Chapter 31 Chapter 30: Ever Centimetre Measured
I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew, the Doctor and a nurse were standing over me. I hadn't seen or heard them arrive; they had simply materialized in the silent room like ghosts. The sedative had wrapped my senses in a thick, muffling blanket.
The nurse, a different one from before, moved with practiced efficiency. Without a word of asking, she took my wrist, her grip firm and cool. She held two fingers over my pulse point; her eyes fixed on a small watch face that hung from a chain on her chest. After a moment, she gave a single, curt nod to the doctor.
He spoke, his voice seeming to come from the end of a long tunnel. "This way, please, Nanda."
I followed them on legs that felt like shaky, unset gelatine, down the interminably white corridor. We stopped at a small, cold room with a floral-printed curtain partitioning off one corner. The attempt at softness was more sinister than the starkness.
"Now, go with the nurse behind the curtain. She will help you change into an examination robe," the Doctor instructed.
My mind felt too weary, too chemically subdued, to muster a protest. The fight had been drained out of me. I numbly followed the nurse behind the curtain. She handed me a garment made of crinkly, disposable paper. It was an open-back robe that barely came down to my thighs, offering no warmth and less dignity. I changed, the paper rustling loudly in the quiet space, a sound that seemed to mock my vulnerability.
"This way, Nanda." The nurse's voice was devoid of inflection. She guided me through to an adjoining room.
The sight that greeted me made my breath catch in my throat, a final spike of fear piercing the sedative haze. The room looked like a medieval torture chamber, only rendered in sterile stainless steel and blinding white. In the centre stood a high, padded examination table, and my blood ran cold at the sight of the stirrups for the legs and the stark, leather-looking belts clearly intended to secure a patient's arms and chest.
I took an involuntary step backwards, a weak, primal instinct to flee.
"Now, now, Nanda, don't get excited," the nurse said, her tone patronizing as she took my arm, her grip firm and unyielding. She steered me firmly towards the table. "Everything is for your own good."
Somehow, I found myself lying back on the cold vinyl. I felt their hands, impersonal and efficient, as they secured the belts across my chest and wrists. The restraints were snug, not painfully tight, but their message was absolute: I was not in control. I was too weary to fight, the sedative making my limbs feel like lead. I felt almost nothing, a strange, floating detachment. I'm not sure if I cried, but a deep, hollow part of me felt like I should.
The Doctor moved to stand at the head of the table. A bright, cold light shone from a lamp on his forehead, blinding me and casting his features into an indistinguishable shadow. He was just a voice and a light.
"Perfect," he said, the word horribly misplaced. "Now, Nanda, it's very important that you relax and try to remain calm."
The examination began. I felt a sharp prick first, a distant sting as I think they took blood. Then they measured my entire body with cold, metal callipers, reading out numbers in a monotone, the circumference of my skull, the width of my hips, the length of my limbs. The nurse echoed the numbers back, her voice a faint scribble on the edge of my awareness. I could not move my head to see her.
Then came the deeper violation. I felt the cold, clinical touch of rubber-gloved fingers, then something larger, a cold, hard instrument. I was prodded and poked in every orifice, my body treated as a fascinating, malfunctioning machine. My mind, grateful for the sedative, began to slip away from the humiliating details, retreating to a quiet, dark corner inside itself where the measurements and the probing couldn't reach. I must have passed out, because the next thing I was aware of was the sensation of the belts being untied. The pressure across my chest and wrists released, but the feeling of violation remained, etched into my skin. The vinyl of the table was cold and sticky with sweat.
"This way, please," said the nurse, her voice still a flat, professional monotone. She didn't offer a hand to help me sit up. I pushed myself up, my head swimming, every muscle aching with a deep, phantom soreness. She led me back to the small changing room with the floral curtain. "You may change again now."
I moved slowly, each motion sending a fresh twinge of pain through my body. The crinkly paper robe felt like a part of the humiliation. As I pulled on my own clothes, the soft fabric felt alien against my skin. My whole body felt bruised, both inside and out, a map of the clinical probing I had endured.
Still on shaky, unsteady legs, I followed the nurse back to the blindingly white waiting room. The same empty chairs, the same sad plant.
"You need to sit here for ten minutes, so the sedative can wear off," she instructed. "Someone will be by to check on you." And then she was gone, leaving me alone in the echoing silence.
I gingerly found my com, my fingers clumsy. The screen glowed: 11:33. The morning was gone, stolen by that room.
I sat perfectly still, trying to breathe through the ache. The ten minutes stretched into an eternity. Finally, a different nurse appeared, her footsteps silent on the polished floor.
"You may go home now," she said.
I didn't really process the words at first. They didn't seem to belong to me. I think I was in a dream state, a numb, floating bubble where things like 'home' and 'go' had no meaning. She must have seen the blank look on my face.
"You can leave now, Nanda," she repeated, a little louder, gesturing towards the heavy double doors.
The words finally registered. Leave. I stood up, my body protesting with a chorus of pains. I didn't walk; I waddled, my gait awkward and stilted, my whole inner body raw and tender. Each step was a reminder.
I pushed open the clinic door. The light in the street hit me like a physical blow, bright and real after the artificial whiteness. The sounds of the city, a distant porty, a shout, the hum of life, flooded back in. I took a deep, cold gulp of fresh air, and it tasted like freedom. I was free. But as I stood there on the pavement, trembling and sore, I knew a part of me was still tied to that table, in that room, under that blinding light.
I fumbled my com out again, the screen blurring before my eyes: 11:45. A cold jolt of panic electrocuted the last of the sedative's haze.
Fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes to get from this sterile hell to the gleaming Consulate office across town. It was impossible. It was a distance meant for a hopper, not on foot. But the secretary's icy voice echoed in my head: "Not if you want to work for Lord Vincent."
If I ran. If I ran like my life depended on it, I might-might-make it.
No dieball match, no fight with a rival, no deep ache from a training session had ever been as potent, as all-consuming as the pain that screamed through every limb as I launched myself down the street. It was a symphony of agony: a deep, internal throbbing from the clinic's violation, a sharp stitch in my side, the burn of muscles pushed far beyond their limits. I ran for all my life was worth, my hair whipping wildly, my breath coming in ragged, sobbing gasps. I must have looked like some mad Polli escaped from a mental home, a frantic, desperate figure weaving through the midday crowds.
Yet, I had never run so fast. The whole world became a smear of colour and sound, the blare of a porty horn, the startled shout of a pedestrian I nearly collided with, the relentless slap of my own feet on the pavement. Tears streamed from my eyes, born not of sadness but of sheer, unadulterated strain, blurring the world further. But beneath the pain, there was a determination I had never felt for anything before. This wasn't for a game. This was for my future. This was a refusal to be broken by a morning of humiliation.
I reached the sleek, glass door of the office building, my body slamming against the cool surface. I was completely breathless, drenched in sweat that soaked through my clothes, my chest heaving. I could taste blood in the back of my throat. With a trembling hand that felt like it belonged to someone else, I took my com out.