Too Much Blood

by Jane Bennett Munro

  “Are you actually going to let me do this one?” I inquired. “Don’t you want to send it to Boise so the experts can do it?” Like he did the last time a possible homicide involved the hospital, three years ago.

  “You’re never going to let us forget that, are you? No way. We learned our lesson the last time.”

  It wasn’t really all Bernie’s fault; I’d actually been a suspect at the time. One can’t really put one’s faith in an autopsy done by a known suspect, even if it was me. I could have fabricated all sorts of things to divert suspicion from myself, and the cops and lawyers would never know the difference.

  Unfortunately, the forensic pathologist in Boise had been recovering from open-heart surgery at the time, and the autopsy had been done by a locum tenens who had no more forensic experience than I did.

  “Well, I don’t know yet, Bernie. I’ll have to call you back.”

  By this time Hal was up and dressed for work. He came downstairs and poured himself a cup of coffee. “You ready for coffee?”

  “Not yet. I have to get out of these sweaty clothes and take a shower before the phone rings again.”

  “Can’t you talk to those guys and tell them not to call you in the middle of the night?” he asked, as he opened the sliding glass door to let the dogs out.

  Here we go again, I thought with resignation. I was so sick of this particular conversation that I could spit; but Hal didn’t care. It was all about him these days.

  “I have been,” I said, showing what I considered admirable restraint by not actually strangling him. “For the last thirteen years, I have been, and you can see for yourself how much good it’s done.” I wished I could find a way to make Hal quit bugging me about it, short of actually solving the problem, which wasn’t going to happen anytime soon; but when something bothers him, he never quits bugging me.

  I mean, I didn’t like the situation either. I could never understand why it couldn’t wait for morning and normal working hours. What, did they think I was going to just pack up and go on vacation in the middle of the night if they didn’t pin me down quick enough? The body wasn’t going anywhere, as Hal pointed out.

  “It’d be one thing if the patient was alive and needed immediate attention,” Hal said, “but these are dead people, and you don’t need to be called at all hours of the night about it!”

  “Sweetie, you’re preaching to the choir here …”

  He overrode me. “Don’t they realize it wakes up everybody in the house? I have to teach in the morning. How am I supposed to do that when I’m half asleep?”

  “I have to read out surgicals and Pap smears and do frozen sections when I’m half asleep,” I countered.

  “Well?” Hal gave an exaggerated shrug. “All the more reason to tell those guys off. I’m not kidding, Toni. You need to deal with this, because I’m not going to put up with it.”

  He’d been saying that for the last thirteen years—no, wait, seventeen years, because I’d had to take calls as a resident too—but things were a lot better now, since autopsies had decreased so much, and besides, now I had a partner.

  So why was he still hammering at me about it?

  Something snapped. I jumped to my feet, hands on my hips, and glared at him. “You’re not going to put up with it? What are you going to do about it, Hal? Move out? Divorce me? What?”

  Hal stared back at me for a long minute before he replied, very softly, “Don’t tempt me.”

  I stared at him, aghast, feeling the blood drain from my face. I had never challenged Hal like that before, and his reaction shocked me. It felt like a physical blow to the solar plexus. I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs, and I could only imagine what my face looked like.

  Abruptly I turned away from him and headed for the stairs, needing to escape his nagging and hide my undoubtedly shocked expression. I really hadn’t expected Hal to react that way. I thought he’d back down and apologize to me. Now I wondered if he expected me to back down and apologize to him; but I’d be damned if I would. To hell with him, I thought, but in spite of my mental bravado, I was still unwilling to aggravate him further and find out what his feelings really were. For instance, did he really want to divorce me and move out? Or was that just bravado on his part, just big, tough-guy talk?

  Maybe it was simply an expeditious way to shut me up. It’d worked a treat, hadn’t it?

  I decided against saying anything more to Hal. Experience had taught me that we both needed time to cool off before that would accomplish anything.

