09 Closing up and releasing the body (Autopsy - A Screenwriter's Guide)
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This article is from the Autopsy - A Screenwriter's Guide FAQ, by Edward O. Uthman uthman@neosoft.com with numerous contributions by others.
09 Closing up and releasing the body (Autopsy - A Screenwriter's Guide)
After all the above procedures are performed, the body is
now an empty shell, with no larynx, chest organs, abdominal
organs, pelvic organs, or brain. The front of the rib cage
is also missing. The scalp is pulled down over the face, and
the whole top of the head is gone. Obviously, this is not
optimal for lying in state in public view. The diener
remedies this problem. First, the calvarium is placed back
on the skull (the brain is not replaced), the scalp pulled
back over the calvarium, and the wound sewn up with thick
twine using the type of stitch used to cover baseballs. The
wound is now a line that goes from behind the ears over the
back of the skull, so that when the head rests on a pillow
in the casket, the wound is not visible.
The empty trunk looks like the hull of a ship under
construction, the prominent ribs resembling the
corresponding structural members of the ship. In many
institutions, the sliced organs are just poured back into
the open body cavity. In other places, the organs are not
replaced but just incinerated at the facility. In either
case, the chest plate is placed back in the chest, and the
body wall is sewn back up with baseball stitches, so that
the final wound again resembles a "Y."
The diener rinses the body off with a hose and sponge,
covers it with a sheet, and calls the funeral home for pick-
up. As one might imagine, if the organs had not been put
back in the body, the whole trunk appears collapsed,
especially the chest (since the chest plate was not firmly
reattached to the ribs). The mortician must then remedy this
by placing filler in the body cavity to re-expand the body
to roughly normal contours.
Ultimately, what is buried/cremated is either 1) the body
without a brain and without any chest, abdominal, or pelvic
organs, or 2) the body without a brain but with a hodgepodge
of other organ parts in the body cavity.
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