EIGHTEEN
I call it the “electrification pallet,” but I hoped someday it’d get a new moniker based on my name. Like Bunsen burner or Erlenmeyer flask or galvanism. You know, that kind of thing. It's designed to be a built-in conductor plate with ports to negate the need for new incisions. It's brilliant.
*
That was how the second body was found. At night. In a field. By teens who’d had too much to drink. It was ugly and real and had left tiny spiderwebs of death clinging to those who’d witnessed it so that I knew, in some small way, each student there would be marked forever, just as I’d been from the moment I found my father.
I couldn’t help but be reminded of the eerily positioned cadaver cast in silver light as I stared down at Adam lying on the metal gurney the following day. I glanced away, trying to shake the thought, but my look landed on Adam’s legs and my mind instantly formed the image of the porcelain bone sticking out from beneath the snapped trap. The boy’s death wasn’t a hunting accident. The missing leg had made that clear. Whoever had killed that boy had made good and sure he was dead. I rolled the scalpel handle between my fingers. If there was good news, though, it was that if someone knew about the car accident or about Adam, they seemed to have decided to leave us alone. There had been no more tire marks or evidence from that night left at my doorstep. In fact, the missing boy’s death had in some ways offered Adam, Owen, and me a scrap of cover.
“Adam,” I said, and I surprised myself at how much I sounded like my mother from when I was a kid. Back before my father had died. “I need you to look straight up at the ceiling, okay? Don’t look at me until I say so. Can you do that?”
“But why? You’re here, Victoria.” He grasped my hand. I set it back down on the gurney, where I gave it a gentle pat.
“Because. I’m—we’re—” I gestured to Owen, who was milling in the background, shifting his weight between untied sneakers. “We’re going to install this … plate.…” I pointed to my surgical tray, where Owen’s gadget lay next to forceps, clamps, and two more razor-sharp scalpels of different sizes. “So that it’s easier for us to keep your energy supply charged. It’s an electrification pallet. I invented—” Owen coughed. “We invented it. For you.”
Adam nodded, looking every inch the child waiting for his measles shot, and directed his eyes up toward the crumbling ceiling.
I pulled a pair of plastic gloves from their box and slid them over my hands, popping the wrists into place, and then slipped into a shabby lab coat. “You’ll tell me if this hurts,” I said, still wishing we had access to an anesthetic, even though, with Adam, we shouldn’t need one. “Owen?”
He stared down at his shoes while he put on a pair of gloves. I could hear him breathing through his nose. He edged around to stand on the other side of the gurney. I zeroed in on the center of Adam’s bare chest where his rib cage joined together at the sternum, a flat piece of vertical bone that ran from his collarbone down to the bottom of his lungs. I placed my pointer finger high up on the blade of the scalpel and positioned it in the narrow crease between his pectoral muscles.
Blood seeped out. I drew the incision down twelve inches, slicing through the tree-branch tapestry that decorated his skin. Owen whimpered. At the top and bottom of the line I’d cut, I made two horizontal lines, half the length, so that it looked as though I’d drawn an I on Adam’s chest. I paused to examine my bloody handiwork.
I then replaced the scalpel on the surgical tray and retrieved a pair of forceps. Using my fingernails and the forceps, I was able to flip up a corner of Adam’s skin at the middle seam and peel it back, opening him like the pages of a book. Owen choked. My eyes flitted to him. Milky white had crept up his face and neck. Fog coated his lenses, and his tongue kept protruding out of his mouth before he was able to swallow it back.
“Hold this,” I ordered. Owen pinned back the flayed skin.
“Can I look yet?” Adam asked, pointing his eyes obediently to the ceiling.
“No,” Owen and I both snapped in unison.
“I can’t even look yet,” said Owen, voice high with held breath. He stared up at the ceiling, too. “Not much of a view, eh?”
While Owen held Adam’s flesh in place, I fetched the plate. Owen had designed it exactly as I’d envisioned, only better. I slid the plate into the gaping wound. The metal grated against bone. The plate was outfitted with four holes, evenly spaced around the perimeter.
“You can let go now.” There was no need to tell Owen twice. The flaps of skin fell back into place, and the plate disappeared from sight. Owen cupped his hands over his mouth and breathed hard. “The worst part’s over. Now you can stop overreacting.”
“Over…” His voice shook. “Overreacting. To this?” He waved his hand over Adam’s body. “There’s a person under there, Tor.”