Chapter 2
Returning to his work, Dr. Verus commenced to repairing the hepatic artery. "How do you handle the heavy workload at the beginning? How many were killed on the first day this year?"
Dr. Galen reached for a pair of pencil sized metal tubes from the rolling cart, setting them on the edge of the table before replying, "There were nine on the first day. I often bring assistants to help me during the first week. I can manage alone from then on."
"Not to mention, the occasional help from fellowship candidates." Keeping his eyes on his work, the chief resident grinned.
"Most don't get as far as you have, Dr. Verus."
"I'm still working on your question of how to measure a person. I'm ruling out wealth." He glanced at his mentor for a clue, which she did not give.
Turning away, Dr Galen retrieved another rolling cart with a 12-liter embalming machine, positioned the cart to the right of Pandora's head. The doctor next retrieved a scalpel and made two small incisions on the side of the neck. When she was through, the two pencil-sized tubes protruded securely from the neck, one from the carotid artery and the other from the jugular vein. "Are your repairs complete?"
"I'm closing the skin."
"I'm hooking up the embalming tubes to the pump."
Dr. Verus trimmed his last stitch and stepped back from the table. He witnessed his senior stroking the hair of the young woman. "Um…I'm done, Dr Galen."
Without looking away from Pandora's face, the female doctor cleared her throat. "How are the dead raised? And with what body do they come?"
"What?" The resident's brow rose with confusion at the new question.
"That is your second question."
"I haven't answered your first." Dr. Verus circled around the table for the surgical cart.
"Take your time. There is no rush here."
The young doctor returned his surgical tools to the tray. "I've discussed this with many a patient. Do you have a particular answer in mind?"
"I do."
The chief resident approached the front of the table and stared down at Pandora. "It all depends on one's faith. People rise according to their beliefs. Is this the answer you are inquiring?"
"No, try again." Dr. Galen met her junior's stare. "I'll start the pump."
Dr. Galen moved to the front of the machine to confirm the connections and settings before flipping a switch that activated a pump with a low humming sound.
The male doctor inspected the jugular drain. "Do you ever have to use multi-point injections?"
"No. Their youth makes the embalming process quite easy. Sometimes severed limbs have to be processed separately. The mutilated I send for cremation."
Clasping his hands together, Dr. Verus asked, "Should I begin the cavity embalming?"
"No. I prefer to wait to see if anything unexpected happens at the beginning. Unseen trauma usually reveals itself right away." Stepping away from the table, Dr. Galen removed a blue towel from a cabinet and proceeded to cover Pandora's torso with the blue modesty cloth.
Taking a seat on a folding chair, the chief resident crossed a leg over a knee. "Is that necessary?"
"I don't want the Peacekeepers to gawk if they return."
The resident nodded in agreement and began to stare at Pandora's face when something stood out. He approached the table and inspected the dead girl's chin. "There's an old two centimeter scar on her chin with dotted scars from three crude stitches. I wonder what happened."
Dr. Galen inspected the scar from the other side. "One year in September, she was helping the family harvest grain late into the night and barely got any sleep. Waiting in a line at school the next day, she fell asleep on her feet."
Eyeing his senior, Dr. Verus crossed his arms. "And how would you know that?"
"It was in her medical records." The doctor approached the small metal desk in the room and retrieved a computer tablet. "She was nine."
Dr. Verus's brow furled. "Why do you have her records? These…victims are not to receive any medical attention."
"One of them is. If there is a large battle at the end, where the victor becomes severely wounded, they may need to know the medical history in order to save him or her. There could be a drug allergy or a genetic medical condition that would affect their treatment."
The resident leaned against the table. "Don't the paramedics just fly them to the Capitol for treatment?"
"They do." Dr. Galen sat in a second folding chair near the autopsy table. "Once, I needed to accompany a mortally wounded victor whose intestines had spilled out. It was the second Quarter Quell. After the young man was stabilized in the Capitol, I flew back to take care of the fallen. They credited me for saving his life. The Capitol then realized the importance of having a doctor on site since they nearly lost their victor. They now gather the health histories of all the kids. The poorer districts do not have much documentation except for what comes from the schools and small town clinics. But the Peacekeepers collect what they can and scan them into our medical database."
"And I suppose that you read all the histories before the start of the Games?" The chief resident returned to his chair.
"I do," replied Dr. Galen, glancing at her companion from the corner of her eye. "You must think that I'm too involved."
He smiled. "I don't assume why anyone does anything. I won't even pretend to know how you feel."
Dr. Galen returned his smile. "Very wise. How many times have you made that mistake with a patient?"
"Just the once, I believe. When you say 'I know how you feel' to the wrong patient, you never make that mistake again." The chief resident eyed his colleague. "But I do see that you are deeply concerned."
The senior doctor leant forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "I admit that I'm consumed with these kids, wishing that I could stop all of it. I volunteer to make sure they get the respect that they deserve once they fall. And someday when it happens, I will be at the ready if they need me."
"Ready for what?"
