The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The smell of woodsmoke teased Nicola awake, buried deep in her sleeping bag. The night had been remarkably cold, and she had been thoroughly thankful for the puffy down slippers that her friend had given her as an early birthday present to stop her feet turning into blocks of ice. Although the geodesic tent was remarkably spacious, given how small it packed, the two girls had huddled together in the middle of the floor, seeking out what little warmth might be escaping from each other’s sleeping bag.

She poked her head out of the bag, feeling a cool draft on her face. The tent door was unzipped, and she could see Anna squatting in front of the stone fireplace that belonged to their pitch site.

Anna must have heard the rustling. “Morning, sleepy-head!” She poked some more wood into the fire. “I’ll have hot water for us in ten minutes. Get dressed hun, and remember it’s cold outside right now.”

Ten minutes of careful juggling of clothes from her backpack, and trying to minimize exposure to the cold air finally brought Nicola all the way out of her sleeping bag and into her hiking clothes. She pulled on tracksuit leggings, mindful of her friend’s warning, and started to lace up her boots. She shivered as she felt the cold leather chill through her socks.

“I wish I’d packed boot warmers,” she called out.

“Not when you’re carrying them up and down every hill,” Anna snarked. She carefully opened two foil bags, squeezing them to make their open tops into funnels. Picking up the metal billy-can from where it had been heating over the fire, she used a stick to tilt it slowly until a stream of hot water ran into first one bag, then the other. “Breakfast’s up! Do you want oatmeal with blueberries, or oatmeal with strawberries? They taste exactly the same, I hear.”

“Oatmeal with bacon?” Nicola said, hopefully, pouring some of the remaining hot water into her travel mug, where it mixed with instant coffee granules and sugar to form a drink that was almost entirely unlike her normal morning Starbucks.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, the chef is fresh out of bacon.” Anna took the remaining water and poured it into her own mug, where a fruit tea bag was waiting. “But the bunkhouse we’re staying in tonight—if we reach it—is right next to a cafe, according to the guidebook.”

Nicola took what appeared to be the blueberries version and spooned some into her mouth. As Anna had indicated, it tasted of warm and lumpy moist cardboard, with no hint of fruit whatsoever. She poured some of their supply of sugar into it and mixed it around to see if that helped. Now it tasted like sweet moist cardboard.

“I do love this time of day.” Anna gestured around them. The wilderness campsite—essentially, a few cleared areas with rough stone fireplaces added—was on a relatively flat piece of land, surrounded by the Andalusian forest. To the east, a mountain range currently hid the sun from them, so despite the sky being light, it was still cold. A few stars were still visible in the west.

“How are we doing on water?” Nicola asked. “We could top up from the stream, but we’d have to purify it.”

“I hate the taste of those tablets,” Anna confessed. “I’ve got about a quart left, I think you’ve got the same. But look, that mountain well mentioned in the guidebook is only two hours walk from here—and it claims to be drinkable, because it comes direct out the rock.”

“We can manage on a quart each,” Nicola judged. “It wouldn’t last until the end of the day, but no problem for a couple hours.” She shoveled the last spoon of oatmeal down her throat, and chased it with a swig of coffee substitute. “If you pack your ruck, I’ll strike the tent—let’s make the most of the cool morning while we’ve got it.”

“Deal.” Anna started poking the fire to break it up.

Half an hour later, the tent and sleeping bags were packed into their backpacks. Anna carefully swept their camping area for litter, packed it all into a Ziploc which she stuffed in a side pocket of her pack, and doused the fire with a bucket of muddy water that she refilled from the nearby stream, and placed back at the center of the camp site along with a set of fire-beating tools.

“Onwards and upwards!” She double-checked the map and her compass, and pointed her friend towards a trail that wound through the forest in the direction of a set of increasingly tall hills.

An hour later, the sun appeared above the eastern mountains and lit up the forest around them. The trees were getting more sparse as they climbed, and with the increasing exposure it didn’t take long until the girls stopped to remove leggings and sweaters, stripping down to their hike shorts and tees.

“Any signal on your phone?” Anna asked. Her own had expired from battery drain yesterday.

Nicola dug the device out of her pocket where she’d been keeping it warm, and scrutinized it.

“Nothing, really. One bar, maybe. No data, of course. Maybe a text would get through, but I doubt it.” She repocketed the phone and shrugged. “It’s nice being cut off, really. Just us, and Nature.”

A bird of some kind, high above them in the tree canopy, used that cue to tweet a call that sounded for all the world like a phone ringtone. Both girls burst out laughing.

