Experiencing Death

Risk of Murder

Sometimes in the morning, you wake up and just know today's gonna be a bad day. You slept fine but you're still tired. Your coffee machine decides to break and spill hot water everywhere, and the blow dryer isn't working so you're forced to go to work with wet mangled hair.

Of course this had happened to me, and I was already late as it was. Now I've got fake coffee running through my veins, my mouth tastes like plastic, and I looked like someone had taken a rat and placed it on my head. I got to work and checked in, the familiar brunette handing me my daily folder. "Good morning, Jason." I murmured.

"Good morning, Miss Volkoff. Good luck with today's case, by the way," He replied half heartedly. I guess he's not really interested.

"Thank you. Though I hopefully won't need it, eh?" I yawned, opening the yellow manila folder. with a simple glance over the information, I headed into the morgue.

It's listed as 'Unnatural causes.' Could mean Tetrodotoxins, Sarin, Strychnine or some other poison, or it could mean that it was an electrolyte imbalance causing an arrhythmia. Although 'Unnatural Causes' means anything from suicide to a train wreck to a bad reaction to a peanut, usually they'd put it on my list as so. In this case, it means there's no obvious wound that had caused death. But I knew that it had been an air embolism that killed her as soon as I saw the photo.

She was probably just a wonderful girl who was caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Or... not.

I put on my gloves and apron, then grabbed the wheeled table she was. Gently, I rolled her to the x-ray before flipping the switch, removing her sheet, and waiting for the machine to print my photo.

There was no reason for me to do the real autopsy. So I lazily started on the paperwork that it would take. Nothing too hard, as I already knew most of the information, so there was no need to even glance at the folder Jason had given me. I worked for a bit before I ended up spacing out, remembering what she was like.

DATE AND HOUR AUTOPSY PERFORMED: August 1, 2016; 9:30AM 

BY: Olivia Volkoff, M.D.

1085 W. Lumberg Lane

Salem, Oregon 503

208-863-XXXX (FAX 208-863-XXXX)

NAME: Natalia Withersfield

DATE OF BIRTH: 2/23/89

AGE: 26                     RACE: White

SEX: Female           DATE OF DEATH: July 23, 2016

Case #: 001294-23E-2016 

"The autopsy is begun at 9:30 A.M." i  on August 1, 2016. The body is presented in a black body bag. The victim is wearing a violet sleeveless shirt, black strapless bra, red bikini-cut underwear and denim jeans. Jewelry included two smooth-textured oval pierced earrings, 1-inch length, one in each ear, and one 1-inch wide silver expandable wristband on left wrist. Victim's cause of death was an air embolism being caught in the pulmonary artery, blocking flow to the lungs. No other cause of death seems to have been found..."

.....

She didn't struggle much. merely stood, horrified at my appearance before simply passing out.

That's too bad, actually. I was kind of hoping for more of a fight.

I had my hair up; wearing mostly black as a cliche murder would. Ski mask over my face, blue surgical glove on my hands, I inserted the needle into her sub-clavicle vein and pressed the plunger. There was nothing in it but air, and that would later be considered cause of death. A bit of air caught in the pulmonary arteries can do a lot of damage.