The rice was at the ready this evening, as were the pot, the pan, the onions, and the broccoli.  Just as I was about to fire up the burners, I heard a frantic knock at my door.  As I reached for the handle, I expected to find my roommate locked out.

No.

Instead, I found a panicking 13-year-old child clutching his bleeding hand and asking me to take him to the hospital.  I told him to show me the injury; it was a lateral cut on his left index finger, perhaps 3 mm deep and extending across the width of his digit.  There was evidence of non-arterial bleeding.  Was it bad? Yes.  Did it warrant an immediate trip to the ER? No.

My training from various sources kicked in.  I invited him inside and told him in a calm voice to sit down.  I got out a clean towel and told him to wrap his finger and apply pressure.  As he began to calm down, I got him to give me his dad’s work phone number.  Luckily, his dad was near his phone, and even better, his dad’s office was just a few miles away.

While waiting for his dad to arrive, I talked calmly and confidently with the kid and tried to keep his mind off of his finger.  It turned out that he was my downstairs neighbor, who I had not yet met.  I’m totally out of touch with what’s popular for 7th graders these days, so we made do with small talk about canoeing in the BWCA and his playing of the trumpet.  A few minutes was all it took for his breathing to slow and his voice to stop wavering.

His father arrived not long after. They left to have the injury repaired by a professional, and I went back to my cooking.

Coincidentally, I made a deep cut in my left index finger when I was 16, and I prevailed upon my then-neighbor in a similar manner.  Karma?

I stood at the large black lab bench, and my thoughts were at once drawn to the object in the container before me.  The smell was one of a preservative, perhaps formaldehyde, perhaps something else.  Everybody in the room spoke in low, respectful, professional voices.  The sound of rain on the windows that May morning remained audible above the subdued din of speech.

I pulled the small object from its liquid-filled home.  Tan in color, hardened from its former goo-like consistency by time and chemicals.  I rolled it around in my gloved hands, feeling the bumps and folds.  I marveled at its surprisingly small size.

The brain.  The seat of consciousness.  That which makes us sentient.  Rational.  Creative.  Irrational.  Human.

I couldn’t help but ponder the history of that specimen.  It was from an adult, so it had surely experienced a significant amount of life.  It had loved, it had learned.  It had hated, it had schemed.  It had friends.  It had family.  It had, at one time, realized its own mortality, and thus considering that inescapable truth, it had made the decision to donate itself to science, to the pursuit of Truth.

The circumstances prevailed on me to maintain a detached, objective professionalism — at least outwardly — but my inner voice was free to marvel and contemplate.

Where did this brain grow up?  Was it good at math?  Perhaps it played an instrument.  Perhaps it experienced first stage-fright and later elation at a dramatic performance well done.  Did it ever marry?  Do its offspring still wander this world?

What was its final thought?  Was it surrounded by loved ones at its end?  Was it happy?

I put it back in its container.  It had a name, but now it had only a number.  It was just an object.