Chapter 5: Treatment During School
The bell for third period release was a sharp, electric shock through the hallway’s din. Valentina moved with the current of bodies, her backpack a dead weight. The doctor’s words, three times a day, had become a biological metronome inside her, ticking relentlessly beneath the buzz of fluorescent lights and adolescent chatter. The inflammation was a low, persistent throb, a constant reminder that her body was a separate, demanding entity.
Between third and fourth period. It was the only window. History to Calculus, a seven-minute passing period. She veered sharply, pushing through the heavy door into the girls’ bathroom. The air was a cocktail of cheap strawberry soap, bleach, and something sour underneath.
Empty. Thank God.
She chose the last stall, the lock on the door broken, so she had to hold it shut with one hand. The graffiti was a chaotic tapestry. Hearts. Phone numbers. For a good time call... Someone had scrawled WHO CARES? in angry black marker.
Her heart was a trapped bird against her ribs. This was insanity. This was necessary. She fumbled with the button of her jeans, her fingers clumsy. The denim and her cotton panties pooled at her ankles. The chill of the air, the colder porcelain of the toilet seat against her bare skin, made her gasp. She didn’t sit. She hovered, one hand braced against the metal partition.
Her other hand went down, fingertips skating over the swollen flesh. Already wet. It was always wet now, a humiliating, constant seepage that stained her panties. Dr. Evelyn’s prescription. Her body was just following orders.
She closed her eyes. The sterile bathroom vanished.
She saw the garage. Not the whole of it, but a fragment: the worn leather of the driver’s seat, the smell of gasoline and sweat. She felt not a memory, but a fabrication—the imagined weight of him pinning her there, the console digging into her back. His calloused hands, grease under the nails, spreading her wide.
Her index finger found her clit, a hard, desperate little knot. She rubbed, not in circles, but in a frantic, back-and-forth sawing motion. The pleasure was sharp, urgent, bordered with pain. “Fuck,” she breathed into the stifling air, the word swallowed by the hum of the lights.
This wasn’t enough. The phantom in her mind was bigger, rougher. She needed the stretch. She pushed two fingers inside her cunt, her inner muscles clenching tight around the intrusion. A low moan escaped her clamped lips. She fucked herself with her fingers, a rough, pistoning rhythm, her hips meeting each thrust. The sound was obscene—a wet, sucking squelch that echoed in the tiled chamber. She was glad for the broken lock. The pressure of her shoulder holding the door shut grounded her, even as her mind fractured.
Three times a day, minimum. The doctor’s voice, clinical. You’re backed up.
“I’m trying,” she whimpered, to the voice, to the ghost, to herself. She added a third finger, straining, the burn a pale imitation of the real thing. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She imagined his mouth on her neck, biting. His voice, a graveled command. Take it. Her fingers worked harder, faster, slamming into the tender, inflamed flesh. The orgasm built not as a wave but as a crackling electrical surge, short-circuiting her thoughts.
It crested violently. Her body locked, a silent scream tearing through her as the contractions ripped through her, wracking and deep. Her juices gushed, dripping hot between her thighs, spattering onto the white seat and the floor. She slumped, forehead pressing against the cool metal of the stall, trembling from the aftershocks.
Silence, then the distant roar of the hallway flooding back.
She was panting, spent. The throbbing had eased, replaced by a raw, well-used ache. She looked down. The evidence was there, glistening. A medical treatment. She grabbed a wad of toilet paper, cleaning herself with mechanical efficiency, then mopped the seat. The used paper, clumped and damp, disappeared into the bowl with a guilty flush.
She pulled up her panties, her jeans. The denim felt abrasive against her sensitive skin. As she buckled her belt, the bathroom door swung open with a bang, followed by a wave of giggles and perfume.
Valentina froze, hand still on the stall door.
“—so fucking creepy, the way he stares,” a voice said. Lacy. It was Lacy Miller. Valentina would know that razor-blade tone anywhere.
“Totally. Like, does she even shower? She always looks… greasy.” That was Chloe, Lacy’s shadow.
“Family’s fucking gross. Everyone knows it.” The sound of a compact snapping open. “My mom says it’s a miracle she’s even in a normal school. Should be in some special place.”
They were at the mirrors. Valentina stopped breathing. The stall door remained shut, held by her trembling hand.
“Probably inbred,” Lacy said, the word casual, vicious. “That’s why she’s so quiet. Damaged goods.”
Cruel laughter, bouncing off the tiles, sharper than any bell.
Valentina looked at her own hand, the fingers that had just been inside her, now pale and clenched. She brought them to her nose, almost unconsciously. The scent of her own sex, of the school’s cheap soap, of the lingering, medicinal lube from that morning. Damaged goods.
The girls finished their touch-ups, their conversation shifting to a party Friday night. The door swung shut behind them, leaving a vacuum of silence.
Valentina finally pushed out of the stall. She went to the sink, avoided her own reflection in the smudged mirror. She scrubbed her hands with the pink soap, scrubbed until her skin was red and raw. The water was loud in the quiet.
She had followed the doctor’s orders. The physical urgency was temporarily sated. But the hollow place inside her, the one named by the graffiti and Lacy Miller’s laugh, was wider than ever. It yawned open, a void no amount of frantic, stolen friction could ever fill.
The final bell was hours away. She had one more treatment due before then. She turned off the tap and shouldered her backpack. The damp spot on her jeans was small, but she felt it like a brand. She walked back into the flow of students, the current carrying her toward Calculus, another class where she would be unseen, a ghost following a prescription written for a body that no longer felt like her own.