An Experiment With Pain
The nice woman in the white coat was tying me down with nylon ropes as another nurse pressed a mask filled with the sickly sweet scent of drugs and sleep over my mouth. Holding my body in place, just in case my mind decided this was a bad idea. I breathed in deep, my eyes darting around the room even as the fluorescent lights reduced my sight the blurs of nurses and clogs of machines and wires. I forced my body to relax, muscle by muscle, even as the last strap ripped into the soft flesh of my ankle. The deep muscles in my back were quivering, for reasons known only to it, sharp flashes of pain clawing up my spine. Desperately, as the prick of the IV on the arm made itself known, I thought: '"This will make the pain go away".
Something in that IV line was wrong! That damn faceless woman in white was slowly injecting a malevolent acid deep inside of me, letting loose this being of fire that was trying to eat itself out through my skin. My vocal chords didn't have time to give out before darkness took me.
But he said that everything would be alright.
#
Three men stood around a bound and helpless girl, lasers at their finger tips, and mind-numbing drugs dripping from the forest of wires, shrill machines and LCD screens. A blonde head dipped down, a small smile on his face as he sliced away another chunk of brain tissue, dark red seeping onto his pale hands. He was doing good. Pressure was thick in the air as the three worked in tandem, carefully peeling back layers of bone, cartilage and spongy flesh; meticulously delving into the part of her that cradled her mind and soul, intent of planting of seed of their own design. One last stroke of the laser sent a curl of smoke into the air and the sickly sweet scent of burning flesh into their noses. Finally, they were ready.
Hands shaking, the dark haired assistant slipped the coin-sized piece of plastic and metal into the outstretched bloody palm of the lead surgeon. Tension stretched thick and palpable as the men contemplated how this small chip would help their prone charge. No pain, no suffering, just life. With steady, hopeful hands, he placed the chip into the gaping chasm they had created in her brain tissue; while the faceless assistant injected his miracle into her highway of veins, sending it to all of the sacred hidden places. Just as planned, the drugs tricked her body into welcoming this construct of theirs, the flesh of her brain welling up and drawing it in, the wet suckling sounds filling the room. It would take only a few heartbeats for their miracle to come to fruition, they would see the skin on her wounded back would begin to sew itself together, the pain monitor's loud beeps would fade into a calm burble, and her bodies weak struggles would slow into the peace of true sleep instead of drug induced fog. Just a few moments.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The girl's body suddenly jerked against the straps and the pain monitor began to scream. Bloody hands lefts smears on her white skin as they frantically tried to hold down her bucking body, the spasming limbs knocking over monitors sending droplets of blood to refract in the bright white light. The room's balance had shifted; where previously only self-congratulation and buoyancy flowed, now screams, fear and chaos ruled supreme.
"Hold her down," screamed the blonde, as he scrabbled for a laser. They had to get the chip out before irreparable damage was done. The nurses were rushing to pump saline through the lines to clean out their drug. Blood dripped down the clean white linens, slices from wrists as she struggled. Laser in hand, he viscously gripped her shaking head and tore it to the position he wanted. The room was deathly silent, except for the sizzle of flesh being eaten away, all watching and waiting to see if the surgeon could pull off a miracle. Careful stroke after careful stroke, the man explored as much as he dared; flesh peeling away under the red beam. Suddenly, he stepped back and peeled off his gloves throwing them to land with a sickeningly wet splat on the floor, her blood mixing with a pool of spilled saline. His drug had done its job, and done it well. The chip was now deep inside the girl's brain, in control.
For better or worse.
#
The nice woman in the white coat was back, but this time her face was clearly in focus under the dim lights of my hospital suit. She was leaning over me, gently pushing me into a sitting position.
"Violet honey, we are going to take good care you, alright?" I didn’t answer, simply taking the pill cup out of her hand and downing the small capsule without looking at it. She smiled reassuringly at me as the bed finished adjusting itself to my spinal measurements and the mattress softened to take pressure off my back injury. I tried not to think about what it meant that it still hurt even after the surgery, or that Dr. Wellers wasn't there. The woman slipped the remote into my hand, and I pressed the on button, small LCD by my bed blipping into life. I nodded, satisfied.
