TWO WEEKS LATER, and after a ton of research on the topic, I was sitting in the waiting room of Miami’s best plastic surgeon, looking at before-and-after photos. It was amazing the changes a doctor could make, and I was looking forward to changing myself for the better.
The waiting room was empty. The sounds of the large, saltwater fish tank filled the space. My eyes lingered on the tropical coral reef and the exotic fish that moved languidly through the water. Oh, to be a fish and glide carelessly through life.
The door opened, taking my attention away from the tank, and a slim brunette walked in and went to the counter. She stood with her back to me—her curvy figure accentuated by the tight pants and stylish shirt she was wearing.
Girls like her were the reason I was there in the first place. She was perfect, and I wanted that kind of perfection. I had dreams of slimmer hips and a gap between my thighs. I envisioned a flatter stomach and perky breasts. Running my fingers down my face, I thought how much smaller my nose could be and how much brighter my eyes might look once I’d had a face-lift. I wanted the works.
“Mrs. Aldridge, the doctor will see you now,” the nurse said, waking me from my daydream.
Collecting my expensive purse, I stood on shaking knees and followed the nurse to the back. She was my age. An auburn ponytail bounced with her step, occasionally showing off her tiny diamond earrings. Her teal scrubs were cute and baggy, but still showed off her short stature and small frame.
She opened a door for me, and held it open, allowing me to enter before her. The room was just like any other room at the doctor’s office. Pastel-green covered the walls, and the sterile smells of a germ-free environment tickled my nose. Along the walls were posters of the female and male body. Colorful pictures depicted muscles in red and bone in white. Examples of how changes could easily be made showed in step-by-step processes made my skin crawl.
Reaching under the cabinet, the nurse pulled out a white, paper gown and handed it to me. “You can leave on your panties.”
The nurse looked up me sympathetically as my shaky fingers brushed hers, and I took the gown from her hands. She gave me her best ‘don’t worry’ look and patted my arm.
“Don’t worry, honey,” she said. “Dr. Blake is the best. He’s done wonders for every one of his patients. Whatever it is, I’m confident he’ll fix it.” She gave me an encouraging smile and turned to leave me in the room alone.
Guilt and nerves rolled in my stomach, and I was worried I might lose my breakfast. I hadn’t exactly lied about my reasoning for my appointment with the plastic surgeon, but I’d spent the last two weeks stalking him and I knew his rules.
Reconstructive only.
I shivered as I thought about the horror stories and images I could never un-see. Picture after picture of all the botched plastic surgeries some women had endured. I refused to let some fresh-out-of-school doctor use me as his first Frankenstein project.
I didn’t have many friends, close or acquaintances, but I knew a few of the women at the country club Michael and I attended flaunted their plastic surgeries like they did a new pair of Manolos. I’d seen those women before and after and I had to admit, they were better afterward.
As embarrassed as I was, I worked up the nerve to strike up a conversation with Molly Douglas and gushed over her pretty, pink lipstick and how fabulous it looked on her. That was all the encouragement she needed to tell me all about the plastic surgeon who did a “little” work on her lips.
Dr. Marcus Stein was apparently the surgeon every Miami housewife was turning to when they needed a little pick-me-up. I listened carefully as she explained her experience and when another woman joined and then another, I realized how much I missed conversation with other people.
When two other women joined us thirty minutes later, I took it as more than a coincidence and counted my blessings when she introduced herself as the one and only Mrs. Stein. The other women praised her husband’s work and giggled like teenage girls when they asked what it was like to have those hands on her every night.
As the conversation grew and the mimosas filled everyone’s system, the conversation turned to Dr. Stein’s partner, Dr. Roman Blake. I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol talking, but Mrs. Stein was all too willing to admit that as good as her husband was, the one and only Dr. Blake was better.
I listened intently, hanging on to her every word of the infamous Roman Blake before excusing myself to run home and Google him. The whole drive home I wondered why, if Dr. Blake was so much better, they hadn’t gotten him to do their surgeries. Maybe if I had stayed just a little longer, I would have found out and I wouldn’t have set my hopes so high on the one and only Dr. Roman Blake.
Swallowing hard, I set my purse on the chair to my side and slowly began to undress. The gown was gaping in the back, letting cool air skim my back and ass. Tucking it around me, I carefully sat on the paper-protected bed in a way that would keep me covered. Wiggling my ass until I felt a semblance of comfort, I sat and swung my legs from the bed like a child as I waited for the doctor to come in.
