by Mimi Strong
After fussing around looking for free parking for several minutes, even though Nora offered to pay, Nora's mother finally pulled into the pay parking lot.
“Every little bit counts,” she said as she backed the car into a spot.
Nora bit her tongue and thanked her mom again for driving her. She was glad she'd been able to cancel the ride with Tianne, and thus safely avoid having her photograph taken post surgery for a blog post.
Inside the office, Nora's mother's eyes bulged at the sight of the short-nosed receptionist. As soon as the girl disappeared, Nora's mother whispered, “Don't tell me you're getting one of those. That nose would not look right on your face. Whose nose are you getting, again?”
“You saw the photos on the fridge.”
“Yes, I know what you look like now.”
“Mother, you do realize the photos were a digital simulation of what I'll look like after the surgery.”
Realization dawned across Nora's mother's face. “I thought that was just a really nice photo of you. You have such a lovely little smile.”
“See, I told you it was going to be subtle.”
Dr. Garrett appeared in the doorway, wearing surgical scrubs. “Who's this?” she said, her voice barely pitching up at the end to indicate a question.
“I'm the mother,” she said, holding up her hand as though calling a classroom to order.
“Two Valium,” Dr. Garrett said to another woman in scrubs. “One for the mother, if she wants it.”
“Oh, yes, please,” Nora's mother said to the woman in scrubs, then to Nora, “I've never had a Valium before! This is so exciting.”
The woman ran off to get the medicine.
Everything was happening so fast, and Nora was excited.
After getting her mother settled in with some magazines—the staff assured her she didn't have to stick around for the entire procedure, but she insisted she did—Nora was alone in a small patient room, changing into a green thing. Was it a surgical gown? The Valium was kicking in. Gown? That sounded like something you'd wear to a ball. She giggled at the idea of a ball, then she giggled at everything, from her fuzzy pink socks to her button-down shirt—button-down because when she came out of surgery, she'd have bandages on her nose and wouldn't be able to pull something like a t-shirt over her head.
Dr. Garrett came in and drew on her nose with a pen, which seemed really funny. The Valium was nice, and she didn't feel nervous. It was a beautiful day outside, and the nurses were all so friendly and efficient, like a really great Starbucks, only for noses. One of the nurses asked if she would prefer to keep her prosthetic foot on, or take it off, and she opted to keep it on so there would be less fuss after the surgery.
She followed them down a hall to the procedure room and was introduced to some people who all looked the same, with funny caps on their heads and masks over their faces. Some of them had glasses and some did not. There were a lot of them, and she wondered for a moment if her butt was hanging out of the gown, but then again, she didn't really care. It was such a nice day.
She got settled back on the padded table—was it a bed?—and someone jabbed something into her arm. She thought she heard her mother's voice somewhere, and then someone brought her another blanket and tucked it in around her sides.
One of the people in green masks asked her to count backwards from ten as he administered the anesthetic. She would be going under lightly, a twilight sleep that would give her a faster recovery time than general anesthetic. She still wasn't clear what the difference was, but she began to count, just as they asked.
She felt sleepiness come up suddenly and persuasively before she got to five.
Ache.
Throb.
That's not so bad, Nora thought before she opened her eyelids. There was a heaviness on her face, as though Razzles the cat was sitting on it. Her throat was dry.
A woman was talking to her and stroking her hand. “Wake up sweetie. That's right, there you go. Wakey wakey.”
Nora wanted the woman to go away, but she persisted. When Nora opened her eyes, the woman worked quickly, helping her sit upright. She had to breathe through her mouth, because her nose was completely plugged up, like the worst sinus cold ever.
As she tilted up, the pressure in the bandaged area changed and she winced.
“How bad does it hurt, on a scale of one to ten?” the nurse asked.
“I'm fine,” Nora said.
When her feet touched the floor, she was surprised that one of them was numb, still sleeping, then she remembered. Tears came to her eyes as she felt the loss of her right foot all over again. It was gone, forever.
The woman led her into a dimly-lit washroom, where her clothes were laid out on the counter. Nora went pee in the toilet, amazed at how full her bladder was considering she hadn't had anything to eat or drink—but of course, it must have been from the tube in her arm. “Gross,” she said to herself.
“Is everything all right?” came a voice from the other side of the door.
“Yup, just a minute.” She got dressed, careful to keep her head elevated. She stuffed her socks in her pocket and slid on her shoes barefoot.
The nurse knocked on the door again, asking if she needed help.
Nora realized she was in a room with a mirror. She looked at her face. Even with the plaster cast and white bandages, her nose was already smaller than it had been. She gently touched the exposed tip, which felt numb. Tiny stitches ran along the incision between her nostrils, which were ringed with dried blood and stuffed full of white packing.
The nurse knocked impatiently at the door again, so Nora opened it and shuffled out carefully.
“What do you think? Not too scary, right?” the nurse asked. She had an accent, maybe Filipino by the look of her eyes. “Dr. Garrett is very gentle. You don't look too beat up now, but you will have two black eyes by tonight.”
“Cool,” Nora said, giving the nurse a very slow thumbs-up.
