“It won’t take all the pain away, but it should help.” Taryn kept her hand on his neck while she gave the cream some time to do its job.
She picked up the scalpel. “Ready?”
“Do what you need to do.” His voice was thick with emotion. Eyes closed, he took one final deep breath and then focused on separating his mind from his body, the way he did when he surfed the network.
“This will probably hurt like a son of a bitch.”
Ash sucked in a sharp breath when the point of her scalpel broke the skin. She paused and it was bearable until she moved the blade deeper. “Motherfucker!”
Her movements didn’t slow, but she placed her free hand briefly on his shoulder. “Relax. It’s worse when you tense up.”
Between the blade and her touch, he couldn’t believe that she expected him to remain calm. He tried to get out of his own head. When that didn’t work, he tried to imagine his life with the port open. He was getting everything he’d ever wanted over the last five years, but it was nothing like he’d expected.
After what seemed like forever, he finally felt the blade withdraw from his neck. The pain didn’t recede, though.
Taryn’s hand was back on his neck, this time with something soft. “Take a deep breath,” she instructed him.
After a few breaths, his muscles started to relax.
“You have a choice to make,” she said. “I can’t bandage the wound up because that defeats the purpose of uncovering the port.”
“Okay.” He shifted his head so he could see her. His neck was on fire, but he didn’t want to have a serious conversation like this, not without seeing her.
Her arm stretched to keep the temporary bandage in place. “I can put some salve on it and leave it open. It’s bleeding a little right now, but that should stop soon.”
His stomach turned at the thought of porting in with an active wound. “Gross. What’s my other choice?”
She paused. Her silence was long and ominous.
“Worse than the open-wound option?” What could be worse than that?
“Yes.” He’d asked as a joke, but her voice was completely serious.
“What is it?” Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t that bad.
“Cauterization.”
He was wrong. His skin crawled just thinking about it. “You’re fucking joking.”
“Sorry.” She sounded sincere, but that didn’t ease his concern on how awful it would be. “I have a laser. It’s not like I’d be using fire.”
“You want to use a laser on my wound to cauterize it?”
“Stop being such a baby.”
Easy for her to say—she didn’t have a gaping hole in the back of her neck and someone begging to laser it closed.
“Cauterization will lessen the chance of infection, too.”
Intellectually, he understood the argument. Emotionally? He was not ready for this. “Laser it,” he said before he could change his mind.
When the laser hit his skin, he flinched. It hurt so much, he couldn’t scream. He’d never felt pain like that before.
The next minutes were a blur. His shirt had teeth marks. His neck felt like he’d been branded. But that was nothing compared to the nausea that racked him.
“Can you sit up?”
“I think I’d rather die.” The truth slipped out.
