“In 2014, The Hollywood Reporter Dispatted Me to Investigate The Tragedy of A Plastic Surgery Patient Who’d Fallen to Her Death from A Beverly Hills Medical Plaza Plaza Soon After A Facelift. She’d be in the care of a respecated doctor with a client Known to Include Demi Moore and Meg Ryan. The Coroner Concluded”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
By that Point i’d already spent years covering the glossy Underbelly of Los Angeles. Yet this story burrowed Into me and remained there. Not in itsecifics but in itmatics. There Was Something Deeply Compelling About’s Darkness and Absurdism – She Landed Steps from Lisa Vanderpump’s Restaurant Villa Blanca – Amid The Manifest Yearning. A novel crystallized.
More than a decade laater, i’m publicing In pursuit of beauty (Blacksstone) on July 1. As my Colleague seija raankin put it laast weeks in her roundup of new summer Fiction Potentilly Unitting Journalist Who Agrees to Ghostwrite Her Story From the Other Side of Her Prison Cell. ”
CourTesy of Blackstone Publishing
In pursuit of beauty Couldn’s Help But Be InfluenCed By My Day Job As A Journalist at ThrWHTHER IN MY COMPlicted Encounters with Mercural, Larger-Tan-Life Subjects Not Unlike My Doctor Protagonist Ventures. Case in Point: I OWE thanks for a riff about beverly hills’ person palaces to the real estate agents from bravo’s Shahs of SunsetWho Once Shared with Me Their Deep and Personal Expertise About the Singular émigré Architectural Style During a Ride-Alng Trough Trousdale Estates. Perhaps the Toughest Part of Finally Finishing the Book Was Continuing to Come Across Material – During, for Example, A Summer 2024 Expedition Into La’s Dental Veneer Culture – Thoto Coul.
In this excerpt from In pursuit of beautyDr. Roya Delshad Tells of the Turning Point in Her Fledgling Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery Practice, WHEN SHE BCAME A FIGURE the MEDIA Wuld Label the Robin Hood of Roxbury.
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My Practice Never Lost Money. It Just Didn’t Make Much, Barely Anything in Fact, And I Hustled A Lot with A Tiny Team. Our All-Female Office Consized of Someone at the Front Desk Who Handled the Appeabics, A Medical Assistant Who Helped Me with Patients, and A Billing Specialist Who’s File.
I was initially abill my calendar because i accommodated insurance at Disadvantageous Rates, at the Bottom of the Beverly Hills Market. One Could Argue My AcquiesCence, Due to A Lack of Clout, set The Bottom of the Local Market. These Were Prices that More Establized Doctors, Those Who’s Practices Were Teaming with The Preferred Sort of Patients (Which Is To Say, Cash Paying), Wound Flatly Turn Turn
My Chief Gambit in Establishing My Practice in this Ultracompetitive Realm Was A Willingness to Work on the Weekends, at Least for the Firmst Couple of Years. I didn’t perform Procedures then; The Surgicenter and Used Was Closed. But My Office Was Open on Saturdays and Sundays. We Took Tuesdays Off Intead.
On the Weekends, It Was Just A Physician’s Assistant, A Front Desk Girl, and Me. My Regular Staff Was with Me on Saturdays. On Sundays and Relied on a rotating array of part-tiMers from ofeer practices to Fill in. While I Didn’t Love Working Six Days A Week and Figured It Wuldn’T be Forever. I HAD PERSPECTIVE. IT WASN’T as Exausting as Medical School and Residency, With Those Crazy AROUND-The-CLOCK HOURS. Not by a long shot. I could tound it out.
