In mid-December, I wake up during my commute when the elderly man pushed against me hacks his throat out and I feel the droplets from his mouth fly dangerously close to my eye. He lets out another wet cough. My breath shortens, and as my vision comes to in a haze of sanitized beige and white, a lump builds up in my throat and pushes its way up through my mouth and a barely suppressed cough flies out of me. Another hangs onto its coattails. Once the coughing starts, all I can do is cover my face with my arm and rifle through my bag for a bottle of water. It’s somewhere in there, because I distinctly remember debating whether I would need water or not, and then begrudgingly filling it up after my roommate Öykü comments how my skin has been looking stretched and thin, like you’re not drinking enough water and using a moisturiser. But I can’t get a hold of it. The cough makes catching my breath impossible. My fingers tremble and sweat, and the bottle keeps slipping through my clutch and slipping back into my bag. My knees start to buckle in rhythm with each cough clawing its way deep out of my chest. The sides of my stomach are hurting now. The man with the wet cough serenely gazes out the window of the train, unaware of what he’s caused. Two women in matching knee-high boots and hair bleached to high heavens shoot me a glance before continuing a muted conversation. One has a pinched nose that doesn’t really fit her face.

The building next to our apartment calls itself an “aesthetic clinic”. In the morning, when the people who work at the clinic start to roll in, Öykü nastily notes that they somehow narrowly avoided the very “ aesthetics” they promise. Doctor Emre is one of them. I try not to encourage Öykü sometimes, because her nastiness is the kind that gets bigger the more you acknowledge it, and withers into mortification once ignored. But she’s not wrong about Doctor Emre. After all, he smashes open women’s faces and bodies and saws and shaves and shreds them until the women that enter are not the women that leave. Meanwhile, the man himself could use some work.

Hair plugs, a rhinoplasty, definitely. Not sure if men get lipo but he really should, Öykü says while we stand on the balcony with our coffees. Well, my coffee, her matcha. It’s her new fad, because coffee spikes your cortisol levels and makes your face puffy and debalances your hormones. It annoys me, because its her way of saying I have a puffy face and high cortisol and unbalanced hormones.

Today’s victim is a 30-something woman with dark roots showing and a nice turquoise sweater that brings her blue eyes out. Öykü and I like to pick these women out in the morning, see what they look like before they become different people. I concede there’s a sick pleasure we derive from it. My pleasure comes from the genius of it. They go in with normal faces and come out with skin so tight it could burst open at the slightest touch, leaking flesh and tissue everywhere. But somehow it doesn’t. Or pinched eyes when before they had wrinkles and saggy skin. Or an ass when there wasn’t one before. Doctor Emre of course doesn’t run a shoddy business. His Instagram is pretty clear that his consultations have a strict screening procedure. “NO UNNECESSARY PROCEDURES”, one of his stories proclaimed. “MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS”, the next slide shouts. “Cash payment preferred”, the next one says.

I wonder what his criteria is. I wonder if all the Instagram posts about “ethical plastic surgery” is just bullshit. Often Öykü and I joke about going in there with some fake bullshit story just to find out. But neither of us would ever actually go through with it.

Although I hide my fascination with the whole thing under the guise of admiration, Öykü doesn’t. She likes the bad ones, the pinched nose that no longer fits the face drowning under tape, the puffy post-face lift look, the engorged lips, the young 20-somethings that leave looking like 40-somethings who had plastic surgery done. An episode of Botched but with Anatolian blood. As she sips her matcha, her eyes lock into the turquoise sweater woman and she perks up. This one’s young. She’s going to leave looking a mess. 24 to 44 in a day. I hack out a wet cough as I laugh and the droplets fly into her matcha.

The coughing isn’t a mystery. Öykü convinced me that smoking cigarettes aged you, so I bought a disposable vape, and then another. I’m on my ninth one just this month. The ones that run out are tossed off the balcony into the terraced area behind the clinic, where they join a growing pile of needles and rags and other miscellaneous items. In the train, I’ll steal a couple puffs here and there. I did so right before the coughing fit in the train started.

The growing pile of needles is embarrassing. For a city that could very well be the global capital of cosmetic procedures, they really do cut corners with medical hygiene. That homeless guy sleeps way too close to that pile, Öykü points with her matcha mug. One lip filler could buy him a month’s groceries. I shrug.

I think Turqoise Sweater might get an eyelid lift. She looked a little droopy. I shake my head. It’s her neck that droops, so maybe just a necklift. Doctor Emre charges less for it. I know the prices by heart. I check the Instagram stories religiously.

In the train, someone’s spilled their milkshake on the floor. The milky froth creeps out from the center where the plastic cup lols around directionless. When the train stops at each station, the milk spreads out until its just a pale white film on the floor. I watch it stretch and stretch, until it looks like its almost about to burst, and take a hit of my vape. It stretches like skin. I touch mine.