Medical students owe an enormous debt to those who donated their body to science for the instruction of anatomy. My debt is greater than most. Here’s why:
On the first day of medical school, during orientation, I chose to sit, in the large amphitheater-style lecture hall, next to a beautiful woman, a new classmate that I had spied in the elevator. Over the next few months, I wisely maintained that seating arrangement. Toward the end of the first semester, it was announced that gross anatomy, to be held second semester, would require that we form groups of four students who would share one cadaver; and that each quartet would divide into two pairs, to work as dissection partners.
My seat neighbor, in addition to being kind on the eyes, was an outstanding student. Desiring her company meant that I spent more time in the library than I otherwise would have, and my grades benefitted.
And so, when it came time to choose a cadaver partner, I—struggling to keep my face as straight as possible—asked her, “would you be interested in discovering the wonders of the human body with me?”
I dearly wish I had a photograph of her face from that moment. She was appalled of course by my corny, obnoxious and audacious question—but she acquiesced.
With the olfactory bloom of formaldehyde in the air, so bloomed our relationship. More Cadaver Lab #5 than Chanel #5. Does it get any more romantic than that?
Five years later, our now forty-one-year marriage began. Things seem to be working out.
I’m Arnold Rosen, and that’s my incisive perspective on romance.