The UnriVALED WEEKEND APPOINTMENT AVAILBILITIES, ALONG with MY, SHALL WE SAY, Flexibility with Insurers, Had The Effect of Production A Patient Population Notable for It Diversity. By the I MEAN I SAW FAR more MIDDLE-CLASS AND EVEN WORKING-CLASS INDIVIDUALS (I REALLY SHOULD JUST SAY “WOMEN,” SINCE MY Clients Were More. I Lured this Demographic in Preponderance, Turning Myseldf Into A Shameless Bargain-Basement Option that Neverthaless Still Featred Comforting Prestige Plumage. I was a lovemann’s of the scalpel, simply because i was was AVAILABLE to see them, in the prokactical terms. Their Insurance Plans Wuld Allow The Visits, and Sathoday or Sunday APPOINTments Meant Suri Wowst Time Off and Be Subject to the Mercy of the Superiors, FROM Hourly Insthead of Salaried – Tat Didn’s Offer Any Inclusive Annual Paid Time Off. These Folks Came from Long Distans, as Far As Simi Valley to the North, the Inland Empire to the East, and Orange County to the South, which meant that a visit to my. Commitment.
Perhaps Not Everi Young Plastic Surgeon Seeks to Super-SubsPecialize, But Everyone I Knew DID, AND I WAS NOT IMMUNE. There Was Money to be Made by Become The GO-TO OF A PARTICULAR PROBLEM AND RECOGNITION TO BE RECORIved From Colleagues for Being ITS AGREED-PPON AUTHORITY.
I Homeed In On Teolas and Nipples As My Areas of Expertise. There were reasons for this. I LIKED HOW THESE WERE by Nature More Intimate Procedures, The Work Seen by Far Fewer People (Mothers, Sisters, Close Friends; MOSTLY, OF COURSE, SEXUAL PARTNERS). And’s and who the Importance of the Visual Outcome Is Obvioses – Achieving Undetable Incisions Via ADEPT SUTURING – The PTITUDYT The Practioner’s Craft Dermines of the Eiterates of the Apactyn. Advance: Loss, or not, of Feeling. Sensation, A Keen Alertness to ITS Fragality and Its Complexity, is of Crucial Importance. It Adds Another Dimination to What’s at Play in the Operation Room. Outside of vaginoplasty, There’s No Procedure Where Cognizance of Touch Response Is As Integral to Surgical Success.
I’ve Got Plenty of Regretts. Never Having The CHANCE TO TRULY MASTER THIS SPACE IS ONE OF THEM. I Know It May Sound ODD, But It Was Shaping Up to Be My Forte. In my own shop, as i stried to get it going, i didn’t have the luxury to focus on just one Thing. I Played All The Hits: Tummy Tucks, Breast Lifts, Butt Implants, Nose Jobs. (Septorhinoplasty, COVEDED BY INSRERERS WHO SKEPTICAL ABOUT CLAIMS OF DEVATED SEPTUMS Compreehensive “Mommy Makeover” Packages that Were Great Deals – For the Patients, if Not for My Bottom Line.
Still, The Benefit of the Way My Practice Was Set Up Was that I Found MySelf, for a Plastic Surgeon Based In Beverly Hills, Working on a Wide Ethnic Array of Body Types. The Nipple and Remeola Work Wuld, Indeed, Cycle Through With All The Rest. Those Procedures Are Quick and Simple, SO I GOT to DO A LOT OF THEM. And WHEN IT MOVES TO PROcedures, There’s An Arc Connecting Experience and Excellence.
The Two Most Common Surgeries in this Genre Are Receptions Reductions and Inverted Nipple Corrections. Rarely Do Women Want Larger Teolas – It’s Always “I Hate These Piperonis.” Sometimes It’s About Making One Tereola or Nipple Look Like The Other, Reconfiguring the Shape Via Skin Excision. Althugh if the Conclusion is Reacted that One Needs Work, Typically The Patient’s Attitude Becomes, Who Not Other While We’re at, and Make Them Both. (I can’t fault that attitude.)
Inverted Nipples Are Common and Can Be Agonizing, Especialy Hen Further Invert Upon Contraction. Those afflicted are enormously self-conscious. Thatre’s the reverse extreme: Nipple Reduction – Long, Protruding, Often Sagging Nippples that Are The Consequence of Breastfeeding. They be be painful if they’re not flatten.
