This story was written for the NFA Skills workshop. The criteria were as follows:

One of the NCIS characters has been picked to star in a work-related training video for other NCIS employees (if it's really good, it might even be shown at FLETC!). You pick the character and their subject of expertise, and tell us what happens in the video. Make sure that the teaching is broken down into steps that the audience can follow. (The training need not be for beginners, however. It might be for experienced employees who need a little something more.)

Dialogue is encouraged-we know that the character is speaking to the camera-but you can also use as much description and prose as you see fit.

No other characters! This is a solo performance.

This is my response:

Training video – Jimmy and the autopsy

The video whirls into life revealing a slightly nervous Jimmy from the chest up. Dressed in freshly laundered greens, he has a face mask perched on the top of his head. He licks his lips nervously. Staring straight into the camera, he begins. "Hi I'm Jimmy ... no wait."

The screen goes blank.

Jimmy's face appears again, closer this time and sporting a serious expression. "Hi, Dr James Palmer here – oh no not yet ..."

More blank screen.

Jimmy's face appears again, he is looking casual this time with arms folded across his chest. "Hi there, my name is Jimmy Palmer and I'm here today to show you how we do an autopsy here in NCIS." His brow furrows and he looks slightly to the left of camera to an unseen person. "Is that too many 'heres'?"

A reassuring, but unintelligible, answer is heard. Jimmy smiles, relieved, and returns his attention to the camera.

"Right," he continues, "well here in Autopsy we do ahhh autopsies. Mainly on dead people – no all the time, they're always dead," he throws a panicked look off camera. "... ah can I start again?"

He takes a deep breath and looks straight at the camera. "Autopsy: the word means 'to look for one's self' so really you could autopsy a movie or even someone's dog or girlfriend and still be grammatically correct, though maybe not popular." He gives a nervous smile.

Jimmy licks his lips again and begins a deliberately casual stroll to the autopsy table. The camera pans in jerky steps following him. "To perform an autopsy or post mortem examination, we need a body. Fortunately this man is dead. Well, not fortunate for him, of course, but for us, we're glad he's dead because otherwise we wouldn't be performing an autopsy. Oh I didn't kill him, he came that way."

There is silence while Jimmy swallows audibly before continuing. "There are four things you want to get from your standard autopsy: the time of death, the cause of death – like drowning or something, the mechanism of death – um like what damage was done to the body like lack of oxygen or haemorrhaging and the manner of death – which is sort of like the category like suicide, homicide. Is that too many 'like's' this time?"

He does not wait for the reply. "Right, well, ah, number one is the time of death. For this you need the ambient temperature, humidity and an estimate of the body temperature. The sooner you measure the body temperature after death, the better estimate you get. For that reason, you'll often see us down at the scene of the crime. If the victim has been dead a long time, body temperature won't help and you have to look for other things like lividity and rigidity."

"We measure the core body temperature by the old thermometer in the liver trick." He holds up a probe. "Here it is. Looks a bit like a meat thermometer doesn't it? That's because it is. We use it the same way except we don't eat the meat ... of course, you know that ... unless your first name happens to be Hannibal."

"After the initial examination, we use a fresh body bag and zip them up. Sometimes we bag the hands separately so we can keep any little details uncontaminated. By the way, don't re-use your body bags. It's environmentally conscious and fiscally responsible and everything but there is always contamination. You can't get them clean again, no matter how hard you try. Believe me. For this reason they don't make good sleeping bags or rain protection." He smiles proudly at his insider knowledge.

"When we get the body back to NCIS, we x-ray it – usually in the bag. The zippers are generally plastic so they don't show up but if you do happen to get a zipper on your image, just remember," he adopts a serious expression, "the incidence death due to zipper ingestion is remarkably low." His expression relaxes again. "Make sure you get the teeth. Despite what you see on TV, it's still faster to ID a body by teeth x-ray."

"Once we've finished the X-ray, the body comes into the autopsy room where we remove it from the bag. We keep the bag and cross label in case we find something important has fallen out into the bag – like a finger or a lung. If we aren't planning on autopsy straight away, the body goes into one of these stylish freezers." He moves back to allow the camera to sweep over the stylish freezer area. "Otherwise, we put it here on the table. Note we don't remove the clothing yet."

"Usually, the autopsy is done with an assistant – known as a Diener. This is German for "helper" but any nationality will do. In some places you can get two or three - helpers that is, not Germans." He turns on his serious expression again. "There is no limit on the number of Germans assisting at an autopsy". His expression relaxes again. "As a Diener, you can be asked to prepare the body, assist in the autopsy but mostly, you'll just be cleaning up the mess. You'll also often find yourself working solo."

"Now we start on the external autopsy." The camera turns to the array of equipment on the trolley beside him. Jimmy's voice narrates as the camera pans over the equipment. "For this you will need: scalpels, clamps, spanners, scales, syringes, fingerprinting kit, magnifying glass, ruler and sometimes a tape recorder."

The scene cuts to Jimmy, now full length and away from the table. Jimmy indicates his outfit. "Usual autopsy attire is the very fashionable green scrubs, a gown, a box of gloves, these trendy shoe covers and your face shield. You could be in this outfit for up to 6 hours so it pays to be comfortable." He lowers to face shield to cover his face. His voice becomes muffled. "This is all to prevent cross contamination: you with the evidence and them with you."

