It was a cold night as Derek got into work. With a headache from the night before and a bad cold, his moral was low.
He didnt talk to anyone much as he walked down to the morgue, the front receptionist was never that talkative anyway. He never really had the skills that were necassary for much social interaction anyway. He moved down the corridors of the hospital, as if he was a shadow, not leaving a trace that he was even there.
It was dark in St Lucian Memorial Hospital at this time, and it was as if a blanket of quiet had been layed over the entire building. It was usually quiet at night, the night shift not being known for its over-activeness other than the odd drunken buffoon being brought in for alchohol poisoning. One of the reasons that Derek got involved in Pathology was to get away from the unfortunate aspect of the medical career, which was the patients themselves. It was much better for him to deal with them after they were already dead.
However this was a different kind of quiet. This was a complete absence of anything. There were no ticking noises emanating from the clocks and there were no creaks from the floors or the walls, in fact there was no noise anywere. It was a complete absence of noise. This was a predatory silence, that was waiting for it"s time to strike. To Derek however this fact was blissfully unknown to him. He just went about his usual routine with his same usual efficiency. What did he care if it was unusually silent, what was there worth hearing anyway.
He walked right past the lifts (They had been out of order for weeks, not that Derek noticed at all. He never used them anyway), heading towards the stairs. He descended the stairs two at a time. This was all a part of his routine. It hadn"t changed since he"d been here. There was no deviation, it was all a part of his every day life.
As he came to the bottom of the stairs, the lights flickered soundlessly, and a shadow crossed along the far wall. Derek paid it no heed, there was no reason to. He knew everything that was down here, and there wasn"t anything unusual to him. Most people would at least have looked in the direction of the shadow, but not Derek. He just couldn"t see the point. What interest could a shadow hold for him. He wasn"t a naturally curious person, things were the way they were and that was that.
He reached the morgue, and got ready for his shift. From the little that the receptionist actually did say to him as he arrived at the hospital, the mortuary technician had called in sick. Stuart was never that reliable anyway. In the two years that he had worked with him, all he had ever talked about was how cute all the nurses were. He was never very interested in these trivial conversations, a fact that Stuart was blissfully unaware of. Derek was just a humanoid shaped soundboard for him to relate every minor and insignificant thought that happened to pass through the vacuous region that was his head. Derek was glad of the brief respite from his company. It meant he could get on with his work unhindered.
People could be so distracting sometimes. Stuart was a prime example of how stupid and useless most people were. They were glorified sheep, unable to think for themselves. That was what the politicians were for, and even they were as dumb as a single celled amoebae. The only people who were worth Derek"s time were the dead kind, and they weren"t very big on conversations.
The Hospital records showed that three bodys had been admitted to the morgue.
The first was a heart attack victim. Mr John Greenwood had died on the operating table, a minor slip up by a junior level surgeon that would most probably end his career before it had even started. Derek was used to the inner political workings of the medical board, it was how he had got his five year residency at St Lucians Memorial Hospital in the first place. The young surgeon would most probably be used as a scapegoat to cover up the fact that the attending senior surgeon hadn"t spotted his mistake and corrected it in time, or that he had even allowed him to take a leading role in the procedure in the first place.
The autopsy on Mr Greenwood had already been done by a senior level forensic pathologist and his attending mortuary technician, earlier on in the day. Derek went through the pathology notes on the computer anyway. It never hurt to check over a colleagues work, just to make sure there were no mistakes made. However as usual Dr. Stallin was as precise as ever. It was no surprise as he was a specialist in many different fields, including Forensic Pathology and Biomedical Research.
The notes suggested that the patient had suffered from a secondary heart attack while on the operating table. Perhaps the young surgeon had been granted a reprieve from his mistake. Whether it would make him more cautious in the operating theatre, or whether Derek was doomed to see more victims of the young doctors scalpal in the morgue, was yet to be seen.
The second body to be admitted was a DUI victim. From the little amount of information on the screen, Derek guessed that it was a pretty straight forward deal. The body of the woman had been found two meters away from her car, which was wrapped around a tall oak tree. There had been two other passengers in the car. They both survived (Most probably because of the fact that they had there seatbelts on, and hadn"t been catapulted out of the front window at 110 mph) and they were now both resting up in intensive care.
The woman had already had the preliminary forensic tests run on her. Derek opened up her file. Her name was established as Elizabeth Harvey. She had a BAC result of 0.23. Derek was surprised she could even get in the car let alone drive it. She had enough alchohol in her system to open her own brewery. Another look at her blood test results, revealed that miss Harvey was a Haemophiliac. There was one more factor of why miss Harvey hadn"t survived the crash.
The third body brought in was a John Doe. He was a young boy of about fifteen years in age who had been found in the canal. Derek found it odd however that there was no other information in his file. Surely a case like this would require an immediate autopsy to confirm the cause of death, so that the police could put together a proper investigation on the boys death. Derek knew this should have been the procedure, and as it was shown with Mr Greenwood they had already had access to an excellent pathologist that day. However as he reminded himself, the employees at this hospital rarely did things in an efficient manner. It was possible that the boys case had simply been forgotten for a more trivial case. It wasn"t important now regardless, Derek would finish off the work that someone had been too inefficient to do anyway.
Derek got back to his routine. An extra five minutes to wash up again, a doctors hands could never be clean enough. A pair of gloves and a quick inspection of his tools and he was ready to begin.
