Chapter 39: Bernice spits blood into a nearby basin as their wheelchairs pass, rasping 'Next time I'll twist your cervix till it pops' - Serenity responds by suddenly standing on trembling legs to tower over her rival, IV pole clattering to the floor as she grabs Bernice's catheter bag with a predatory smile.
The physical therapy room was a different kind of arena. The air didn’t thrum with crowd noise, but with the low hum of exercise bikes and the clank of weight stacks. The smell wasn’t blood and sweat, but antiseptic and the faint, sweet odor of someone’s leftover lunch. It was a place of slow, grinding effort, a war of inches fought against your own broken body.
Serenity focused on the parallel bars, her knuckles white. Each step was a negotiation with the fire in her ribs, a careful calculation of balance and pain. She was halfway down the length when the door swung open with a soft whoosh.
The energy in the room shifted. It wasn't a dramatic change, just a subtle cooling, like a cloud passing over the sun. A nurse wheeled in a new patient.
Bernice.
She looked smaller in the hospital gown, her formidable bulk diminished but not erased. Her face, a roadmap of old scars, was set in a familiar scowl. One of her arms was in a sling, her shoulder heavily bandaged. Their eyes met across the room. No words were needed. The hatred was a live wire, humming between them.
The nurse positioned Bernice on a leg press machine a few yards away. For a while, there was only the sound of Serenity’s shuffling steps and the rhythmic clank of Bernice pushing weight with her good leg.
“Heard about your old man,” Bernice said, her voice a low gravel. She didn’t look at Serenity, staring straight ahead at the wall. “A real shame. What they did to him.”
Serenity didn’t answer. She took another step, the metal bar cool and solid under her palms.
“Henderson’s a sick bastard,” Bernice continued, as if they were discussing the weather. “Always was. But to let it go that far… to let yourself get… unmade like that.” She finally turned her head, her eyes crawling over Serenity’s battered form. “Guess he didn’t have much choice, though. Had to pay for his wife’s little hobby.”
Serenity stopped. She turned, slowly, the movement sending a fresh spike of pain through her side. “You got something to say, Bernice? Spit it out. I’m busy learning how to walk again.”
A thin smile stretched Bernice’s lips. “Just making conversation. Wondering if he’s still a man, now. Or if you’re just roommates.” She let out a short, harsh laugh. “All that for a house. You both are pathetic.”
The words were meant to find the cracks, to seep into the places that still felt raw and hollow. Serenity felt them land, but they didn’t stick. She saw Marcus’s face in the hospital bed, the terrible clarity in his eyes when he’d said, I’d do it again.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Serenity said, her voice flat. “You never had anything worth breaking for.”
Bernice’s smile vanished. She pushed herself up from the machine, ignoring the nurse’s concerned look. She took a limping step toward Serenity. “I have the title. That’s worth something. And you’re not getting another shot at it. You’re done. You’re both washed up.”
They stood there, two wounded gladiators in a sterile coliseum, surrounded by resistance bands and stability balls. The air was thick with the promise of violence, but their bodies were prisons of suture and bone.
“The doctor says my shoulder will have ninety percent mobility,” Bernice said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Enough to get my arm around your throat. Enough to squeeze.”
Serenity didn’t flinch. “The doctor says my kick will be ten percent stronger after the ribs heal. Enough to shatter your good knee. Enough to make sure you never walk out of a ring again.”
They were inches apart now. Serenity could smell the hospital soap on Bernice’s skin, see the faint pulse throbbing in her temple.
“I’m going to take everything from you,” Bernice hissed. “The title. The respect. I’m going to make you watch while I do it.”
Serenity leaned forward, just a little, until her forehead was almost touching Bernice’s. “You try,” she whispered, the words cold and sharp. “You just try. And I’ll show you what ‘unmade’ really looks like.”
The nurse finally intervened, her voice tight with anxiety. “Ladies! That’s enough. Back to your stations, please.”
Bernice held Serenity’s gaze for a moment longer, a silent oath of future pain, then turned and limped back to her machine. Serenity watched her go, the phantom feel of a skirt around her legs, the memory of sandals solid on a bloody floor.
She turned back to the parallel bars. The path ahead was still pain. But it was a path that led forward, to a different kind of fight. She gripped the cold metal. She took a step. Then another.
Then another. Her progress was a slow, grinding testament to will, each shuffle forward a silent rebuke to Bernice’s presence. The clank of the leg press machine was a metronome counting down to something inevitable.
Bernice watched from her station, her eyes like chips of flint. "Look at you. Shuffling like a broken old woman." She let out a low chuckle. "Maybe you should've stayed in your lane. Kept baking pies or whatever it is you pretend to do when you're not getting your husband dismantled for mortgage money."
Serenity didn't break her rhythm. She reached the end of the bars, her body trembling with the effort. "You talk a lot for someone who's one bad step away from a wet patch on the floor."
A raw, ugly sound ripped from Bernice's throat. She levered herself off the machine with a grimace, her bulk swaying. She closed the distance between them in three lurching steps. "You think you're still tough? Here? Now?"
Before Serenity could brace, Bernice’s good hand shot out. It wasn't a punch. It was a brutal, precise grab, fingers digging like iron rods into the specific, traumatized nerve cluster low on Serenity's abdomen, a place still screaming from Henderson's final, crushing weight. Agony, white and electric, arced through her.
Serenity’s legs buckled. Her hands slipped from the bars. Bernice held her upright by the sheer, vicious pressure of her grip, her face inches away. "Let's see what's left in there," she snarled.
She ground the heel of her hand in a cruel, circular motion, a mockery of intimacy that targeted deep muscle and ravaged tissue. The pain was excruciating, a violation that bypassed thought and went straight to the spine. Serenity’s body, betrayed by its own shattered wiring, seized.
A violent, shuddering spasm wracked her frame. It was an orgasm, but it was made of broken glass and acid, a convulsive wave of pure physiological treachery that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with system failure. A soundless scream caught in her throat.
It was over in seconds. Bernice released her, and Serenity collapsed to the cold linoleum, her body curling inward around the echo of the violation. She shuddered, humiliated and enraged by the involuntary response, the ghost of a feeling that should have been Marcus's now twisted into a weapon.
Bernice looked down at her, a predator satisfied. "See?" she whispered, her voice dripping with contempt. "Nothing but a broken reflex. A spasm. That's all you are now."
She turned and limped away, leaving Serenity on the floor, the sterile air burning in her lungs and a new, colder kind of fury coiling in the hollow space where her dignity had been.