Chapter 6: Traction Transgression
The ambulance ride was a blur of fluorescent light and jolting pain, each bump in the road sending lightning bolts through Willow’s left side. Daisy held her hand the entire time, her grip almost painful, her face a pale moon of silent weeping. The paramedics’ calm, clipped questions—On a scale of one to ten? Can you feel this?—were islands in a sea of nausea.
The ER was a familiar circus of noise and controlled chaos, but this time, the script was different. The pain was deeper, more profound. The looks from the nurses held a new layer of professional curiosity bordering on suspicion. When the X-rays came back, the resident’s face was grim.
“A displaced femoral neck fracture,” he said, pointing at the cloudy film on the screen. “The hip is broken clean through. This is a significant injury.”
Willow, floating on a cloud of fentanyl, managed a slurred, “Add it to the tab.”
Daisy, standing in the corner like a guilty ghost, made a small, choked sound.
Dr. Amelia Harding arrived just as they were prepping Willow for surgery. Her sharp eyes took in the scene: Willow pale and drugged on the gurney, the new X-rays, Daisy looking like she wanted to dissolve into the linoleum. She scanned the chart, her lips a thin line.
“Fell transferring from a wheelchair?” Harding asked, her voice neutral.
“It was my fault,” Daisy burst out, the words tripping over each other. “I slipped on syrup. I hit the chair. I didn’t mean—”
Harding held up a hand, silencing her. She looked at Willow. “Is that what happened, Willow?”
Willow turned her heavy head. She saw Daisy’s desperate, love-stricken, guilt-ravaged face. She saw the memory of the knitting needle, the confession in the dark. I want you to need me for everything.
“Yeah,” Willow breathed, the word thick. “Syrup. Real clumsy.”
Harding’s gaze lingered on her for a beat too long. She gave a single, slow nod. “Okay. We’re going to do a closed reduction and internal fixation. Pins and screws to hold the bone together. You’ll be in traction for a while post-op to keep everything aligned.” She turned to Daisy. “You should wait outside.”
The surgery was a black hole in Willow’s memory. She fell into it and woke up hours later in a private recovery room, the world a muffled, aching place. The first thing she became aware of was the weight. A system of pulleys and ropes suspended her left leg, keeping it slightly elevated and perfectly still. A gentle, constant pull emanated from her hip. It wasn’t painful, but it was an inescapable presence, a mechanical tether to the bed.
And the second thing was Daisy, asleep in a vinyl chair by the window, curled into herself like a child. She had a smear of what looked like dried tears on her cheek.
The next two days passed in a haze of medication, physical therapy assessments, and a staggering, all-consuming boredom. Daisy was there every visiting hour, a whirlwind of forced cheer. She fluffed pillows, read gossip magazines aloud in silly voices, and meticulously arranged get-well cards on the windowsill. But her eyes were haunted. Her hands, when they adjusted Willow’s blanket or passed her the water cup, were eerily, purposefully steady.
Dr. Harding made her rounds on the third morning. She examined the incision site—a neat, angry line of staples—and checked the traction apparatus.
“How’s the pain?” Harding asked, her fingers probing gently.
“Manageable,” Willow said. It was mostly true. The deep, grinding ache in her hip was a constant, but the sharp edges had been sanded down by pills.
“Good. The alignment looks perfect. We’ll keep you in traction for another few days to ensure stability, then we can transition to a brace.” Harding made a note on the chart. She glanced at Daisy, who was hovering near the foot of the bed, staring at the weights holding Willow’s leg aloft as if they were fascinating artifacts. “You understand she cannot put any weight on that leg for at least six weeks. The wheelchair is mandatory. No attempts to stand, not even to pivot.”
“I understand,” Daisy said, her voice solemn. “I won’t let her.”
“It’s not her job to let me,” Willow muttered, frustration bubbling up.
“Right now, it absolutely is,” Harding said, her tone leaving no room for argument. She turned her attention back to the traction setup, adjusting a small knob that regulated the weight. “We’re going to increase the pull slightly today. Promote better alignment.”
As Harding leaned over the bed, her focus on the mechanical hardware, Willow felt a familiar, maddening itch begin to bloom deep within the new cast on her right wrist. She twitched her fingers inside the fiberglass.
Daisy saw it. Her eyes snapped from the traction weights to Willow’s face.
“Itching?” Daisy asked, her voice low.
Willow gave a tight nod, her jaw clenched. She didn’t want to ask. Not here, not in front of Harding.
Harding straightened up. “Use the air blower. Don’t introduce anything into the cast.” She said it like she’d read their minds, her gaze flickering between them. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”
The moment the door swished shut behind the doctor, the atmosphere in the room thickened.
“Where?” Daisy asked. She was already moving, not toward the bedside table with the hospital-issue itch reliever, but toward her own large tote bag.
“Daisy, don’t,” Willow said, but it was weak. The itch was a crescendo, a screaming chorus under the plaster.
“Where?” Daisy repeated, her voice calm. She pulled out a long, slender makeup brush with a synthetic bristle tip. It was new, the tag still on. “I bought this. It’s clean. Softer than the needle. Better for a fresh cast.”
