Marker by Robin Cook Read Free Book Online

They appeared normal, with no hemorrhages on the sclera. Opening the mouth, she made sure the endotracheal tube was in the trachea and not the esophagus. Laurie had seen that on a few occasions with the predictable disastrous results.
    With all his preparations complete, Marvin came back to the side of the table opposite Laurie and stood expectantly, waiting for the internal part of the autopsy to begin.
    "All right! Let's do it!" Laurie said, reaching out with her hand as Marvin handed her a scalpel.
    Although Laurie had done thousands of postmortems, each time she started another, it gave her a tingle of excitement. Starting the actual autopsy was akin to opening a sacred book, the mysteries of which she was about to discover. With her index finger pressing down on the top of the scalpel, Laurie expertly made the usual Y-shaped incision, starting from the points of the shoulders, meeting mid-sternum, and then continuing down to the pubis. With Marvin's help, she quickly reflected skin and muscle before removing the breastbone with bone cutters.
    "Looks like a broken rib," Marvin commented, pointing to a defect on the right side of the chest.
    "No hemorrhage, so it was postmortem, probably from the resuscitation attempt.
    Some people go overboard with the chest compressions."
    "Ouch!" Marvin said sympathetically.
    Expecting blood clots or other emboli, Laurie was eager to examine the great veins leading to the heart, the heart itself, and the pulmonary arteries, where fatal clots would usually be found. But she resisted the temptation. She knew that it was best to follow a normal protocol, lest something be forgotten. Carefully, she examined all the internal organs in situ, then used the syringes Marvin had laid out to take fluid samples for toxicological testing. A fatal reaction to a drug, toxin, or even an anesthetic agent had to be considered. Less than twenty-four hours had elapsed since the deceased had undergone anesthesia.
    Laurie and Marvin worked together in silence, making certain that each sample was put into the correctly labeled specimen container. Once the fluid samples had been obtained, she began to remove the internal organs. Diligently, she maintained the normal sequence, and it wasn't until a bit later that she finally turned her attention to the heart.
    "Here comes the money!" Marvin quipped.
    Laurie smiled. The heart was indeed where she expected to find the pathology. With a few deft strokes, the heart came out. She peered into the cut end of the vena cava, but there was no clot. She was disappointed, since she had already noted that the pulmonary arteries had been clear when she'd removed the lungs.
    Laurie weighed the heart, then with a long bladed knife, began an internal examination. To her chagrin, there was nothing amiss. There was no clot, and even the coronary arteries appeared entirely normal.
    Laurie and Marvin's eyes met across the opened corpse.
    "Damn!" Marvin exhaled.
    "I'm surprised," Laurie said. She took a deep breath. "Well, you see to the gut and I'll take my micro samples, then we'll check the brain."
    "You got it," Marvin said. He took the stomach and the intestines over to the sink to wash them out.
    Laurie took multiple tissue samples for microscopic study, particularly from the heart and the lungs.
    Marvin returned the cleaned gut to Laurie, who went through it carefully, taking samples as she proceeded. Meanwhile, Marvin started on the head by reflecting the scalp. By the time Laurie was finished with the stomach and intestines, Marvin was ready for her to inspect the skull. She gave him a thumbs-up when she was through, and he hefted the power-vibrating saw to cut through the bone just above the ears.
    While Marvin was busy with the skull, Laurie took a scissors and opened the sutured wound on the lower leg. All looked fine within the surgical site. She then opened the long veins of the legs, tracing them from the ankles all the way up into the abdomen.
    There were no