The post-mortem

‘I slowly cut across the back making an incision along the spine from the neck to the bottom end of the spine with the mechanical saw’

‘creak…’ there was a sound. ‘What’s that?’, the duty doctor and my in-charge questioned me. ‘Nothing sir, the saw cut through the bone'

‘Just that you don’t know how to work upon anything, this isn’t your first time. You have made numerous mistakes in the past. Now you have messed up with the circumstantial evidence also. I have warned you to be careful with this body as the police needed some post mortem analysis regd. the death of this girl and now we see that you have tampered with the evidence’ doctor Nell was furious with me.

‘I am sorry doc..’ I tried to explain, ‘I have been working for three days continuously on the post mortem analysis, look at the bodies over there, I have worked fine on them…’

‘Just shut up…. And get out of here’ shouted the doc.

I was the best anatomy doc in my batch. My fellow batch mates used to be mesmerized with the way I used to cut across the specimens. They called me Mr. Anatomist for obvious reasons. And now .…

I will show Dr. Nell what perfect post mortem means.

That night I reached Dr. Nell’s apartment. ‘Ding dong’, the bell rang, and the doctor opened the door. ‘What is it Gary, you are here at wrong time?’

‘No Dr. Nell, I am here at the right time’ he thought and said ‘You have to come with me doc’

‘But where?’

‘To see how I do the post mortem…’ I said and hit on Dr. Nell’s head with an iron rod lying nearby and he fell to the ground. I lifted his body on my shoulders and walked to my car. I then opened the back door and lay his body on the rear seat, and started to drive to the hospital.

Seeing that nobody was there around, I parked my car, pulled the doc’s body out and laid him on the wheel chair. In 2 minutes I was at the post mortem room.

I slowly laid his body on the examination table. Then I walked to the door and ‘clutch’ I bolted the latch from inside. Walking towards the other end of the room where the tools are placed, I picked the mechanical saw and the scalpel, and a book, to take the notes.

I plugged in the saw and ‘grrr…..’ it’s started to run. I walked towards the examination table.

‘I cut across the clothes with a scissors and then took the scalpel in my left hand and held with my index finger and thumb holding the skin apart and started to make an incision across the chest. Blood started to ooze out from the cut open part, and I wiped it with a cloth and continued. After making an incision throughout the entire length of the thoracic region, I slowly removed the skin and flesh and took the saw in my hand dropping the scalpel. And then started to cut across the ribs'

‘The rib cage is one of the strongly bound portions of the human body’ I told myself and left the scalpel and the saw on the table and pulled apart the rib cage. After opening the ribs, I cut the arteries and veins, then pulled out the heart in my hands which were full of blood. The heart was still beating and I cried out loud ‘This is how you do post mortem … And that too of a live specimen…….’

The next day police were at the hospital to collect their evidence. The mobile of Dr. Nell rang and he suddenly woke up with a jerk. There was a stinging pain in his skull. Moving one hand over it, he pressed the green button and a voice said, ‘doc, where are you? ...’

The doc looked around, hysterically. His vision was blurred for a minute, but he managed to reach the door and opened it. By the time the police have reached the place and sneaked into the room.

There was blood all around.

‘Sergeant, look at this book’ and Sergeant bent down and lifted the book even as blood dripped from it. The sergeant leafed through the first page and read it out loud.

‘In the history of medical science, this is perhaps the first ever time, a post mortem was conducted on a live human being. And this book contains the descriptions in detail….’

Not far away from the place was the body of Gary lying in a pool of blood with his rib cage opened and the heart in his hand.

And the last of the pages of the book read, ‘I am the Anatomist … and this is the post mortem report of myself…’