"For the needed change, for the permanent end to the Hunger Games."
Dr. Verus leant forward. "The Hunger Games are written into the Treaty of Treason. I don't see anything changing."
Dr. Galen sighed. "Everything changes eventually." Closing her eyes, her head bowed as if carrying a heavy weight.
With clasped hands, the chief resident stared at the girl on the table. "Let's hope so."
The senior doctor slowly straightened and began rubbing her neck. She then took a deep breath through her nose as she rose from her chair. "Time we begin embalming the cavities. I will do the chest and stomach. Can you embalm the colon?"
Rising to his feet, the resident nodded. "Yes, of course."
Retrieving aspirators and trocar needles from below the rolling cart, the doctors began their work by piercing the appropriate locations of Pandora's abdomen. Once initial tasks were completed, the doctors took hypodermic needles and finished embalming the hard to reach places on the surfaces of the skin, which were few for the young Pandora.
With the embalming complete, the doctors washed the weeks of dirt from Pandora's hair with a basin of water. They rinsed it a second time with clean water, drying the strands with towels.
Dr. Galen next removed a heavy plastic liter container from below the cart and set it on the table next to Pandora's body. She removed the plastic screw cap, revealing a white cream.
The chief resident examined contents of the container. "Skin cream?"
"Mortician's cream. I developed it especially for embalming. It helps preserve the skin past the funeral viewing. Apply it liberally."
The doctors proceeded to take large handfuls of cream and spread it onto sections of Pandora's body, rubbing the skin in a firm matter that aided the final act of the arterial embalming. As they turned Pandora alternately onto her sides, they bent her joints to counteract the rigor mortis, thoroughly applying the embalming skin cream to the entire surface of the body. As Dr. Galen finished rubbing cream into Pandora's face, Dr. Verus made sure the cream reached in between the fingers and toes.
A three-centimeter scar found on Pandora's left heel grabbed the young doctor's attention. "Do her medical records mention this scar?"
A faint smile appeared on the senior doctor's face. "Pandora was playing with friends at a swimming hole and cut her foot on a piece of glass. The school nurse repaired it."
"Why didn't she go to a doctor?"
"The school nurse is the town doctor. There are no medically trained physicians in her community."
Dr. Verus paused his rubbing of skin cream. "Is the access to doctors this bad in all the districts?"
"It is," replied Dr. Galen
"Perhaps we should be sending med students and residents to the districts for stints during their training."
His senior gave a dismissive shrug. "That would never happen."
"Why not?"
Dr. Galen raised her head. "The Capitol prefers its citizens to not knowing, and the last thing the Capitol would want is to have their best and brightest to become fully aware of the blight of the districts."
"There must be thousands of Peacekeepers who know."
Dr. Galen moved to the other side of the table. "Yes, but they return to their own deprived district, trained to keep silent with the knowledge that things could be much worse."
With furled brow, Dr. Verus gently flexed Pandora's legs. "The question isn't 'how are the dead raised'; it's how will the living rise up?"
The physician eyed him coolly.
Moving to Pandora's other side, the chief resident flexed the rigor mortis out of the other leg as he rubbed in the embalming cream. "What else did her records say?"
Delayed by medical ethnicity, Dr. Galen bit her lip before saying in confidence to her medical colleague, "The school nurse documented a gravida in her record."
The resident paused as he glanced at the young woman on the table. "She must not have delivered."
"I agree, but I don't know what happened. Except for the mandatory vaccines and the stitches, most of what happens to the people in the districts is never documented. Her records don't say much." With a gentle sigh, Dr. Galen began flexing one of Pandora's arms and said, "Most of what I have learned of these children comes from the newspaper. Sometimes there is the odd fact in the gambling section."
Shifting the modesty cloth, the young doctor began applying lotion to the torso. "I never bet in the games. I just...became numb to them."
"I gather information from wherever I can," said Dr. Galen. When the physician squeezed Pandora's upper arm, she remember another factoid. "The paper said that she could throw a fastball."
Dr. Verus smiled. "That's right. In her television interview, she mentioned that she loved baseball and that she would throw balls high up onto the roof of the barn. They would roll off randomly, which allowed her to practice catching pop ups. I remember that now...and her hair."
Removing the modesty cloth completely, the female doctor joined the resident at applying cream to the torso. "We should turn her on to her sides again before finishing the front."
Working in tandem, they treated the skin on Pandora's back, after which, Dr. Galen finished the front torso.
As his senior repositioned the modesty cloth, Dr. Verus began whispering to himself. "How is a person measured?"
Dr. Galen had to restrain a grin.
Noticing her moment of levity, the young doctor asked, "Dr. Galen, did you have a special swimming hole as a kid?"
"No. I was busy collecting caryophyllaceae."
The resident dug into his memory. "The wild flower?"
"Yes. I use to study the wildflowers in the nearby mountains, carnations being my favorite."
"Is that what led you to medicine?"