He removes the mask again so that his voice is clear. "The external examination basically involves taking samples of everything from the outside of the body: fingerprints, fingernail samples, hair samples, fibres, mould, paint and any other foreign matter you find on the outside. This is all sealed in sample jars which are labelled, recorded and then sent up to the forensic scientist for analysis. Make sure you note any obvious signs of injury like, say, a javelin protruding from the eyeball. We also take a whole heap of photos. If there is something unusual on the surface, we like to photograph with a ruler to get the scale. Also check out the tattoos, some of those are really cool."

"When you are sure you have everything, it's time to strip off the body and clean it up for the internal. Mainly we just rip out a pair of scissors and cut all the clothing from the body. Hold, on – scissors weren't on my inventory. Add that." He holds up a pair of scissors . "One pair of sharp material scissors."

"Once the clothing has been removed, we examine all the wounds and document them – including some more photos. After all that, we can finally clean the body and start on the internal examination."

A moment later, a different body is seen in front of Jimmy. He smiles to camera. "Removing the clothes and cleaning the body takes a considerable length of time so here's one I prepared earlier."

"At this point we do the weighing. We also write down the race, eye and hair colour and everything. We could do this earlier but we like to wait until the clothes are off before we weigh so we fill out the whole form at once. Generally we audio tape this too because there are things you forget to write down."

"We now start on the internal examination. First we need a body block," he holds up a black rubber brick to camera. "This can be either rubber or plastic. And it is placed under the body directly below the chest. This makes the chest cavity more accessible and less likely to fold in on you while you are cutting."

The camera angle changes to above the table, looking down on the body. Jimmy looks up, his mask is down and he is wielding a scalpel. His breathing is heavy, as though they have lodged a microphone inside the face mask. "You know I once watched a Quincy episode where he used the "lazy S" cut but, to this day, I have never seen that used. Here we use the Y cut. Like this." He slices the body deftly, talking down into the body, his voice un-naturally loud. "Of course it's a capital Y: block letters. You don't want to go all cursive or anything or you'll lose an appendix."

He pauses. "Now we peel back the skin to reveal the chest." He does so. "You'll notice there isn't any bleeding because the blood has pooled at the back but if I were to nick his gluteus maximus, it would be like a red waterfall here. At this time it's good to remember these shoe covers go all the way underneath."

He picks up a large pair of secateurs, the strain obvious in his voice. "Now the fun part."

There is a muffled thump of a body hitting the floor. "Oh, I should mention that anyone who hasn't been through an autopsy before – like a student or a lighting technician, might faint so keep them at least a body length away from the table, they can really mess up your results."

Jimmy proceeds to clip each of the ribs. "Now we just snip each of these." He puts down the secateurs. "And then lift out the ribcage to reveal the internal organs. It's just like lifting the cover off a great meal – I always love the reveal."

The next scene has Jimmy standing behind the body again. "Now in a real autopsy, we examine almost all of the internal organs. We take urine from the bladder, blood from the heart, bile from the stomach and sometimes we even suck out fluid from the eyeball! The syringe is huge – like one of those horse ones." He holds up an enormous syringe. "See! Looks big enough for an enema, doesn't it? When we've finished sucking our body dry, we take the organs out, one by one, weight them, take a sample and examine them. All the samples are put in these specimen jars full of preservative and taken to our forensic scientist for analysis."

He smiles at the camera excitedly. "Here are some of the cool things we get to check out." He rips out the heart. "This is a pretty good size but if you check out the aorta," he slices through the artery and the camera zooms in, "we see a lot of clogging. If I squeeze this," he runs the aorta between his thumb and fingers, squishing out a white fatty substance. The sound of retching can be heard in the distance. "... you can see the cholesterol. We can edit out those other sounds, can't we?"

"From the lungs we can tell if they were a smoker or have scaring from pneumonia but the most fun is the stomach contents." He picks out the stomach and holds it in one hand, knife poised in the other. "If you've ever eaten haggis, you'll understand that this can really whet your appetite. Sometimes the food looks so good you that want to do the forensics just so you can work out which restaurant they ate at and try some too." He pauses to consider his statement. "Unless they died of food poisoning, of course."

He stabs the stomach and a wet mixture oozes out. "Oh I should mention that if the stomach looks distended, you might want to stand back. Sometimes the food ferments and it can be really explosive when you stab it." More retching is heard in the background. "There's a sink over there... stomach contents can also give you a handle on the time of death because the food still decomposes even after death. Once we've finished the body cavity, we usually put everything back in and sew it shut with a baseball stitch. It doesn't really matter where you put them back but sometimes they just fit better in their original place. Otherwise you have to cram things in and squish them down – it gets messy."

The camera cuts to Jimmy at the body's head, circular saw in hand. "Now if you've ever watched 'the man with two brains', you'll be surprised to learn you can't put a thread on a human skull. We prefer to just slice the top off like a boiled egg with this special vibrating saw which cuts bone but not soft tissue." He starts up the saw and the camera tilts over and lands on the ground. Only a pair of wheels are visible on the screen.

Jimmy's voice is heard off screen. "Ahh, well since I seem to be the only one still standing here. I might, ahh, leave it at that."

The screen goes blank.