Chapter 7 : The Pathologist
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, West Smithfield — June 2, 2010, 12:45 PM
The hospital smelled like every hospital I'd ever been in — antiseptic layered over something older, something institutional that had seeped into the walls over centuries. Bart's had been standing since 1123, which meant nearly nine hundred years of that smell accumulating in the stonework, the corridors, the DNA of the building itself.
I'd come with a legitimate excuse. The NHS records office had forwarded my amnesia file from St. Thomas' at my request — follow-up neurological consultation, standard procedure for cases like mine. Sandra Mitchell's office had arranged it weeks ago, and I'd been putting it off. Today, it served a purpose beyond paperwork.
The reception desk was staffed by a woman who processed my visitor badge with the enthusiasm of someone counting the minutes to lunch. She typed my name, checked my NHS reference number, printed the badge.
"Medical records is on the second floor. Neurology consultations are by appointment only."
"I'll start with records, thanks."
The badge clipped to my jacket. Nathan Cole, Visitor. One day only.
I took the stairs instead of the lift, because stairs told you more about a building than lifts ever did. Who used them, how often, where they connected. Bart's was a maze — Victorian bones under modern skin, corridors that turned at strange angles, staircases that seemed to exist for no reason other than architectural stubbornness.
The medical records office took twenty minutes. A clerk pulled my file, such as it was — admission notes from St. Thomas', transfer paperwork, the neurological assessment that had found nothing wrong. I read through it carefully, playing the part of a man searching for clues about his own forgotten life. In truth, I was memorizing the floor plan visible on the wall behind the clerk's desk. Pathology. Basement level. Morgue access via the east stairwell.
Noted.
After records, I wandered. Not aimlessly — targeted wandering, the kind that looked casual but covered ground. The medical library on the third floor. The research wing. The cafeteria on the ground floor, which was where I'd decided to stage my coincidence.
If you could call it that.
---
The cafeteria was half-full with the midday crowd — junior doctors inhaling sandwiches between shifts, administrative staff taking their allotted forty-five minutes, a cluster of medical students arguing about something with the passionate intensity that only people under twenty-five could sustain about a topic nobody else cared about.
I bought a tea — not coffee, despite wanting coffee; Sandra Mitchell's voice echoed from that first meeting at St. Thomas', reminding me to blend — and found a table near the window. Opened my notebook. Looked busy.
The woman sitting two tables over had a salad she wasn't eating and a phone she was texting on with the focused concentration of someone composing a message far more complicated than it needed to be.
Molly Hooper.
Smaller than I'd expected. That was the first thing. Television added presence to people, inflated them beyond their actual dimensions, and in person Molly Hooper was just — small. Five foot three, maybe four. Brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, mousy but clean. Lab coat over a floral top that was trying too hard and somehow endearing for it. No makeup except lip gloss she'd applied unevenly. She was the kind of woman that most people's eyes slid right over, and I knew — from the show, from the meta-knowledge I carried like contraband — that this was the woman who would keep Sherlock Holmes's greatest secret. The woman whose love would never quite be returned, whose strength would never quite be seen.
She was also my best route to forensic access. Which made me feel like a bastard for thinking it.
I sipped my tea and waited. Patience was cheaper than strategy.
Five minutes later, Molly put her phone down with a small exhalation — the message either sent or abandoned — and picked at her salad. She looked tired. Not exhausted, but carrying the particular weariness of someone who spent their working hours with the dead and their non-working hours alone.
I stood, carried my tea to the bin near her table, and paused.
"The coffee here any good?"
She startled. Looked up with wide eyes, the automatic surprise of someone unused to being addressed.
"Oh! Um." A quick laugh, too quick. "It's terrible, actually. Like, properly awful. But the tea's... acceptable? Sort of. If you don't think about it too hard."
I smiled. "Too late for that. Already committed." I raised my cup.
"Oh, you got the tea! Good call. Smart." She caught herself, seemed to realize she was babbling, and her cheeks went pink. "Sorry. I don't usually — I mean, most people don't talk to me in the cafeteria. I'm the—" She stopped. "Never mind. I work downstairs."
"Downstairs?"
"Pathology." A pause. "The morgue. I'm a pathologist." Another pause. "With dead people. Obviously. That's what a pathologist — sorry, you didn't ask for my life story."
