God's Hotel [antikvár]

Introduction HOW I CAME TO GOD'S HOTEL ; t was my first autopsy, my first day in the clinical clerkship of medical school called pathology. Of course, I had seen and even taken apart dead bodies before, in the first months of medical school, but those had been bodies that w^ere clearly ex-bodies. They smelled like the formaldehyde no longer running in their veins, and my hands and fingers w^ere w^rinkled from touching them. Except for that smell, they might as w^ell have been made out of plastic. But w^hen the covers w^ere lifted from this body's face, I was stunned. It was Mr. Baker! One of my first-ever real patients! A short, stocky, cigarette-smoking "blue bloater," w^hose emphysema had destroyed his lungs and given him his barrel chest; thick, short neck; and gravelly voice. Whose arteries and veins had been so difficult to get blood from, and w^ho had been so understanding, so cheerful, so lively. I was sure he'd done well, been discharged, gone home. But apparently not.