  Only maybe this time that wouldn’t be enough.

  Over the last few months or so, Hal had changed. Things that used to bring a shake of the head, a sympathetic comment, or an indulgent smile now seemed to truly piss him off. I wasn’t sure exactly how long this had been going on, but I thought it had been since around the time school started in August. I had absolutely no idea what had set him off, and even less of an idea what to do about it.

  I had asked him on occasion what was wrong, but he denied that there was anything, and if I persisted, he asked me to please get off his case.

  Was whatever was bothering him enough for him to threaten divorce over such a minor matter? What on earth could change a man’s feelings to that degree?

  I took a quick but very hot shower and hurried into a pair of pants and a turtleneck sweater, shoved my feet into boots, blew my hair dry, and stared at myself in the mirror, trying to arrange my face to not show any hint of the turmoil going on inside me. I applied minimal makeup with shaking hands.

  In the kitchen, I filled an insulated cup with coffee, screwed the lid on it, grabbed my coat and purse, and headed for the door. Hal continued to read the paper and ignore me just as hard as I was ignoring him. Screw him. I could get breakfast in the cafeteria, and he could just go perform impossible physical acts of a sexual nature upon himself.

  Outside, the sky had just begun to turn pink, but it didn’t make me feel any better. As I crossed Montana Street, I tried not to think about possible reasons for Hal’s behavior. I failed. How the hell do you actively not think about something without thinking about it?

  Three years ago, when that surgeon who had been harassing me at work was murdered and Bernie Kincaid threatened to arrest me for it, I’d had Hal solidly behind me, supporting me, comforting me, and loving me. Now, I didn’t have that comfort, because this time Hal was the problem.

  Was it me or something else? Something at work, perhaps? He wouldn’t talk to me about it when I asked. If it was something unrelated to me, he’d talk about it, I was sure. If he’d recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness, he’d tell me. So it must be me.

  Had I done something that pissed him off? Other than get phone calls about autopsies in the middle of the night, that is? I couldn’t think of anything in particular. Again, Hal would tell me if that was what was bothering him. He always had.

  Until now.

  What could it possibly be that he couldn’t talk to me about?

  As I crossed the hospital parking lot, I knew that I had to get my mind off my personal life and onto work. Mike was on call, but I still had to sign out all those goddamn surgicals before all those goddamn doctors started bugging me. This was not the time to dwell on Hal and the state of my marriage.

  I checked my face in the ladies room before going to my office, just in case repairs were necessary, but they weren’t. Rage had given my cheeks a healthy flush, and my eyes were shining. I looked positively triumphant: a much better look than that droopy, tearful, woe-is-me-I-had-a-fight-with-my-husband look.

  Professionals don’t let their personal problems interfere with work, I told myself. They don’t let their emotions show.

  You go, girl.

  Chapter 3

  Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins.

  Which of the two has the
grander view?

  —Victor Hugo

  I found my partner, Mike Leonard, in Histology, hunched over the cryostat, working on yet another unscheduled frozen section. Mike, who towered over my diminutive five foot three by several inches, had joined me three years before. “Morning, Mikey,” I greeted him, pasting on a smile and endeavoring to act normal. “How’s it looking?”

  “Hey!” he responded. “Got a lymph node here. Jeff’s doin’ a routine choley and found big nodes all over the place. Wants to know if it’s carcinoma or lymphoma.”

  Two different types of cancer, requiring totally different treatment and totally different surgery. If it was a carcinoma, it would require extensive resection and debulking; but a lymphoma required only removal of enough tissue for the pathologist to make a diagnosis. I hoped that it wouldn’t turn out to be one of those undifferentiated tumors that required a battery of immunostains in order to even identify it as lymphoma, carcinoma, or melanoma. That would have to wait until the next day, and it would put the surgeons in the position of having to do a possibly unnecessary debulking procedure for which they might not get paid, which would put everybody in a bad mood—even Mikey.