Since that trash of a delivery driver had crushed our family car into a metal girder, and ruined my back, hospitals had become that summer vacation spot that everyone tries to avoid but ends up at anyway. Or at least that’s how I saw it. I saw Dr. Wellers as the pushy tour guide that dragged you to spots you never wanted to see, or even think about for that matter. Like getting the surgery. Call me backwater, but putting a chip on a lobe of your brain that essentially takes control of your subconscious body functions, scares the shit out of me. But Dr. Wellers said that it would be all right, that his drug would fix everything.
I flipped through the channels, growing more concerned as the moments stretched on without any sign of Dr. Wellers. Doctors were supposed to visit their patients after surgery. I would know, I'd been in the position often enough. I landed on a local news channel, my attention caught by the sight of the very hospital I was staying in. It was a press conference. The camera panned in, to a shot of Dr. Wellers charismatic face, all blonde and blue-eyed, before he spoke.
"I am sad to say, that the surgery, which has brought such hope to hundreds of patients like Ms. Walks"--they cut to a picture of me before the accident, all bright and sunny, " did not go quite as planned--" I felt a pressure start to build in my chest.
"The chip was planted successfully, I at least got that right--" he paused for laughs, " but it seems the our drug, Toriken, has not performed as anticipated. My team and I are still very hopeful, and will continue to move forward." A woman in a red power suit barreled forward through the throng of reporters and camera crews, microphone steady.
"What exactly went wrong with the drug? You were so confident before the surgery…" Dr. Wellers' handsome face wrinkled into a frown, as if angry that someone would dare ask the prodigal surgeon details of how he ruined someone's life. The gall.
"I inserted the chip into the part of the brain responsible for the pain and pleasure--" he smiled winningly at a reported who tanked him for not using doctor jargon before continuing, "and Toriken's job was to enable the nerve endings to work more smoothly in tandem with the chip, it would allow sensory signals to be streamlined between the chip and nerves. But it would seem that although the chip is functioning correctly, Toriken is assisting the wrong signals."
"What exactly does that mean?"
I didn’t get to hear the answer as I was introduced first hand what exactly Toriken had done to my body. One moment I was sitting and contemplating my doctor betraying me, and the next, pain had become a thick and palpable thing. Deep and aching on my back near my wound, as if some one had taken a bat to me. Fire screamed along my right hand, as if the skin itself was trying to twist itself off, and my fingers convulsively curling into a first to tightly; it was as if my bones were warping and popping. Pins and needles on my left leg, as if someone was delicately slipping a needle into each open pore. Then pain in my head, like some one was trying to hammer out through my eyes. The pain kept coming, an ever changing, twisting, warping thing stealing my mind away.
As the nurses ran in and the lights became brighter, I realized there was a high pitched keening sound droning off the white washed walls. I concentrated on it, instead of how the pain was eating away at the inside of me. I realized the noise was coming from me.
One of the nurses injected something into the IV line and it as before, a fire trying to eat its way out of me. These people were trying to kill me. Letting out an incomprehensible shout of rage, I lunged over the side of my hospital bed at the closest of them, desperate for them to stop… whatever it was that they were doing to me.
The nurse dodged, and another darted in to catch my outstretched hand before it could snag the IV and rip it out of my arm. The acid creature in my arm was working its way upwards, aiming for my brain. I was screaming at them, franticly trying to explain to them that if they didn't stop, then they were going to kill me, then this monster in my arm would get all the way to my brain, then the pain would go on and on. The nurses didn't say a word and lights got brighter.
With my free hand, I swung wildly, hoping to clear the space around me. I needed to get before these people and this pain swallowed me entirely. I could feel my rationale being burned to ash under the onslaught of the light and fear. I reached for the IV bag, intent on getting rid of my tormentor but a faceless woman in white was there, her long claw like nails digging into the soft flesh on my wrist. She snarled something at me and I felt like crumpling because they didn't understand. I was being undone. Another faceless shape appeared needle in hand, and injected fire into my IV line.
The last thing I remember is pain.
#
Doctors are the people we go to when we are sick, when we are in pain. We put our lives in their hands and expect them to be better for it. Robert J. Wellers had destroyed mine for sake of his career. Those are the words I spoke to my mother when the nurses finally let her into my room after the attack, and it was like I had slapped her. It was as if my mother, the woman who raised me and had to watch as I was pinned between the twisted remains of our car and steel girder, didn't care that this man had signed my life away to one of pain and suffering. It was as if my mother couldn’t see, or refused to understand that this narcissistic laser jockey had done to me. I rubbed my thumb over and over a small ink stain on my desk, as I stared blankly out the window. I'm trying desperately to give my mother a chance, maybe the reason she doesn't understand what Dr. Wellers did, is because during the month and half I was in the hospital recovering from the surgery, she hadn't actually seen me have an attack. My suffering was always hidden far away from prying eyes at the hospital.