"No." Returning the cap to the large jar of cream, Dr. Galen glanced on Pandora's face. "Once I started seeing past the veil of innocence, I wanted to understand man's cruelty."
"Did you study psychology?"
"No. I saw that as trying to put reason to chaos. I wanted to study the brain in search of the link."
"What link?"
Dr. Galen looked into her colleague's eyes. "The link to our being. It's in the brain somewhere; otherwise, we're just biological computers bumping into each other. The human brain is more than a sophisticated computer. The answers we seek are all in there. And since it appears that we cannot find those eternal questions through conscious thought, I've decided to seek them out from the outside."
With growing respect, the young doctor smiled grew with Dr. Galen's explanation.
Seeing the resident's reaction, the doctor smiled sheepishly before changing the subject. "So, did you have a special swimming hole?"
Dr. Verus smile turned ominous.
Shaking her head, Dr. Galen said, "I withdraw my question. I don't want to know."
With arterial embalming completed, Dr. Galen began dismantling the machine. Dr. Verus removed the vascular tubes and began closing the small incisions in Pandora's neck. As the last stitch was trimmed, the senior retrieved a set of light blue cotton patient pajamas from the cabinet, setting them at Pandora's feet.
"We'll wipe her down once more, making sure we didn't miss anything before we dress her." Dr. Galen passed a white hand towel to her colleague.
Rubbing the pajama cloth between his fingers, Dr. Verus sneered disappointedly. "The fabric is cheap."
"I actually have to pay for them myself since the Capitol deems their dirty arena clothes sufficient. They are standard hospital issue." Dr. Galen turned to Pandora and began the final inspection, rubbing any excess lotion with the hand towel. "Besides, the families back in the districts have their preferred funeral clothing."
Dr. Verus began assisting his colleague with the final inspection. "We spoil them until the games start, and from that point on, nothing. It doesn't seem right."
Cleaning some excess cream from between Pandora's fingers, the Dr. Galen eyed her junior. "The Capitol spoils the sacrificed. Once they're dead, which they are as soon as they enter the arena, the Capitol has no more use of them."
Preparing the pajamas, Dr. Verus clenched his jaw as he assisted with the dressing of the fallen tribute, no longer able to suppress his emotions as taught in medical school. When the two doctors finished, Pandora lay on the table as if asleep, at peace.
At peace herself, Dr, Galen turned to her junior and asked, "Dr. Verus, are you ready for your final question?"
The chief resident glared at her.
"You have plenty of time to answer the other two. You don't even have to answer them in order."
"Okay. What's the next question?"
Dr. Galen flattened a turned up collar on Pandora's pajama top before staring at the dead girl's face. "What does everyone possess, rich or poor, that grows in value as we age?"
Twisting his mouth, the resident hesitantly spoke. "Something tells me that it's not the obvious answer: time."
Shrugging, Dr. Galen stepped away. "No rush. Come help me with the coffin."
"Wait." Dr. Verus studied the young woman on the table. "We're missing something."
Dr. Galen joined the resident at his side. "What?"
The younger stared at Pandora for several seconds before answering. "The hair."
"We washed it during the embalming."
"No." Dr. Verus approached Pandora's hair, rubbing some of her long black strands between his fingers. "It's not right. It's not how I remember seeing it during her television interview. Her hair was so vibrant on the television."
Moving to the head of the table, Dr. Galen inspected Pandora's hair. "She was alive then. She had stylists."
"No it's not that. She valued her hair, and with what limited resources she possessed, she made it stand out.
"The prep teams make the hair stand out."
"No. It was full of body and curls before she came to the Capitol. It stood out at her reaping. Can we bring in her prep team to treat her hair?"
"No. They are back in the Capitol. The Gamemakers would never allow it."
Dr. Verus rubbed the strands between his fingers. "Let's wash it again."
Feeling her colleague's urgency, Dr. Galen again stroked Pandora's hair. "There are some higher quality hair products in the women's locker room. I'll collect what I can."
"Dr. Galen, is fixing her hair a lie?"
The woman laid a comforting hand on the young doctor's shoulder. "No. We're just thoroughly washing it. You wrap her face and neck in towels so that we don't get her skin wet."
"Okay," replied the resident, "And I'll prepare the hot water."
Dr. Galen returned with a couple bottles of hair product, a curling iron, and hair dryer. Using the computer tablet, Dr. Verus found images of Pandora to use as a style guide. With great care, the two doctors washed the tribute's hair. They rinsed the strands with warm water and gently squeezed out the excess from the flattened curls with towels.
Under direct light, Dr. Verus inspected the rewashed hair. "The shine is back. At least we can give back this part of her to her family." When the hair fell from his fingers, the man fell silent.
Taking notice of the silence, Dr. Galen asked, "Is there something wrong?"
"How are the dead raised? And with what body do they come?" The chief resident turned away from the table to face his mentor. "I thought that I had an answer for you, just now, but it slipped away."
Reaching for an extension cord, Dr. Galen smiled as she plugged in the hair dryer. "It will come."