Scene 1 - Awesomely Totally Great Chick Stuff Galore

Pan-Clorheptanol-D, it was called. Three tiny pills a day, and Shellie had enough for about another week, which should be EXACTLY right. It hadn't been hard to get one of her fans, Dr. Scheidler (in her mind, she always called him Dr. Stinky because of his cigar habit) to provide the magic medicine. He was an endocrinologist, which Shellie didn't have to be able to pronounce to know it meant hormone doctor. She didn't have to fuck him; he was putty in her hands, totally slutty for any kind of attention from her. Hey, that rhymed! "Slutty putty, slutty putty, slutty putty..." she giggled softly as she pranced up the walkway to the house, glowing with self-admiration.

Fifty thousand bucks, Shellie, you incredibly smart naughty wonderful brat! And for what? Doing what you already do five nights a week, just once and in a bigger showroom, for a bigger audience (WAY bigger counting the pay-per-view, and then the video), and it isn't going to do your fan club any harm either! She pinned the Neiman's bag between her hip and the wall, dropped the Bebe bag on the flagstones (nothing in there was breakable), shifted the bigger of the two Vicky's Secret bags up to the angle of her elbow, and tussled with her keychain (GOT to take some of that shit off of there!) until she got the door key lined up with the lock. Finally it turned, and without a broken nail. Her good karma was holding steady.

Carla was home, more good karma. Shellie almost never made it to the alarm control thingie in time when she came in from shopping. Then she'd have to figure out how to shut it up and find the number and call them and tell them it was her again. Life is just TOO hard on a girl. But Carla's Explorer was in the carport, so it was all good this time.

Nudging the Bebe bag ahead of her with a her foot as she tried to stuff her keychain into her purse, Shellie made slow progress toward the living room. She stopped to get her breath, puffing her unruly bangs off her forehead in a habitual gesture. The rest of her hair (well down her back and a chestnut-auburn-honeyblonde that was TOTALLY the look this month) was pretty out of control too, at the moment, a hazard of being out on a semi-windy day with a really big style. But hey, it goes with the territory and now that she was home, she could put it up, finally.

With her giant load of treasures dumped at last in their temporarily proper place on the floor by the couch, she collapsed in the Lazy Boy and called, "Hey, Carla, I'm home! I went to the mall, check it out!"

Carla came in from the kitchen, lovely, leggy and athletic in a little belly top, short shorts and tall wedgies, a wine cooler fizzing in her hand. "To the mall without me?" she smiled. "You suck, but I might forgive you as long as you didn't get anything good!"

"Hah, I got TONS!" Shellie smirked as Carla spied the loot and her eyebrows rose. "MAJOR damage. They gots new perfume in at Vicky's, purple stretch jeans at the Runway, don't EVEN get me started on shoes! You're gonna hate me so bad!" She indicated the pile with a limp wave of her hand, too exhausted to move otherwise but managing to exude extreme enthusiasm nonetheless. Carla looked appropriately blown away.

"Woah!" She genuflected before the shrine of Chick Stuff and dug in, paper fountaining over both shoulders. "You SLUT! You WENCH!" She opened a shoebox, the lid sailing across the living room like a Frisbee. "You back-alley, schoolyard, BARNYARD..." She held up a pair of elegantly painful-looking stilettos in a rich shade of fuscia and adored them, eyes wide. "What were you doing at North Beach?!!" she accused. "Their sale doesn't start 'til tomorrow!"

Shellie made her wait for a second while she dug in the chair cushions, came up with a reasonably new scrunchie, and constructed a voluminous pony tail. "God, I'm sweating like a mare in heat! It's like the Siberian Desert out there, or something. Hey, Babe, who needs a sale when you're the GUARANTEED future Best Chest in Vegas?" That got Carla's attention, and Shellie batted her eyelashes winningly, sat up in her chair and arched her back, throwing her hands in the air with a studied abandon left over from her cheerleading days. "Whaddaya think?" she chirped. "Ready to give up?"

Carla stared, the delicious shoes forgotten. "Woman," she asked seriously after a moment of disorientation, "what is UP with your tits!" She looked like she'd landed in an X-Files episode without Mulder to explain the madness. Shellie returned a sparkling smile that would have cost God-could-only-have-known-how-much if one of her fans hadn't been a dental cosmetic technologist. She offered not a word.

Scene 2 - Cheaters Cannot Be Allowed To Prosper

Carla's mind churned as she stumbled back into the kitchen, put down her drink, sat on the barstool where she'd left her Cosmo open to this month's version of "99 Positions He Never Heard Of" and distractedly lit a cigarette. Shellie had gone to take a shower, but not before smugly resisting Carla's pleas for an explanation. Those were NOT her real... um... her PREVIOUS breasts. Shellie was a "surgically improved" 36DD. Carla was a natural 36DD. It was the true order of things, a fundamental building block of their universe. Shellie was a former cheerleader, Carla was a former volleyball player. Shellie was a showgirl at the Bellagio, Carla was an RN who only OCCASIONALLY worked at Cheetah's, and only when she really wanted to buy something she couldn't otherwise afford. Shellie gleefully took jewelry and clothes and cruises and stuff from men, Carla took men (when she wanted them). Shellie's boobs were fantastic and artistically done by the best in the business, Carla's boobs were fantastic and original equipment. Carla was the Boss.

