William Cass
Breasts

Martin was making his way through the specialty rounds required of all third-year medical students. Several weeks at a time following radiology, orthopedics, neurology, and the rest. Mostly, he stood around with a handful of other students in lab coats listening and watching while the specialist in charge explained things or performed routine duties. But during his surgery rounds, he and his classmates were occasionally divided up individually to do initial intakes with patients. That's where he met Leila, a woman about forty of Middle Eastern decent, a bit worn but still beautiful, who was scheduled for breast reduction surgery.

She'd already changed into her surgical gown and was sitting on the end of the exam table in the pre-op room when he entered it with her chart. Her troubled eyes held his as he introduced himself. He pretended to study her chart while he thought about how to proceed. Finally, he looked back to her and said, "So, they've probably already explained to you how this is going to work."

She shrugged. He tried to keep his eyes on her face instead of her breasts which stirred like overfilled water balloons under the thin gown.

"Well," he said, "the anesthesiologist will come in next and put you under. Then you'll be taken into the operating room. The surgeon will first make a keyhole incision around the areola and then vertically down to the breast crease. Next, she'll remove the desired amount of tissue and reshape the new, smaller breast as you've decided with her. Then the incision will be closed with sutures."

Leila nodded and let out a long breath.

"Same procedure on both breasts," he continued. "As I'm sure you know, the incision marks will be permanent but are thin and usually fade significantly over time."

She stared at him, blinking. He glanced down and turned pages on the chart. "Let's see," he said. "What else?"

When he looked up next, she'd begun crying very quietly. He watched her wipe snot from below her nose with the back of her hand. "You have no idea what it's like," she said. "Men always staring. And I feel like a cow. I can't run, can't even walk fast, no matter what kind of special bra I wear. My back constantly aches. I don't want to alter my body, but I have to do this."

He nodded and thought about what his fiancée, Gwen, had told him out of the blue the night before in bed. They'd just finished making love and were lying on their backs in the darkness. She told him she was of having her breasts enlarged. She said she'd wanted to feel more like a real woman for a long time. He hadn't even told her about the surgery he'd be involved with the next day. Instead of answering her, he'd pretended to have fallen asleep.

Martin took a tissue out of his lab coat pocket and handed it to Leila. He said, "Of course."

She used the tissue to dab at her eyes, then blew her nose into it.

"So," Martin said. "The procedure will take a couple of hours and bandages will be applied over the sutured incisions afterwards. Your breasts will be wrapped loosely in a kind of elastic support. Then you'll be in recovery for another hour or two before being admitted upstairs."

He attempted to smile. The stare she returned was pained. Outside, behind the door, footsteps passed. A voice said something in a lilting manner and another laughed loudly. The footsteps continued down the hallway, then disappeared. Martin found himself biting the inside of his cheek. He said, "All right, then. I think we're all set. The anesthesiologist should be in shortly."

Leila nodded and turned her head towards the wall. Martin opened the door. Just before he clicked it closed, he heard her whisper, "Thank you."

Gwen was propped up against pillows in bed reading when Martin got home late that night. She glanced over the top of her book at him as he entered the room and said, "Hey."

He walked over, kissed the top of her head, and mumbled, "Hi."

"Long day, huh?"

"Yeah."

He moved to his side of the bed, sat on the edge, and began taking off his shoes and socks. He was vaguely aware of the regular murmur of traffic in the street far below their apartment. He asked, "How was work?"

"Same old. You know."

Gwen had curtailed her law school studies and had become a legal librarian earlier that fall at the same large firm where she'd interned during the summer. The two of them had met as undergraduates seven years earlier at the same college across town. Martin stood up, started unbuttoning his shirt, and watched her turn a page. Like always, her forehead furrowed into a slight frown as she read; it was one of the things that had first endeared her to him. That, and her gentle nature, the kindness in her eyes. He never understood why she'd pursued law in the first place; it had never seemed to suit her. There were other things about her that had been surprising, too, perplexing. Like her high school phase when she'd died her blonde hair blue and how she sometimes bit her nails until they bled. Or the tiny butterfly tattoo on the back of her neck that she always kept hidden under her hair. And they'd been together for three years before he discovered she wrote poetry and had published a few pieces in small literary magazines.

He said, "I'm going to jump in the shower."

She nodded but kept her eyes moving across the page. She wore a tight tank top under which the curve of her breasts pressed. He studied them for a moment. Perhaps they were on the small side, but he thought they were lovely. He thought they were perfect.

Leila had been asleep when Martin and his classmates had rounded with the surgeon early that next morning, so the surgeon asked him to check on her later. He stopped in again around ten and found her sitting in the chair next to the bed gazing out the window.

He said, "Good morning."

She turned and gave a small smile.

"How do you feel?"

"Fine." She nodded. "Good."

"Any pain?"

She made a slight shrug. "A little sore."

"That's to be expected."

She nodded again. In the white morning light from the window, he saw tiny lines etched at the corners of her eyes and a few wisps of gray in the hair near her temples.

"May I take a quick look at your incisions?" he asked. "See how they're healing."

"Sure."

>> click to read: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

>> back to Issue 22, 2019