CHICAGO—Speculating that the self-anesthetizing, scalpel-bearing woman must have left the house in a big hurry that morning, passengers on a crowded Chicago Brown Line train confirmed Friday that a fellow rider attempted a quick session of plastic surgery on her face while on her way to work. “She must have overslept this morning because she’s really rushing her way through this chin-and-cheek tuck,” observed fellow commuter Josie Xavier, who looked on as the woman boarded the train, sat down, and assembled various supplies on a surgical steel lap tray, including a roll of gauze, a tube of topical numbing cream, and several syringes of Botox and dermal filler to augment her lips and cheeks. “I have to say, she seems like a pro at this. She didn’t even use a mirror half the time, and she marked up her own face with a Sharpie while waiting on the platform. I have to admit, I got kind of nervous for her when we hit that bumpy section of the track while she was shaving her nasal cartilage and the scalpel was millimeters from her eye socket, but she still pulled it off.” Passengers observed, however, that after the woman had reattached her facial epidermal layer and tied off her stitches, she clumsily applied an uneven layer of foundation and used a too-bright lipstick before getting off the train deep in the financial district.

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