Thorn in My Side by Slaughter Karin

Author:Slaughter, Karin [Slaughter, Karin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2011-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

Chang and Ang Bunker are perhaps the most famous conjoined twins in history. Called “Siamese twins” because they hailed from Siam, they worked in a traveling circus most of their lives. Having made their fortune as a freak show, they retired to Tennessee, where they farmed the land by day and tended to their wives and families by night.

Yes, they had wives and families. Chang and his wife had ten children. Ang and his wife had eleven. Because their wives—who, by the way, were sisters—did not get along, the two men had separate households. Three nights would be spent in Chang’s marital bed, and then the next three nights would be spent in Ang’s. They were gentlemen farmers. Respected citizens. Their sons fought for the Confederacy, which, while not exactly laudable, had some tinge of honor.

The twins died on the same day. Chang succumbed to pneumonia during a long January night. The next morning, Ang woke to find his brother dead. His wife and children heard his cries of grief and came to comfort him. A doctor was sent for. The plan was to separate the two, but Ang refused. He would not be parted from his brother.

He died a few hours later.

Today, the surgery to separate the two men could be performed in a few hours. Doctors would refer to them as xiphopagus twins, joined at the sternum by a tiny piece of cartilage and sharing a liver with two independently functioning halves. The liver is a remarkable organ, the closest thing to a salamander that the human body has. Slice it into pieces and it will grow back as one.

The adorable Hensel girls are craniopagus twins, meaning they are joined at the head but, for the most part, have two separately developed bodies.

The more reclusive Gaylon brothers are omphalo-schiopagus twins, with four arms, four legs, and fused abdomens. They live in the embrace of their loving family, which consists of nine brothers and sisters.

Kirk and I are thoraco-omphalopagus twins. We are fused from the upper chest to the lower chest. We share a heart. A liver. Part of the digestive system. We are also, to my knowledge, the only conjoined twins in the American penal system.

Aggravated assault. Rape. Murder. It was hard to quibble with any of these charges once they showed the crime scene photos. Poor Mindy Connor. The police photographer’s flash was even more harsh than the xenon parking lot lights of the Pink Pony. She was not a pretty girl. Nor was she a girl. Forty-three years old. She’d lost custody of her children five years ago because she preferred the needle to the demands of motherhood. Her father said she was trying to get off drugs before she died. She’d taken up knitting to give her hands something to do. Maybe it was Mindy, not the grandmother, who’d made the sleeves too long on the reindeer Christmas sweaters in my dream.

Kirk’s idea had been to throw Mindy’s body in the Dumpster behind the Pink Pony.

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