Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

Jason didn’t ask another question right away. He just sat there and looked at Andrew, and as Andrew looked back, he thought: The boy is dancing around this topic. Just like I am. Because the boy has seen something in there—Devils up from Hell, he called them—that he cannot explain any more than I can explain anything I have seen. And neither of us will be able to figure it out, until one of us takes that step—openly, into that place.

Jason finally asked his question.

“How big is Mister Juke? Is he skinny and tall with a strange bend to his face, like he’s been whacked? Or is he just little? Like a baby, or maybe a bit smaller than a baby? But with… teeth?”

They sat quiet again, as Andrew took that in. Andrew’s answer, when it came, had no words. He nodded.

“So both,” said Jason, and Andrew said: “Yes. Both.”

Annie Rowe returned with a hospital gown for Jason, and once he’d changed took the sheet and stuffed it into a sack for washing. As she folded it and stuffed it in the bag, she nagged Andrew a bit about getting back to his room, but Andrew put her off. “Just seeing to my patient,” he said.

“You are the patient,” she huffed. “And a terrible patient at that. Why is that truer with doctors than anyone else?”

“Annie, I promise to return to bed once I’ve seen to a few things.”

“Why don’t you let me see to them? I am on duty tonight.”

“You must have enough to do,” said Andrew.

“Oh,” said Annie, “it’s not so busy. We have a new mother and her baby staying the night, but they’re resting fine. Other than that, there is just a certain doctor who is recovering from an unjust beating, yet prone to wandering… .”

She stuffed the cloth into the laundry bag and hung it on the peg outside the examination room door. The whole time, she did not take her eye off Andrew.

“Now what can I take off your hands, Dr. Waggoner, to get you back to bed any sooner?”

Andrew sighed and looked in her eyes and, reading the expression there, he made up his mind.

“All right,” he said, “you can go into the autopsy. You can light up the lamps in there, and you can pull out Maryanne Leonard’s remains and set her on the table. Then you can go up to my room, and you can set up another cot for Jason, and leave the two of us to our work for a moment,” he said. Annie’s eyes widened and she prepared to say something else, no doubt to point out some other damning aspect of Andrew’s obvious infirmities, but he pre-empted her.

“That is how you’ll get me back to bed the quickest.”

§

“Why do you want to look at that lady’s body?” asked Jason as they made their way slowly down the corridor to the autopsy. “Why now?”

“The truth is, I want to find out as much as I can before I talk to Dr. Bergstrom next. I have my suspicions about what has been transpiring here all this time—and I want to see, so I can get some good answers from him. You want to wait outside, I understand.”

Jason pondered. “You don’t get on with that Dr. Bergstrom either, do you?” he said finally.

“No. I guess not.”

“Well then, I got stomach for whatever you’ve got to do. It’s not like I ain’t seen a dead body before. And you still look like you could use some help.”

“All right, then.”

As they came upon the door to the autopsy, Annie Rowe emerged. Seeing her gave Andrew pause. She looked older, the lines in her cheeks standing out in sharp relief, and the shadows around her eyes deep. Those eyes were wide, though—not this time with disapproval. She looked at Andrew and gasped, started to say something, then shook her head.

“Annie?” Dr. Waggoner leaned on Jason’s shoulder. “What—”

“I did what you asked, Dr. Waggoner,” she said. “I brought her out. But—”

“But?”

“Just go do what you got to do,” she said. “But leave that boy out of it.”

Then she turned and fled into the shadows at the end of the hall.

Andrew and Jason looked at one another. “I think you’d better wait here,” said Andrew. “I’ll go see what has Nurse Rowe so upset.”

Jason nodded. “Just don’t cut yourself. I’m not so good at stitching as you are.”

“I’ll be mindful.” And with that, Andrew let go of Jason and headed into the autopsy.

Andrew had been impressed with the Eliada autopsy from his first visit. The fact that there was a hospital in a place this remote was enough in itself; but the Eliada autopsy was also set up with tables like a surgery. The tables were on rollers, and exactly the height of drawers in the wall where the bodies of the deceased rested and there was at hand a full surgery of equipment for the purposes of examination. But for the absence of electric light, the autopsy here would not have been out of place in New York or Paris.