“And I’m not actually a coroner,” Talia retorted lightly. “You could have been a doctor, your skill level is certainly high enough.” She’d known people who’d made it through med school that weren’t even half as talented as Zach. He had a knack for it.
She hadn’t bothered to parse it out and really figure out why she liked having Zach around, but the joking was probably a big part of it. He took his work seriously, but didn’t take everything else so seriously and she found that refreshing. “They are!” she exclaimed. “Especially when you’re a size eight. Most average shoe size for women,” she sighed exaggeratedly. She was taken aback by the suggestion, not because she was surprised he’d made it but because she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it. “That would actually be a very good idea.” For right now her memory seemed to be a steel trap, but who knew when that was going to wear off. She really shouldn’t depend on it. “Do you think the storage space would have one?”
“Oh my god,” she exclaimed, though she was smiling behind her mask. “You’re insufferable, Zachary,” she informed him with more fondness than exasperation. “Careful, I might just take you up on that and you might not like the result.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him before she went back to her work. Crinkling her nose at the decay she found, and squinting at what looked like a rib fragment floating around in the chest cavity.
“And a gentleman after all,” she teased as she pulled the rib fragment out and dropped it into one of the containers Zach had shifted around for her. Upon closer inspection there were quite a few fragments of things floating around in there, so she would probably need to fish most of those out before removing the rest of it. “Can you identify this?” she asked him as she held up a piece of bone that looked like it might be part of the spine maybe. “It looks like vertebrae to me.”