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

Chapter 10

It was Saturday, and Ryan woke up later than usual. Pouring his first cup of coffee, he sat at his laptop. Reflecting on the previous night, he emailed the pictures from his late visit to the lab to his personal account. Now, he was downloading them to a folder on his desktop. As he sipped his morning coffee, he clicked through the images of the dead woman, whose body still lay on the stainless steel mortuary tray. Looking them over several times, his mind was consumed by their grisly nature. He had taken a great number of pictures -- extremities, genitals, the abdominal cavity, held open by an ungloved hand. But it was the face—that final expression—that embodies everything uncertain about human nature. Ryan found himself fascinated by it and would stare at it for minutes at a time.

He began studying using the pictures as references. Comparing them to those in his textbooks, he realized again that things are not always consistent with what is supposed to be a learning tool. Then again, books have always served as the foundation of knowledge. However, it wasn’t long before Ryan discovered how much easier it was to absorb the various arrangements of organs and where they fell within the overall system. For a change, studying had become a lot less difficult.

That night, as well as the following day, was consumed by studying. Occasionally, Ryan found his gaze frozen to his laptop’s display, staring at the images of the cadaver. He continued to be drawn to the pictures of her face, almost to the point of obsession, having become consumed by them. Later that night, he decided to take a small break, and in spite of the cold, dark January air, Ryan walked the short distance to Evergreen Cemetery. He was mindful of the icy roads, walking through the snow that lined their edges. It was an especially cold night. The sky was clear, and the moon, full in all its glory, glowed eerily among a scattered array of stars, casting its light across the wavy fields of snow and ice, creating a ghostly reflection of the numerous gravestones. Leaving the side of the road, Ryan traversed the snow-covered fields of granite and marble, and guided only by the unclouded light of the cold January moon, he made his way to a row of burial vaults built into the side of a hilltop.

He had come to enjoy the solitude of this particular place, admiring the ancient appearance of the burial crypts built into the cold earth, their doorways sealed off with mortared granite slabs and poured cement. The grassy roofs, penetrated by rusty iron pipes, served to vent away the vapors of decay. A granite walkway connected them to a series of cold, silent rooms, occupied by the quiet dead, kept safe from earthly harm as their skeletonized remnants lay in a well-dressed slumber. Ryan made his way to the center vault, being careful of his footing as he crossed the icy bridge that covered the narrow aisle of stone and sitting on a dry patch of granite, he sat back against the concrete doorway, chilled by the bitter January night. There was something about the cemetery at night that gave Ryan an odd sense of comfort. Most people would be immediately turned away at even the thought of being in the cemetery after dark. But for some reason, Ryan felt drawn to its solitude, and on a windless night such as this one, the ear-shattering silence could bring out a choir of whispering voices that seemed to emanate from the surrounding fields of the interred. For a few minutes, there were no lectures, no books, no pressure. Ryan sat in the shadows of those small burial fortresses, allowing himself to step into a place ruled by quiet timelessness. A place heavily gated from anything of the real world. Eventually, he lost track of time, and as he began to doze off, he was slapped back into wakefulness when a stiff, frigid wind suddenly rose, momentarily robbing him of his breath. It was time to go. Again, Ryan carefully walked through the ice and snow on his way back to the gate. He knew it was well after closing time, but it wasn’t as though anyone else would be looking for him — not at night.

Walking around the end of the closed gate, Ryan began the short walk back to his apartment. He didn’t really think of it as home. It was just the place he studied and slept. Given the nature of his educational choice, his apartment held no other purpose, and as he entered, he noticed the wind continuing to pick up, causing his body to suddenly shiver. A warm bed would be a welcomed sight, as the effects of the cold made themselves known. Once inside, Ryan went straight to bed. He threw an additional blanket on in order to ward off the cold. Monday would arrive soon enough, and his first class was scheduled for 8 o’clock. He thought that perhaps next semester he might be able to register for classes that began a bit later in the morning.