An hour later and he had finished with the first body. Miss Harvey had been an ordinary and very unoriginal case. She had gone headlong through the window hitting her head on the concrete as she landed. She had died of a massive brain aneurysm causes by blunt force trauma. If she hadn"t already died of that, she would have died of massive blood loss. She should have wore her seatbelt, she shouldn"t have been drinking and she definately shouldn"t have been driving a car. Put it down to yet another case of the disease known as stupidity.
Now it was on to the boy. Derek was surprised to find that the body was quite clean. In fact for someone who was meant to have been found submerged in the murky and unclean waters of a canal, he was surprisingly spotless. Why would someone take the time to clean the boys body and not perform an autopsy at the same time. On a cursory sweep of this John Doe, Derek was puzzled. The primary sign of asphyxiation were not there. There was no cyanosis of the skin, indicating Hypoxia, and Derek doubted that he had been submerged in a body of water for any length of time recently. There had to have been a computer error with the boys file. Derek decided to find out before proceeding with the autopsy.
He went to the phone, and dialled the number for reception. After the tenth ring the receptionist answered.
"Hello, reception here. Shelley speaking how may I help."
Her bored and rather irritating chirpy voice got on his nerves, and he was glad that he didn"t have to converse with her on a regular basis.
"Hi, its Derek."
"Derek who?", The way she said this Derek could just imagine the stupid look of confusion plastered on her face at that moment.
"Derek Jederan!" He decided to add more detail, just in case she still didn"t understand and he ended up being stuck on the phone with this dim-witted airhead for an hour still explaining who he was (Which was a distinct possibility) "Doctor Derek Jederan, down in the Morgue."
"Oh", He could hear the fake comprehension in her voice, and knew that she really hadn"t a clue who he was even though she"d been working with him for nearlly a year, and the fact that he had past her on the way down here, just over an hour ago.
"I"m just finishing off my last autopsy for the night, and I was wondering if you could help me with something?"
"I"m sorry, but I"m not contracted to help in the Morgue."
Derek rolled his eyes. For a layman, she was surprisingly hard for Derek to fully understand. He just couldn"t understand how her thought processes worked.
"No, not that kind of help. I was wondering if you could pull up the records for the John Doe I have down here on your system." He was really hoping she could grasp this simple request, though he really did doubt it was possible "I"d just like to see if there was any mistake made with the report."
"Ok, just give me one second", He could hear the usual chirpyness reappear in her voice, and it grated on the inside of his head.
He could hear the sound of her distant clicking, and was surprised at the speed at which she typed. Well, he supposed someone of her type would have to be good at typing fast otherwise how would she be able to catch up on her daily amount of gossip.
"Hello?", Her voice came over the receiver in a questioning tone, as if I would have gone anywhere.
He decided to answer her anyway, "Yes I"m still here."
"I"ve tried to pull up those files you asked for but the only files I can find for the Morgue, are the files for a Mr Greenwood and a Miss Harvey." She actually sounded like she knew what she was doing, Derek was impressed. But it was confusing to him how she could get into the right area of the hospitals files and completely lose the files he wanted.
"How is that possible, I just had the files up on my computer down here" He tried to keep his frustration out of his voice, and failed abyssmaly.
"I"m sorry Doctor, but there just is no file on the system for a John Doe admitted today" She said this in a monotone voice that sounded like it came right out of a hand book on how to deal with difficult patients, and it probably did, "is there anything else I can help you with?"
"No thank you, I think I"ll be ok now," He slammed the phone down. He could imagine the look of incredulity on her face right at this moment, and he smiled. If he needed any more help he"d be sure to ask the photocopier next time.
He decided to look again himself. He removed his gloves and moved over to the computer. He opened up the Morgue files and looked for todays files.
There were only two files there.
How could this be? He"d checked the files an hour ago, and there were three files. Where had this John Doe"s file gone. Derek just couldn"t understand it. He turned towards the boys body, and wondered what kind of mystery surrounded him. This just didn"t seem right. Files went missing all the time, it was just an inevitability of working with incompitence and with an outdated computer system. But this seemed just plain wrong to him. There was no physical flaw on this kid.
There was a sudden clashing sound behind him, that made him jump. He turned around, to find that his scalpal had dropped on the floor. He couldn"t even think why he had jumped now. He wasn"t naturally edgy. What was there to be jumpy about. He turned back towards the John Doe.
He just couldn"t figure it out. Everything was off here. He didn"t know why, but he knew it was something to do with the boy. He was an impossibility. He shouldn"t excist. He was suddenly filled with an insatiable urge to get rid of him. It would be better for everyone if there was no trace of this boy at all.
He shook his head. That thought was ludicrouse, what harm could this boy do in the end. He was dead. Besides if he disposed of the body, how would he explain it to his superiors. He had already talked to the receptionist about him and though she may be just an airhead, doubtless she would be able to bring her head out of the clouds long enough to tell someone in the hospital about there conversation.
Best to just leave the boy in his refrigeration unit until tommorrow and ask Dr. Stallin about it. Derek moved over to the boy and was about to push him back in when there was a movement behind him. Derek turned quickly, to find that there was nothing there.
He was begginning to get annoyed with himself. He didn"t get like this. Paranoia was for other people, it was a stupid trivial thing. He didn"t need to get paranoid about anything, there was nothing there.
He turned back towards the boy, and screamed. The boy had opened his eyes.
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