By David Sorflaten
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The Old Baseball Stitch
— Excerpt —
The job I hated the most was that of helping Dr. Margolin with autopsies. I had no moral or ethical problems with them, as I felt most of the patients who died in Springfield were better off, and finally free of their mental problems.
It was my job to go down to the morgue in the basement, take the body from the slab in the coffer, unwrap it from the paper shroud, and lay it out on the stainless-steel operating table, put out the cutting knives, reciprocating saw, and the scale, and measuring devices.
I don’t recall whether I sawed the opening in the skull from which to remove the brain, or opened the chest cavity. After that I called Dr. Margolin that the patient was ready, and he came down to perform the autopsy. I helped measure and weigh body and intestinal parts as needed and even strip intestines for his inspection.
After the autopsy was complete, I was left to sew up the body openings with the old baseball stitch, clean up the instruments, put everything away, re-shroud the body, and slide it back into the coffer on the slab. All this was usually about a four or five-hour job, and by the time it was over I was tired, bloody, and prayed no one else would die in the near future.
— End of Excerpt —