Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examinerby Judy Melinek and T.J.Mitchell
Impossible to put down--heartbreakingly honest--fascinating.
Always in the forefront were the bodies and their ailments. OD'ed bodies that the family insisted had been murder; bodies smashed by a falling crane; 9-1-1 bodies and and body parts. She told a lot of medical and anatomical details without drowning you in ten-syllable words. She revealed enough about her personal life as a trainee medical examiner to make herself a real person, but didn't get embarrassing. She didn't try to hide her femininity, but didn't wallow in it, either.
On a side note--this is my blog, I can get personal if I want to--if anyone had ever presented the idea of her profession as an option to me, I might have considered it. As a kid, I knew about doctors and nurses, and I sure didn't want to be one of them! Responsibility for a human life? Not taking it. When I got older I heard about lab technicians and theirs seemed the most boring job imaginable. (Still does) But poking into a nicely dead body, dealing with science rather than human hopes and fears, occasionally trucking out of the lab with a bag of evidence-gathering apparatus to view the crime scene in situ...what a job!
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