The Select

by F. Paul Wilson

  Quinn took heart. Maybe she wasn't such a wimp. She felt a sampling of each of those same emotions swirling within her: As much as she loathed the idea of cutting up a human body, she yearned for what she would be learning. And as eager as she was to get started, she dreaded her first look at that dead face.

  "Here we are," Tim said. "Table four." He moved around to the far side of the green-sheeted form. "And here's Mr. Cadaver." He lifted the edge of the sheet and peeked beneath. "Oops. Sorry. Mrs. Cadaver."

  "Tim," she whispered. "Knock it off. Aren't you...the least bit...?" Words failed her.

  Tim lowered his dark glasses and looked over the rims with his blue eyes.

  "Want to know the truth?" he said softly. "I'm terrified. And I'm completely grossed out." Then he snapped the glasses back up over his eyes and gave her a steely smile. "But don't tell anyone."

  Well, we've all got our own ways of dealing with things, I guess, Quinn told herself. This must be his.

  Better than throwing up, which was what she felt like doing.

  She jumped as the overhead speakers came to life.

  "All right, gentlemen and ladies. We're about to start the first dissection. But before we begin, I want each of you to listen very carefully to me."

  Quinn looked around and saw their anatomy professor, Dr. Titus Kogan, short, balding, puffy, looking like he'd spent some time in the formaldehyde baths himself. He stood in the lecture/demonstration area, holding a microphone.

  "For the next nine months you will be dissecting the cadavers at your assigned tables. They are no doubt intimidating now but you will soon enough become familiar with them. Do not become too familiar with them. I will repeat that for anyone who might have missed it: Do not become too familiar with your cadaver.

  "Never forget that you are dismantling the body of a fellow human being. This is a rare and precious privilege. Many of these people donated their bodies for this purpose. Others belonged to the least of our species—the homeless, the unidentified, the unclaimed. All of them are anonymous, but that doesn't mean they didn't have names, didn't have friends and family. Remember that as you carve them up. No matter what their past histories, no matter what their socioeconomic status when they were alive or what route they took to get here, they all deserve our respect. And I shall demand that you accord them that respect.

  "I should inform you that this lab will be open at all times. One good thing about an enclosed campus with its own security force is that it allows students access to the labs whenever they need them. Do not hesitate to take advantage of that.

  "Now. Roll your cover sheets down to the foot of the table. It is time to begin."

  Quinn looked at Tim across the table. He raised his eyebrows.

  "Ready, partner?"

  "Sure," she said, steeling herself. "Now or never. Let's get to it."

  They each grabbed a corner of the green plastic sheet and drew it swiftly toward the end of the table.

  Gray hair...sallow, wrinkled, sagging, turgorless skin... flabby buttocks...skinny legs—the images, strobed close-ups, bits and pieces, catapulted into her brain. She blinked, got the whole picture. Female. A thin old woman. No jolting surprises in the appearance of their cadaver except that it was lying face down on the table.

  Quinn glanced around at the other tables. All the cadavers were face down.

  She turned back to her table. Whoever the woman was—or had been—Quinn felt embarrassed for her, laid bare like this under these pitiless lights. She wanted to edge the sheet up, at least to cover her buttocks, but she left it where it was. As she tucked the plastic sheet under the cadaver's feet she noticed a tag tied to her left great toe. She turned it over and read the print:

  Fredrickson Funeral Home

  Towson, MD

  A name had been block printed in blue ink below the heading:

  Dorothy Havers.

  Dorothy Havers...that couldn't be anything but the woman's name. They weren't supposed to know their cadaver's name. Nobody was.

  Quinn pulled her dissection kit from her labcoat pocket, removed the scissors, and snipped the string. The back of her hand brushed the cold, stiff flesh. She shuddered.

  "What are you doing?" Tim asked, leaning over from his side.

  "Nothing." She stuffed the tag into her pocket. "Just checking out my kit."

  "Good afternoon, Miss Cleary."

  Quinn turned and recognized the white-haired figure standing by the head of their table. He wore a stained, wrinkled labcoat and had a battered hardcover copy of Gray's Anatomy clamped under his left arm.

