Thank You Letter

I am holding a saw in my hands. I need to make a relatively small, rectangular cut, but the details must be perfect. If I miss my measurements, this ten week project will be ruined.

Others have already started, so I plug in to my power source and feel the hum of machinery in my hands. With gentle touch, I carve through this inconsistent material, guarding against sharp fragments left behind by the unforgiving blade. 

I turn the corner, and before long there is smoke: It is the smoke of a bone saw meeting the human sternum. 

This is cadaver lab, week 5. Today we open the chest cavity. Today I am asked to saw open the core of another human. 

We are not allowed to know our cadaver’s name. For the first week, I am not even allowed to see her face. To dare to seek this information is too personal. Surely if they hold back her name…surely if they hide her face, I will not wonder about her story. I will not wonder about her living. 

But from day one, I am helpless. I am too curious.

Who are you, stranger, who is laying before me? Can I really understand the physical human without knowing the story of her life? 

For five weeks now, this stranger is what I see when I close my eyes at night.

The images cannot leave me, when I am the very thing I am asked to slowly destroy. 

No one warns you that as you go deeper into this body, you must take parts of this human and throw them away. This is the most difficult thing for me.

But weakness is not acceptable. Not here. I have been warned – thousands of wait-listed predators are lurking in the shadows, seeking out the struggling first year medical students. I am being hunted. And so I blame my tears on the preservative fumes. I carve on.  

Amidst the smoke I surge through the sternum, completing my rectangle. I lift this mass of cartilage and tissue, being careful to avoid the sharply fractured ribs. 

The image below is very strange. Spongy, purple lungs. And a thin white tissue wrapped around a dark center. 

A few more swift moves of the scalpel, and now I am holding this heart in my two hands. Someone is yelling in the background about marking the openings for pulmonary arteries and other things; what they say is nothing to me. I have given in to the story; I cannot separate my emotional wonder of this anatomy in order to learn it.

Have you said thank you to your heart lately? Do you ever stop, rest, and feel your pulse thundering within you? 60 times this very minute, 100,000 times today, 35 million times this year, every single cell in your heart will courageously do its job, and you will live. 

Can you see what I see? This is the face that launched a thousand ships of poems, of songs, of romance. 

Every second, this bundle of fibers and electricity says yes: yes, I will work as hard as you ask. Yes, I will charge oxygen into even the tip of you hand. Yes, I will quicken at the footsteps of the one you love. And yes, when lightning strikes, I will come back to life for you. 

I hold this heart. I start praying. And I walk out the doors and never return. Let the predators attack, let the world tell me I’ve given up six figures and envious white coats. In the cadaver lab valley of dry bones, I have found life again. 

With liberation comes motivation. It’s time to move.

For I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.