Self-Portrait Post-Biopsy, with Caravaggio’s Last Painting

There's a small, faint scar at the edge of her right areola 
(the circle of dark pigmentation surrounding the nipple): 

souvenir of a procedure the doctors insist on performing 
after routine mammograms come back with areas of 

suspicious irregularity. So she agrees to a localization 
biopsy, in which a small wire is threaded through a needle, 

and its tip guided toward the area of abnormal tissue. 
A French dermatologist came up with the word biopsy 

in 1879: study of tissue removed from a living body. 
Because that day there's renovation going on in other 

parts of the clinic, they numb her up, insert the wire, 
tape it down, and steer her in a wheelchair to the building 

next door. She thinks about the legend of St. Ursula, martyr 
and subject of the very last documented painting produced 

by Caravaggio—in it, Ursula calmly regards the arrow 
that's just been released from the bow of the pagan king: 

how it pierces the cloth of her dress and rests like a quill 
on the plump cushion of her breast. No blood drips from her 

wound, but her cloak and the voluminous sleeves of her
murderer's doublet are crimson. Already, her face 

has the pallor of death, but there's no aureole of light 
yet above her head. None of the 11,000 virgins in her retinue 

are in the frame; they've all been beheaded. The artist 
has painted himself right behind her figure: openmouthed, 

in witness or in wonder. Two months after he finishes 
the painting, he is dead. As for her, they take out the wire lead 

and cover the site with gauze. In less than a week, she will get 
the results: nothing conclusive. Just breasts as dense as oatmeal.