space heater that struggled against the cold winds that battered her cramped upper-floor apartment. I sat on the couch and let the currents of heat work into my skin while Helen made hot chocolate for us in the kitchen. When I heard her mutter something under her breath I left my warm enclave and walked over to her.
“I hear talking to oneself is the first sign of insanity,” I said.
Helen, dressed in blue jeans and a thick wool sweater looked at me with her emerald-green eyes. “Sometimes I think that next time I walk into that stinking anatomy lab all the cadavers will sit up from their tables, form a big circle around me and start giving a discourse on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“We’ll be done in there after this term,” I said after we had walked back into the living room with our hot chocolate—liberally fortified with 100-proof bourbon—and sat down on the couch. “Once we’re out you’ll probably decide that you miss the place.”
She shook her head. “No way. When we’re in there hour after hour teasing out those tiny nerves and vessels, I start to feel…” her voice trailed off and she gave a deep sigh.
“Feel like what?”
“I start to feel like them. I start to feel so fucking old and tired. I bet that if I lay down next to one of the cadavers no one would notice.”
“I would notice.” I put my arm gently around her shoulder. “You’re not alone. I feel just as tired.”
She managed a weak smile and laid her head on my shoulder. “Douglas, you’re so young. Sometimes I wonder why we’re still friends.”
I pulled away for an instant, thinking she had grown tired of me, thinking she had found herself another man.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll make it through.” She got off the couch and turned up the thermostat.
“Of course you will. We both will,” I proclaimed, realizing she wasn’t talking about leaving me at all.
It was at that instant, that I saw in her eyes a dark, vacuous glimmer before she suddenly leaned down and kissed me full on the lips. Just as quickly as she had kissed me, Helen moved away and stood by the heater.
“Haven’t you ever wondered about the cadavers?” she said in a soft, far-away voice. “Haven’t you ever wondered who they were, where they were from, what they did with their lives?”
I was still shocked at the kiss. “No,” was all that I managed to mutter.
“I have.” She came back over to me, squatted down and placed her hands on my knees. “All the energy those people once had, all the life that once flowed from their pores, now all gone. It’s like a giant vacuum in that lab, a huge cold maelstrom of dead, and I swear I can feel it drawing me in. That’s what I hate about the lab. Not the smell, not all the inane, worthless details we’re forced to memorize. I hate the death.”
“We’ll always have to deal with death,” I said. “All of our patients will eventually die.”
She got up with a frown on her face. “But that’s different.”
I was utterly perplexed. “How is it different?”
She frowned. “It’s just different. When people die there’s still that spark, still a core of life in them. Even now we can bring people back from the dead four, even five minutes after they have clinically died. And who really knows what happens after that, how long their energy, their soul is with them.”
“Then where does the soul go?”
Helen’s eyes sparked and danced, and I told myself it was just a reflection from the outside setting sun, just too much bourbon in the hot chocolate.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” She smiled fiendishly. “That’s the one we’d all like to know the answer to.”
After that discussion, we didn’t talked about the subject of death again for months. The second year of medical school quickly turned into the third, and we were thrust into our hospital externships.
Helen and I picked the same hospital to work at, and managed to schedule our first two