Today, with a thrust and a bounce, that had all changed. Shellie was at LEAST an E cup and they had a plump, ripe look, even stuffed into that sports bra, that Carla would certainly have remembered if it had existed a few days ago. So round, so firm, so fully packed, as the saying goes; Shellie was absolutely right about the guaranteed contest victory, and HOW had she done it? There hadn't been time for another operation, and besides the Best Chest in Vegas was in six days and the final judging was topless. Shellie couldn't have counted on recuperating that fast. And she WASN'T recuperating, she was SHOPPING. And the brat wouldn't TELL! Carla absently made a smoke ring, then swatted it into oblivion with her other hand. This was not good.

Casually torturing one another in the name of friendship was normal for the girls, but there was never any real jealousy. Their taste in men was diametrically opposed, so they had been practically perfect roommates for a lease and a half. When they had heard of the Best Chest in Vegas contest a month earlier, they had entered together without a thought of cattiness. If the judges went for sleek, sultry curves and unspoken promises, Shellie would have a good chance. She had already started working her magic on the sponsor, a pudgy, florid businessman of forty-five or so. If they wanted fitness-contest definition and magnificent natural charms, Carla would do better. Either of them might win, and it would be a great party afterward no matter what. But this... THIS wasn't fair. And Shellie wasn't going to get away with it, not if Carla could help it.

She wracked her brain. A change so pronounced, so abrupt, had to have a medical explanation, didn't it? There were certainly medications that could make girls' bodies react radically, but where had Shellie gotten the stuff?

From a man, of course. Everything was becoming clear. One of her sloppy old doctor customers, it HAD to be. And what was it? Well... that could be revealed too, now that they weren't playing fair.

Carla tiptoed barefoot into the bathroom, where pieces of outfit including the new and heroic sports bra were strewn everywhere, and listened to Shellie humming brightly to herself as she soaped and shampooed and probably touched herself inappropriately on the other side of the shower doors. A glance at the toilet told the tale. It was only justice that one of Shellie's stubborn bad habits was going to prove her undoing. Carla slipped the lid off of a little Tupperware cup that she had just taken from the dishwasher, easily sterile enough to do the job, and dipped it in. She could just imagine Shellie's shriek of "Eeeewww!" if she'd seen Carla purloining the urine sample. Carla was an RN, though, and this was NOTHING compared to some of the world-class grossness she'd been through in her Candy Striper days.

Now, off to the lab!

Scene 3 - Busted

Friday morning dawned bright and early. Shellie dawned somewhat later and somewhat less bright. She had really had her butt kicked at work the last couple of nights as her startling new dimensions led to sharply increased attention from sundry admirers in the audience, and her attempts to fend them off after the show had often melted under an assault of cash, waved by the fistful and stuffed into various parts of her costume and... elsewhere. Last night she had finally succumbed to an eleven hundred dollar bottle of champagne pressed on her by a dorky Saudi prince, and while she had eventually escaped his advances with the help of hotel security, she hadn't escaped the alcohol. The graveyard security supervisor, who was totally married and really sweet, had impounded her car keys and sent her home in a limo. How she had actually made it to her bed was something of a mystery.

She sat up and looked muzzily around her bedroom, trying with both hands to get her hair out of her face. Carla, evidently having heard Shellie's confused groans, padded in and presented a huge cup of hot coffee ( five creams, seven sugars and a shot of Frangelico ) and Shellie almost burst into tears. "God, I love you, you are the BOMB!" she moaned as Carla pressed the insulated Starbucks mug into her fingers and sat on the edge of the bed with a fond expression.

Shellie took a big sip, closed her eyes and moaned louder, swallowed, then set the mug on the nightstand and yawned mightily, stretching. As she did so, Carla eyed her roommate's mind-boggling physique and asked, "Are you okay? They look like they're sort of out of control, y'know."

Shellie didn't have to ask who "they" were. Her boobs had continued to plump and swell all week, and now the common "watermelon" euphemism wasn't too far wrong. In addition, her nipples had swollen and lengthened in proportion. She put her hands under her bosom and hefted it experimentally. Wow. She was glad the contest was tomorrow. These things were getting HEAVY. And SENSITIVE. And what was she going to find to wear today? No more pills, she decided; she definitely didn't need them even though she had a few left. In fact, maybe she had gone just a TEENSIE bit far with it? To herself, she wondered how long this was going to take to go away. To Carla, she said dismissively, "I dunno, must be some hormone thing, like when I'm gonna get my period. It'll go away, prolly." She picked up her coffee mug and took an even bigger sip, trying to maintain an expression of total innocence.

"Okay," said Carla with a shrug. "Why don't you drag yourself out of there and come in the living room. Oprah's on and I want to chat about something."

"Sure, in a sec." Shellie was mildly curious. "Aren't you going to work?"