The Ladies in the Office (We Called Each Other “Lady”; It Just Became A Thing) Once Gave Me A Cake From One of Those Erotic Custom Dessert Shops Kept Busy by Bachelorette PARTES PARTES PARTES. It Featured a Nicely Shaped Pair of Breasts and Two Long Lit Candles Jutting from Their Centers. “Happy Birthday, Dairy Queen!” The Cursive Icing Read. I felt the love.
They Were All Funny and Fun Like That. We Were Funny and Fun Together, and I Miss Them. Among My Anxieties About Opening My Own Business Was Being A Boss: The Hiring and Firing and Managing, with All The AttDant Interpersonal Hard-Rasedness Its. I’d Never Done It Before. I’d Forever Been the Student, The Junior, The Protégé. Maybe i just lucked out, but the ladies i ended up with all had their shit togother while, as a bonus, being a relable joy.
Thatn again, I did the take the advice of a metonor who had his own beverly Hills Practice: Assess Prospective Staff at the Interview Stage on Vibe. He explained that to him a résumé, while an indiciation of base qualification, was nonetheless a “mere hypothesis” that could only only. What Matter Was In-Person Rapport. “You Need to ASK YOURSELF,” HE TOLD ME, “’DO I WANT TO SUBJECT MYSELF TO THIS INDIVIDUAL IN THE BREAK ROOM, at the Holiday Party?’ ‘DO I WANT TO SUBJECT Other Staffers to this individual? ‘ IT’s Quality of Life. Atmospherics Correlate to Morale. ”
Sonya, My Front Desk HenchWoman, Took No Prisoners in Enzuring that Patients Were Kept in Line, And by This, I Mean Not Flacking on Appointments. Her Bubbly Personality and Valley Girl Upspeak Combated Excusses Both Legitimate and Not with Lethal Cheer. Durying Confirmation Calls, She Wuld Remind Them of Our Steep Penalty Fees for Cancellations with Twenty-Four Hours or Showing Up More Than Ten Minutes Late. HER ENTIRE IMMEDIATIATE filin Family – Mother, Father, Three Elder Sisters, and One Elder Brother – Were Home Health Aids. The Baby Girl Had Gone Rogue After Firmst Doing the Same.
“I Need More Action,” She Told Me When We Met, About Wanting To Work in An Office. Sonya Was Twenty-Three Years Old. I would Later Learn That When (Not If) She Got Married, It Wound Most Definitely Be in a Monique Lhuillier Gown – Lhuillier Being Filipina Community in Such A Shining Light, Even If She’s “Only Half, From Her Mama.” Sonya Bore A Faint Resemblation to Hudgens. I Told Her This Once, Offhand, and She Levitated Near the Celing. So i kept on doing it at intervals.
WHERE Sonya Was A Classic Extrovert, Happiest Who Gabbing, Feeding on Energy, My Medical Assistant, Narine, EffervesCed on a Much Quieter and More Intmatate Register. . This was har First Gig Out of School. Her Job Was to Be My Right Hand, and She Participated in All My Examinations. Narine’s Soft Presence Affected The Delicate Alchemy in the Room As Secrets Were Shared, Dreams and Fears Aired. Vulnerable Patients Felt A Kindred Spirit.
I I I I Kick Out of the Daily InterPlay Between the Demonstratic Sonya and the More Subdored Narine, Who Grew Up in Glendale and Whose Racher Gloomy Bloomy. PASSIONATION ADVOCacy for Genocide Recognition-She Voluntered for An Organization Seeking to Raise Its Awareness in the Us-and Interest in the Life and Ideas of The Pathologist and Physician Kevorkian. Sonya was a huge fan of the Kardashian Women. They Reminded Her, In The Best Possible Ways, Of Her Female-Dominated Family, In Their Loudness an D Vulgarity and ECSTATIC INTERGERGENERATIONAL BONDING OVER GLAMOUR AND SHEER, CLEAR, BICKING LOVE FOR EACH OF Other. She presued that Narine, a fellow armenian, would be antioner disciple.