I heard the rattle of the clipboard on the back of the door, and then there was a soft knock before the door slowly opened. As I held my breath, the ball of nerves in my stomach exploded.
I wasn’t sure what I expected. When I thought of a top plastic surgeon, I pictured an older man with lots of experience and knowledge. A man that had lived a long life and had the wrinkles to show it.
That was not who walked into the room. No. This man wasn’t much older than I was, and he was tall and big. Not in the way that he’d had too many cheeseburgers and fries over the last few years, but so muscled that his scrubs, which should have hung loosely from his frame, rubbed his thick thighs like they were a second skin. He adjusted the long, white coat he was wearing and shut the door behind him. The room instantly felt ten times smaller when he fully entered.
“Mrs. Aldridge, how are you?”
Dear God in heaven, the man was British. My thigh muscles clenched with the sweet tilt of each of his words. His voice was deep and musical. I felt each clipped word in places that hadn’t had feeling in over a year.
As he flipped up a page on the clipboard and looked over my file, his sleeves were pushed up and I couldn’t help but notice how thick his forearms were. Solid. Tan. Perfection. His long fingers worked a black pen as he made notes on my file. He lacked a wedding band. Not that I usually checked for things like that, but I made a mental note that he wasn’t married.
“I’m…” I finally managed to wedge out, but I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Fine was what I normally would’ve said, but when I hesitated, he looked away from his note taking and waited for me to respond.
His eyes clashed with mine, and I was instantly reminded of a shot glass full of whiskey. The caramel brown of his eyes glittered under the florescent lights above us.
A tiny smile tilted his full lips and plunged a sweet dimple into his cheek. The air was literally sucked from my lungs, and I felt the heat of a few glasses of whiskey on my cheeks.
“I’m actually really nervous,” I confessed honestly. Honesty would be the death of me one day.
He laughed and tucked away the clipboard. “I assure you that’s quite normal. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a patient who wasn’t nervous at some point during this whole experience. A lot of my patients have a hard time wrapping their mind around the fact that everything will change for them.”
I knew I had to tell him now, but fear choked me and I couldn’t breathe, let alone explain to him I wasn’t like most of his patients. I desperately didn’t want him to turn me away. Reject me. I wanted this more than I wanted anything in my entire life.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, snapping me from my inner fears. “I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Dr. Blake, but you can call me Dr. Roman if you’d like. My father is Dr. Blake as far as I’m concerned.” He smiled innocently.
He reached out his hand for mine, and a few seconds passed before I realized he wanted to shake my hand. My arm felt like fifty pound weights were attached to it as I lifted it and placed my hand in his large, warm one. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Aldridge.”
And then, bless my poor heart, he smiled down at me, both dimples popping. I momentarily forgot why I was there, who I was, and who he was. Time froze for a few seconds and in that moment, something totally amazing happened. I got turned on. Just like that. No touching or sweet whispers. No sexual promises. Just a smile that almost shattered my reason for being there and an accent I’d swim the Atlantic Ocean to feel spoken against my skin.
I gave him the limpest handshake imaginable and then embarrassed, I pulled my hand from his and shifted on the table, suddenly realizing I was wearing a thin paper gown and nothing else but my panties.
“You too,” I croaked.
Folding his large frame, he took a seat in the rolling chair across from me and then used his strong legs to pull himself toward me. I knew what was coming. I knew he was going to ask me the dreaded question. The urge to scream and run from the room, arms flailing, was almost tempting.
“So, tell me your story, Ms. Aldridge. How can I help you?” His eyes dropped briefly to my chart again. “Your file says you wanted to talk to me in person about your condition…” His sentence faded as he waited for me to fill in the blanks.
I watched patience settle into the curves of his face, making me want to pour my heart out to him.
My condition… and there it was. I knew the question was going to be asked. I expected it. My answer was on the tip of my tongue, yet I couldn’t let the words loose.
After two hours of intense research on Miami’s number-one reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Roman Blake, my dreams felt crushed. I knew, now, why the women from the country club hadn’t used him to work on them.
As I read article after article on Dr. Blake, my despair grew as they all said the same thing. Roman Blake had started out as a plastic surgeon—his reasoning a personal choice he’d always kept to himself. However, his first year at a private practice, he suddenly changed his field from plastics to reconstruction only.
There were speculations and rumors for his decision, but without any confirmation from Roman Blake himself, that was all it was. From then on, he had refused any and all plastic surgery patients, leaving that to his business partner, Stein.
