Simon turned away from the body (or what was left of it) that he’d been examining, glad of the interruption. He was a passable coroner when the situation called for it, he’d gone through the requisite cadaver-carving at the medicad and he wouldn’t damage evidence for an investigation. Of course, there wouldn’t be any investigation. Much as they played at installing security systems and providing escorts everyone knew what, who, had really done this. The autopsy was a sham, a sort of scientific placebo pill to make Simon feel better because this was a marker, this was what a civilized society did with their dead, they determined the cause, they closed their affairs honorably, and they buried them with dignity. Still, he hadn’t gone to medicad to be a coroner or an undertaker and he waved a hand at the woman, no one he recognized but faces didn’t often stick with him for very long, to dismiss her apology as he crossed to the sink and stripped off his gloves,
“Take a seat, it isn’t as if this can’t wait,” he said, indicating an examination table across the room from the body as he washed his hands and replaced the discarded gloves with a new set as he transitioned mentally to thinking about a new patient. Plane crash? Then the usual, broken bones, contusions… He realized suddenly that from what she’d just said (Booth had to recommend her, she didn’t know to come) that this must be a new arrival, and here he’d sat her in the same room as a corpse without so much as a hello. He turned back quickly, mouth open to apologize, then shut it again and raised his eyebrows as he realized she was, even to his unreliable eye where other people’s moods were concerned, relatively calm.
“Did you receive any medical attention at the scene?” he asked, stepping forward after the initial hesitation and picking up a pen light, “Look straight ahead please,” he requested, the minutiae of a trauma exam old habit, the punctuation to a sentence, after so long. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re a doctor of?” that next question less medical necessity and more curiosity as he catalogued her pupil reactions.