Unexplained III

“Ice” van Eck strode down the sparsely lit corridor that led to his domain; the city morgue. Once inside the pristine theatre area, Ice was pleased to notice that his intern had arranged to have Mrs Palframan’s body removed from the freezer and placed on the autopsy table in preparation for his examination. She was a bright, proactive young thing and sexy to boot. With the right kind of encouragement, Ice was sure that he could greatly assist in furthering her career in pathology. He smirked hotly as he imagined blonde and blue eyed Sarah Browning – full lips pursed - on her knees underneath his desk; a still-unrealised pleasure, but not out of his reach, he believed.

Adjusting his trousers to accommodate his burgeoning erection, Ice looked down at the dead woman’s twisted face with its staring eyes. Since he took little notice of any woman over the age of 30, he barely remembered meeting Patsy Palframan, although they’d been introduced at the library fundraiser his wife had dragged him to earlier in the year and yet again at the house of a mutual friend where Ice had spent his time sniffing around Patsy’s friend’s luscious young daughter.

From the autopsy room door, Sarah Browning watched “Arse” van Eck’s hand surreptitiously brush against the front of his trousers and sighed. The man was in a perpetual state of arousal and while it made her life uncomfortable, she was confident that Ice would fuck up sooner or later and when that happened, she was next in line for his job. There wasn't exactly a glut of candidates for the post of small town coroner.

“You going to open her up?” she asked as she entered the room.

Startled out of his erotic reverie, Ice looked up at her. “We don’t really need to. This old dear died from hypoxia, but if you think you could learn something by an autopsy, we have free time. It’s not like she has a next of kin to complain about the stitching”.

“I’ve only ever read about a case like this”, Sarah conceded. “I’d like to see what the damage is to her lungs first-hand.”

“For you, I killa da bull!” Ice stated dramatically, with a lewd wink. Sarah suppressed a shudder.

Soon however, both their heads were bent closely over the Y-incision that Ice had made in Patsy Palframan’s chest. Ice removed the left lung from the chest cavity and laid it in the stainless steel dish. Impatient to begin, Sarah picked up a scalpel and began to dissect the spongy tissue.

“Look at this”, she said as she nudged Ice’s arm urgently to gain his attention. Ice glanced at the lung she’d cut into and stared in surprise at the unblemished tissue.

"Check the other one - quick", he urged Sarah as he removed the remaining lung and plopped it onto the autopsy table.

Sarah sliced it in two and lifted it up for Ice to see.

“This woman died before the smoke even got to her lungs”, he pronounced in bafflement.