“Quiets the hand,” the guard explained. “Quiets you.”

“Quiet as in—” I put my hand at an angle, closed my eyes and moved my head over.

“Yes.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll stay awake. I have to stay awake.”

“The patients here do not decide. Outside? Yes. Inside? No. You don’t choose.”

“This isn’t my choice. It’s government. Gimel, Shin made agreements,” I said. “You were told to fix me. You can do it without knocking me out.”

He exchanged words with the doctor. The doctor looked annoyed.

The exchange continued for what felt like a minute. Every movement of air on the back of my hand made me want to throw up, not because of pain, but because of how visceral it was, where it took me in a horror sense.

My skin was—

I had a very mixed relationship with my skin.

“Someone who was treating me didn’t listen when I told them to stop, once, and I got—”

The guard motioned for me to stop, or to back down, or shut up. I wasn’t sure which, but the hand was swiped my way, firm.

“—fucked up.”

The doctor twisted around on his seat, facing me. He looked pissed. With an exaggerated show, he set the syringe down. He picked up a small glass bowl and filled with colored granules that looked like tinted sugar. He said a single word in his language.

“This,” the guard translated. “Is this acceptable?”

“I have no idea what it is.”

There was another brief exchange.

“It cleans the hand. Some quiet.”

“For just the hand?” I asked.

“Yes, the hand,” the guard said.

I didn’t trust it, and I didn’t trust them, but I was already worried, and I had no idea how clean that clean towel had been.

“Yes.”

The guard translated. He didn’t wait to see or do anything before walking down the hall toward Tristan and Theo. Sveta remained where she was, her attention divided between me and the guard.

He sprinkled the mixture over my hand. It felt cold, but that was the anaesthetic element of it. My hand tingled, cold, the pain stopped, and then the anaesthetic claimed my hand in entirety, followed by a swift loss of my arm, and it reaching my chest to grip my heart in some combination of horror and numbness that I couldn’t tell apart. From there, it swept over my entire body. It reached my throat, my head—and it decimated my consciousness.

With what remained of my awareness, I looked at Sveta, and saw her looking down the hall at the guard, rather than looking at me.

Then the next wave came, and I was out and gone, the doctor catching me as I slumped over.

⊙