Adventures with Max and Louise (2 page)

I quickly scan the chart. “And you’d be right if my name were Christine McDaniel. But it’s not!” The chest pain ache becomes a throb. My heart races along with my mind. How in the hell could this have happened?

The nurse rushes from the room, leaving me, Angeli, nose job girl, and her mother in silence. Nose job girl mouths, “OMG,” to her mother as if Angeli and I aren’t six feet away. Glaring at them, Angeli yanks the curtains shut around my bed.

Her hand remains clamped over her mouth. “Holy shit,” she whispers.

I glance down at my chest again, thinking maybe they’ll have disappeared and we can have another beginning, but no, I definitely have breast implants.

The nurse appears a few moments later, pushing the curtains aside. Dr. Hupta follows in his hospital scrubs. He looks tired and apprehensive, but the nurse steps in front of him, shoving the chart in his hands. “Here’s
her
chart,” she says stridently. Then to me, “We’ll get this all sorted out.”

The doctor’s eyes rest on Angeli for a moment with a flicker of interest. Not yet aware of his fallibility, he reads the chart with the air of a man who has yet to encounter a problem he couldn’t solve.

“Breast implants. It says right here: 250 cc’s implants. I did go up because we’d discussed the option, and it seemed like a good idea.” He seems relieved that he has cleared the matter right up. “No, everything looks good.” He checks his watch. “You can go home in about a half hour.”

Angeli looks over his shoulder, stabbing a blood red nail at the chart. “Brilliant. But you got the wrong girl.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not possible. We have a very effective method of ensuring that . . .” He stares at me for a moment, blinking methodically, as if to clear something in his eyes. “Who is she?” he whispers to no one.

“Apparently I am a woman with implants.” Squirming around, I try getting a better look at my new topography. My arms, neck, and shoulders ache as if I’ve been pounded with a hammer. More drugs won’t be enough. I want to wake up in my own bed with my simple, ordinary A cup life intact.

A horrified comprehension dawns on Dr. Hupta. The color drains from his face. “You’re Molly Gallagher, Trina Rasad’s sister,” he whispers, blinking frantically.

“How in the hell could you give me implants? I just wanted the scar tissue fixed!”

Now he gets flustered. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. There was another patient, Chrissy McDaniel. Her scars were similar, but I would have known the difference . . .” His voice trails off uncertainly. “I would have . . .” The blinking stops. A look of fear crosses his face. “Her chart was on your bed.” He steps forward, lifting a chart hanging from the foot of my bed and reads it. “Your chart,” he says bitterly.

The world shrinks. I remember the nurses talking about another girl whose dog had pulled her through a window. Her scars, they said, were similar to mine. I’d overheard them talking at the front desk about how strange it was that two patients had almost identical scars. “What are the odds?”

“The dog walker?” I ask.

He nods miserably. “She wanted implants.”

“Well, take them out. I want them out. Now!” My voice is high-pitched, nervy.

“Wait a minute, Molls, not so fast,” Angeli pipes up, pacing at the foot of my bed. “You might try to look upon this as a bonus, not an error.” She stops to address Dr. Hupta, who has aged ten years in the last five minutes. “I’m assuming the scars are fixed?”

He nods dumbly. The poor man looks like he could be pushed over with a stick.

“So, in addition to removing the scars, he added a bonus. Like a gift with purchase.” Leave it to the Clinique consultant to come up with that analogy.

“I didn’t want the gift with purchase. I wanted the lipstick. All I wanted was one lousy lipstick, and I get breasts. Boobs. Hooters. Knockers!” I stare down at my chest glumly. “What size are they?”

Dr. Hupta’s hands are over his eyes. He’s muttering something repeatedly that sounds like, “Oh my God, oh my God,” but I can’t make out the words. Blood pumps through my ears like a freight train.

“I said, what size are they?” I hear myself shriek.

He looks up for a moment. “D,” he whispers hoarsely.

“D! I’m not a D cup!” Taking what I pray is a deep, cleansing breath, I turn to Dr. Hupta. “I want them out. You wheel me right back in there and take them out. Now!”

He shakes his head. “We can’t.” The man is shrinking inside his shirt like a turtle, furiously massaging his temples.

“Why not?” I demand.

“I need to have your chart reviewed by a specialist. I can’t go in there and perform surgery on you again,” he says, eyes shut. “Not this instant. If I went back in there and operated on you again, I could lose my license.”

