Her hair was soaked, and she was making these little whimpering sounds that would have tugged at my heartstrings if I still had any where she was concerned. "I can't make it stop," she sobbed. "The burning won't stop. Something's wrong with that tube."
I looked at the fallen tube on the floor, my handiwork scattered across the bathroom tiles. "That's weird," I said, picking it up and examining it like I'd never seen it before. "This is the same brand you always use, isn't it?" "I don't know."
"Maybe they changed the formula. Maybe it's expired. I don't care what it is. Just make it stop."
The beauty of capsaicin is that it doesn't just burn. It creates this deep, penetrating heat that feels like it's coming from inside your bones. And once it gets on sensitive tissue, especially tissue that's already been traumatized by, say, emergency medical separation procedures, it turns into the kind of pain that makes you question every decision you've ever made. "We need to get you to the hospital," I said, wrapping a towel around her shaking shoulders.
"This isn't normal. You might be having some kind of allergic reaction." "I can't go back there," she whispered. "Not again. Not after last night."
Aha. There it was, the admission that last night had been something more than a work emergency. She was so focused on the burning sensation between her legs that she'd let her guard down and revealed that she had reasons to avoid the hospital beyond simple embarrassment. "Honey, this is serious."
"You're in real pain, and I'm worried about infection or complications from your fall yesterday." Her fall. Right. We were still maintaining that fiction even though she was currently experiencing what felt like napalm being applied to her most intimate areas.
"I can't," she said again. But I could see the resolve cracking. The pain was winning the battle against her pride, which was exactly what I'd been counting on. "Look at me," I said, taking her face in my hands with all the tenderness of a devoted husband.
"I love you. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, but this isn't something we can handle at home." The drive to the hospital was a symphony of suffering. Marissa couldn't sit properly in the passenger seat.
She was half lying, half crouching, trying to find a position that didn't make the burning worse. Every bump in the road sent her into fresh waves of agony. She was gripping the door handle so hard I thought she might rip it off. "How did this happen?" she kept asking.