The concrete bowl of Operating Amphitheater OR-00 was built like a subterranean Roman colosseum for the dead.
Forty feet overhead, a ribbed observation dome of wire-reinforced safety glass looked up into the weeping granite foundation pilings of St. Jude’s Municipal Hospital. Steep, concentric tiers of wooden spectator galleries rose around the pit, their benches coated in thirty years of black soot and gray condensation frost.
Down in the center of the arena stood a single 1974 stainless-steel dissection table bolted to a cast-iron pedestal, surrounded by circular brass floor drains cut into blood-grooved terrazzo tile.
The air at the bottom of the pit sat at a dead thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit. It smelled of crystallized formalin, freezer rime, and rusted copper plumbing. Every ragged breath Julian and Elena drew hung in pale white plumes between their faces.
Julian braced his shoulder against the cast-iron pedestal of the central dissection table, his knees stinging through his torn trousers from the drop out of the sluice chute. He kept the thirty-pound 1996 Master Autopsy and Admissions Ledger locked against his chest with his left arm. His right hand verified the tin of methylene-blue ink and the steel desk stamp in his belt pouch.
