People keep asking me what I’m going to do for the Big Three Oh.
My best friend Jesse went to Europe with ten of her best friends, and my other best friend Kaley rented an entire museum where we partied and drank all night.
As for me, I decided to get plastic surgery. I was going to get a nose job and a boob job, and then I was going to my best friend Jasmine’s bachelorette party in Nashville and surprise all their pants off.
I had my surgeon all picked out. My best friend Jasmine is a private nurse and she had told me all about him. Jasmine not only knew the models who got their noses and tits done with him but she had the receipts too. He could, she told me, make me look like anybody I wanted. I could have Angelina Jolie’s lips, Margot Robbie’s nose, and Kate Upton’s tits. He could make my dream come true.
How could I resist? How could anyone resist?
The only problem was I couldn’t afford it. But I wanted it so bad I begged him during consultation for a discount. I told him how he was my dream surgeon and how I had saved for years so I could go to him, but like everything else his prices had skyrocketed in the last two years and I hadn’t been prepared for that.
He looked at me for a long time and I felt, I dunno, a little scared? He looked at me if I were a piece of meat, a thing or something. And I felt as if I had made a deal with the devil when he told me he’ll let me know.
When I left his office, I was literally shaking. I went home and tried to forget about the whole thing. When my best friend Anna asked me how the consultation went, I lied and said I didn’t go. I didn’t want to talk about it though I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
That night the surgeon called me and said he would do it at no charge. Their office would also cover the surgery center fees and anesthesia so it would be completely free on my end.
I couldn’t believe it and was immediately suspicious, but at the same time I was wildly curious. His interest in me was far too acute to be natural. I was pretty sure though it wasn’t a sexual thing, it was something else, something not good. All my spidey senses were going OFF.
He said the receptionist would give me a call to set up a surgery date, and added that if I told anybody, then the deal was off. He didn’t want it to get around that he was doing work for free.
The next morning he sent me a dozen roses with a note that said he was going to pick me up for dinner that night.
*
Just because he’s good looking, rich and successful, he had just assumed I would want to go to dinner with him?
How cocky is that?
On the other hand, why would I assume a rich good looking guy wouldn’t be into me just because I didn’t look like barbie and have a six figure job in finance?
When I told my best friend Becky about it, she said he must totally have a crush on me or something. I said it would seem that way but it didn’t FEEL that way. I couldn’t explain myself really well and Becky told me I was crazy to think the guy wasn’t into me. And a surgeon too, oh my god, she kept gushing, she was going to be so jealous of me when I get married, I had better pick her to be maid of honor, blah blah blah…
The fact was, I loved Becky to the moon and back but the girl was a complete idiot. Just hearing all that come out of her mouth made me realize how trash everything sounded. I seriously considered calling Brad (that was the surgeon’s name) and telling him I didn’t feel comfortable going through with the surgery. I would have done it too had I not received an email from my boss telling me I was laid off.
When I realized I had just lost my job, I panicked so badly that I forgot about Brad completely. I was in deep deep shit. I had barely any savings, and I lived in a super high cost of living city. I still owed $1500 for Jasmine’s bachelorette and her Maid of Honor was going to be all over my ass if I didn’t cough up the cash. I panic texted my best friend Emma and she told me right off I better get that money or Jasmine was going to eat me alive. She said Jasmine had already “fired” one bridesmaid, and that girl almost had to leave town because of the fallout.
When I hung up, I all but passed out from the stress.
*
When I woke up, I thought I was in heaven.
I felt all weightless and good, like nothing could touch me, like ever.
Brad asked me how I felt, and I said I felt good.
He told me he had come to pick me up for dinner, and when nobody answered the door, he had simply walked in. He asked me if I knew how dangerous it is for a woman living alone in a big city to not lock her door?
I told him I didn’t care, I had lost my job.
He said I didn’t have to worry about any of that, and that he would take care of me. It sounded so strange the way he said it that I got scared all over again. But this time it was a different kind of scared. It was a good kind of scared. This time I knew I would do whatever he wanted me to do no matter what it was. He put his arms around me and before I knew it, I was sobbing my heart out.
