THE OTHER BODY

by Aless Nox

1. The Sherlock cover up

Molly breathed a sigh of relief as the body was finally wheeled out of the morgue for transport to the funeral home, a "Do Not View" note firmly taped to the top of the bag. The personal items labeled to be sent to the next of kin had already been taken to the front office.

Molly was comfortable here in the dark recesses of St. Bartholemew's Hospital. The metal tables and the hard white floors that made up the autopsy room were more familiar to her than her home. Even so, Molly had sweat blood every minute of the autopsy, afraid that some detail of her deception would have been discovered, but miraculously it had all worked out.

Last night, Sherlock had come to her for help. He needed to fake his death as Irene Adler had hers. He needed a body. The time frame was impossible, but Molly was very good at her job. Luckily, a match, close enough, had just come in just the day before. Aneurysm, body donated to science. Rigor mortis had passed so others would simply assume that it had not yet set in. Even so there was work to do to make it look like Sherlock.

She used a chemical to make the lenses of the eye more clear (they tended to cloud up after death), and the hair... It was hard enough to dye hair when the person was alive! Molly was afraid that someone would notice that the curls, instead of being natural, were made by a few minutes with her curling iron. An item so rarely used that she had never even taken off the white twisty thing that held the cord.

She had worked all night, looking over her shoulder, afraid that someone would wonder what she was doing here so late. This was of course a stupid thought. She was often here at odd hours. The morgue was Molly's life. The one thing in the world that she was actually good at.

Dating, she wasn't good at. Even if she did work up the courage to talk to a bloke, he usually ran screaming when he found out that she cut up bodies for a living. No man wanted to hear about that. No man...except Sherlock.

She had thought that the coat would be a major problem until Sherlock admitted that he had two of them. Even so it had required an early morning run to the dry cleaners, banging on the door to make sure that she could get the coat and get back in time to dress the body.

The other clothes were easier. Sherlock kept some in a locker here at Bart's for when he did his marathon lab investigations. Once he didn't go home for a week! Molly had looked in on him every day fantasizing that his fatigue would make him ask for her help, maybe to rub his back, or to let him lie down for a bit on her cot. The cot that she had brought into her office only after he had started showing up here so often. He had finally asked for her help to do some tests before running off to Scotland Yard.

Molly printed the autopsy form. She placed a mark beside the word "Suicide" in the section labeled "Classification of Death". Her hand shook a bit as she signed the form attesting that all data were "true and correct" She crossed the gloved fingers on her other hand trusting playground logic to save her.

If anyone found out what she had done, she would lose her license. She would probably lose it anyway once Sherlock was found alive. He had told her the risks, and she had said that she'd do anything.

"If there's anything you need, anything at all. You can have me." Molly had said, and he had asked for her. For her word. For her silence. For her reputation. She had done everything that he had asked for, and more.

Molly had told Sherlock the precise time to plan the fall. The time when all of the factors were best for a successful cover up.

The assistant today was little Sharon Alford. Molly had never thought herself old until Sharon had joined the team, newly degreed and excited about her first chance to work with bodies. Sharon had never met Sherlock. Something about her Welsh accent and the cute way that her ponytail swung when she walked down the hall made all mention of Sherlock dry up in Molly's throat when she came by, especially when she asked, "do ya have a boi friend?"

The head of the department would usually be here, but today he had been asked to give a lecture at Cambridge and he would be gone 'til evening. This made Molly the senior, and as long as she kept her cool no one should ask any questions.

The door opened and she turned to see a policeman standing there.

"We've just finished." Molly said a little too cheerfully. "I need to copy this report then we should be done."

The policeman looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face. He stood aside to show his partner standing beside a trolley.

"But, what should we do with the other body?" he asked.