Post Op

by Luke Ramer

It’s the 1990s, the summer between eighth and ninth grade when Henry’s pigeon chest finally goes under the surgeon’s knife. Growing up, his sternum always poked out a bit. The kids on his baseball team called it the “egg” and would rub Henry’s chest bone between innings for good luck. Henry could have been offended, but he was a great pitcher, and every time his team rubbed the egg he would strike out the other side or get the other team’s best hitter to ground into a double play. Thanks to Henry’s arm and egg, his team won the Little League Championship two years in a row.

But the bump grew with puberty, and its luck wore off.

Henry stopped playing baseball and started keeping his shirt on at the pool, but the wet cotton stuck to his ribcage, and the egg was still clearly visible. He stopped going to the pool. Baggy sweatshirts became his daily style, even in the dead of summer. By eighth grade, his parents began to worry about the mental effect his condition was having on him.

The rare condition was known as pectus carinatum. The cartilage between the ribs grows abnormally, pushing the bones in the wrong direction. Henry’s parents had a hell of a time finding a doctor who even knew how to correct it. After months of searching, they resorted to a pediatrician who had experience with Henry’s deformity.

On a Tuesday morning, Henry and his parents sat in a brightly lit waiting room before the consultation. Henry watched the babies floundering on the multi-colored carpet, the toddlers building Lego towers, Tiny Toons playing on the 13-inch TV hanging in the corner. One of the little kids had pasty white skin with a smooth head and no brows above his sunken eyes. Henry’s mother nudged him and told him not to stare.

Doctor Chen, a well-dressed short man with a million-dollar smile, looked Henry over and took x-rays. He showed them how the boy’s ribcage was growing inward, the middle of his sternum pushing out. He told them surgery would be necessary. The Doctor was going to reshape his young ribs, and then Henry would be good as new. Henry was too scared to listen to the gory details, but as they left the office, his parents seemed relieved.

That was until the insurance company refused to pay for the procedure, claiming it was only cosmetic and therefore unnecessary. Henry’s parents were dismayed; how would they pay for the surgery out of pocket? But Doctor Chen assured his parents it was more than cosmetic. He explained that Henry’s ribs would eventually push against his lungs and his heart, causing serious complications. Henry’s parents decided to go through with the surgery even if it bankrupted them. Doctor Chen wrote the insurance company an impassioned letter, and two days before the operation, they agreed to cover it.

Henry’s mother drove him to the sprawling hospital on a dark Monday morning before Dunkin Donuts was even open. The nurse gave him a skimpy nightgown, laid him on a crinkly-sheeted bed, and hooked him up to a needle.

Doctor Chen smiled and told him to count down from ten. Henry never forgot the way Doctor Chen smelled like mint as the countdown began.

Henry wakes up from the anesthesia, and the oxygen tubes in his nose bother him immediately. He tugs at them until the nurse scolds him to stop.

His vision is blurry as a pair of orderlies roll Henry’s gurney from surgery to an elevator where they climb what feels like a million floors to his room, the gurney’s wheels squeaking against the waxy floor. The orderlies grab the wooden plank beneath Henry and begin to transfer him to his bed when one of them slips, and Henry drops onto the stiff mattress with a thud, pain splintering through his fragile chest. He’s had torn up knees, bee stings, and an untreated concussion during a backyard football game, but nothing comes close to this agony.

He lies in bed for endless hours, clicking through cable TV with the oversized remote in one hand, a codeine drip button in the other. Every time he clicks the tiny red button there’s a rush of pain relief, and a few minutes later, a wave of nausea makes him vomit. Vomiting with a broken chest is a special hell. He can’t walk, can barely even talk. When his parents ask him questions, he answers with one finger for yes, two for no.

A cranky nurse with a dagger tattooed on her neck asks Henry if he has to pee, but he hasn’t had the urge to pee since the surgery.

Night falls, and the hospital is dark and quiet. Henry’s mother snoozes on the standard beige futon across the room. Blue light flickers from the late-night talk show playing on the TV. The late-night host wears a signature bright red bowtie as he does his opening monologue of lame political jokes and comments on current events, and says, “OH!”, after most of his punchlines.

The host mentions the famous rockstar, Teddy Rader. Henry perks up. He loves Rader’s music—dark and heavy and melodic. The late-night host plays a paparazzi video of Rader, all leather jacket and chains and long hair, doing the handcuffed-walk-of-shame into a Los Angeles police station. The report claims the rockstar has been caught with a prostitute who is also an illegal alien and possibly underage.

The late-night host jokes, “Why does he even need a hooker? I heard he can take care of himself. OH!”

The host makes a motion with his hand and mouth like giving a blowjob. The crowd laughs hysterically. Henry chuckles but quickly contains himself as the pain sears his tender chest. Henry has heard the rumors about Teddy Rader. The rockstar had engaged in extreme body modification for years. Nipples removed. Belly button smoothed over. Jaw elongated. It was all part of his schtick. Supposedly Rader had even paid a glitzy Hollywood surgeon to remove a few of his ribs, which allowed him to bend far enough to suck his own dick.

Henry had always thought it was an urban legend, but it must be true if they are talking about it on TV.

On Henry’s second day trapped in the hospital, the cranky nurse with the neck tattoo has dreadful coffee breath and tells him if he doesn’t pee soon, they’ll have to insert a catheter. He’s groggy and confused, so the nurse explains what catheter means—

Two minutes later, Henry’s yellow stream is splattering all over the inside of the porcelain toilet. Soon he’s walking the hallways with the help of the nurse’s shoulder. By the third day he’s ready to be released.

