"Good to see you back in action, Dr. Hiddles...fuck, I'm sorry. I meant Mercutio," the officer said as he opened the door for her to access the morgue.

"It's alright," Hadley said with a sad and weary smile. She felt like crap, and her day wasn't turning out well. Her favorite bra was dirty, so she had to wear an uncomfortable lingerie piece. Then she was almost late because Edgar was getting clingy again and had to stay at her parents' house. To make matters worse, her hair wasn't as straight as it was this morning, and her makeup wasn't finished. Other than that, though, she was just dandy. At least her mandatory scrubs were clean. The top was a black mock wrap, and she had to wear the most God awful traffic-cone yellow pants. "Is there a reason you're meeting me down here, officer?"

"I was told I uh...needed to be present for the Moorecaster autopsy."

"Your first?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Got a video camera?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Give it to me. I'll record it, and that way, you can puke somewhere other than my office, and I'll still have privacy. I can't have you corrupting evidence with your biological matter," she said, taking said camera and leaving the officer there with a nod. Total greenhorn.

When she got to her lab, Hadley first unlocked her little side office and checked the thermostat. Sixty degrees: the perfect temperature to freeze to death and keep bodies from oozing nastiness. She put on her protective gear next and pulled out the file of her first victim: Alabama Moorecaster. He was in a highway standoff between police after robbing a casino. Obviously it hadn't ended well, but the authorities needed to know if one of their boys did the deed or something else. It wouldn't be the first time it happened. She left her office and pulled the body from the freezer. He was tall and meaty with big lips and two buck teeth that peeked out from underneath. Stubble covered his neck and chin as well as acne and meth scars.

"Alright, Mr. Moorecaster," Hadley began. "Here in Autopsy we do autopsies. Mainly on dead people...no always on dead people." She always talked to bodies, mostly to pass the time. After all, she was stuck alone in a basement from nine to five and sometimes longer than that. "Autopsy means 'to look for one's self,' so you could autopsy a movie or a girlfriend and still be correct, though maybe not popular. To perform an autopsy or post-mortem examination, we need a body: that's you."

Hadley walked casually over to a stainless steel drawer with a tiny cart. She started bringing items either to the table or to the cart until she had what she needed and returned to her patient. "Now, Mr. Moorecaster, there are four things you want from an autopsy: time of death, cause of death, damage done to the body, and the manner of death. For time of death you need the ambient temperature, humidity and an estimate of body temperature. Luckily, you're a fresh one, so it's less work.

"When they hand you over to me, I do an x-ray. Once I finish the x-ray, the body comes into morgue. So, now we're ready for your external exam," she said as she pulled a scalpel. She took samples of everything: fingerprints, fingernail samples, hair samples, fibers, mold, and paint. Hadley grabbed the camera. "Alright, patient seems to have, scrapes on knees and...knuckles. It goes along with police reports of the death fall. And uh...oh, he has herpes. See?" she turned off the camera again and started to photograph tattoos and wounds with a ruler to get the scale.

She flipped the camera back on. "Patient weighs 256 lbs., mostly in muscle. Caucasian in race, uh...brown eyes and auburn hair. He looks to be about 6'3". Blood type is...A negative." She shut it off. Hadley had to scrounge about for a body block, a black brick placed under the body directly below the chest. It made the chest cavity more accessible and less likely to fold in while cutting. Hadley then attached the camera up above the body, but left it off for the time being. Then she sliced into the body deftly.

In a moment of sadistic glee, Hadley turned on the camera. "Now I'm peeling back the skin to reveal the chest. There isn't any bleeding because the blood has pooled at his back, but if I nick his gluteus maximus, it would be like a red tsunami." Hadley picked up a large pair of secateurs. "Now for the fun part. Now we just cut the ribs...and lift out the ribcage to reveal the organs. It's just like lifting the cover off a meal," she said before turning it off. That'd show Sheriff Dimwit for sending the greenhorn to her lair...uh office.

The next scene she shot had Hadley standing to the right of the body. "Now, I've examined all of the organs. Didn't really find anything out of the ordinary except," she pulled the heart out of a jar and pulled away a clamp on the aorta. "There's a lot of clogging. If I squeeze this," she ran the aorta between her fingers, squishing out a white fatty substance. "You can see the cholesterol." She could practically hear those bastards upstairs in their debriefing retching on coffee. "He was a smoker by the way, Officer Doyles." In the next shot, she stabbed the stomach, and a wet mixture oozed out. That was it though. Ha!

The camera cut to Hadley at the body's head, circular saw in hand. The top of Alabama's head was gone, and his furry scalp was left over his face. She was covered in goo and blech, but her eyes were glowing with mirth and an old spark. "I found something! He has a chemical imbalance judging by the size of his pituitary," she pulled the brain out with a gooey sound and showed them the gland. "That should be the size of an...I'll get the example when I've cleaned up. Anyway, this means he was likely not mentally all...there," she went off into space.

What if that's what Freddie had been trying to tell her? Put him in Tommy's body! They were the perfect pairing! Suddenly, Hadley realized the camera was still on. "Oh, sorry. Anyway. Found the killshot. I doubt forensics will be able to determine exactly which cop fired the kill shot. Toodles, I've got to stitch Mr. Moorecaster up and ship him off." She had an assistant take the tape and camera upstairs. Hadley hoped they enjoyed it.