Abuse

The foot was rotting, there was yellow gunk inside the circling crusts of brown. The skin around the holes was purple. Hair grew here and there, but it was sparse, and sporadic. The toes were big, the fingers on the foot clunky, spread in different directions, as if trying to escape. The toenails were immaculate though, they shone, and smelled good, if one could get past how the rest of it smelled.

When she had been brought in, she had been complaining of a stomach ache. A doctor gave her medicine for that, and she sighed in relief. Someone noticed her limp, nothing on her charts mentioned anything, she was a perfectly healthy woman in her twenties. They decided to check it out. She resisted at first. She resisted vehemently. But her doctor was concerned and kind, and she gave in. A stray dog resisting capture by its rescuers. She was starved for kindness. She had been thrown around, passed from one to the next. Now she was here. And they were so kind. She slept peacefully, for the first time in weeks. A smile on her face made the hearts of the nurses melt as they walked by at night, doing rounds. 

When they had taken off the sock, her leg shivered. Then all of them. The smell was the first thing. A collective gasp rose from all but two, the one whose leg it was, and the aged doctor who was standing by the corner, observing. A nurse vomited. They asked her, she was tight lipped. They asked her, her face turned white, the corners of her eyes tightening with fear. 

The foot was rotting, there was yellow all around, there was crusted brown gunk circling that. A bone was sticking out, cartilage was torn.

Eventually it came out. In sobs and gasps. In little screams, quick darting looks, trying to find him in the shadows, searching the faces of the staff, to see if they would tell on her.

The skin around it was too tight, and the skin around that too wrinkled and loose. It was all purple.

She screamed when it was all out, she screamed as she tried to explain as she had tried to get it out, reliving the pain.

Maggots were crawling around it, flies buzzed nearby, brought by the smell. All the alcohol in the world did not seem to help her.

When she screamed, patients around her started screaming. Some were woken out of bad dreams, others were stuttering already, some joined in just for fun. It was as if she were their Messiah, she had suffered the pain the most, was a symbol for them.

They wound it up, but it had started bleeding, slow trickles at first, and then rivulets. It would not stop. They kept on filling her up with blood but it was as if she were a broken faucet. Always leaking. Drip, drip, drip.

The smell was bad.

It had been a metal pipe. Blunt, heavy. He had held her still. She knew what was coming. She had screamed.

She would not die. Drip. Drip. Drip. She died on that hospital bed.