Carved in Bone

both noticed my purple rubber glove at the same instant. “You really don’t want to shake my hand right now. I’m Dr. Brockton.”
    She shook her head and sighed. “Hi, Dr. B., I’m Katie. We have met. Twice. You’re looking better, by the way.”
    Okay, perhaps we had met after all. What was wrong with my memory, and what had been wrong with me last time she saw me? I didn’t have the time or the heart to pursue either question. I asked if she’d seen the morgue tech I needed, hoping I wasn’t too late. “Joey? I think he’s doing a burn.” Not good, I thought. I spun on my heel and sprinted down the corridor that led out one side of the morgue, where the medical waste incinerator was tucked into an out-of-the-way angle of the hospital complex.
    Joey Weeks, the lowest-ranking morgue assistant, stood beside the incinerator’s open hatch, a gurney parked beside him. I saw him toss a bag into the burner, then grab another off the cart. “Wait!” I yelled.
    “Hey, Doc,” he said as I skidded to a stop. “What’s up?”
    “Joey, I’m looking for some tissue that came from an exhumation a couple of days ago.”
    “Exhumation? Oh, you mean that one autopsied by Dr. Carter from Chattanooga? The guy that ain’t got nothin’ between the head and the waist? That’s creepy, man.”
    “Yeah, that’s the one. You know anything about that? There was a biohazard bag with some tissue in it with the body in the cooler.”
    “Sure. Dr. Hamilton told me it was waste. Said to incinerate it. Probably going up in smoke right now.”
    Hamilton? “Damn.”
    “Problem?”
    “I was hoping to take one last look at something.”
    He motioned toward the cart. “Well, I got a few bags left here. Maybe it’s not too late. Let’s take a look. Do you know the number?”
    I racked my brain. “It had two autopsy numbers on it—the original was from last year, but I don’t remember what came after the ‘A-2004.’ But Dr. Carter added a number when she looked at it the other day, A-2005-125, maybe.”
    “Can’t be too many with double numbers. If it’s here, we’ll find it.”
    We checked the cart. It wasn’t there, and my heart sank. Then I noticed the bag still dangling from Joey’s right hand. If I’d arrived a second later, it would have gone up in flames.
    I bore the putrid organs before me with both hands, like the crown jewels on a velvet pillow. It wasn’t so much a gesture of reverence as a stance of caution: the bag had been punctured and was dripping steadily. Entering the decomp lab, I laid my prize on a countertop and sliced open the top. The contents slithered and plopped out onto the absorbent surgical pad.
    I fished out the remnants of the heart, stomach, and intestines first, then what I believed to be the liver, then various other organs that were more or less recognizable as themselves, or at least as something other than lung. That left a mound of lung tissue, which looked like a chocolate pudding gone terribly wrong in the making.
    The most efficient way to do this was also the messiest. Picking up the nearest blob of tissue, I began to squeeze, squishing it through loosely clenched fingers. Nothing. I repeated the process with half a dozen other lungish-looking blobs. Still nothing. I scooped up the last of the blobs and gave it a hard, frustrated squeeze…and when I did, something sharp jabbed the heel of my hand. It was a shard of bone, an inch long, a quarter-inch wide, and tapering to a wicked point. It had nicked my glove; I hoped it hadn’t also broken the skin. I rinsed it off, set it in a small pot to simmer, and then cleaned and disinfected my hands. The skin appeared unbroken, but I still gave it a pretty thorough marinade in Betadine.
    Just as I was drying off, the door opened and in walked Miranda, sporting a bright orange fiberglass cast. She pirouetted, angling the cast in all directions. “UT orange,” I said. “Very sporty.”
    “Thought it might get me a close-up on ESPN at the football game next weekend,” she said. “Any luck with our friend here?”
    “Yeah, barely. Pure, blind, last-second luck.” I fished the bone fragment out of the pot with some tongs. She whistled appreciatively. “It wasn’t a knife that punctured his lung and made him bleed to death—it was a piece of his own rib.”
    “And that happened eighteen days before he collapsed and died?”
    “Assuming it splintered off during the stomping he took in that bar fight.”
    “So the guy