You must wonder what we're doing here in your part of the world.

[bestsir]

Who: Harry Goodsir and anyone who promised him some stuff, or hell, if you just want to bug him in the coroner's office in the hospital, so literally anyone.
What: Dr. Goodsir's office hours. Bring him things, come to chat, or tell him to clean his overgrown curiosity cabinet out of the hospital posthaste.
Where: Harry's office and impromptu lab in the basement of the Riverview hospital.
When: Anytime in July.
Warnings: Harry's doing an autopsy with Victor Frankenstein. Potential for grossness having to do with critters.

The truth is, there isn't that much for the Riverview coroner to do on a good week. There was a brief increase in activity after the business with the cult, but otherwise Harry is very much left to his own devices.

Hence letting his naturalist's instincts out to play. He now has a pet eyeball-eating lizard (he is still trying to work out a system of nomenclature and is hoping someone might have some ideas) and a couple of moths in a jar, a lot of botanical specimens, and some assorted feathers, bones, and other items that he's collected or that have been brought to him by friends.

When he's not attending his classes at the university, you'll probably find him here, working or studying. He does go back to the communal housing on a nightly basis, but he keeps very late hours. Come see.

Comments

[jolting]

It was too bad he didn't have his old lab coat. As it was, he borrowed one and an apron, pulling on the gloves. Victor's eyes lit up when he recognized the body.

"Oh, hey. I know this one. They tried to kill me and Doctor Beckett. Beckett tried talking them down, but then our patient shot them."

[bestsir]

"Your patient?" Asked as he positioned himself by the corpse's torso, asking with a nod and gesture if Victor could get the legs so that they could get it on the gurney and move it over to the exam table.

[jolting]

Victor moved to lift the legs and help get the body on the gurney. It'd been a while since he did this, and he and Igor didn't have the benefit of a gurney to help transfer the body.

"Yeah, Beckett and I were trying to help somebody. Beckett tried talking this guy down, but then our patient shot him. Wouldn't have been so bad if our patient hadn't died, too."

[bestsir]

"Oh. Oh no, I'm so sorry." Harry shook his head. "Such a terrible business, all of it." He'd tried to help people as well, but none of them had died under his care, at least.

He wheels the corpse over to the table so that they can reverse the process and get it in place for the work.

[jolting]

Doctor Beckett had been more upset about the whole thing than Victor. He hated losing patients just like any doctor would, but he didn't need any consolation. He shrugged it off, concentrating on the body in front of him. He got the recorder ready, though he would let Harry do the honors of starting them off.

[bestsir]

If Harry is not particularly unsettled by Victor's nonchalance (even if he doesn't agree), it's only because a man doesn't serve with Stephen Stanley for two years without getting accustomed to a certain lack of bedside manner.

He nods to Victor. Ready.

When the recorder starts, he announces the date and time, as he's now learned to do, Drs. Goodsir and Frankenstein attending. A description of the appearance of the body: the arms, the bullet wound, other assorted minor abrasions and lacerations. Then to Victor: "Any further observations?"

[jolting]

Victor didn't answer right away; he was thinking about that moment with him, the cultist and Beckett. Wondering what he could have done or said differently that might have saved their patient's life. He took a breath and pushed it out of his mind.

"The wound on the body's eye was caused by a dagger. I was the one who threw it, so there will be no need to search for a match. It should be noted that this was not the cause of death, and in fact the being barely seemed fazed by the attack. Perhaps closer examination of the body will help enlighten us on why this is so."

[bestsir]

Harry, having just picked up a scalpel, looks up at Victor with mild surprise. He hadn't expected the man to be a dagger-throwing type.

"Should we start with an examination of the skull, in that case? There may be unusual physiology worth noting before we proceed."

[jolting]

"It's a good start," Victor agreed. He went to retrieve the bone saw. Though this corpse had multiple arms and eyes, its parts were all where a human's would be. He snapped on the mask first before going in. It was a safe bet that the brain would be in the skull, so Victor cut in carefully so they could preserve it and study it in whole.

They would of course weigh everything and compare it with human organs to determine any similarities and differences.

"How do you think they determine age?" he asked suddenly.

[bestsir]

Harry frowns. "One would ordinarily go by teeth and bone growth, of course, but that may be less applicable given these ... physiological differences. Perhaps we shall discover other markers that we can identify."

He waits for Victor to remove the skullcap, at which point he will take the brain and weigh it.

[jolting]

"Still might be useful to examine that, even if we can't determine age," Victor mused. "All information is useful; we just need to figure out how it all fits together."

He carefully removed the skullcap, stepping aside for Harry to take over while he moved down the other way to check out the corpse's legs and feet. It didn't entirely surprise him to find that this thing had more toes than a human would, and they were shaped differently. He went to get some nail clippers so they could take a few samples before really cutting into the flesh.

[bestsir]

There was a moment where Harry paused; he had to blink away the image of William Heather before he could retrieve the brain—

It's a pudding.
I would have said a cathedral. I suppose it depends on the man.

—and place it in the scale. He noted the weight and set it aside for further dissection.

He paused a moment, looking at the inside of the skull, examining the multiple eye sockets. "There are bony protrusions behind the orbits of the sockets," he said for the recorder. "One is damaged in a manner consistent with Dr. Frankenstein's account of inflicting dagger injury upon the deceased, and it is also evident that the protrusions prevented the blade from fatally penetrating the brain."