  "You lucked out," he said, looking over the cadaver. "You got yourself a thin one."

  "Dr. Emerson. I didn't expect to see you here."

  "Oh, you'll see a lot of me around here," he said, smiling. "Neuropharmacology is my field and my love, but you can spend only so many hours a day calculating minuscule changes in the reuptake rates of sundry neurotransmitters without going batty. A few afternoons a week it does me good to get back to the basics of gross anatomy."

  Quinn was glad he was here. She liked Dr. Emerson. She had a feeling he'd played an important part in her acceptance, but she would have liked him anyway. He radiated a certain warmth that invited trust. And it was certainly good to know that she had someone willing to go to bat for her at The Ingraham.

  She introduced him to Tim.

  "Do you have a photophobic condition, Mr. Brown?" he said, eying Tim's shades.

  "Yes," Tim said slowly. "In a way."

  Quinn then asked the question that had been plaguing her since they'd removed the plastic sheet.

  "Why is she face down?"

  "Because the first dissection you'll be doing is the nuchal region, the back of the neck. You'll be looking to isolate the greater occipital nerve. Dr. Kogan will be starting you off momentarily but if you want to get a jump, take a look at Section One in your lab workbook."

  "Okay," Quinn said. "But first..."

  She freed the end of the plastic sheet from under Dorothy's feet and drew it up to the middle of her back.

  Dr. Emerson was looking at her curiously. A faint smile played about his lips. "Are you afraid your cadaver's going to catch a chill?"

  She's not just a cadaver, Quinn thought. She's Dorothy.

  She shrugged. "We'll only be working on the neck, so I just thought..." She ran out of words.

  Apparently she didn't need any more. Dr. Emerson was nodding slowly, his eyes bright.

  "I understand, Miss Cleary. I understand perfectly."

  *

  Quinn made the first cut.

  With Dr. Kogan instructing over the loudspeaker and Dr. Emerson watching, Quinn gloved up, fixed a blade to her scalpel handle, and poised the point over the white-haired scalp. The diagram showed a central incision running from the back of the head down to the base of the neck.

  She hesitated.

  "Want me to do it?" Tim said.

  She shook her head. She was going to have to get used to this and the quickest way to acclimate to the water was to jump in.

  "Press hard," Dr. Emerson told her. "Human skin is tough. And human skin that's been in a formaldehyde bath can be almost like shoe leather."

  Quinn gritted her teeth and pushed the point through the skin. Dr. Emerson hadn't been exaggerating. Even with a brand-new scalpel blade it was tough going. The honed edge rasped and gritted as she dragged the blade downward to the base of the skull and along the midline groove above the vertebrae of the neck.

  "Very good," Dr. Emerson said. "Now you've started. From here on you're each on your own, each responsible for the dissection of your own side. Later, of course, when we get to them, you'll have to share the unpaired internal organs." He patted Quinn on the shoulder. "I'll be back later to see how you're doing."

  "Wow," Tim said to the air when Dr. Emerson had moved on to another table. "Only just got here and already she's teacher's pet."

  She flashed him a grin. "Some of us have engaging personalities, so
me of us don't."

  "Is that so?" Tim raised his scalpel in challenge. "Race you to the greater occipital nerve?"

  "You're on."

  *

  Quinn won.

  In fact, she had to stop her own dissection a couple of times to help Tim with his.

  Finally she told him, "I would venture to say that your manual dexterity is inversely proportional to the accuracy of your memory."

  "Am I to take it then that you don't think neurosurgery is the field for me?"

  "Only if you keep the world's finest malpractice defense attorney on permanent retainer."

  "Who knows? I may decide to be the world's finest defense attorney."

  "You have to go to law school for that. This is a med school, in case you forgot."

  "Didn't I tell you? I'm going to law school as soon as I graduate from The Ingraham."

