An embryo without brain. Not a pretty sight. But it is on display in a tiny museum that you have to cross on the way to the university hospital cafeteria, for all the world to see.

An easily scared friend of mine who was visiting me one day was going to get a coffee and froze at the sight of this display. She actually had to phone one of a our friends to come and get her because she could not move. Later on I found her with her eyes closed in some sort of meditative trance. “What are you doing?” “I am trying to burn the negative of that embryo in my head.”

Me, I got used to that embryo after my unnecessarily long stay in the hospital. I ended up greeting it on my way to the cafeteria. We were, after all, neighbors.