When we got back to the morgue at the medical school, I watched as Kyle and Ricky transferred the body from the gurney to the embalming table. I took notes as Ricky made up the embalming fluid according to the recipe written on a piece of paper attached to the wall above the sink. He showed me where all the chemicals were stored and explained what he was doing as he went along. In the meantime, Kyle was rinsing down the body and preparing the embalming machine.
When everything was ready, Kyle turned to me and said, “Okay. We’re ready to start. As I showed you before, we have to insert the injection tube into the right common carotid artery in the neck. So, first we have to make an incision in the neck and find the artery.”
“Since you’re the expert dissector, why don’t you go ahead and make the incision and find the right common carotid artery?” he said as he handed me a scalpel.
I took the scalpel and made the first cut. Blood oozed out from between the open edges of skin. I was a little startled for a second because I hadn’t expected it. The embalmed cadavers that I was used to dissecting usually don’t bleed. If they do, the residual blood is diluted with embalming fluid and doesn’t look too real. Even though I had encountered blood coming out of a body during the autopsies I had watched, this time, under these circumstances, it took me somewhat by surprise.
I found the carotid sheath which encloses the common carotid artery and internal jugular vein without difficulty. I sliced it open and identified the common carotid artery.
“Great,” said Kyle. “Now, make an incision in the artery and insert the injection tube. Then clamp it in place.”
When I had completed his instructions, he said, “Okay. Now we’re ready to turn on the embalming machine. It’s already set to the correct pressure, so all you have to do is slowly turn that dial until it gets to that pressure. Go slow so you don’t blow out a small vessel.”
I did as he said, keeping my eye on the gauge, watching the pressure slowly increase until it reached its endpoint.
“Now what?” I asked.
“That’s it for a while. We’ll check back every so often to see how it’s going. It usually takes several hours to completely inject all the fluid. The machine turns off automatically when all the fluid has been used up. Why don’t you check back in about an hour? There’s really nothing to do in the meantime. I’m just going to mark down in the log book over there what time we started, the volume and pressure used, and stuff like that. We keep a record of everything we do, just in case there’s a problem.”
As expected, by the time I got back to my office, everyone in the Department was gone for the day. And most of the lights were off. Even in the hallways. Walking down the hall to my office, past all the deformed babies and body parts in glass jars, I must admit, was pretty creepy. Strangely, at the same time, I found it calming.
I sat behind my desk in the quiet and thought about what I had just experienced. I had dissected quite a few cadavers in my career so far, and I had learned to divorce myself from them as living breathing people. From early on, in my dissection training, I had made it a practice not to look at the cadaver’s face until I had to. After all, they didn’t really look like people. Cadaver skin was a grey color, without the healthy, or sometimes pallid, complexion of a living person. And the skin of the cadaver felt stiff and cold, not supple, flexible, and warm. But tonight, I couldn’t escape it. I was a part of the process that would change that once viable human being into a specimen to be taken apart, piece by piece, by young people – aspiring doctors – who hadn’t even lived long enough to be able to truly appreciate the gift that they had been given. I vowed that I would never forget that, in the end, these people had trusted us with the only thing that they had left – their bodies.
###
While I waited in my office, I worked on my first lecture that was coming up in the following week. I had finished the Power Point presentation already, but, being the perfectionist that I am, I kept going over it again and again, tweaking minute details that only I would notice.
The clock on my wall told me I still had plenty of time before I had to go back to the morgue and check the body. I decided I needed to get up and move around some before I either got stiff (oops, sorry about that) or fell asleep. I got up, stretched, and started toward the restroom. That’s when I heard it. At first, I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just the noises that old buildings make when they settle. I stopped, held my breath, and waited. Sure enough, I heard a faint moaning sound coming from the hallway on the other side of the Department. The only places down that hallway were the anatomy labs, a couple of faculty offices, and the departmental dark room that was used by the research people.
