A Steep Learning Curve
Jonathan Stewart
The year was 1996, and I, a fresh, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed A level student took what many described at the time as a rather profound leap of faith, that would not only impact on my chances of university entrance but also on my life. For that autumn I would be embarking upon, it was hoped, a degree in Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh, but what preceded that planned journey of educational discovery was quite unlike anything I had ever contemplated before.
June of that year was a rather balmy month, and a month that heralded something new for the then 22-year-old fresh from sitting examinations at the city’s further education college! In fact, that entire summer was a sultry, humid affair and one that will remain branded upon my grey matter until the day I depart this Earth.
The ‘experience’ commenced no sooner I had sat the final exam, and the day in question began as most did that summer, with a bright sunrise and vapour trails traversing the blue morning sky. The car ride averaged a solid 30 minutes during which time my focus was ‘elsewhere’ and seemingly not on the idle chit-chat my mother was offering to ease my jangling nerves. The destination had soon been reached after negotiating the plethora of traffic calming measures randomly located en route, and they did nothing but frustrate both passenger and driver, and heighten the sense of trepidation of the former. As the car slowed to a gradual halt, I was overwhelmed with the magnitude of what I was about to undertake. The building that stood before me was bland, both in palette and architecture and the air of foreboding lingered intensely. At that moment, I broke into a cold sweat, felt overcome with a burning urge to expel my breakfast, but the calming and reassuring look and touch of my mother’s hand allayed those acute feelings of stress.
In the near distance a suited figure stood waiting patiently amid the stillness of day. He was a portly character, short in stature but with a personality that outmatched his frame or height. A confident man in every sense of the word, he was my contact, the one who would effect change on huge scale, and someone I owe a great deal of gratitude and appreciation to.
After the customary kiss goodbye and yet another look of reassurance, I stepped out to greet this fine fellow and take my ‘leap of faith’.
At this juncture it is worth noting that my purpose for being at this ‘place’ was to learn, and learn I did. It was an experience that was, as I later found out, never repeated to this day, and one I feel very privileged to have been exposed to. It was what many would say as ‘hands-on’ work, and I won’t deceive you, it was.
The man looked pleased, taking his right hand from his trouser pocket to formally greet me. The handshake was firm and measured, and his introductory tone was inviting and warm. Soon the conversation turned to my purpose for wanting to do what it was I had arranged to see and do, and he seemed pleased by the answers I gave to his casual questions. In themselves, the questions were not at all probing, and at one point a digression broke the flow to talk about the local football team’s performance the previous season, and how best the management should tackle the forthcoming fixtures. After a short walk down a slight gradient ‘under’ the building itself, we arrived at a large chrome door cowering beneath an outcropping of grey masonry. He pushed the doorbell that had a very grating sound about it, and soon voices from within became clearly audible. The door opened outwards, and I took a couple of paces back. There stood like a colossus was a tall, silver-haired man dressed from neck to ankle in grey linen overalls whose first words spoken in a mid-west American accent were: ‘Hello Colin!, the name of my contact and the arranger of this rendezvous. I walked through the door into a compact world akin to a rabbit warren: a central foyer with an array of tributaries leading off into unfamiliar territories. Before long the foyer became a hive of activity, as many more overalled men converged upon the epicentre of much chatter between myself, Colin and the tall American, whose named was Ken, and who hailed originally from El Paso, Texas. It was he whom I became good friends with during my time there, not least because he was simply a ‘funny and smart guy’.
Incidentally, Colin was a high-ranking boffin who oversaw the work of Ken and others, and someone who pulled no punches. Back in the Eighties, people who dressed in Colin’s attire would be classed as ‘yuppies’, and on a couple of occasions the name Gordon Gecko, that ruthless Wall Street tycoon, was mentioned in reference to Colin.
The ‘warren’ was resonating with the sound of intermittent bursts of sawing coming from the adjacent room. Like any curious person in a foreign land, my eyes began surveying the landscape and what I saw from the foyer was sobering: to my left was a rather capacious area devoid of any artefact but for a hydraulic trolley, and enclosed by a sliding door, though bearing quite a sizeable population of 49 people; to my right was a pokey cupboard of miscellany, comprising largely plastic containers of various sizes and cleaning implements of one kind or another; and directly ahead was the office, too small for more than 2 persons and not at all inviting even for those whose job it was to administer the premises and its business.
