Aberrant: 2011 - This Will Only Hurt a Bit, and Other Lies

[Libertyne]

New Paltz, NY - 12/05/2009 - 10:25 AM

The worst thing that a person who is about to be a part of a skin graft operation can do is research skin grafts. Two days earlier, Brittany had told Katelee, called Divine, that she would go to UC Davis and - after researching it for hours, she couldn't believe what she was saying - give her some of her skin. She corrected herself; her skin wasn't a damn coat. She was going to allow the doctors there to graft her skin to Katelee. After they removed it. From her. Brittany found herself in a bit of a panic; she didn't regret offering. She didn't even regret what she knew was going to be the intense pain to follow. But she was frightened. Not just frightened, in fact, but terrified. Between herself and Robert, she'd spent an awful lot of time in hospitals, recently, and it was only now that she was truly beginning to understand the gravity of what she had offered. It wasn't just a painful and ugly operation that came with extreme physical agony, but it was weeks of self-inflicted confinement to a hospital room until her body became able to fight off disease. At least for Divine, that wasn't a problem. Brittany didn't know about herself. Doing this meant not being able to get Robert from the hospital when he was finally released. In fact, it pretty much meant that he'd be leaving Spain and heading straight to California to visit her, under similar conditions. It was a wretchedly unhappy thought, and somewhere in her heart, she cursed herself for putting Robert through still more pain and distress. He'd been through hell, and now she was forcing him to not only leave the hospital alone, but to either come home to an empty house or fly halfway across the world to visit her, only, you know, missing half her flesh. But the alternative...well, the alternative was to let a friend fare on her own in the face of agonizing, mutilating wounds. Nobody else seemed all that eager to step up, and besides, they even had the same blood type. Donors are rare, especially for skin. It becomes useless after so little time that one can virtually never find a corpse donor. No, skin grafts have to come from living hosts, and if you don't get them, well...tough for you. She sighed and hugged herself, tearing up a little as she clamped shut her eyes. She had to do this, she knew. She couldn't do anything to help Robert, but she'd be damned if she wouldn't do everything she could to help Kate.

But, she decided, she wasn't going to do it all alone.

A bit of a nauseous crimp still in her stomach, Brittany turned back to her PC terminal, minimized the spirit-wilting gallery of photos she'd been poring over, and brought up her email. There was only one person she trusted this procedure to. She just hoped he was available, and more importantly, up to the task.

[Dr. James Adler]

It took, according to the excruciatingly precise clock on her computer, about an hour and a half for her phone to ring. By which time the pictures had managed to drag her back to them, like an art gallery so grotesquely unpleasant you can't quite bring yourself not to go back and see if it was really as bad as you thought.

The voice on the other end of the line was still muzzy with sleep, which didn't keep it from being precisely as acerbic as she remembered. "You are entirely out of your mind. Has anyone told you that in the last few days? Because obviously, if they haven't, they weren't paying attention."

[Libertyne]

"I..." She sat stunned for a moment, consulting the seriousness of the question. In all honesty, it was the last sort of reaction she anticipated. Maybe an insult as to how stupid what she was doing was, maybe even an enthusiastic declaration that he'd start sharpening his good scalpels. But the man on the other end of the phone seemed almost...dare she say...concerned? She almost laughed at the thought. No. Probably not. Probably he just realizes how really, truly frightening what she's proposing is, better than she ever will, and knows enough to know what a dumb idea it is.

"I, uh... I know it's crazy. The more I research and think about it, the crazier it seems to get." A single note of whimpered pain in her voice announced to the doctor that she'd been doing her homework. "But I'm serious", she asserted. "Katelee...she's a friend of mine. She nearly died. And what's happened to her is monstrous. And I know a lot of people got it worse and I know a lot of people could use this kind of help, but she's my friend, and she needs me now, and if I don't do it, who will, and then what happens?" It all came tumbling out at once, and Brittany felt for a moment like she might start crying again, just thinking about it. "I understand if you won't do it. But...after what happened with me, and with Kara, there's nobody else I'd rather have doing this. If you have something to tell me...I'm listening."

[Dr. James Adler]

There was a long pause, as though the world were straightening its clothes and putting itself back in order afer a severe rumpling, before Alder finally said something. "You are, without question, out of your mind, not to mention suffering from a truly unhealthy level of giving-a-damn, and for the record, Kara is going to kill me for not talking you out of this. But if you're going to let someone flay you to help this woman, I suppose it may as well be me."