Chapter Seventeen

‘So how are we doing here?' Dr. Hove asked, walking up to Kay, Myeong and Tullik's group to check on their progress, just as the first forty-five minutes were over.

‘We're OK, I guess,' Myeong replied, her head angling slightly to one side, showing uncertainty. ‘I wish I could've covered a little more ground.' Halfway through her sentence, Myeong's stare moved to Kay and stayed on her until seconds after she had delivered the last word. ‘But things didn't run as smoothly as they could've done.'

Kay's eyes widened at Myeong. ‘Not quite like that,' she said, not so much in an effort to defend herself, but more to try to grab Dr. Hove's curiosity. ‘Straight from the external and preliminary exams, Doc, a couple of things just didn't look quite right. Here, have a look…' Kay tried, pointing at the body's eyes, but before she could say or do anything, Dr. Hove paused her with a subtle hand gesture.

‘It doesn't look like it's your turn, Kay.'

‘Damn straight,' Tullik said, repositioning himself at the head of the examination table.

Dr. Hove knew how dedicated Kay Sixtree was. After all, she had already offered Kay a residency at the Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner. Kay would be an exceptional medical examiner someday, but her enthusiasm did get the best of her most of the time. That was something Dr. Hove also knew would eventually die down naturally, but as a student, Kay wanted what every other forensics pathology student wanted – to be the hero… to find that one thing that no one else saw… that one thing that was overlooked by everyone… that one thing that so happened to solve the whole mystery, if there was one.

Tullik reached for the body block and moved it from under the body's back to under the body's neck, like a pillow.

‘What are you doing?' Kay asked, her eyes narrowing at Tullik's action.

‘What do you think I'm doing,' Tullik replied, unconcerned, as he reached for the electric hair clippers on the instruments tray.

‘You're going to autopsy the brain?' Kay stepped closer. ‘Right now?'

‘Wow, you're definitely with it today, Dr. House,' Tullik said back, as he started shaving the body's head. ‘Another excellent spotting job.'

‘But what about the rest of the body,' Kay tried to argue. ‘All the exposed fractures? The bone breaks? All of it. You're not going to look into that?'

Tullik turned off the clippers for an instant and faced Kay. ‘The assignment is to supply Dr. Hove with indisputable confirmation of the COD.' His gaze moved to their professor. ‘In my professional opinion as the head pathologist, following an expertly detailed external examination by Dr. Myeong…' A quick glance at Myeong followed by a single nod. ‘The cause of death will, most certainly, be linked to the extensive blunt trauma to the subject's head. I'm going to obtain that indisputable confirmation first.' He quickly checked his watch. ‘If time allows, I'll then dig into everything else, if not, then you can do it when your forty-five minutes come up.'

Before Kay had a chance to voice the rebuff, which Dr. Hove knew was coming, she stepped in. ‘Tullik is right, Kay. He's the head pathologist. Once all the internal organs have been removed, it's his decision where to start.' The nod that she gave Tullik was a confident one. ‘I'll also admit that his call on the probable COD looks to be right on the money here. If this was my session, I'd start with a brain autopsy as well.' She softened her words with a smile. ‘As I'm sure would you and Myeong, if she had more time.'

Kay had no returning argument because Dr. Hove was right. If she were going second, she too would've opted to start with a brain autopsy.

As Dr. Hove left their group to go check on the next group along, Tullik restarted the clippers and picked up from where he'd left off. A minute and a half later, their autopsy subject had a fully shaved head and that was when Kay noticed something else that nagged at her senses – something that once again, just didn't seem right – but this time, when neither Tullik nor Myeong seemed to have noticed the same thing as Kay did, Kay decided to stay quiet. She knew that if she said anything, even if she was right, Tullik wouldn't care for her opinion. All he would do would be to tell her to shut the hell up. Kay decided that her best move would be to just wait until her turn came up.

With the subject's head fully shaved, Tullik reached for a scalpel and made a deep cut from behind the left ear, across the forehead, and over to the right side.

‘Lift, please,' he called for his assistants' help.

Kay and Myeong carefully lifted the head off the body block so that Tullik could finish the cut around the back of his head, creating a full 360-degree incision.

As Kay and Myeong returned the subject's head to the body block, Tullik swapped the scalpel for an electric saw. The smile he gave Kay just before he brought blade to bone almost made her sick.

‘Now watch and learn, people.'