When she shuffled her way out to the waiting room, she found her mother a third of the way through reading a thick paperback romance novel.
“Aw, Mom, you were here the whole time?”
“This book just keeps getting better and better.”
The receptionist said, “Take it home with you to finish. You can bring it back when you come to get the packing out.”
“Don't mind if I do.” Nora's mother tucked the book into her purse. “What'll we get you for dinner, then. Chicken soup?”
“No talking. I wanna go home.”
They made their way down to the car, and Nora was grateful they'd parked in the lot and not blocks away, as her mother might have insisted.
They'd made it only a third of the way home when Nora realized she was going to throw up. She grabbed the bucket down by her feet—the one Dr. Garrett had recommended having in the vehicle—and threw up into it. The vomit was almost black, her own blood that had dripped down the back of her throat during the surgery.
She apologized to her mother, over and over, even though her mother assured her it was just fine. “These things happen,” she said. “Just breathe. We'll get you through this.”
Nora was in a fog, and the drive home seemed to take forever, yet be over in an instant.
When they got home, Nora took the first of her scheduled painkillers and lay down on the sofa in the rec room that adjoined the kitchen. Her mother brought her coffee, which didn't taste like anything at all. She realized it must have been due to the padding in the nostrils, and not being able to smell the coffee.
With her head and shoulders elevated, Nora napped on the couch the rest of the day, careful not to move.
Nora's mother had been the one to take her to all her important doctor appointments after the motorcycle accident. She'd taken a year off work to look after her daughter.
Nora's mother held her daughter's hand as she learned to walk for the second time. She kept detailed records of Nora's progress, always had an encouraging word, and never let anything
get her down. When she came in to talk to Nora's principal after Nora had gotten into yet another fight—it was at a different school from where she taught—she'd defended her daughter like a mother tiger. It was always clearly something the boys had brought onto themselves, because her Nora was a “sweet and gentle child.”
By high school, Nora had quit hitting boys and taken a turn for the shy, skirting the edges of rooms, and making friends with kids who were on the fringe.
Tianne was a wild child with even wilder hair and a tendency to swear in the middle of class—a condition she claimed was a very rare, unusual form of Tourette's Syndrome, though the teachers wisely and more accurately assessed her as being a jackass. It was because Nora wanted someone to buy candy and magazines with after school that Tianne stopped doing the things that got her detention. Both of the girls' mothers seemed relieved by their new friendship, as though they finally had someone else to share the responsibility with.
Nora's father became obsessed with order and structure after the accident. He measured her height against the kitchen doorway, not every month, but every four weeks precisely. One November, they measured her height twice in the same month, and he labeled them November A and November B.
The day after she was fitted with her first custom-made prosthetic foot, he bought the Camaro from someone over the internet and began the restoration process. The car only left the garage once, to get painted.
Nora's father didn't talk to her much about the prosthetic or the transtibial amputation, though once, after they saw a man with no legs roll by them in a wheelchair at the mall, he asked what it felt like when she put pressure down on the bottom of her residual limb.
“It's like when you put your elbow on something,” she said. “It's different from the heel of your foot, because it's not the same bone, but it doesn't hurt.”
He seemed troubled by this and immediately changed the topic by giving her a handful of money to buy whatever clothes she wanted.
The morning after the surgery, Nora admired her blackened eyes in the mirror. The flesh on her forehead was swollen, making her look alien. She turned left and right, trying to visualize what she'd look like when the cast came off. The tip was visible, and it was the most adorable little thing she'd ever seen. It looked like a button—a real button nose, like the kind cute girls in fairy tales had. Dr. Garrett's office called to check up on her and reminded her not to pick at the scabs lining her nostrils. “Of course not,” she said, though she had been, just a little.
Three days after the surgery, she went in for a follow-up and to have the internal packing removed.
“It's going to feel like your brains are coming out your nose,” Dr. Garrett said.
“Why would you say that?” Nora asked, incredulous.
Dr. Garrett tugged at the packing. Nora saw stars and stopped breathing.
“I say that so you expect the worst, then it's not so bad.”
Nora gripped the edge of her chair with both hands.
After it was done, the inside of her blouse was stuck to her with perspiration.
Dr. Garrett said everything was healing on schedule, and took a moment to admire her work, noting how straight everything looked, even though no human is perfect symmetrical, and there are always underlying imperfections.
“I'm perfect now,” Nora said, smiling through her discomfort.
“Just a few more days until the cast comes off. Then you'll see perfect.”
Nora was glad to be rid of the packing and be able to breathe again. The inside of her nose felt tender and sensitive, and she was glad for the cast on the outside. She kept feeling like she might sneeze at any moment, though she hoped she wouldn't, for fear of damaging her healing nose.
The air in her nostrils felt hot and cold, moist and arid, all at once.
After six days at home, she'd watched all the movies she could stomach, and wanted to do something productive. She'd never been off work so long before. She'd started at the radio station immediately out of college, and before that she'd worked as a grocery store cashier, a stock girl at a department store, and for a few weeks, an assistant at a shoe repair shop. The shoe people had let her go, citing lack of enthusiasm for their various resole services.
