Page 101 of Stay Buried

I nodded, did as I was told.

“Take notes for me,” he said.

He began with an external examination, stating the subject’s age, height, weight. “Cause of death, gunshot wounds to the head and chest,” he said matter-of-factly.

I wrote it all down. “Subject’s sclera are yellow in color, suggesting jaundice. Signs of cyanosis present in the extremities and face. These were visible in the hours before death.”

He continued to study the body, picking up limbs, poking at his abdomen, rolling him over with effort and inspecting his backside.

At last, Benjamin flat on his back, Uncle Thomas reached for the scalpel and began the Y-incision.

Tough as I believed myself to be, I winced as he sliced, half expecting Benjamin to sit up, screaming.

Two incisions, one descending from each shoulder joint, met at mid-chest. There, a single incision was made all the way down to the pubic area.

“Next, I’ll remove the rib cage,” Uncle Thomas said, reaching for a saw and a heavy pair of pliers.

The room was redolent with the mingled smells of blood and rotten burned fruit.

Feeling lightheaded, I stepped back, resting against the wall, clinging to my little notebook and pencil with damp hands.

I had never seen the inside of a person. Not like this. I’d assisted Uncle Thomas with an appendectomy once, sewn up torn muscle and skin myself, but this was something else altogether. I’d studied the pages of my uncle’s anatomy books, done drawings of the body’s systems, could name each organ and all of their lobes and chambers. But all of this in no way prepared me for the violent crack of the ribs, the terrible sound of the saw biting through bone as my uncle labored, pushing back and forth, his hands soaked in blood, his face covered in a sheen of perspiration.

I wanted to run from the room with its stink of blood and sweet sickness, to hide like a coward, like the timid child I still felt inside me sometimes.

Instead, I stepped forward, forced myself to peer inside the body cavity, wrote down everything my uncle was saying about the heart and lungs. “Atypical,” my uncle said. “Heart badly damaged by thegunshot.”

“You heard something odd when you listened to his chest back at his house,” I said, remembering. “What was it?”

My uncle, his eyes on the still heart, ruined from the gunshot, on the lungs full of a dark, viscous fluid, said, “Nothing.”

“But you—”

“I heard nothing at all, Frankie. No heartbeat. At least none that I could discern.”

My mouth went dry.

“But he was… awake. Sitting up, speaking, surely he was…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it:alive. I was talking too fast, the words all running together.

Uncle Thomas nodded. “Indeed he was.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know, Frankie. I wish I did.” He reached for a scalpel. “Open the specimen jars and put them on the table.”

Hours later, Benjamin sewn back up, my uncle sank into the chair in the surgery. He’d scrubbed the blood off his hands and sat looking into them now, staring like he was wondering if he’d missed a spot. The jars full of formaldehyde, sealed with wax, sat in a row on the table: sections of Benjamin’s lungs, brain, heart, and liver. Glass tubes held blood and sputum samples from both Benjamin and Uncle Thomas.

I left my uncle and went into the kitchen, made coffee and two sandwiches with salami and hard cheese. Aife was curled on her bed by the stove and I gave her a reassuring pat and a small piece of salami. I wasn’t hungry and doubted my uncle was either, but I knew we should eat. We needed our strength for whatever was coming next.

Outside, it was already dark.

How had the day passed so quickly?

A gentle tap at the kitchen window made me jump and step away. Then, summoning up the courage, I looked out, past my own reflection, into the night. There was a face looking in at me, waving a hand.It was Jim Collins. He was pointing to the back door.

I went and opened it.

“Come in,” I said. And he shook his head, looked around nervously. He was holding a rifle. “What is it?” I asked.