No art adorns the walls. Only the orange storage cabinets and the stained orange and yellow cushions on the rolling chairs clumped around the dissection tables break the monotony of the room's dominant color, off-white. Stainless steel tables, when not in use, are covered by hinged doors, and give the labs an air of clinical efficiency. When medical students dissect, as they do Monday through Thursday from the first week of January until mid-April, the lab fills with an expectant buzz. But for the smell of embalming fluid mixed with the mildly unpleasant aroma given off by preserved human bodies, it is easy to forget that which is omnipresent in those four rooms.
Death here is devoid of drama.
Gone are the pretenses of stage and cinema, where the cessation of life is accompanied by the swell of violins or a dissonant cacophony equal to the violence being portrayed. Death, in effect, becomes banal. Nowhere is that more evident than on a sign posted in the office where lab technicians distribute surgical tools, rubber gloves and teaching aids to the students. Until the sign went up, the bones were tossed haphazardly onto a shelf. It was chaotic, one technician explained, everything mixed together like that.