So there's a room in Stoneheart, where there is provided the necessary trappings for a medical procedure. The patient is not going to make it, though. They're quite expired. She's a female who was recently one of the Lost of this freehold, and somehow...
...it's really something that in the days hence may become something of a scandal or embarrassment if all the facts get out...
...somehow Kyle has been drafted into performing an autopsy on this poor young woman. He walks out of that room wearing a smock and rubber gloves up to his elbows, and a surgical face mask, basically in the 'costume' of someone performing an operation. And he proceeds to doff the thoroughly bloody gloves and gorey smock. Apparently beneath that he has been wearing nothing but...well nothing. Actually.
One of the things about seeing Kyle clothesless is that he doesn't give off that same impression one would expect when seeing a naked man. There's just all the cat fur in the places it needs to be, and so in a real sense it's more like seeing a vaguely man-shaped cat without clothes. There's a fulfillment of expectation to it, really. While here he starts to wash his hands in a bin of water prepared for this occasion.
Who knows why Gisa came in here. Maybe she smelled blood and wanted to make sure everyone was all right. Maybe she's just on patrol, checking the edges of the Freehold, in case of Nazis or Amelekites. (You never know. Eternal vigilance.) In any case, she appears in the doorway, and props her hands on her hips the same way she did yesterday when she was scolding him (or whatever that was) about Lunette.
If there's any reaction to clothes or the lack thereof, it's impossible to see on her face, especially at this distance -- her expressions tend to be tiny things. Her eyeflames burn steadily, her shin is at the usual brightness, and her face is impassive.
"Kyle." Beat. "What did you do."
I mean honestly, look what the cat dragged in.
His fur bristles, that becoming a more expressive part of him when he doesn't have a suit on or anything like that. It's more out of surprise though as he stands there with pawlike hands in water, furiously rubbing them together along with some soap. Kyle looks toward the now-familiar voice and immediately smiles. "Oh hi Gisa. I did an autopsy!"
He seems rather proud of himself, really. Like it was a Job Well Done. Never mind that among the acceptable answers in the universe to the question of What Did You Do the answer he gave is unlikely to be among the good options available.
She tips her head to one side, and then the other. "Are you a mortician?" And then, more importantly, "Do we have a Chevra Kadisha? Or ... whatever... goyim call that function?" The golem moves in a little bit, out of the doorway, "What... " She just looks at what used to be a living being -- or seems to look at it, it's almost impossible to tell exactly where Gisa is looking -- and there's sort of a mild distress in her voice. Whether that's at Kyle's work or at the sight of a dead body, difficult to say. "Who was she?"
Is he a mortician? "...you know that's a very good question." replies Kyle with a nod as he turns to his washing. Washing washing. Even though he wore gloves he is determined to be clean after some of the stuff he just got through touching and going through. Talk about getting personal with somebody. "I didn't know her." He actually sounds sad about that, ears laying back on his head as he frowns visibly. "But she was found dead and I was asked to help find out how she died. So I did my very best to help."
Upon a nearby table lies an open book of Anatomy of the sort a medical student might use. It's from a public library. Next to it is a binder, a very thin binder, labelled in permanent black marker in Kyle's hand: Autopsies for Dummies.
As the cat-beast silently declares his hands clean enough, he very quickly shakes them to send a spray of droplets flying, and then begins to lick them clean. Lick lick lick.
Aneira was probably the one who drafted Kyle in the first place. Upon hearing it's underway, or... something, she arrives at Stoneheart and looks around for the autopsy in question. It doesn't take too long for her to find the place. She knocks before entering and walks into Kyle licking his paws. She stares at him. It's probably disapproving, but given her face is frozen in place it's hard to tell for sure. "Kyle," she says, before her gaze shifts to Gisa appraisingly. "Hello," she greets after a beat. Then, attention shifting back to Kyle, she asks, "What did you find?"
That sound that Gisa makes is... possibly distressing. It sounds like maybe a volcano starting to bubble over, or a blacksmith's bellows creaking under too much strain. Without actually saying anything to either of the people present about what, exactly, she is doing, Gisa -- with no regard to her clothing, or the blood, or the anything -- moves across the room like a mountain range advancing. It could be threatening if you were on the wrong side of it, but clearly she doesn't either care about that, or it isn't what she means. Her ceramic fingers start digging in the tools Kyle was using, coming up with a needle and black heavy thread. She shoves her sleeves up her arms, pulls the sheet back, and bends over the body, starting at one autopsy cut, and beginning to stitch. Apparently goylomim can sew.
