Carla Valentine - The Chick and the Dead - Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors

‘What do you think?’ the assistant director, John, asks me.

‘She’s wonderful,’ I reply with awe. ‘If only all my cases were this pleasant!’

I’m in a small, freezing-cold film studio in East London. I’ve been brought in because the picture being made here focuses specifically on an autopsy and the director wants to make sure everything◦– every instrument, every technique, every sentence◦– is absolutely perfect.

I have to hand it to them: as far as fake mortuaries go◦– and I’ve seen a fair few now◦– they’ve done incredibly well. There’s only the odd anomaly. For example, in place of rib shears, the specific medical tool which would be used to remove that as-yet-unopened rib cage, there is a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters from a hardware store. I suppose they do look fairly similar so they’ll pass for correct. Instead of post-mortem twine, which should be more like the thick white string used to tie up parcels, there is thin green cotton◦– cotton which would slice through the delicate skin of a real cadaver and be useless at sewing up any incisions. Also, on a magnetic tool rack above the sink there seems to be a cake slice. I can think of no justification for that…

Perhaps these are things that only someone qualified to work in this environment◦– a pathologist or a pathology technician◦– would notice in a film. But, boy would they notice. ‘What’s a friggin’ cake slice doing next to the knives and scissors?’ I can already hear that audience cry, incredulous. Granted, there are some pathological conditions with confectionery-themed nicknames, such as ‘maple-syrup urine disease’, ‘nutmeg liver’ and ‘icing-sugar spleen’◦– an observation that once led me to a pop-up anatomical cake shop called Eat Your Heart Out◦– but I don’t think there’s such a thing as ‘Victoria sponge pancreas’, even if it does sound delicious. Mind you, there are times when the skin of the deceased flakes off like the pastry of a croissant, and there can sometimes be a dark brown, gritty purge fluid we call ‘coffee grounds’ which escapes from the mouth and nose. Perhaps these, along with ‘foamy discharge’ and the aforementioned ‘nutmeg liver’, mean the dead can resemble a Starbucks menu more than a cake stand?

I do my best to explain to John that these errors will be noticeable to certain parts of the audience but he informs me it’s too late now to make any changes to the props or the set because the team have already started filming scenes in the fake mortuary. I discover that in showbiz parlance this is ‘the shots have already been established’. But there are still some things I can advise on: for example, the exact technique for crunching through the ribs (you really need to put your weight behind the shears and give it some welly) or the type of container that would be used to collect specimens for examination.

Back in the post-mortem room, after our distraction, I’m just in time to help Jason collect specimens from the anorexic dentist.

‘Carla, can you swab the decubitus ulcers, please?’ Dr Jameson asks.

I look at him, puzzled.

‘The bedsores,’ he explains.

I feel like an idiot.

Jason gently tilts the deceased on his side while I take a swab◦– the correct container for this type of specimen collection◦– from the stainless-steel cupboard and begin labelling it, hiding my flush of embarrassment behind the cupboard door. The swab’s casing is a long, thin plastic tube with a rounded bottom and a blue lid. The rounded end is filled with a nutrient jelly that allows microbiological cultures to be grown and then examined in the lab. When I pull off the lid, the swab comes with it, its end already moist and prepared with the jelly from the bottom of the tube. It looks like an elongated wet cotton bud. I use this to gently swipe at some of the greenish-yellow pus in the purulent bedsores, then place the swab and its contents safely back in the tube.

Dr Jameson writes on his clipboard as he explains, ‘I thought perhaps heart failure may have been his cause of death, but now I’m suspecting septicaemia.’

Septicaemia is often called blood-poisoning or sepsis and is caused by an infection entering the bloodstream. It looks as though this man’s bedsores have become infected and, left untreated for so long, the microorganisms have poisoned his blood. Jason has already taken some blood samples and now they’re also off to the lab for the microbiologists to help in the post-mortem process. We’ve done our part perfectly, for now.

Skip forward a few years and here I am in the film studio, advising John that some of the containers they have in the fake mortuary aren’t perfect but they will probably do. However, I do draw the line at one thing: this wonderful prosthetic corpse they’ve had made to resemble the actress Olwen, who plays the deceased main character, has something wrong with its forehead. Questioning this while bending down and looking closer, I learn that the production team assumed that brains are removed at autopsy by lopping off the top of cadavers’ heads in one fell swoop◦– skin, skull and all. Picture, if you will, the scene from the film Hannibal in which Anthony Hopkins eats the brain out of the live, but drugged, Ray Liotta, and it looks a bit like a flat pink cactus in a plant pot. That’s what the crew envisaged as part of the autopsy.

I stand up in disbelief and explain to John that there’s a vast difference between their idea and what we actually do during the procedure. The imagery they clearly have in their heads is one of a kitsch Frankenstein’s monster with his horizontal forehead slash and exaggerated stitches. Do the general public really assume that when we carry out an autopsy we access the brain via the deceased’s forehead then roughly stitch it back together with thick black string? Do they think that sometimes, if the mood takes us, we throw in a couple of neck bolts too?

It makes me worry about the reputation morticians and anatomists have in general◦– as if members of the public never really got past the idea that we all look and act like a mad scientist’s assistant named Igor, hell-bent on mutilating corpses and storing bits of them in jars for no reason other than to create a cupboard full of pathology-themed lava lamps. Films like Re-animator and Young Frankenstein give the tongue-in-cheek impression that dissection and organ retention are done for nefarious and selfish purposes such as trying to discover the secret of everlasting life or create the perfect woman, and not for the greater good.

Does it matter? Well, one would hope that when laymen read crime procedural novels or watch forensic-based TV shows they could separate reality from media fantasy and understand that sometimes clichés are perpetuated by writers or producers because they lend a certain dramatic or sexy element to an otherwise mundane scene. Obvious examples are the attractive women of CSI attending crime scenes with their perfectly styled hair waving in the breeze created by the fan placed at the edge of the set◦– and don’t get me started on their low-cut tops and high-heeled shoes. Everyone knows that in real life CSIs (crime scene investigators) and SOCOs (scene of crime officers) have to wear white Tyvek suits and masks to prevent their own DNA being transferred to the crime scene, don’t they? Unfortunately, not everyone does, and when there are production companies working to create drama these seemingly harmless additions and artistic licences carelessly perpetuate the macabre or simply lax reputation of mortuaries and their staff.

Around ten years ago, when I was a trainee at the Municipal Mortuary, the team was approached by a production company to be filmed for a TV series called The Death Detective . It was to feature a wonderful pathologist I worked with at the time called Dr Dick Shepherd. [3] He is on TV now, in a popular programme called Autopsy , which examines the recent deaths of famous people. Brittany Murphy and Whitney Houston have been featured. We were happy and honoured to be filmed because the topic of autopsy was to be tackled scientifically, but only as long as the families of the autopsy cases, as well as the local Coroner, also gave consent. Surprisingly, everyone who was asked agreed and the documentary went ahead. The one thing my manager Andrew stipulated was a chance to see the final edit of the TV series before it went on air. It turned out that was a necessary and useful request. In the programme, during post-mortem room footage of one of us removing the top of the skull of the deceased to access the brain, images of our pristine mortuary floor were removed from the VT and instead a scene of blood splashing on some random tiles was spliced in. We all looked at each other in shock. Apparently, my fastidious efforts with the Bioguard detergent were not quite right for this production and only a blood bath would do for their visuals. However, apart from that one issue, which was corrected, the documentary did come out very well.