  Quinn was about to ask Tim if he was joking when one of the second-year student teaching assistants strolled up to the table. The name tag on his labcoat read "Harrison." He was thin, with longish blond hair, and pale, pock-marked skin that glistened under the fluorescents. His attitude was condescending, bordering on imperious. Quinn disliked him almost immediately.

  "Not bad," he said as he inspected their dissection.

  He smiled as he pulled a pen-like instrument from the breast pocket of his labcoat, telescoped it into a pointer, and began quizzing Quinn on the local anatomy. She did all right on the tissues they'd already covered in class, but then he began to move into unknown territory.

  "We haven't got there yet," Tim said, coming to her aid.

  "Oh, really?" Harrison said, his gaze flicking back and forth between the two of them. "Well, maybe you ought to consider showing some initiative. One way to get ahead at The Ingraham is to work ahead."

  "Thank you for that advice," Tim said softly. "Now, if you don't mind, what was the origin and insertion of that last muscle you pointed to?"

  Harrison smirked. "Look it up," he said, then turned and almost walked into the man standing directly behind him.

  "Oh," Harrison said. "Excuse me, Dr. Emerson."

  Dr. Emerson's expression was not pleased.

  Quinn wondered how long he'd been standing there. Long enough to hear Harrison's last remark, apparently. Quinn hadn't noticed him come up. But Tim obviously had. His lopsided smile told her he'd bushwhacked the second-year student. He cocked his head toward Harrison as he mouthed the words, Dumb ass.

  "I'd like to speak to you a moment, Mr. Harrison," Dr. Emerson said.

  He took the younger man aside and did most of the talking. Quinn couldn't hear much of what was being said but caught brief snatches such as, "—if you wish to keep your stipend—" and "—no place for one-upmanship—"

  Finally Harrison nodded and turned away, moving toward the far side of the lab. Dr. Emerson, too, moved on, not bothering to stop at their table.

  "You set that up, didn't you," Quinn said.

  "'Hoist with his own petard.'"

  "Easy," Quinn said. "Hamlet. But does this mean I have two guardian angels here?"

  Tim smiled. "Could be."

  *

  "I don't know if I can handle this."

  Judy Trachtenberg was speaking, holding a forkful of prime rib over her plate and staring at it. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, she wore no make-up, and looked very pale. She and her roomie Karen Evers occupied the room next to Quinn's. She'd hooked up with them on the way to the caf. Tim and his roommate Kevin Sanders, a big black guy, a quiet type who didn't say much, had joined their table.

  "If it's too rare for you," Tim said, "I'll take it."

  Judy rolled her eyes and returned to fork to her plate.

  "I'm not talking about the food. I'm talking about this... this whole medical school thing."

  "This is only the first day," Quinn said. "It'll get better. It has to."

  She said it to encourage herself as much as Judy. She knew exactly how she was feeling. Like Judy she'd found today almost overwhelming.

  "I can handle the courses easily enough," Judy said. "I mean, give me a textbook, put me in a class, and I can learn anything. But these labs. Have you seen the lab schedule? Every afternoon! And Anatomy Lab has got to be the worst! Am I right?"

  A chorus of agreement from the table.

  She went on. "I mean, I've washed my hands half a dozen times since we got out of lab and they still smell like formaldehyde—and I was wearing gloves! My God, I still smell it. It must have gotten into my nose. I mean, even the food tastes like formaldehyde. I don't know if I can handle a whole year of this."

  Quinn sniffed her own fingers. Yes, there was a hint of formaldehyde there. She'd thought she'd tasted it for a while, but that was gone now. Maybe Judy was more sensitive to it—or more dramatic. Either way, she was not a happy camper.

  "Does that mean you're not going to eat your meat?" Tim said, eying Judy's plate.

  Judy shoved it toward him. "Here. Be my guest. Eat till you burst. Doesn't any of this bother you?"

  Tim speared the prime rib from Judy's plate and placed it on his own.

  "Sure," he said. "It's sickening. But I don't dwell on it. It's something you've got to get through. And if you can't handle it, maybe you shouldn't be a doctor."

  Judy reddened. "I don't intend to practice on preserved corpses. I plan to have living patients."

