Adventures with Max and Louise Read Free Page A

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