“I find your disrespect disturbing,” Laurie said, trying to maintain her composure. With everything else that had happened over the past few hours, dealing with this unpleasant woman was a severe test of her patience.
“What am I disrespecting?” Aria said, making an exaggerated expression of confusion. “I’m giving credit where credit is due.”
“I heard you were remarkably disrespectful to our director of education, Dr. McGovern.”
“Oh, really?” Aria drawled. “Let me tell you something. Old Doc McGovern got what he deserved.”
“What do you mean by that? Are you implying he’d been disrespectful to you?”
“Obviously,” Aria said.
“What did he say that was disrespectful?”
“It was the way he looked at me and his syntax. The man is a hopeless womanizer. It’s written all over his face. Of course, it didn’t help that after he’d been talking with me for five minutes, he suggested we should have a drink sometime. I’m not all that fond of men, particularly the Dr. McGovern type. I’ve had to deal with them all my life.”
Once again Laurie found herself staring at Aria, who impudently stared back. As the head of an organization with a thousand employees in an era of heightened workplace sensitivity to issues of sexual harassment, Laurie wondered if beneath this woman’s brassiness, she might be communicating something important. The question arose inher mind whether sexual harassment could be nonverbal and merely implied. Thanks to Jack, she’d known for years that Chet McGovern was a philanderer on his own time, but could that reality affect his behavior in-house? Laurie didn’t know but stored the thought to examine later. Currently she had to deal with the woman in front of her, who was enough of a conundrum.
“Dr. McGovern followed me all the way over to the Tisch Hospital,” Aria said. “As far as I was concerned, that raised a red flag. I didn’t want him following me back to my condo some night.”
“He followed you because you had failed to make an appearance at an assigned autopsy,” Laurie said.
“Big deal,” Aria said. “That’s easy for you to say, but who’s to know. Besides, I’d already stood around and watched one forensic autopsy for the day, and as far as I was concerned, that was enough.”
“That’s not for you to decide,” Laurie said, struggling to control herself.
“Yeah, whatever,” Aria said. “I’m learning enough about forensics to satisfy myself, which is the point of this rotation. I’m sure as hell not going to become a forensic pathologist.”
“What attracted you to medicine?” Laurie asked, to change the subject. Aria’s lack of respect and basic empathy was difficult to weather.
“Whoa...” Aria voiced. “This is getting personal.”
“Do you mind?” Laurie said. “As I’m sure you are aware, or would be if you thought about it, it’s our responsibility to certify that you spent your rotation here at the OCME appropriately. So far your behavior of skipping assigned cases makes us question that.”
“Okay, that’s not unreasonable,” Aria said. “I went into medicine to get away from the family business. Also, in college everybody seemed to be premed, so I was, too. I really didn’t think much about what it would be like being a doctor. I was caught up in the competition, which I enjoyed.”
“What was the family business?” Laurie asked.
“My father, the asshole alcoholic, was a very successful NYC venture capital, hedge-fund guy who knocked me around a lot when I was a tween.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Laurie said, meaning it. “Was your father at least pleased you chose to become a doctor?”
Aria laughed derisively. “He never knew, the selfish bastard. He committed suicide when I was just barely in my teens.”
“My goodness,” Laurie managed. She was appalled. “It certainly sounds like you didn’t have the best childhood.”
“You could say that,” Aria added. “Especially considering the stepdad my screwy mother ended up marrying. He was worse than my real dad in just about every category. But I managed to blackmail him into putting a lot of my mother’s money in my name.”
“How did you end up in Pathology?” Laurie asked. She wanted to get away from Aria’s lurid and depressing family history. Laurie had sometimes felt sorry for herself growing up because her father had been emotionally distant. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to be physically abused.
“That’s a good question,” Aria said. “It was by elimination. Maybe I should have given more thought to becoming a doctor, because during medical school I was quick to learn that I hated seeing patients. I mean, it’s pretty pathetic when you think about it. But what can I say? It was what it was. Anyway, pathology is the only real choice if you hate patients. It’s also intellectually stimulating.”
“Well, it’s encouraging to hear you were at least challenged,” Laurie said. She tried to gird herself for an unpleasant afternoon. “Let’s talk about the next hour. My intent here is to get a sense of what you have learned about forensic pathology in the little more than a week you’ve been here. We have an overdose case, and I want you to essentially do it. Are you up for that?”
“I can tell you this: It sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than me just standing around emptying the wastebasket.”
“I hope you find it stimulating,” Laurie said. “Maybe we can even excite you a bit about forensic pathology.”
“That would be a stretch,” Aria said, reverting to her disinterested voice. “Let’s not let expectations get out of hand.”
