Death of a House – Part Trois

This is called ‘practice’.  Small fires are started and they learn how to put them out under controlled conditions; a cadaver for medical students.  I saw one when I was 19: an elderly woman.  You could pull the tendons in the top of her wrist and make her fingers move.  She was pickled in formaldehyde, which turned her organs into light gray rubber.  Her uterus was an oddly shaped balloon, connected in an odd way, but it would move in a 360.  She had been frail, but precise.

This cadaver is still vigorous, stout.  I hope it does not go quietly.