Day 2

January 28, 2010
Case 1
Self-inflicted GSW to the chest.
Caucasian M, approx 35 YO
Single shot to center chest. Projectile was recovered.
I was not directly involved in this autopsy.

Case 2
Motor vehicle accident
Caucasian M, approx 70 YO
Complete open fractures of both femurs, one shin, one ankle, completely avulsed. Head completely detached from C-Spine, spinal cord, connected to body solely by skin. Broken clavicle, multiple fractured ribs, multiple skull fractures, multiple spinal fractures, severed aorta due to osseous pinch of collision.
Head-on collision w/ semi truck at 55 mph. Poss. Suicide.

The internal organs were almost pulped. The smell this time was worse, for the bowel was punctured. Greg was cutting, Dr. Gr. was in charge, Jen and I were helping out. We talked about our favorite fruits while picking bits of dashboard stereo and cell phone out of the mass of dirty, stringy, red muscle that constituted the legs. The feet were intact, separated from the main body by the avulsed, sagging mass of the lower limbs. The femur protruded spongily, whitely from the thigh, a large portion of marrow ripped from it and resting above.
I feel like I’ve been working here for weeks. Entirely comfortable. Everyone is cheerful and funny and takes everything in stride. Dr. Gr. and I discussed Latin origins of words while feeling the crepitus in the organs and slicing the lacerated, pulpy liver. Jen and Greg talked about concerts they wanted to go to while siphoning blood from the body cavity. The radio was on and Angie and Dr. A. were doing another autopsy across the room, the GSW, at the sink we were at yesterday.
It sounds as though we were being irreverent, but I must assure the reader that we were not. We were professional and thorough in the autopsy. When bending over the broken, pulpy body of a man who drove into a semi truck, you can’t focus on that. You can’t think about the guy on the table in a way that suggests you might end up that way someday. You can’t think of what you’re doing as cutting up a person with a dog or a cat or kids or a spouse. If you do, you leave after the day is over and every person you see, you can suddenly envision lying on that blue nubby table, blank-eyed and gape-mouthed, and you start to think of what you would look like on that table. If you’re lucky, it passes quickly. It’s disconcertingly easy to disassociate the gaping Y-incision and the floppy straps of the neck muscles from the face. The face, the head, the hands and feet, that’s the person. It looks like a person. The body, split and red and yellow, is just a body.
A song began to play from the radio, one everyone knows.
“Since you been gone,” we sang as we started to sluice water over the table and the body, “I can breathe for the first time!”
It seemed a little unfair to our patient.
We mopped the room to the strains of “Brown-Eyed Girl.”