Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures Read Online Free PDF Page B

do it.”
    â€œAs 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 linedrawn 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.
    â€œRight 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.
    â€œGood job, Sri,” said Chen.
    â€œFeels funny.”
    â€œI 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.
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    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.
    â€œAnyhow. 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