Chapter Text
Day 2. Anatomy
There is something beautiful in the human body that only Herbert can see.
The subtle bend of an elbow, the way the wrist clicks when rolled just far enough, veins and arteries and fine, fine capillaries bringing blood to the vital areas in a sublime web. It fascinates him, consumes him. There was so much that Herbert knew, so much more than any other man, but still so much that he could learn.
Death, too, is beautiful. He knows Dan finds it disgusting. Dan looks away because he cannot handle the shame of failure, the final defeat that a corpse represents. But when Herbert looks at a dead body, he sees the unmolded clay soft and ready for his masterful hand. It is beautiful, yes, not just for what it is -- finely balanced tissue structured together into organs, a self-regulating network of nerve endings and glands -- but for what it could be. A dead body was just the beginning of Herberts work.
His touch is gentle as a lovers as he makes a Y incision, eagerly peeling away skin and fat and muscle to reveal the glorious machinery underneath. Herbert understands the body, the many variations on an evolutionary theme, better than he can ever hope to understand the humans they belong to. Ribs lined up neat and regular, lungs nestled coquettishly around a heart that not so long ago beat tirelessly. Herbert wants nothing more than to plunge his hands into the chest cavity up to the elbow, revel in the feel of the bloody corpse, but he won't be greedy. He's just here for parts. Carefully he cuts away the connective tissue that holds the lungs in place like a web, prying out his prize. Smokers lungs, black and pitted. He fancies he can feel some tumors as he palpates one lightly.
Perfect.
Herbert took Dan to a fancy French restaurant in Boston, because Dan had taken him to a medical conference and Herbert wanted to treat him in return. Dan ordered the lamb, but he'd almost turned green when it came out, soft meat on a shiny bone oozing red marrow. Dan, who didn't drink milk because he couldn't bring himself to touch the clammy cartons, rubbery and cool like a corpse.
"Would you like to-"
"Yeah." Herbert switched their plates, giving Dan his fish in butter sauce, unable to resist wrapping his hand around the small piece of what had once been a living animal. The cut of the bone was neat, right above where the joint would be, and the meat was so tender he could pull it off with his fingers. A single large, stringy tendon under the muscle, fat that had in life stored vital energy for the mechanics of the body. Now nothing more than so much flesh for Herbert's own dinner.
Herbert pretended not to see Dan flinch when he cracked the bone open to suck out the last of the marrow. Dan pretended not to notice when Herbert refilled his wine glass. Herbert thought about the cadaver waiting for him in a trough of ice, thought about how firm and unyielding the skin would be by now, imagined the brain, hidden by bone and skin and hair, electrical impulses slowed to a stop. What had once been a human, now just another data point in Herbert's research.
Now he wipes some of the viscera off the shriveled coal lungs, splays them on the concrete slab. He picks up his instrument to carve out the best pieces. Everything is quiet. Everything is just right. The night is still young, and Herbert doesn't need to waste time with sleep and food the way Dan does.
Dan would come around eventually, Herbert knew. He was still letting bias cloud his eyes, still shying away from the truth. He would learn. He would learn to appreciate anatomy like Herbert did.
After all, when you held the puppets strings, you could take your pleasure in making it dance.