"Oh! Results. Right. Where did I leave it..." Kyle looks around between licks on his paws, finally consciously realizing that he's doing it and then giving a dark look to nobody in particular as he stops. He pads briskly across the floor to his binder which he opens, going past the first series of pages to handwritten notes he took. Then he starts to read off as if from a list, because he really did make an organized list of things. "Cause of death is as best I can tell blood loss due to cuts at her wrists. Small sharp blade, it looks like, in an X-shape pattern on each wrist. It severed her tendons too so she couldn't have done it to herself. Someone had to do the cutting for her. She had a lot of other injuries too. Uhm...abrasions at the wrists and ankles. My guess is she was bound that way. Her palms and the soles of her feet were burned. She has what looks like frostbite in places and also some contusions. Bruises, you know? Someone beat her. But most of all she was cleaned. Someone actually used soap and some kind of disinfectant on her. And there was no blood or dirt in her wounds or on the skin. Someone went to a lot of trouble to clean her before they dumped her."
As he finishes up his little report, Kyle glances at Gisa with apparent surprise. There's not even a small effort to stop her or question her actions. If anything it's more just irresistable curiosity. Finally he looks to Aneira and asks her with a concerned look, "Who was she?"
Aneira's glittering, faceted eyes stop on Gisa a moment or three as she starts to stitch the corpse back together. More quietly, she says to Kyle, "Her name was Beth. A Spring Courtier. That's all I can remember about her. I haven't heard from any other Spring Courtiers who might know better at this point in time." She crosses her icy arms and thinks for a moment. "That's in keeping with what we thought. The cloth the killer wrapped her in was clean. No blood, no marks. Hedgespun, though, and in the Hedge. Were you able to tell anything else? Did she have any injuries that were older than -- thirty five hours and twelve minutes?"
It probably isn't too surprising to Kyle -- who, at least, knows enough about Gisa to know what she is and how she functions -- that a) once she starts a task, she stays totally focused on it to the exclusion of all other things and b) while she stitches, there's ... well, it might be Hebrew. (It's Aramaic, but unless you know the difference, Hebrew's a good guess - the same guttural 'ch' sounds and vowel sounds are in this as in everything else he's heard from her.) It's evenly metered and rolls out of her as she works, her motions matching up to the words. There isn't really a melody to it, just a slow rising and falling of words like a tide coming in and going out again.
"Well she'd never given birth before. She had been in good physical health. Her lungs only had two lobes on the right, which is unusual but also congenital. I mean..." None of that being relevant, he stops himself and says instead, "The oldest injuries I found were some of the bruises being about a day old. Everything else looked fresher than that. I mean maybe possibly thirty five hours and...that's a very specific time..." Kyle's ears perk curiously toward Aneira at that point, pupils narrowed to slits in the light here but fixated on her for a few seconds. He tears his attention away from the icy woman and looks toward the body on the table. An unconscious motion of his tail has it dropping to the backs of his ankles, loose and listless in some echo of the sadness in his voice. "Beth." He even approaches the corpse in a manner that stays out of Gisa's way, reaching out to grasp the nearest hand and squeeze it, repeating the name as if she could hear it. "Beth. I'm so sorry."
Aneira's expression remains as hard as ever, and she leans back against the wall and falls silent as Gisa sings? her song and Kyle squeezes the corpse's hands. She simply observes the process quietly, arms folding over her chest, waiting for them to finish.
When she finishes one set of stitches, she starts another. Everywhere there's a cut, a hole, a laceration, it appears, Gisa is intent on stitching Beth up. Neat and careful, gentle and respectful. When the Aramaic winds down, and the stitching is done -- both really at the same time, -- she says, "I need a clean white sheet. Two." She says this to the room as if the room itself will simply provide this, not lifting her head from her task. Now, she's double-checking Beth's body, gently lifting and turning her as necessary, to make sure she hasn't missed anywhere the former Spring was cut up. It may be too late to keep the blood in, which is sort of the point of the exercise from a halachic standpoint, but that doesn't seem to matter to Gisa. It's the doing of the thing.
Kyle doesn't fixate on the body for longer than it takes to call her by name. He explains possibly to nobody's concern, "I had to treat her like a piece of dead meat to do all this to her, but I didn't want to end on that note. She wasn't a piece of dead meat. Not at all." By the time he finishes that thought he's facing Aneira again, watching her and idly rubbing a hand down his furry chest and abdomen as if to wipe Beth off on himself. "So what's next? Is there anything else I can do to help?"
Aneira looks around the area uncertainly. There's probably a few spare sheets around given this is where they were storing the body, so she shifts away from the wall and moves to a shelf to pull them out. Kyle's words don't seem to bother her. At the question, she lifts one shoulder in a slight shrug. "The autopsy helps, I suppose. Any indication she was drugged? Or was she attacked, and then... dragged off?" She moves to Gisa's side and sets the two folded sheets down near her. "This was a message to the Freehold. I can't imagine it was anything else. Her body was placed close to it, and her abdomen..." She shakes her head. "Everyone needs to be careful about going places alone right now."
