“I want to look better than this hag my boyfriend is married to.”
The words hung in the sterile air of my clinic, sharp and cold as a scalpel. She didn’t know that the face she was mocking was the same one hidden behind my surgical mask, and that by the time I was finished, she wouldn’t just look like the hag—she would become her.
The Vance Institute in Beverly Hills was a temple of white marble and hushed whispers. It smelled of eucalyptus and money, a scent designed to make you forget the blood that paid for it. I sat behind my glass desk, fully scrubbed in—blue cap covering my hair, N95 mask concealing my nose and mouth, surgical loops magnifying my eyes. To the world, I was Dr. Evelyn Vance, the “Sculptor of the Stars.” To the girl sitting across from me, I was just a pair of hands holding the keys to her vanity.
Chloe was twenty-two, blonde, and radiated the kind of entitlement that usually comes with a trust fund, though her cheap shoes told a different story. She tossed her phone onto the desk with a clatter.
The screen lit up. It showed a candid photo of a woman in a garden. She was wearing no makeup, her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she looked exhausted.
It was me.
It was a photo taken three weeks ago, in my own backyard, while I was deadheading roses after a fourteen-hour shift.
“This is her,” Chloe sneered, popping a piece of gum. “My boyfriend says she’s a bore. A hag. He says he only stays for the kids, but he’s tired of looking at her. I want to look like a younger, hotter version of… whatever this bone structure is. I want to walk into a room and make him forget she ever existed.”
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. Richard. My husband. The man who had kissed me goodbye this morning and told me I was beautiful.
I looked at the photo of myself—vulnerable, unguarded. Then I looked at the predator sitting across from me.
I took a deep breath, the mask filtering the air. I forced my eyes to crinkle in a professional smile she couldn’t see.
“I understand completely,” I said, my voice smooth as steel. “We can certainly achieve a… striking resemblance. I will make you a masterpiece.”
Chloe beamed, a shark smelling blood. “Good. Money isn’t an issue. He gave me his card.”
She slid a sleek, black card across the glass. Richard Vance. Vance Corp.
My husband was paying for his mistress to replace me. He was funding his own haunting.
“Excellent,” I whispered, picking up the card. It felt heavy, like a weapon. “The nurse will take you to prep. I’ll see you in the OR.”
Chloe signed the consent forms without reading a single word. She stood up, checking her reflection in the window, preening.
As the nurse led her away, I sat alone in the silence. The rage didn’t burn; it froze. It crystallized into a plan so perfect, so symmetrical, that it felt like destiny.
The prep room was quiet. I washed my hands, the ritualistic scrubbing grounding me. Finger to elbow. Scrub. Rinse. Repeat.
My phone buzzed on the metal tray. A text from Richard.
Richard: Stuck in meetings late tonight, babe. Mergers are a nightmare. Don’t wait up. Love you.
I stared at the screen. He wasn’t in a meeting. He was probably at a bar, or a hotel, waiting for his “upgrade” to wake up.
I looked through the observation window. Chloe was lying on the table, the anesthesia already taking hold. Her eyes were fluttering shut. She looked peaceful. Innocent.
But innocence is an action, not a look. And she had chosen violence.
I walked into the Operating Room. The lights were bright, casting no shadows.
I picked up the marking pen. Usually, I follow the Golden Ratio—phi, the divine proportion. I measure distances to the millimeter to create objective beauty.
Today, I followed the lines of my own memory.
I leaned over her sleeping form. I traced the bridge of her nose. It was straight, cute. I drew a line to indicate a deviation—a slight bump, just like mine. I traced her jawline. It was soft. I marked it for reduction, for sharpening, to match the severity of my own profile.
I stopped viewing her as a patient. She was clay. She was raw material.
For a second, my hand trembled. This was malpractice. This was mutilation. This was the end of my career if anyone found out.
But then I remembered the photo. A hag.
And I remembered the credit card.
“You wanted to take my place,” I whispered into the silence of the room. “So you shall.”
“Scalpel,” I said to the nurse.
She slapped the instrument into my palm. The light glinted off the blade, a star of cold steel.
“We are going deep today,” I announced, my voice devoid of emotion. “Total reconstruction. Facial feminization and structural realignment.”
I made the first cut. A line of crimson bloomed on her skin.
There was no going back.
The surgery took nine hours.
It was a fugue state. I worked with a precision that bordered on the demonic. I broke her nose. Crack. I reset it, ensuring the slight asymmetry that Richard used to kiss, saying it gave me “character.”
I filed down her chin. The bone dust smelled like chalk. I harvested cartilage from her ear to rebuild the tip of her nose, giving it a slight droop—the Vance droop.
I worked on her eyes. A blepharoplasty, but in reverse. I created the slight hooding of the eyelids that I had inherited from my mother. I etched lines into the corners of her eyes—permanent crow’s feet carved from flesh.
The nurses watched in awe.
“Dr. Vance, the technique is… unconventional,” one whispered. “You’re aging her?”
“I am giving her gravitas,” I replied, not looking up. “She wants to be a woman of substance. Substance comes with scars.”
I stitched her up. Hundreds of tiny, microscopic sutures.
It wasn’t just surgery; it was identity theft in reverse. I was printing my soul onto her face.
By the eighth hour, my back ached. My hands cramped. But as I looked down at the swollen, bruised face on the table, I didn’t see a stranger anymore.
I saw myself.
It was terrifying. It was perfect.
I placed the final stitch.
“Bandages,” I ordered.
We wrapped her head in thick layers of gauze. She looked like a mummy. A cocoon waiting to hatch a monster.
I stripped off my bloody gloves and threw them into the biohazard bin. They landed with a wet thud.
“Recovery will take two weeks,” I told the head nurse. “I will handle the post-op personally. No one else is to see her face. No mirrors. No phones. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
I walked out of the OR. I felt light. I felt heavy. I felt like God on the seventh day, looking at a world that was about to burn.
Two weeks later.
The swelling had gone down. The bruising had faded to yellow.
Chloe sat on the edge of the bed in the recovery suite. She was vibrating with excitement.
“Is it perfect?” she asked, her voice muffled by the remaining bandages. “Will he love it? Does it look like the photos I showed you?”
“It is exactly what you asked for,” I replied. “You wanted to replace her. You wanted to make him forget she ever existed.”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I want to be the only thing he sees.”
I stood behind her. I reached for the scissors.
Snip. The first layer fell away.
Snip. The second.
The air in the room seemed to freeze. The final layer of gauze peeled away from her skin.
She was healed. The scars were thin, invisible lines.
I picked up the silver hand mirror from the table. I held it out to her.
“Take a look,” I said.
