Crime-Scene Log

I've seen more dead bodies lately on the job than I care to, but I have learned much about how my squeamishness works in the process.

Not all dead bodies are alike.

Worse than grisly, I think, is the unexpected dead body. I came upon a suicide jumper late at night during one shift. There was no one around and I believed that the body had already been removed. I was taken aback by the sight of the corpse and was distracted from my work for the rest of the night. It was something about how unnatural the man looked -- the position of his body, the lack of motion. He was a young man, cleanly dressed with a tucked-in collared shirt and khaki pants that had stayed pristinely in place during his fall. His stillness and apparent peace seemed to betray the inevitable vision of extreme violence that came directly before.

More dramatic but less disturbing were the bodies of gun-shot victims laying in a big, messy crime scene on Madison Avenue. The bodies laying there, covered or uncovered, are part of the
surreal landscape that is a crime scene and their gore hits you like a cliche. They're laying there in pools of blood and are horribly disfigured by their wounds, but of course they are! That's what happens in a murder. I think that process of immediate acceptance and distance is the only way one can sanely approach this kind of carnage. Doctors and nurses must have a very well-developed means of externalization.

All the same, it was still a bit shocking to focus in on the bodies and try to connect them with actual, living people. What is eerie to imagine is that the distance between the two states -- alive and morbidly dead -- is but a split second. It's an inexplicable moment we can't comprehend or perhaps even process existentially, so we just accept it after the fact.