Five(28)

“Why?” Rafi asks, flatly.

“To find out why they died,” Mrs. Worth says.

“Do the ghosts come to tell you?” Rafi asks.

“Ghosts?” Mrs. Worth says, alarmed, putting her paper down. “There are no ghosts. Ghosts are pretend. I work in a hospital, with doctors and police. It’s a serious place.”

“Do you cut open dead kids?” Rafi asks.

“Sometimes. But it’s very sad,” she says.

“Why?” Rafi says.

“Because no one wants children to die,” Mrs. Worth says.

“How do you do it? Do you chop them up or do you use a pizza slicer? Mum just bought one of those, it’s very cool, want to see?” Rafi says, running to the kitchen drawer to find it.

“Now wait just a moment. No pizza slicer. That is absolutely the incorrect implement for an autopsy. It’s not nearly sharp enough. You clearly have no understanding of human physiology whatsoever,” she says.

“Pizza?” says Robi, shirtless and trouserless but wearing socks, underwear and a baseball cap, popping out from under the kitchen table.

“What are you doing under there? And where are your clothes?” Mrs. Worth says.

“Clothes are boring,” Robi says.

Mrs. Worth sighs. “Now look, you two can’t just wander around here in your underpants doing nothing and saying all kinds of nonsense. Now go and play, or whatever you do.”

“Okay, Robi,” Rafi says, ignoring his grandmother and leaning over his brother, wielding the pizza cutter in the air. “I’m sorry, but it’s really bad, and we’re going to have to cut you in half.”

“Good God!” Mrs. Worth shouts, grabbing the slicer from his hand and laying it on the kitchen island. “That is not a toy! And you would never get through a whole body with that anyway. Now look, we need to be more productive than this. Go get me one of your felt-tip pens.”

They decide that Robi, as he is partially clothed, will be the patient. Mrs. Worth finds two shower caps in the bathroom, one for her and one for Rafi, and they put them on. She explains the necessity of not contaminating the body with skin or hair cells. She shows the boys how to scrub up. Then she gets the disposable gloves and masks she always carries in her purse and puts a set on Rafi.

“I want one,” Robi complains, feeling left out, so she puts a set on him as well.

Then, feeling very solemn about his job as the patient, he lies down on the kitchen table.

“Pretend you’re dead,” Rafi says to him. “Be really still and don’t breathe and close your eyes. Dr. Gran is going to cut you open and take out your heart and stomach, and then we’re going to go into your brain and push it out your ear.”

“No!” Robi screeches with gleeful horror.

“I will do no such thing!” says Mrs. Worth. “Now pay attention and you’ll learn something. Where is the heart?” she asks Rafi.

“There?” he says, pointing at Robi’s left shoulder.

“Close, but not quite. It’s lower, here, slightly to the left, closer to the center,” she says. “Robi, make a fist.” She has him put it on his chest in the correct position and draws a circle around it. “That’s the heart, you see? Every person’s heart is about the size of their fist.”

Robi looks down without moving his head, trying to stay still, as Dr. Gran continues. “So to get to the heart, first we have to deal with all of this skin and muscle and bone that’s above it. What are these?” she asks the boys, drawing a light line along one of Robi’s ribs. She teaches them about the rib cage, how it protects the organs underneath.

“So if that’s the heart, where’s the patient’s stomach, doctor?” she asks Rafi. He points to his brother’s belly.

“Well, yes and no, that’s too low, it’s under there, but it’s also more to the left. It’s in what we call the left upper quadrant. You see, we divide the abdominopelvic region into four parts, which helps you know how to find things.” Dr. Gran says, and she draws two long dotted lines on Robi, dividing his torso into quarters.

After explaining which organs can be found where, Mrs. Worth, with Rafi, turns Robi on his side. She draws lines to show where to find his lungs and to explain that the ribs wrap around all the way to the back. Then Mrs. Worth’s phone rings in the other room.

“Don’t go anywhere, boys, I have to answer if it’s the hospital,” she says.

If she had spent more time with her grandsons or ever exchanged more than polite pleasantries with Livvie or ever babysat more than four times in six years or had any real maternal instincts, Mrs. Worth would have known not to leave the boys alone. Earlier, she would have reflexively put the pizza slicer back in the drawer immediately, thinking many steps ahead of the children the way practiced mothers and grandmothers are conditioned to do, rather than just resting it on the kitchen island within their reach.

“I know, I know!” Rafi shouts with glee, having thought of a brilliant idea.

He opens the fridge and takes out the family-size bottle of ketchup.

“Here, now I’m gonna to put this on you, and it’ll be like blood and we’re going to do an operation!” he says to Robi.

“Okay,” Robi says, obediently lying back down on the operating table.