* * *
The morgue’s pale blue-white neon lights made even the living stand out as if they had been just as cold dead as the corpses filling it. The whole cooling chamber was actually reserved for important people, like officials, dignitaries and mostly foreigners. Somehow to the Biafrans it was really important that a dead foreigner - perhaps a journalist, a UN official or a priest with inordinate amounts of belief in mankind - received all due care when the time came: a morgue, a funeral, a tombstone. The rest of the normal people could just lay dead wherever they liked, but not the foreigners.
“We keep them here until their relatives and governments are notified. Most are claimed and we arrange the transportation of the body through the Red Cross, sometimes the UN. Some though, stay here forever,” said the doctor in charge. Nicole asked then, “You can keep a corpse indefinitely?”
“No, I mean they get buried here, in Biafra. We can’t keep anyone more than two weeks. Not a lot of room, anyway. But this is a remarkably equipped facility. The bodies are kept in cold storage,” he said with a slightly awkward smile. Ethan asked bluntly, showing his impatience:
“Will you just show us the corpse?”, to which the doctor nodded and led the way towards a specific slot, while Ethan added “Un-fucking-believable. It’s like a bloody farmer’s market, isn’t it?”. He wiped his mouth without a need, suddenly feeling nervous despite the fact that he really believed this corpse was simply a useful mistake from which they could move on. Still, something inside ate at him. A quick gaze at Nicole told him that odd feeling came from her. The question of why she had lied to him gnawed his mind.
“Ready?” asked the doctor, to which Ethan retorted:
“You’re not very good at this, you know that, don’t you?”
“A doctor is supposed to tend to the living, sir,” the doctor said apologetically, and continued, “I’m only saying that because the sight is particularly…”
“Just get on with it, yes, please,” said Ethan while the doctor pulled the handle on the small door, opening it carefully, almost reverently. He slid out the stainless bed with care, revealing the badly charred body of a man laying almost comfortably on his back, with a bullet-ridden chest almost torn to pieces. Nicole gasped at the sight instantly and her face furrowed, while Ethan couldn’t help wondering at how anyone could identify this man with any amount of certainty. The doctor spoke then in a professional, easy voice:
“White Caucasian male, judging from the shape of the hips and the cranium. Large entry and exit wounds on the chest probably from a high-powered rifle. Body stance indicates the fire was irrelevant to the man’s death. Two gold fillings melted away, both on the right frontal wisdom teeth. A broken clavicula, an older wound, possibly as a child.”
The doctor paused, as if waiting for something from either Ethan or Nicole, but they both remained silent for more than just a moment. The doctor felt compelled to ask:
“Does this man seem to be the one you’re looking for?”
Nicole broke down in sudden tears, sobbing like a little girl and nodded furiously even as the doctor tried to show her the burnt off personal effects that were found on the body: Andy’s switchblade, his steel-cased watch with their father’s signature on them, and a badly burnt but still somewhat readable passport. It was all there, this looked exactly like Andy’s body.
Ethan stood silent, while Nicole took a step back. He took a good, hard look at the charred body lying in front of him. Nicole placed her hand on her mouth, and sobbed quietly, respectfully, before whispering, “Oh, God… Andy…”. Ethan looked at the doctor, and then at the body once more, from head to toe, as if vainly trying to find a sign of life in that piece of charcoal lying in front of him.
He looked at Nicole then with a curious look, like he had never seen that woman before in his life. My brother’s wife, he reminded himself. Something very human inside pushed him to hold her in his arms gently and offer a crying shoulder, while a part of his mind raced in the completely opposite direction. And that part of his mind was the part that was usually right about basic things, like keeping out of trouble, dodging bullets and gunfire. Instinct made the hair on his back suddenly rise, a chill went down his spine when the doctor’s words rang once more in his mind.
The medical report; the wisdom teeth. He could see the doctor idly fiddling with some sort of paper on his writing pad. He caught a glance of him looking back. The doctor tried his best at smiling uncomfortably before fixing his attention once more in the writing pad. Ethan’s eyes looked around the morgue and flipped a few pages in recent memory.
That same bone, but no incisions, no X-ray machine. That very same bone, ever since they were thirteen years old. He shot Nicole another weird, expectant look. He asked himself then how she could not see it for herself. Unless, he thought, she could, and she did. Because she must have known as well, and that only meant she was taking him for a fool. A damn near-sighted, forgetful fool.
His heart must’ve skipped a beat when he heard the doctor ask him rather hesitantly:
“Is this your brother then?”
He cleared his throat and closed his eyes for a moment. He drew a deep breath and said with a reluctant, shy voice, even as Nicole threw herself into another fit of sobs:
“Who do we talk to about the funeral?”