A nurse entered the room. ‘Ms Prentiss?’
‘Yes?’
‘This way please.’
Anna followed the nurse into a consulting room.
‘Please take a seat. The doctor will be with you in a moment.’
‘Thank you.’
The room was uncluttered and clinical. Just two seats opposite a bare wooden desk with a computer on it. She sat down and looked around. Another door was set into the wall opposite the desk. A couple of pictures, soothing landscapes, hung on the walls. The room was deathly silent. No comforting background music. No sounds of another person so much as breathing. Not even the sound of the air conditioning humming. It was all very detached and unemotional. If they had expected this would calm their patients, they were wrong. At least as far as Anna was concerned. Every muscle in her body was quivering with tension. There was nothing to hold her here except her own decision. She could change her mind right now and walk away.
The door opened and a man walked in. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Ms Prentiss. I’m Dr Wilson.’
In his fifties, with greying hair and an intelligent and kind face, Dr Wilson looked exactly like his photo on the website. He looked like someone she could trust.
‘No problem at all, doctor.’
Smiling, he took a seat behind his desk. In no way had he reacted to the scars on her face. She imagined he had seen worse. At least, she hoped he had.
‘I understand you are looking for scar revision on your face. Is that correct?’
‘I want to know if there is anything I can do to reduce the scarring on my face. And maybe other parts of my body.’
He nodded. ‘We refer to that as scar revision. Can you tell me what has prompted the decision? Are the scars causing you any physical issues?’
‘The skin on my face is tight. It pulls a bit when I smile or laugh. It doesn’t hurt as such, although it does itch sometimes. I just …’ She took a deep breath and confessed, ‘I don’t want small children to turn away when they see me. I don’t want people to look at me with pity or shock, although I’m not really sure which is worse. I want to feel comfortable with my face. The way I used to be.’
‘You want to feel beautiful again?’
She hung her head, feeling ashamed. ‘Yes. I know that sounds vain and shallow …’
‘No, it doesn’t. Not at all,’ Dr Wilson rushed to reassure her. ‘We all need to be able to look at ourselves in a mirror and like what we see.’
‘I’d be happy just to look at myself in the mirror and not feel disgusted.’ Her bitterness poured out into her words.
‘I understand. I have to tell you right now, Ms Prentiss, that nothing will ever remove that scar entirely. I would be lying if I said I could. However, I can certainly improve the look of it. Maybe get it to a place where you can hide it with clever makeup. But I can’t remove it. Nor can I repair any nerve damage. And it’s likely you will always feel that skin pulling across the scar.’
Anna closed her eyes to let the words sink in, although they were exactly what she had expected to hear. When she looked back at the doctor, she nodded. ‘I was told that years ago. After it first happened. They said … they said it was the best they could do given the circumstances.’
A light frown creased Dr Wilson’s forehead, but only briefly. ‘With a traumatic injury like this,’ he replied, ‘it’s often the case that improvements can be made a year or more later, when the injury is fully healed.’
‘I know. I googled.’
‘Ah. Dr Google. Well, I hope my advice will be better than his.’ Dr Wilson almost smiled. ‘Do you have scars elsewhere on your body?’
Anna hadn’t expected that question, but there was no point in avoiding it. ‘Yes. On my shoulder.’
‘Do you wish to reduce those, too, if possible?’
Did she? The scars on her body were smaller. They caused her no discomfort at all and were easily hidden under her clothes. No one ever saw them. No one had seen them since she left the hospital three years ago. All her time had been spent first in physical recovery, then getting her life back on track—getting more experience of work and eventually, with her parents’ help, buying the small clinic in a country town. Her emotional recovery had seemed small and unimportant. Her work was mostly with horses and small animals. She didn’t treat cattle, but that was no great hardship. And she might just have overcome that hurdle a few days ago on the side of the road near Wagtail Ridge. With Justin’s help.
Justin.
The last man she’d dated had vanished soon after she left the hospital. Not that she blamed him, looking the way she did, with the scars still fresh. In a way, she’d been glad he left. She had been so focused on healing, she hadn’t had emotional space for him. And certainly not for the way he’d avoided looking at her face every time they were together. He had never seen the scars on her body and nor had anyone else. But that didn’t mean she would be alone for the rest of her life. She flexed her shoulder, feeling the slight pull of the skin across the muscles and down towards her breast. She tried to imagine being happy to wear a sleeveless top. Or a dress with tiny straps. She could go swimming without feeling self-conscious. And perhaps, one day, some man …
‘Maybe,’ she said.