It’s a bright June morning, and the air conditioning hums in the ceiling as Henry eats rubbery pancakes and sausage links from a brown tray while watching Animaniacs on the TV. Doctor Chen comes in to check on him, tapping a clipboard with his pen, and asks Henry if he’s ready to go home and enjoy the summer. Henry nods, and Doctor Chen checks the incision. The Doctor smiles, gives Henry a thumbs up, and wishes him well.

As Chen is about to leave, Henry asks if he can have the rib bones that were removed during the surgery. Doctor Chen laughs; he didn’t remove any bones, just some cartilage. Henry’s disappointed but asks if he can at least have the cartilage. Doctor Chen says no again.

No, you can’t take your own medical waste home with you.

That doesn’t seem fair to Henry.

Back at home he’s much more comfortable, but he still can’t go outside and play with his friends. Too risky. He’s got to be careful with his fragile chest for at least a few weeks. It’s a bummer that this whole process needs to happen during summer, but his parents didn’t want him to miss school.

Henry sits on the forest-patterned couch, watching endless TV. The rockstar is back in the news. The paparazzi video shows a strung-out Teddy Rader busted in an upscaled Vegas hotel with a pound of cocaine, two underage hookers—thirteen and fourteen, and a few machine guns.

Henry sits down at the family computer in the corner and signs onto dial-up AOL, which takes a couple of minutes, the modem screeching madly before the computer says, “You’ve Got Mail.”

Henry doesn’t care about any e-mail and instead clicks on the chatrooms… Music… Music Room 5…

He asks the people in the chatroom what they think about Teddy Rader. Asks them if they think the story about the rockstar’s removed ribs is true. Some say yes, some say no, and one person named DaddyDearest69 sends him an instant message asking if Henry wants to have something called “cybersex.” Henry’s not sure what that even means, and he signs off AOL.

Darkness falls, and Henry’s parents go upstairs to bed, leaving him alone in the living room watching TV. He flicks through the channels, but TV has become so monotonous that he can barely stand it. He goes through the scrambled pay channels that his parents can’t afford… and his heart stops.

One of the premium pay channels is playing crystal clear.

THE channel.

The TV screen says FREE PREVIEW WEEKEND along the bottom with a bow-tied bunny logo that he’s seen before. It was on a magazine under his friend Mike’s father’s bed. That was the first time he had seen a naked lady.

Henry’s eyes track up the television screen, following a dream girl’s bulging watermelons, slick with white soap suds as she dance-washes a red Ferrari in front of a perfect sunset, her smooth blonde hair dripping over her tan shoulders. She turns the hose on her own engine as she moans along with the electronic music and leans back across the hood.

Henry stands up and goes to the stairs, listening for his parents, his sweatpants bulging.

He looks back at the TV as a big-booty Spanish girl with a blueberry bikini enters the scene, and she’s even sexier than the sudsy blonde and the red Ferrari put together. Henry can feel his heart beating through his underwear.

He remembers the story about Teddy Rader’s rib removal and looks down, inside his sweatpants. His penis is staring straight up at him. He remembers that Doctor Chen didn’t actually remove any ribs, just cartilage. Henry sighs, but the thought still lingers in his head.

Is it possible? He wonders.

He turns the TV volume up so he can hear the girls moaning, but he keeps it low enough that his parents won’t hear it upstairs. It’s a full-blown lesbian scene on screen now, and Henry loves it; he hates the sight of other dudes’ dicks.

He sits down on the wooden ottoman in front of the couch and slides his sweatpants down around his ankles. He bends forward, his chest aching. He should have taken some extra pain medicine before trying this, but it’s too late now. His face is inches from his penis, which is bouncing, giddy for its first blow job. Henry closes his eyes and pushes himself forward farther, fighting through the pain in his ribs when something snaps, crunches, and his chest heaves forward, way beyond natural, and he cries out as his throbbing manhood slides right into this gaping mouth. It tastes like sweat and salt on his tongue, and Henry regrets not showering or at least washing first.

Before he can even decide what to do with his mouth next, before he can even have another thought, the floorboards creak. Out the corner of his eye, Henry sees her shadow, hears her whisper, “Oh my God,” and hears her run back up the stairs.

Henry tries to jump to his feet—but loses his balance and slips off the ottoman, collapsing to the living room carpet, his chest breaking and imploding, his incision tearing open, his penis jamming further down into his throat, gagging him.

Henry tries to move, tries to pull his own penis out of his mouth, to get up and run away forever, orphaned by embarrassment. But his body is a human pretzel and can’t do anything but rock back and forth.

But as he struggles, Henry realizes… it feels really nice, this rocking back and forth, this up and down.

He can’t breathe, his eyes are dimming, but somehow that makes the whole experience even better. He pulses and shoots himself down his own throat as he runs out of oxygen.

The birds chirp and crickets howl and Henry’s parents come down for their morning coffee and find their lifeless son on the living room floor. Mom immediately melts down, screaming and raving.

Dad stumbles back in horror, unable to speak. He looks up from his dead pretzel son and sees a naked blonde with a dagger neck tattoo taking it doggy style on the free preview weekend. He grabs the remote and quickly changes the channel. His wife doesn’t need to see that on top of everything else.

The news is on TV now.

As Henry’s parents frantically call 911, the TV explains that Teddy Rader was found dead in a hotel room, naked with his head shaved and a belt around his neck. Death by public humiliation.

Henry’s parents are relieved when their son never makes the news.