Excuse me, doc - I’m having a little trouble hearing you in back, and all the tall people are in front of me, so I can’t really see too much. Do you have something I can stand on? A stool or something, maybe.
Hey, can I use this?
I get the feeling that it’s very hard to do that to a medical examiner. 
Okay, scalp’s cut. I nicked her ear, but they can totally cover that with makeup, or arrange her hair artfully in the casket.
Very good, Draelin. You are definitely a Miss Autopsy America.
Now force your thumbs under her scalp and peel it forward, until it’s inside out completely over her face. You may have to use your scalpel to loosen up the temporalis muscles on each side of her head. Just scrape them right off.
Don’t worry about the occasional nick or buttonhole. The funeral home guys are very good at fixing that. Right, Harvey the Heavy?
Do you want to stand on the mobile stairs we use for photographs, or on the next autopsy table over?
Hell, pull up a footstool, put on a gown and some gloves, and get your fingers wet! Always room for one more.
Somebody please ask me, “What are those things you are using to cut her ribcage open with?”
I’m guessing it’s bad to try and make a hand puppet out of it as I do so? Yeah, I thought it might be. I’ll cut that out now.
What are those things you’re using to cut her ribcage open with?
OK, I’m game. I don’t have much finger strength, though - tendinitis & possibly some arthritis.
So - what are those things you used to cut open the ribcage?
Dray! I AM NOT DEAD! I am hovering over everyone taking notes. I know where you post, and I forget nothing.
Draelin, YaWanna, you’re both good sorts. You know that?
These are hedge clippers.
No kidding, we bought them at Loew’s, ten bucks each. You see, medical rib cutters are $100 and up, we don’t have much money being as we’re a government-run agency, and, well, they work…
YaWanna, grab that syringe and see if you can aspirate the bile out of her gall bladder for Tox. It’s right under the edge of her liver; it’s the green balloon-shaped thing.
Draelin, today’s your lucky day. Fire up the Stryker; you get to take the top off her cranium. It’s brain time!
Did Lissa ever find the appendix? Sheesh, I gotta do everything around here.
You came back! You came back! I thought you were gone! Forever!
Welcome back.
Any questions so far?
What do you like best about your, um, body?
Wow, I’ve been poked plenty o’ times, but I’ve never got to be the poke-er. Cool!
Say, when you get a chance, would you show me the thyroid gland? I’m curious, since I’m hypothyroid & all. Thanks.
Oh, uh, what do I do with this thing now that it’s full?
Well, I wasn’t going to keep it forever … just long enough to scare my roommate.
Look out brain, here I come!!! So, I just take this bone-cutty thing and go to town? I assume I’m not supposed to actually hit the brain, since she’ll need it in the future, right?
oh shit i don’t feel so good.
Your roommate scares easy.
Now here is one of the secrets of the trade. Don’t go in a straight level line right across the bones of the forehead. Go level until you get close to the midline, then angle the saw and cut a little notch.
You see, if you cut straight across the way I first did when I was learning, sometimes after you close the scalp, the whole cranial cap slides forward, and you get this huge ledge under the skin. First time I did that, the tech looks at the body and goes, “Doc, you franked him!”
As in frankenstein.
The notch prevents the forward slide.
You have the coolest job ever. le sigh I should have gone to med school.
Squirt it into the clear plastic tube labeled ‘bile’. Make sure you close it with the special top; the regular black plastic tops get eaten away by the bile acids, and come off.
Sure, I’ll show you the thyroid. First I gotta elevate the chest flap - somebody give me a sharp scalpel, willya? Hm… hm… there. Now see how carefully I gotta go round the neck with the blade to free up the skin without accidentally poking through. That’s called a buttonhole, and it’s not nice if you do it. Nobody jog my elbow.
DRAE! Dammit!
Sorry, Harvey.
Okay, you see all these strap muscles of the neck? Me and the ENT surgeons, we’re the only docs who have to actually know their names. Everyone else calls 'em strap muscles. I have to know them because these are the muscles that turn bloody and bruised in a strangling. The ENT docs have to know them because they cut them to get to the thyroid.
But they have such clever names. They’re all named in Latin for where they come from, and where they go to. Take this one, while I sever it and peel it upward, this is the sternocleidomastoid. Comes from the sternum and the collarbone (clavicle in Latin, cleido- in Greek) and goes to the mastoid process, behind your ear. What could be simpler and clearer? This one’s next, it’s the sternohyoid. Peel it up. These paired ones are the thyrohyoids; as soon as I peel them up, you’ll see the thyroid, crouching like a waiting spider around the trachea. If a spider were butterfly shaped. And sorta meaty, if you get my drift.
These two slanty muscles out here are the omohyoids. Smartass medical student once asked me, if everything in the neck is named for where it comes from and where it goes to, and these go to the hyoid bone, where’s the omo? Had to get my husband to look it up.
Class, anyone?
I think Winston Smith has openings without the long wait for credentialing.
I’m stumped. Oto- is ear-related, right? Never heard of omo.
Sorry. WhyNot jiggled my arm. Yeah, that’s it.
I think this is a trick question, but I’ll look up the answer when I get back from lunch.
Okay, I’m gonna have to leave in a few minutes to go meet a lawyer about something unrelated we’re doing (excited!), so this is what we’re gonna do.
I’m gonna slide the scalpel right under the skin of the neck in the midline until the tip hits the jaw from underneath. Bonk. There it is. Okay, I deflect the tip just a tiny bit downward and slide it upward so it just misses the jawbone, and here I am poking my blade out under the tongue. I slide the blade back and forth until I’ve got a good little hole. Then I extract the scalpel, put my fingers in the hole, tug it wider in all directions, grab the tip of the tongue, and pull downwards.
Observe how this makes the tip of the tongue stick down into her neck.
Now I use a combination of blunt finger force and scalpel to cut the remaining pieces of flesh that attach the back of the tongue, and I can pull the whole thing down from underneath her jawbone, still attached to the trachea and esophagus, with the hyoid, and with all those funny strap muscles hanging off it.
I’m gonna pull down until the neck contents reach the thoracic inlet, where I will stop to sever the carotids right at the aortic arch, also the subclavians, and now we can all grab the throat contents and pull hard, and as soon as we dissect off the diaphragms, whoomp, there it is. We’ve just eviscerated the organs en bloc. Let’s put them on the cutting board off to the right, pack her in ice, and I’ll be back around five, eastern USA standard time.
We can leave her her brain until then.
I kinda doubt we’ll get 3 autopsies in today at this rate. Damn, I was really looking forward to cuttin’ up a guy! winks and grins evilly at Hal Briston