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

I’d been surprised at how many families had granted permission for filming. We’d thought it would be a battle, but next of kin were clearly curious to see what on earth goes on behind those closed mortuary doors. Some also rationalised that if their loved one’s pathological findings were described to a viewer who was perhaps experiencing similar symptoms it could even encourage them to visit a doctor: televising autopsies could literally save lives.

It’s exciting for anyone to be on TV, but for me, as a trainee APT, doing the job I’d always wanted to do and being able to show it my family and friends, it was as thrilling as hell. I remember inviting everyone round to my flat and making popcorn when the first episode was due to be aired. We all crowded around the screen, most people sitting on the floor and me squeezed between two more on the sofa. Everyone munched in near silence after the opening credits had rolled. There was a voiceover introduction and the first few clips, then suddenly me, tiny and blonde with a huge pair of silver rib shears, cracking my way through a man’s rib cage, the tough bones making the most awful noises in the echoey post-mortem suite.

Nine astonished faces turned to me in silence in that living room, popcorn-filled hands paused halfway to open mouths.

‘What?’ I exclaimed as I looked from one set of wide eyes to another.

It seems my friends didn’t quite understand the exact nature of my work. I suppose many of them never really wanted to think about it. That is, until they saw the brute force required and became aware that I really did have to get in there and get my hands (and arms and elbows) dirty. One of them said, ‘I thought you just did paperwork or something!’ and another, ‘I thought you put make-up on them!’◦– fairly common misconceptions. With this documentary there were certainly no more unanswered questions: nothing was left to the imagination.

Correcting these mistakes matters to me because we pathology staff do our best to maintain an air of dignity during what could be considered quite an invasive and undignified procedure. The post-mortem room is as respectful and clean as most operating theatres and we want families to know that, not to watch TV and have all their greatest fears and ghoulish imaginings about autopsies and death realised.

So I’m being incredibly picky on the set of this film, refusing to let the team portray APTs as forehead-chopping miscreants. It turns out the production team would need to replace the prosthetic’s entire head at a cost of hundreds of pounds if they’re to show the brain removal the correct way, but I won’t budge! I’ve developed a wonderful rapport with the special effects girls, one of whom actually used to be a SOCO before moving into SFX make-up in hospital dramas such as Holby City . She completely understands the dangers of misrepresentation in the media so we spend a lot of time chatting about TV shows such as Silent Witness and Waking the Dead . It’s nice to have someone on set to discuss such a familiar topic with. She’s of the opinion that if the current film producers were so keen on doing it right they should have asked for the guidance of someone like me long before they started creating the prosthetics and decorating the mortuary set. I have to agree with her. Getting the right information before any action is the best strategy, which is why we read through the 97A form carefully before we begin an autopsy and ensure we’re fully prepared.

Exactly like the SOCO-turned-SFX girl, I too have had a career change by the time I’m on set. Although I carried out autopsies for years, eventually qualifying as a Senior in the field, I began to realise I was doing more paperwork and less hands-on pathology. That’s why I’m now the technical curator of a pathology museum, and instead of opening the recently deceased and removing their pathologies for the doctors to examine, I maintain and utilise five thousand preserved examples of pathologies that have already been removed over the last two hundred and fifty years and kept for posterity in beautiful containers or ‘pots’. I use these unusual objects from the human body to teach students and engage the public with the topics of medical history, the autopsy process and more. The irony is that being an APT is a very demanding job, so much so that when I did it I didn’t have the time to talk about it. Now that my schedule is marginally less hectic (read that as ‘bloody’) I’m able to think back on and revisit all those years of training to help advise students and the public on the career via TV, theatre, writing and, of course, the current film.

A few days later I return to the set and, while the team are busy being briefed near the audio-visual equipment in what they call their ‘video village’, I hang back at the breakfast table to grab my coffee and brioche, avoiding any flaky pastry items of course. It’s a routine to which I’m getting fairly addicted by this point. ‘Chocolate chips? In the morning ? Don’t mind if I do!’ I think as I reach out to the buffet. It feels very transgressive because I normally have a green smoothie for breakfast◦– a smoothie which also resembles some kind of post-mortem emanation, but I think that’s enough food comparisons for one chapter.

Once I’ve stuffed the brioche in my mouth and devoured it as though my life depended on it, I decide to sneak on set and take a look around the mortuary. I enter undetected and there she is, lying on the PM table, the lovely prosthetic corpse of the star of the film. Coffee in hand, I bend over to inspect her forehead and note that the visible slash◦– where her head was supposed to split apart◦– has gone. It’s good that they sorted it over the last few days, I think. I take a look again. She’so realistic, even the eyelashes! And the little hairs on the arm! I idly wonder how much she must have cost while I give her upper arm a squeeze.

She sits up.

She howls so loudly and unexpectedly that I throw my coffee so far upwards it hits the makeshift ceiling. I scream three, maybe four times in a row before we both burst out laughing at my utter idiocy and at the terrified pale faces of the crew who have run on to the set in abject horror at the sounds we made.

Of course it’s not the prosthetic, it’s Olwen, who is a method actress lying on the stainless-steel PM table trying to get in the right frame of mind to◦– well, be a good corpse, I suppose. That is, until I wandered in, bleary-eyed and curious, and decided to fondle her. I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. The crew and I are in tears, ribs practically splitting.

‘Well, what a pathology expert I am,’ I think, unable to tell a live body from a fake dead one. ‘Who can’t tell fantasy from reality now?’

One thing I like about the film’s two main stars◦– both veteran Hollywood actors◦– is that they keep saying they’re very pleased to have me there, although there is a bit of confusion about exactly who or what I am.

‘It’s so great to have a pathologist here!’ said Emile Hirsch on my first day, shaking my hand enthusiastically.

‘Thanks,’ I’d mumbled shyly, ‘but I’m not a pathologist, I’m a pathology technician.’

‘What’s the difference?’ he’d asked, confused, at the same time as John said, ‘But I thought you were a pathology technologist .’

‘The pathologist is a qualified medical doctor who uses his knowledge to diagnose cause of death by dissecting the organs and examining the body,’ I explained to them both. ‘I offer technical support for the procedure, but I’m qualified in a different way. I carry out all the physical aspects, like removing organs and specimens, but I also help the pathologist with the diagnosis and run the mortuary.’ Then I turned to John specifically. ‘There are so many different words for our job but the professionally used acronym is APT. The “technician” part was changed to “technologist” a while back but it never sat well with me because the dictionary definition of “technician” makes much more sense in this context than “technologist” does.’