Digger - The Doctor Will See You Now by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 9

The following week brought long classes and many cups of coffee. Ryan began having difficulties staying awake during the day, and sleep was rapidly becoming plagued with the same repetitive nightmare. He’d begun to feel as though he was alone in his experience. Intellectually, he knew better. But no one else so much as even yawned in class. It doesn’t take much for one to become sleep-deprived --two, maybe three days. And when the brain wants to sleep, it will simply turn itself off, and during lunch, as Ryan set against the wall, something inside him decided it was time to check out. His consciousness flickered as the muscles in his neck released their tension. His head suddenly fell forward as his vision momentarily went black. He retained enough of his senses to catch himself and quickly snapped his head back up. Shaking himself back into the waking world, Ryan chastised himself for allowing his mind to wander in such a way. “Fuck,” he cursed quietly. “I’ve got to get some sleep.” He glanced up at the clock and noticed it was ten minutes of one. Everyone in the cafeteria put their books away and proceeded to file out to their various classes. Following the crowd, Ryan noticed his books were particularly heavy that day, but he trudged on through the hallways, sitting as close to the front of the class as possible, hoping the instructor’s proximity would prevent him from dozing off. But every time he sat down, it seemed that his mind was determined to shut itself off, dragging him down into an involuntary somnolence.

Finally, it was Friday. And as usual, the night was occupied by studying. Ryan spent hours delving deeply into his books. But his thinking was becoming muddled as the words melted into each other. He had to find a way of memorizing the material more efficiently -- something visual. But the images from the books began to look rather cartoonish. After a few cups of coffee, he was struck by what he believed was a sound, practical idea.

Every building on campus was accessible by key card, while the only rooms deemed off-limits were administrative offices. Ryan grabbed his anatomy book and lab notes, stuffed them into his day pack and left for the campus. January in Portland was inhospitably cold and biting to the bone for even the hardiest of New Englanders. There was a stiff breeze in the air and the streets were dark, prompting a change in perception that seemed to bring even the most benign shadows to life. Between the cold air and Ryan’s escalating sense of urgency, he found himself driven to get to campus as quickly as possible. He let himself in by swiping his UNE ID card over a lighted sensor near the door, and turning the light from red to green, Ryan heard the quiet click of the door’s locking mechanism open. Stepping inside, he felt the comforting rush of warm air envelope his chilled body. It had only been a two-block walk to the campus, but the malicious January night already had its fill of his body’s warmth, leaving him a shivering, wind-burnt shell.

Closing the door behind him, Ryan again heard the door lock click shut. The hallways were sparsely lit, and Ryan slowly made his way through the darkened, door-lined maze. His objective was the anatomy lab. Unauthorized entry was strictly forbidden. One couldn’t simply walk off Stevens Avenue and enter the anatomy lab, and bringing someone in who was not a student of the program was a violation of both UNE’s policies and state law, punishable by immediate expulsion and possible prosecution. But Ryan was only there to get caught up, to find a more interactive way of retaining the material, and he wondered if working alone would allow him greater focus.

Finding the lab, Ryan, again, used his key card to gain entrance. The closed sliding drawers seemed to surround the cold darkness of the room, bringing a sudden chill of some concealed, murky presence that had taken refuge in a deep, shadowy corner from the frigid January night. Allowing the door to close behind him, he quickly found the panel of light switches nearby and turned on only those nearest the cadaver he and Carol had been working on. Walking over to the stainless steel drawer, Ryan dropped his day pack on the linoleum floor, and grabbing the chromed handle pulled the mortuary tray out as far as it would go. There, lying on the cold bed of stainless steel was the body of the woman who had offered herself up to the hands of strangers to be taken apart in the name of science. Her soul may have gone to heaven, but her body remained behind as an earthly shell, something to be tinkered with.

Ryan stood for a moment, his eyes sweeping up and down the body. But within moments, he found his attention pulled toward the woman’s face. As intrigued as he was, there was something about her clouded, empty stare that sent a chill through him. He couldn’t define the expression completely and tried not to focus on it. But in the dark recesses of his mind was something that had long been waiting for such a moment, something whose appetite had been aroused by the sight of death and the deeply buried memories of childhood, fraught with pain and anger. It left Ryan on the edge of obsession and was poised to take him over, destroying everything he’d worked for -- his future, his life. Everything was now hanging in the balance -- his life on one side, madness on the other. What would allow him to bury this hunger was yet to be discovered. Perhaps this was a sickness without a cure. Some things cannot be set right.

He opened his anatomy book and, laying it on the woman’s knees, picked up a pair of forceps and a scalpel. The precaution of a face shield and gloves did not enter his mind as he set to work. Not that he was in a hurry he simply became intensely involved in a short time. Now, the hunger of obsession was beginning to raise its head. But his intensity, his need for success blinded him from this encroaching madness, and soon it would catch up to him, roaring into his mind and blackening his soul.

Ryan continued, teasing tissues from organs. He found the connective tissues to be tough and pale -- no doubt the result of embalming chemicals. The hours quickly passed as he compared the cadaver’s interior arrangement to the images in the anatomy book. He realized earlier that this arrangement didn’t exactly match with what was presented in the book. In fact, the book was essentially a collection of generalities. Some of the smaller organs, especially, could not be located with the book alone. This would take more time.

In order to better commit what he saw to memory, he began sketching out drawings of body cavities and organs, hoping that this would act to set the images in his mind. But he soon realized that his artistic skills were badly lacking. He stood, looking at the childlike scrawlings in his notebook. They were anything but familiar. In fact, they were wholly unrecognizable and in a sudden state of frustration, he tore the pages from his notebook and threw them to the floor. “Fuck!” he yelled. “How am I going to do this?!” He ignored the volume of his voice. After all, who would hear him? Everyone else in the room was dead. Certainly, they were in no position to be bothered by his ranting. Close to giving up, Ryan began to pack up his books as another idea suddenly glimmered in his mind. It seemed reasonably practical, and he debated it for several minutes, remembering the extensive lectures on the preservation of dignity. However, he concluded that these particular people were here to help him learn and Ryan was, therefore, able to rationalize his decision.

Ryan reached down toward the floor and, picking up his coat, fumbled through the pockets and, within only a few seconds, retrieved his cell phone. It was an expensive touchscreen model with a high-resolution camera, and after turning it on, he paged across the screen. Tapping the camera icon, Ryan held it over the body, photographing its various parts. He pulled the abdominal cavity open and photographed its contents. He would later email the images to himself and download them to his laptop in the morning.

The digital shutter tripped repeatedly as Ryan continued to photograph every part of the body. Again, he was inexplicably drawn to the face and photographed it from several angles. While recording this particular series of images, Ryan hesitated. He stared into the pale yellow face, wondering what it was her eyes last saw as her heart came to frozen stillness. Passing the phone to his left hand, Ryan gently turned her face towards him. He looked deeply into her cold cloudy eyes, contemplating where, if anywhere, she might be now. Leaning in closer, he whispered in her ear.

“So, what’s it like to die?” he asked. Of course, a response was not forthcoming, but Ryan hesitated as if there had been some utterance of an answer, and he paused to give his reply.

“I know what you’re thinking, but I have to take you apart. I promise it won’t hurt, but it’s the only way.” The darkness that had been sleeping inside him for so long had found its way out, ready to consume anything left of his sanity.