I sighed and slowly levied myself up from the desk, intent on taking my afternoon medicine; medicine to fix the medicine. Stepping barefooted onto the cold tile of my bathroom, I studiously ignored my reflection. No longer the "bright ray of sunshine" my mother so often accused me of before the accident, I was now thin and sickly with shadows under my eyes. It wasn't a sight I indulged in often. As I was raising the small sleek capsule to my lips, I felt a tingling on the back of my neck, like someone was blowing cold air on me. It was telltale symptom before an attack. Knowing I needed to get off the unforgiving surface of the tile, I launched into the carpeted hallway, ignoring the concerned cry of my mother.
Just like Dr. Wellers had explained, his drug was too experimental. Instead of allowing the chip in my head to dull the pain in my back, and facilitate faster healing, it had damaged all nerves that it touched. No attack would feel the same, every time the chip would try and dull the pain, and every time my damaged pain sensors would react in a different way.
This time, it felt like my bones were breaking. As if someone was trying crack my bones out through my skin. I fell to my knees, trying not to be overwhelmed by the rising tide of pain. Clutching my arms to my chest, fingers clawing at the exposed skin of my arms. I could feel tears pool at my eyes, I was so tired of pain. I fought against the pressure on me for as long as I could muster the energy, but as all the other times the pain won over and my mind submerged into the hazy world devoid of rational or any other marks of my psyche. I never remember screaming, crying, or biting my tongue. But I've lost count of the times I've had an attack to come back to myself lying in a pool of my own blood, unable to talk because I'd screamed myself hoarse.
The pain seemed endless… until it stopped. I was lying face up; arms splayed trying to bring air through the burning of my lungs. I knew I wasn't crying, or whimpering due to my newly abused vocal chords, but for some reason there was this terribly annoying almost adolescent whimpering filled the hallway. My head lolled to side, eyes hazy with the aftershocks of pain, to the see my mother leaning against the wall, shuddering under the onslaught of her tears. I know it was wrong of me, but it was so relieving to see her pain. Because I was so sure that now, now, she would understand what exactly that man had done to me. She turned towards me, her little doe eyes filled with tears:
"We have to call Dr. Wellers, he can help you, Violet"
It was worse than the pain. My own mother, after seeing first hand my agony, sobs that the very man that caused it can help. I felt bile rise in my throat, and if my throat hadn't been so ravaged by screams the Toriken had ripped from me, surely my screams would have been cause for the neighbors to call the police. Instead, I crawled to my knees, then used the wall the slide into a standing position, pointedly ignoring the idiotic bitch standing before me. I walked to my room and closed the door behind me. Sliding to the ground, my mind started to whirl with plans and action.
I knew something had to be done. The government told us to be proactive, schools told us to be adults and mothers, the good ones anyway, told their daughters to be strong and never let a man rule their lives. Dr. Wellers had taken over my life, and no one had done anything about it. The press had lauded his work, my mother continued to trust him with what little remained of my body and no one understood what was happening. My mother was pounding on the door, screaming, pleading, and crying as if she even had something to cry about.
Thump.
"Voilet, please listen! These things happen, we just have to move foreword!"
Thump.
"He can help, I know you're scared but…."
Thump.
"Everything will be all right"
Thump.
"Please"
By the end of her tirade, I had figured out how to make everything better. My mother would stop crying, no one else would have to suffer like I did, and Dr. Wellers would not be allowed to go on with his perfect, happy little life unpunished. My heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of my chest as I ran the details over the insides of my skull. I could pull it off, I know I could. It would even the playing field, make things better.
"Mom, I'll call D. Wellers tomorrow for an appointment, okay?"
#
I won't say that it was an easy decision. But I knew that I never wanted anyone else to suffer the way I suffer; to have their lives destroyed because of this man's insatiable need for fame and power. It needed to be done, and I knew that no one else would step foreword to do it. I was doing good.
