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Heart-Shaped Breasts

This medical procedure is sponsored by Vitamin Water

By Cali LoriaPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
6

Even before everybody started dying from the new flu, the number of medical professionals dwindled. It was the way of formerly lucrative careers with large buy-ins. By 17, so many kids had found their millionaire status niche online, replete with earbud and automatic car sponsorships. Pursuing anything else seemed frankly foolish. Profiting parents, easily placated by their children with the promise of no student loan debt, found futher schooling unnecessary. It was a win-win for everyone but the dying and diseased.

I knew I was dying without any doctor having the chance to inform me. Both of my parents were dead, siblings too. I wondered about distant relatives but declined to discover; they couldn’t help me anyway. One was a florist, the other a defunct bookseller.

I found a lump in my breast. It felt like a miniature golf ball I could not putt away. I found an online doctor via a youtube search for: “women doctors breast.” The results were varied. Nudity restrictions had lessened as medical professionals turned to online practice: less risk of contagion and large endorsement deals. Occasionally a nipple or flaccid penis had to be shown to illustrate an at-home procedure properly. What medical supplies remained available were easily pilfered from hospitals. If you died playing God, it was probably better than what He had in store for you.

I chose @maeghanmedicine2029 because she had undergone a double mastectomy. A heart-shaped locket settled itself on her pronounced sternum between the scars of a former lifetime. She radiated from this new perspective, allowing femininity to mean so much more than tissue so easily objectified, so quickly diseased. I could not take my eyes off her videos. I observed, learning about everything from UTIs to pink eye, enraptured by this necklace that seemed to possess a personality. I spent so much time pondering what pictures would be held within the heart that I began to forget the lump that had brought me to her in the first place. Instead I imagined every image ranging from lost love to IV bruises. After each video, I hit the like button. I engaged in the comment section. Death had a strange way of breeding connection amongst all who remained. No one else was transfixed like me by this trinket. I tried to engage others in speculation. Viewers quickly rebuked the idea in the comment section for being too trivial. I knew it was a sentimental and important piece. It was screaming something inside. I was fascinated by its symbolism imagining it to be my panacea.

Layers of skin surrounded my sternum. Excessive drinking had added to my frame. Perhaps that produced this current problem. Maybe it was bread. I remembered reading once that it was the new en vogue food to avoid. Imagine digging your own grave with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

The 33rd video I watched was about a mastectomy. While I had only found a lump in one breast, it seemed so much more symmetrical and wise to rid myself of all the tissue. I knew the procedure would kill me. With no anesthesia, it meant I would have to remain awake long enough to fake my way through the process without bleeding to death. I had the proper tools and enough Vicodin. I was confident I would at least die a peaceful death if necessary. I never glorified this option. When the news still ran, I witnessed how the plague ended your life. Women seemed to die in more pain and pus than men. When death was imminent, men were able to form words to describe the disease. Women could only speak with their eyes.

I steadily grew more steadfast in my resolve. I balked at the first slice. It produced a pain I could never have fathomed. It was akin to giving birth to your death. My head swam as I hit play, pause, play. It was like those old videos where you learned to draw line by line and could always hit pause if your penguin began to look more like a platypus. There was no eraser for a flesh wound. The computer became mottled with blood. Her voice seemed to grow louder as my vision blurred. “And now we insert the scalpel here…” There was a clicking noise as if the sound of stabbed tissue was instead the clasp between two golden hearts breaking open. I was drifting off. In that last moment, I would have sworn I saw the two images formerly closed together, forced to stare at one another for all eternity. One, the handsome face of a man, seemed to smile at the other. In this photo, a pair of perfectly rounded breasts, as if made of silicone, perched on a television set whose screen showed only analog pixels. There was the humming noise of static. Everything faded out.

Short Story
6

About the Creator

Cali Loria

Over punctuating, under delivering.

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  • Testabout a month ago

    Brilliantly creative and fantastic entry! Enjoyed this a lot! 🤍

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