Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [23]
I walked towards the closest bed. Doctor Evans never turned around or acknowledged me in any way. White sheets formed tents over each patient, held up by some sort of framework to keep the sheet from touching them.
Doctor Evans finally turned to one side so I could see the face of the patient. I blinked and my eyes refused to see it, or maybe my brain just rejected what I was seeing. The face was red and raw as if it should be bleeding, but it didn’t bleed. It was like looking at raw meat in the shape of a human face, no meaty skull. The nose had been cut off, leaving bloody holes for the plastic tubes to be shoved inside. The man rolled brown eyes in his sockets, staring up at me. There was something wrong with his eyes beyond the lack of skin around them. It took me a few seconds to realize his eyelids had been cut off.
The room was suddenly warm, so warm, and the mask was suffocating me. I wanted to pull it off so I could breathe. I must have made some movement because the doctor grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t take anything off. I’m risking their lives with every new person that comes in here.” He let go of my wrist. “Make the risk worth it. Tell me what did this.”
I shook my head, concentrating on breathing slowly in and out. When I could talk, I asked, “What’s the rest of the body look like?”
He stared at me, his eyes demanding. I met his gaze. Anything was better than looking at what lay in the bed. “You’re pale already. Are you sure you want to see the rest?”
“No,” I said, truthfully.
Even with just his eyes visible I could see the surprise on his face.
“I would like nothing better than to turn and walk out of this room and keep walking,” I said. “I don’t need any new nightmares, Doctor Evans, but I was called in here to give my expert opinion. I can’t form an opinion without seeing the whole show. If I thought I didn’t need to see it all, trust me, I wouldn’t ask.”
“What do you hope to gain by it?” he asked.
“I’m not here to gape at them, Doctor. But I’m looking for clues to what did this. Most of the time the clues are on the bodies of the victims.”
The man in the bed made small jerks, head tossing from side to side as if he were in a great deal of pain. Small helpless noises came from his lipless mouth. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe normally. “Please, Doctor, I need to see.” I opened my eyes in time to see him rolling back the sheet. I watched him roll it back, folding it carefully, revealing the man’s body an inch at a time. By the time I saw him to the waist, I knew that he’d been skinned alive. I’d hoped it was just the face. That was awful enough on its own, but it takes a hell of a long time to skin a grown man’s entire body, a long screaming eternity to do it this well and this thoroughly.
When the sheet rolled back over the groin, I swayed, just a little. It wasn’t a man. The groin area was smooth and raw. I glanced back up at the chest. The bone structure looked male. I shook my head. “Is this a man or a woman?”
“Man,” he said.
I stared down and couldn’t keep from staring at the groin and what was missing. “Shit,” I said softly. I closed my eyes again. It was so hot, so very hot. With my eyes closed, I could hear the hiss of the oxygen, the whisper of the nurse’s booties as she came towards us, and small sounds from the bed as he twitched and strained against padded restraints at his wrists and ankles.
Restraints? I’d seen them but hadn’t really registered them. All I could see was the body. Yes, body. I couldn’t keep thinking of the man as a “he.