Yet Narine, A LOVELY, PETITE TOOTHPICK WITH A WEDNESDAY ADDAMS THING GOING ON IN HER POSTURE AND PALE-DERMIS-TO-DARK-HAIR CONTRAST Acknowledge they’d used their platform for good in SpotLighting the Genocide. She wasn’t a hater, per se, But she wasn’t enamored either, and she didn’t like to see her “People” reduced to some “clucking swirl of extensions” in pop.
The Big Lecture and Received from My Mom – A Career Administratrate Manager – Before and Opened the Practice Was On “Cultivating A Positive Office Culture.” She deservedly felt she was an expert on this. Her Main Insight, Beyond Banalities Involving Setting Boundaries and Remaining At the Texture and Nuance of Morale, Was “To Be Proctive Without Statement.” This Meant Bringing in a Masseuse or A Mani/Pedicurist or Sugarfish for Sushi or Sprinkles for Cupcakes, But Always Unannounced and Never on the Regular.
WHEN I THINK About TESE Times at the Practice, That Sweet Spot After and Worked Through the Initial Anxious Hustle of Getting It Alling And The Dayting Imploded, I Reterthon. Last Patient Had Been Sent Away, WHEN WE Were Each Handling Our Respect Paperwork. IT WAS A Narrow Stretch, Maybe Fifteen Minutes Before Sonya Had to Catch Her Bus Home. She have this radio by her desk, always tuned low to the top 40 on kiis. One Day Early on We Were Debating The Taylor Swift and Katy Perry Songs that Were Mist Likely to Age Into Eternal Radio Classics, The New Oldies. “From Kiis to KOST,” I SAID, REFERENCING THE LOCAL ADULT CONTEMPORARY PROGRAMming Option. She loked lost. I Turned the Dial to Kost and Cranked the Volume. AT THAT VERY Moment, Seal Was Crooning “Kiss from A Rose.” I Intoned, “This is WHERE YOU CAN FIND YOUR FAVORITE POP WHEN IS NO Longer Popular.”
HER RESPONSE: “I TONOUGHT THAT WAS YOUTUBE.”
In my office, the close ofcontless afternoons Turned Into goofy if heartfelt ad hoc kost sing-alngs, Part Ironic Girlie Hormone Indulgence (“DON’T KNOW MUCH,” “AFRICA”). My Staff Knew Their Whitney and Stevie and Madonna. IT WAS GLORIUS, GENUINE CHEESE LIKE The PEREER CETERA AND SQUEZE HITS THAT WERE The ACQUID TASTES. Yet Once The Ladies Opened Themselves to Adult Contemporary, WHICH IS TO SAY RECENT CULTUral History, they Were All In.
I Swear This Was Not Forced Frivolity. After the first few Times, I wasn’t the only one turning on and turning up kost. It Became a Shared Habit. Now IF this all reads like a cliché Teen Sleepover of Adult Women Backdating Themselves Several Decades – or A MOVIE MONTAGE OF THAT SLEEPOVER – I WULDNN’T ARGUE. We Also Discussed Myriad Boy Problems in Depth and at Length, Along with The Latest Twists On The Bachelor, The Bacheloretteand Bachelor in Paradise. Narine would Pantomime Vanessa Carlton’s Piano Playing in the Video for “A Thousand Miles.” Sonya would Mimic the Emphatic Hand-and-Arm gesturing of Boyz II Men Performing “I’ll Make Love To You.” They would join me in a Full-Throated Rendition, Once they Familiarized Themselves with The Lyrics, of Wilson Phillips’s “Hold On.”
So yeah, we were c with-Hardcore. The Sporadically Game, ofThen Relctant Fourth-Wheel Participant in All of this Was Jenny, My Billing Specialist. She was good for the aaron neville Half of a “don’t know much” duet. Jenny Arrived at my Practice Direct from Seattle, Whore She’d Earlier Done the Same Work for, In Succession, A Gastroenteologist, Neurologist, and Urologist. Originally from a small Town a Couple of Hours East of that City, She’d Chosen to Move After Breaking Up with Her University Pursue Her Songwriting Dream. “IT WAS ONE OF TOSE NOW-NOW-NEVER THINGS,” she’d told me a few months into our time.