Willow stared at the brush, then at Daisy’s resolved face. The dependency was a pit opening beneath her. She hated it. She craved it. “Inside. Near the thumb.”
Daisy sat on the edge of the bed with the quiet authority of a nurse. She took Willow’s splinted hand in hers, turning it gently. She slid the delicate tip of the brush into the cast opening at the wrist. The soft bristles wormed their way in, a whisper against the inflamed skin.
The relief was instant, luxurious. Willow’s head fell back against the pillow, a sigh escaping her. It was a different sensation than the needle—softer, more diffuse, almost sensual. Daisy watched her face, her own expression one of intense concentration. Her strokes were methodical, searching.
“Good?” she murmured.
“Yeah,” Willow breathed. “A little higher.”
Daisy adjusted the angle. The brush slid deeper. The pleasure of the relief was so acute it felt indecent. Willow’s hips shifted minutely on the bed, a faint, unconscious movement.
The door opened.
Dr. Harding stood there, a forgotten chart in her hand. She took in the scene: Daisy, intimately close on the bed, her hand working subtly inside Willow’s cast. Willow’s flushed face, her body relaxed in a way pain medication alone never achieved.
All three froze.
Harding’s eyes narrowed, just for a fraction of a second. She didn’t comment on the brush. Her voice was professionally even. “I forgot to note your allergy history. The penicillin on your chart—true allergy or just a rash?”
“True allergy,” Willow managed, her voice strained. “Hives. Swelling.”
“Noted.” Harding’s gaze swept over the traction weights, then back to Daisy’s hand, which had slowly withdrawn the brush, hiding it in her palm. “The traction seems to be pulling slightly to the lateral side. Let me adjust it.”
Harding moved to the machinery. She released a small locking mechanism and began to carefully turn a ratchet, adding incremental weight. The pull on Willow’s hip intensified, a deep, internal tension shifting. It wasn’t painful, but it was profoundly strange, a mechanical rearrangement of her skeleton.
Willow gasped, more from the sensation than any hurt.
Daisy, reacting to the sound, to the perceived need, to the overwhelming compulsion that had governed her for days, lunged forward. Her hand, the one not clutching the brush, darted past Dr. Harding and landed on the traction rope itself, as if to steady it, to help.
“Don’t touch that,” Harding said sharply, but it was too late.
Daisy’s trembling fingers closed around the taut cable. Her touch was clumsy, panicked. She pulled, just slightly, in the wrong direction.
The weights jiggled. The line of force transmitted directly up the rope, through the pin in Willow’s bone, and into the heart of her fractured hip.
The sensation was electric. It was not the clean pain of the break, but a shocking, internal violation—a sudden, wrong pressure deep in the joint where everything was held together by metal and hope. Willow’s body arched off the mattress, a silent scream caught in her throat. Every muscle seized. The monitors by the bed chirped in alarm at her spiking heart rate.
Daisy jerked her hand back as if burned, her face white with horror. “I’m sorry! I was trying to—”
“Out.” Harding’s voice was ice. She was already checking the apparatus, her hands steady and sure. “Wait in the hall. Now.”
Daisy fled.
The doctor worked quickly, recalibrating the weights, her touch expert and gentle. The awful, wrong pressure subsided, leaving behind a throbbing echo and a cold sweat on Willow’s skin.
“Are you alright? Was that sharp pain?” Harding asked, her fingers on Willow’s pulse.
Willow could only shake her head, breathing hard. It hadn’t been sharp. It had been deep, profound, and terrifyingly intimate. It had felt, in some way she couldn’t articulate, like a completion.
Harding studied her. She saw the panic, but she also saw the lingering physical response—the dilated pupils, the flushed skin, the rapid breath that wasn’t entirely from fear. The pieces—the frequent accidents, the specific injuries, the intense caretaking, the makeup brush, the proprietary touch—clicked into a clinical picture Dr. Harding recognized, though she’d never seen it so vividly drawn.
“Willow,” Harding said, her voice lower now, devoid of its professional crispness for the first time. “What is happening here?”
Willow looked at the door, where Daisy had disappeared. She felt the ghost of the traction’s wrong tug deep in her pelvis, a sensation already twisting into memory, into something else. She met Dr. Harding’s concerned, knowing gaze.
“I don’t know,” Willow whispered, and it was the most honest thing she’d said in weeks.
Harding watched her for a long moment, the hum of the hospital room filling the space between them. She carefully placed the forgotten chart back at the foot of the bed. Her movements were deliberate, giving her time to choose her words.
“The human body craves care after trauma,” she said finally, her voice low. “The mind, however, can get creative about what that care looks like.” Her eyes flicked to the door, then back to Willow’s pale face. “Particularly when the caregiver is so… invested.”
Willow looked away, studying the ceiling tiles. “She feels guilty.”
