Letter From the Dead
Gross Anatomy class is a rite of passage, and has been so for a few hundred years. Generations of first-year medical students have spent months dissecting cadavers and painstakingly learning the intricacies of human anatomy.
I well remember my first day of class—the overpowering smell of formaldehyde and the unnerving sight of a roomful of twenty-five dead people lying supine, their faces and genitals covered, on metal tables.
Assigned by the alphabet, four students to a cadaver, my peers and I (Fabert, Ferris, Flamm and Fleming—my maiden name) stood gingerly next to our cadaver, careful not to get too close. We shifted uneasily. Touching our cadaver (a woman) for the first time, even with gloves on, was disquieting.
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