  Mike’s sunny personality was a welcome change from Hal’s grumpiness. I wondered how Mike’s wife, Leezie, coped with being awakened in the middle of the night. It would be worse for them; they had a baby.

  So I asked him.

  He laughed. “Oh, yeah, it pissed her off, I tell you what. She’d threaten to divorce me or kill me or worse; but not anymore.”

  “How come?”

  “I keep my cell phone in my pajama pocket on vibrate,” he said. “She never hears it, and I go into the bathroom to answer it.”

  Sheesh. How simple. Hell, I could do that. How come I never thought of it? Maybe it was because I didn’t have a pajama pocket. Maybe I could keep it under the pillow. If that didn’t work, I’d start wearing Hal’s pajama tops.

  Of course I’d have to first make sure everybody who was likely to call knew to call the cell phone and not the home phone. Hal and I hadn’t yet joined the ranks of those who no longer had a land line.

  If that was all there was to Hal’s problem with me, it was fixed. If not, well, then, I guess we’d just see what else happened. Because surely there was more to this than me getting phone calls at night.

  “Where are the girls?” I asked.

  The girls to whom I referred were our histotechs, Lucille and Natalie.

  “On break,” he said. “Your slides are on your desk already.”

  “Cool!” I headed for my office. A stack of slide trays sat on my desk, along with a pile of requisitions and my typed gross dictation. I could easily sign these out this morning and leave the afternoon free for the autopsy. I called Rollie Perkins and let him know, asked him to pass it along to Bernie, and then got to work on the surgicals. Since Mike was on call, all the interruptions would go to him, and I could work undisturbed.

  At two o’clock, I headed for Rollie’s establishment, Parkside Funeral Home, to do the autopsy. Perrine Memorial doesn’t have a morgue, at least not one that’s usable. When they recruited me, they bought an autopsy table and set aside a room in the basement but made no provision for ventilation, running water, or drainage, and over the years, everybody just forgot about it.

  My erstwhile autopsy suite was now a storage room, and the gleaming, once state-of-the-art autopsy table was buried under boxes of toilet paper, Chux, and the like, and I still have to do my autopsies in funeral homes.

  Which means I have to (a) call Hal and ask him to come get me so that I can drive him back to work and keep the Cherokee, (b) lug all my stuff out to the car, (c) drive to the mortuary, and (d) lug all my stuff into the embalming room. Then after I do the autopsy, I do the whole thing in reverse, and then try to remember to pick up Hal from work. Of course we could avoid the whole thing by just getting a second car, but we haven’t because I only have to do this maybe ten times a year—no, actually five, because sometimes it’s Mike’s turn—and if I didn’t walk to work I’d weigh five thousand pounds.

  Besides, we only have a one-car garage and consider ourselves lucky, because most of our neighbors have no garage at all. In the central and oldest part of Twin Falls, most of the hundred-year-old Victorians like ours don’t have garages, and the rest have only rickety carports added on.

  In the last couple of years, we’ve arranged for all our autopsies to be done at Parkside, and we keep the stuff there; so now all we have to do is keep track of the consumables, such as scalpel blades, needles and syringes, blood tubes, and specimen containers, and carry the specimens back to the lab. In addition, I can usually borrow Mike’s car, so I don’t have to bother Hal. So it’s a lot better than it used to be.

  I was still pissed off, though, about not having my own morgue. Surely in thirteen years they could save up enough to build me a proper morgue. Mitzi Okamoto, the radiologist, only has to say she needs a new six-hundred-thousand-dollar CT scanner, and they fall all over themselves to get it for her and build a place to put it, complete with lead-lined walls, for at least another hundred grand. But if I need a fifteen-hundred-dollar automatic slide stainer for frozen section slides, oh, golly gee, do I really need it that bad? Because they can’t afford any more capital expenditures in this fiscal year.

  In the world of durable medical equipment, fifteen hundred dollars is pocket change.

