Just a warning, this story will go into detail of a full autopsy so if you are a bit squeamish about that sort of thing don't read it! It's intended as a one shot, but maybe if I'm feeling more inspired I'll write a sequel. It's also pretty heavy on the pathology side of things as I am a pathologist. Hopefully I don't use too many medical terms!
There was only a half hour left until Molly's call was over. She sighed as she glanced at the clock on the wall. Lately she had been a black cloud on her call nights. She decided that if she was going to get called in eventually; she might as well come into the morgue to work on some leftover reports. The worst part about night call was the emptiness in the hospital. At least during the day she could chat with the histology techs and the autopsy technicians. "I guess I better start working on those reports," she thought to herself out loud. She pulled out her slides and started looking at the sections, jotting down notes into her computer as she previewed. It was a pulmonary embolus case. Fairly straightforward and had been easy to find the embolus in the lungs. At least the gross picture was good, she thought as she looked through her lung section. Her mind began to wander and she started fiddling with her pager. That's when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She felt like she was being watched. She looked around her office, but no one was there.
Beep-beep-beep. The shrill sound of the pager filled the room. Molly fumbled with it to turn it off. Quickly checking the screen she recognized the number as the expiration desk. She hastily returned the page, "Hi this is Molly down in pathology returning a page". The person on the other end of the line quickly told her the details "One autopsy has been called in on a 60 year old man with a MI 2 weeks ago with suspected ventricle rupture and a possible unknown primary cancer in the kidney". Molly hung up and heard the fax machine in the background warming up. She rushed over to sort through the consent form. As she was going through the consent, she heard the door to the autopsy suite open. She called out "I'm just in here. Please put the body on the table and I'll be right out."
Molly began tying her hair up and started walking towards the autopsy area. She could hear the technician getting the body ready. She pulled on bunny suit making sure to get her mask and gloves on afterwards. She always hated wearing the bunny suit in the summer. It always made it so much harder to concentrate through the oppressive heat. As she entered the autopsy suite, she noticed that the technician looked different than usual. Even through the bunny suit she could tell he was a slender tall man. "Where's Earl?" she asked. The technician turned around quickly. Molly gasped. Even with the mask and protective eyewear she could recognize those dark brown eyes anywhere. She could tell he was smirking behind his mask.
"Jim? Wh- what are you doing here?" she stammered as she backed away slightly into the glove cabinet. "Mm, don't be so stupid Molly. Obviously, I'm here to help you with the autopsy," Jim said as he finished positioning the body on the table, "After all, I couldn't leave you here all alone at midnight. You never know who could show up in the morgue at this time of night."
Molly tried to regain her composure as she thought out all the options. She could try running, but the bunny suit made that difficult. It would take her at least 5 minutes to fully degown and he would kill her by then. The other option was to try to finish the autopsy with him as quickly as possible. Maybe she could escape after the autopsy was finished. She couldn't tell if he had a gun under the bunny suit, but she assumed he did. He always carried one with him for protection. Even when he was pretending to be Jim from IT, she knew he had a gun with him at all times. That was that then, she would just try to get through the autopsy as fast as possible. She warily approached the table as Jim got out the scalpels. She gingerly picked one up and began slicing a V into the chest. She made quick work of reflecting back the skin and muscles. As she was opening the abdomen, she noticed Jim grabbing the electric hand saw. "Do you even know how to use that thing? I thought you didn't like getting your hands dirty," she asked. "Of course, I know how to use this Molly. It can't be that hard. You just cut the ribs in half." Jim responded as the whir of the saw filled the room. She winced a little as he roughly severed the ribs and cracked the rib cage off. The pleural spaces appeared clear, but the pericardial sac appeared to be distended and filled with blood. At least the cause of death will be easy to determine she thought.
Molly severed the trachea and esophagus and began removing the heart and lung en bloc. "Is there anything else I can do?" Jim asked impatiently. "Well…." Molly paused for a minute; thinking to herself what task she could assign him that would keep him busy. If it weren't for her mask, Jim would have noticed a mischievous grin creep across her face "You could help me run the bowel," she said sweetly. Jim groaned with displeasure, "Fine, but only because you are my favorite pathologist". Molly quickly clamped the duodenum and began taking down the bowel placing it in a tub for Jim. "Just take it to the sink and for God's sake make sure the water is running when you open that thing" Molly hated running the bowel so it made her quite pleased that Jim had begrudgingly agreed to take on the task. She hoped he wouldn't make her pay for it later.