I didn’t know why I thought I would be the one to change his mind after all this time, but that didn’t seem to matter because here I was.
I should be feeling a good amount of confidence over my decision. I had talked myself through the whole appointment with the understanding that no matter how much it cost, or under what terms he requested, I was going to have Dr. Blake as my surgeon.
I wanted to hold my head up high, sit straighter, and tell him exactly what I wanted… even if confessing what I wanted right now in this moment wasn’t a new body, but to feel alive in my old one.
Instead, I lowered my head with embarrassment filling my cheeks, picturing him as the older man I had envisioned before I entered the office.
“I want everything done,” I stated, in a matter-of-fact tone. Apparently, I was going to feign ignorance.
He frowned and shifted in his chair. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Aldridge, I don’t think I understand. What is it you’re asking me to do?”
I squirmed under his gaze. “Cosmetic surgery.”
Something shifted, and gone was his patience and sensitivity for my “condition”. His jaw hardened, making a vein in his neck tick and his eyes become cold.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Aldridge, but I don’t do cosmetic surgery. That’s Dr. Stein’s area. I’m strictly reconstructive, but I think you knew that, considering you pretended to have a condition that required reconstructive surgery in order to see me.”
I flushed under his accusation. “Dr. Blake, please let me explain.”
“I’m sorry,” he said firmly, cutting me off, “but you’ve wasted not only your time, Ms. Aldridge, but mine, as well.”
“Please,” I begged, grabbing his forearm. It was warm and hard under my hand. The muscles shifted beneath my fingers, relaying the raw strength in his arm. “Please let me explain.”
“You have five minutes, Ms. Aldridge, but you should know I have no intention of changing my mind.”
I took a deep breath and tried not to do the one thing I wanted to do in that moment. Throw up.
“I’m sorry that I deceived my way into a meeting with you, but I didn’t know what else to do. I knew you wouldn’t see me if I was upfront and honest about what I wanted.”
He surprised me by snapping, “Damn right.”
“I know I’m not like your other patients, Dr. Roman.”
“Real,” he said, confusing me.
“I’m sorry?”
“My real patients. You know, people with real issues? The ones born with deformities or who were in terrible accidents that left them scarred and changed forever,” he corrected. “Tell me, Ms. Aldridge, why did you come to me, knowing Dr. Stein would have been more than willing to do whatever you wanted done?”
“I wanted the best.”
“Dr. Stein is good at what he does.”
“But he’s not the best. You are, and I wanted the best.”
He eyed me. “Please don’t mistake my curiosity for anything more than that, but what exactly does everything consist of to you, Mrs. Aldridge?” he asked.
I didn’t hesitate as I answered truthfully, giving him a tiny glimpse at my vulnerability. “Any and everything that will make me beautiful.”
Another deep, dark confession and the minute the words left my mouth, I felt like an idiot, but it was the truth. Secretly, I wondered if maybe they leaked some kind of truth serum through the air vents to get the patients to bare it all. I wondered what Dr. Roman would think if I told him I wanted things sucked, tucked, lifted, and reshaped. I wanted to be the young sex goddess my husband was probably screwing right at that moment.
When he didn’t respond, I brought him into focus. My cheeks heated when I realized Dr. Roman was looking at me as if I’d suddenly grown several heads, and the embarrassment burned hotter on my cheeks. This had to work. I needed to save whatever was left of my marriage. I had nowhere to go and no one to turn to, but I did have Michael’s money, and I’d use it to save us if I had to.
“I’m confused,” he uttered. “You want me to make you beautiful?”
I knew it sounded totally ridiculous, and I was sure he thought I was some freak addicted to medical procedures or something. There were a lot of women out there with money and nothing better to spend it on then a new nose and a few cheek implants. I’d seen the consequence of a plastic surgery addiction, but I wasn’t doing this just because. I wanted to look good, not overworked and unnatural.
“Yes. I want to be beautiful.”
Rolling away from me, yet keeping his whiskey-colored eyes locked on mine, he rested his forearms on his thighs, drawing my attention to this thick legs and crotch. Quickly, I averted my eyes.
Then he did two things that I hadn’t experienced since I was a whole hell of a lot younger. His eyes slowly dragged down my body and then back up, making me blush under his inspection. I wanted to cover myself, but oddly enough, I didn’t feel ashamed the way Michael made me feel when he looked at me. Maybe it was because Dr. Roman didn’t have that look of disgust in his eyes.
“Who told you that you weren’t beautiful?”
His question caught me off guard, and I sat there, confused and speechless. “What?”
