no soul, no crime

did you know that formaldehyde triggers hunger? it’s why they schedule anatomy before lunch, so we can savour every taste, every sense. some of us refuse to eat, the first time. there’s a bet going around - ten bucks on the inaugural body to hit the ground. as though we didn’t have enough competition. no one loses, of course. you don’t get into med school with a weak stomach, unless it’s pumped full of SNRIs. 

 

every interaction across the surgical table feels like you’re wearing down the scalpel-sharp edge. precision is key - you can’t give too much information away, or you’ll be the classic doctor. today, i’m in charge of forceps. my classmates say it feels surreal, to sink teeth into skin and pull it back with more force than you’d expect. i wonder if this man ever thought about the layers he had, tried to understand himself the same way. we snip and stretch and sew our teachers apart, squint to catch every last detail of the spiderweb that makes a body. i wonder if he had too much cholesterol in his diet. 

 

something about dissection makes me think of visiting the wet markets of my childhood. maybe i am just hungry. but there’s striking similarities between the beating pighearts that drip from hooks at road-side vendors, and the empty vessels we’re instructed to remove. the main contrast is in sound - our labs scream of stone-cold hesitancy, a palpable lack of humanity. i try to recall the heartbeat of street stalls, instil it with every touch, a CPR of my own making. how much of myself do i choose, to give and to take with every incision? 

 

there’s an explanation - an excuse, rather - in here somewhere. something along the lines of pattern recognition, clinical reasoning for my eagerness as i approach the cadaver. last week i overheard a group huddled at the sanitation station (our version of locker-room talk?) asking if psychosis was an indictment, if it was possible to feel nothing. the voice in my head asked why i should feel something, when my hands are finally ripping someone else apart. 

 

morbidity is a strange concept. most people think it just means death of the body, but i think it’s the death of the soul. anyone with a chronic illness could tell you, the death starts at the epidermis and works its way in, or vice versa. at some point, you’ve reached morbidity in both senses of the word, and i’ll be able to investigate a case crime-free. 78% of medical students reach morbidity at some point. the conclusions are simple - when you probe the field of death so often, you find yourself placed on the cutting board. all you can do is hope someone else holds the knife.