Kyle moves away from Beth as Gisa continues her work and Aneira helps with the sheet gathering. He seems largely done with the task of her. "I didn't get any indication of drugs. I couldn't test her blood or anything and don't think I'd recognize other signs really, but I have a very good sense of smell and didn't smell that on her. Nothing obvious anyway. But someone could've drugged her and held her for long enough that it was undetectable that way. That's possible." Absence of evidence and all that. He narrows his eyes thoughtfully and asks, "What about her abdomen?"
"Just the thirty-five hours thing," Aneira says, shaking her head. "No drugs. Maybe something else, then. Went home with the wrong guy, or got mugged or something. I don't know what else to look for from the body." She looks down at the body in question. "I suppose the next move is to try to interview some Spring Courtiers." A short pause, then: "Or find some of her friends. I thought a few would show up after I posted the announcement to the Freehold, but I suppose not everyone pays attention to those. But someone will have to deal with her body."
She moves on from the stitching -- including the marks carved into the stomach -- to bathing the body. The water that Kyle was using to wash his hands? Gisa finds a basin of some sort, whether it's a bowl or a pitcher or -- doesn't matter -- and starts bathing the body, beginning at the hands and face, and moving on, cleaning the body and then pouring water over it, rinsing Beth thoroughly. She's gone from prayer to absolute silence, not offering any sort of opinion. Apparently her opinion is given through action, which is that she'll let others handle the investigation -- she's going to wash the body.
"Oh, I thought there was something else." Kyle suddenly slaps his forehead with the heel of his pawlike hand. "Of course that's where you got that. That was dumb of me. Wow Kyle you're a moron..." He pets his own head once in a slick-back-your-hair motion with that same hand as he contemplates options. "Well. If you want I can help interview anybody. I mean...no offense Aneira but you're not really super-nice or engaging. People may not volunteer information to you the same way they would to me. I'm pretty good with people."
Aneira gives Kyle a steady look. "I suppose you're in this deep already," she says after a moment, not sounding offended. Not that she sounds much like anything. "Whatever makes the whole thing as painless as possible. Whoever did this needs to be found as soon as possible."
The body is washed. It takes a long time to get blood out of hair, so Gisa is occupied with that for a good long while. When she's done with that, Gisa washes the scissors thoroughly, until there's not a speck of blood left on them. Then she sets about butchering one of the sheets that Aneira set out at her request -- a neck hole, and whip stitch down the sides. In a few minutes, it's a serviceable tachrichim, or shroud. Still working in steady, assured silence, she lifts the cleaned corpse as if she's moving a doll around, but as gently as if she's picking up a child. Gisa doesn't do anything quickly, but she does it thoroughly, and with care.
"Why not? I already know too much." Somehow Kyle seems either disregardful or unaware of how that sounds. Is it time for him to sleep with the fishes?? He might even laugh if that were brought up. "Don't worry, I seriously want to catch who did this too. Beth deserves better than for us to do less than our best." He watches Gisa for a moment as she performs ablutions on the body, but seems a little awkward about this. "I should help." he decides at last. Then to Aneira, "I'm gonna help her. Why don't you take my notes so you can share them?"
"All right," Aneira says after a moment, looking at the body. "I suppose I should put her on ice. No telling how long it'll take for any of her friends to turn up." She glances from Gisa to Kyle, and back, as Gisa picks the body up. "Or... I guess we can do... that." She doesn't sound quite sure what 'that' is. Glancing to Kyle, she says, "You need to be careful. It could have been one of her friends, for all we know. In fact, I really insist you don't do any interviews alone, especially since you're new to the Freehold..."
"She should be buried, sooner rather than later." Gisa voices an opinion, finally. "If her friends want to hold a memorial later, if they turn up, they can do so. But we are here now. To keep a body from the ground is ... " Her voice trails off, and she shakes her head; the corners of her mouth turn down, as if she just smelled dog poo or something, rather than talking about refrigerating a corpse. When Kyle comes to help her, she gives him a vaguely unreadable look. "It would be better if she did," Gisa says, "But you have already autopsied her. Thank you." Then she goes back, in quiet, to dressing the corpse in the makeshift shroud, and laying her out on a clean surface.
To Aneira the Cat says, "No problem. In fact you're right and I'll follow your lead." Suddenly instead of being a medical examiner, Kyle finds himself possibly performing the role of detective! How exciting! Now if only he could be convinced to put some clothes back on. He just blinks at Gisa without understanding though. Clearly she isn't making sense to him in some way.
|
