Scar
In the alternative universe, when a person lies, a scar appears on their body.
The bigger the lie, the deeper the scar. It was rare to see a person with no scars. I myself have had a few. I wasn’t a liar; I just said a few white lies to get away from scolding or stupid arguments. Some people had deep scars and good lord, how much can a person lie? It made me really inquisitive as to what they would lie about to have a scar so deep, so ugly, yet so fascinating.
The incident that I am going to tell is of when I just got out of medical school and started working in a hospital. My team consisted of a senior and four newbies, including me. My senior was a nice guy, and out of the three newbies, there was this one woman who had an aura about her. There was not a single scar on her and she became the talk of the hospital. Even the patients were whispering among themselves about this sorcery.
She said that she was in the army before, and left because it wasn’t “her scene”. No scar meant she wasn’t lying.
Then I saw it. One day, I was changing into scrubs and saw her changing in the mirror. She had the deepest, ugliest scar just below the left breast. I didn’t dare ask her about it. I mentioned it to my friends in the hospital and we all brainstormed theories, some of which were so far-fetched and some fictional.
Then we all finally knew why. There was a child who had bone cancer, and her MRI lit up like a Christmas tree on the screens in front of us. It meant the little kid’s days were numbered. Our one scarred woman said, “You will be fine,” and she flinched a little in pain. We all understood that her scar had deepened.
