WHO: Liv Moore & Alecto Carrow WHEN: March 14, afternoon WHERE: The ME's office WHAT: Deliveries and shenanigans RATING/WARNINGS: Mentions of dead bodies, organs, blood STATUS: compleeeete
Alecto had been entrusted with taking a few things over to the Medical Examiner’s office. Probably because she’d offered on the off chance that she’d get to see a dead body. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen a dead body before, but she’d never found anyone that humored her enough to let her sit in on an autopsy. It was pretty much one of those things that she'd always wanted to see, though. She could practically hear Amycus making a disgruntled noise somewhere in the distance. She really didn’t know if anyone here would humor, but she was going to try. Who knew? Maybe she'd find someone that wasn't completely boring. It was difficult to find back where they'd been before. She had a feeling it would have been downright impossible in England.
Walking into the building, she went to the front desk and explained who she was and what she was doing. One of the workers led her to the room after she insisted that she wanted to make sure that what she was delivering got where it was supposed to go. Even if it meant leaving her license and getting a badge so that people knew that she was a visitor. She knocked lightly on the door, not sure if anyone was there. "Delivery from the police. Anyone home?"
Liv was just beginning the autopsy. She hadn’t even opened the body cavity yet. She was just examining the skin when she heard someone someone enter the morgue. Liv almost jumped. Her boss had just gone on break so she knew it couldn’t be him and they weren’t expecting anyone else. Plus being alone with dead bodies, it still made her a bit jumpy. She was new to the job okay? It was only her second week. The morgue was definitely more quiet than the busy halls of a hospital that she had gotten used to.
Liv turned to face the voice and smiled in relief once the words registered and she saw it was just a harmless girl. “Great,” she replied setting her notes down. “You can just set it down over there,” she nodded to the empty counter space. “What do you have?” she asked making her way over to the counter as well to examine the contents.
Alecto herself wasn't really out of sorts around the dead. She was more intrigued by them than anything. Perhaps it was the more morbid side of her, the part of her that spent more than her fair share of time photographing the dead bodies and various other things. She'd made herself at home in most of the crime stories and general other stories, but you didn't get to see autopsies on there. Hence why she was here. She decided to play it cool, though. Act like it wasn't really a big thing.
Setting the folder down, she let herself look around the room. "Oh, just a few odds and ends. A phone number for the family. Apparently it took a million years and the blood and sweat of a whole department to find it. I somehow doubt it was that serious, but they have a habit of exaggerating when it comes to these things." She stopped, attention shifting to the girl standing there. She didn't seem so bad. "I mean, obviously they've gone to talk to the family, but I told them I could bring it over with me to save them more blood and sweat. They didn't explain a lot about the rest of the stuff. I'm just the photographer." Her gaze settled on the body in the room and she forced herself not to seem too interested in it. "Oh. Did you already start the autopsy?"
It wasn’t the dead that made Liv jumpy. They were all just bodies to her with mysteries to be solved. Cold, maybe. But being alone in the morgue, noises startled her. Perhaps it would subside the longer she worked down here but for now new noises were still startling.
“Cops can be dramatic,” Liv commented with a smirk. “For some reason they like to point out all the hard work they do, but I guess it is a somewhat thankless job,” she shrugged. “I did,” and it was the truth, even though it didn’t look like much recording any discrepancies on the skin was an important step. “I’m just about finished looking this guy over,” she nodded at the dead body. She still had to X-ray him and then open him up.
"Yeah. I've worked with them for long enough to be used to it." More often than not she just tuned it out unless she wanted to tease them about it later. "I guess that's true enough. Sometimes I think they've all watched a few too many cop dramas." Either that or the cop dramas were just super accurate, but she was pretty sure that wasn't really true. She'd seen things that happened differently with cop dramas and real police stuff.