Unlike The Three of Us, She Wasn’s Pursuing A Career in Health Care. I ALMOST PASSED ON HIRING HER for this Reason, Except Her References Had Such Effusive Words of Praise About Her Work Ethic and Her Meticulousness. And Unlike the Three of Us, She Wasn’t A Local. A lifetime of having to endure Assorted Flavors of Dumb Commentary About La From Nonresidents-WHICH REACHED ITS Ill-Informed, Condescending Apex Durating My Songon ALONGN me, unfairly or not, against transplants.
To Her Credit, Jenny Was Very Good In, and Very Serious about, Her Self-style “Day Job.” She was a True Professional. Still, i was forever on guard around her, antennae attired to interpret perceived disdain, whather from the subtle reproach inherent in the severity mystery of her alien-CROP-CIRCLE -ish Abstract Arm Tattoo. “Sorry,” she once said, Batting Away An Inquiry Into Inking, “It’s A Private Thing.”
SO I WAS A LITTLE EXTRACED WHEN JENNY, OUR VERY OWN Resident Musician, Boasting Next-Level Taste Decide to Viciously Warble a Drenched-in-Sarcasm “Kiss Me”-After All, I Remain A Dyed-in-The-Well She’s all that fan. By the same measure, i’d be relieved on days whohn sincerity, that Better Angel of Our Nature, Won Out and She’d Lean Into An Emphatic “You’re Still The One” or, For that Matter, For that Matter, For that Matter.
Jenny, Through No Fault of Her Own, Brough Out My Insecurities. She Was One of Those Smart, Well-Meaning Women of a Certain Progressive-Minded Bent Who’d Built and Sounga to Inhabit a Complete Moral Landscape of Authentic Political, Social, and Aesthetic Choices. Some Were Overt, Other Less SO. The Consensus Editss Were Clear WHEN IT CAME TO CULTURAL CONSUMPTION. Among Others: Wear Minimal or, Better Yet, No Makeup; Embrace Challenging Art and Entertainment, Ideally Created by Dierse Voices; Eat Organic and Sustainable; shop local; Support Small Businesses; Seek Out The Homemade and the Handcraft Wherever Possible.
HER LIFESTYLE AMUCTED TO A REBUKE OF MY OWN LAZINESS. I Recyled and Was Prone to Pangs of Half-Jewish Guilt. That was was about it. Perhaps this was jenny’s point: be the Change You Wish to See in the World, La-Di-Da. But i registered it all as an irritating affront.
So, because i’m a bad person, I have to admit enjoying How Oblivious The Other Ladies Were, Time and Again, to Jenny’s with-Iit White-Girl Values. Exhbit A: That Jenny’s Decision to Live at the Less-Hentrified Southern Edge of Hipster Echo Park Was Met by a Baffled and Bemused Sonya with, “”WHY would you Choose to LIVE IN SUPER-DAngeRous Filipinotown WHEN YOU COURT AFFORDD TO LIVE IN A PERFERLY Nice part of the Valley? ” Exhibit B: That Jenny’s Elated Discovery of Delicious Local Armenian Chicken Chain Zankou – Prompting Rare Outright Effusion: “I Can’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THAT GARLIC SAUCE! – WAS PUNCTUED IN THE MOST Wah-Wah of Terms by Narine with, “My Family Hasn’t Gone Since and Was A Kid, Who The Owner Kildled His Mother and Sister and Ten Himseld. My Paarents’ Friends Knew. Cancer Was Somehow to blame.
Depending on How You Look at It It, I was Was Mither Blessed or Cursed to Have Jenny’s Point of View, Her Progressivism (Millennnnnial Socialist, Forged Byst) CAME NEXT. I Couldn’t Have Gotten Myself Into The Same Trouble i did if Things Hadn’s Been What What They Were. Now, i’m not trying to spread blame, Far from it. I take full responsability; i All On Me. I’M MERELY PROVIDING CONTEXT FOR MY ACTIONS, IN THE INTEREST OF CLARITY.