He looked up at Victor—there you go, then.

[jolting]

Victor was listening while he was making notations on the legs and feet. He glanced up to meet Harry's eye, giving a nod. "I'm glad it was there. I didn't really want to become a murderer." He moved to join Harry back toward the head.

"The neck, shoulders and chest are reminiscent of human. Aside from the extra appendages, which appear to be by biological design rather than a mutation. The deceased was ambidextrous. Anything else before we go in?" He was interested in seeing if this being had extras of anything internal.

[bestsir]

"Defence of one's person is not murder," Harry said quietly—as much, perhaps, for his own benefit as Victor's. No—he was not going to let his memories interfere with his work. He picked up the scalpel.

"Let us begin. I will now make the Y-incision to begin the internal examination."

His hands were steady as he cut through skin and muscle, and when the cut was complete, he began peeling back the layers to open the torso.

Twenty. I've performed on twenty. More now. Forcing the thought out of his head required a nearly physical effort.

[jolting]

"Doctor." Victor's voice was calm and gentle. He'd been watching the other man the whole time and noting the subtle expressions. He doubted Harry would admit there was anything wrong.

"How about we take a break? The corpse isn't going anywhere."

[bestsir]

Harry is about to protest, but he's looking into the opened chest cavity just then and realises that Victor has the right idea. A moment to breathe will do him some good.

He straightens up and puts down the scalpel. "Very well. You are right, of course, there is no need to be hasty." He bends down and takes a folded sheet out from under the exam table and shakes it out, to cover the corpse.

[jolting]

Victor would've liked to continue, but it was obvious the other doctor was going through something; he didn't want to push. So he set aside everything and found them chairs so they could sit.

"Never gets any easier, does it? I haven't had to open many bodies working in Storybrooke, but I remember the ones I did too clearly."

[bestsir]

Harry laughs softly, humourlessly. "For most of my career as an anatomist and surgeon, it has been—I should not say easy, but a thing I have expected." He thinks about his conversation with Alex, and wishes now that in the time since then, he'd had the wherewithal to actually do as he'd said he would and try to find out what the world says about Sir John Franklin. He feels that he must explain himself now, and there is only one way he can think of to go about it.

"Do you know, perhaps, of the Franklin Expedition? Of Sir John Franklin and his search for the Northwest Passage?"

[jolting]

Victor had to think about it for a moment. He wasn't familiar with all things that had to do with Earth, as it wasn't his native world.

"Sounds a little familiar," he said at last, "but honestly, my cursed memories didn't make me much of a history buff. I'll have to look it up at the library later."

[bestsir]

Harry nodded. It would have been easier if Victor had known of it, but needs must.

"I sailed with that expedition in 1845 as assistant surgeon and naturalist aboard HMS Erebus. Between her and her sister ship Terror, we sailed with 130 souls." He stared at the floor. He'd rehearsed variations of this story in his head several times, but the actual telling was no easier for all that. "We became trapped in the ice for two winters, then abandoned ship to try and walk to safety. I cannot say how the expedition ended, but I can tell you that before it did, the survivors became ... desperate."

He sighed. "I did not know that one can be wounded in the soul, and yet that is how I feel at times, when I am reminded of what happened. Not always, and not every time I work in here—" a gesture around the morgue, "—but there are moments of—weakness, I suppose."

[jolting]

Victor listened as the other doctor told his story. It was a familiar one. Maybe not in exact details, but he heard of people being trapped and desperate to survive and knew what would happen next.

"It's not a weakness," Victor assured him. "Or if it is, I'm just as guilty of it as you. I don't know how familiar you are with my story, but it haunted me. And then it became too much and I was terrified. I've since healed, but it takes a while. Don't be too hard on yourself."

[bestsir]

Harry looked over at him and smiled faintly, sadly. "Thank you," he said. "I do know your story—that which has been written, that is—and perhaps that is why I felt I could tell you mine. Or some of it, at least—for the entire tale is quite long and ... difficult."

[jolting]

That got him to smile a little. "Then I'd say we know enough about each other's stories." There were just some things that were too difficult to speak of to just anyone. James was the only one who knew every piece of Victor's story, for example.

"If you want to learn the rest of your story, I'm sure you can," Victor said after a while. "But I can tell you from experience that how others tell it doesn't matter as much as how you decide to live it."

[bestsir]

"A wise observation," Harry said, and it really was a way of looking at his situation that he'd never thought of before. "I had thought by coming here to erase what had happened to me, but I begin to see that it is impossible to do so."

He rubbed his chin absentmindedly; one of the first things he'd done on getting settled in Riverview was shave the beard he'd grown and trim his whiskers back to what he considered his normal state, a literal attempt to erase the last three months of his life in Nunavut and, in turn, his shame.

"And perhaps to erase, to forget, is not the blessing one might think."

[jolting]

His lip twitched a bit. "It's really not," he agreed. "What you went through is terrible and horrifying, but it's yours. Getting rid of it would be like getting rid of a part of yourself. Believe me, you'd still feel its absence even if you don't understand why."

Victor was quiet for a moment, then gave an assuring bump of their shoulders. "That cultist member over there could help us a lot. When you're ready, we'll get back to it and see what they can teach us."