sHe (Haylor)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Cadaver lab is probably the worst of my days. Cutting into dead bodies to see and feel how everything is set up. I mean, yes, I love it and that's the whole reason why I'm going into this field. But when I step back and actually think what I'm doing to a dead person gives me the chills.

As the professor ends his lecture about respecting the bodies once again, we get into groups and step up to a body. Of course, with respect we place a towel over the face.

Matt laughs at the body hair Isaac has to shave and I sit quiet. It takes me a few moments to get acquainted with our cadavers. It's my mothers side of me, sensitive to who is lying on the table in front of me. I think about their families and their lives. For me, it makes it easier to work on them, if I understand that they died not of just something but for something. It may not have been this guys choice to die at the age he was at, but for him to choose to be a cadaver and then later be a organ donor, makes it easier for me to understand him. It makes it easier to study because I know they had a purpose.

Matt and Isaac are the opposite. They don't want to know anything about the persons life. Don't want to know their name, blood type, or even see their face.

But when we become surgeons, they'll have to know that and they'll have to understand that people die. Unexpectedly, yes but it's our job to make sure that doesn't happen.

I strive to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. The human heart is an entity on its own. The amount of stress a heart can take is fascinating to me. It can take so many shocks to revive and still work at the function it was before. It can stop beating up to an amount of time and still come back as normal. It's the powerhouse of a person. Yes the brain and all the ways it controls someone is fascinating, but a heart, the heart is the power house. A brain can still be fully dead and a person will be alive, but if the heart is dead; you are dead.

That's why I'm intrigued by this study. I love the challenge of making sure people stay alive and if they make it through, I helped them out

My mother had always taught me that people that enter your life is more important than the relationship with yourself. I was always confused by that as a kid, in school we were told to love ourselves first. That's not what my mom meant. She wanted me to respect myself first. Which is something I did, if I was prompted with something that I didn't respect or isn't something I would've done without the pressure, I wouldn't.

That respect is different than the relationships my mom spoke about. I were to respect myself but treat people better than I treat myself. Which later in my years, I fully understood that.

If I wanted to get the respect and treatment from someone else, I want it at the level I treat myself. And people expect it the other way around too. So you always treat them better because you expect they deserve better.

So, long story short, that's why I want to be a surgeon. To treat people better than I treat myself and save people while I'm at it.

"Okay, now grab your scalpel" our professor holds up his hand to show what instrument to use.

Matt laughs at the stomach again, poking it and disrespecting the dead. "Cool, he was fat. Stop touching him Matt" I scold him and grab the scalpel.

The hour passes quick and I find myself working around the heart. Our professor comes over and smiles at me, "in school, you can't focus on one thing. That's what a speciality is for Styles." He pats my back and walks away

"Make sure you're reading pages 115-189 tonight. It's a big part of the cadaver lab for Thursday." He takes off his other glove and tosses it, "test is next Tuesday, be ready. There is an oral and then the hands on part. Make sure you're ready for curve balls. Have a good rest of your day"