“How much further to the summit?” Nicola asked. “We must have done a good couple of miles since camp, even on that slope.”

Anna consulted the map. “Assuming we’re here... maybe another half mile before we break into the open? Then it’s a straight shot climb up a fairly steep...”—she counted contour lines under her breath and did some math—“four hundred feet.“

“Joy.” Nicola shuffled her pack into a more comfortable position. “Well, we’re not going to get there by standing around, are we?”

Anna’s estimate had been fairly accurate, and fifteen minutes later they broke through the treeline to the exposed and rocky summit. Donning sunglasses to avoid the full glare of the now rapidly rising sun, they carefully made their way up a goat track that zig-zagged across a rocky scramble. They puffed and sweated in effort as the weight of their packs became fully apparent, and slowed their pace to a very deliberate placing of their steps.

The plodding had become almost hypnotic, so Anna was surprised to realize suddenly that they had finally made the summit—the slope ahead finally flattened out after a series of false summits. The pair found themselves on a half acre of rock, dotted with patches of scrub grass. Nothing marked the peak other than a small cairn, barely a foot high.

Nicola shrugged off her pack, dropped it to the floor, and flumped down on a patch of grass barely big enough to fit her.

“I am beat.” She stared up at the blue sky for a few seconds, then grunted as Anna deliberately lay across her body like a cushion. “Ouch! You weigh a ton, you know that?“

“I’m just thankful for all your padding,” Anna sighed, taking a long swig of water from her bottle. She passed it to her friend, who gratefully copied her, and passed it back.

“That’s enough laying around.” Anna slapped her friend’s thigh. “Get up and moving before the lactic acid starts chewing up your muscles.”

“I hate you,” Nicola groaned, but pushed herself up to a wobbly standing position. “Still, isn’t this some kind of view?”

“It’s fantastic,” Anna admitted, her compact digital camera in hand. She took several panoramas, angling the camera to hide any evidence of human activity, which was not particularly difficult. Few roads wound through the area, and most of those were concealed by the tree canopy. The eastern mountains hid the region’s farms and larger towns.

Nicola carefully assembled her Nikon and a 15-35 lens, extracting them from their cushioned lair in her pack. “Hard to beat,” she agreed, taking a few test shots. “Can you pull out the tripod? I need about fifteen minutes.”

Anna slid her arm inside her pack and ferreted around the various bags within until she felt the distinctive base of the tripod. “Got it.” She removed it from the case and set it up on a reasonably flat area of rock, then found a natural seat on a boulder facing west. Sketch pad and pencil in hand, she started to outline the scene as Nicola secured her camera and lined up her first shots. Going by her friend’s well-established terrible sense of time, she figured she had at least half an hour.

The half mile descent from the peak was much more gentle, bringing them across three progressively lower local summits, until the tree line beckoned them again. By now, the sun was close to its zenith, and they were grateful for the shade provided. Pausing under the edge of the umbra, they took another drink of water, and consulted the map.

“We want to head right, along the western side of the hill,” Anna proposed. She traced the line on the map. “Once we’re committed to that side, avoid any right-turn forks in the trail. Look for the left turn between two spurs, and the fountain should be fifty yards from there.”

“Got it.” Nicola wiped sweat from her forehead with a hiking towel. “Cool natural water—what’s not to like?”

They silently agreed to slow their pace, now that they were in shade, and proceeded at no more than an amble along the trail.

“Why didn’t you do Fine Art?” Nicola asked, out of the blue. “You’re so talented! I’ve seen how good your drawings of Nature are. You can’t tell me that you get your rocks off drawing cubic concrete blocks in Architecture?”

Anna laughed. “Fine Art? Do you know how much crap I’d get from my mom? I swear, she’d rather I play piano in a whorehouse—as long as they were classical tunes.” She shook her head. “No, Architecture is respectable, and pays the bills. Drawing—I do it on my own time.”

Nicola sighed. “It’s just such a waste. I wish I had a tenth of your talent.”

Anna nudged her with an elbow. “Sister, remind me; who did all the planning and booking for this trip because she was the one spoke fluent Spanish?”

“Mexican Spanish,” Nicola reminded her. “Even the Castillian Spanish here is a nightmare, and the Andalusian accent still confuses the heck out of me.“

“Whatever, sister—you are the bomb.” Anna gestured around them. “We wouldn’t be doing this without you.” She reached over and pulled her friend close, awkwardly because of the backpacks.

They walked in companiable silence until a left fork of the trail appeared. An old wooden sign, half-consumed by rot, announced ’Fuente Natural’.