Stealing the necessary items was frighteningly easy; as few smiles and a few dropped hints about how hard my life had become now that the attacks have started coming with more intensity, and the nurses in his office simply melted and ignored my obviously suspicious actives. Pitiful. I pocketed the small the cylinder and walked back into the examination room, the stark bright whiteness making my head hurt and putting me on edge. I settled down on the crinkling paper on the bed and waited.
Dr. Wellers walked in, bright and charming as ever. He was smiling at me with that practiced look of pained sympathy, with a dash of mirth for flavor. I nodded, smiling, as he checked my vitals and sympathetically asked about the attacks and my pain. I simply waited, still smiling, the lies and smoke coming to me with ease because I knew it was all justified. I was staring into the hollow of his throat, as he was feeling the lymph nodes on my neck, speaking in his low soothing voice, when I slowly reached into my pocket. The hypo spray tube was cool and justified in my palm.
He was moving to check my thyroid, thumbs brushing the little butterfly gland, exposing his wrist to me when I brought the tube up and into soft skin there, pressing the toggle before he had time to react. I looked up into his baby blues as the Toriken drained into his veins, and I knew he was seeing me writhe in pain under his laser. I kept the hypo spray on his wrist, eyes boring into his, telling him that this was his punishment.
"That, doctor is pain"
#
The Valley View Care Centre for the Mentally Unstable treated me nicely. The food was better than my mother's, the nurses were kinder than she during my attacks and there were plenty of doctors to badger during the daily share sessions. But that was just the icing on the cake. Dr. Wellers apparently had a rare genetic marker that made him especially sensitive to Toriken; he had his first attack at my feet as I lounged on the examination bed and hasn't been able to ruin any other lives since. Sweet and something to savor.
My cell is bare, clean and cold. But I don't mind as I sit and stare out the window at the manicured lawn. It's time for my nighttime medicine and right on cue there is a soft knock signaling the sweet faced nurse with her sour tasting pills. I don't turn at the sound of her soft foot falls.
"Violet? Sweetheart, we've gotten some bad news."
I nod, not really paying attention. Bad news permeates the air around me.
"The drug, Toriken, Dr. Wellers discovered that it might be leath…." She trailed off as if afraid of what I would do. I turn around slowly and take the pill cup out of her hand before swallowing them in one gulp. She simply stared at me through the hushed darkness, waiting.
"Violet?"
I shake my head at her and face the window again, waiting until her footfalls retreat again. Slowly, I slip my hand under the flimsily cloth of my night gown, letting in rest of the warm beating of my heart.
Thump.
Thump
Thump
Thum-
End
Something in that IV line was wrong! That damn faceless woman in white was slowly injecting a malevolent acid deep inside of me, letting loose this being of fire that was trying to eat itself out through my skin. My vocal chords didn't have time to give out before darkness took me.
But he said that everything would be alright.
#
Three men stood around a bound and helpless girl, lasers at their finger tips, and mind-numbing drugs dripping from the forest of wires, shrill machines and LCD screens. A blonde head dipped down, a small smile on his face as he sliced away another chunk of brain tissue, dark red seeping onto his pale hands. He was doing good. Pressure was thick in the air as the three worked in tandem, carefully peeling back layers of bone, cartilage and spongy flesh; meticulously delving into the part of her that cradled her mind and soul, intent of planting of seed of their own design. One last stroke of the laser sent a curl of smoke into the air and the sickly sweet scent of burning flesh into their noses. Finally, they were ready.
Hands shaking, the dark haired assistant slipped the coin-sized piece of plastic and metal into the outstretched bloody palm of the lead surgeon. Tension stretched thick and palpable as the men contemplated how this small chip would help their prone charge. No pain, no suffering, just life. With steady, hopeful hands, he placed the chip into the gaping chasm they had created in her brain tissue; while the faceless assistant injected his miracle into her highway of veins, sending it to all of the sacred hidden places. Just as planned, the drugs tricked her body into welcoming this construct of theirs, the flesh of her brain welling up and drawing it in, the wet suckling sounds filling the room. It would take only a few heartbeats for their miracle to come to fruition, they would see the skin on her wounded back would begin to sew itself together, the pain monitor's loud beeps would fade into a calm burble, and her bodies weak struggles would slow into the peace of true sleep instead of drug induced fog. Just a few moments.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The girl's body suddenly jerked against the straps and the pain monitor began to scream. Bloody hands lefts smears on her white skin as they frantically tried to hold down her bucking body, the spasming limbs knocking over monitors sending droplets of blood to refract in the bright white light. The room's balance had shifted; where previously only self-congratulation and buoyancy flowed, now screams, fear and chaos ruled supreme.
