The bandage used to bind Sam’s chest after top surgery lays crumpled on the exam room table. It looks weightless, sad, abandoned. “Do you want to take it with you?” the plastic surgeon asks my seventeen-year-old. “Some do…for a keepsake.”
“I’m good,” Sam says.
“So that’s it?” I stare one more time at the lone bandage.
“Yes,” the doctor says.
Sam puts back on his Nirvana tee shirt. His shoulders still rounded. It’s the first time in four years I’ve seen him in clothing without some form of tight binding. I want to tell him to stand straight. I look back at the used bandage. As part of his aftercare, I wrapped him in it twice a day for one month. Meaning I wrapped him in it sixty times since surgery. Swaddled him gently. Hand washed his bandage in lavender soap each morning and night. Hung it to dry over a shower curtain. Someone besides me will now have to throw the bandage away. I want to scoop it up. Claim it. Stick it in my bag. I don’t.
Anne Falkowski is a writer who recently fell in love with flash. She was the 2024 Oxford Flash Fiction winner. In 2024, she was also shortlisted for both the Bridport and Bath Flash Fiction Contests. Her essays and stories have been published in The Rumpus, Pithead Chapel, Hunger Magazine, Change-Seven, Entropy, and others. She lives in Connecticut and recently finished her memoir Ordinary Body. She can be reached at www.annefalkowski.net
Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/liz west
Love this!!