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Chapter 3

Once they were in the building, Ardala tried to parse the smells that came to her. Mostly they were the scent of humanity overlaid with some sort of citrus scent. But under all of that was pain. She looked up at Francis with alarm. "Why does the air smell of pain? What will you do to me here?"

"We're going to have the doctor look at that wound on your foot." Francis sniffed the air and looked back down at her. "I don't smell anything but disinfectant."

"Humans have weak noses." Ardala said quietly, still smelling the pain in the air. It was faint, like someone had tried to scrub it away. Perhaps it was not recent, perhaps someone had simply wounded themselves here and had left the residual scent. That was a justification, and she shouldn't make it, she should get away from here. But the chair she was in kept moving and she was pushed through a side door and into the presence of yet another human.

This one was tall and dark, elegant, and spare, dressed in odd blue clothing. He was looking at her with assessing eyes that widened when he saw the bloody rag that was wrapped around her foot. "Ok, up on the table and we'll see what we can do about that."

Devon did something to the chair, so it stopped rolling and Francis helped her up. She had to force herself not to react again when her foot hit the floor and pain shot up her leg enough to almost make her crumble to the floor. It took both Francis and Devon to help her up onto the hard table where Devon started unwrapping her foot. Once the wound was exposed, Ardala had to own that it looked much worse than it had when it was half frozen. The guard had bitten her far harder than was truly needed and her foot was missing parts of itself.

The blue clothed one moved himself into her range of vision. "I'm Doctor Stevens, are you ok with telling me your name?"

"I am Ardala," she looked down at her foot. "What will your help cost me?"

"I bill the unhoused project directly." Doctor Stevens started manipulating her foot, making the blood drip onto the hard table. "What happened? This looks almost like a bite?"

Ardala recounted events as she had told them to Francis. "The guard did not tear me; it was an appropriate punishment."

Doctor Stevens looked over Ardala's head at Francis. "Some kind of cult, I think. Offshore to avoid legal repercussions." Francis said, patting Ardala on the shoulder again. "Does she need stitches?"

"She needs a wound vac on it until the deep parts close up." Doctor Stevens gestured to Devon who left the room. "I can't stitch it right now, it's too deep and it risks infection." He looked squarely at Ardala, catching and holding her eyes. "No part of this was deserved or ok. It's called abuse and we don't let that happen here."

Before Ardala could reply Devon came back with an armful of oddities. There was padding and some sort of small, odd box and a sheet of clear film. What followed was pain that she tried not to show as the padding was pressed into the wound and the sheet of clear film was wrapped around her foot to hold it in place. The tiny box was connected with a long flexible tube, and it whirred as it was switched on. The pain and pulling in her foot increased as the film clung closer and closer to her foot until it was sealed to her skin. Doctor Stevens looked satisfied, like that was what was supposed to happen.

"Now, I'm going to prescribe you some pain meds, and you can't walk on that foot as long as the wound vac is on it." He took a tiny square of paper out of his pocket and wrote on it. "You'll have to come back every two days to have the dressing changed. If not and it gets infected, you may lose the foot."

Ardala looked away from her foot and up at Doctor Stevens. "I thank you; it was no pleasure to be in your presence, but I thank you for your help. Is there anything I might do to repay your kindness?"

"I'll send the unhoused project a bill." He looked over at Francis. "Are you bringing her back to have the dressing changed?"

"I'm her assigned social worker, so yes." Francis helped Ardala back off the table and into the wheeled chair. "I assume she'll be on crutches. She's at the woman's center for the next two days and then she's moving to the tiny village."

"Devon, could you get her a pair of crutches please?" Doctor Stevens asked the other man before turning his eyes back to Ardala. "No standing unless you have to. Give the wound vac time to work."

Ardala nodded, Devon came back with oddly shaped and padded pieces of wood and handed them to her before wheeling her back out of the room and back out to the vehicle she'd arrived in. The air was utterly savage, and she was immediately as cold as she had been before she went into the building. Francis followed her, with the slip of paper that Doctor Stevens had written on fluttering in the wind. Once again it took Devon and Francis to maneuver her body into the vehicle and Ardala was just about done with other people doing things to her.

"Now that we've had your foot looked at, how do you feel about a big bowl of hot chowder?" Francis started the vehicle again making the heat pour out to surround Ardala.

"It is as you like it." Ardala said, looking at the strange pieces of wood in her hands. "I do not know what that is."

"I think you'll like it." Francis drove away, back to the shore and back to that place with the heat poles. "Crutches are a little bit hard at first, but I'll help you get the hang of them."

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