"Hold her down," screamed the blonde, as he scrabbled for a laser. They had to get the chip out before irreparable damage was done. The nurses were rushing to pump saline through the lines to clean out their drug. Blood dripped down the clean white linens, slices from wrists as she struggled. Laser in hand, he viscously gripped her shaking head and tore it to the position he wanted. The room was deathly silent, except for the sizzle of flesh being eaten away, all watching and waiting to see if the surgeon could pull off a miracle. Careful stroke after careful stroke, the man explored as much as he dared; flesh peeling away under the red beam. Suddenly, he stepped back and peeled off his gloves throwing them to land with a sickeningly wet splat on the floor, her blood mixing with a pool of spilled saline. His drug had done its job, and done it well. The chip was now deep inside the girl's brain, in control.
For better or worse.
#
The nice woman in the white coat was back, but this time her face was clearly in focus under the dim lights of my hospital suit. She was leaning over me, gently pushing me into a sitting position.
"Violet honey, we are going to take good care you, alright?" I didn’t answer, simply taking the pill cup out of her hand and downing the small capsule without looking at it. She smiled reassuringly at me as the bed finished adjusting itself to my spinal measurements and the mattress softened to take pressure off my back injury. I tried not to think about what it meant that it still hurt even after the surgery, or that Dr. Wellers wasn't there. The woman slipped the remote into my hand, and I pressed the on button, small LCD by my bed blipping into life. I nodded, satisfied.
Since that trash of a delivery driver had crushed our family car into a metal girder, and ruined my back, hospitals had become that summer vacation spot that everyone tries to avoid but ends up at anyway. Or at least that’s how I saw it. I saw Dr. Wellers as the pushy tour guide that dragged you to spots you never wanted to see, or even think about for that matter. Like getting the surgery. Call me backwater, but putting a chip on a lobe of your brain that essentially takes control of your subconscious body functions, scares the shit out of me. But Dr. Wellers said that it would be all right, that his drug would fix everything.
I flipped through the channels, growing more concerned as the moments stretched on without any sign of Dr. Wellers. Doctors were supposed to visit their patients after surgery. I would know, I'd been in the position often enough. I landed on a local news channel, my attention caught by the sight of the very hospital I was staying in. It was a press conference. The camera panned in, to a shot of Dr. Wellers charismatic face, all blonde and blue-eyed, before he spoke.
"I am sad to say, that the surgery, which has brought such hope to hundreds of patients like Ms. Walks"--they cut to a picture of me before the accident, all bright and sunny, " did not go quite as planned--" I felt a pressure start to build in my chest.
"The chip was planted successfully, I at least got that right--" he paused for laughs, " but it seems the our drug, Toriken, has not performed as anticipated. My team and I are still very hopeful, and will continue to move forward." A woman in a red power suit barreled forward through the throng of reporters and camera crews, microphone steady.
"What exactly went wrong with the drug? You were so confident before the surgery…" Dr. Wellers' handsome face wrinkled into a frown, as if angry that someone would dare ask the prodigal surgeon details of how he ruined someone's life. The gall.
"I inserted the chip into the part of the brain responsible for the pain and pleasure--" he smiled winningly at a reported who tanked him for not using doctor jargon before continuing, "and Toriken's job was to enable the nerve endings to work more smoothly in tandem with the chip, it would allow sensory signals to be streamlined between the chip and nerves. But it would seem that although the chip is functioning correctly, Toriken is assisting the wrong signals."
"What exactly does that mean?"
I didn’t get to hear the answer as I was introduced first hand what exactly Toriken had done to my body. One moment I was sitting and contemplating my doctor betraying me, and the next, pain had become a thick and palpable thing. Deep and aching on my back near my wound, as if some one had taken a bat to me. Fire screamed along my right hand, as if the skin itself was trying to twist itself off, and my fingers convulsively curling into a first to tightly; it was as if my bones were warping and popping. Pins and needles on my left leg, as if someone was delicately slipping a needle into each open pore. Then pain in my head, like some one was trying to hammer out through my eyes. The pain kept coming, an ever changing, twisting, warping thing stealing my mind away.