After receiving my instructions to ‘get some greys’ I followed the sound of the power tool through the shoe box of an office into yet another confined space where I changed into more suitable garb. As I removed the garments of formality: the polished shoes and suit jacket, I gazed in somewhat disbelief at the sight that awaited me through the door leading to the source of the noise. The last item of clothing that would confer ‘worker’ status, the white shoes, was soon exchanged for a white pair of rubber boots. In the distance I was met with what I had only seen on television or on the glossy pages of American textbooks, and it was a marvel and a treat rolled into one.
The room was laced with a strange odour that was sweet but tinged with unpleasantness; the ceiling was high and busy with many a bizarre and intricate looking piece of engineering that gave a very eerie feel to the place; at ground level white tiles adorned every nook and cranny, but dominating the field of vision were huge hulks of chrome blocks, five in total, all lined up in single file. The periphery was awash with yet more metal, and the significance of these cold areas became apparent instantly.
The masked man wielding the saw glanced towards me, still crouched in the ‘sawing’ position, and flanked by two heavily robed onlookers standing to his right with their arms firmly folded. He did not utter a word and proceeded to resume sawing, so I began walking towards him, all the while casting my eyes over the activity of the room in particular on what the masked man was doing that made such a shriek. What lay before me was breath-taking, for the block of chrome was a table and on that table lay the remains of a woman, disembowelled and riddled with the ravages of trauma. There she lay, naked, an empty husk, the contents of her torso overflowing in bowls of stainless steel poised unceremoniously between her legs awaiting examination. She was not recognisable owing to her face being obscured by her scalp that had been reflected to facilitate the opening of her skull and hence removal of her brain. The smell was unpleasant but in no way nauseating. In staring in amazement at how structurally vivid and polychromatic we really are I found myself contrasting that sight with the anatomical illustrations that I had come to know and learn from my textbook. It was a very enlightening and momentous event, but seeing is no match for touching. After a short wait, it revealed itself: the brain, in all its splendour and mysticism. So beautiful a thing and yet still so misunderstood and complex, it was added to the collection of organs and taken to the examination bench at the margin of the room. The onlookers soon departed after bearing witness to the dissection of this unfortunate soul, and thereafter I found myself alone with the deceased road traffic accident victim, whose vehicle ploughed headlong into a tree at speed.
I stood transfixed on her disfigured body, so battered and bruised, and yet I couldn’t help but be taken aback by what I had come to learn months earlier in college kept wondering why I hadn’t ‘kissed the tiles’ as they call it when first time visitors to this place of death, the mortuary, pass out by the sights and smells, and then it dawned on me why I was still bipedal: I viewed everything in a purely educational context, not as some Victorian circus freak show spectacle where curiosity was the driving force behind my being there. That case was just ‘the tip of the iceberg’ for no matter how sobering a ‘Baptism of Fire’ it served to be, one thing was true and palpable: the de-sensitisation of my very being, for over the coming weeks I would be exposed to a vast spectrum of horrors that inevitably ‘changed’ who I was and what I stood for. The experience was unquestionably a rollercoaster ride in terms of the very gritty nature of what I was seeing and the degree of ‘impact’ the learning had upon me, but it was also a time in which friendships were being forged and fresh perspectives being considered, and all amid an environment of morbidity and monotony. I found myself resolute in the face of often harrowing and challenging situations, but after a short time the ‘changed’ side of me prevailed and I assumed the behaviour of an automaton, not consciously thinking about a great deal as if a protective function had overridden my mind, but nevertheless one that permitted my continued receptiveness to the wealth of information I appeared to avidly absorb like a sponge.
It is a fair summation to state that I was learning even without realising it: a kind of ‘osmotic’ effect for want of a better expression, and this prevailed from start to finish. The experience had to be seen in that light, for the absence of attachment and emotion was wholly natural yet something I tried, nevertheless, to fathom on a couple of occasions. I did not those know people so I felt nothing, as strange as that may sound to some people. I did, however, feel a great sense of sorrow for their bereaved, and for the young who were so untimely taken.
In conclusion, my mandate for being there was well defined and ultimately achieved, and that was to learn human anatomy as a prelude to a university course. However, the irony of the experience soon appeared toward its conclusion, for I no longer wished to labour over learning the intricacies of Man given what I had been exposed to, so I looked elsewhere for an inspirational path to follow. Hence forth I embarked on a very different journey...into the field of microbiology!
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