Breaking Chains

Treatment and Indifference

“Again,” Roger ordered. Celia was grabbed by the face and slammed back into the ice water. By now her body was numb from the repetitive the treatments. It didn’t matter anyways; here she was sitting in a tub of ice but in her mind it was summer with the sun raining heat.

They pulled her up from the water, her hair splattering water all over the nurses. They were starting to get tired; Celia could tell. They had been at it for hours now. It was a pretty straightforward treatment. Put the patient in the tub, shove them down, bring them up, dry and warm them up, repeat. By now their hands must have been freezing from holding her under and their clothes were getting pretty soaked; Celia just had to wait them out.

“Why did you do it?” the good doctor asked. He stood at the base of the metal tub with both his hands on it’s body. “Everything we worked for, just thrown away.” Celia didn’t answer. An answer would require for her to be paying attention, and for her to be paying attention would mean that she wasn’t frolicing in the warm embrace of a summer day. Even if her mind was in the tub with her body, she still wouldn’t respond; there was nothing to say. Except maybe that she wished she was a better liar.

“Again.” Celia’s body was dragged back into numbing waters while her mind basked in the sunshine. These treatment had almost become enjoyable now. Celia could never achieve oneness with her mind like she did at times like these unless she was in the isolation room or being treated. She broke through the layer of crushed ice and her blank expression was face to face with the good doctor again. “Again.” Back under the water she went but it didn’t matter, because her expression was still empty when she was dragged back up. “Again.”

Treatment were always received in the nude. Time was of the essence and a naked patient was easier to dry and quicker to warm up; the fact that it was humiliating was just a bonus, not that Celia felt humility anymore. Dr. Call Me Roger had it down to a science. A minute in the tub, twenty seconds underwater each time, and ten minutes out. When warming a patient, start with the extremities and then dry inward; the chest and stomach should be the last thing attended too.

“Take her out,” he commanded. Celia’s limp body was dragged out of the tub. When they first started he had explained the treatment to Celia.

“The goal,” he had said, “was to shock the illness from the patient. Provide a big enough shock and you can rid the body of any ailment.”

They dumped her onto the table of towels and blankets and began to rub the warmth back into her. The materials were starting to become too wet to be usable. If they didn’t get new ones soon then it wouldn’t matter how much they rubbed if it was performed with damp equipment and that would be truly unfortunate. Many a patient was lost because of poor performance on the nurses part or a miscalculation of time in the tub or failure to warm a patient because of wet materials.

“We can still fix this,” Roger said. Celia’s dead eyes stared at him without registering his existence. “There is only so much I can do if you are unwilling to heal yourself.” The pink started to return to her skin as the nurses worked. “Get new materials,” Roger said. “Leave us.” The nurses nodded and left.

Roger stood next to his daughter and covered her up with the dryest available blanket. With her skin so pale, her body so depleted, and her eyes so dead, she was little more than a corpse but he still had hope. She wasn’t completely lost from him. He’d find the cure for her and then she’d be able to walk among her family as something pure and whole again.

“We will defeat this,” he promised. Roger took his child’s ice hand in his; it was frail enough to break with a squeeze. “Even if you are content to resign, I will not abandon you to be controlled by this disease. You are my daughter; my flesh and blood. I will cure you. Your father promises.” He waited in vain for any kind of response from Celia.