It's not a bad one, as far as smell goes. He'd only been down for about a day, maybe two, before he'd been found, And he's right out of the cooler now, so it's not too bad. But still, as soon as the bag is unzipped you can smell it. The assistant grabs an arm and hauls the upper body onto the metal table, then grabs a leg and drags the rest. Clothing is dutifully noted and then cut off. The pathologist examines the body, noting scars, contusions, marks. The assistant rolls the body onto its side so that the pathologist can see the back, and a thin stream of dark red blood trails out of the mouth and onto the table. The assistant uncoils a hose at the end of the table and washes the blood away. There's a drain near the feet, and I see now that the table is slightly sloped. A large block of wood is placed beneath the body's shoulders, raising the torso and letting the head fall back.

Then the first cut. Start at the right shoulder to the breastbone, then same with the left shoulder. Then staight down the center, all the way to the pubic area. There's no blood, and it all looks rather plastic. Even the guts don't look very real, and everything looks very neat and tidy--all packed into place. Pruning shears next--like you'd buy at Home Depot--and the ribs are cut away in an inverted V, exposing the lungs and heart. The lungs are dark red and black. Smoker.

More examination, more looking. Then draw fluid from everywhere fluid can be drawn. A syringe is stabbed into the femoral artery in the leg, but he can't get any blood there, so he goes to the heart next and slides the needle in there. The blood is thick and black. Another syringe to slide into the bladder and draw urine. The smell increases now a bit, perhaps because things are being moved around and it's mixed with a smell of feces as the bowels are disturbed. I stand a little closer to Johnny because he's a smoker, and the nicotine smell is better than the death smell. Another syringe, and bile is taken from the gall bladder. The assistant calls me over to where he is by the head, and has me watch while he slides a needle into the side of the right eye, showing me the point of the needle in the pupil and letting me see the way the eyeball collapses as the fluid is removed.

Then the cutting, weighing, measuring. Lungs are removed. First the right, then the left. Heart next, and that's set aside for closer examination since it's suspected he died of a heart attack. The liver, and it's much bigger than I thought a liver was. And kidneys, and they're smaller than I thought. Stomach is cut away and set aside for examination of the contents.

The pathologist starts examining the heart while the assistant takes a scalpel and makes a slice from ear to ear over the top of the head, then peels the scalp back, over the face and down over the back of the head, exposing the top of the skull. The bone saw is next, and he starts slicing around the head, but not with a clean circle like you'd think, but instead making a "z" shaped notch on the sides. Johnny tells me that he makes the notch like that so that the skull will go back on neatly for the funeral. I can smell the smoke and the bone dust, and I see that all the observers have backed away from the smoke--even the experienced ones. The skull is not as thick as I expected. Not even a half inch think. But the lining of the skull is tough, and the assistant takes a piece in his hand and shows me how hard it is to tear. The brain is removed, and then the lining, and I can see the top of the spine now.

The pathologist walks over to me and shows me a tiny piece of flesh balanced on his scalpel. "There's your heart attack," he says. I look down and see only a half inch piece of meat, with a tiny vein in it--barely and eight of an inch across. But I can see that in that tiny vein is yellow goo. "Complete blockage," he says, and then shows me where the vein is on the heart. "That's the vein they call the widowmaker." And then he shows me a discolored portion of the heart. "Not his first heart attack, either. That's scar tissue."

The esophagus is removed now, all the way up, including the tongue. Closely examined to make sure there's no trauma or blockage. All the organs are weighed and recorded, then slices are taken of each one and stored in a plastic bucket of formaldehyde. The skull is replaced, and the scalp sewn back together in huge looping stitches of thick white twine. Then more thick twine to pull the Y-shaped incision back together on the torso.

Back into the bodybag and back to the cooler. Then the hose again to wash away the blood and bone dust and debris, down the drain at the end of the table.