*
I couldn’t remember the last time I cried.
My life had always been a non-stop whirlwind of parties and travel. But when Brad held me in his arms, I realized how alone I had been. My hectic social life was nothing more than an excuse for the emptiness, an exhausting sideshow that wasn’t even interesting. When none of my gazillion friends called to check on me, to see if I was okay, if I could pay rent, or eat, or get out of bed, Brad was there by my side. He loved me unconditionally.
He made good on this promise to take care of me.
First he (somehow) got me out of my extortionately expensive lease and moved me into his apartment. When I wanted to start looking for a job right away, he said I was clearly suffering from exhaustion and that I needed to rest. He made sure I ate healthy and slept right so there were no more late nights with greasy snacks and wine and sugary soda. Breakfast was poached eggs and dinner was steamed salmon dressed with lemon juice and olive oil, things like that.
I had never felt so well physically. Eating shit and drinking too much and not sleeping good can really fuck with a person in the long term. But I must say I was dying for some Taco Bell’s after two weeks. The only thing that stopped me was I didn’t have a car and the closest Taco Bell was three bus rides away.
*
The radical change in diet was difficult enough in of itself. But on top of everything else, Brad made me quit smoking and alcohol in preparation for the surgery. He was adamant about this to the point that he became frightening. It was the only time I had my doubts about him and our relationship. His outburst when he found me sneaking a cigarette out the bathroom window shattered in a second all my trust in him. I was positive he would have smashed me to pieces were it not for the fact that that would have defeated the whole point of keeping my body clean and healthy in preparation for surgery day.
But the moment passed and he apologized and told me horror stories from medical school of what happened to people who smoke and drank.
He held me in his big strong arms, and as we watched the sunset from his balcony, I told myself that he was right and I was wrong.
But still something held me back. I told myself I was being paranoid and stupid, but it was no good.
A week before the surgery, I told him I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had told him this before but he had brushed me off, insisting that he wanted to help me achieve my goals. But this time I was serious. I told him quite frankly that I was having second thoughts, that it wasn’t a money thing, or just a money thing. I knew my nose wasn’t perfect and my tits could be perkier and bigger, but I didn’t want to feel like I was being railroaded into it.
He retorted that it was me who had come to him, begged him in fact for the surgeries. So who was railroading who here?
Yes, I said, but it was just a consultation, I was still thinking about it. And now that I had more time to think about it, I didn’t want it anymore. Plus, I have other things to worry about, like finding a job. I simply couldn’t afford to be out of commission for weeks recovering from a major surgery.
He sneered and said if I looked better, then maybe I could actually find a job.
That hurt but I was used to it. My ex had told me the only reason I’m not a butterface is because there isn’t much to be said for my body either.
“Do you feel better now Brad?” I said quietly.
His face was like a rubber mask that was coming undone, and I thought to myself: he is going to kill me.
And then he said in a voice that I can only describe as eerie and not quite human that he had been going to propose to me.
He sounded like he was been forced through a small opening as the words were wrenched out of him with red hot tongs.
He said he was in love with me but he could only marry me if I had a rhinoplasty and breast augmentation. He didn’t think it would hurt to have my hip dips filled in either with some fat transferred from my waist. He said he was sorry for being such a superficial jerk and that he had been to therapy but it hadn’t helped.
Now isn’t that ridiculous?
I was speechless. I had never been so flattered, grateful and offended all at the same time. I wanted to hug him, jump up and down and slap him.
He brought out a little velvet box and gave it to me. He said he was going to give it to me on surgery day, but he figured now was as good a time as any. Inside the box was a diamond ring from Tiffany’s.
*
Not for nothing do they say diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
I would have been perfectly, completely happy were it not for the fact that I had nobody to tell my good news to. After I had lost my job and told Jasmine I couldn’t go to her bachelorette party, everybody ghosted me. Now, I knew from past experience that Jasmine didn’t play when it came to money. You paid up or you were sleeping with the fishes, socially speaking. My inbox was deader than a ghost town.
