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II
The Poison
1
Richard Lafargue rose early that Monday morning. His day would be busy. He went straight to the pool and swam a few laps, then took his breakfast on the lawn, enjoying the early morning sunshine as he absently scanned the headlines of the daily papers.
Roger was waiting for him at the wheel of the Mercedes. Before leaving, though, he paid a visit to Eve, who was still asleep. He slapped her gently awake. She sat straight up, startled. The sheet slipped aside, and Richard noticed the graceful curve of her breasts. With the tip of his forefinger he caressed her, tracing a path from her ribcage to the point of her nipple.
She could not help laughing; she seized his hand and drew it to her belly. Richard flinched. Straightening up, he started for the door. Once there, he turned. Eve had tossed the sheet off altogether and held out welcoming arms. It was his turn to laugh.
“Bastard!” she hissed. “You’re dying for it!”
He shrugged, turned on his heel, and disappeared.
Half an hour later, he was at the hospital in the center of Paris where he ran an internationally renowned plastic surgery department. But he spent only his mornings there and devoted his afternoons to a private clinic he owned in Boulogne.
He shut himself in his office to study the file on an operation scheduled for that day. His assistants waited impatiently. After taking the time he needed to think the case over, he donned scrubs and headed for the operating room.
The room was surmounted by a glassed-in gallery with tiered seating. Today there was a goodly number of spectators, doctors and students. They listened attentively to Lafargue’s voice, distorted by the loudspeakers, as he expounded the procedure.
“Well, what we have here, on forehead and cheeks, are large keloid plaques, the result of burns from the explosion of volatile chemicals. The nasal pyramid is virtually nonexistent, the eyelids have been destroyed. You are looking at perfect indications for treatment by means of tubular skin flaps. We shall be drawing for this purpose upon both the arm and the abdomen.”
With the help of a scalpel, Lafargue was already cutting large rectangles of skin from the patient’s stomach. Above him, the spectators’ faces pressed against the glass. An hour later he was able to show a first result: skin flaps sown into tubes had left the subject’s arm and abdomen and been grafted to his burn-ravaged face. Doubly anchored, they would serve to rebuild the completely ruinous facial integument.