As Jim muttered swear words over the sink, Molly began separating the heart and lungs from the abdominal organs. She had just finished separating them when she felt Jim behind her. He reached around grabbing the scissors from her hands, whispering in her ear "Let's work on this together now". "Fine, but let's find the adrenals first. I'll take the left side and you can take the right," she muttered exasperatingly. Molly hoped he would be good at finding the adrenals. It was always a little tricky in someone with such a large body habitus. She quickly located the left adrenal and turned to see Jim dissecting fat near the inferior pole of the kidney. She sighed audibly and Jim turned his head "What?" he asked harshly. "You're in the completely wrong area for the adrenal glands!" as she started cutting at the fat above Jim's handiwork. "Well it's not like I've done an autopsy before. You don't have to be so RUDE," Jim huffed. Molly could tell she had irritated him. Perhaps she shouldn't have pushed him so hard after having asked him to run the bowel.
"Do you want me to find it?" she asked meekly. "NO, I want you to show me how to find it. The whole point of this was that we were going to do the autopsy together, not so I could be your assistant doing whatever you didn't want to do!" he said as he threw the scissors across the table. Molly hastily picked the scissors up and made an effort to show him how to carefully cut through the fat looking for any signs of small tan organ. He put his hand over hers and said calmly "Maybe if you could guide me, I wouldn't be in such a bad mood." She sighed. This wasn't exactly what Molly was hoping for. She was hoping to get this autopsy done quickly. She was so used to doing them on her own and even in medical school she had a partner but it was never what she would consider a romantic activity. Molly figured she might as well go with it since it was likely he was going to kill her anyway. She always thought he was handsome. The only thing that had really deterred her was when Sherlock deduced that Jim was gay, but obviously given his behavior that wasn't entirely true. Molly moved her hand and gave Jim the scissors resting her hand over his, "How about you try finding it and I'll help you dissect away some of the fat?" This seemed agreeable to Jim as he resumed searching for the elusive organ. They found it quickly and Jim beamed. This was a new side of Jim that Molly hadn't seen before. He seemed eager for her approval, nothing like the intimidating world-class criminal she had grown to expect. "Great! Perfectly dissected too, Jim. You have a real knack for this," she layered on the praise hoping it would lift his mood, "Let's weigh them now and you can write it down for me." Jim nodded wiping his glove clean so the note-taking sheet wouldn't get too dirty. "10 g for the left and 6 for the right. You really did a good job of taking all the fat off! It's much closer to the normal weight than mine is," Molly added the extra praise seeing as how he was clearly in a much better mood. "Thanks, dear. I have had some practice with being precise, although normally with living people," Jim replied coolly. Molly shuddered as his comment brought her more back to reality.
They made quick work of the rest of the abdomen. Jim had begun to get faster with his dissection and seemed quite pleased with himself when he expertly detached the pancreas from the duodenum. Molly had grown to appreciate his help and was happy that they had been working in silence when Jim had seemingly decided that he wanted her to talk more, "Well Molly, did you miss me? I noticed you aren't dating anyone and still pining after Sherlock as usual. I'm sorry he was so rude to you about Irene." Molly grimaced this wasn't exactly the topic she wanted to discuss. She had missed him terribly at first. He was her first boyfriend that had seemed genuinely interested in her and Toby liked him so much. This was all of course before she discovered he tried to blow John up and was a consulting criminal. After Sherlock told her she tried to force herself to get over him. She also deep down realized that the Jim she knew was very different from how he actually was in real life. Although throughout the autopsy there were things he did that reminded her of Jim from IT, especially when he had been so eager for praise when he found the adrenal. "Well did you miss me? You're taking an awfully long time to respond Molly. It's a very simple question." "Yes, I suppose I did for a while, but I miss Jim from IT. I don't even know who you are," she stated while trying to section the spleen. "You'll find I'm not too different, less awkward and obviously better dressed with the exception of this horrible bunny suit. You should give me a chance." Jim had stopped dissecting the pancreas and was staring Molly straight in the eyes. She began to feel uncomfortable, partly because she was still very much attracted to him. His eyes were one of his best features and the mask covering up the rest of his face made them even more apparent. She blushed and answered cheekily "Do I even have a choice?" "Not really, I suppose," he responded darkly. "Let's just focus on getting this autopsy finished, please." Molly hoped that the autopsy would put him off, but clearly it had piqued his interest in her more. "Why don't I finish taking the organs out and you can weigh them for me?" Jim nodded in agreement. His interest in the autopsy seemed to be waning. Molly focused on opening up the stomach and pulling the esophagus through. Nothing was terribly interesting with the GI tract or liver. The lungs were heavy, but to be expected with someone who had just recently had a heart attack and probably been lying about in the hospital. The heart was large as expected. Jim seemed quite interested in the ruptured ventricle. But Molly's main focus was trying to find the previous site of the MI. She sliced through the heart looking for any areas of hemorrhage or fibrosis. She pointed out a suspicious focus to Jim, "It'll show up better when it's fixed but I suspect that's where it is." He seemed disinterested and began repeatedly probing the ventricular defect. "JIM stop doing that!" Molly yelled before catching herself. Jim whipped his head up and seemed a bit sad, like a small child that had been yelled at. It was not the effect Molly expected to have on him. Maybe he is genuinely interested in me she began to wonder. "I'm sorry Jim. I just don't want you to destroy the defect. I need to preserve it. Why don't we look at the kidney mass instead?"
