Bill Orrick stuck his head into Yancey Roberts’ office. “You got a minute?” he asked. He’d been trying to talk to Roberts for awhile, but hadn’t had much luck, what with Roberts going out of town so often. Now he saw his chance.
Roberts looked up from his work. “That’s about how long I have – a minute,” he said, gesturing for Orrick to come in. “What do you need?”
Orrick closed the office door behind him as he entered. “I just wanted to ask you what’s happening with Sarah Whitley,” he said, standing in front of Roberts’ desk.
Roberts gestured for Orrick to sit down. “I told you that I’d take care of it, and I have.”
“What does that mean?” asked Orrick.
Roberts put his pen down and sat back in his chair. Obviously, he’d have to spell it out for Orrick, he thought.
“I had a talk with her and made her understand what can happen to people who poke their noses where they don’t belong. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble from her.”
“I hope not, because we’ve got a real problem down in the morgue,” said Orrick.
“What kind of problem?”
“Kyle is swamped. He’s been trying to get enough cadavers prepared for next year’s Gross Anatomy course, but he’s only one person. Without any help, he’s fallen way behind. You’re going to have to either hire another morgue assistant, or get Sarah to help out like she was doing before.”
“What about the shipments?” Roberts asked.
The money always comes first with him, thought Orrick. “They’ve been going out on time. Kyle doesn’t have to do much on those except for the paperwork.”
Roberts thought about it for a few minutes. “I’ll have Sarah start helping out in the morgue again. It’ll give me a chance to see if she got my message. Have Kyle keep an eye on her, and let me know if there’s any trouble.”
###
I was working on my lectures in my office when Mrs. Sanders called and told me that Dr. Roberts wanted to see me. What now, I thought.
“Did you want to see me, Dr. Roberts?”
“Sit down, Sarah,” he said, looking up from his work. “How are things going with the PA course?” he said, leaning back in his chair.
Why do you care, I thought. So, we’re going to play the ‘I-care-about-you’ game first? Is that it? Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind?
Out loud, I said, “It’s going well. It’s almost over. Just a couple more weeks.”
“Good,” he said. I was sure he hadn’t even heard what I’d said.
“Have you given any thought to what we talked about last time?” he continued.
“Yes,” I replied. Now, we’re getting to what you really want to talk about, I thought.
“Good,” he said again, but this time, I was definitely sure he had heard me. “Kyle has started preparing cadavers for next year’s Gross Anatomy course, and he’s got a big job in front of him. As you know, it takes a lot of cadavers for that course. He’s told me what a big help you were to him in the morgue last fall, and I’d like for you to give him a hand getting the cadavers ready for next fall’s course.”
I didn’t answer right away. I’d been afraid this would happen, and I’d dreaded this moment.
“Dr. Roberts, I’d like to help Kyle, but preparing the cadavers takes a lot of my time. A lot of my free time. It’s a lot of night work, and it’s hard work – physically.” After a quick pause to gather up my courage, I blurted out, “I’d rather not.”
He looked stunned. “I see.” He just sat there staring at me and his whole demeanor changed. Gone was the friendly department head who earlier had appeared to care about what I was doing.
“It wasn’t a request. Consider this as part of your job. Your refusal could be considered as insubordination and would be cause for immediate dismissal. I’m sure you wouldn’t want that, Dr. Whitley.”
I didn’t say anything. What could I say? He hadn’t really given me a choice. I wanted to ask him if preparing the ‘specimens’ for shipment was also part of my job, but I was afraid of how he’d react to that.
“I’ll tell Kyle that you’re going to be helping him. You can work out a schedule with him,” he said, turning back to his work.
###
I tried not to dwell on my conversation with Dr. Roberts. What was the point? There didn’t seem to be any way out. If I didn’t want to be fired from my first faculty position, I’d have to do exactly what he said. And I had no doubt whatsoever that he’d do just what he threatened.
The more I tried not to think about my predicament, of course, the more I thought about it. I imagined all kinds of unlikely scenarios. In one, I could see myself, years down the line, spending more and more time preparing cadavers. So much time, in fact, that I didn’t have time to teach, and I’d wind up nothing more than a glorified morgue tech. But that wasn’t the worst scenario.
In the worst situation, I imagined that the collecting and supplying of bodies and body parts, or ‘specimens’ as Dr. Roberts referred to them, became the major business of the morgue, and that I was thrust right in the middle of it – forced to be a part of Dr. Roberts’ illegal endeavors. And when it all came tumbling down, as it inevitably would, I would be the one to take the fall.
Either of those scenarios ended with me losing everything that I had worked so hard for. I would no longer be a teacher – something I had come to love. No longer could I hope to be a well-respected professor – something I had dreamed of all those years when I was growing up in one foster home after another. I had kept my dream to myself, not trusting anyone enough to let them in for fear that they would laugh at the pathetic little orphan with the big dream and tear apart the one thing that kept me going.
I had to get away from there. So I decided to start looking for a new faculty position at a different medical school. But, what if I found one? Would Dr. Roberts let me go? Or would he ruin any chances I had of moving on? I began to feel trapped – and desperate.
It didn’t take long for Dr. Roberts to follow up on his ‘request’. Kyle came by the anatomy lab at the end of the PA session a few days later.
“Hey, Sarah. Got a minute?” he asked.
I didn’t have to ask what he wanted. I’d been expecting him.
“What do you need, Kyle?”
“Dr. Roberts said to let you know when I needed some help preparing cadavers.” He waited a second for me to say something. When I didn’t say anything, he continued, “I’m going to be working tonight, and I sure could use some help.”
I felt like lashing out at him, but he sounded so apologetic that I thought twice. It really wasn’t Kyle who I wanted to scream at. He was just doing what Roberts told him to do. Like the rest of us.
So I just said, “Okay. I’ll be down after I get some dinner.”
Kyle and I worked for a good portion of the night. There were four cadavers waiting to be embalmed, and it took quite some time to get them to the point where we had to just wait for the embalming fluid to saturate the tissues. He didn’t mention Delta Biologicals, specimens, or anything else that I had asked him about previously. He also didn’t go near coolers number two and three.
When we were at the point where the cadavers we were working on needed to ‘rest’, we put them in cooler number one. I noticed that there were several un-embalmed bodies in there already. Kyle saw my surprised look, and, before I could ask him about them, which I definitely was not going to do, he said, “I’m way behind with the cadaver preparations. Those are the ones that we still need to work on.”
All I said was, “A lot of work.”
He looked relieved that I hadn’t said more.
Back in the morgue room, I was starting to clean up the equipment when he said, “I guess that’s about all we can do tonight, Dr. Whitley.”
So now it was ‘Dr. Whitley’. Before, it was always ‘Sarah’.
“Can you meet me in the morning to check on these cadavers? Maybe we can even start working on some of the others tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I said, gathering up my belongings and leaving him to finish cleaning up the mess. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.