1105 words (4 minute read)

Thomas Dissected

Hospital Camera 23: Day of Our Birth

They converge on my body while it’s still warm. The five pound eight ounce brown bundle of would-be joy is splayed face up on the operating table, surrounded by masked surgeons. Thomas Brown, the weakest in his herd of two, has fallen victim to a pack of scavengers. They wield steel claws and sharpened teeth in a variety of standardized shapes and sizes. They lean over the cadaver to get leverage with their scalpels. There are perhaps too many hands crowding the small body, but they communicate well and stay out of each other’s way. Thomas is rocked gently by their attentions. It is as if he sleeps restlessly and his nightmare is this very scene.

It’s a particular breed of scavenger. They’re very picky. They will only lay hands on a sample in a well-lit, sterilized room after scrubbing their hands and donning clean robes and latex gloves. They never tear or rend flesh but cut it cleanly. They do precise damage along predetermined lines. And they have their individual tastes, based on the nature of their research. Each person in the room is there for a specific part of the infant body, their choice cut of the veal.

They converge on my body before it’s cold. And indeed that’s the point. Thomas Brown has died, but his organs hang on to a provisional sort of life, a shelf life. For a time they’re viable as transplants or research samples. So the scavengers prefer the freshest meat. That’s why calls were made and documents were signed and dibs were called and payments shelled out months in advance. That’s why an infant corpse was pulled prematurely from its mother’s arms.

The baby’s skin is split down the center of its torso from neck to groin and pulled open like the covers of a book written in blood; he’s about the size of a large hardcover. The first several pages of subcutaneous fat and muscle have been peeled back to reveal ribcage and body cavity. Dr. Jackal stands at the head as if presiding over the ritual. He draws the heaviest blade along the sternum with a single forceful motion. Then he pries an opening with the gloved fingers of both hands and with an audible CRACK pulls the rib cage open.

Now things begin in earnest. Dr. Jackal exchanges the large blade for a smaller one. He reaches into the chest cavity with both free hand and blade, works by feel to sever a few specific veins and arteries. Then he pulls up his hand. “I’ve got the heart,” he says. The rust-colored muscle, tough and dense like a little clenched fist, has only recently stopped pumping. Stagnant blood sloshes within its chambers as the doctor pivots with it. “Nurse?” The few scrub nurses in the room have been attending the surgeons so flawlessly and silently as to be invisible to Dr. Jackal, one with his instrument tray. But now there is a heart occupying a hand that should be cutting, and nowhere to put it down until the nurse brings the small ice bowl over from the side of the room. “Nurse!”

“Careful with that!” One of the surgeons next to Dr. Jackal—we’ll call her Dr. X—stares with wide eyes over her mask at the heart hovering over the floor. She’s a cardiothoracic surgeon who also does research on developmental biology. The heart is hers.

She visibly relaxes when the heart lands safely on the temporary ice bath. “It’s gorgeous,” she croons. “Look at the pericardium,” and indeed the sheath of protective tissue around the heart looks glossy and unbroken. “I need to hold that now.”

“No! Focus! Take out the lungs!” says Dr. Jackal. His impatience, initially only clear from his eager though always precise movements, has been made verbal. And as her organ is covered with a sterile sheet and removed from her reach, Dr. X obeys. There is a hierarchy. They’ve agreed upon a leader for this somewhat unorthodox dissection, and who better than the one who needs the others to finish first, and in a timely manner. He is not a lion by any means, but he is first among the scavengers. The king of thieves.

The organs each come out in their turn. The kidneys, one of which will go to a baby in Richmond Heights who’s having renal failure. The liver, that rubbery regenerating organ that will be liquified and injected into several other infants as a holdover treatment for their liver failure. Each one a small miracle, and Dr. Jackal tosses them aside like scraps. The pack can have them. The alpha male has a specific prize in mind.

“Shall I do the eyes now?” asks Dr. Y—sorry I don’t want to get anyone in trouble—who wants the corneas for research into improving sight. He rarely sees youthful, intact corneas.

“Be extremely careful with the optical nerve.” Dr. Jackal takes my right eye and Dr. Y takes my left. They carve them out of their sockets with slow, delicate strokes. Dr. Y looks at his little orb like it’s a heavenly sphere. Dr. Jackal quickly sets his aside like a worthless marble. He is concerned with the bundle of fibers running back from the eye, the direct signal pathway to the mind. And that’s very thoughtful of him. I’m using that pathway as we speak.

Each of these removals is the main event for someone. But for Dr. Jackal it is all preliminary. He is a neurosurgeon and so he has elevated tastes. He hungers for that most celebrated organ, the seat of consciousness and rationality, and for its long extension cord that runs along the core of the body.

The various organs leave the hospital of their birth in their dormant state. They lie hibernating within their local thermos winters in the back of one or another of the local Transplant Authority trucks. The trucks form a small fleet as they pull out of the parking lot, and then they scatter down different roads. They are the pieces of Thomas Brown’s soul flitting away to be revived as part of someone else, or to make their contribution, large or small, to medical progress.

But one organ, or rather a whole system, travels warm. It is transported in a personal vehicle, and its container sloshes back and forth during the trip. It is on its way to become more fully a soul than Thomas Brown ever had a chance to be.