Autopsy team

Say you are found on your bathroom floor, on the grassy knoll of someone else’s front yard, in the berth of your tractor-trailer, in your own bed, at the foot of a bridge, under a car wheel, in the car, caught in the bend of a river, collapsed in the bar, alone in the remains of a scorched kitchen. Your death is sudden and unexpected, a death that no one plans for but that approximately half a million of us will experience this year in America. No death is special, but this kind of death requires special care, procedurally, from a number of people you will never meet. The procedural aspects of your death, which you will never see, begin with a phone call.

One afternoon in the summer of 2018 in Cleveland, a man returned home to find his wife slumped over her computer keyboard. She was in her 50s and had been in poor health, but nothing seemed urgent or life-threatening. It looked as if she died while shopping online. Her husband […]