In her essay, she tells of Clare, an elegant twenty-something businesswoman who had recently undergone surgery to remove her right breast. Clare sat in Dr. Remen's office sobbing at the fact that before her surgery men had found her attractive and she had been very proud of her body.
"But that is over now," she told Dr. Remen. "I could never allow anyone to see me disfigured like this." After her surgery she ended the relationship with the two men she was seeing.
The story goes on to explain that Clare had gone through cancer entirely alone, too embarrassed to open herself up. As she visited Dr. Remen over the next couple of months she told her that she planned on having breast reconstruction surgery in 5 years, when her oncologist said the chances are sol low she will be home free.
Over the next year, Clare met Peter, a painter who she deemed a good friend. Peter and Clare had developed quite a relationship when suddenly Clare scheduled an urgent visit with Dr. Remen.
"It's the end," Clare said. "Peter has invited me to go away for the weekend and now he will know about my breast. Beauty is his whole life and now he will be completely repulsed."
Dr. Remen did her best to soothe Clare's worries and urged her to call if she needed anything.
Dr. Remen did not hear from Clare for a few weeks, until Clare called and told her Peter still wanted to be friends. Clare's breast reconstruction surgery was coming up and Dr. Remen did not see her until a few days before the much anticipated surgery.
"I was delighted to celebrate this milestone with Clare and I asked her about it, " said Dr. Remen in the essay. "Clare smiled at me and told me she cancelled it."
"How come? I asked her."
"She slowly unbuttoned her shirt and shrugged it off her shoulders. She was not wearing a bra and her left breast was exquisite. But its beauty was overshadowed by the radical change in her body. Her mastectomy scar had been covered with a mass of tiny, exquisite tattooed flowers. They looked real. In the most delicate of pastel shades, they climbed to the top of her right shoulder. As she turned away from me, I could see that they fell across it and down her back as if scattered by gravity or wind. Her body was beautiful...One little tattooed flower had come to rest in the small of her back, under it was a tiny initial 'P'. She was indescribably erotic. Men encountered women like her only in their dreams."
Clare and Peter had gone to Amsterdam to get the tattoo done then they used the money she had saved for her surgery for a honeymoon.
"My husband convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that anything of real beauty is one of a kind."
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