As the nurses ran in and the lights became brighter, I realized there was a high pitched keening sound droning off the white washed walls. I concentrated on it, instead of how the pain was eating away at the inside of me. I realized the noise was coming from me.
One of the nurses injected something into the IV line and it as before, a fire trying to eat its way out of me. These people were trying to kill me. Letting out an incomprehensible shout of rage, I lunged over the side of my hospital bed at the closest of them, desperate for them to stop… whatever it was that they were doing to me.
The nurse dodged, and another darted in to catch my outstretched hand before it could snag the IV and rip it out of my arm. The acid creature in my arm was working its way upwards, aiming for my brain. I was screaming at them, franticly trying to explain to them that if they didn't stop, then they were going to kill me, then this monster in my arm would get all the way to my brain, then the pain would go on and on. The nurses didn't say a word and lights got brighter.
With my free hand, I swung wildly, hoping to clear the space around me. I needed to get before these people and this pain swallowed me entirely. I could feel my rationale being burned to ash under the onslaught of the light and fear. I reached for the IV bag, intent on getting rid of my tormentor but a faceless woman in white was there, her long claw like nails digging into the soft flesh on my wrist. She snarled something at me and I felt like crumpling because they didn't understand. I was being undone. Another faceless shape appeared needle in hand, and injected fire into my IV line.
The last thing I remember is pain.
#
Doctors are the people we go to when we are sick, when we are in pain. We put our lives in their hands and expect them to be better for it. Robert J. Wellers had destroyed mine for sake of his career. Those are the words I spoke to my mother when the nurses finally let her into my room after the attack, and it was like I had slapped her. It was as if my mother, the woman who raised me and had to watch as I was pinned between the twisted remains of our car and steel girder, didn't care that this man had signed my life away to one of pain and suffering. It was as if my mother couldn’t see, or refused to understand that this narcissistic laser jockey had done to me. I rubbed my thumb over and over a small ink stain on my desk, as I stared blankly out the window. I'm trying desperately to give my mother a chance, maybe the reason she doesn't understand what Dr. Wellers did, is because during the month and half I was in the hospital recovering from the surgery, she hadn't actually seen me have an attack. My suffering was always hidden far away from prying eyes at the hospital.
I sighed and slowly levied myself up from the desk, intent on taking my afternoon medicine; medicine to fix the medicine. Stepping barefooted onto the cold tile of my bathroom, I studiously ignored my reflection. No longer the "bright ray of sunshine" my mother so often accused me of before the accident, I was now thin and sickly with shadows under my eyes. It wasn't a sight I indulged in often. As I was raising the small sleek capsule to my lips, I felt a tingling on the back of my neck, like someone was blowing cold air on me. It was telltale symptom before an attack. Knowing I needed to get off the unforgiving surface of the tile, I launched into the carpeted hallway, ignoring the concerned cry of my mother.
Just like Dr. Wellers had explained, his drug was too experimental. Instead of allowing the chip in my head to dull the pain in my back, and facilitate faster healing, it had damaged all nerves that it touched. No attack would feel the same, every time the chip would try and dull the pain, and every time my damaged pain sensors would react in a different way.
This time, it felt like my bones were breaking. As if someone was trying crack my bones out through my skin. I fell to my knees, trying not to be overwhelmed by the rising tide of pain. Clutching my arms to my chest, fingers clawing at the exposed skin of my arms. I could feel tears pool at my eyes, I was so tired of pain. I fought against the pressure on me for as long as I could muster the energy, but as all the other times the pain won over and my mind submerged into the hazy world devoid of rational or any other marks of my psyche. I never remember screaming, crying, or biting my tongue. But I've lost count of the times I've had an attack to come back to myself lying in a pool of my own blood, unable to talk because I'd screamed myself hoarse.
The pain seemed endless… until it stopped. I was lying face up; arms splayed trying to bring air through the burning of my lungs. I knew I wasn't crying, or whimpering due to my newly abused vocal chords, but for some reason there was this terribly annoying almost adolescent whimpering filled the hallway. My head lolled to side, eyes hazy with the aftershocks of pain, to the see my mother leaning against the wall, shuddering under the onslaught of her tears. I know it was wrong of me, but it was so relieving to see her pain. Because I was so sure that now, now, she would understand what exactly that man had done to me. She turned towards me, her little doe eyes filled with tears:
"We have to call Dr. Wellers, he can help you, Violet"
It was worse than the pain. My own mother, after seeing first hand my agony, sobs that the very man that caused it can help. I felt bile rise in my throat, and if my throat hadn't been so ravaged by screams the Toriken had ripped from me, surely my screams would have been cause for the neighbors to call the police. Instead, I crawled to my knees, then used the wall the slide into a standing position, pointedly ignoring the idiotic bitch standing before me. I walked to my room and closed the door behind me. Sliding to the ground, my mind started to whirl with plans and action.