"Nathan," I said, offering my hand. "And I did ask about the coffee, so technically you were just being helpful."
She shook my hand. Light grip, cold fingers — the cold of someone who worked in refrigerated rooms. "Molly. Molly Hooper."
"Nice to meet you, Molly." I gestured at the empty chair across from her. "Mind if I...? All the other tables have medical students, and they look like they're about to start throwing textbooks."
She laughed — a real one this time, small and surprised. "Please. I was just—" She glanced at her phone. "Nothing. Sit. Please."
I sat. Drank my tea. It was, as advertised, acceptable at best — thin, over-steeped, the particular shade of brown that said institutional catering rather than anyone's actual effort.
"What brings you to Bart's?" Molly asked, then immediately backpedalled. "If that's not too — you don't have to answer. Sorry."
"Medical records. I'm following up on some tests." I kept it vague, let the pause do the talking. "Memory issues. They're trying to figure out if there's a neurological explanation."
Her expression shifted — from nervous to concerned, the professional empathy kicking in. "Oh. I'm sorry to hear that. Have they done an MRI?"
"Clear. Everything's clear. Which is good news and terrible news at the same time."
"Because if nothing's wrong physically, then..."
"Then nobody knows what is wrong. Yeah."
She nodded with the understanding of someone who dealt in medical uncertainty daily. Her fork turned in the salad without conviction.
"The brain's funny," she said, more quietly. "We understand so little of it, really. For all our scanning and imaging, it's still... mostly mystery."
"You sound like you've thought about it."
"I work with brains." A small, self-deprecating shrug. "Well. After they're finished being used. It's probably different when the person is still — sorry, that was morbid."
"It was honest. I'll take honest."
Something passed across her face — a flicker, quick, gone. Gratitude, maybe. Or surprise. The surprise of being told her honesty was welcome rather than weird.
We talked for five more minutes. Nothing of substance — the weather's attempt at being June, the construction on Giltspur Street, whether the cafeteria's soup was ever worth risking. She mentioned she'd worked at Bart's for three years. I mentioned I was new to London. She didn't press for details. I didn't offer them.
Then her phone buzzed and she checked it with a startled glance at the time.
"I have to — there's a body coming in at one-thirty. Well, not coming in — it's already dead, it's not walking anywhere — I need to go." She gathered her tray, the uneaten salad, her phone. Stood. Paused.
"Good luck with your research, Nathan. I hope they find some answers."
"Thanks, Molly."
She smiled — genuine, a little uncertain, the smile of someone who didn't quite believe it when interactions went well — and left. Her lab coat disappeared around the corner toward the basement stairs.
I sat with my terrible tea and the echo of her voice.
She's kind. She's nervous. She's undervalued.
I knew what was coming for her. The years of pining for Sherlock. The Christmas party where he'd humiliate her. The rooftop where she'd help him fake his death. The phone call where he'd force her to say "I love you" while a bomb counted down.
Molly Hooper deserved better than what canon gave her. Whether I could provide it was another question entirely — one I had no business answering at this point, with sixty-three SP and a visitor badge that expired at five.
[Reconnaissance: Bart's Hospital layout — partial. +5 SP]
I finished the tea, pocketed my notebook, and headed for the exit.
At the front desk, I unclipped the visitor badge and set it on the counter. The receptionist glanced at it, then at me.
"All finished?"
"For today." I slid the badge toward her. Then, as she reached for it: "Actually — is there a process for longer-term visitor access? I may need to come back for follow-up appointments."
"You'll need your consultant to arrange that through records." She filed the badge away. "Each visit requires a new badge otherwise."
"Right. Thanks."
I walked out into Smithfield's afternoon bustle. Bart's behind me, its stone facade impassive as it had been for centuries.
Molly Hooper was in the basement, elbow-deep in someone's chest cavity. Sherlock Holmes would walk into that same morgue in four months and change her life forever — for better and for worse.
I pulled out my burner phone and texted Charlie: North contacts. How many?
The reply came in two minutes: Two solid. One maybe. Meet tomorrow?
Tomorrow. Same bench. Noon.
I pocketed the phone and turned south toward the Tube. Three new contacts north of the river. A pathologist who'd remember me — or forget me, depending on how unremarkable I'd managed to be. And the beginning of an access route to the one resource I needed more than any other: forensic evidence.
The seed was planted. Whether it grew depended on what I did next.
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