Coroner Hal Dopkin, M.D., and his crews of highly trained N.Y.C. coroner department specialists worked day and night to autopsy the remains of the Lambrecht Theater goers. More than one-half of the creative theatrical and film talent of New York had been lost in this single tragic event. The lives of the good and the bad had perished in a single moment of extreme horror. As he cut into the chest and thorax of each patient, Dr. Dopkin performed his ritual of wishing each of them well in his mind as he had always done in trying to make this procedure as humanely respectful for them as possible.
It was useless, and he knew that, but he did it anyway. The coroner knew that little things in life were often tied together like paper dolls cut from the horror stories found in newspapers to create endlessly happy newsprint babies, each with the same stupid little smiles as they danced in the hands of their youthful creators. That, too, was an example of the good being created from the horror of our lives, and Hal often dreamed of how he had created those smiling babies from newspapers on rainy days when he couldn’t run through the streets to the park and join other kids’ baseball teams. With his little scissors, Hal cut out thousands of neatly arranged newsprint babies, each attached by their hands and arms to a paper accordion of little people. When Hal played baseball in the city parks each strike out allowed him the occasion to pretend he had just whacked a homer out of the park to the endless cheers of fans. He knew that his discarded paper babies hovered close-by in his inquisitive coroner mind. They had become thin ghosts in the trees beyond the crime scenes and the baseball parks where the gaseous strands of his imagination blew in the rustling leaves as they rattled against themselves in nature’s winds high up in the hidden branches of that dense greenery where hidden paper doll ghosts gazed down upon him as they applauded his every move of his bat and scalpel.
Officer Denzel Woods was the official autopsy policeman and attache for the autopsies. Detective Woods had been stationed like a trendy blue Druid inside Dopkin’s autopsy room. Woods was a necessary evil of America’s court system. He was there to keep the train of evidence intact. He was an extra witness so to speak. He was there only to later testify if needed in a court of law where he could be sworn in and say, “Yes, your honor, I was there for the entire autopsy, and, yes, I witnessed Dr. Hal Dopkin as he ascertained the condition of his clients at the moment of their deaths.”
“Can you describe in detail for those in the court, who are not aware of these things, exactly what happened there?”
“Yes. Dr. Dopkin surgically opened each victim and removed their organs and their brains. After placing these items on the examining table he then investigated their condition. At times, this required cutting into these items to find a bullet or other foreign object that might have caused their death.”
“Did you and the coroner find this distasteful?”
“No. We found it to be in the best interests of the victims. These procedures are very necessary to determine the nature of death and to classify it as either natural or as a homicide. It is not something you would describe in detail to your children when you go home, but it is something that needs to be described in great detail before being presented to a jury in order to arrive at real justice for the victim.”
Dr. Dopkin interrupted his day dreams by suddenly speaking to no one in particular.
“Number 427,” Dr. Dopkin read into his cell phone’s recorder. He took pictures of each organ as he discussed it. “Patient’s brain shows signs of trauma caused most likely by the collapsing roof of the Lambrecht Theater. The other internal organs are in a condition similar to what would happen if they had been crushed from the same building collapse. The heart has been impaled by the victim’s own bones which were found intact inside the organ where they had been forced by the collapse. The death seems to be caused by the collapse of the building. The court will have to determine whether or not the death itself was a felony. This will be based on evidence gathered at the scene to determine whether the building collapsed by itself or did so as the result of a criminal act of some sort. This ends the coroner’s official autopsy report for victim number 427. I am Dr. Hal Dopkin, M.D., the coroner in charge.”
Officer Denzel Woods sat in his observation post trying to stay awake. Woods mulled through his past memories in order to amuse himself for a few moments. Anything to partially distract his mind from the incessant removal of organs and their inspection. Although Woods dutifully watched each procedure with an eye toward so testifying in a court of law, nonetheless, being a typical person, Denzel was prone to daydreams as was every cop, taxi driver, or actor within the New York City area.
To deny day dreaming as a national on-the-job activity was to deny all realities in the world at large. It was simply understood, because all Americans did it hour after hour no matter where they worked. Dreams were a part of every activity within America’s work force. Even the placement of nuts and bolts in the manufacturing process were usually accompanied by day dreams of one sort or another. These dreams were the coping mechanisms by which factory workers wielding tools dreamed of their high school exploits and things that might have happened differently and better in a far friendlier world but somehow never seemed to transpire as the factory worker had planned. Without these dreams, the American worker might well die of boredom. The tightening of screws by worker slaves could not be sustainable over hours of work assignments without the constant interjection of minor fantasies for their minds’ amusement.
Detective Denzel Woods was a career officer who backed his men and gave his all to the force. This was his life. He knew that it wasn’t much, but it was what he had been dealt from childhood on as a direct result of having been raised in a policeman’s family where he made the decision to live his life exactly as his father had done and reap the retirement pension at the end of his avocational rainbow which contained the sparkling pot of gold that glowed vociferously at the end of each policeman’s career. Woods already knew what he’d do when he retired. He would sell his home and move with his wife to Florida and live the stingy good life that all ex-cops lived. There, he would eat at cheap local diners and watch the New York sports teams on his HDTV in crisp living color until the inevitable heart attack or cancer sent him into the ground or packed his ashes inside the proverbial jar of her loving husband’s final cremation. He and his wife, Nellie, laughed at the idea that they’d both be better lovers after they died. They figured their own passing would be the final tweak to make all things right, clearing up unpaid debts and atoning for dreams that were desired but never totally fulfilled. The songbirds of death deep inside the earth would tweet to them of the great things they had done or missed having done, because in their final end everyone’s triteness needed to be covered up as with a blanket of self forgiveness. Otherwise, suicides would rise. They would cause planned price increases to be foregone due to the unexpected loss of more and more consumer units and with them, the lowering of overall demand for products. Hence their prices would drop.
“Look at this, guys,” Lonny Harris said. Lonny was one of the coroners tagged to help in the crisis. Lonny stood back and revealed a man’s head with his own hand and wedding ring wedged inside his brain.
The coroners continued to work. They sawed open their patients’ skulls and surgically opened their soft thoraxes with their scalpels. They held up their victims’ innards for inspection directly beneath the room’s surgical quality lights, and spoke to their recording devices when giving their findings. There were more than a thousand bodies left for them to respectfully dissect, if such were even possible, which meant the present project was going to be a long and laborious toil.