There's a small, faint scar at the edge of her right areola
(the circle of dark pigmentation surrounding the nipple):
souvenir of a procedure the doctors insisted on performing
after routine mammograms came back with areas of
suspicious irregularity. So she agrees to a localization
biopsy, in which a small wire is threaded through a needle,
and its tip guided toward the area of abnormal tissue.
A French dermatologist came up with the word biopsy
in 1879: study of tissue removed from a living body.
Because that day there's renovation going on in other
parts of the clinic, they numb her up, insert the wire,
tape it down, and steer her in a wheelchair to the building
next door. She thinks about the legend of St. Ursula, martyr
and subject of the very last documented painting produced
by Caravaggio—in it, Ursula calmly regards the arrow
that's just been released from the bow of the pagan king:
how it pierces the cloth of her dress and rests like a quill
on the plump cushion of her breast. No blood drips from her
wound, but her cloak and the voluminous sleeves of her
murderer's doublet are crimson. Already, her face
has the pallor of death, but there's no aureole of light
yet above her head. None of the 11,000 virgins in her retinue
are in the frame; they've all been beheaded. The artist
has painted himself right behind her figure: openmouthed,
in witness or in wonder. Two months after he finishes
the painting, he is dead. As for her, they take out the wire lead
and cover the site with gauze. In less than a week, she will get
the results: nothing conclusive. Just breasts as dense as oatmeal.
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