  "Right. But you've got to have a certain amount of intestinal fortitude, got to walk through some fires along the way to get to those living patients. If you can't handle this, how are you going to handle spurting blood and spilling guts when people are calling you doctor and looking to you for an answer?"

  Quinn watched fascinated as Tim somehow managed to cut his meat, poke it into his mouth, chew a couple of times, and swallow, without breaking the rhythm of his speech. His expression was intent—on his food—but his words struck a resonant chord within Quinn: You do what you have to do.

  Maybe she and Tim weren't so different after all.

  "Looking at the way you eat that red meat," Judy said, "I can see you've got no fear of blood and guts."

  Amid the laughter, Tim grinned and held up his knife.

  "Okay. How about this? We've all met the estimable Mr. Harrison, haven't we?"

  Nods and groans all about the table.

  "A dork of the first water," Judy said.

  "Indisputably. But consider the fact that he's a second-year student. That means he took whatever The Ingraham threw at him in his first year and came through. In your moments of self-doubt, gird yourself with this little thought: I will not be less than Harrison."

  Judy stared into Tim's sunglasses for a few seconds, nodding slowly, then she reached across the table and retrieved the remainder of her prime rib.

  "I will not be less than Harrison," she said.

  Amid the applause, Quinn looked at Tim and made a startling discovery.

  I like you, Tim Brown. I like you a lot.

  But she'd never tell him that.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Tim's head was killing him as he pulled into The Ingraham's student parking lot. He leaned forward and gently rested his forehead on the steering wheel.

  Jack Daniel's...too much Jack Daniel's. It happened every time someone talked him into trying some sour mash.

  He shook himself and straightened. He'd made it from Baltimore in forty minutes—record time—but he hadn't raced all that distance just to take a nap in the parking lot. He glanced at his watch. Two minutes to get to Alston's lecture. He jumped out of the car and hurried toward the class complex. He eyed the security cameras high on the corners of the buildings, wondering if they were eying him.

  As the days had stretched into weeks, Tim had found himself falling into the rhythm of The Ingraham's class and lab schedule. The basic first-year courses were mostly rote. Anatomy, pathology, and histology were purely memory. Biochemistry and physiology were more analytical, but still mostly regurgitated facts. And regurgitating facts was
Tim's specialty. Poor Quinn needed hours of crunch study to master what he could absorb in minutes.

  So he'd found himself getting bored. Sure there was the roving bull session in the dorm, but he could take only so much of speculating and arguing about the future of medicine. Novels and his tape collection could hold his interest only so long. With everybody's head but his own buried in a book most of the time, he'd begun to feel like the only seeing, speaking person in a land populated by the deaf and blind.

  The only answer was to get off campus. The nearby county seat of Frederick was little better than staying on campus. He needed a city. Baltimore and Washington were the two obvious choices.

  He was passing the pond when he heard a familiar voice.

  "Where have you been?"

  He turned and saw Quinn hurrying up the walk behind him. He stopped to wait for her, nodding to others he knew as they swirled past him. She looked great but he didn't want her to get too close. He figured he had a terminal case of morning mouth.

  "Miss me?" he said.

  "I was looking for you last night. Kevin told me you took off after dinner. God, you look awful. Where on earth have you been?"

  "Baltimore."

  He knew a little about the city. Some guys he'd hung with in high school had gone to Loyola and he'd made a few trips down there during his four years at Dartmouth. But last night he'd headed for downtown, far from Loyola's suburban neighborhood. He'd hit Baltimore Street: The Block. Baltimore's down-sized equivalent of New York's West 42nd Street or Boston's Combat Zone.

  He hadn't gone there for the porn shops, the peep shows, the strippers, or the whores. He'd gone for the games. He'd learned on his past visits that there were a couple or three backroom card games in progress on any given night, games with stakes high enough to make things interesting.

  Trouble was, they hardly ever played blackjack. Poker, poker, poker was all these guys cared about. Tim knew he was a decent poker player, but nothing close to what he was in blackjack. Still, he was desperate for some action, and Atlantic City was too far.