There Was One More Way Jenny Was Unlike The Three of Us. IT WAS PLAIN WHEN She FIRST BEGAN WORKING AT AFFICE THAT She Thought My Patients Were Somehow Fundaly Suspect for Undergoing Plastic Surgery. We Never Discussed It. She Never Said Anything. I just KNEW.
But by that same measure, it was plain that within months, Even Weeks, Her Outlook Had Changed. Jenny Saw and Overheard the Results. And by “results” and don’t only mean fit. I’M Talking Psychological: The Tears of Happiness, The Smiles. Again, We Never Discussed It. She Never Said Anything. I just knew. She Became a Believer.
Another Believer, A Longtime Member of the Converged, Set My DownFall in Motion. She didn’t Realize, Probably Still Doesn’t Realize, That Her Act of Good Faith Had Such Ramifications. To repeat, this isn’t about blame. IT’s Context.
Irena was a beverly Hills Mother in her Late Forties with Three Children. She was a Russian immigrant, a Stunning Trophy Wife Unmarred by Age, Married to An American Businessman: The Full Cliché. She’d Started Visiting Another Golden Triangle Plastic Surgeon Who Was Still Single Two Decades Earlier and Invested in the Works. Over The Years Her Husband Had FinANCED TUNE-UPS, INCLUDING MOMMY MAKEOVers. How She Paid for the Early Procedures Was Vague. She’d Said, in Passing, She’d Been A Model. I Suspected, Based on Experience and Intuition, She’d Been An Escort, Meeting Her Mr. Right in a Pretty Woman–Esque scenario. At the most respectable, IT was a millionaire-matchmaker situation.
Irena broght in her early-twenties mexican HouseKeper, Gabrieila, for a consultation. Gifted Procedures Weren’t Out of the Ordinary Among Relatives. OCCASIONALY FINANCING EVEN OCCURRED AMONG FRIENDS. However, This Was The First i’d ExperienCed Stemming from An Ongoing Business Relationship. The Ethics Made Me Queasy. Yet i was set at ease by the palapable benevolence involved. (Of Course, Let’s Be Real About the Bounds of the Bigheartedness: It’s Not Like She and Her Husband Sprang for Gabriela to See Her Own Surgeon; The Discount Doctor Wuld.))
Gabriela Was A Strong Candidate for Chin and Jaw Augmentations to Correct a Substantally Recessive Profile. “I have the same Thing but in reverse; Mine was overly jutting,” Irena said, her Russian accent reduced to a trace by time Sisterhood. The Combined Procedure Involved A Chin Implant As Well As a Titanium Platate for the Repositiored Jawline.
I was struck by the tender rapport Between the Housewife and the Housekeper. Gabriela’s English Was Basic and Irena’s Spanish Was Nonexistant. However, Their Affinity Was Visible in the Shortthand of Gesture and Giggle that’d been Established, I imaginer, over years Insulated in Irena’s Home.
There Was Something Bittersweet About their Dynamic. I was happy Tese Russian and mexican Immigrants Born A Generation Apart Had Establized A Friendship Across Class and Race Divides. I was Also Sadded Their Bond Was, to My Mind, Doomed By Their Original Sin: Transgressing their vast employer-employe duality. THEN AGAIN, WHO WAS I TO STAND IN JUDGMENT OF PEOPLE SEEKING MUTUAL SLACE FROM The ISACLATION OF ADULTHOOD, HOWEVER HOPESS AND MONEY PoISONED? Wasn’t i doing the Same Thing by Socialization with My Staff – Presuming to be on Their Level?
WHEN LATER I HAD GABRIILA AWAY FROM IRENA, I Asked Her If She Really Wanted This. She Was, in My Professional Estimation, An OtherWise Cute Girl with One Unfortunate Malposition. Gabrieila Said, In Spanish, “Want this? I’ve DREAMED OF THIS MY WHOLE LIFE! I Just Didn’t Know It Was A Possibility. ” WaterWorks commenced.
The Surgery Was A Success. On the day of the Procedures, I Met Gabriela’s Kind and Tentative Mother, Who Accompanted Her to the Surgicenter Along with Irena. The Recessive Chin and Jawli ne must have been pattern traits.
