“I miss it regardless of the technically I don’t have available to me,” Talia responded seriously. “I was actually going to make a difference, rather than just trying in vain to do that.” She knew that what she did now was important, but her life would have been much different if the outbreak had never happened. She would have been helping to solve crimes, rather than biding her time with science projects and what equaled hospital rounds. But she’d always tried to be more optimistic, so she was working with what life was now, and overall she enjoyed it.
It was a little discouraging to think that they weren’t any closer to figuring out what happened, and she couldn’t help but feel a little bitter towards the government for not using the means they had to focus on dissecting what they had. But it didn’t help to focus on that either.
She was grateful that the conversation didn’t linger on what they didn’t have, that Zach was more than happy to move on to hands on things.
“Assistant,” she clarified. “I don’t particularly love the term slave, though yes, I realize I used it myself.” He probably thought he was being cute by reiterating that again, and overall she didn’t mind, but she really did just want his help right now, there was no ulterior motive behind it. “I’m going to make you move once you get those cracked, since you don’t look like you’ve dug around many chest cavities.” Maybe he had though; he’d been a soldier. But emergency medicine was much different than an autopsy; there were different procedures involved.
She tried not to hover as he worked, and bit back a reminder to be careful, since she guessed he knew that the body was fragile. When he’d managed to open the chest cavity she grinned, thanked him and shooed him out of the way so she could get a few tools in place to keep the cavity open.
“See, would have taken me longer than that,” she told him, glancing up from the body. The level of decay was exactly what she expected, so she wasn’t surprised by the smell or the sight of it. She’d grown used to the kind of black, grimy look of the interior of a zombie corpse. “I’m not really going to bother to weigh anything, but I would like to examine some of the more vital organs. There’s a whole row of containers on that other table,” she continued and waved in the direction of the other table.