It took a little while to get used to the idea of all that money. It also took a little while to think about what The Surgeon had told me and promised me. I had a few doubts about plastic surgery. I'd read about the disasters. The Surgeon said he had gone one stage beyond everyday cosmetic surgery and developed special equipment - don't ask me to explain it - that worked like a sculptor shaping the available material - my flesh - into the best it could ever be.

I paid Ed's medical care bills anonymously. His mother was on welfare. I was starting to come to terms with forgetting about him. There was no hope really unless he suddenly came out of the coma.

The idea of spending quite a few months locked away in The Surgeon's private center in LA was also a difficult thing to buy in to but I thought, what's the alternative. So I signed up.

I can only describe his place as something out of Star Trek. I'd never seen such equipment. I had a private room and was one of about a dozen patients going through body remodelling conveyor belt. The first time I saw The Transformer, as it was called, I almost freaked. The Surgeon could actually get inside this machine and operate batteries of lasers and surgical equipment using a kind of three-dimensional model of the ideal body shape and especially the face. There was wasn't much to do to the rest of me and I had seen a print out of how I might look when I had healed and when I had gone through the exercise and diet routine. Maybe it's the way he hooked his customers but, I gotta admit, I bought it hook, line and sinker.