The Cool Room by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 58

The next few days passed uneventfully as Jonathan continued working with several clients; all tightly scheduled for services within the week. Emily, on the other hand, struggled to flush from her mind the image of a melted back stripped of flesh. The medical record described it as having occurred by accident, but this did nothing to erase its memory. For her, coping meant working late hours and burying herself in every detail of her profession. By the time she got home, she was exhausted enough that heating up a sparse dinner required more effort than usual. During the first one or two nights, Emily found her sleep haunted by the surreal experience that played in her mind like moving images on a silver screen. The arms of Morpheus could not hold her tightly enough, and her thrashing soul slipped through on occasion. What flickered across the stage of her somnolent mind displayed what she had seen laying on the cold steel exam table with one exception. What had sent Emily to the waste can had, in her sleep, come to life as she watched the naked flesh bubble and subside, with larval eyes protruding from weeping pits then vanishing. Disturbing her sleep, these living images were powerful enough to send her from the comfort of her bed to the open toilet of her bathroom.

As much as Emily had already seen in her young career, there were things she never expected to see. Burns she could handle. Flesh stripped down to exposed bone was a different matter and something she never wanted to see again. It seems that a sane life can be seen as a gift when compared to what the mind can conjure. College, it seems, had done little to prepare her for the internal consequences of such situations. As such, this was her first lesson; that a troubled mind can harbor a reality all its own.