The door opened after a brisk knock, showing a woman much younger than she’d imagined. Too young to be the doctor, surely. Uma had to reevaluate the mental image the doctor’s voice had conjured on the radio the week before. She’d pictured a wise, older woman, not someone close to her own age.
Sunny and blond. She didn’t look like her story. This woman looked too innocent, too wholesome to have been hurt, marked, branded like cattle.
Panic streaked a cold swathe through Uma. Was it all a complex lie? A ploy to get women like her in here and then back to where they belonged? Back to the men who’d abused them?
Dr. Hadley must have seen something in her face, because she waited before speaking. She seemed to understand that Uma required time to evaluate, adapt, and adjust—or whatever the hell other touchy-feely shit she’d need to do to get through this. Did they teach people in med school how to deal with cases like her? The ones who were so fucked up they were more like stray cats than humans? Desperately in need of help, but no damn good at accepting it?
The doctor sat and put down her pen and pad, pausing briefly before pulling off her lab coat, unbuttoning her cuff, and rolling up her sleeve.
“Mine was right here,” she said, jumping right into it. “You can see a tiny bit of scarring, but it’s pretty much gone.” She watched Uma closely. “I had another that I won’t show you, but it’s even better than this. On my belly. I can wear a bikini now. Not that I do, but…” She smiled gently. Her skin looked immaculate. White and beautiful, with the faintest shadow of some ugly memory she’d chosen to erase. “You’re breathing a bit fast. Do you need a paper bag?”
Uma shook her head.
“More tea?”
She hesitated and then nodded. Maybe a moment alone would help.
The doctor got up and left the room, reappearing moments later with two mugs. Real ceramic this time instead of the flimsy paper the receptionist had used. Uma’s had a stick figure doing a happy dance, with the wordsI pooped todayscrawled across it. She let out a huff of laughter.
Dr. Hadley smiled, showing perfect white teeth, and then cut to the chase. “Want to tell me about it? Or show me? We can talk as little or as much as you like.”
Uma started breathing fast again. Embarrassed, but incapable of tamping down the panic. One hand flew to her mouth, and she bit down, vaguely aware of how crazy it must look.
“Or you can take my card and call me when you’re ready.”
Uma nodded. The doctor mirrored the movement and sipped calmly at her tea. Some part of Uma’s brain—the part that could think clearly through the panic—wondered if this woman had already been a doctor when it had happened to her, or maybe she’d become a dermatologist because of it.
“I…” Uma’s lungs struggled to suck in a thin stream of air, two, three. She shut her eyes. “I can’t even look at myself. In a mirror. Or…definitely not in person. I’mdisgusting,” she finished on a whisper.
With an effort, she pried her eyes open, enough to see a bit of blue peeping out from under her massive watch. Turning away, she pulled the watch off and held her wrist up to the doctor. Baring four ugly block letters:MINE.
Uma didn’t look—couldn’t. She knew what was there, knew how stark it appeared against her pallor. Dark, violent streaks embedded into her. One word of many.
Every time she caught a glimpse, she relived that specific moment, that particular punishing hour. A piece of her past stolen, along with her body.
For Uma, more than most, her skin held her history. A part of it she would never be allowed to forget. Other scars faded, but not these—they were a constant reminder of how messed up her life was.
She heard her breath shaking as if from far off. Then there was the other woman’s hand cool and firm against her skin. Compassionate but still assessing.
Strange how her brain flew to the last person who’d touched that skin. The neighbor. Ivan. Uma liked the name Ivan for him. Ive seemed too…incomplete, like an unfinished thought. And he was the opposite of that—the man seemed so utterly whole.
Dr. Hadley’s touch was soft and comforting but lacked the calming power of Ivan’s bigger, rougher hand. For the briefest of moments, she wondered how it would feel to bare her skin to that enormous, frightening-looking monster. Get him to hold her, maybe let her disappear into the steady beating of his heart, the way she lost herself in his nighttime percussion.
Would her body shock him?
No.
He looked like nothing would surprise him. A supremely comforting thought.
The doctor ran her fingers over the letters, stroked them with none of the clinical coldness Uma had expected from this encounter.
“We can do this,” she said, placing Uma’s hand back gently in her lap. “Any others?”
Uma swallowed with a wet click, accompanied by the loud crinkle of paper on the examination table beneath her. The sound was jarring in the silence.
With clammy hands, Uma grabbed at her sleeve.
“Would you like a gown?”