He sat back in his chair. “Obviously, someone made you feel as if you needed to change yourself.”
Suddenly, I was too ashamed to admit that I was doing this for a man who may or may not love me, and who was sleeping with every twenty-year-old he could get his hands on.
“Then why would you go through all of this effort? I’m trying to understand why an already-attractive woman would want to undergo extensive plastic surgery when there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her other than an unhealthy self-image.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Unless someone, someone important to her, made her feel and think otherwise.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but instead, I snapped it shut.
My shoulders stiffened when the memories of all the magazine articles about Michael sleeping with a different A-lister every month bombarded me, which of course, brought on the memory of the blonde he had facedown on my side of the bed.
The memories, too, of his unimpressed eyes the few times I’d tried to dress sexy for him—the way they skimmed my body in horror once he realized I was trying to turn him on. My dreams of one day having a baby with Michael had died then and never returned.
“It’s just…” I prepared myself to explain, but I lost the nerve. Whatever had been in the air before had faded and with it, so did another confession. “I need this.”
He watched me. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to find and maybe he didn’t either, because he sighed and stood. Holding my breath, I prayed and hoped I’d made him understand enough to change his mind.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Aldridge, but you don’t need anything. A child with a cleft lip who has trouble eating needs this. A woman whose face was destroyed in a car accident and can no longer get a job needs this. You, on the other hand, are perfectly healthy and fine just the way you are,” he said, and with those words, he took the last bit of hope I had with him. “Insecurities are something I know about, and women tend to have a lot of them. That’s not me being sexist…” he said firmly, “it’s just a simple fact. I understand you thought you needed to come here, but I hope you can understand that you don’t need to be here at all.”
“Does that mean you won’t help me?”
He stared at me for a long moment and then sighed. “No. I’m sorry, but I won’t.”
Even though I knew coming to see Dr. Roman was a long shot, I still felt stunned by his refusal. I should have expected him to say no. I was nothing or no one special. Rejection was my best friend.
“Why?”
“I’m not a cosmetic plastic surgeon, Ms. Aldridge.”
“But you used to be.”
His jaw twitched at my words, and something sad and regretful darkened his eyes before a spark of annoyance covered it.
“Exactly. Used to be. And honestly, Ms. Aldridge, even if I still were, I wouldn’t do any work on you. You don’t need cosmetic surgery.”
I felt a little spark of anger. “Isn’t that for me to decide?”
“Yes, but I can refuse to do the work.” He looked down at his watch.
“Money isn’t an issue,” I blurted, launching forward and almost knocking myself off the table. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
Instead of that making him stop and think twice about walking out of the door, it only seemed to make him angrier.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll pay whatever you want. Just name the price and I’ll pay it. Whatever it is.”
As I heard the words leave my mouth and echo off the walls, I suddenly felt pathetic sitting there, begging the man in front of me to make me beautiful. But it was said and done, and now I had to live with it.
Taking a step towards me, he loomed over me as his furious eyes bore down into mine. His large shoulders went up with each of his deep breaths, making me feel small. He was huge.
“There is no amount of money you can throw at me, Ms. Aldridge, to make me change my mind. I perform surgery on those who actually need it. I’m not here to entertain you or all the other bored housewives of Miami with unnecessary surgery after surgery until there is nothing left of the real woman you used to be. Or worse.” He didn’t elaborate on what he meant by or worse.
“Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you, but I’m not that kind of doctor anymore, Ms. Aldridge. Plastic surgery isn’t a quick fix for boredom, loneliness, or a housewife looking for a project.” He took a breath. “Obviously, I can’t tell you what to do, but you seem determined and I’d hate for you to end up under the hands of some money-hungry quack with a God complex and a scalpel. So if you’re still going to get the surgery done no matter what, Dr. Stein is a very good doctor and would be more than happy to meet with you.”
I should have been angry as his blatant refusal and maybe under the frustration, there was some, but all I could focus on was my heart-sinking disappointment.
“I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Doctor.”
“And I yours, Ms. Aldridge.” He moved to leave the room, but he stopped. “I don’t know anything about you, I don’t claim to know a lot of anything, really, but at the risk of offending you, it seems like you just need someone to talk to.”
Looking up at him, I stiffened my shoulders. “You’re right, Dr. Blake. You don’t know anything about me. Thank you for your time.”
Turning away, I waited for him to leave the room. When the door shut, I wanted to curl up into a ball and sob, but I slowly got dressed and got the hell out of there.