“I don’t think Spaulding would alert anyone. He doesn’t have that kind of authority, despite his big talk. But at the moment I’m not thinking about going back to the lab. I think I’ll follow your suggestion and check with Pathology. As I said, I hadn’t thought of that. It’s a good suggestion.”

“Then I’ll tag along. I know, I’d feel guilty if I don’t go and you get carried away again and get yourself kicked out of school.”

“I don’t care one way or the other,” said Pia. She was intrigued. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it.

Chapter 35.

35.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
NEW YORK CITY
MARCH 24, 2011, 8:50 P.M.

The wind blew fiercely down Haven Avenue and into the canyon of 168th Street. Pushed from behind, Pia and George made rapid but chilly progress from the dorm toward the medical center. It was raining, and George struggled with a cheap umbrella until it finally turned inside out for the third time. He stuffed it headfirst into a trash can. Pia strode on, head down, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled tightly over her head.

Once inside the hospital, they descended into the labyrinthine bowels of the nearly century-old building to the morgue. It was malodorous and poorly lit and filled with outdated equipment. The morgue served as a way station for the dead: In simple cases, bodies would be picked up by a funeral home. A van from the OCME, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, would come if there were complicating factors.

Both Pia and George found it difficult to reconcile this run-down, dirty place with the hospital and medical center as they knew it. Some campus buildings were slightly shabby on the outside but pristine and modern within. The morgue was unkempt inside and out, and at this time of the evening seemed to have been deserted by anyone from the realm of the living. Old-fashioned wooden meat-locker-style doors with metal signs proclaiming that only authorized personnel were to be admitted were the order of the day. The only noise in the godforsaken place was a low-grade electrical hum and the drip of water onto cement floor.

Following their noses, they walked into the tiered amphitheater of the abandoned autopsy room, which looked like the set of a horror movie depicting Victorian times. Some of the seats were broken. The pit area, with its two ancient autopsy tables, was being used as storage for a random collection of pipes, old sinks, and discarded toilets. With the constant fight for space in the medical center, George wondered out loud why the area hadn’t been retrofitted.