Breasts

Sid thinks tits...

She was a worried woman, and Sid was about to feel her tits.

He had felt a lot. There was the worried teenager and her mom that puzzled why one was twice the size of the other.

Let ‘em grow, had been the advice. They did. Beautifully.

There was the middle-aged saggy woman with lumps everywhere. She was worried. Sid was not. She years later got breast cancer as one in ten women do.

They are an enigma.

He knew they feared this. He knew they were baring their breasts to him for his expert examination and assessment. Not out of any attempt to seduce him. Though his mind went that way.

Sid loved breasts. Tits.

Sid called them breasts in the office with patients and professionals. But they were tits in his mind. Beautiful, welcoming, soft bags of tissue.

Sure they might sag.

This beautiful Hispanic woman bared hers to him six weeks after she’d delivered her beautiful little boy. Sid had just done the pelvic exam, but she was beyond that. Will they ever stand up again? Her dark eyes shot fire at him on his weak rolling stool beneath her.

Sid saw her as beautiful, though the fierce eyes fought off his look.

This woman here today was worried. She had found a lump. So she was in Sid’s exam room because her regular doctor was too busy. Sid always kept openings in his schedule, so he got these cases.

It’s best to consider tits as “cases”. Otherwise…

Sid heard her worry, asked the family history, the hormone history, the smoking history, the childbearing history, then gave her the cotton gown and left the room so she could disrobe. And then he would be able to go back in and look and feel and touch her tits. Breasts. Legitimately. As a doctor.

God, don’t you love them? Tits? Doctors?

So there she was on the exam table with the gown.

Some women leave the shroud open in the front, then you just open the front and do your business. Some women have the solid part to the front and you have to take it all off. Sid had pondered this.

Sid would have preferred them just naked from the waist up. It’s the tits, after all. Why are we offering the comfort of modesty? But we do.

This nervous woman had kept the opening in the back. She was bent forward and glaring at Sid, not her usual doctor, about to feel her beautiful breasts.

Some women see their breasts as powerful. And yes, they can be. Some women don’t. Sid had pondered this.

I need to take this gown off and look at your breasts.

Sid removed the cotton gown from her shoulders and laid it on her lap.

Now put your hands on your hips and bring your shoulders back.

Sid was standing in front of her, staring at the soft globes she brought out. Sid modeled the shoulders back posture and they came out more.

This was the first part, looking.

They had taught Sid this in his training. First listen, then look, before you feel. Sid loved the looking. He liked the listening too, but the silent studying gaze was his strength. He could divert distractions.

The brown areola were there, but not of interest. Browner than some pink ones, and even some almost pale ones he’d seen. He’d seen a lot. She had no hair there, maybe she had tweezed, some left it. The nipple wasn’t erect, but that didn’t really matter for this. Sid was scanning the skin.

Cancer is a crab, both in the zodiac and in our bodies. It claws the tissue around it, pulling it in. Sid had seen the wrinkle. None there on her soft, maternal, beautiful middle-aged globes.

So now he felt.

Listen, look, feel.

Medical training hadn’t been all that difficult. But the discipline was important. Don’t rush to the feel. More, don’t rush to the cut.

For that’s the last part of the training. Look, listen, feel, cut.

Sid never knew if his hands were warm or cold. He washed them. But he sometimes had a lot of coffee. One beautiful red-haired woman had shrunk from his palpation.

Your hands are cold!

Sorry, was all he could say.

Maybe he was nervous to feel the tits of a beautiful red-haired woman and his circulatory system had responded to his nerves and shut down the blood flow to his extremities. Sid pondered this.

Sid felt through the tissue, first upright. Then he had her lay back down so he could mash a bit harder. Sid felt the lump.

She was looking away, laying back, letting him do what he did.

Can you find the lump? Sid knew to use this language. Lump, tumor. Be careful.

She quickly went to what he had felt there in her left breast, over the heart.

Here.

Sid smiled.

I felt that too. It’s a very firm round lump that moves easily. I think it is a benign fibroadenoma, a fancy word we use for just a lump. I don’t think it is a cancer. It might get smaller, but it might not. I could not see it when I looked.

Can you be sure it’s not cancer?

Her gaze had fear. Sid felt her fear.

I am confident it isn’t cancer. But we could take a needle biopsy if you want. I would need to numb the skin and tissue and then push a needle into that lump and remove some tissue and send it off to a lab to look at.

And then we could be sure?

She had bared her breasts to him. And from this she wanted assurance.

Of what?

Sid knew, from the many tits and breasts he’d examined, he could not assure a woman she would not die from breast cancer. More, he knew, and they should, that they would die. Breast cancer, whatever.

Meanwhile, it’s the tits.

So would you like a biopsy?

Sid got the TruCut needle and the local and the specimen jar. He held the lump hard against her chest wall, though it wanted to squirm. He pushed the needle in, sucked back and withdrew. He squirted the little core into the specimen jar and sent it off. She got a bandage and assurance he would call.

That was a Tuesday. Sid saw 25 other patients. He wasn’t worried. He did his week of work. The weekend approached.

Friday Sid got a report.

You do this shit, cutting parts out of people, drawing their blood, or aspirating tissue out of a breast lump and then you just send it off and they give you what they give. Pathologists are remote. They don’t listen. They don’t look at the saggy or pert tits. They don’t feel. They look at the shit you send them under a microscope and render a diagnosis.

This guy called it cancer.

Who the fuck was this guy? Sid had never heard of him, though he signed the report.

Jesus.

What should we do?

It was his new nurse. Sid’s one of 15 years had fired him and moved on. This new one was good.

Sid looked over at her after he read the report, and she asked him for his judgement. She had read it. She had tits, though Sid would never see them. Women fearing their tits, while men adore them. And then we’re the judge? Go figure.

Let’s wait. It’s Friday. I’ll call her in on Monday.

She had looked away, like he was a loser. Sid remembered that.

Sid hadn’t worried about it. He’d had a decent weekend. Maybe some Tball games or swim meet or soccer shit with the kids. Maybe he’d fixed a leaky sprinkler line. It’s what we do, when we’re not thinking about tits.

Monday Sid’s email lit up.

He’d rounded on the hospital patients and just expected the usual Monday morning things, but he had an email with alert from the pathologist’s office and two new documents in his in folder.

Sid knew the woman in charge of the pathology department. He had trained up there and he trusted her. Her email to him was direct. We have reviewed the diagnosis and do not concur. I have had three other pathologists look at this tissue. We have changed the tissue report. She apologized for the mistaken report from the fill-in pathologist.

Sid went out to the station where he and his nurse worked.

Did you see the emails?

Yeah.

So we’re okay?

Yeah.

I’m going to call her with this new pathology report.

Yeah.

She turned, facing him. Her blue jacket and cotton smock covered her chest. But if I had cancer I’d want you to tell me.

Sid looked at this brave, fully clothed woman, no nakedness between them,

I would.

Sid didn’t imagine her soft small breasts under her layers right then.