Univited practices

[SteelChime]

The Morgue was a dreadful smelly place in Natalie's mind as she stepped down into the dank halls. It was early in the morning, earlier still since the school year, the classes had yet to begin yet the student rolled up her sleeves, began to pull her silvery hair back with a ribbon. It was early enough no one should have questioned the young doctors reasoning for being down with cadavers. There would be no disruptions as she turned the corner into the  darker space. It was a sweet smell, a mixture of preserving chemicals and decaying flesh. The fetor remained as a heavy scent, weighted to the bottom of the room, just out of sight until it wafted past your nose, reminding you that you stand with the dead.

The young woman walked up to the first cadaver laid out on the table. A young man, not much older than her, a muss of curly chocolate brown hair and a round face. Many of the new students would surely he haunted, they still looked so alive - yet so inexplicably not. It was curious, how bodies looked the same in any country with any face. Your soul can feel it's emptiness when it knows there used to be life. This had once been a person with a mother, a father who had loved him. He had been to school, eaten, celebrated and cried like the rest of humanity.

He had. The spirit that once gave the body life was now gone. All that remained was flesh, and flesh had no sentiment. She didn't check the tag on his foot, she didn't need to know what his name was, it didn't matter anymore. This body was a cadaver, as useful as a textbook -nothing more. Slipping off the small satchel on her shoulder, Natalie began her work, drawing forth a small table she opened a few books to their appropriate pages, her tools rolled out on the leather belt which held them. The gloves snapped onto her long fingers before turning to the clean tools of her butcher trade. She had sharpened them herself, staying late to polish the blades. Early Morning light streamed through the stained glass in the top corner of the Morgue, giving her ample light that bounced from the cadaver's chest. She took her scalpel, sure and true and with a steady hand let it glide along the flesh of his Tricia, opening the throat up. These western books were completely advanced, but she needed to confirm that there were not internal differences between herself, and someone from Europe. If so then her own medical practices would have standing within these city walls as they had back home.

Her job as a doctor, as a surgeon was to know the inside of a human's body, to have a map of the inner clockwork of organic matter. It was her job to work quickly, efficiently, to know where to cut and how to. To be clean and precise For now, today she only worked on sutures, of the repairing of wounds. A cadaver can only be worth so much training for amputations, they no longer held the threats of bleeding to death, or of going into shock from the pain. Still she had a long list of what she could practice on the cadavers of St.Thaddeus.

Still, the woman worked quickly, methodically, cutting large and long lacerations before  threading her needle and moving to work, threading the skin back together, this skill was one of the most important ones for a surgeon to know. Natalie didn't speak as she worked, didn't hum or pass the time as most would have. She sought the silence that came, the delicate sound of her utensils tapping tin, the sound of thread pulling skin tight. if left to her own devices, if left for the whole day she would butcher the whole body to sew it all back together. Practice makes perfect, and she aimed to be the best there ever was.