by Ms. Meghan Doraty
Late at night when all the other students go home, I sit with cadavers. The anatomy lab aches with darkness, a wide, hollow cavern lighted only dimly by a ceiling bulb that swings in the draft of the air con. Around me are bodies laid out on stretchers, shrouded in white sheets. I have my pathology textbook open beside Fern, whose last name is Hiatus Hernia, because she suffered from such before the embolism took her at eighty eight. I cannot see her face. A white sock tugged over her head obscures her features. Her chest has been cut down the middle and the skin and muscle spread open like a door, her internal organs, grey and dry, resting primly in their places. There are pieces of Fern that have been tied together, loose arteries and veins tagged with red twine to keep from sagging. The students have had their hands in her for twenty years. Her heart has been removed.
I share her table.
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