“I’m sure she does.” Harding adjusted her stethoscope, a pointless gesture that felt like a reset. “Recovery requires trust. But it also requires boundaries. For everyone involved.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. With a final, assessing glance at the traction weights, she turned and left the room. The door sighed shut behind her, sealing Willow in with the beeping monitors and her own churning thoughts.
Out in the bright, antiseptic hallway, Daisy was leaning against the wall, arms wrapped tightly around herself. She looked up as Harding approached, her eyes red-rimmed and desperate.
“Is she okay? Did I hurt her?”
“The alignment is fine,” Harding said, stopping a few feet away. She kept her voice clinical, but her gaze was penetrating. “The physical integrity of the repair is intact.”
Daisy nodded, a jerky, relieved motion. “Oh, thank god. I just, I saw her jump and I panicked, I wanted to—”
“What you want isn’t the priority here, Daisy.” Harding cut her off, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Willow’s physiological stability is. That requires a sterile environment. A predictable one.” She paused, letting the words land. “Your assistance needs to be within defined parameters. Fetching water, fluffing pillows. Not adjusting medical equipment. Not…” She hesitated, the image of the hidden makeup brush clear in her mind. “Not improvising.”
Daisy’s face crumpled. “I just want to help.”
“I know.” Harding’s voice softened, almost imperceptibly. “But help can sometimes be a complicated gift. One you should maybe examine before you keep giving it.”
She walked away, her sensible shoes silent on the polished floor. Daisy stood frozen, the doctor’s words slicing through her more cleanly than any criticism of her clumsiness ever had. Examine the gift. The air in the hallway felt thin, insufficient. She pushed off the wall and went back inside.
Willow was staring out the window, her profile sharp against the flat gray light. The stillness of her suspended leg was a constant, awful reminder.
“She thinks I’m a monster,” Daisy said quietly, not moving from the doorway.
“She thinks you’re trying too hard,” Willow corrected, still not looking at her. Her voice was tired. “She’s not wrong.”
The words stung. Daisy moved to the bedside, her shadow falling across the blanket. “You needed relief. I provided it. That’s helping.”
“Is it?” Willow finally turned her head. Her green eyes were depthless. “Or is it just making sure the relief only comes from you?”
Daisy had no answer. She looked down at her own hands, those agents of chaos and comfort. The silence stretched, filled only by the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor. It felt like a cliff edge.
“My mouth is so dry,” Willow said, her tone shifting into something lighter, deliberately breaking the tension. “Hospital air tastes like regrets and old latex.”
It was an offering, a return to their old pattern. Daisy grabbed it.
“I can fix that.” She turned to the small plastic pitcher on the table, her movements grateful for the simple task. She poured a cup of water, the ice cracking softly. She fitted a bendy straw and brought it to Willow’s lips.
Willow drank, her eyes locked on Daisy’s face. When she finished, she gave a small nod. Daisy went to pull the cup away.
The plastic was slick with condensation.
Daisy’s fingers, still trembling from the confrontation, lost their purchase. The cup tilted. A cascade of cold water and half-melted ice spilled onto the bed, over Willow’s chest, and onto the pristine white sheets below.
Willow flinched, a sharp intake of breath at the shock of the cold.
“Oh, god! I’m so sorry!” Daisy fumbled, grabbing for napkins, her face flooding with fresh horror. She dabbed ineffectually at the wet patches, her actions frantic. “I’m such a disaster, I can’t even—let me get a nurse, we need to change the sheets, you’ll get cold—”
“Daisy.” Willow’s voice was quiet, but it cut through the panic.
Daisy stopped, a wad of soaked napkins in her fist.
Willow looked down at the damp mess spread across her hospital gown and the sheets. She felt the cold water seeping through, a shocking contrast to the sterile, warm room. Then she looked back at Daisy, who stood poised for another bolt of shame.
A slow, strange smile touched Willow’s lips. It wasn’t warm. It was weary, and dark, and full of a terrible understanding.
“See?” Willow said, her voice barely a whisper. “You don’t have to try so hard. It just happens.”
Daisy stared at her. The truth of it, the fundamental, unchangeable truth of her own nature, settled over her. It wasn’t about wanting to be needed anymore. It was the simpler, more devastating fact that she broke what she touched. And Willow was letting her. Welcoming her back from the cliff edge of doubt with a spilled cup of water.
She sank slowly into the chair, the fight leaving her body. Her shoulders slumped. The soaked napkins fell from her hand to the floor.
“It does,” Daisy whispered, not looking away.
Willow held her gaze, the smile fading into something more neutral, more resigned. The wet spot on her gown was cooling unpleasantly against her skin.
“Go find a nurse,” Willow said, her tone flat. “Get some dry sheets.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. It was an instruction. A continuation.
Daisy nodded, pushing herself up from the chair. As she walked to the door, her steps were heavy, but a new certainty was hardening inside her. A dreadful, peaceful certainty. She had slipped. She would slip again. It was her architecture.
And Willow, lying in the bed, shivering slightly in the damp, knew it too. The itch under her cast began to simmer, a low, persistent whisper. She didn’t call Daisy back. She just watched her go, and waited for her to return.