Chapter 7 Adrian #2
The scars are a topographic map of violence. The puckered divot on his right chest—an old gunshot wound that healed without a surgeon’s touch. The long, thin surgical line across his lower belly.
And on his left flank, a tight cluster of small, perfectly round burns.
Cigarette marks. Hypertrophic skin, raised and shiny.
The pattern is deliberate. Someone used him as a ledger for their cruelty.
Garrett returns with the basin of cold water. I soak a towel and wring it out.
I start at his forehead. The cloth against his burning skin produces an audible hiss. The extreme temperature differential creates a small cloud of steam that curls off his body.
I draw the towel down his temples and his jaw. I wipe the thick column of his neck. His pulse beats heavily against the wet cloth.
I move to his chest. The pectorals are dense plates of muscle. The dark hair is coarse. His nipples contract instantly from the cold.
The Madonna. The surgical scar. The hard ridge of his sternum.
I press the cloth against his flanks and his obliques. I reach the sharp crease of his hip. The skin is thinner here. The powerful femoral pulse hammers against my fingertips.
I rinse the towel. I soak it again. My hands are functioning. My breathing is controlled. I am a physician performing a medical procedure.
I move to his thighs. The quadriceps are immense. I need both hands to span their circumference. The muscle beneath my hands is firm and incredibly hot.
I work the cloth along his inner thigh. This is where the cooling will be most effective. The skin is different here. Softer. Less scarred.
I feel the adductor muscles tense under my touch.
I move the cloth higher. I need to cool the groin—the area where the major vessels run just beneath the surface.
I wring the towel and press it against the crease of his groin. My knuckles brush the junction of his thigh and pelvis. I reach for the other side.
He’s hard.
The erection is sudden. It’s an involuntary vascular response to the high fever and the constant, stimulating touch. I’ve seen this happen in ICU patients. My medical training knows this. My hands know this.
My hands stop moving.
His eyes snap open. The glassiness recedes. Consciousness registers the cloth, my hands, and his own body’s betrayal.
Something dark and ugly moves across his face. Shame. Rage. It’s the expression of a man being betrayed by his own flesh.
"Don’t." His voice is shredded. A barely audible rasp. "Don’t look at me."
I pull the towel back immediately. I lay it across his lower abdomen, covering him.
My fingers are trembling. A fine, visible tremor that has absolutely nothing to do with fatigue.
"It’s an involuntary response," I say. I try to find my surgeon's voice, but it sounds thin and reedy. "Vasodilation from the fever. It has no clinical significance."
He turns his head away from me, facing the wall. The tendons in his neck stand out like steel cables. His jaw is clenched so hard his teeth grind together.
His bandaged hand grips the edge of the cot. The aluminum frame whines under the sheer force of his grip.
"Get out."
I gather the basin and the towels. I leave the room.
I close the door behind me and stand in the narrow, dark hallway. My back is pressed against the rough wall. My heart rate is one hundred and forty beats per minute. I can count it hammering in my carotid artery.
The bathroom is a tiny closet with a sink that runs only cold water. I lock the door.
I turn on the tap. I hold my hands under the icy stream and watch the water run over my fingers. I try to diagnose myself.
My hands are shaking. My face is flushed. I can feel the heat in the back of my neck.
Fight or flight. But I’m not fighting. And I can't flee.
I’m standing in a bathroom with the afterimage of his body burned into my visual cortex. The sheer mass of him. The topography of damage. The way his skin felt beneath my hands.
The sound he made when he said don't look at me.
That sound was stripped of everything. It was the raw, guttural shame of a man reduced to something he couldn't control.
I’ve heard it before in hospitals. From men in delirium. From patients waking up from surgery. I’ve always catalogued it and moved on.
I cannot move on from this.
I turn off the tap. I dry my hands on my trousers. The tremor subsides.
My reflection in the small, cracked mirror looks the same. Sharp jaw. Composed. Grey at the temples.
I push my left sleeve up. The scar is there.
A thin white line across my wrist. Healed smooth. A pale ridge that catches the light.
I trace it with a finger. The old nerve damage makes the scar numb. I can feel the pressure of my touch, but not the texture of the skin.
It’s a dead zone. A place where sensation simply ends.
I put it there three months after I lost my medical license. A hotel room in Baltimore. A sterile scalpel from my own kit.
The cut was precise. I knew exactly where the artery ran. I knew the depth required. I knew the rate of blood loss.
I didn't know the maid would come in early with fresh towels. I didn't know the towels would hold the blood long enough to keep me alive until the paramedics arrived.
I trace the dead zone. I think about the man in the other room. His shame. His scars.
The way he said don't look at me as if being seen was a death sentence.
I understand that impulse. The absolute terror of being witnessed in a state you can't control.
I should be afraid of him. I am.
But the fear has company now. It’s something darker. It lives in the same dead zone as my scar.
It’s a fascination with the architecture of his damage. A magnetic pull toward the intense gravity of that body.
The impossible contradiction of a man who catches knives with his bare palms but can't bear the touch of a wet, cool cloth.
I lower my sleeve. I straighten my glasses.
I leave the bathroom.
His door is closed. I press my ear to the rough wood and hear his breathing. It’s deep and labored. The fever is still there.
He doesn’t call out. He won't ask for help.
I sit down in the hallway. I put my back against his door. I keep my medical bag in my lap.
I listen to him breathe.
I do not leave.