Garbage

I marked the leg at one thirds and two thirds of its distance.   I drew a roadmap for our sharp implements, our knives of metal and electrocautery.  In silent curiosity, I watched as the gowned and gloved man applied a knife of furious electricity to the skin, burning through it in the quick of a blinking eye.   He cut down to deep, exposing the rust filled sartorial red of relatively healthy muscle.  Moving the tool with deliberate ease, he marched along the map I had drawn, etching it out in eerie relief.  

Pulling back the flap of skin so recently relieved from its tense duties, we expose muscle, cutting and detaching until the bones are visible.  They hand me the instrument, a giant parody of garden shears, meant for cutting of thin bones (of which the fibula counts).    A slow alignment, and I have the bone in my grip, tenderly squeezing the shears.   My touch does nothing, and I slowly increase the pressure, eventually squeezing with all my strength until I hear a crunch both satisfying and revolting.  

"Good Job," notes the Fellow, regaling me with scarce praise.   "Now saw through the Tibia."  He hands me a loop of sharp toothed wire, a Jigglysaw, the jigsaw in miniature.   In my best impression of a ghoulish lumberjack, I saw through the thicker tibia.  The others are clamping and burning bleeds, the sparks of their electrocautery refracted in a spray of white bone chips.   With a lurch, the saw come free.   The Fellow picks up the leg and hands it to me.  

"Get rid of this."

I stand there, momentarily bewildered.  I hold the leg firmly, the business end of fragmented bone and gore facing firmly away.   I'm meant to get rid of it.  I have no idea how.   The circulating nurse is holding a giant biohazard bag for me, a clear invitation to dispose of my post-apocalyptic zombie trophy.   I have a momentary flash of incongruity, and I throw the leg in the bag.  The nurse walks to the trash, and throws it out.