"Anything interesting?" She lifted up on her toes to try to look. "Are you the only one here?" Because if there wasn't anyone else here that was too serious, she could probably get a chance to see the autopsy. She just wanted to watch one up close. She'd wear whatever they told her to wear if she was allowed to stay and watch. Even without having asked yet, she felt her fingers itch with the desire to text Amycus about getting to see an autopsy. There were probably rules against that, though, so she kept her phone in her pocket. After a little time had passed, Alecto said, "Do you guys ever let people watch? Like if you have students or people considering mortuary stuff?" She was neither of those things, but she wanted to watch anyway.
Liv couldn’t say the same. Working with cops was still very new to her. But there had been some that came into the ER back when she was a resident. Either injured or visiting the injured. So she had been around them a bit. “How long have you been forensic photographer?” she asked although the woman had just said photographer Liv just assumed that was what she meant. Who else would work with police and take pictures?
“Not really, other than the stab wounds,” she shrugged considering this guy had been stabbed to death. But there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary so far. “My boss is on break,” this girl sure had a lot of questions. Liv got back to work wheeling the victim over to the x-ray machine. She assumed the photographer had left until she spoke again. “I have no idea. It’s my second week,” Liv replied although she had watched one when she was in med school.
Alecto didn't really find it strange that she came to the conclusion. She'd come over with stuff from the police and she knew she'd mentioned her photography. "It's going on two years. I was a late life decision maker." Much to the chagrin of her parents. But it wasn't like she was particularly old. Twenty-four, almost twenty-five wasn't old. Not that she'd ever succumb to the idea that she was old, but that wasn't really something she felt she needed to worry about just now.
Should she have left? It was possible. She wasn't sure if she was going to be allowed to stay anyway. But she'd chance it. Mostly because she was pretty good at ignoring social cues and general 'how tos' when it came to interacting with other people. No one else was here, she'd only been here for two weeks. "If I promise to be really quiet can I watch?" She let the question hang there for a moment before adding, "I won't even tell anyone what I saw and if anyone asks, I'll say I'm training to do Mortuary or work in the morgue at a hospital or something." Truth was malleable and Alecto tended to be a little fast and loose with it at times. Being completely honest all the time was boring anyway. Her childhood had taught her the art of bending the truth and how far you could go before you got in trouble. "Plus, I'll accept whatever blame there is if anyone even notices. For all they know I'm a really obnoxious person that forces people to do things by wielding their monetary power." Well, she was being somewhat obnoxious probably, but she hadn't wielded her family's wealth to get her shit since boarding school.
Liv knew all about late life decisions. She had only decided to become a medical examiner about a month ago. But she did have a clear path for basically her entire life. It had just been derailed. She spent enough time feeling sorry for herself though, now it was time to move on.
“I thought you were someone studying mortuary work?” Liv shot back. Granted she hadn’t said that but she had insinuated it. However she didn’t seem the harm in letting the girl watch. Unless she was involved in the murder somehow and was trying to cover her tracks. But Liv wasn’t getting that vibe. “Why do you want to watch?” she asked because well it was an odd request. Who liked taking apart dead bodies if they didn’t have to?
Alecto shrugged slightly. "Close enough." She liked studying crimes. Both because figuring out everything about them was interesting...and also because it involved dead bodies and intrigue. It was mostly the dead bodies and intrigue if she was being honest. The question didn't really throw her off because she was prepared to answer questions. Or, at the very least, she was prepared to think on her feet. She was pretty good at it, too.
"I'm just interested. I've seen the police side of crime solving, but I don't get to see much of the other side. I mean, you have the court stuff sometimes where you hear about it, but you don't really get to see it. Plus, I have the afternoon off and it's a lot more interesting than sitting around with my nieces watching today's idea of kid's shows." Had they seen Dora the Explorer? It wasn't something Alecto wanted to be subjected to.
Long explanation. Liv could tell this was something the woman really wanted to see. Liv still didn’t fully understand why. She supposed seeing the crime solving process could be interesting to someone who didn’t have to do it on a daily basis. Not that Liv was sick of it by any means, she was still new. But it wasn’t exactly something she would seek out.
