(Again, not fiction, but also doesn't fit any of the other Et Cetera criteria, so this is the closest choice to non-fictin.)
I arrived home after my surgery two weeks ago with the bulges of the thick gauze pads over my incisions visible beneath my shirt. I was curious to remove the coverings to see what damage had been done, but due both to my very, very tiredness that day and an unwillingness to rip my skin apart from the excruciatingly sticky adhesive tape used to hold the gauze in place. The next day, a strangely manic day especially juxtaposed to the previous, a hazy day spent mostly sleeping, I got a call from a nurse at the hospital who seemed a little miffed, a little put-out, to have to answer my two apparently very bothersome questions about showering and eating (please excuse me, I don't quite remember yesterday, kind madam,) and she informed me that today would be a good day to shower.
I stood before the mirror and pulled up my shirt. Most of my abdomen remained covered with the overzealously applied gauze pads. I shrugged groggily, then began gingerly pulling at the pads. The two smaller ones relented easily and with only a few snags on the hair of my very white belly while the other, large pad, easily six inches square, refused my tender coaxing. Still, fearful that blood had clotted it together with my skin or the tape holding it together, I tugged it half-inch by half-inch, ripping hairs here and there, until my entire, nearly bare belly gleamed brightly back at me from the mirror.
Shaved clean, the evidence of my surgery was shockingly . . . minimal. Six pieces of semi-translucent tape adorned a roughly circular area of my abdomen. The two small incisions both had two pieces of tape each, overlapped as sloppy Xes. Small clots of blood dotted each one, with inch-long lines of reddish-black trailing the two larger incisions. I poked at the tender areas carefully, feeling the crusty hardness beneath, satisfied that at least some amount of healing had begun. Regardless of how swollen and sore the areas were, I was happy to see some progress.
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