Autopsy

Posted on Thu Jul 7th, 2022 @ 10:41am by Petty Officer, 3rd Class Lottie Daglish & Lieutenant Avira zh'Kenarh M.D.

Mission: Mission 6 - Memory
Location: Deck E - Sickbay
Timeline: Day 300 22:00
1871 words - 3.7 OF Standard Post Measure

Lottie hated who she was looking down at but it was impossible to not carry through after she had been the one to declare the woman dead in the nacelle. She needed answers just like the rest of the crew. Lottie stared at the doctor as she tried to process what the petty officer had, had more time to process it all.

“What do you need from me doctor? I have never been involved in an autopsy before.” The woman demanded as she covered up the dead executive officers a bit better to protect her modesty until they started the autopsy.

Avira steeled her resolve, a stark reminder of the dangers of space travel in front of her. With the additional confirmation that she does well in keeping the rest of the crew at arm's length. "Let's start with a basic autopsy scan and tox screen." If the cause was obvious there would be no need to resort to crude methods.

“I could not find anything on my basic scans just found the time of death as between 14:00 and. 15:00,” Lottie said sadly as she started to run the better scan and create a proper toxin screen.

The autopsy scan would narrow it down but not by much. "Any contextual clues at the crime scene we can take into account?" Avira waited for the scan to complete, there was no obvious indication of trauma or struggle on the body. "Something that could've been used as a weapon?"

“Nothing in the slightest. There was nothing in the Starboard nacelle that could be used. The only sign of anything other than her being asleep was a nose bleed that was drying.” The young woman said softly as she looked away from the woman on the slab to the woman waiting just as impatiently as her for the scan to be completed.

As the scan completed and yielded no significant results Avira stretched out and arched her neck, the antennae following suit. It had already been a long day and she had been getting ready for bed and now she had to switch gears and be ready for an autopsy. "If her heart hadn't stopped she'd be in perfect health." If it hadn't been for the fact that the time of death was half a day ago the Andorian doctor would've started resuscitation protocols. "Computer, lock the medical bay doors, start recording, the autopsy of Leyton, Samantha Lee, Lieutenant. Conducted by Doctor Zh'Kenarh, Chief Medical Officer."

“Petty Officer Third Class Lottie Daglish. Nurse.” Lottie said without hesitation as she moved to get her mask on.

"The remains were found in the starboard nacelle on April 2nd at 20:00. Initial scan on the scene by Nurse Daglish established time of death between 1400 and 1500 hours, shipboard time." Avira droned on, showing no signs of emotions, something that her people envied in the Vulcans sometimes, though never openly.

“The scene has been investigated and there is nothing in toward in the area. No forensic items have been observed so far. The deceased was lying on her left-hand side with blood protruding from her left nostril. No signs of a struggle, no defensive wounds or marks that were observed on the seen.”

Pulling back the small piece of cloth to take the investigation to the next logical step Avira narrated her thinking process and the steps they were taking. "Autopsy scan shows no cause of death. Tox screen in progress. Proceeding with the visual and physical inspection of the remains."

“It is like her brain just stopped,” Lexi said thoughtfully as she thought on it before slamming her mouth shut. It was not like her to speculate on something like this but she had and closed her eyes for a moment.

Avira suppressed a tut, then the comment raised a thought. She pulled the readings from the on-site report and the one from the autopsy scan just now. In humans, it could take several hours, sometimes a day, for the last electric charge to fully die out. "Both the preliminary and the autopsy scan indicate zero residual electronic charges in the brain or central nervous system." Her antennae perked up in alert. There wasn't anything in her immediate knowledge that would cause this. Most deaths were connected to a disruption in circulation, the brain stopped as a consequence, not as a cause.

Lottie stayed quiet. She did not know what that meant at all but she was following the thought trail of the woman - it was unusual. “Strange.” She finally offered as commentary.

The pale blue of her hands shone through the thin white of the latex gloves as Avira put her fingers around the face of the deceased XO. What in life could be construed as gentle cupping of the head, an intimate moment was now a clinical examination of the muscles and soft tissue of remains. A way to extrapolate the final moments in the hopes that it would reveal some insights, leading perhaps to justice. "Examining the face there is no obvious external trauma." She lifted the eyelids, "several periorbital veins have ruptured, likely due to strain. Limited spread and coagulation of the blood seem to indicate this coincided with the time of death."

