Human Remains Read online

  Ryan laughed, and I felt like a '50s throwback, 99 percent naked and clinging to a semblance of virtue in the front seat of a car.

  "I love you," said Ryan.

  "I love you," I said.

  He placed one hand between my legs, and the look in his eyes, enjoying the wetness, made me want to pass out. Especially when he started rubbing my clitoris through the fabric. I've heard some guys need a map. Ryan could write the map.

  "Um," I said. I'm good at self-control. You can't do med school without discipline. Except it was all evaporating as I started to writhe over his fingertips.

  Ryan's head bent over my breasts so that he could kiss each one before his tongue circled one nipple, synchronizing with a finger that had slipped under my panties.

  Wait! I'm still holding on to my underwear! I thought, confused, just before I exploded.

  It happened so fast, I hadn't finished shuddering and blinking away black spots, when he pushed two fingers inside me and started tapping my G-spot. My mouth fell open.

  Ryan laughed, a throaty laugh, but I was too far gone to care. Dimly, I realized that he was using his free hand to unbuckle his leather belt. His left hand, so he was a bit more awkward, but he still had it off in seconds, and now he was unzipping his pants.

  "You're going to … fuck me … through my underwear?" I managed to say, even though my eyes were rolled up in the back of my head.

  "You're going to take it off for me." I did.

  Chapter 7

  MONDAY

  I'm kneeling on the snow. Snow seeps into the gap between my snow pants and the top of my boots, chilling my skin. I hold a pocket knife in my hand. The blade catches the moonlight. I'm leaning over the body. I'm alone, slicing open the bag on his face.

  I hold my breath, waiting for the vomit to spill out of the hole, but the man's bulging eyes stare into mine, and his mouth drops open—

  I snapped awake, a scream arrested in my throat. The door creaked.

  I batted aside the duvet, heart battering my chest. Where was I?

  My head ached with every heart beat, and my breath choked.

  One thing for sure: there was no Ryan beside me. The rest of the bed was cold, but smelled familiar, and I recognized these old snowman flannel sheets.

  The white wood door yawned open while I groped for my glasses on the dresser next to the bed.

  I jumped behind the dresser, crouching as I shoved the hooks behind my ears. A waist-high maple dresser wouldn't provide much cover, but it was better than nothing. It could shield my head and body, if not my feet.

  "Hope?" said a little boy's voice.

  I exhaled, trying to tame my heart. "Kevin?"

  "Why are you hiding?"

  I straightened up from my scrunch, trying to look dignified while I checked that it was, indeed, my little brother barging into my bedroom. "I was practicing."

  "Practicing what?" He tilted his head to survey me with curiosity in the dim, dawn light. He was only wearing underwear, and made no attempt to hide the curve of his belly. Kevin was a kid who shucked his pants as soon as he came in through the door after school. Not exactly terrorist material.

  I breeeeeeeathed before I answered him. I touched my duvet, which has this red fleece cover that my parents bought me as an early Christmas present or late 14/11 present. Either way, I love to lie in bed and make a nest out of it. I find it very comforting, especially when the feathers are as high and fluffy as possible.

  Kevin grinned an evil grin from the doorway, his glance fixed on my duvet.

  "Kevin, no!" I half-hollered. I didn't know what time it was, but I couldn't smell coffee or hear talking, so our parents might still be aslee—

  Kevin took a running leap and belly-flopped onto my duvet, squishing all the feathers underneath him.

  "Kevin!" I started spanking his butt.

  He veered from side to side, evading my palm while extending his blanket-squishing area.

  "Stop it! Get off! Get off right now, you little brat!"

  Kevin grabbed either side of the blanket and folded his arms over his chest, swaddling himself from both sides before he shifted onto his back, squashing more feathers underneath him and laughing the entire time.

  "You jerkwad! You Fangbone!"

  "Fangbone! Yeah!" It's one of his favourite books. Not the best insult.

  Through dint of greater height, dexterity, and years of experience, I flipped him onto his face and pried the blanket edges out of his little fists. I was smiling as I threw my duvet on my desk, where it would remain relatively unmolested. He was chortling his teeny little head off.