“You could at least look at me.”

He opens his eyes. They are red, brimming with tears. “I am so sorry. I just don’t know how something like this could have happened. I am a thorough surgeon, even meticulous. I don’t operate on people with body dysmorphic syndrome. Many surgeons take anyone. I hire the best assistants and anesthesiologists that I can possibly find. I, I . . . I really can’t believe this has happened.” He slumps into a chair. The nurse gazes down at him helplessly.

“I can. Look at me. I come from a long line of flat-chested women. Okay, so my sister isn’t flat, but she’s a C cup. Now I am a D cup.
A D cup.
Look, I know some women really get into the whole cleavage thing, but I didn’t mind being flat-chested. It never bothered me. I’ll admit, it was kind of embarrassing when the pads in my bikini top floated out in the pool, and Peter Warnick grabbed one and played keep-away from me in high school, but most of the time it was okay. I cannot believe this happened.”

I’m not so much talking as babbling out loud. Suddenly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted and overwhelmed.

Dr. Hupta leans on his elbows, staring at the chart as if it’s going to change into something more acceptable. “I am so terribly sorry.” He sighs. “I don’t know what else to say.”

Angeli flutters her eyes at him from the foot of the bed where she’s sitting. I’ve known Angeli since grade school when she moved from Bombay, horrified to find out on the first day of school that her last name, Poopathi, was a passport to American grade school hell. Martin and I gained her undying friendship by calling her Angeli during first recess instead of Poopy Pants, like the rest of our classmates. Her parents were both at the University of Washington medical school. Angeli spent almost every waking hour at my house, absorbing American culture like a sponge.

I know this look. It’s a flirty, come hither look that means, as far as any male is concerned, I am now wallpaper. “What’s body dysmorphic syndrome?” she asks, batting her long, black eyelashes.

Dr. Hupta perks up, happy to talk about something other than his career-wrecking mistake. “When people become addicted, so to speak, to plastic surgery. They have one surgery, and the results are so favorable they have another and then another until they’ve remade their body and their face into something unrecognizable. They put up with an incredible amount of pain and suffering in order to attain an imagined perfection that in reality doesn’t exist. It’s a psychological condition.”

The lecture calms him. I want to tell him not to bother because, although she herself is Indian, Angeli doesn’t date Indian men, the result of one too many fix-ups from her parents’ friends.

“Fascinating,” Angeli chirps. She’s hitting on my doctor. After listening to her gripe about Indian men and their hang-ups for ten years, she’s decided to flirt with one who has just butchered me. I would smack her, but I doubt I can lift my arm.

“Michael Jackson was the most famous sufferer,” he says before turning to me. “After a review, we can schedule you for surgery in eight weeks. I can use the same incisions to remove the implants with very little scarring. You will still retain a much-improved appearance with your scars. Perhaps dermabrasion in a few months would be something to explore. I don’t know.”

I nod, feeling slightly mollified. At least there’s a plan.

“Do you think you can comfortably live with the implants for two months?” There is genuine concern in his voice.

“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” I snap.

Chapter Two

A
FTER
D
R
. H
UPTA
and the nurse leave, Angeli helps me change into my sweats. By the time we open the curtains, nose job girl and her mother have departed. I gather my purse, shoving the postoperative instructions inside. Together we slowly walk down the hallway toward the waiting room door. Dr. Hupta appears, briefly assuring me that he’ll be in touch tomorrow before fading back into the hallway. His thick hair hangs in his eyes. He looks scared. I’m sure he’s been on the phone with his attorney.

In the waiting room, I turn back to the front desk, insisting on making an appointment for my new surgery.

Angeli wants to get me home. “Molly, you are so wiped out. We can call later, all right?”

Although I’m exhausted, I want a date on the calendar, set in stone. “No, not all right; I want an appointment now.”

The receptionist grins warmly from behind her desk. “Our follow-up visits are at one week and four weeks.”

I bend down as far as I can without pain, the implants tugging my skin. “This isn’t for a follow-up. It’s to get my implants removed!”

A nurse I’ve never seen before appears, bending and whispering urgently in the receptionist’s ear. The receptionist’s eyes widen. “You’re joking, right?” The nurse shakes her head.

“That totally sucks,” the receptionist blurts.

