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"Nice axilla." The TA compliments my dissection of the brachial plexus: a
cat's cradle of nerves nestled within the sheltering armpit, crossed by dark
blood vessels and festooned with lymph nodes like clusters of tiny, pale
grapes.
He hovers over my work, as if wanting to say more. "Coffee? After?"
"Sure. I'd like that." I strip away cobwebs of fascia obscuring the
anatomical structures. Fingers are best, but sometimes a stainless steel
probe helps in tight spaces.
A quick smile seals our agreement before he raises his voice to address the
class, "Time to wrap up your upper limb and neck. We'll move on to the
reproductive system."
I fold my elderly cadaver's arm to her side, her reflected muscles atrophied
to tissue paper, and then cover her flayed limb with formalin-soaked gauze.
I take my time reviewing the crowded cloverleaf of red-brown vessels and
yellow-white nerves at the root of her neck. Once upon a time, the former
routed blood from heart to brain, and the latter transformed impulses of
love into embraces.
Half my cadaver's face is undisturbed; half has been dissected down to
toothless jaws. Thin fibers of Obicularis Oris seem insufficient to have
ever pursed now gray-beige lips into a kiss. I cover her face with moist
sheeting.
"If you have a female cadaver," the TA directs, "Look for glandular mammary
tissue lying under the skin of the thorax, superficial to Pectoralis Major."
I use my blunt probe to peel back the dermis and its thick layer of adherent
fat. All that remains of my cadaver's right breast is a patch of yellowed
curds and a small sack of loose skin. All that remains of her left breast
is a scimitar-shaped mastectomy scar.
I cut through skin and the thick layer of fat over her abdomen. My eyes
water at phenolic fumes released from the newly opened body cavity, and I
have to wait a moment before I can work without choking. I lift the fatty
lace apron of omentum, and shift intestines out of my way. I look behind
the bladder for the uterus, and find...nothing. No inverted pear of womb,
no frond-like fallopian tubes, no irregular lumps of ovary. Diseased and
discarded: a pitiful fate for her children's first refuge.
When the hour is over, students talk and laugh as they cover cadavers with
black plastic, remove gloves and lab coats, wash hands, and shut books. I
wipe human fat off my probe, and catch the TA's eye.
He starts in my direction, but doesn't get far before he's surrounded by
eager, questioning students.
I take my time clearing up — to give him a chance to free himself.
Distracted, I bump the gurney, and my cadaver's arm falls away from her
side, exposing her half-dissected hand. Three fingers curl into her palm;
the index finger beckons to me. I tuck her hand away, and whisper that I
still have time.
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