Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer Read Free Book Online

sprigs of rosemary into the gashed flesh.
    He wasn’t sure he wanted to look inside a woman.
    The noise from Professor Madoc stopped, and the silence brought Patrick back to the here and now. Names were read out, and he was relieved to find himself soon standing at a table that held the body of what looked like a middle-aged man. It was hard to tell the age with the head wound in cotton strips, but even in death this body looked tighter than the old lady’s had – more muscular, the skin less folded, and the abdomen swollen by embalming fluids rather than by fat.
    Four other students joined him, including the dark-haired girl, who smiled at him as if they already shared common ground.
    Their table mentor was a junior doctor – a young man only a few years older than they were, and in a
real
white coat – who introduced himself as David Spicer. He picked up the clipboard hanging at the dead man’s feet in an incongruous echo of a patient’s hospital notes.
    ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Everybody, meet Number 19.’
    ‘I don’t want a man,’ said a short Asian boy with thick glasses. ‘I’m going to be an obstetrician. Can I swap with someone else?’
    ‘No,’ said Spicer.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because I’m an uptight arsehole who wants you to fail.’
    The Asian boy pursed his lips and looked sulky.
    ‘You’ll all get proper access to a female cadaver and the relevant prosections as the need arises during the course,’ Spicer reassured him. ‘Plus you will be doing various clinical rotations in a range of medical departments, so that you get plenty of exposure to a variety of real patients and conditions, OK?’
    The boy nodded and Spicer went back to reading. ‘Let’s see … Number 19 here is a Caucasian male who died aged forty-seven.’
    ‘Of what?’ said Patrick.
    ‘That would be spoiling the fun.’ Spicer smiled. ‘You should be able to diagnose cause of death during the dissection, but if you’re really stumped and you don’t mind being a
big fat failure
, you can go and ask Mick in the office.’ He inclined his head towards a glass-walled cubicle beside the entrance door. Inside Patrick could see the tops of filing cabinets and an appropriately cadaverous middle-aged man glaring out at them. Mick, he assumed.
    He wouldn’t need to ask Mick or anybody else; he’d find out for himself.
    ‘What’s his name?’ said the girl, nodding at the cadaver.
    ‘That’s confidential,’ said Spicer. ‘The important thing to remember is that he’s Number 19.’ He flicked a rectangular metal tag that was attached to the cadaver’s wrist by a black zip-tie. In one corner was stamped the number.
    ‘Anything and everything you take off or out of this cadaver gets bagged and tagged so it can be put back together again at the end of the course for burial or cremation. The fat and skin – what we call “fascia” – goes in the yellow bin marked nineteen in that refrigerator over there.’ They all turned to follow his pointing blue finger to one of two big white doors in the far wall. ‘And that fascia will also be reunited with Number 19 at the end of the course for burial or cremation.’
    Patrick nodded. That all made sense, and followed nice strict rules.
    Spicer clapped his hands and rubbed them together like a TV presenter. ‘OK. We’re all going to be meeting here around this gentleman twice a week for the next six months, so we might as well get acquainted.’
    Introductions. Patrick hated this kind of thing, but the other students looked eager to be friendly.
    The would-be obstetrician was Dilip, and the tall, beefy-looking boy with ruddy cheeks and thinning blond hair was Rob, who was considering surgery.
    ‘Depending on how this goes,’ he added, pointing at the cadaver with a wry smile.
    The dark-haired girl’s name was Meg and she was considering paediatrics.
    Then there was Scott, who wanted to be a plastic surgeon.
    ‘Boob jobs and tummy tucks,’ he said, rubbing his finger and