Chapter 5: The Bandaged Confinement
The pain was changing.
It had started as a sharp, immediate fire, but now, lying strapped and spent on the bench, it had deepened into a throbbing, all-encompassing heat. Every nerve from his neck to his ankles broadcast a single, unified signal of raw, abraded sensation. Robert tried to focus on the ceiling tile above him, a square of pockmarked white, but it swam in his vision. The chemical reek of the disinfectant filled his nose, his sinuses, his lungs.
A cart wheel squeaked. Katy reappeared, pushing a different metal table. On it sat a large, open tub of clear gel and rolls of what looked like off-white bandages, wide and tightly wound.
“The aloe?” Robert croaked, a spark of pathetic hope in his throat.
“In a manner of speaking,” Bridgit said. She stood over him, blocking the light, her form a dark silhouette. “The initial chemical irritation has served its purpose. It has… opened the pathways. Now we seal the lesson in.”
Robert strained to lift his head. “Seal?”
Katy, wearing fresh purple nitrile gloves, dipped her fingers into the tub. She scooped out a gleaming handful of the gel. It wasn’t the soothing green stuff from a drugstore. This was viscous, almost colorless, and had a sharp, medicinal smell that cut through the pine.
“Medical-grade hydrogel,” Bridgit explained, her voice taking on that didactic tone she used when she was most pleased with a procedure. “Infused with topical analgesics and anti-inflammatories. And a few other compounds to enhance dermal absorption and memory reinforcement.”
Katy began spreading the gel over his shins, where the brush had been most savage. The initial touch was a shock of cold, so intense it made him gasp. But it wasn’t a relief. As she worked it into the fiery skin, the cold mutated into a new, stranger sensation—a deep, penetrating chill that seemed to seek out his bones. It didn’t extinguish the burn; it layered underneath it, a freezing core beneath a hot shell.
“What… what is it doing?” His teeth wanted to chatter.
“It’s teaching you,” Bridgit said simply. “The burn is the consequence. This is the container for it.”
Katy worked with methodical care, coating every inflamed inch of him. She used far more than seemed necessary. The gel pooled in the hollow of his stomach, dripped down his sides onto the padded leather. Its smell was clean and ruthless. When she gloved her hands afresh and took up the first roll of bandage, Robert felt a new kind of dread, heavy and cold in his gut.
“Please,” he whispered, as she pressed the end of the bandage to his ankle. “Not… not wrapped. Not like this.”
“Like what, Robert?” Bridgit asked, circling the bench. “Like a wound? That’s what you are.