I do not want one.
Those are different things.
Blood, sweat, antiseptic, house air, too many people, too much tension. It all feels stuck to my skin. If I’m going to get any sleep, I need it off me.
The shower is a mistake.
I know that before I start.
I make it carefully anyway.
Getting the shirt off is the first problem. I unbutton it slowly and peel it away from my shoulders, jaw clenched against the pull in my side. The black T-shirt underneath is worse. It sticks slightly at my back, and lifting my arm sends a white-hot line across my ribs.
I stop halfway and breathe through it.
Shallow, even breaths.
Do not make it worse.
Do not pass out in Luca Conti’s guest room like an amateur.
Eventually, the shirt comes off.
I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror for a moment and find the same thing I always find after an injury.
A body that has done its job and paid for it.
Bruising has spread around the wound, dark and ugly beneath the edge of the dressing. The skin around it is angry. Old scars visible in the harsh bathroom light.
Shoulder. Ribs. Back.
Reminders from other days, other places, other moments when someone tried and failed to put me down.
I turn away.
The shower is careful, brief, and miserable.
I keep the water warm instead of hot. I angle my body so it does not hit the dressing directly. I wash one-handed, moving slowly, every bend and twist like I’m working around tripwire. Pain catches me a couple of times hard enough that I have to brace my forearm against the tile and wait it out.
By the time I shut the water off, I am sweating again.
Excellent.
Very productive.
I dry off slowly, wrap a towel around my waist, and step out of the bathroom with every intention of getting dressed, lying down, and pretending the last twenty minutes were not as difficult as they actually were.
Then there is a soft knock at the door.
I go still.
The hour is late enough that a knock means one of three things.
A security issue.
A medical issue.
Or trouble.