"Nope, I'm going to stay home with you today. I've got some stuff I need to take care of."

Shellie made it to the living room, plopped on the couch next to Carla and started digging in the cushions for a scrunchie. Oprah was indeed on, and the lifestyle diva was holding forth on some topic utterly crucial to all womankind, managing to be simultaneously bubbly, incredulous, sisterly and sage. Shellie had ransacked her dresser drawers for a top after struggling out of the cotton stretch nightie she'd worn to sleep, and finally resorted to an old boyfriend's white rib-knit tank undershirt to wear with her little cutoffs. She was truly bursting out of it, but at least it covered her nipples. They tingled and stiffened as the fabric slid across them.

"Okay, whassup?" she smiled at Carla, who was nursing her own coffee mug.

"Okay. Now listen... you know you don't always do exactly the smartest thing sometimes, right? I mean not like you're dumb or anything, but you get excited and just do stuff. And I've always taken care of you, haven't I? Like when you're wasted, or when that guy wanted you to do that modeling thing in the Philippines, or when your girlfriend from the hotel tried to get you to put your savings in that marketing thing."

"Yeah, I guess," said Shellie cautiously. Carla was right, although Shellie hadn't exactly spent a lot of time thinking about it. Actually, Carla really did take care of her a lot, and Shellie maybe should have said Thank You more often. She caught her plump little lower lip between her teeth and looked up at Carla from under her lashes.

"So now I'm going to take care of you again, because you haven't exactly been a good girl and I'm afraid something bad is going to happen if I don't do something." She scooted a little closer, holding Shellie's eyes, and their knees touched.

Shellie went very still, butterflies starting to flutter in her tummy. "What do you mean I haven't been good?" she asked softly. "Is this about some guy? Because I'd NEVER if I would have known..."

"No, no, Babe," Carla said just as softly, "it's about these." And she leaned a little closer and slipped her fingers up Shellie's ribs to the side of one of those outrageous breasts and gave it a gentle caress. Shellie's breath caught and she tried to suppress a squirm at the unexpected heat of Carla's touch. That was just because her boobs were SO sensitive right now. Wasn't it? Carla didn't take her hand away.

"What... what about them?" Shellie whispered cautiously.

"It's about the Pan-Clorheptanol-D," Carla said and Shellie said "Uh-oh!" in a tiny little squeak, guilt written all over her face.

"I'm not mad at you," Carla went on. "Really I'm not. I'm worried about you, 'cause I know you don't understand how it works. Whoever gave it to you should have told you. You took too much for too long, and now other parts of you are going to start getting like this if you don't get treatment."

"Other parts?" Shellie gasped in alarm. "WHAT other parts!"

"That depends. When did you stop taking it?"

"I... um... I was going to stop today?" Shellie's green eyes were wide with dread.

Carla started stroking lightly where her hand still rested on her roommate's breast, calming Shellie with her best bedside manner. "It's okay, it's okay, I know what to do... Don't worry, I can take care of it. We can do your treatment right here at home, you won't have to go to Emergency, nobody has to know."

Shellie sighed with relief. "Really?" It never occurred to her to wonder how Carla had known about the hormone stuff. Carla was a nurse, after all, and Shellie was used to her taking over whenever some medical thing happened. "Okay, what do we have to do?"

Scene 4 - Emergency Treatment

"Carla, are you sure about this part? It feels weird!" Shellie hadn't been surprised when Carla had done a careful examination of her boobs, although it was a little embarrassing and secretly a little arousing. She hadn't been surprised when Carla had had her swallow of couple of small pills, and she hadn't been surprised that she was going to have to stay home today and tonight to rest and let the treatment take effect; she'd called in to work and told them she couldn't make it tonight, which was never a problem, there were lots of on-call girls always anxious to be in the show.

But now, as she sat on her bed and watched Carla take this tacky stretchy medical bandage stuff and wrap it around her waist and up her rib cage to just under her bosom, she wondered just how the heck it was going to help.

"Compression therapy, it's called," said Carla. "Whenever we anticipate abnormal swelling of some part of your body, it helps to use this med wrap to keep light pressure on the area. We do it all the time, don't worry."

Shellie subsided, a little intimidated by the hospital terminology. "Oh, okay..."

"It's not too tight, is it?" Carla asked in a professional tone.

"No... not really." It always made Shellie feel good when Carla was in charge like this. She just seemed to totally know what she was doing. Shellie had never really stopped and thought about it before, but now it just seemed so RIGHT to relax and do as she was told. And the way she felt when Carla touched her... that calm, reassuring, but warm and personal way Carla had with her, why hadn't she noticed that before? Carla had taken care of her LOTS of times when she was drunk or had the flu or a cold or something, but she couldn't remember it ever feeling exactly this way, or this good...

Shellie looked up, surprised, as she realized that Carla was wrapping more of that stuff around her thighs, binding them together. And what had happened to her cutoffs? She still had her cotton thong on, but nothing else, and Carla was finishing up, the clingy, stretchy stuff snug and smooth from Shellie's knees to right under her butt. It didn't feel sticky, like tape, exactly, but it sure wasn't going to come loose.