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DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters or ideas created by Anthony Zuiker, Carol Mendelsohn and Ann Donahue. I borrowed them for the entertainment and amusement of my audience.
SUMMARY: People often ask me how I do what I do.
GENRE: Drama
RATING: G
DATE COMPLETED: May 25, 2011
::~*~::
Most people, upon seeing a dead body, are met only with silence. Perhaps abject terror within their still beating chests, but silence nonetheless. Not me. When I encounter the dead, I am met with an intimate history of the deceased individual's life. Their bodies speak louder than their voices ever could.
Here, in my familiar haven, the voices of the dead rise up, each struggling to be heard over the others. Here, I work my magic and tell their stories, the stories they can no longer give voice to.
People ask me how I can do what I do. How can I look at the results of humanity's worst and still maintain my own humanity? You would think that being asked that question as often as I have, I would have a well-rehearsed answer at the ready...and yet, I don't. I think my answer changes almost as frequently as the bodies on the tables. At one point I would have said it was because I had a deep, and slightly morbid, desire to study the human anatomy, but you can't do what I do and not feel sympathy for the lives that were lost to bring them to my lab. The desire for study was there, but it didn't run deep enough.
I suppose you could say that, like my law enforcement colleagues, I have a strong desire to see justice served to those responsible for filling my tables and refrigerated drawers. Like most law-abiding citizens, I most definitely do want to see justice served, but if it was as simple as that, I would have become a police officer and locked criminals away in that capacity. That's not to say that my sense of justice is any less pronounced than my colleagues', merely that I wanted to contribute in a different fashion.
Maybe it's because I grew up wanting to know why? and how? I was never content with the who? what? and where? Growing up I always watched people. My mother would take me to the park, but more often than not, I would sit on the swings and watch the other kids play. I would watch the new arrivals running away from the clutches of mothers and fathers and I would try to figure out what part of the playground they would run to before they ever reached the sandy pit. Why did that particular feature draw that particular child to it?
I remember, amusingly, the first, last, and only time I played the board game Clue with a friend of mine from childhood. The point of the game was to guess the who? what? and where? Peter never wanted to play with me after I tried to make up elaborate reasons as to why Professor Plum did it, though I'm still convinced Miss Scarlett bribed him somehow.
Growing older, those questions still fascinated me. Perhaps that is why I do what I do. Because I am the last person in the world who can tell the last story a person has to tell and I can only do that by focusing on the why? and the how?
As I stand here over my cold, metal table, draped silently with a sheet, I take a deep breath. It doesn't matter how many times I do this, it never gets any easier to pull back the sheet. Snapping on my white, latex gloves, I gently tug the sheet away from the head. I have to force myself to take several deep breaths before I can even pick up my scalpel. I learned long ago that I needed to remain strong and stoic, if not for my sanity, then for the grieving family and friends left behind, but occasionally a victim comes along that shakes me to the core. I look down on the serene face of the college-aged young woman in front of me, but I see another face, transparent and overlaying the victim's face. I give a silent prayer of thanks that my own daughter is still healthy and safe, content in her own independent life.
Shaking my head to clear the vision, I can't really shake the feeling of utter sadness that wells up inside of me. Autopsies like these, where the deceased strongly reminds me of the living, are always difficult. It's a part of my job that I try to keep hidden from everyone, but I think some of them suspect that even I have cases that are difficult to bear.
Picking up my scalpel, I prepare to start. At least for the sake of her grieving father, I can tell him why.