Nassau Street. “It’s not a large section, but they’ve got huge iron gates going up.”

“What are they doing with it?” Emmy asked as bent in to inspect the article with the map.

“They’re using it to bury the Infected?” she screeched, shocked by her own uncharacteristic hysteria.

Gibbs, his eyes wide as saucers that lent her to believe he was also bordering on hysteria, nodded mutely.

“Why here?” Emmy asked, horror in the grim set of her mouth.

“They’ve always insisted the Infected must be burned. . .” couldn’t halt the onslaught of thoughts. Who were ‘they ,’ anyway, making these decisions? Part of her thought it had to be Achilles House, but that couldn’t be it. They were a part of a larger whole, that much was obvious.

“I don’t know.” Gibbs sank onto the sofa, and Emmy flanking him. “This is mental, right?”

Both women nodded absently, each lost to their thoughts.

When she felt she had command of her sensibilities, read the full article, a knot of dread knitting together in her abdomen.

Hours later in Morbid Anatomy, Professor Murdoch was pacing around an open cadaver splayed before the class, but she hadn’t heard a word he’d said.

“. . .Take the Plague for example,” he was saying. “It shuts down the organs, blackens the blood, resulting in death.” He walked a circle around the cadaver. “But the Plague seemingly chooses at random. There are no current indications of a rhyme or reason, like a typical disease, or even pre-existing conditions or signs of cancer”—he tossed his hand around in the air—“foul play, nothing of the sort. The Plague has made equal men and women of us all over the past six years.”

scoffed, unable to stop herself or use decorum in her stressed state.

To her horror, Murdoch stopped and turned to look directly at her, one brow quirked, and she froze. “Do you have something to add, Miss Morrow?”

shook her head sharply, hoping her cheeks weren’t aflame.

Murdoch returned to his route around the corpse, but ’s shadow self, her darker side, the one festering with all the Plague had wrought over the last six years, that side betrayed her. “Actually,” she heard herself say, like an out-of-body experience, “I do.”

One of the students behind her snickered, the little gobshite, and two others let out audible gasps.

“By all means.” Murdoch splayed a palm in a gesture for her to continue.

Her blood was boiling enough that it pushed out trepidation and perhaps logic. He did that to her, this man, just like the Plague. “The elite like to pretend that horrific events or circumstances make them equal with lower classes, but it’s only to pacify their own conscience and lull the lower classes into thinking they’re not just existing in an open-air prison.”

A flicker of something glittered in Murdoch’s gaze as he levelled her with it. “Death comes for us all, Miss Morrow. There is no one left untouched by the Plague, not anymore.”

stood from her seat. “That is a cop-out. Something the wealthy say to blur the harsh lines drawn between classes. You said yourself that we have too many lines. The elite use blue instead of red, but it doesn’t mean the harshness is actually softened, it only portrays the illusion that it is.”

She knew the class had no idea what she was referring to, but Sonder Murdoch did. And if the look on his face was any indication, she’d struck a chord. Or a nerve.

“And yet we all die,” he said evenly. “Do we not?”

“Of course we do.” gestured angrily at the cadaver. “But nothing short of a cataclysm, nature steamrolling even the elite, can make equals of us all as long as wealth and power rule the world. And they still do.”

“And if the Plague is that event?” he challenged.

“How can it be? You can’t tell me the elite have felt the effects of the Plague as harshly as the lower class.”

“Has it not killed the wealthy as ruthlessly as the poor?”

“Perhaps it has,” she argued, “but is it the wealthy who are going to be helped first, or the poor?”

“Hypotheticals will not help your case, Miss Morrow.”

Her head was on fire, but he looked to be enjoying himself.

Despite the inferno in her gut, smiled, let it be a wicked little grin. “You’ve just proven my point. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

“You make rash, snap judgements,” he shot back with a dark, humourless laugh. “That might be acceptable in Botany, but it will not bode well in Morbid Anatomy, in real science.”

’s head jerked back as if he’d slapped her. Rather than responding, she collected her things and left.

She spent the rest of the afternoon hiding in the cocoon of the library, lost to her studies, to her tapes of Liszt, headphones blocking out everything and everyone. Most of all Sonder Murdoch and the unsettling cemetery of Infected she couldn’t stop thinking about.

The sun was beginning to set and her stomach growled, alerting her it was time to make her way home. Maybe she and Emmy could make cheese toasties and pretend the world was normal before her late shift at Gallaghers’.

“Good evening.”

looked up at the sound of the terse, gravelly voice, shocked to see Murdoch lounging on the green sofa in the Briseis common room like he still lived there. The colour made his eyes stand out, and she merely blinked at him, watching him as he rose and crossed the room toward her.

“Walsh asked if you and I would debate in every class.” He tried at a smile, but as usual, it fell flat. “I wanted to apologise to you.”

crossed her arms. “Then do it. I’m going to be late for work.”

“I won’t apologise for the debate. I rather enjoyed it, to be frank. But I insulted you and it was cruel. I’m sorry.”

As far as apologies went, it wasn’t half bad. “I’m sorry I challenged you in front of your class.”

Murdoch shook his head, a dark curl falling across his forehead. “If we were never challenged, , we would never grow.”

Before she could say anything, he reached out a hand, one finger gliding up the elongated spine of her collar chain, ending at one of the two skulls attached on either side. “I like this.”

Turning on his heel, he strode away, one hand in his pocket and the other—the one that had just been so very close to touching her—clenched in a fist at his side.