  Okay, not his head off. That reminded me of the body last night, with the bag around the head. I'd been dreaming about it, that feeling of suffocation, the cold soaking into my clothes and into my bones …

  I shook my still-fuzzy head and rolled out my stiff shoulders. Then I remembered exactly what (and whom) I'd done last night, and my entire body seemed to flush.

  I checked the phone lying on my dresser, but Tucker still. Hadn't. Answered.

  Just as well. I couldn't talk to him with a straight face today.

  Touching my phone reminded me, though: had I remembered to turn on my alarm?

  Good thing Kevin had woken me up. I scowled at him anyway. "What are you doing here? Don't you knock?"

  "Sorry. You've been gone so long, I got used to coming into your room." He widened his deep brown eyes, staring at me. He's a cute kid, the only one in our family who doesn't need glasses yet, with high cheekbones and a perpetually moving mouth, and he knows exactly how to mine his adorableness.

  I swatted him again. "Liar. This is my room, and you know it. What's up?"

  The duvet slumped half off my desk, onto the chair, and Kevin laughed.

  I poked him, provoking another round of hee-hee's before he caught himself. "I was going online, checking news about the body—"

  "You already found an article on it?" I sagged. Even though I knew the man had been mostly dead, I was sorry to hear he was officially deceased. Also, news outlets had suffered so many cut backs, the man could easily have slid under their radar.

  Kevin snorted. "You're the top story for city news."

  "Oh." I guess it's true that if it bleeds (or dies), it leads. Even so, I found that kind of suspicious. I prodded Kevin in the side again. He's getting a bit fat. If he slumps, the skin folds into rolls on his sides.

  He giggled.

  I smiled, but I had to ask him. "Did you tell the news outlets?"

  Kevin shrugged and pressed his lips together the way he does when I tickle him.

  I threw my hands in the air. "You did! You tipped them off!"

  "Hope, you want them to know, right? It's a health issue."

  "How is it a health issue? You're eight years old. You don't even know what a public health issue is."

  Kevin ignored me. "They want to know if people are dying around a hospital. I'm helping them. I wish they'd paid me, though—"

  I hadn't even considered the terrible PR of having someone die outside your hospital. The Ottawa Health Science Centre reps must be freaking out.

  "—but it was easy! I wrote that you and Ryan found a body—"

  "What? You named us? Holy sh—" I barely managed to bite back the curse. "Kevin!"

  "They have Contact Us forms on their websites. They like if you have pictures, though. I wish you had a picture."

  "Fuck!" I try not to swear in front of my brother, but this was epic.

  Our mother thundered down the hall, already calling, "What is it?"

  "I'll take care of it, Mommy," said our father, heading toward us in his navy terry cloth bathrobe, looking bleary-eyed behind his glasses, but my mother pushed ahead of him, totally un-self-conscious about her hair wrapped around pink curlers and her feet stuffed into those polka dot slippers.

  "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up, or swear," I said. I didn't want to worry my parents, but here I was, rousing them with not one, but two curses at the
break of dawn.

  "You said the F-bomb," said Kevin.

  "I know. Sorry."

  "And almost the S-bomb."

  "I know, Kevin. Sorry."

  He shook his head. "At my friend Sam's house, they've got a swear jar. If you swear, you have to put in a dollar."

  "A dollar! That's nuts. You broke into my room. You squashed my blanket, you told the media about me and Ryan …. You're not supposed to do that, Kevin! You give tips anonymously for a reason."

  "Why?" said Kevin, rolling onto his other side and playing with his belly button. "If I found a body, I'd want everyone to know."

  "Because now everyone's going to track us down and ask us questions."

  "Well, you don't have to answer them," said Kevin.

  "We'll put the answering machine on," said Dad. It's true, we're one of the only households with a real, concrete, old-school answering machine, because my parents shell out for a land line but are too cheap to pay the monthly fee for voice mail. "Don't worry, Hope."

  Now that the adrenaline had worn off, I felt pretty awful. I'd woken everyone up, sworn at my brother twice, and now reporters would descend on me.

