Anatomy Lab: Day 1

We met our cadavers today. The hospital chaplains held a memorial service in the anatomy lab before we started, and we were encouraged to think about who these people had been, what their lives had been like, who they had loved.

At our table, the six of us stared at the white bodybag lying in front of us. We could tell from the lumps beneath that our cadaver was short- probably a woman, someone said to break the heavy silence. One of the braver souls reached out and felt the leg through the plastic. "Rigour mortis," he blurted out with a nervous laugh. Body juices were pooling through the zipper of the bag. We decided not to unzip the bodybag just yet, and busied ourselves with our bone box. Bones were less personal. Carpals, metacarpals, phalanges. We pored over each groove and bump of the skeleton.

Our anatomy professor came over to watch our discussion. He leaned his elbows against our cadaver's head as if it were just another piece of furniture as he answered our volley of questions. After he left we looked at each other. We had all noticed his disregard for our cadaver. Somehow, that realization gave us the courage to open the bodybag. We all donned gloves and watched in silent anticipation as the zipper slowly pulled open.

First, the feet came into view. The cadaver was lying facedown. Then the legs, and then more came into view, until we were looking at the back of her head. It was a her. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall, an older woman with bluntly chopped grey hair. She probably had been a grandmother. She looked like she would have looked right at home sitting in a rocking chair in front of a big picture window, knitting booties for the newest grandchild. "Wonder how she died," someone mumbled. Stomach cancer and heart failure. She had been 66.

We decided to name her Nora. Partly because she looked like a Nora, but mostly because none of us knew anyone called Nora. We wanted her to be special. As we were leaving the room, we saw half a cadaver's head, sawed through the middle and sliced off at the shoulder, skinless and grey, discarded on a side counter in a little tray. I barely blinked. The desensitization has begun.