Title: Anatomy Lessons
Author: Madeleine Mitchell Carr
Rating: PG
Subject: General vignette
Spoilers: ITSOTG
Disclaimer: The characters of Donna Moss and Josh Lyman are owned by Aaron Sorkin and NBC. I am not making money out of doing this, but I am having a very good time.
Summary: A tragedy is not confined to those who experience it directly. Picking up the pieces can hurt as well and facing death can change your life forever.
The Soul's distinct connection
With immortality
Is best disclosed by Danger
Or quick Calamity -
As Lightning on a Landscape
Exhibits Sheets of Place -
Not yet suspected - but for Flash -
And Click - and Suddenness
Emily Dickinson
For three months, Donna Moss imagined that she held Josh's life cradled in her hands like a stricken bird. At first it was a fledgling thing, weak and sightless; it frightened her to see the pulse of blood beneath the white skin and the rapid uneven beat of the heart. But this existence was a warm and soft thing against her palm and she was gentle and nurtured it.
Later, her hands ceased to be a cradle and she saw them, instead, curved and white like the petals of the lotus blossom. When the petals were fully open, the bird she held would be able to fly; flex its feathers in the cool air. She began to long for the day when she would see this because the bird was always meant to fly; it could not live long imprisoned by weakness and it had been brought to earth too suddenly for it to forget the motion of wings.
When her imagination failed her, she would simply endure. Endure the helplessness of pain and frustration and wonder why her own body did not ache in sympathy. She also wondered why she had never realised before how fragile and delicate a thing existence was; how the quirks and quick darts of a personality were so tightly entwined in the vulnerable weaknesses of the body. The body and the soul; they could not be so easily separated and she marvelled that anyone could glibly imagine such a thing.
She could picture herself as she was before Rosslyn: a blind and thoughtless creature who had no comprehension of what it meant to come face to face with mortality. She had known of death in the abstract, had cried over images on her television screen, sought to empathise with those who had lost so much but this was no defence against the horror of seeing the events of that May night unfold. The horror lay in the betrayal of the body, confronting the swiftness with which breath could be snatched away. It frightened her beyond words.
Now the time has come for the bird to fly. There is a heaviness to his wings, but he fights the downward pull of air with a courage that only she seems to know is costing him dearly. She wonders if the cost is too great; whether the nightmare that was forced on him has imprinted itself too deeply on his mind to be dismissed for long. Perhaps the damage of betrayal will always be with him, as deep and permanent as the scar on his chest. She wonders also why she cannot seem to follow him; why her feet remain encased in dread, her soul weighed down with foreboding.
She takes refuge in minutiae, as she has always done. She reads about, and seeks to understand the motion and impulses of the body, the mechanisms that sustain us. Anatomy, physiology, osteology, the careful, precise delineation of a human life. The careful placement of the organs, the graceful counterpoint of the lymphatic and nervous systems, the reflexive, untiring motion of the heart.
Sometimes, when she's lying in bed at night, Donna can see the images forming above her on the ceiling: the elegant asymmetry of the thoracic cavity, the thick curving arch of the aorta, and curled beneath it, the left pulmonary artery conveying the pumping blood to the oxygen-rich haven of the lungs.
She also knows that the memory of seeing this hidden, intimate complexity laid out before her in an operating room still has the power to move her shockingly, so in the warm, easy silence of her darkened bedroom, she imagines it instead in the stark, meticulous monochrome of Gray's Anatomy. There is a comforting precision in the careful interplay of ventricle, artery, vein, capillary. The words wrap themselves around her tongue like poetry, a dance of line and form and structure. How fastidious is the body without the distraction of blood, of controlled haste, of terror.
Sometimes she also imagines the path that the bullet took. She sees the shocking, easy penetration of the skin, the careless violation of the delicate structure of tissue and cartilage. It burns and burrows, catching the edge of the pulmonary artery on its inevitable crow's-path journey to the lung where it enters through the smooth serous coat into the left superior lobe. It's probing continues on through the areolar tissue, through the lobules of the parenchyma, disrupting the unique, cathedral-like branches of the bronchi.
These are words she had not known the meaning of, months ago. Now she caresses them with her mouth, relishes their abstract beauty. They are friends to her; she thinks that if the words exist, the things they represent exist. They sustain his life still, and hers also, and every human that she meets. How are we so oblivious to them? How can we not pause in awe at the unceasing, complex pulse of our bodies? Under her fingertips she can feel the expansion of her lungs beneath her ribs, the soft, steady thump of her heart. She fancies that she breathes in tandem with him.
Strangely, she hardly ever has nightmares. Sleep, when it comes, is heavy and blank and each morning, blinking at the weak sunlight, she hopes that one day she will relearn how to relish this moment of awakening. The moment when consciousness returns is more welcome on the rare occasions when the dream visits her; a dream she has long since given up trying to analyse. She accepts it now as she accepts the rush of blood through her veins and the insistent twitch of life at her throat and her wrists.
In the dream, she finds herself standing in a completely blank and featureless room. There are no shadows to soften the harsh, geometric cut of the corners; a bright, diffuse light permeates the cavernous box, empty save for a chair and table, which sit precisely at the centre. She is aware of the world outside the room as a persistent whisper of sound and movement. If she listens carefully enough, she can catch specific sounds: the clatter of metal, a rhythmic mechanical beep, the rise and fall of voices, but recently she has stopped trying to hear these things. She feels safer in her comforting enclosure.
She finds herself seated at the table, a pack of playing cards in her hands. Slowly, with infinite care and patience, she balances two of the cards together in front of her. The edges are aligned with painful attention to detail and she only removes her hand when she is certain of their stability. Her concentration becomes so focused that the world narrows until all that exists are the cards, her hands and the unhurried rhythm of her breathing.
A structure of cards rises in front of her; she sets herself a measured pace, making sure of her foundations before attempting the next level. As the tower grows taller, she grows calmer and lighter as though the illumination in the room has somehow entered through her skin. She can feel it pulsing through her veins and knows that if she were to stretch up her arms, she would float upwards, gently, like a feather caught in a breeze. Light and free.
Today, when she wakes from the dream, the feeling of floating remains. She hugs it to herself and dresses with more care than usual as though she is afraid a sudden movement will dispel the sensation forever. She recognises that this is a sign of healing but she has learned to distrust certainties and instinctively stops trying to analyse this recognition.
She prefers to hope instead.
THE END