Chapter 1: Plaster Prisons and Lingering Fingers
The hospital odor wouldn’t leave me. It was a ghost in my hair, under my fingernails—that sharp, sterile smell of fear and antiseptic clinging to my skin, mingling with the dusty-plaster scent of my new constraints. They’d sent me home in a wheelchair this time, a bulky, rental-model beast that didn’t fit through the bathroom door. My right leg, now in a fresh thigh-high cast, stuck out like a bleached tree trunk. The knee was slightly bent, locked in a permanent, awkward angle that made sitting feel like a form of torture. My pelvis, where the new pelvic binder cinched tight, throbbed with a deep, nauseating ache.
And my left arm. The full-arm cast was a lead weight. It rested on a pillow on my lap, the plaster still vaguely warm from the chemical reaction, a sarcophagus from fingertips to just below my shoulder. The fingers of that hand, the ones not encased, were splinted individually, taped together into a useless, alien claw.
Juniper pushed the chair into the center of the room and stopped. The silence was louder than the hospital bustle. She stood there, hands on the grips, breathing heavily. We hadn’t spoken much on the ride home.
“Home sweet home,” she finally said, her voice too bright. It cracked in the middle.
I stared at the coffee table, its shattered glass now replaced by a cheap, laminated piece from a thrift store. A monument to the first fall.
“I need to get out of this chair,” I said. My voice was flat. “And I need to… clean myself.” The sponge bath at the hospital had been a clinical, demeaning swabbing. I felt grimy, inside and out.
“Right. Of course.” She maneuvered the chair to the edge of the sofa. The transfer was a complex operation. She had to brace my good leg—the left one, now the only reliable limb—and guide my dead weight as I pivoted, my arms useless, my pelvis shrieking in protest. I landed on the sofa with a groan, my head thrown back against the cushions. Sweat beaded on my forehead from the effort.
Juniper knelt before me, her expression serious. “Okay. Operation Hygiene. I laid out some stuff.” She gestured to a towel, a basin of water, a washcloth, and soap on the floor. “We’ll start with what we can reach.”
She helped me wrestle my t-shirt over my head. The air was cool on my skin. I wore a simple, front-clasp sports bra. My arms were useless. She saw my dilemma.
“I can… or you can try with your…” She trailed off, looking at my splinted fingers.
“Just do it,” I whispered, closing my eyes.
Her fingers were warm. They brushed against my sternum as she fumbled with the clasp. It took three tries. A little snick, and the pressure released. She carefully peeled the fabric away. I didn’t open my eyes. I heard the soft rasp of the washcloth in the water, the gentle wringing out.
The first touch was startling. Warm, damp cotton on my collarbone. She began to wash my neck, my shoulders, with a slow, methodical care. Her movements were clinical at first, but as she worked down my right arm—the one with only a wrist cast—her touch changed. It became slower. More deliberate. The cloth traced the line of my bicep, the inside of my elbow. She rinsed the cloth, her knuckles grazing the side of my breast.
A shiver, completely involuntary, raced over my skin. My breath hitched. It wasn’t pain.
She paused. “Cold?”
“No,” I breathed.
She continued. The washcloth moved over my ribs, my stomach. My skin hummed beneath it. Every nerve ending was a live wire. This was supposed to be humiliation. Pure, degrading helplessness. But the darkness behind my eyelids, the focused quiet of her breathing, the sheer physical sensation of being tended to… it was morphing into something else. Something warm and coiled deep in my abdomen. The pelvic binder felt suddenly hotter, tighter.
Her hand, guiding the cloth, skimmed the lower curve of my stomach. Her pinky finger dipped, just for a millisecond, below the waistband of my sweatpants. It was an accident. It had to be.
A low, soft sound escaped me.Not a word. Just a vibration in my throat.
Juniper’s hand froze. The room held its breath. I opened my eyes.
She was looking at her hand on my stomach, then up at my face. Her cheeks were flushed a deep, blotchy pink. Her blue eyes were wide, not with guilt this time, but with a startled, dawning awareness. She saw my parted lips, the dilation of my pupils. She felt the heat coming off my skin.
“Elara…” she started, but her voice was thick.
“Keep going,” I said. The command hung between us, heavy and impossible to take back.
She didn’t look away. Slowly, she dipped the cloth back into the basin. She didn’t wring it out as thoroughly. Drops of warm water fell onto my stomach, tracing paths down my sides. She brought it back, washing lower, her movements now openly slow, almost caressing. Her other hand came up to steady herself, resting on my hip, her thumb pressing into the soft flesh just above the pelvic binder.
The itch inside my casts was ferocious now, a maddening static that mixed indistinguishably with the building heat between my legs. I was trapped in a cage of plaster and pain, yet the most acute sensation was the glide of a washcloth over my belly and the scorching pressure of her thumb.
Her breathing had shallowed to match mine. The pretense of cleaning was gone. The cloth made a slow, wet circle. Her eyes were locked on mine, questioning, terrified, hungry.
Then, her foot, tucked under her, shifted. Her knee bumped the basin.
The sound was a sharp, plastic crack. Water, now lukewarm and soapy, gushed across the floorboards, over the towel, and soaked instantly into the bottom of my sweatpants and the edge of the sofa.The spell shattered.
Juniper jerked back as if electrocrated, scrambling to her feet. “Oh, crap! Oh, I’m so—the water—your pants—”
The moment was gone, drowned in a flood of mundane accident. The cold, wet fabric against my skin was a brutal shock. The coiled warmth inside me twisted into a knot of frustrated, agonizing need.
“It’s fine,” I said, my voice hollow. “Just… get me something dry.”
She mopped frantically with the dry end of the towel, her previous intensity replaced by frantic clumsiness. She fetched a pair of clean, loose shorts and, with averted eyes and trembling hands, helped me change out of the soaked sweatpants. The intimacy was gone, replaced by a stiff, mechanical efficiency. The air between us crackled with everything that had just been silently acknowledged and everything that had been ruined.
She got me settled, propped on pillows, a blanket over my lap. The wet spot on the sofa seeped cold into my thigh.
“I’ll make tea,” she mumbled, fleeing to the kitchen.
I stared at the ceiling, at a hairline crack I’d never noticed before. My body was a battlefield. The pain from my fractures was a constant, droning bass note. The itch was a frantic, screaming choir. And overlaying it all was a new, raw hunger, throbbing in time with my heartbeat, born from the touch of a washcloth and the look in my roommate’s eyes.
I was utterly, completely helpless. And for one crystalline, terrifying moment, I hadn't hated it.
I had wanted it.
From the kitchen, I heard the familiar, damning sound of ceramic hitting the floor. A cup, undoubtedly. Then Juniper’s soft, frustrated curse.
The cracks were everywhere. In the ceiling. In the china. In me. And something was spilling out of all of them. Something that had nothing to do with bone.