Nine asks Mosch and the PAs if they can handle sewing up the body. They will place the organs back inside, then put the body back into refrigeration until the funeral home comes for it. The only things UPMC keeps are the slides and jars of samples.

The end of the autopsy is the most difficult part for Sun.

“We pretty much return a shell to the family,” she says. “We return the leftover pieces, cut-up pieces, in a big plastic bag. We put it—very messy—into the body and then we sew everything back up. But then nothing is perfect, because we don’t put the bones back together, so we just sew the skin over it. So the person’s chest just comes out a little bit, so it doesn’t look natural.”

They do a nice job with the head, Sun says, careful to replace the brain and to not damage the face. And the funeral home is very adept at making everything look presentable. But that image of the hollowness stays with her.