What It Is

Chapter 1

Contrary to what my mother always taught me, it's not really necessary to wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident. If you end up at the morgue, chances are said underwear will be soiled anyway. The brand name and type are much more important, something Mom would probably agree with.

"You have to document everything," Nikki declared. "The fact that this guy died wearing nothing but black BVDs will become public record when the autopsy report is released."

After she had finished noting his personal effects, Nikki set down her clipboard to pull off his briefs. She discarded them into a bin next to the autopsy table as I tried to focus my eyes somewhere other than where the BVDs used to be.

"All of their clothing goes into that container," Nikki stated. "It's given to the next of kin by the funeral home. Be careful if you find any money—once I found several hundred dollars inside a patient's bra. I always announce to the room when I find cash so that no one can accuse me later of stealing it."

Nikki, the experienced pathology tech who was training me, appeared to be in her late twenties, with short dyed-black hair. We met as I waited outside the fridge before my "trial autopsy," standing nervously in my scrubs and slippers, my blonde locks encased in a hairnet.

She had told me in a smoker's voice, deep and gravelly, "Now listen. Before we go in there, I want you to be aware of something: what's done is done, the past is the past; whatever you see in there already happened, and you had nothing to do with it."

"I know."

"Do you?" She studied me over the top of her goggles.

I nodded.

"Did you eat a good breakfast this morning?"

"Yes . . ." I couldn't decide if she was making conversation or if a deeper meaning existed behind her inquiry.

"You might not want to do that anymore—at least for a few days, until you're used to it. You never know what you'll see in there."

"OK," I said. The eggs my mom had made me that morning suddenly felt heavy in my stomach.

"I'm a coffee drinker myself, but you might want to hold back on that, too, for a few days. You'll be nervous as is, and you don't want your hands to be shaking so badly that you can't wield a scalpel."

I nodded again. The way Nikki kept stressing the "few days" part made it seem like what I was about to see in there would only have a temporary effect, as if, after those few days, everything in my life would go back to normal. I certainly hoped that was true.

"You're lucky . . . this will be an easy one today. My first autopsy was liquefied, and I got it all over my scrubs. You haven't lived until you've had decomp drip on you." I swallowed audibly. Nikki continued unabated. "And Dr. Hart's the path on this one. You'll like him; he's much easier than Dr. Duncan. Dr. Duncan will make you do the cutting"—she paused as she glanced at me—"eventually. When you're more experienced. Speaking of which, have you ever been around a dead body?"

"I watched a cadaver get cut open in college," I said. I shoved the thought of how I'd nearly fainted when they unveiled the corpse out of my mind.

"That's good. Although the goal of a cadaver cutting is to see the gross anatomy of a human, whereas the goal for an autopsy is to decide on a COD: cause of death. This one is a forty-something John who probably died of a drug overdose."

"His name is—was—John?"

She furrowed her brow. "As in John Doe. Unidentified. As of yet. But that's part of our job: we give them a COD, and if need be, a name and a family that will take care of them after we do."