Post Mortem: Part 1

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Post Mortem: Part 1

 

I like the living, they can talk, they can breathe and they’re nice to be around. The dead just lie there and stare with that “You did it” look in their eyes. The remains they brought in are lying on a table in sickbay, ready to be examined. Whoever this person was when he was fully fleshed and ambulatory, whether he'd been a Captain, an Admiral or even a Ship’s Janitor, his new name will be “Volcanic Crash Subject” or VCS. Sappiness isn’t really useful at autopsies; it tends to make things take longer and the job sloppier.

 

Lieutenant Commander Hawke was angry at these types of ideas I have. She had said that taking the corpse back to the Pandora’s Box in the first place was disrespectful. If I had taken a sample of blood from an accident it would have been fine but this was a body, and she thought that a body was a sacred thing, it makes no sense.

 

However, she is right about something, the body is a sacred thing, if it is damaged or lost then facts pertaining to the termination of its life will be lost or destroyed too. The only way you can be truly disrespectful to a body is if you stop at all short of finding absolutely everything about what killed the person and who was responsible for it. Dead men don't tell tales but their cadavers have a few good stories. As a security officer, I feel that Hawke of all people should have valued the potential evidence but instead let sentiment cloud her judgment. There is nothing wrong with treating those who have passed away with dignity but attempting to pervert my attempts at discovering how they left this mortal coil was foolish. In these situations you need to be equitable and though my being equitable may have been confused with being cold-blooded it is hardly the case. If VCS was still alive I would be giving him the highest possible standard of life, caring for his needs and feelings, but VCS is long since deceased and has no feelings. The dead have no emotion and have no pride to hurt when you pick them up and lay them on a table for a post mortem so when dealing with them a doctor shouldn’t have any emotion either. It doesn’t mean you play with the arms and legs or joke about their demise, but it does mean that you keep a stiff upper lip as you cut them open and look inside. However in this case the cutting won’t even be necessary, there are no organs left to look at…