But still, I figured they would get over it? What I didn’t count on was that they would all change their phone numbers so I couldn’t reach any of them. The kicker was that I had never even met Jasmine’s fiance, and yet was expected to shell out thousands of dollars for a party while broke and unemployed?
I couldn’t believe I had once considered this girl my dearest friend. And now she had kicked me to the curb over a stupid party.
*
The night before the surgery, Brad and I made love for the first time instead of waiting until our wedding night like he had been insisting. I was beyond thrilled, but couldn’t help being disappointed as the thing itself was pretty lackluster. Maybe, I thought, with a new nose and D cups, he would be more into me?
I dreamed that night that Jasmine was angry at me. I tried to explain to her how I couldn’t afford to go to her bachelorette because I lost my job, but somehow my mouth didn’t work right, like I had been drugged or something.
And then Brad woke me up to tell me we have to get started for the surgery. It was still the middle of the night, and I was so confused that I just did what he told me.
It was still dark when we arrived at the surgery center which was attached to his own practice and not at an actual hospital. There were no nurses, nothing. He hustled me into the basement and told me to get undressed. It was freezing cold and nothing felt right, but I did what he said as if I were a robot.
He had me lie down on a gurney and before I knew it, he had tied my wrists to the side rails and pushed a needle into my arm. The last thing I remember was him taking the engagement ring off of my finger.
*
I woke up at the hospital and Jasmine was leaning over me with Emma and Becky behind her. I could hear the rest of the girls in the hall, arguing with security or nurses it seemed. I felt as if I had been through ten rounds with a bear.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked Jasmine. “Why did you block me. Where’s Brad?”
Jasmine rolled her eyes, said, “Girl what drugs are you on?”
She then told me she had never blocked me, and that it was ME who had GHOSTED and BLOCKED HER, and that the police had got Brad for a long long time.
*
It was Brad who had blocked their numbers on my phone, and then changed their phone numbers in my contacts. And just like that, he managed to isolate me from my entire social network. Why? Because apparently being a successful plastic surgeon wasn’t enough, Brad had a side hustle in human organ trafficking.
People would go in for nose jobs and come out with one less kidney, and he would tell them the scar was for a rib graft. But the real money maker, the one that would allow him to retire on a private island at forty five, was liver because nobody could live without one.
When Jasmine, in her capacity as private nurse, accompanied her client to the surgery center in the middle of the night, she immediately knew something was wrong. Her client, a guy worth billions and whose liver looked like the finest of dry aged Iberico ham, had told her he was going in for a small procedure. And then she saw me on the other operating table (I was passed out by then). When Brad came into the room, she knocked him over the head with her boss’s cane and then she called the police.
*
Jasmine helped me move out of Brad’s place. She helped me pack, meaning she took my clothes from the closets and wardrobes and threw them on the floor.
“Thank you Jasmine,” I said.
“For what?” she said, not looking at me.
“For saving my life,” I said.
She turned around with a piece of lingerie gripped in one fist. “Did he buy you this?” she said.
He did. Brad had bought me a lot of lingerie.
She tore it up and threw the pieces out the window. “I could kill you,” she said.
I was stunned and confused, and ashamed. “Jaz,” I said, “it wasn’t my fault. I thought you were mad at me. He messed with my phone, he lied to me about everything, he was a total psychopath.”
She looked at me with complete disgust as if she would have liked to hit me. And then she said, “He is a genius and you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She went into the bathroom and threw all my stuff out. There was no more pretense of packing. She threw my moisturizer, my shampoo, my body wash, my toothbrush, my toothpaste all into the trash while leaving Brad’s things untouched.
“How did you know that was my toothbrush?” I said.
I felt sick, as if I was going to throw up.
She had set me up for the money, and then she had betrayed Brad out of rage and jealousy because he slept with me.
As if she had read my mind, she said, “The only reason he fucked you was because I told him too.”
And then she left and I never saw her again.