“Yes, it does,” I respond.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. This is highly unusual, to say the least.” She types rapidly into her computer. “Yes, yes. Of course we can schedule you in eight weeks. How does November 15 look for you?”

I don’t have to look at a calendar. Nothing is more important than getting these things out. “Perfect.”

The nurse bustles around the front desk, placing her hand on my arm. “Ms. Gallagher, I hope you understand that if the surgical review board hasn’t met and given Dr. Hupta the authority to operate, he can’t remove your implants on that date.”

I pat her hand. “If he can’t, I’m sure somebody will.” With as much dignity as I can muster, I take Angeli’s arm and shuffle out of the waiting room, my other hand supporting my aching new implants.

We’re waiting at the elevator when the same nurse bursts out of Northwest Plastic Surgery, sprinting toward us with a white slip of paper in her hand. She gives it to Angeli. “Here, you’re going to need this,” she pants, offering me a sympathetic grin before returning to her office.

Angeli dangles the slip of paper in front of me. “Painkillers.”

It’s raining as Angeli drives me home. The wipers slap a steady rhythm on the windshield. Normally, Seattle’s relentless, soggy gray doesn’t bother me. Today it feeds into the bleak sense that my life is being sucked into a downward spiral, flushed into an enormous cosmic toilet, soon to be spit out, in parts unknown. Of all the operations that have taken place in Seattle today, how many of them went sideways? Is there a man who went in to have an abdominal scar touched up and came out with a penile implant?

Angeli glances at me, her face a worried knot. I’m morosely quiet, brooding about the morning fiasco, having my own little pity party with no guests allowed. In the mood I’m in, I’d eat them. Every bump and pothole in the road jolts my chest until I’m forced to hold my new breasts with crossed arms.

Angeli clears her throat as she turns off the main drive into my neighborhood. The houses are huge, leftovers from a time when all the Catholics living here had at least five children. Some of the houses are renovated, and some, like mine, are still in the hands of middle-class owners, showing their age.

“If it’s any consolation, they look great,” she says.

I roll my eyes. “It’s not. And what were you doing flirting with my plastic surgeon?”

She turns her eyes to the road. “I wasn’t flirting.”

I imitate her. “ ‘Oh, Doctor! What’s body dysmorphic syndrome?’ And calling these implants a gift with purchase! The man made a surgical error. God knows what else he left inside me. He probably took off his wedding ring when he saw you and sewed it up inside of me.”

Angeli sniffs. “He’s not married. I asked the nurse.”

We turn onto my street. “Oh well, that’s a relief. You should have been threatening him with a lawsuit, not trying to imagine him naked.”

“Why would I want to sue him?” Angeli steers into our driveway. To her credit, she’s driven like a snail, sensitive to my pain.

“On my behalf, Ang. Honestly, whose side on you on, anyway?”

She turns to me before she gets out of the car. “On yours, of course. I can’t help it if the man’s attractive. And a doctor. Attractive and a doctor. You’ve got to admit that’s a good combo.”

“Did you miss what happened back there? He gave me someone else’s implants! Doesn’t that make you the least bit concerned about his stability? His frame of mind?”

This isn’t going anywhere. Once Angeli latches onto an idea, particularly in matters of the heart, she has the tenacity of a pit bull. I give it one last shot. “Besides, you don’t date Indian men, remember? You were never going to sit through another endless cricket game while some guy blathered on about how he wanted a modern woman who cooked like his mother.”

She pivots in her seat, perfectly made-up eyes narrowed in concentration. Obviously, she’s put a lot of thought into this, probably while I was on the table getting Christine McDaniel’s implants sewn into my chest. “Rules are meant to be broken. Besides, I don’t meet too many good-looking doctors working at the Clinique counter. I am so done with metrosexuals. I have no use for men who’ll fill up my bathroom cabinets with their grooming supplies.”

“Well, next time hit up your own doctor,” I sniff.

“That’s a good idea,” she says, grabbing her purse. She steps out of the car and grabs the back of her thighs. “Does he do lipo?”

Climbing out, I stumble a bit before Angeli rushes around the side of the car. She grabs my arm, firmly squeezing it, while slinging her other arm around my shoulder. For a moment, despite my irritation, I feel a surge of love. Angeli can be awfully self-centered, but when it’s important, she’s never let me down. Slowly, we make our way to the front steps.