Nova
I can’t stop shaking.
Another rush of ice cold water hits me from the hose and I scream. I don’t know how long it’s been. Long enough that I just need it to end.
My legs are shaking so hard I would fall if I wasn’t being held up by my bound wrists. Another spray. My right leg gives out. Something pops in my left shoulder and everything goes white.
Cleansing my ass.
When it comes back I’m still standing. Barely. The weight on my wrists is almost unbearable now, pulling at the shoulder that popped, and I can’t — I try to get my feet under me and my right leg won’t cooperate and the water comes again and I stop trying.
Just breathe.
Just breathe through it.
I think about Rane huddling close showing me my phone. How warm he was, how I wanted him closer. I think about Vaelor’s hands around the hot mug of coffee, already adjusted. Setting it down in front of me before I ever asked. I think about the Hollow, all the shifters there. The road…
The water hits my face and something in my chest tears open and the sound that comes out of me doesn’t feel like mine.
Too raw. Too broken. It keeps coming and I can’t stop it and I hate it — I hate that they get this, whoever is watching, whoever is holding the hose, whoever is writing it down in whatever file they have on me—
The water stops.
The silence is worse.
I hang there, shaking, the scream still ricocheting around inside my chest looking for somewhere to go. My shoulder is on fire. My right leg is useless. I’m soaking and freezing and I just gave them something I didn’t want to give them and I can’t take it back.
One of the women steps forward with a towel. She doesn’t look at my face. Neither of them have looked at my face this whole time. Even as I stand here freezing, gasping for air.
I’m not a person in this room. I’m a procedure.
How many others have there been?
I let them dry me off. Let them cut down my wrists and redress them and put something thin and white on me that does nothing for the cold. I don’t have the energy to be anything other than what they need me to be right now.
I’m saving it.
I don’t know what for yet.
But I’ll know.