  "What's this? Are the reporters coming?" My mother touched her hair, where her white roots showed under her dyed-black hair. It was clear where her priorities lay.

  "No, it's okay, Mom, I'll deny everything," I said.

  "You can't do that. That's lying," said Kevin, and I'd already shocked him enough today, so I said, "I mean, I'll tell them 'No comment.' It always worked before."

  "You never found a dead body before," said Kevin, which was true, but I said, "It's not as big a deal as being taken hostage. It'll all die down soon. I mean, it'll be over soon." I never realized how much I talk about death and violence until I started trying to censor myself.

  Kevin said, "Anyway, Hope, I never got to tell you the good news!" I raised an eyebrow. "There's good news?"

  My dad stood up and yawned loud enough to crack his jaw, making his way toward the shower.

  Kevin's eyes gleamed with excitement. "Yeah! They've already ID'd the body. And get this, Hope. It's a guy who worked at the same lab as you! His name is Lawrence something."

  Chapter 8

  I couldn't get into the stem cell lab.

  It was locked.

  I guess I should've expected security, but it still took me by surprise, because this is Canada, yo. After taking the elevator to the third floor of the Ottawa Health Sciences Centre, I was now flanked by two sealed, frosted glass doors on either side of the elevator.

  My badge from Montreal's St. Joseph's Hospital was strictly ornamental here. I didn't even know which door to knock on.

  Between the barred doors, they'd made a small, purple-walled welcome area with a chair, a phone, and a ledge holding the directory, a sheet of paper in a plastic frame. I quickly scanned for the name Dr. Thomas Zinser and called his secretary.

  A plump, smiling, fifty-ish woman with greying brown hair pushed open the frosted glass doors on my right. "Hello, I'm Susan." She wore a navy wrap dress and wedge heels.

  I looked down at my red rayon blouse and the plain black dress pants that probably cost less than her mani-pedi. My boots tracked dirty water everywhere, even though I'd wiped them upon entering the building.

  Susan waved her hand and said, "You can leave your boots at the front." She pointed to a boot rack inside the doors.

  I hadn't brought an extra set of shoes. My heart plummeted. You know that moment when, despite careful planning, you'll end up as the idiot on your first day, tromping around in your socks? "Um, I didn't bring shoes. Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking."

  She said, "Don't worry about that today. We have other things on our minds. I don't know if you heard about Dr. Acayo—"

  I cleared my throat, not wanting to reveal exactly how much I knew about Dr. Lawrence Acayo. "I heard. Did he work at this lab?"

  "No, he was at Dr. Hay's lab next door. He was so charming." That was an interesting word. Usually people would say "nice" or "intelligent" or "hard-working" or some other generic, academic compliment. I looked at her more closely, but she had stopped behind the first desk, which was naked except for a monkey tail plant, a computer, and a tray of papers. She started leafing through the papers. "You'll have to get your badge and parking pass today. You can do that during the meeting."

  "Shouldn't I go to the meeting? Dr. Zinser said I should see what a lab meeting was like."

  "Oh, it's not a normal meeting today." She met my eyes, the corners of her mouth turning down. The lip liner around her mouth was crooked on the left, exaggerating the effect. "We've decided to have a little memorial for Dr. Acayo." She gestured with her left arm toward the entire room, and over the warren of cubicle walls, I noticed a group of at least five people gathered around the doorway of the lone corner office. Ah. The guy in the middle must be the lab head, Dr. Thomas Zinser.

  I'd only ever met Tom by Skype, but he was easy to spot because of his crown of white hair, white lab coat, the way people clustered around him, and the bank of windows visible through the open door of his corner office. He was patting a woman's arm consolingly.

  "I'd like to pay my respects, if you don't mind," I told Susan.

  "Oh, that's nice of you, dear, but it's only a small gathering for the people who work here. It's really not a good introduction to the group. You can meet everyone after lunch." She held a form out to me with a smile that didn't reach her mascaraed eyes.

  I took the form and placed it back on the desk, messing up her piles. "I work here now." The words jerked out of my mouth.

