whispering and shuffling like white-coated ghosts in the basement anatomy lab. No windows. Instead, a dry fluorescent light flattened every surface.
“You want to go first?” asked Ming.
“I don’t mind,” said Sri.
“Me neither,” said Chen, holding the blade hesitantly between his thumb and second and third fingers.
“Well, to me, it doesn’t matter,” said Ming. “What about you?” she asked, turning to Sri. When he paused, she said, “If it’s a problem for you I’ll start the cutting.”
To Sri, Ming seemed both overly eager and fearful regarding the task, and Sri did not want their dissection to begin with this mix of emotions. Sri felt only fear, which he believed was a better way to begin this undertaking, and so he said, “I’ll start.” He gripped the blade handle firmly.
“Not if you don’t want to,” said Chen, seeing Sri’s discomfort. “I can.”
“I’ll start.” Sri shifted closer.
That morning, they had been briefed in the lecture theatre by Dean Cortina: “A few of you might be upset initially. You may temporarily excuse yourselves if necessary. In any case, I would rather you be a bit emotional than, shall we say, overly cavalier. Keep in mind that distasteful incidents regarding cadavers have, in the past, resulted in expulsion.”
She reminded them that there was to be no eating or drinking in the dissection rooms, although snacks could be consumed in the anatomy museum as long as it was kept tidy.
“I think it’s easier if you hold it like a pen,” said Ming. When Sri said nothing, she added, “All I’m saying is that if you hold it like a. … Well, never mind, suit yourself of course, it’s only that—”
“Just let me do it,” said Sri. “Let me stand there.” He moved to stand where Ming was, without waiting for her to make way. She shifted, avoiding collision. Ming and Chen were quiet.
Sri began to cut the cotton wrap, a stringy damp net, discoloured yellow in its folds. It smelled tough. First he cut downward like when you lean with the first finger on a boned meat. This dented it, but the fabric was swelling inwards instead of giving. He turned the scalpel upward, and lifted the edge of the fabric to slip the blade beneath it. He sawed back and forth, and the threads twisted when severed.
“What about scissors?” whispered Chen.
Dr. Harrison, their anatomy demonstrator, appeared at their table, congratulated them upon entering the study of medicine, and said, “This fine cadaver is your first patient. Dignity and decorum are crucial. You must be mindful of this gift you are given, and treat your patient nobly.” He paused. “Nobility. You may give him … or her?” Harrison checked the tag. “Ah, him, a name if you like. Or not. That’s up to you. No frivolous names. Questions? No? Very well. Continue, then.” All of this he managed to say with his hands crossed neatly in front of himself, and then he was at the next table, nodding seriously.
The fabric now open, Ming took scissors and cut it wider in a quick, impatient motion, spreading the fabric up to the neck and then down to the navel. The damp skin of the cadaver’s chest was a shocking beige within the yellowed fabric.
“There,” said Ming.
“Are you going to do it?” said Sri, not offering the scalpel. He hadn’t moved, and she had leaned across him to open the swath of cloth.
“I was just trying to help, you know, get things going.”
“I already said I’ll do it.”
“As you prefer.”
Sri now held the scalpel like a pen. He looked at the manual. The manual was very particular, and Sri wanted to follow it with clarity. The incision should begin at the top of the sternum, extend downward to the xiphoid. A central incision, it read. Ming opened the fabric, pulled it to either side, the nipples purple on the rubber-cold skin. Still not moving, Sri stared at the manual’s exact instructions. There was a dotted line drawn from the top of the sternum in the illustration, an arrow pointing toward the navel but stopping short of it. Sri straightened the veil, covered the nipples. He gripped the scalpel hard, like a dull pencil.
“Right down the middle,” said Ming. “Like a zipper. But if you’re going to take forever—”
Sri grabbed the scalpel handle like a stick and buried the short, triangular blade in the midline of the chest. Flesh gripped the blade, and through the handle Sri felt its texture—thick and chalky. Steel scraping on sternum. Sri thought of a beach—of writing with a stick in hard sand thrown halfway up from the tide, with the water not far away. Through his knuckles, Sri felt fibres tearing. The cadaver’s flesh pulled hard at him now. Halfway there. It ripped at Sri, to cut this skin. He tore it, forced his way through. He pulled open the cotton shroud. This old, wrung-out chest with small lopsided man-breasts. Above the left nipple were four tattooed hearts in purple, the shape of the designs twisted by the skin’s movement through its years. A clean, jagged tear through the centre—the sternum white beneath. Sri was amazed by the pale ivory of this man’s bone.
The three of them stood erect at the shining cold table. The man now lay slightly unwrapped. The cloths wound around themselves up and over his neck, then tenderly wrapped the face. They had been told the heads would all be shaved. The table was indented, and the indentation traced down to a hole between the feet. The hole opened into a spout over a bucket so fluids could escape as they ran down the table. On the steel was the man-form in soaked cloth. His chest was gashed now. The chest was not shaved but thick with cold hair. Hair parted now by one crooked stabbing cut that peeled open the front.
“Good job, Sri,” said Chen.
“Feels funny.”
“I guess it’s my turn.”
There were eight dissection tables in the room. Whispers shuddered up from the floor as the familiar touch of skin became distorted. One hushed voice: Haven’t we all seen bodies before? At another table, one student held the cloth up while the other two cut at it. All of the students wore new lab coats, which they had been told they would need to discard once the dissection was done.
One day when Chen was in Dean Cortina’s office to discuss student loans, she said to him, “I remember my dissection group. Oh, what year, I don’t want to tell you. I remember some comments that were made … regarding dissection material. You see, in my time it was all people from the jails or found dead in fights or ditches. No identification and so forth. What you would call bad people. Yours are different, all volunteers. Elderly, upstanding citizens mostly. Ours were young people with fast lifestyles. Virile, some might say. Although I guess it’s really no different once they’re cadavers.
“Anyhow. I remember some guy saying, ‘Wow look at this one, what a broad.’ I didn’t like that, you know, I didn’t think it was right. On the other hand, I remember we dissected a big man. Muscular, built, and someone called him an ox … as if to say what a powerful man, a big strong man. So they called him an ox. Vernacular to be sure, but it was out of respect and to say he must have been impressive. I thought that was all right. I didn’t like someone saying ‘what a broad,’ though. What was he looking