I knew something had to be done. The government told us to be proactive, schools told us to be adults and mothers, the good ones anyway, told their daughters to be strong and never let a man rule their lives. Dr. Wellers had taken over my life, and no one had done anything about it. The press had lauded his work, my mother continued to trust him with what little remained of my body and no one understood what was happening. My mother was pounding on the door, screaming, pleading, and crying as if she even had something to cry about.
Thump.
"Voilet, please listen! These things happen, we just have to move foreword!"
Thump.
"He can help, I know you're scared but…."
Thump.
"Everything will be all right"
Thump.
"Please"
By the end of her tirade, I had figured out how to make everything better. My mother would stop crying, no one else would have to suffer like I did, and Dr. Wellers would not be allowed to go on with his perfect, happy little life unpunished. My heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of my chest as I ran the details over the insides of my skull. I could pull it off, I know I could. It would even the playing field, make things better.
"Mom, I'll call D. Wellers tomorrow for an appointment, okay?"
#
I won't say that it was an easy decision. But I knew that I never wanted anyone else to suffer the way I suffer; to have their lives destroyed because of this man's insatiable need for fame and power. It needed to be done, and I knew that no one else would step foreword to do it. I was doing good.
Stealing the necessary items was frighteningly easy; as few smiles and a few dropped hints about how hard my life had become now that the attacks have started coming with more intensity, and the nurses in his office simply melted and ignored my obviously suspicious actives. Pitiful. I pocketed the small the cylinder and walked back into the examination room, the stark bright whiteness making my head hurt and putting me on edge. I settled down on the crinkling paper on the bed and waited.
Dr. Wellers walked in, bright and charming as ever. He was smiling at me with that practiced look of pained sympathy, with a dash of mirth for flavor. I nodded, smiling, as he checked my vitals and sympathetically asked about the attacks and my pain. I simply waited, still smiling, the lies and smoke coming to me with ease because I knew it was all justified. I was staring into the hollow of his throat, as he was feeling the lymph nodes on my neck, speaking in his low soothing voice, when I slowly reached into my pocket. The hypo spray tube was cool and justified in my palm.
He was moving to check my thyroid, thumbs brushing the little butterfly gland, exposing his wrist to me when I brought the tube up and into soft skin there, pressing the toggle before he had time to react. I looked up into his baby blues as the Toriken drained into his veins, and I knew he was seeing me writhe in pain under his laser. I kept the hypo spray on his wrist, eyes boring into his, telling him that this was his punishment.
"That, doctor is pain"
#
The Valley View Care Centre for the Mentally Unstable treated me nicely. The food was better than my mother's, the nurses were kinder than she during my attacks and there were plenty of doctors to badger during the daily share sessions. But that was just the icing on the cake. Dr. Wellers apparently had a rare genetic marker that made him especially sensitive to Toriken; he had his first attack at my feet as I lounged on the examination bed and hasn't been able to ruin any other lives since. Sweet and something to savor.
My cell is bare, clean and cold. But I don't mind as I sit and stare out the window at the manicured lawn. It's time for my nighttime medicine and right on cue there is a soft knock signaling the sweet faced nurse with her sour tasting pills. I don't turn at the sound of her soft foot falls.
"Violet? Sweetheart, we've gotten some bad news."
I nod, not really paying attention. Bad news permeates the air around me.
"The drug, Toriken, Dr. Wellers discovered that it might be leath…." She trailed off as if afraid of what I would do. I turn around slowly and take the pill cup out of her hand before swallowing them in one gulp. She simply stared at me through the hushed darkness, waiting.
"Violet?"
I shake my head at her and face the window again, waiting until her footfalls retreat again. Slowly, I slip my hand under the flimsily cloth of my night gown, letting in rest of the warm beating of my heart.
Thump.
Thump
Thump
Thum-
End
