Chapter 4. Reverse Road Trip

The anatomy class was a lot of work and ground on uneventfully after the trip to Holly’s. My mugging adventure was quickly forgotten in all the class work. I concentrated on keeping up with the material and passing the class. I got into a routine of class, lab, study and recreation. My main recreation was skateboarding, so I could see the city and get some exercise.

My final exam was scheduled for Thursday and I wanted to take Friday to clean up and then get moved out on Saturday, just a little over 4 weeks from when I saw Holly. We decided that Jim would arrive on Friday and head out with me on Saturday. We scheduled a stop in Des Moines into our trip home so that I could see Holly again. Holly and I had set up a meeting on Saturday, and I was bolstered by the thought of having Jim with me without Holly’s roommates.

The anatomy final exam was brutal. By the time a final exam is done on a human cadaver, the body has been dissected and examined in detail over the several weeks of the class. So the cadaver begins to look like a bizarre three-dimensional road map with strings and fibers running in seemingly random directions. Clare’s body had been instrumental in educating several health care professionals, and in the process the skin had been completely peeled off of her, every muscle and nerve dissected and isolated, all of her organs removed and analyzed, her ribs cut and heart cut open and even her skull was cut in half with a band saw to expose her brain.

Interestingly, one of the other cadavers had apparently died of a massive brain hemorrhage. When her skull was cut open, the blood must have still been under some pressure, because it sprayed all over the technician and student doing the cutting. Both had brownish-black splatters all over their clean lab coats. They washed the blood and sinew from their skin and clothes and went back to work. The dissection of this cadaver’s brain was made more unusual by seeing the pathology of the hemorrhage. There was so much brain damage from the hemorrhage that it was easy to see why the person had died. After the hemorrhage the brain swelled, and there was not enough space within the confined space of the skull for both blood and swelled brain. All of this pressure caused the brain to stop functioning.

The final exam was a test to identify anatomical structures in a pile of flesh and bones that had been poked and prodded to an almost unrecognizable state. Nonetheless, I appreciated the learning experience and had come to respect that pile of flesh as the proverbial icon of my learning experience in Omaha, Nebraska. I was familiar with Clare’s body inside and out, so to me she was an educational tool I will always remember and could never have done without.

My final exam was successful and I got a B in the class, which I was very happy with and was equally happy at having learned a tremendous amount of anatomy. Jim arrived the next day as I was returning all the class and library materials I had borrowed during the course. It is amazing how much additional stuff one can accumulate in a short time, and I needed to return all of that equipment. Jim helped load up the car while I closed out my class account and library loans.

Saturday morning Jim and I were on the road headed east to Des Moines. About halfway to Holly’s, Jim found a set of hemostats in the Ford. Hemostats are surgical instruments that I used during the dissection of Clare, something I had borrowed from the anatomy lab and should have returned. They look like scissors, but are more like clips that snap shut. I figured I could mail them back when I got home, so I asked Jim to clip them on the tassels hanging from the rear view mirror. If they were hanging in plain view, I’d be less likely to forget them.

Saturday afternoon Jim and I found Holly’s no problem and I parked in my “usual” spot. I stood outside the door for a few moments before knocking. When I visited alone a month ago, I was too tired and annoyed at my car to be nervous, but I was definitely nervous now.

Would she be there, were her roommates really gone and what would we talk about? All this ran through my mind like a rumbling freight train. Jim, frustrated by my hesitation, knocked forcefully on the door to bring me back to the present.