Skin Deep

I had waited for this for a long time.

Ever since I was a child, I had hated my nose. The way it curved like a beak, making me look way more masculine than I could handle. Now it was finally time to get it fixed. I could be normal. I could take pictures and post them without editing. I could get a boyfriend. The last thought made me giddy with anticipation of the joy and wholeness I was going to feel once my dream of getting a nose job was complete.

This was not a decision I made lightly, rather one I planned meticulously for years. I had watched the reality tv shows, heard the horror stories, I knew how wrong a cosmetic surgery could go so I did my due diligence. I researched surgeons extensively.

Three years after I began the search, I found Doctor Slater. He was so transparent. He posted all his before and after pictures and received glowing reviews from the subjects in every one of them.

I found myself booking an appointment at his office. I had been to other doctors’ offices before, but I never liked what I saw. Some were messy, some were cheap, and some didn’t have the doctor at all but rather a glossy office assistant with a perfect face and body that could “answer all my questions”. Those were the offices I ran from the fastest.

I was pleasantly surprised when I walked in the door to Doctor Slater’s consult office. The humming florescent lights illuminated a bright modern space with sun-filled windows and tall lush plants in every corner.

As the door closed behind me an electronic bell tolled, alerting the office patrons of my presence. A beautiful smiling woman rounded the corner to greet me. I immediately bristled at the thought of another “salesperson” consultation.

She beamed at me with perfectly straight teeth that were almost blinding in their brightness “Hello, I am Susan, the office staff. Can I bring you a lemon water while you wait for Doctor Slater?” She asked.

I released a small breath I didn’t know I had been holding. “Yes, a lemon water would be fantastic thank you.”

She disappeared and returned with a frosty glass in her manicured fingers. She smiled as she handed it to me.

“You… you have a beautiful nose,” I said to Susan before immediately regretting it. Why was I so awkward?

Susan looked taken aback a little but recovered instantly “Thank you, Doctor Slater does amazing work. It healed so quickly too!”

The excitement grew in my belly and I could feel the warmth tingling out into my fingers. I could look like this soon.

Doctor Slater was a charming man. He smiled at all the right times and spoke delicately of my situation. We looked at his portfolio and he answered all my research questions with flying colors.

He explained to me that their clinic held their patient comfort as the utmost priority. So instead of staying in a clinical setting with cold steel and even colder medical professionals, I would be going to the spa resort their clinic partnered with. I could recover in the sunshine, with Jacuzzis and fine dining, and then come home with a fully healed, glowing new face. My family would be so surprised!

We scheduled everything and the last words he said to me made my heart stutter in my chest. “I have been waiting for a patient like you since I started my career.” I must have done everything right.

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The next week I was lying on the steel surgical table in a thin paper gown. A surgeon explained to me I would go to sleep and wake up ready to recover at the spa. Doctor Slater would come in once he is sterile and I am asleep. I looked around the treatment room at all the shiny metal surrounding me. Large round lamps, textured post railings, heavy tables, thin stands, and all of them were reflecting my face back at me. This room felt like it was designed to laugh at me, to mock me, to copy my flaws, again and again, refracting them in every direction then throwing them back at me like a blow.

I took a deep breath and nodded to the masked surgeon. He held a mask to my face and started counting backward from ten in a smooth, even voice.

I dropped into darkness like an acrobat falling from the top of a tent into a thick, comforting safety net.

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I felt like I had been hit by a train. I knew I was awake, or something close to it. I knew this because I could hear my own thoughts. I sat in darkness, or something close to it.

I took a mental attendance of my body. While every part of me felt hot and swollen, I could feel that I had toes, and those toes were connected to legs, connected to torso, to shoulders, to arms to neck. I was here.

I tried to flicker my eyes open but found I couldn’t. There was a strong resistance. Maybe they were swollen shut?

My thoughts and memories crashed over me like a wave. I had been at a hospital; I had a surgery. I was recovering now. I was beautiful now.

I tried to open my eyes again, with more bravado. This time I felt the crushing weight of resistance but also a sharp, searing pain shot through my thoughts.

“Hello? Is anyone out there? Nurse?” I called into the blackness. There was no answer. Had I already been moved to the spa?

I blindly felt around my sides with my fingers. I was in a bed, covered by a thin blanket. The blanket was a cheap fleece, like one you got on an airline, yet I was so hot. I could feel my sweat pooling into the sheet underneath me. I was still in the paper hospital gown.

I tried again “Nurse? Is anyone out there? I need help with something?” My voice rose in pitched and cracked on the last word. Keep it together. You signed up for this, I berated myself.

I brought my trembling fingertips up to my eyelids, where the pain was the worst. They slid along the puffy flesh until they felt the lash line. I felt an unnatural fabric and recoiled with a scream.

I recovered my wits and felt my lash line again. There was definitely an artificial something. On closer inspection, I could feel lines, strings connecting my lids together.

The realization hit me. My eyes had been sewn shut.

I screamed again. It ripped through my body tearing at my throat like claws. Someone had to have heard that. I went silent and listened for the comforting sound of shoes running to my aid.

Silence.

I lurched upright in the bed and swung my legs over the side. Sitting up it felt like I had more power. I scratched at my face, finding the end of the sutures where they bit into the delicate folds of paper-thin skin.

Silence. I couldn’t hear anything except my own rasping breath. No one was coming.

I stretched my eye as close to open as I could make it. The pain and disorientation almost knocked me back onto the bed. I could do this. I placed my thumb on my bottom lid and my forefinger on the top.

I inhaled sharply, held my breath, then pushed my fingers apart.

I screamed in agony as I felt each suture pop, ripping through the delicate skin under my eye. Blood welled and dripped into my vision, hot and oily. I used the back of my hand to wipe it away.

I could see a blurry impression of the room now. I wiped my eye harder, ignoring the burn of the fresh wound. Shapes came into focus. I was on a hospital bed in a small room lit by a single bulb. Other than the bed I sat on there wasn’t any furniture in the room, no dresser, no drawers, and only one door.

I twisted my head to see what was behind me and I caught sight of a floor-length mirror.

My own reflection startled me. I was close to unrecognizable. My hair was plastered to my scalp with sweat, my face was so puffy my features were distorted. I could see dark smears of the cosmetic surgery marker had stained my face. It mixed, melted, and bled into the bruising so much I could barely tell them apart.

Bled welled again into my opened eye and I wiped it away fervently to keep examining my circumstance.

I lurched off the bed and hobbled over to the mirror. My joints screamed in protest from lack of use. How long had I been here?

The swelling and bruising covered all of my visible body. I raised the hem of my nightgown then dropped it with a gasp.

I lifted it slowly again. There was another line of sutures vertically down my middle, from sternum to belly button. The flesh holding the stitches was red and angry.

My belly was swollen and mishappen as if something was below the surface.

What did they put in me?