Irena Granted Her Several Weeks Off to Recover. Gabriela’s New Facial Profile Was in Ideal Balance. She was thrilled with the outcome. “IT’s BETTER THAN I COURCK printed out for me. ” She was speaking of the Side-by-Side Image Renderings i’d Presented to Her On My Desktop Computer at Our Initial Meeting.
All Was Well – Another Triumph. THEN, FIVE MONHS After the Surgery, Gabriela Was Back in My Office, This Time With Her Identical Twin Sister, Alejandra. You can gues whore this is going.
My Heart Sank: A DEFINITE FUCKUP ON The MOST ELEMENTARY PATient History Leading to What Wahld’ve Been A Foreseen Turn of Events. I Later Learned, in a Fit of After-action recrimination, we’d marked that she have two sisters and bots wre older. Due to a language Impassse or unrecdown or gross negligence, we hadn’t bored down to the nuance that one of them was was a mere Three Minutes Older.
If i’d been aware, i would’ve warned gabrieila. She was pleaving from the story she’d shared with her twin, one of the communal pain. Alejandra, Who Worked As a Stock Girl In One of the Wholesale Shops in Downtown La’s Flower Market, Wound Now Bear It Alone. Maybe Gabriel Wuld’ve Gone Through with The Operation Anyway, Taking Advantage of the Opportunity Her Benefactor Had Offer and Her Alone – Despite What’est Who Knows? IT WAS A FABLE WORHY OF AESOP.
No Matter. Here the Twins Were, Seated Across from Me, by My Hand No Longer Identical. They didn’t need to teell me of the new emotional distance Between atm, but they did. They didn’t need to teell me of the new raw tension Between atm, but they did. They didn’t need to teell me of the guilt and jealoousy and betrayal, but they did. Narine, As Always, Had the Tissue Box at the Ready. They Made Use of It.
HERE WEER The FACES. Alejandra, Like Gabriela, Had A Green Card, and Insurance Under Medi-Cal. Like Gabriela, She Was A Strong Candidate for Chin and Jaw Augmentations. The Orthognathic Element (Jaw Work) Could Be Covered by Her Plan, Since and Wuld Be City Medical Necessity on Account of TMJ, Headache, Dry Mouth, An Lip -Dida. The challenge wound be arguing that the Genioplasty Procedure (for the Chin) was in anything buting but cosmetic.
“I Just Want To Look Like My Sister,” Alejandra Told Me, In Spanism, Tears Streaming. She and Gabriela Didn’t Need Me to Condescend to Them by Expressing The Truth: That I Truly, Deeply, Deeply, crushingly Understood this exact Impulse. So i didn’t. Institute Sentiment OverwhelMed Me and I Told Them – this is where it all all wnt wrong, the Point of No Return – “We’ll Find a Way to Make It Work.”
Alejandra’s Surgery, Too, Was A Success. Sheehow was able to take the Necessary time off from work to recover and still hold on to her job. And I Ended Up Coding Her Genioplasty As Medically Necessary Due to the Worsening Afterffect of An Inconsequential Accident She’s Way to Her Bus Stop after Work.
This Worsering Was A Lie, The First of Many, But Not the Biggest Whoper, not by a Long Shot. AT LEAST IN THIS CASE THERE WAS AN IDERLING TRUTH. The Sidewalk Spill ITSELF WASN’T TOTAL FICTION.
I Felt a Pinprick of Sin for Conjurying the Bogus Aftereffect: The Special Fact Itself (Having to With An Airway Defect), The Ease With Wich I’D DONE IT. How Much Worse Did I Feel Than I DID WHEN ALLEGING A DisPUTABLE HEADACHE or CASE OF DRY Mouth? Not Much. By Comparison, The Pleasure I Found Myself Taking in Doing What, All Things Considred, Was A Minuscule Bad Thing in Service IT WAS IMMENSE.
Excerpted from In pursuit of beauty (Blackstone Publishing). Copyright 2025 by Gary Baum.