  Her eyes widened, so I tried to make my tone more compassionate than confrontational. "And I would have liked to know him. I—" I was going to play the card, shouldn't play the card, was going to play the card. "We were very sorry to find his remains."

  Her body became unnaturally still. "You … "

  "My friend Ryan and I found him last night."

  For the first time, she looked at me. Really looked at me. Her chin wobbled. "You're not … oh, my goodness. Oh." She sat down so abruptly that her ergonomic chair squawked in protest.

  "I was coming to visit the lab last night, to make sure I knew where it was," I said, more softly.

  "Of course." She drew a paper clip out of a well on her desk. She fiddled with it, still staring at me in mixed fascination and horror.

  I'd seen that look before. Avid eyes, repelled yet drawn to me, as if I had smallpox or measles or both pockmarking my skin.

  "So I'd like to pay my respects." Ryan would want to know about this. He'd already texted me a few times this morning. And Tucker would practically neigh in excitement when I told him I'd almost worked side by side with Lawrence, if he ever answered his phone.

  Still, this wasn't an investigation. It was about honouring the dead.

  "I don't know. Oh, my goodness. I'll have to speak to Dr. Zinser," said Susan.

  "No problem."

  She glanced at the clock screensaver on her desktop. "The meeting's starting at eleven. I'll have to see if I can discuss this, and maybe you'll have time to get your badge before the meeting."

  "At eleven?" I cheered up. I was early?

  "We changed the time because of the … change in topic." She kept sneaking glances at me. My hands. My neck. She wanted to look at my face, but when I made eye contact with her, she dropped her gaze and reached for the phone. "Excuse me."

  "Of course." I backed away from her desk.

  After a minute, she glanced over my shoulder and nodded.

  I swivelled. Tom waved at me from his entourage, and I started heading toward him. He wasn't much taller than my five-foot-two, and probably not older than his 40's, but he had the same kind of prematurely white hair that plagued my mother's side of the family, along with pleasant features and a ready smile.

  I wiggled my way into his circle and half-waved at the rest of the crowd before I turned to the big dog. "Hi, Dr. Zinser, I'm Dr. Hope Sze, the reside
nt doctor starting in your lab today—"

  "I know who you are. Welcome, Hope, and please call me Tom." He glanced at the rest of the circle. "This is a crazy day. You should go get your ID card and parking pass." He ran a hand through the hair above his ears, looking distracted.

  A very pretty woman with pale skin, Asian eyes, and a big rack said, "I still can't believe it. Are we sure about this? Is everyone sure?"

  I pressed my lips together. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see Susan closing in on me, ready to foist me on the parking pass people.

  "It was on the CBC this morning," said a white guy in a ragged Strumbellas T-shirt and sweatpants. Unruly brown hair, sandals over socks even though it was December. He was cute in a pothead sort of way, except his brown eyes missed nothing.

  "Yes, but did they ID him?" said the Asian-esque woman.

  I reached for Tom's sleeve. He turned toward me, and I said, "I'm a physician. Maybe I could help more here."

  Tom shook his head and signalled Susan, who led me back toward the door and said, "Everyone's very upset today, dear. It would be better if you got some of the administrative work done first."

  I couldn't help feeling that they were blaming me. She's a doctor. Why didn't she save him? I opened my mouth to explain, or apologize, or defend myself.

  Susan read my mind and pressed her warm, soft hand on my arm. "No one's blaming you, Hope. Now that you told me, I'm glad that a medical person found him. But we still feel responsible. We're going to take a few minutes to remember him now."

  Right. That was exactly what this "medical person" wanted to do, too. Find out who Lawrence was, what he was like, and how he might've ended up with a garbage bag over his head.

  Wait. No. I meant, I wanted to honour his memory. I swallowed hard. "Susan." It still felt weird to call grown-ups by their first name, but I fought the embarrassment, because this was important, and I wanted her to think of me as an equal. "I know this sounds strange, but I would like to stay for that. I won't say anything if you don't want me to. It's just, I couldn't do anything for him when I found him. The least I can do is listen to his story now."