Chapter 10. Burn.
There had been a multiple car crash, a terrible accident that had ended up as a pile of twisted steel and charred remains, after one of the gas tanks exploded. It had left five bodies almost unrecognizable. The autopsy room was filled. Three autopsies were being performed at the same time, so Kate, Bug and Jordan were there. Each one of them in charge of one body… and there were two more bodies awaiting.
The coroners were chatting as they worked on the corpses; this time Kate was talking to Jordan. "I must confess that I was impressed when Woody told me about your guessing on the lipstick marks… I think I wouldn't have done better than you."
"Oh, well…" Jordan inclined her head a little and shrugged. The mask she was wearing didn't leave much to see of her face, but her tone was light as she talked, "that isn't much of an issue, you know? You had almost done all the work; and then Dr. Weir had made assumptions about the murderer… I just filled in the blanks, that's all… By the way, is there any new information about that lead, DNA or something?"
Kate lifted the cover of her mask, and rubbed her cheek with the back of her hand. Then she glanced at Jordan. "The saliva sample was pretty degraded, I could extract some of it; but its taking time to reconstruct it. I had to send it to the CSU lab, but you know I always make a double, so, I sent the other sample to a good friend of mine at the Uni of Maine…" She covered her face again and continued her job. "I'm expecting the results in a week or so… meanwhile we'll have to deal with O'Brien's team and his good doctor-profiler. And Nigel is working on the e-mail… I hope he'll do a better job than the one O'Brien got to do that..."
The conversation boosted their moods as they performed their grimy work. Finding out why a teenager boy, no more than fifteen, had died, wasn't pleasant. Added to the fact that they were looking to see if the drunken dad was the one who caused it. It was overwhelming for the majority of the people there.
Jordan sighed as she looked to the boy's feature. Then she shook her head. "He should be playing football or inviting a girl to the prom…" She was thinking that the parent's job had been lousy, to say the least. She hoped, for herself, to be a better person than the ones that were taking care of this boy.
Kate detected Jordan's introspective reflection; she had been waiting for a moment to ask her, and she decided that was a moment, as good as any other, "Jordan, I'm sure you know by now, we all are aware about your pregnancy dilemma."
Bug lifted his head from the body he was examining, and like the two women, his face behind the mask wasn't telling much of his frame of mind, but his body language screamed alert. If anyone would have been watching him carefully, this anyone would have recognized that his eyes were tensed and expectant.
"Oh yeah… about that." It wasn't a surprise for Jordan. On the contrary, she found it strange that nobody but Garret had fought with her about the matter. And of all the people that could be questioning her besides him, Kate probably was the one to be expected to do so. "You don't have to worry… I've been monitoring my condition very carefully and Dr. Sanchez is following the development of the meningioma closely." Jordan was struggling to extract, the boy's heart as best she could without spoiling it, and then she moved it to the plate for the weighing procedure. "The MRIs show no sign of enlargement, and to my fortune, there is, in fact, shrinkage… maybe progesterone antagonist such as mifepristone…" She paused and looked to Kate, "I was taking it before I knew… well, maybe it inhibited the tumor growth… or maybe after the second procedure Dr. Sanchez performed on me in an effort to take out the remains, there was central tumor necrosis… In benign meningiomas, like mine, extent of surgical resection is an important prognostic variable, such that five-year recurrence rates are five percent for totally resected, versus thirty one percent for subtotally resected cases. Mortality rates are negligible for such patients… I can ramble on, going to a large amount of possibilities… The only thing that I know for sure is that I've been lucky, and I expect I don't run out of luck for the rest of the show…"
"Why Jordan, why are you doing this? You know… I'm not questioning your decision… you're a grown up woman… intelligent… with a promising future… You're gonna get married and you've survived way too many obstacles in your life... I just want to understand…" While she reasoned, Kate was absorbed into putting the organs back to the father's body; her job was almost finished.
Bug hadn't been able to return to his work, this conversation had turned out to be too distracting. He was standing still, in front of the body of the young girl that had been a sister, and a daughter. It was infamous work indeed; he couldn't take his own thoughts away from her, and from Maddie, as his two friends talked.
"That…that is something I'm still trying to figure out… It just feels like the right thing to do. My life has been founded on death, and… I feel I have to change it, I have to base it on life…"
Kate was now suturing, "Alright… it seems to me that this points to alcohol abuse. There's no sign of stroke, or any organ malfunction… we'll have to wait for the tox results, that's it."
They'd been quiet for a moment, when they heard small laughs coming closer from the corridor. Suddenly, the autopsy's door opened, leaving to their view the source of the laughter. Woody and Dr. Weir were arriving. He had his hand placed on the small of her back.
Jordan hadn't met the good profiler yet, but she had enough references to recognize her as the beautiful woman that his fiancé was so kindly guiding to them. She was grateful for wearing the mask in that moment, as she felt her face turning red and hot. She had expected Dr. Weir to be beautiful and clever, as Woody always referred to her as 'Ann'; she sensed he was attracted to her, that was… kind of normal. But witnessing their cheerfulness was too much to ask. Not that she was thinking they had something, or that they could be more than friendly coworkers, but still… The green monster inside of her was irrational, and she was pretty aware of it. She swallowed hard and made a great effort to find composure. She needed to be professional and centered.
