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“Someday you will be a cadaver,” Professor Jenson said as if it was a truth we all ought to know, “Unless you are burned alive or selfish enough to climb Everest, you will someday be a dead body that somebody has to deal with. So, try not to get too hung up about it.”
‘Easy for you to say,’ thought Ingrid, ‘you chose to teach this class,’ though it was true that Ingrid had chosen to take it, it was required if she wanted to be a doctor like her mother before her. She knew it was true though, that she would someday be a cadaver; she counted on it, actually. She had planned it all through her teenage years, after med school she would spend her life trying to prevent people from becoming cadavers, and when she died she would donate her body to science so that other people could learn about how to prevent people from becoming cadavers. She didn’t care what they did with her body, it wasn’t like she was going to need it at that point.
None of that made working with a dead person any easier.
It was definitely looking at her, the body, with its glossy eyes. People assume eyes close when someone dies; that’s how it happens in the movies. The movies lied. If you die in your sleep, maybe, but most of the time the eyelids have to be sewn shut for viewings… but its eyes weren’t sewn shut, and they were looking at her, daring her.
‘Will you really do it?’ they seemed to say as she held up the scalpel in her hand, ‘You know desecration of a corpse is a crime, right?’ Does it count as desecration if it’s a college class? No. All of these people agreed to be here. Not people, corpses. A bunch of people decided that their bodies could be here; they’re not people anymore.
They used to just poke around living people who went in for surgery without telling them. This is certainly better than that. Did surgeons ever feel guilty about that?
“I want you to cut open the abdominal region on a transverse plane superior to the umbilical area. Tomorrow we’re going to be recognizing the different organs, today we’re just going to get in.” Professor Jenson said, certainly she could see the discomfort on the faces of the class. This was how it went every year; Ingrid was sure. Today would just be getting used to the idea of a dead body.
Ingrid didn’t think it would be better tomorrow.
Even as this thought crossed her mind, her scalpel found the abdominal area of her corpse, cutting from one side to the other a little above the belly button. Her corpse had an outie belly button. She wondered if they had been annoying and showed it off at every dumb party the moment anyone pulled out their party trick. Having an outie isn’t even a good party trick, if you can say it’s a party trick at all.
Of course, none of that matters now. She would never know that person; all she knew was their eyes glaring at her as she cut a gaping hole into their guts—its guts, its guts. It is not a person.
As Ingrid puppeted it around the next day, poking at its organs and manipulating its insides, she couldn’t help but feel disgusted. Not at the corpse, but at her mother, at her teachers, at her peers, and at herself. See, the thing is, no matter how hard you try to separate body from person, a body is a person. I am my body. And as long as a cadaver’s eyes are looking into yours, glaring with resentment that you have agency and it doesn’t, glowering as you destroy its physique… the only line between person and corpse is that the corpse is buried at the bottom of the uncanny valley, and a corpse will never cut you open just to see what’s inside.