“I live alone off-campus,” Sasha explains.
I get this really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. We’re still expecting a fifth person in our lab group, and Sasha doesn’t have a roommate. That means that the most likely person to be our fifth lab partner is…
Oh great.
As if on cue, Rachel arrives at our table. She looks like she’d rather be anywhere but here. Her dark hair is pulled into a messy ponytail so that strands fall along her cheeks, and she’s not even wearing scrubs—she’s wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants. Worst of all, I’m pretty sure she’s not wearing a bra.
“Hey,” she says, running a hand through her loose strands of hair.
Mason manages to tear his eyes away from the dissection kit long enough to notice Rachel’s breasts, and his breath catches slightly. “Hey,” he says.
We go around the table with another set of mumbled introductions. To Abe’s credit, he doesn’t seem remotely interested in Rachel’s chest.
Now that the trauma of being splattered with embalming fluid has worn off, I take a look at our cadaver. He’s really big—a good two hundred fifty pounds, at least. But he’s tall, fit, and carries the weight evenly. He could have been a bouncer in a bar. His face is pressed into the cold metal of the table, but I place his age around fifty. There’s a tattoo on his right arm that I can’t make out due to the dryness of his skin.
“He looks like a Frank to me,” Mason speaks up. “What do you girls think?”
Rachel shoots daggers with her eyes. “To me, he looks like a human being who had a name of his own.”
“Aw, come on,” Mason says, flashing a killer smile.
“You’re naming this cadaver over my dead body,” Rachel says through her teeth.
“Fair enough,” Mason says. He winks at me as he menacingly lifts a scalpel out of the dissection kit. Abe shakes his head at his roommate. Seriously bad taste. Fortunately, Rachel is too distracted by the cadaver to notice.
“I brought gloves,” Abe volunteers, nudging my elbow with his. He points under the table, where there’s a little tower of glove boxes. “Three different sizes. I heard you’re supposed to double glove in order to, uh, keep out the smell.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Rachel says. “Nothingis going to keep out the smell. Tonight, we’re all going to stink like formaldehyde.”
My roommate—always a burst of positivity.
“So who wants to make the first incision?” Abe asks the group.
Anyone but me. I step away from the table, trying to make myself invisible.
“I’ll do it,” Mason volunteers with a shrug. He holds out his right hand. “Scalpel,” he barks.
Before I know what I’m doing, I start fumbling with the dissection kit and remove a scalpel, which I obediently place in his right hand with a resoundingplop.
Rachel’s eyes widen, and she looks furious. “You know,” she says to Mason, “Heather’s not your scrub nurse.”
Well, she’s right. But let’s face it: between the five of us, Mason is the only one who looks like a real surgeon. I can almost picture him in the operating room, slicing through the skin of a real patient’s back. His hands are so steady. Mine are shaking like a leaf, and I’m not even doing anything. I’m just standing there.
“Dr. McKinley!”
My heart practically jumps out of my chest. I whirl around and come face-to-face with Dr. Conlon, our anatomy professor. He’s dressed in scrubs (no bowtie), which makes him look much less dorky than he did on stage the other day. I noticed before how black his hair is, but I didn’t realize how bright-blue his eyes are, even behind thick glasses, and he looks younger up close than I originally thought he was. He’s still clutching that cane in his left hand.
“Dr. McKinley,” he repeats. How does he already know my last name? “How are you going to learn anything from back there?”
I avoid eye contact. “I’m not a doctor.”
“And how are the rest of you feeling?” Dr. Conlon asks my partners. “Are you making the first incision, Dr. Howard?”
Mason nods. “Just about.”
“Dr. Kaufman…” Dr. Conlon lays his eyes on Abe. “Can you tell me the names of the three erector spinae muscles?”
I have no idea what the answer to that question is. Does Abe know? I don’t think he does, based on the way he’s squirming. But Dr. Conlon doesn’t make him suffer for too long.