“Name?” she asked the girl as she examined the now finished x-rays. There was nothing unusual about them, they looked as she suspected. There was a few things she would take a closer look at when she opened him up. She made note before getting started. “I guess you can watch,” Liv said picking up the scalpel. She honestly didn’t see the harm in it, it was just bizarre.
Alecto was perhaps an addict when it came to the morbid and unusual. Not that dead bodies were really that unusual. She'd seen them a few times. But this was different. When she asked her name, she said, "Alecto Carrow." She didn't really have anything to hide. No one would be surprised that she'd been found here. Well, okay...people here didn't actually know her that well, but neither Rebekah nor Amycus would be surprised.
Her expression brightened when the woman said that she could stay. "Awesome!" She found a place mostly out of the way, vowing to herself that she was going to send the other woman something as a thank you. At least she could say she thanked people properly...and Amycus could deal with her borrowing some money. Their parents actually didn't see his life choices as worthless, so he was allowed to do what he wanted, which meant she was allowed to profit from it.
Liv got to work on the autopsy, not paying much more attention to the girl. Opening up the body cavity she examined the organs, taking a blood sample from the heart. There was a puncture wound from the stabbing on the lungs, she paused to take note of that then back to the autopsy. “What made you decide to get into forensic photography?” instead of a funeral home or even becoming a ME herself since she was clearly interested. But Liv left that part unsaid.
Alecto watched quietly as she cut the body open, true to her word. She didn't want to disturb Liv or make her question why she let her watch the autopsy. She didn't mind the organs or the blood or anything that was happening. It was so different from the television, which she really should have expected. Nothing was the same as it was on TV for the most part.
The simple answer was that she was too lazy to go through all the school that came with being an ME or anything like that. Laziness was a big part of her life and photography was easier, but it also allowed her to blend into the background for the most part and watch things from afar. "I like photography...and the crime scenes are interesting. I'm pretty good at catching little details, though."
Liv would hope she didn’t mind the blood and the organs. She had asked to see this after all. She assumed Alecto was taking them out to examine them further weighing the organs, taking tissue samples. First the heart then the lungs. Once that was done it was time to move onto the lower part of the body. Before taking the organs out for further examination she opened up the stomach, studying the contents. “It appears his last meal was eggs and sausage. I’d put the time of death at around 9:30 am,” she spoke into a recorder before physically writing down the notes.
Alecto studied the organs quietly as Liv continued with her work. She'd never seen a heart looking so deflated. She wondered if that was just how they looked when a person was dead or if it was because of the blood that was taken out. Her thoughts were momentarily distracted by Liv's voice. Eggs and sausage. She wondered what that looked like. Was it really gross? Did stomach contents smell gross? Did they keep getting broken down? She moved a little closer, trying to get a closer look at them. And the death at 9:30 am was always interesting. She knew it had to do with stages of rigor mortis and things of that nature, but she didn't know them, so she couldn't have told anyone what time someone had died. The state of digestion could probably give someone a heads up, too, which suddenly made partially digested food that much more interesting. How could you tell? "Is it difficult to tell time of death," she asked when she was sure that the tape recorder wouldn't record her voice.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to let Alecto watch. Liv had only been doing the job for a few weeks. It wasn’t like she could answer the questions. So far she hadn’t had any trouble figuring out the time of death, but who knew if there were more difficult cases? Though she knew if something affected the decomposition rate she would be able to tell that as well. “Not really,” Liv replied. “At least not in my experience. You might want to come back when my boss is around.” She didn’t think it was a big deal to have people observe the autopsies. Detectives and consultants did so from time to time in Liv’s little experience. “But I’m pretty much done here, I have to do some tests on the samples but it will take time to get the results.”
Alecto didn't really know if that was the sort of answer that she was looking for, but it was the one she'd been given. She hoped whoever her boss was wasn't opposed to being asked a lot of questions. She'd probably find a way to do it. And now she was practically being dismissed, so she offered up a small smile to hide her disappointment. "All right. It was nice to meet you. Good luck with the tests and everything."