  So that’s the way it is; radiology is the queen, and the lab is the poor relation. I can’t even claim sexual discrimination, because Mitzi is a girl too.

  Still, I owe Mitzi big time, because when I wanted to get my lab accredited by the College of American Pathologists back in 1997, the medical staff objected to the cost. Mitzi mentioned that her mammography unit had to be accredited by the American College of Radiology in order to get Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, and maybe someday the same thing could happen to the lab.

  As if by magic, out came the checkbook, and we got our accreditation—after a rigorous inspection, that is.

  Of course there was a lot more to it than money; I think I run a damn good lab, and we’ve always done everything according to CAP requirements, whether we were accredited or not. To my techs, it’s a matter of pride. It’s good for morale. Physicians who aren’t pathologists just don’t get it.

  Detective Lieutenant Bernie Kincaid was already waiting for me at Parkside Funeral Home along with Detective Sergeant Pete Vincent, their cameras and rape kits, and various other police-type paraphernalia.

  Bernie and Pete looked like a cop version of Mutt and Jeff. Bernie was of medium height, dark-haired, dark-eyed, compactly built, and irritable. Sandy-haired Pete towered over him and was as laid-back and easygoing as Bernie was uptight. Pete had grown up in Twin Falls and played football for Twin Falls High School. Hal and I had known him since he was a student at the college where Hal taught chemistry.

  As a college student, he’d watched me do autopsies on several occasions and had put on gloves and gotten his hands right in there with mine. The gangrenous bowel that made Bernie sick the first time I ever met him didn’t affect Pete at all. I’m not sure Bernie’s ever really forgiven me for that.

  Bernie and I first met three years ago when a surgeon at our hospital was murdered. Bernie, a recent transplant from California, had insisted on sending the body to Boise, where there was a forensic pathologist. In California, apparently, forensic pathologists grow on trees, but the only one in Idaho was on extended sick leave after a heart attack and a coronary bypass. The locum tenens, or substitute pathologist, had left some important information out of his report and confused everybody.

  Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Bernie decided that I had murdered the surgeon, based on nothing more than the facts that (a) I had threatened to resign if she became a permanent member of the medical staff and (b) her body had been found in m
y office. Of course, I’d been proven innocent, and Bernie had ended up saving my life, so we’ve got a much better relationship now.

  Rollie Perkins, rotund, bespectacled, and balding, came out of the embalming room. “Well, good afternoon, young lady and gentlemen,” he greeted us, smiling and rubbing his hands together. “He’s still in the body bag. Is that right? We’re handling this as a homicide?”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “You’ve already decided that this is homicide? Not just an accident?”

  “No, no,” Rollie assured me. “We just want to handle it that way so we don’t overlook anything. I wouldn’t have even asked for an autopsy if there’d been obvious injuries. I would have called it an accidental death and let it go at that.”

  Well, that made sense.

  “That’s right,” Bernie said. They unzipped the body bag, and I got my first look in two months at Jay Braithwaite Burke. He hadn’t changed much, aside from being dead. He still looked beige. The only touch of color was the bright red blood around the nose and mouth, some of which had trickled back across his cheeks into his ears. In the fluorescent light from the ceiling, it had a magenta cast. Without The Voice, he seemed really insignificant in contrast to his illustrious grandfather, Joseph John Braithwaite Burke, whom I had autopsied upon his death from a heart attack shortly after my arrival in Twin Falls.

  J. J. Braithwaite Burke had looked imposing even in his coffin.

  “So exactly where was his car found, and which way was it going?” I asked.

  Pete consulted his notes. “It was between the US 93 exit and the first Jerome exit, and sort of crossways in the median with the back end down in the bottom, and the front end facing north, toward Jerome. The interstate had a snow floor on both sides but no skid marks. They hadn’t gotten around to sanding yet. And if there had been any tire tracks, the snow had covered them up by the time we got there.”

  “So there’s no way to know which direction it came from?”