Free The Forever Marriage by Ann Bauer Page A

since entering the breast center—and introduced himself with a name she immediately forgot. They needed an MRI to follow up, he told her. Then, most likely, a needle aspiration biopsy. It would be relatively painless; just a little local anesthesia. She would be able to go home and cook dinner for her family tonight.
    “Only a guy would say that like it’s a desirable thing,” she cracked and he smiled, but she could tell he was thinking she should, indeed, be grateful. There was a family, she could feed them. These things might not always be true.
    This time Carmen was given a gown that tied in front. It seemed to have been made of wax paper and was, again, pink: the color of the stuff you had to swallow when you were nauseated. The socks they gave her—thankfully, however much they clashed—were a pale blue. Then she was led down a long hallway by a wide-hipped woman who looked like a prison matron. The sweet, young technician had disappeared; Carmen was, apparently, too far gone already for her.
    Inside a steel-gray room, the matron extended her hand like a knight to help Carmen up onto a wide metal table. “Are those what I think they are?” she asked, pointing to a bustier-shaped contraption that lay on the table’s surface.
    “Yep. That’s where your bosoms will go. So let’s just get you ready.” The matron reached out and began untying the gown, oblivious to the intimacy of the act. Carmen leaned back, almost enjoying the play. “Chilly in here,” she said.
    “You’ll be warm soon enough. That’s something a lot of gals complain about: the heat.”
    “What heat?” The woman had eased the gown back fromCarmen’s shoulders so that she sat bare-chested in the strange room. It was amazing how good that felt, almost like the wanton feeling of going to a topless beach, which she and Jobe had done once on their honeymoon. Now she recalled his face—her young husband—when she had wriggled out of the top half of her one-piece suit and lay back on a towel. He’d stood over her, supposedly blocking the sun but also obstructing people’s view of her, until she’d had to beg, “Please sit down, Jobe. You’re throwing a shadow and I’m getting really cold.”
    He’d sunk to the sand, cross-legged beside her, and taken her hand. For an hour they’d stayed this way, Carmen touched by Jobe’s protectiveness but also shamefully titillated by the idea of men and women walking by and ogling her perfect, naked breasts.
    “Okay, now, you’re gonna lie this way.” The woman pivoted Carmen on the shiny surface so she was facing the bustier thing. “I need you to lower yourself down into the coil and I’m going to guide you in.”
    It was like doing a reverse push-up: Carmen had her hands on either side of the cast and the matron, standing at the head of the table, had reached out to grab one dangling breast in each hand so she could settle them into the cups. This was not a woman who appealed to Carmen; some did, but they tended to be slim and rugged, women strangely like herself with dark, wavy hair and muscular arms. Still, she couldn’t help but be turned on when anyone touched her breasts. It had happened at every gynecologic exam she’d ever had. Danny could make her come simply by standing behind her while she was fully clothed, rubbing and pinching her nipples through her shirt. Even Jobe had figured out that touching her there was a catalyst, the magic key to orgasm no matter how awkward their sex.
    “Okay, now you’re in. I’m going to put an IV in your arm.”
    Carmen closed her eyes. Her back was starting to hurt already from being propped this way and she was worried now. If surgeons had to cut the comet from her, would they also cut the nerves that made her shudder that way? It had never, in all the years of watching pink-ribbon-wearing women marching on TV, occurred to her that mastectomy was the equivalent of castration above the waist.
    “Relax now,” the matron said. “This