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By Root 444 0

He exhibited symptoms of acute post-traumatic stress disorder. He had nightmares. He woke up screaming. During the day, he rarely spoke, and then only if it was a necessity. As time went by the doctors and nurses and other hospital staff members came to accept Milo’s silence and he came to know his predictable environment well enough to get along without much language. Then one day as part of his physical therapy and rehabilitation he was introduced to a person who was going to be giving him what the nurse referred to as therapeutic bodywork. A young woman walked up to him and held out her hand. He looked at her hand and it appeared to burst into flames. He looked at the hand and it was again a hand. He pushed the button on his wheelchair and speeding past her he rolled out the door and down the corridor and back to his room. The young woman with her long hair and heavy boots stood looking out the open door. The nurse in her modest uniform stared at her. In these white scrubbed rooms and clean empty hallways the nurses did not like to see outside practitioners. The woman understood the territorial expression on the nurse’s face and picked up her messenger bag and put on her long coat and said that she would try again next time.

A crisis came when the doctors told Milo that he would be required to submit to therapeutic bodywork. This meant that he would have to be alone with the woman with the fiery hands. Helplessly, he argued with the doctors. He used more words than he had since his arrival and, privately, his doctors were pleased by his sudden progress. He was escorted to the dim room with the drawn shades. A frantic desire to hide roamed his body. He didn’t know how to escape. He could never find a position on the table that was comfortable. While he fled into his fantasies the woman, whose name was Honor, stood by his body with her bottles of oils and kneaded his resistant flesh. Her hair was long and wavy and when she worked she pulled it back into a loose bun. When she was working like this she sometimes sang quietly to herself in a voice that was slightly but pleasingly off-key. Her songs were just tunes with no lyrics that she remembered from some long-ago time and faraway place.

One afternoon she began to work on the man’s hands for the first time. He kept them clenched into fists. She looked at them and asked him if he could unclench his fingers. He said nothing, but turned his head to one side in a gesture that seemed to indicate that he was trying to open them but he could not. She took a liberty and pried open the fingers of his left hand. He allowed it. When all five fingers were released she began to rub the center of his palm. There were no visions this time but a shattering pain rushed up her arm and stopped in the back of her eye. She pulled her hands off of his palm, shaking. With his right hand the same thing happened. She pulled her hands off again. She told him that they were done for the day. That was the beginning.

I can’t go.

You’ll feel better, said the nurse.

No I won’t. His head was pounding this morning. He didn’t want to see that woman. A scarf was lying at the foot of his bed.

What’s that doing there? Milo said.

What? the nurse said.

That silk scarf.

Your T-shirt, she said, picking it up.

She put it away and helped him out of bed. She wheeled him down the corridor. Of course he could wheel himself but they wanted to make sure that he arrived at his destination. He had been known to pretend to go for his session, only to be found later in the lounge watching television. This seemed more important, he would say. The nurses had a difficult time resisting his charms even though he wasn’t exactly charming. The one with the smile, they called him. He had a lopsided chipped-tooth unafraid smile. He used it sparingly. Usually he just grinned with his lips closed but it was a welcoming, dangerous grin. He was suffering, no one could forget that, and he was not immune to wanting others to suffer with him.

The harsh fluorescent lights were on in the little room. She was waiting for him. She