Lottie was relieved at the time of death that she had suggested as security had started the investigation on her theory. “Good security does not have to change the direction of their investigation,” Lottie commented. “Strain from what though?”

"Unknown at this time," Avira commented on what was likely a rhetorical question, "Hairline and scalp is unblemished." The doctor ran her fingers through the woman's hair trying to find signs of something. Anything. But there wasn’t anything to find. She took an otoscope and peered into the ear canal, "signs of hemotympanum. Seems to be a minor case, consistent with an overflow of the nasal cavity. The remains were found with dried blood seemingly originating in from the nose." Just before she pulled back she spotted something else. "Very minor damage to the eardrum, in line with strain injury previously noted in the periorbital veins."

Lottie felt helpless and not able to do more than observe and wait for instruction for something that was within her skill set. There were just no signs of anything that gave a clue to what had happened so far.

Avira moved to look at the nose with her otoscope, hoping to find something that could explain what was quite a severe nosebleed. The inside was difficult to see as it was caked with dried blood. "No visual inspection can be made of the nasal cavity. Nurse Daglish will take a forensic swab of both nostrils and clean the cavity. Meanwhile, I'll continue by inspecting the oral cavity."

“Yes ma’am.” The woman said and quietly set about doing the requested swab and putting them through the scanner for testing for any foreign body or any trace evidence that could be used to figure out the mystery. It was not long until she returned and started to clean the nasal cavity. “Lot more blood than I would expect but you should be able to see now doctor.” The woman admitted as she looked at the congealed blood.

After having checked in the mouth, and finding the same indicators of strain she had seen earlier. Avira noted that it seemed as if the deceased had bit down on a piece of the soft tissue in her cheek. There was also slight swelling of the tongue. Just when she finished that thought Lottie chimed in. Avira looked up and gave a solemn nod. "All the trauma we've noted so far seems to be indicative of asphyxiation." She looked into the cleaned nose now and saw the same indicators. Though the extent of blood from the nose was way more excessive than what was found in victims of strangulation.

"But there is no mark on her." Lottie winced as she looked across the woman. She shook her head, it was not making sense at all. Lottie did not want to say it aloud but she had not seen anything like it before.

Continuing the autopsy, with the knowledge that they had, Avira expected to see marks of strangulation or defensive wounds. Suffocation was usually a very messy affair, giving the victims a chance to fight back over the course of the process. But wherever she looked, there were no additional signs of a fight for survival. The body's neck was clean, her fingernails bore no evidence of scratching or clawing at something, and there were no foreign objects, or traces of such, found in the deceased's trachea.

After more than three hours of meticulous focused work, Avira and Lotti had cleaned up the autopsy and returned the body of Leyton back to the morgue. She flopped down in the chair behind her main deck, it was well past midnight now and she felt the strain and fatigue. She sighed loudly, wondering if she might've missed something due to the long day. "I don't get it. So many things seem to indicate asphyxiation. But there are no defensive wounds, something you would definitely expect from a soldier, and even that is beside the point. Not a single indicator of her trachea being blocked forced to shut. It's." She shook her head interrupting her train of thought. "It can't even be asphyxiation because there is no perimortem organ tissue damage caused by oxygen deprivation." She looked over at Lotti. "It's as if she simply stopped living. As if the spark in her brain simply stopped." She hoped that Lotti would have seen or noticed something, something she had missed. How simple it would be if there was just a gaping stab wound or blunt force trauma to the head that she had missed. She knew there wasn't. They had even gone over the body centimetre by centimetre looking for traces of injection of some sort of untraceable neurotoxin.

Lottie sat on the biobed and frowned. She nodded at everything that the doctor was saying. It was a mystery inside a conundrum, to say the least. It was not making sense at all. "I hate to say this Doctor but I have no idea what the cause of death is. You do not just simply stop living." She said softly. Was simply stopping living going to be something new that hit them out of nowhere?

Looking at the autopsy report that the armoury officers were waiting on she needed to put something down in the 'cause of death' field. Avira wondered for a moment if she should put asphyxiation as the main cause, but oddly enough from everything they had seen it was more of an effect than a cause. "Stripped of all neurological charge." It was the one thing that they had detected that could account for all the others, she looked over at Lottie and knew both of them were exhausted. "Now go to bed, don't make me make it an order."

"Yes Sir. I think I will go to bed and I hope you get some rest as well." Lottie said hopefully as she looked at the woman carefully. She offered one final nod and disappeared out the door.