Let Me Call You Sweetheart

11

Pamela Worth had been a mistake. That thought kept Dr. Charles Smith sleepless virtually all Monday night. Even the beauty of her newly sculpted face could not compensate for her graceless posture, her harsh, loud voice.

I should have known right away, he thought. And, in fact, he had known. But he hadn’t been able to help himself. Her bone structure made her a ridiculously easy candidate for such a transformation. And feeling that transformation take place under his fingers had made it possible for him to relive something of the excitement of the way it had been that first time.

What would he do when it wasn’t possible to operate anymore? he wondered. That time was rapidly approaching. The slight hand tremor that irritated now would become more pronounced. Irritation would yield to incapacity.

He switched on the light, not the one beside his bed, but the one that illuminated the picture on the wall opposite him. He looked at it each night before he fell asleep. She was so beautiful. But now, without his glasses, the woman in the picture became twisted and distorted, as she had looked in death.

“Suzanne,” he murmured. Then, as the pain of memory engulfed him, he threw an arm over his eyes, blocking out the image. He could not bear to remember how she had looked then, robbed of her beauty, her eyes bulging, the tip of her tongue protruding over her slack lower lip and drooping jaw…