Woody smiled at the coroners, but he paid special attention to Jordan's figure. That was something Ann didn't fail to notice. "Hey!" He greeted them and added for Ann to hear "this is our team of wonder medical examiners!" Then he tilted his head to Kate and added. "We are looking for you, Kate."
But she was still too busy with her work. "Wait a minute, I'm almost done."
"Alright, we'll be at the conference room, could you please… er… meet us there?" But before she could answer him, he took into acquaintance the state of the bodies on the slabs and blurted out, "bad barbecue ending, huh?... guys, there's still smoke coming up from these people…"
Jordan felt abruptly enraged by his comment, too much disrespect for her liking. But she was, in fact, dealing with her jealousy. And she was losing her temper. "Don't you dare make mock of this! Look at this boy! He's dead because his dad," and she signaled to the body Kate was closing, "had a hell of a party… and his baby sister," then she signaled towards the girl that was on the slab behind Bug, "is dead too…"
Kate took out her mask and uttered rather calmly. "We don't know for sure yet who's responsible for this, Jordan. We'll have to wait for the tox results, and the crash expert, we have to determine why the gas tank exploded; you know that is very unlikely to happen."
Woody closed the space between him and Jordan grabbing her kindly by the waist and planting a small kiss on the side of her head that wasn't covered by the mask. He whispered in her ear. "Sorry, it wasn't my intention…" Then he turned his face to look at Ann and said, "I want you to meet my bride to be… Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh… You should know that it was her who deciphered the lipstick mystery." He was proudly glancing at his girlfriend.
"Pleased to meet you, doctor. Very impressive job you did" Ann came closer to Jordan and offered her hand for a shake.
Jordan was thankful that she was still wearing her full autopsy costume, and masking her voice all she could with courtesy, she said. "Excuse me, I can't…" She lifted her gloved-hands all covered in dark, sticky blood and showed them to Ann. She could easily have ripped off the precious hand of that model-type-profiler. She better not touch her.
Woody kissed Jordan again and walked to the door "So, Kate… We'll be at the conference room… when you're finished, could you?"
Ann followed the detective to the door as Kate answered, "Yes, yes, I'll be there in ten minutes, Ok?"
Jordan was watching, through the window of the conference room, the four people gathered there; Woody, Ann, Nigel and Kate. She had to fill in the paperwork concerning the boy's autopsy, but she didn't feel like it.
"Any problems to share?" the peculiar voice snapped her from her trance. Stiles was standing besides her, looking as she had been, through the same window.
She made a gesture of annoyance, for all the people she didn't want to meet at that moment, Stiles was on the top of the list. "It isn't my turn on the couch, Howie, the time is not even close." She tried for a hasty retreat to her office, but the small man seemed to move magically, matching her long strides and arriving the same time as her to her place. "Who sent you? Was it Lily?" and she stared at him as realization was sinking in, "Garret."
"You think he needed to send me, Jordan? Why?" And he grabbed a comfortable seat on the couch.
Great, it was going to be the quiz freaking show. She wasn't in the mood. Never was the time when she was in the mood. "What do you want Howie? I'm sure Garret put, on the front page, his disagreement with me." She performed, displaying with her arms as if she was discovering a poster or an advertisement. "Big announcement, Jordan's pregnant, and she's out of her mind." Then she frowned and collapsed on a chair. "The first thing could be big news, but the second can hardly be called a notice, so…what do you want?"
"I'm here to ask you the same question, Jordan. What do you want?" He wasn't the least bit intimidated by Jordan's gestures. He folded his arms over his chest and waited peacefully for her to answer.
She closed her eyes, expecting that when she opened them again, the hobbit, reminiscent of a man was gone. She took a long moment to calm down, and when she opened her eyes, Stiles was still sitting on the couch. She sighed and resigned. If there was no other option, it might be better to take it smoothly. "I want my life to be a real life, that's it, I said it!"
"What do you mean? Wasn't it real before you got pregnant?"
"I was living through my fears. I'm not my mom… It took me almost six years to accept I loved Woody… I almost died… twice… and he almost died twice too, before I told him so… Remember you asked me once if I regretted the choices that I had made? Well… I know the answer now… Yes, I regret many of them. I admit to you that I went home to an empty apartment every night, no family, no pets, I didn't even have a plant. Life's not supposed to be that simple. Not if you want to enjoy it… We all are going to die, someday; but until it happens to me, I want to enjoy every damn second of it… I'm taking all the precautions, I'm not on a true feasible danger, I'm making sure that everyone involved won't come out damaged by my choices, and I'm fine!"
"So, why are you so angry?"
"That's because of Barbie." Did she just say it out loud? Hormones were really tricking her. Then, she muttered to herself, "at least she isn't a blond." She sighed again; she was stuck with Stiles, and it was going to be a long, long talk.
Author's note.
Medical science is still uncertain about many things concerning menigiomas, I took some liberties and my explaining is based on the little they know of it that could fit the story. So, as this is a fairy tale, and as I'm a chemist, not a physician, I apologize in advance if something is so utterly wrong. And yet, one more clarification. I made up a second surgery for Jordan, a radiosurgery to be precise. That is performed either for malign meningiomas or to vanish a little one that couldn't be extracted by typical surgery. I would say, if she has gone through a major surgery before, why she couldn't go for a second, less risky, plenty of benefits and more advanced (as the scientists are picturing it). After the crash, everything could be a piece of cake, don't you think so?