Despite his arrogance, Kay couldn't argue that Tullik wasn't just fast with his cutting – he was also millimeter-perfect. Less than two minutes later, he popped off the top of the subject's skull like a cap, exposing his brain.

‘Wow,' Tullik said, moving his head from left to right, as he studied what they could see of the subject's gray matter. ‘We don't even need to extract the brain to identify the cause of death. Look at this.'

Kay and Myeong stepped closer.

Tullik used a scalpel to indicate an area of the subject's brain that sat just a little above his right ear, where tiny skull fragments could be seen embedded into the brain.

‘The head impact with the ground was so severe,' Tullik explained, ‘that his skull didn't just splinter-fracture. It caved in. The sharp bone edges sliced off a portion of his gray matter. Can you see here? There are pieces missing.'

‘Yeah,' Myeong replied first. ‘I see it.'

‘This,' Tullik continued, ‘hands down, trumps a perforated and collapsed lung.' He nodded at Kay.

Kay accepted it with a head gesture, but her attention was already on something else.

How can they not be seeing this?The thought exploded inside her head. Am I overthinking things? She once again waited for a heartbeat, but no one said a word. If I am, it doesn't feel like I am.

They removed and weighed the brain and before Tullik's forty-five minutes were over, he had confidently established the COD – blunt trauma to the skull, caused by the head impacting the ground at high speed due to a fall, where the skull splinter-fractured and caved inward, not only perforating the brain, but also slicing off and extracting a portion of the right temporal lobe. The injury would've caused immediate ceasing of brain functions, resulting in instant death.

By the time Kay Sixtree assumed the role of head pathologist, there was very little else left to do other than examine the many fractures and bone breaks around the subject's body. And that was exactly what she did.

Tullik wasn't the only one who was fast and precise with the autopsy instruments. Kay worked her way around every fracture in the subject's battered body with so much pace and dexterity that even Tullik found himself pursing his lips and nodding at every cut she made. But with every fracture and bone break that she cut around, the odd feeling she had inside that something just wasn't quite right with the information they had on the subject's death grew. Every time she exposed the muscles and ligaments around a new fracture, she would pause and look at the other two members in her group, waiting for them to notice some of the same things that she was noticing, but neither one said a word about any of it.

‘OK, everyone,' Dr. Hove called, lifting a hand to get everyone's attention. ‘Time's up. Please cover the subjects back up, leave the recordings as they are and go scrub down. I'm sure that you all did great. Meanwhile, I'll do my best to get through all of the recordings by the end of the weekend.'

While everyone noisily exited the theater, discussing what they all had just done, Kay stayed behind – her gloves still on, her mask hanging around her neck, her surgical cap still covering her raven-black hair.

‘Kay,' Dr. Hove called, gathering a few files from her desk and placing them inside her brown leather briefcase. ‘We're done here. You've done great. Go scrub down and celebrate. You're all going to graduate in less than three weeks. Enjoy the moment.'

‘Doctor, can I show you something?' Kay said, once again, uncovering the body on the autopsy table in front of her.

Dr. Hove didn't even glance back at her student as she sighed. ‘No, Kay. Like I've said, we're done here. Class is over. Semester is over. Year is over. Med school is over. You've done it. All the years of hard work have paid off. All you need is a few more years of residency and you'll be a fully accredited forensics pathologist. Seriously, go celebrate, girl.'

‘Doctor,' Kay insisted, her tone just as serious as ever. ‘I really think that you'd want to see this.'

‘Kay,' Dr. Hove said, finally locking eyes with her student. ‘You know that your residency is already guaranteed, right? You don't have to try to impress me anymore. Plus…' She paused, an affectionate smile evident in the curve of her words. ‘If you can get that excited with a suicide victim, I can't wait until you're face to face with some of the real, open homicide investigations we get.'

‘That's the problem here, Doctor,' Kay said back, not allowing the doctor's stare to run away from her. ‘I don't think that this is a suicide case. He didn't die on impact.'

Those words certainly managed to halt Dr. Hove.

‘What do you mean? That he was dead before he hit the ground?' There was a shrug in the doctor's voice. ‘It's not uncommon, Kay. It sometimes happens.'

‘No, Doctor.' Kay's eyebrows arched as she shook her head. ‘I'm not saying that he was dead before he hit the ground. I'm saying that he was dead before he jumped… he was dead before he even got to that bridge.'