EXPERIMENTAL SURGERY

The idea had simmered away in her mind for weeks, no, months. She knew it was a fantasy, and really she wasn’t all that unhappy with the way she looked. OK, she wasn’t a raving beauty, but what woman didn’t dream of looking better.
She had mentioned it to Peter, and bless him, he had said, “Darling you are perfect just as you are.”
The magazine cutting had lain around for weeks and Peter had tossed it in the waste but she had managed to rescue it.
“Is it totally pretentious to want to remake myself this way,” she asked herself time after time, “and what about the danger, what if the surgeon is some incompetent charlatan?  And after all the result will not be the real me, it will be something totally artificial.”
Eventually the time came; Peter was away on a business trip to Latin America, she had a three-week window of opportunity and she decided to go for it.
She contacted the clinic that had been featured in the magazine and volunteered for the treatment.
“You realise that it is experimental, and there is a risk,” the consultant said.
“Yes, I appreciate that, but I want to do it.”
“Very well, if you will just sign these release forms.”
She signed the forms.
She booked into the clinic.
When Peter came home the tattoo she had had on her bottom for twenty years since a drunken trip to the seaside was hardly visible.