My pulse quickened and my heart started pounding in my chest. I slowly and quietly made my way over to that hallway and carefully looked around the corner. There was nothing that I could see in the hallway. All of the doors to the anatomy labs were closed as usual.
Maybe some of the medical students are working in one of the anatomy labs, I told myself, trying to rationalize away my fears. But that didn’t work because I could see through the frosted glass of the doors that there were no lights on in any of the labs.
I slowly made my way down the hall, listening at each lab door, then checking to make sure the lab was empty. The sounds were not coming from any of the labs. I breathed a little easier and told myself how silly I had been to think that the sounds had anything to do with dead bodies.
Just then, the moaning got a little louder and a new rhythmic bumping sound began to accompany it. I realized that it was coming from the darkroom down at the end of the hall. I tiptoed to the open doorway that led into the outer room of the darkroom and carefully looked in. No one was there.
The darkroom itself was separated from the outer room by a revolving black-out door designed to keep out light when film is being developed. The red light over the door that lets people know not to open the door when someone is developing film was on. And sure enough, the sounds were coming from inside the darkroom.
I almost laughed out loud when I realized what the sounds meant. Someone, or should I say, some ‘people’ were in there having sex. And from what I could hear, pretty passionate sex at that. I don’t think I’m naïve or a prude, but it just never occurred to me that academia would be a hot-bed of sexual activity. Well, this was, after all, an ‘Anatomy’ department. Guess someone was just doing a little homework.
I wonder who’s in there, I thought as I quietly, but quickly, turned and almost ran down to the ladies restroom at the end of the hall. Probably a couple of graduate students doing a little after-hours experimentation, I thought, smiling.
Boy, was I wrong! As I was coming out of the restroom a few minutes later, who should I see coming out of the darkroom but Ronald Holman and his wife’s ‘good friend’, Marilyn Steele. I don’t think they saw me because I hurriedly jumped back into the restroom. I watched through a crack in the restroom doorway as they went into Holman’s office and shut the door.
When I got back to my office, I just sat there, stunned. I wonder who else knows about that, I thought. Probably nobody, would be my guess. I definitely don’t think Holman’s wife knows about it.
Even though Holman taught in the Anatomy course with me, I hadn’t had that much interaction with him because we were assigned to different labs. But when I had been with him in the Gross faculty meetings, he didn’t really impress me very much. I thought he was sort of wimpy. He was very quiet and tended to fade into the background. When he did speak, he turned beet red, all the way from his neck up to his Einstein-like fly away thinning hair. His few contributions to the discussions, however, seemed to me to be intelligent and even helpful. He would have been the last person I would have picked out as being sexually adventurous. Go figure.
As for Marilyn Steele, I had first met her at the faculty Get-Together. Since then, I had seen her around the Department from time to time. To tell the truth, my first impression of her was that she was one of the homeliest women I’d seen in a long time. That’s a kind way of saying ‘ugly’. She really had nothing going for her that I could see. She had a pinched face, with thin lips, a pointed nose, and glasses that did nothing for her dull, somewhat protruding, eyes. She wore no make-up, but I didn’t think even that would have helped. Her fly-away scraggly hair was a mix of dull brown and grey and didn’t look like it had seen a comb in a very long time. She certainly looked a lot older than her late thirties, which is what Amy had told me she was.
Putting a bag over her head wouldn’t have helped, either. Her figure was as nondescript as her face. She was skinny and not in a flattering way. She stood a little hunched over, which made her abdomen protrude. From the side, she looked sort of like a question mark.
Of course, now the first thing that came into my mind was a picture of the two of them having sex. And it wasn’t a pretty sight. It almost made me gag. What could he possibly see in her that would make him do that, I thought in disgust. Then I had to smile to myself – she must be REALLY good in bed!
I can’t wait to tell Amy, I thought with evil delight. Then, my good sense kicked in. No, I’d better just keep this to myself. Let’s just see how this whole thing plays out. These kinds of things don’t stay hidden for long.