Last Dance, Last Chance

out by the pool, with the requisite barbecue.
    “It was on August 16,” Sandy remembered. “Sarah was on the pool deck in her bathing suit, and she looked beautiful. But she always wanted boobs. For six years, she’d been talking about having breast implants. She used to ask me, ‘How can I have two kids and no boobs?’ And I’d tell her she had a beautiful figure, but she never believed me. It didn’t matter to Dan. In fact, he didn’t want her to ever have surgery because he worried about her.”
    No one looking at Sarah Smith could have imagined that she felt unhappy about her appearance, but perfection had become a goal of many young women in the nineties, bombarded as they were by images of movie stars and top recording artists. Most of them didn’t realize that most of the exquisite models’ and stars’ photographs were air-brushed to remove the slightest flaw and that expert makeup artists worked over them for hours. Sarah stared at her modest bustline and felt inadequate.
    There had been a medical reason for her nose surgery. There was no reason at all for her to have breast implants—nothing at all beyond Sarah’s own perception that she really wasn’t very attractive.
    When she got a job promotion six months earlier, her salary was enough so she could save for the operation. She wouldn’t have taken money meant for her family, but now she had enough to pay for it.
    When Sarah had her first appointment with Dr. Anthony Pignataro, she was impressed. He told her she was a good candidate for the new surgery he had perfected. Since everything had gone so smoothly with her nose surgery in January, Dan wasn’t worried about Sarah’s operation, although he still didn’t see any need for it. She explained to him that Dr. Pignataro had told her about a brand-new procedure that he was using. “He said it worked so well that he would be charging more for it soon—but he would give her a special price,” Dan said. “He talked to her the way a salesman talks.”
    Dr. Pignataro noted on Sarah Smith’s chart that he had given her a complete physical examination, although he did not do any X-rays or give her an EKG, explaining that it wasn’t necessary because she was under forty. He did take all the requisite blood tests, and he advised her hurriedly of the possible dangers in surgery. She signed releases, and her surgery was scheduled for 9:30 on the morning of August 25, 1997.
    Few people knew that Sarah had made an appointment to have her breasts enlarged. “She told me and her mother, of course,” Sandy said. “And her sisters-in-law, but she wasn’t the type to tell people she wasn’t really close to.”
    As Sarah enjoyed the barbecue party for the French exchange students that Saturday night, Sandy noticed that she was “super happy. She came over to me and whispered, ‘Take a good look because this is the last time I’ll look like this in a bathing suit!’”
    Sandy forgot about that conversation soon after the party when Tim Smith suddenly became very ill. He was taken to the hospital and they were all afraid that his earlier illness had returned, but it was only his gallbladder. He was home by Tuesday, August 19.
    On Friday, August 22, Dan and Sarah had their movie-popcorn family night camp-out in the living room with Nathan and Amanda. It was almost Labor Day. School would be starting for Nathan soon, and Amanda would go to preschool.
    Dan Smith drove Sarah to Anthony Pignataro’s office on Monday morning, taking a book with him to read in the waiting room while she was in surgery. He sat down with her to wait, and then she was taken to the back room, where she said the doctor would give her some “relaxing” pills. Dan was surprised when she came back out to the waiting room. He could tell the pills were affecting her; she was beginning to feel woozy.
    Evidently Janie Krauss was late and they had to wait for her to arrive. When she came rushing in, Sarah was taken back through the closed door to have her surgery. Dan prepared to wait, but Dr. Pignataro came out several times and urged him to “go do some errands or something, and you can come back later.”
    “I didn’t want to go,” Dan said. “But finally he said he was going to lock the door. He didn’t exactly throw me out, but it was clear he wanted me to leave.”
    In his book, Anthony, writing as “Debbie,” would recall that August 25 was the day his “world fell apart.” For Sarah Smith, it was far worse