Moo

She exhaled and tried to give as brief yet detailed an account as possible.  “They started growing when I was ten.  By the time I was in junior high they were up to a C cup.  I passed double D in high school.”  She rolled her eyes.  “It wasn’t easy, having the biggest breasts in the school, but that’s always the way it was.”  She glanced down at them, as if they were two wayward children of hers whom she was trying to explain to the school principal.

        “You have our sympathies, Miss Alkaras,” Ms. Danby said with a little smile.  “Thanks again for being so cooperative.”

        “It’s okay,” Dareen said.

        Then they asked her to lie down on the table.  Five faces crowded around her, looking down.  “If you don’t mind . . .” Dr. Vanaver said, “I will now palpate for any masses.”  He encircled Dareen’s left breast with both hands, then pressed down.  Then grabbed and pressed and moved his fingers around, pushing deep into her breast flesh.  It was like the self-exams she did every month only more forceful.  “They are unusually firm and resilient, but I find no masses or fibroids.”

        He went over to the other side and gave equal treatment to the right breast.  And now Ms. Danby was working on Dareen’s left breast, her fingers smaller and cooler, her smaller hands together unable to encompass each great mound.  Soon each of the lab-coated team was taking turns feeling up Dareen’s breasts.  A couple of them had really cold hands.  Finally the colonel took his turn, his hands more gentle than the others.

        “I will now try to express from the nipple,” Dr. Vanaver said.  To Dareen’s face he said, “This might hurt but just a little.”  A quick little inhalation from Dareen as he grabbed and then, realizing the nipple was too big for just two fingers, grabbed with fingers of both hands, pulling the nipple up, stretching it up from her breast, then twisting it and squeezing it.  Now he let go and repeated the process.  With a quick nod to the others Dareen found both her nipples being pulled up and squeezed.  She quickly recognized the motion; it was exactly like milking a cow.  She indeed felt like a cow, like a piece of livestock, her big udders being milked.  She closed her eyes.  Such a shameful thing in the sight of Allah, to be so on display and poked and pulled at this way, though she knew Allah would take no offense because it was a medical procedure.  It was the one time a Muslim woman was permitted to expose her entire self.  But she still felt the natural modesty of a shy Muslim woman under seige.

        There was no discharge from the nipples, of course, though all the doctors seemed to be doing enough yanking for her to produce several gallons of milk.  Suddenly she smiled and giggled.  The similarity was so obvious that it had to be on everyone’s mind.  The last one, the colonel, finally finished, and his pasty-white face smiled down at her as he said, “Thank you, Miss Alkaras.”

        Dareen couldn’t help it; she said, “Moooo.”  And everyone burst out laughing.

        The break in tension made it easier for her to get up and walk naked in their midst into another room.  Unfortunately it contained what she recognized as a mammogram machine.  She had had two in her life, once when a doctor detected fibroids (they disappeared with her next period) and once to complete the physical for entering college.  She had heard that for women with large breasts the process was painful and her experience had been no exception.

        The machine had a stool in front, and she felt her private parts pressing against the cool metal as she sat down, hands down at her sides.  Ms. Danby told her what to do, though she already knew.  She placed one breast on the glass and metal shelf and winced as the upper shelf came down on it.  At least when her breasts were normal and a little saggy they had “give” to them and spread out to the sides, but with her new firm breasts that wasn’t possible.  Which meant the machine had to squeeze harder.  She took a deep breath as her breast was squashed as if in a vise. Fortunately it only took a moment.  Then she turned and placed her other breast on the shelf.  In her pain Dareen allowed her thoughts to turn dark.  She imagined she was a naked prisoner and the doctors crowding around were torturers, witnessing a daily ritual, the crushing of Inmate Alkaras’s huge breasts.

        By the time she walked out of the mammogram room her poor breasts were throbbing, having been poked and stretched and mauled.  Fortunately it seemed they were going to get a rest.  The next room contained a platform upon which was a treadmill, surrounded by a console and lots of wires.