Molly had been saving the kidney for last. It was the most interesting part of the case. She loved it when she got undiagnosed untreated cancers. It was such a rarity in autopsy for that to happen. She pulled out a larger knife to make careful sections through the kidney. Jim stopped her and sheepishly asked "Do you mind if I cut it?" "No not at all, just please try to cut it carefully so we can see where it is in the kidney" Molly replied. Jim carefully cut into the kidney revealing a mostly yellow mass with some tan areas near the periphery. Molly wondered to herself if those areas could be a sarcomatoid differentiation. She pointed those areas out to Jim explaining what she was looking for. She couldn't wait to take sections after it fixed. She carefully wrapped the kidney in paper towels to help it fix faster. "What do you think it will be?" asked Jim excitedly. It was the first time he actually seemed to be interested in something besides the ventricle defect. "It's probably a clear cell with a sarcomatoid transformation. I mean not that it really matters at this point for the patient, but those tumors normally do worse. We will have to see once we get the sections back," Molly said while filling the organ tubs with formalin. Jim helped her lift the tubs into the back area of the autopsy suite.
"When will you get the slides back?" he asked earnestly. "Oh not for a couple of weeks. They take their time with getting them back to me since it's just an autopsy case." "Hmm, maybe I can offer them an incentive to get it out faster," Jim thought out loud. "No!" Molly almost shouted, "I don't want you threatening any of the histotechs!" "Fiiine. You are such a spoil sport," as he began to take off his eye protection and mask carefully throwing it into the biohazard trash. He began to unzip his bunny suit while Molly was taking off her mask. He was carefully dressed in a perfectly tailor navy suit with a pale yellow button-up and a grey tie. She had to admit to herself, he was better dressed and very attractive. He caught her looking and she blushed, "Like what you see Molls?" he asked playfully. She refused to dignify his comment with a response. She started to turn around so he wouldn't see her blushing more, but he was already next to her. "Let me help you out of that terrible hazmat suit" he whispered as he used a gloved hand to unzip the front of the suit, "It really does nothing to show off your figure Molly." "Well it's a good thing that I don't wear it on dates then," she playfully jibed back trying to hide the obvious tension she was feeling for him.
She pulled the suit off her arms and carefully disposed of it in the trash. She could feel him closely behind her as she left the autopsy suite and made her way to the sink. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck as she washed her hands quickly, "You should probably wash your hands too Jim, especially after running the bowel" she said nervously backing away from the sink into him. He grabbed her slightly pulling her into him, "I will as long as you don't run away while I'm preoccupied." She nodded slowly in agreement trying to figure out the best escape route. She had to get out of there before she gave in to her desire for him. She knew nothing good would come of it. She reminded herself again how he had nearly killed two of her best friends. His smooth voice snapped her back to reality, "Hungry? I noticed you hadn't eaten any dinner." Coincidentally her tummy growled as he asked. Autopsies always made her hungry. "Sure, but the hospital cafeteria is closed at this hour." At this point, he had turned around cornering her against the wall, "Well I had something more intimate in mind… Going back to your flat, perhaps?" he said softly, his breath hot against her ear. She could feel her heart pounding against her chest. He brushed some of her hair back that had fallen out of her ponytail. She could smell his breath; it was a delicious mix of mint and something she couldn't place. She bit her lip and tentatively responded "I… I suppose we could go back to my place, but- it's such a mess." "Oh somehow, I don't think I'll mind that one bit Molly Hooper." His face was so close to hers. She didn't know what he was doing, but she just hoped he would kiss her soon to end her torture. "Umm, I guess we should get-" her sentence was abruptly ended as he roughly put his lips onto hers. She found herself surprised as she was pressing into him feverishly kissing him back. One of his hands was messing with her hair and the other on her waist. It was so different from when she kissed him before. There was more passion. It seemed to last forever, when he finally stopped she was breathless. "Well that answers that," he said smugly. "Answers what?" "Whether or not you have forgiven me. It's obvious you still have feelings for me." Molly felt her face go warm as she blushed, "Obviously, I still have feelings for you! But it's different. You are different." "Oh Molls, let's discuss this further at your place. I'm starving," Jim said straightening out his suit. He put his hand on her back as they walked out of the morgue and Molly wondered how this could possibly work.