Bobby didn't phone, but emailed, using the address Kylie had given him. He asked if she was recovered and feeling up for a “snog.” She replied to give it a few more weeks before “light sports,” then she sent her daily recovery report, by email, to both Tianne and Kylie.
Since she was on the computer already, she pulled up her resume, added a few adjectives, and started emailing it out for a variety of job postings. She popped her antibiotics—she was off the pain pills—right on schedule, and sent out another three job applications.
From the sound of Kylie's reports back to her, the radio station was doing just fine without her. Nora decided that if the station didn't need her, she didn't need it.
The day before Nora went in to have the cast removed, she discovered the horror stories. While looking for other people's experiences with recovery time—specifically, how long they waited until they had sex—she discovered a message board full of people posting about their horrible, awful, botched nose jobs. Some of them even posted photos.
The scariest ones were the people who'd had multiple surgeries. It wasn't uncommon—and Dr. Garrett had confirmed this herself—for even the best plastic surgeon to need to perform a second procedure to get optimal results from a rhinoplasty. It was common for patients to ask for further work during the first twelve months, before the swelling had settled down, but most doctors waited at least a year before operating again, so that they didn't run the risk of making the nose too small once the swelling disappeared. Cartilage could be easily carved away during surgery, but it was not so easy to add back once removed. Bone grafts from a patient's rib, elbow, or even skull, were sometimes used to bring back structure.
Nora delved deeper into message boards and websites, feeling ill, but unable to stop herself.
In some cases, patients were not able to see their own faces with an objective eye. Some seemed to suffer from the same body dysmorphia people with eating disorders suffered from. From the looks of the faces on the bulletin board, Nora didn't know what to think. Either the patients had pushed for too much, or the doctors had gone too far. Patients named their doctors, and Nora hastily searched for Dr. Garrett, feeling some relief when she got no results.
At least she'd see her new nose the next day, at the appointment. She ran her finger down the cast lightly and imagined running her finger down her new, smaller nose. She wrapped her arms around herself, giddy with excitement. She should have done this years ago.
CHAPTER 7
For this appointment, Nora's mother came in with her to the consultation room. Dr. Garrett apologized for the stickiness of the tape as she peeled it off Nora's skin. She jiggled the cast as she pulled it away, and Nora saw pain stars again. She thought she might faint, but the feeling passed. The room's air was cool on her nose. She felt vulnerable, and flinched when Dr. Garrett's hand came near her face.
“Yes, very good,” Dr. Garrett said, looking up and down with keen eyes. Nora looked back, hoping to see something reflected in Dr. Garrett's eyes, but all she could make out were the thin blue borders of contact lenses.
Nora turned to her mother, who smiled and made an aww face. “Very nice. You look like your Aunt Kathryn now. You have Aunt Kathryn's nose! Well, isn't that the funniest thing.”
“She has the Greco-Roman ideal nose now,” Dr. Garrett corrected. She pinched the bridge of Nora's tender nose, hard.
Pain shot through Nora, obliterating thoughts. “Wow,” she said.
“Just checking the break,” Dr. Garrett said. “Everything's healing nicely. I didn't squeeze it as hard as it seems, it's just really tender now. You'll have to be very careful, because the cartilage is still soft, and you could dent it. No sunglasses for at least three weeks.”
Nora looked back and forth b
etween her mother and Dr. Garrett, who were both smiling, pleased with the results. Nora wondered when she might get to see her own nose that she'd paid for. Finally, she asked for a mirror.
“Of course,” Dr. Garrett said, grabbing a large, oval, hand-held mirror from the counter behind her.
Nora saw pretty much what she'd expected. The nose looked the way the shape under the thin cast had suggested. It was straight and lovely, and the tip was cute, with a thin line from where the edge of the cast had been. Nora pressed down on her puffy forehead above the nose, trying to flatten it. That was the part that looked odd. The nose looked great.
“That swelling will dissipate over the next several weeks,” Dr. Garrett said. “Your eyes look good. Not black at all. You've been taking the pineapple extract?”
“My eyelids are still yellow and purple underneath the makeup.”
“I think we've made an improvement here,” Dr. Garrett said confidently.
When Nora turned to check her mother's reaction again, she was rubbing the bulbous tip of her own nose. Nora grabbed her mother's knee and thanked her for coming with her.
Dr. Garrett explained further about how the nose would continue to change. When the cast first comes off, the nose looks as good as it will for several months, then it swells up without the cast there. Nora could already feel more blood pulsating through the tender nose, and stiffening her upper lip.
After the appointment, Nora and her mother walked outside to the bright afternoon sun, which felt twice as hot on her nose. It was so sensitive, so charged, that Nora felt like she was a nose, attached to a prosthetic body with relatively little sensation.
People walking by on the sidewalks seemed to stare at her, and she wondered if they knew about the plastic surgery clinic in the building. It was possible they saw people with new boobs and new noses and new faces walking down this same sidewalk all the time. Dr. Garrett had put a small piece of white tape across the bridge of her nose, so even with the makeup covering the bruises around her eyes, she still couldn't pass for normal.