Teagan Harper is small, barely five feet two inches in height, and weighs only one hundred and ten pounds.
She is energetic and a bit acerbic in her conversation, often making obscure rude remarks about people to
their faces – especially if she doesn’t think they’ll get it.

She grew up in Bryn Mawr, went to the University of Pennsylvania and did her internship at the Free Hospital for Women in Boston. She became a doctor to prove to her family that she could, now that she is one she is determined to do the right thing for society. She will always champion the cause of women, and leap to the defense of any female victims – even if they’re not really victims.

She is opinionated, witty, occasionally flirtatious, well educated, compassionate, and determined to change the world – "Get those woolly-headed men and their old-fashioned thinking out of here!"

Her family background is one of privilege. Her father is a banker, her mother a socialite. She is their only child and has grown up determined to prove herself equal to any challenge. When told at school (Shipley School for Girls) that women couldn’t become doctors because they didn’t have the mind for it, she decided that she would become one.

Her family life was distant. She was raised more by the help than her parents. She still visits on the duty holidays – Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, etc. but she feels no real attachment to them as people. They in turn are rather bewildered by her. They are proud that she became a doctor but wonder, now that she’s proved she can, why she doesn’t settle down and marry a nice young man.

The friends of her youth have moved on to take up the lifestyle of the rich and privileged, and none of them have anything in common with her. She has left both Boston and Philadelphia to settle in New York. While she studied to become a physician, she was captivated in school by the puzzle-solving aspects of forensic medicine and is working now as a Medical Examiner at the main city morgue.  Her income is not nearly what it could be as a physician in the city, but she is happier this way, and she does have some of the trappings of a wealthy background. Her apartment is paid for, she owns a car, and she has an excellent wardrobe.

She has cultivated a cadre of friends in New York among the smart set. She goes to opera one night and small clubs playing New Orleans jazz the next. She eats at Delmonico’s – when someone else is paying – and likes to experiment with dim sum in Chinatown and smoking pot in the Village. She has a girlfriend, a reporter newly arrived in the city.

Background Details about the Job

A medical examiner is a physician with a medical degree with specialized training and board certification in pathology and specialized training in forensic pathology (the sub-specialty of pathology and medicine dealing with sudden and/or unnatural deaths).

Typical job functions include:

• Investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths that fall under the medical examiner’s jurisdiction.
  
• Perform autopsies and external examinations.
  
• Order or complete needed lab tests and review results.
  
• Determine cause and manner of death.
  
• Complete death certificate and compile all findings into a report.
  
• While medical examiners are assisted by law enforcement personnel, findings and decisions are independent of law enforcement agencies. Medical examiners may testify to their findings and opinions at depositions and criminal trials.