Snake

You spend a lot of time with your cadaver that first year of school. Which is weird, when you think about it. You build your day around anatomy lab, hours spent in a brightly lit room, reeking of formaldehyde. You huddle around this guy, a generous man who donated his body to the advancement of your knowledge, marveling at the structures inside, and tsk-tsking at his imperfections.

We named him (most groups do). It only seems right. You spend so much time with them, refer to them in so many ways. You explore their bodies in ways that nobody ever does, (or can without significant jail time) and a partner in that kind of intimacy deserves an appellation. His salient feature, his key identifier, was the giant chinese dragon tattoo on his right arm. Bright and colorful, the tattoo had survived the chemical fading of the rest of his skin, the forced de-vivification necessary to prevent decay. It stood there, immediately jumping out to us as we began the process of opening up the arms. He must have had it for years, we assumed, as it had sagged a bit from what must have been a once glorious presentation.

That first week we named him Snake. And when the time came, we kept the tattoo intact, keeping it with him in the the chrome case of preservatives. It would have been a shame to do anything else.