Chapter 1: The Enema Table
The light in the room was the color of old honey, thick and heavy where it fell through the frosted glass. It smelled clean, sharply of antiseptic, but underneath that was something warmer—oiled leather, faint vanilla. Elera lay on the padded table, the material cool and unyielding against her back. She stared at the ceiling, tracing the faint pattern in the acoustic tiles, trying to anchor herself there.
A soft click came from the cabinet.
Her breath hitched. She didn’t turn her head.
Geralt’s footsteps were quiet on the polished floor. He moved into her line of sight, his frame blocking some of the light. He was big, not just tall but broad, the sleeves of his tight black t-shirt stretched over the dense muscle of his arms. Tattoos swirled up from his wrists, patterns she’d never had the time to fully decipher. His hair was dark, shot through with silver at the temples, and his eyes were a startling, calm amber. He held a blue bulb syringe in one hand, its nozzle capped.
“Look at me, Elera.”
Her eyes flicked to his. The professionalism in them was a lifeline. It was the only thing keeping her from floating away entirely.
“You’ve been behind the glass for three days now,” he said, his voice low and even. Not unkind. A simple statement of fact. “You’re regulating everyone’s emotions but your own. You’re holding your clients’ trauma in your body, and you’ve left your own needs in a locked room. You can’t find the key. That’s why you’re here.”
A tremor started in her thighs. She pressed them together.
“We discussed this. The dissociation is a barrier. Your mind has checked out, and your body needs to be brought back online. This,” he said, lifting the bulb slightly, “is a reset. It’s not a punishment. It’s a grounding technique. It will remind your nervous system what it feels like to be present, to be cared for, even when the care is firm.”
“It’s shameful,” she whispered, the words scraping her throat.
“It’s physiology,” he corrected, his tone leaving no room for argument. “The shame is the parasite. We’re evicting it.” He set the bulb on a tray and picked up a small bottle, unscrewing the cap. The sound was obscenely loud. “I need you to turn onto your left side. Bring your knees up.”
For a long moment, she didn’t move. She was Elera, LMFT. She had a waiting list. She had credentials framed on her office wall. This wasn’t her.
But the numb, foggy exhaustion was. The constant static in her head was. The feeling of being a ghost in her own life was.
A sob choked in her chest. She turned onto her side, curling in on herself, facing the wall with the mirror. She caught a glimpse of herself—pale, eyes wide and frightened, looking small on the wide table. She squeezed her eyes shut.
She heard the squelch of lubricant. Her whole body tensed.
His hand, warm and impossibly firm, settled on her right hip, holding her in place. “I need you to relax this muscle, little one. You’re fighting a battle that’s already over. You submitted when you walked through my door. This is the aftercare.”
The term ‘little one’ did something to her. It fractured the competent shell she lived inside. A whimper escaped her lips.
His other hand touched the back of her thigh, just a steady pressure. “Spread your legs for me, Elera. Wider. Let me do the work. Your only job is to feel it.”
She let her knees fall apart, the exposure a cold rush followed by a flush of scalding heat. The shame was a live wire now, sizzling under her skin. She buried her face against her own arm.
The touch at her entrance was blunt, cool, and insistent. She gasped, her back arching involuntarily.
“Breathe out,” he commanded, and his voice was like stone, immovable. “Push against me. There you go.”
There was a slow, inexorable pressure, a fullness that was clinical and bizarrely intimate. She panted, her fingers clutching at the edge of the table padding. It wasn’t pain. It was an overwhelming invasion of sensation, a stark line drawn between her mind and her body. She couldn’t think around it.
A soft squeeze sounded near her ear. A warm, deep flood followed the pressure, a sudden heaviness blooming low in her belly. Her cry was muffled against her skin.
“Good,” Geralt murmured, his hand smoothing over the curve of her hip. “That’s the first step. Your body is remembering. It’s feeling. Just feel it.”
He held the nozzle in place, waiting, giving her system a moment to accept the fullness. She trembled violently, tears leaking from her clenched eyes. The physical reality of it was anchoring her, dragging her down from the numb, gray place she’d been floating in. The embarrassment was acute, razor-sharp, but it was feeling. It was alive.
With a careful motion, he withdrew. He placed a thick cotton pad against her, his hand maintaining steady pressure. “Hold that. Stay on your side. Let it work.”
He moved away, and she heard the running of water, the clink of metal on ceramic. The mundane sounds of cleanup. The intense intimacy of the act was followed by this sterile, procedural normalcy. It was the juxtaposition that finally broke her.
The tears came in earnest, quiet and soaking. She cried for the clients whose grief she carried home. She cried for the dinners eaten standing over the sink, for the yoga mat that had been rolled up in the closet for a year, for the hollow echo in her own chest. She cried because she was lying on a stranger’s table, filled with warm water, and she felt more cared for than she had in a decade.
Geralt returned. He didn’t speak. He placed a warm, heavy hand on the small of her back, right over a knot of tension so old she’d thought it was part of her spine. He simply left it there, a solid weight, a boundary. He was containing the experience for her.
After a few minutes, the heaviness in her belly became a more urgent pressure. A soft, desperate sound left her lips.
“I… I need to…”
“I know,” he said. His hand applied a gentle push toward the edge of the table. “It’s time. Can you stand?”
She shook her head, mortified anew.
“Alright. I’ll help you.” His arms came around her, lifting her with an effortless strength that made her feel both fragile and secure. He guided her the few steps to a private, white porcelain toilet in the corner of the room, his body a supportive wall beside her. “Let it go.”
She did, with a shudder of relief and humiliation that rocked through her. He stood, facing the wall, giving her a sliver of privacy while his presence remained an unshakeable fact. The process was undignified, profoundly human, and as her body emptied, something else did too. A tight coil of anxiety, held for so long, began to loosen.
When she was finished, he handed her a warm, damp cloth without looking, then a soft towel. She cleaned herself, her movements slow, her body feeling strangely new and quiet.
“Come here,” he said, his voice softer now.
He led her not back to the examination table, but to a deep, padded armchair in the corner. He sat and guided her down onto his lap, settling her sideways so her head could rest against his shoulder. He wrapped a light blanket around her. One arm banded around her back, the other hand came up to cradle the back of her head, his fingers stroking through her hair.
She went boneless, the last of her resistance dissolving into the sheer, shocking comfort of it. The frantic noise in her mind had settled into a low hum. She was in her body, weary and hollowed out, but present.
“The shame will try to come back,” he said, his chin resting on the top of her head. “It will tell you this was degrading. You will listen to me instead. This was maintenance. Necessary maintenance for a vital person who forgets she is also a human being who requires care.”
She nuzzled against the soft cotton of his shirt, breathing in the scent of leather and vanilla. For the first time in years, her mind was quiet enough to hear her own heart beat.
“What happens now?” she mumbled, already half-asleep.
“Now,” he said, his chest rumbling against her ear, “you rest. Tomorrow, we talk. And then we decide what you need next.”
Outside the room, the world continued, loud and demanding. But in the honey-toned light, held firmly in the circle of his arms, Elera finally stopped floating. She had landed.