Friday, April 11, 2008

• Formaldehyde and funk

  This weeks weekly writers challenge is to write a letter to yourself sometime when you were younger.  So, I decided to write a letter to me from this morning.
  
  My dearest Rob,
  
  You know that feeling when you take a scalpel and cut through a cadavers chest?  Well, it is actually going to feel quite different now than it did in medical school.  As it turns out, trying cutting through several layers of flesh is really kinda creepy after working in the ER for 3 years.
  
  I don't know what it is, but maybe it seems more real now.  In med school, the whole procedure had a surreal aspect to it that made it seem distant.  Doing it today to practice procedures like chest tubes, open thoracotomys and DPLs really made it seem pretty real.  Discussing how the people who actually donated their bodies after dying so that others could learn more... creepy, but a nice thing for them to do.  Do you remember the name of your corpse?  Gertrude, was it?
  
  Other things really slap you in the face.  The sweet smell of Anatomy lab.  Yeah, you know it.  That formaldehyde smell that continuously wafts up and up.  How on earth is it that it makes you hungry?  Seriously?  You are surrounded by dead bodies, you are seeing pretty gross crap (figuratively and literally), and yet the lab still makes you hungry.  Forgot about that, didn't you?  Here's a creepy, anatomically incorrect pic for yah
  
  
  
  In the meantime, here's another chapter...
  
  
  Walter 18

  How could he even think about that after she just realized that her lifelong affliction was actually a gift?           

              Julia and Jack were married within a year.  She moved into his home near the company while continuing to finish her PhD.  Jack continued to help her hone her abilities.  She realized that she could most easily understand those that she knew well.  When she went home to visit her parents, their thoughts practically screamed out to her.  They were nearly all good thoughts, though.  She could feel the emotion and love in their thoughts.  She also heard their worry and concern about rushing into a marriage with Jack.  They had told her that they thought he was a good man, but their thoughts loudly proclaimed a deeper concern.  All of this she read with an undercurrent of love, so she knew her parents hearts were in the right spot. 

  She did not dare tell them the truth.  They had noticed that she had stopped taking medication, but they did not press the issue.  To them she seemed more stable than ever, and with the PhD work, she really was taking the world by storm, right?  Reading her mom and dad came without effort.

   However, when she really pressed herself, she could start to understand other people.  At first she felt guilty for peering into the minds of others.  It was the ultimate intrusion.  What at first seemed like innocent spying, ended up showing a world where deception was everywhere.  She saw her neighbors smile and wave, but could hear their thoughts deceiving their smiles.  Apparently, Jack had made a few enemies around the neighborhood.  It seemed the current theme of the neighbors was one of “how could a nice girl like that be with a jerk like him?”  She figured people were just stuck up, and they really did not understand how brilliant Jack was.

  After four years, Julia finished her PhD in psychiatry.  Her Talent slipped into her profession perfectly.  The first time she used her new talent in the field, she felt as if she was intruding into her client’s life.  However, when she thought about it, was that not why they hired her in the first place?  A client wanted her to get inside his or her head and figure out why they feel the way they do.  Julia had the perfect technique for such things.

  Jack, on the other hand had become quite deliberate about keeping his mind completely blank when he was home.  She was not sure how he did it, but he was able to completely stop thinking.  One day she had been able to read him whenever she tried to, though she rarely did, then the next day it was like trying to listen to a wall.  Somehow he had either stopped having vocal thoughts, or he had found some way to prevent her from hearing him.  She supposed it was fair, since it was really spying and intrusive on such an intimate level.  However, it seemed odd that he would not want her to see his thoughts.  Actually, it seemed weird, since they were married.  But she did not press the issue. 

  
  

  Currently Reading 2008 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market (Novel and Short Story Writer's Market) By Lauren Mosko see related

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