Anna pulled out her camera for a quick picture. “Here we are!” She pulled out her flask, eyed it dramatically, and turned down the trail. “Natural waters, here we come!”

The trail was heavily walked, and the pair had no problem following it along a wobbling contour line to the point where the two spurs met. The trail terminated in a stone arch, clearly man-made, leading into a dark cave.

“Let there be light...” Nicola lit up the entrance with her small Maglite. The pair instinctively ducked their heads as they entered; the stone ceiling was several inches above them, but various plants dangled from cracks between the stones.

“The fountain!” Nicola’s light illuminated a metallic gargoyle face, mounted above a discolored metal pipe that jutted out from a cleft in the rocks. Moss on the ground below provided unarguable proof that water issued from this orifice.

Right now, however, the pipe was as dry as a bone.

The two girls sat outside the small cave in the shade of a tree, inspecting two flasks of water which looked uncomfortably low.

“What do think?” Anna asked. “Will it get us to our next stop?”

“Dubious,” admitted Nicola. “We’re going to be thirsty, sure as hell. If either of us ends up getting heat exhaustion, we’re in big trouble. Any streams marked on the map?”

“Nothing obvious.” Anna bent over to scrutinize their path. “It looks like any water comes out the other side of these hills, and much further north.”

Nicola peered at their highlighted route. “We could hit this track in three miles or so, and then it’s a four mile walk to that village. There must be water there.”

“We’d be going well out of our way, though,” Anna sighed. “Ten miles round trip. That’s basically an extra day.”

“Wait—what’s that?” Nicola pointed at a mark on the map by the start of the track.

Anna squinted. “I think it’s a building—quite a big one, if the scale is right. A farm? Factory?”

“Good chance that a building that big has water, surely?” Nicola said hopefully. “Worth a try? It’s only a mile diversion to there.”

Anna chewed her lip. “Might just be a farm where the farmer hates foreigners, of course.”

“We can be charming, can’t we girl?” Nicola held up her mostly empty flask. “Heck, wave a twenty Euro bill to get his attention.”

Anna shrugged. “I don’t have a better idea. Let’s give it a go. Worst case, we have to suck it up and hike to town.”

They pulled their backpacks on, took a fortifying swig of warm water from the flasks, and wearily walked off down the trail.

The path rose and fell along the oscillations of the hill for a mile, then broke out of the trees into a clearing. The girls found themselves at the head of a scree slope, with the midday sun beating down on them. Below, the track led down a series of sharp switchbacks before vanishing into another wooded area below in a valley.

Anna nudged her friend. “Hey, what’s that over there?” She pointed down into the valley. “Is that the building on the map? It looks like it’s in the right place.”

Nicola pulled out a small set of binoculars and, careful to avoid the sun’s glare, trained them on the building.

“It looks like a castle, doesn’t it? Old stone walls... Ah, but they’ve got solar panels along a couple of the sides. And, what looks to these uneducated eyes like a water storage tower. You think, Miss Architect?” She passed the glasses to Anna.

“Yup, that’s a water tower all right,” Anna confirmed. She adjusted focus. “I can’t quite see inside the walls from this angle. Looks like mainly gardening?” She passed the glasses back. “Well, they have to have water. Let’s hope they’re willing to share.”

The pair started down the switchbacks. The weight of their packs seemed greater in the beating sun, and the track was narrow. Several times, a misplaced foot led to a slide of small rocks, and a hasty rebalancing.

Ironically, it was at the edge of the switchback where trouble eventually struck. Anna was about ten yards ahead of Nicola, and when she reached the turning point she turned about to watch her friend arrive. Unfortunately, the dry and dusty earth under her feet was no longer in a condition to support both her and her backpack.

Anna’s feet slipped out from under her, and with a shriek of surprise she slid down the steep slope in a shower of small rocks and dust. She flailed around, trying to grasp something to arrest her slide, but her fingers raked impotently through stones and dirt. A sudden, agonizing pain in her left thigh made her cry out again, but then she hit the next switchback below, and stopped. A few rocks continued the journey down the slope, but she seemed to be secure.

“Honey, don’t you move!” Nicola picked her way down the switchbacks as fast as she dared, her eyes darting between her footing and her friend’s body. As she approached the accident scene, she slowed down, trying to take everything in.

Anna gazed up at her with teary eyes. “I’m sorry, girl, I slipped.”

“Sssshhhh...” Nicola dropped her pack and knelt by her friend, grateful to see that this switchback turn was relatively broad and shallow. “Are you hurt, hun?”

Anna considered the signals coming back from her body. “My arms...” Long scrapes on her forearms testified to her frantic attempts at braking. “Ow! And my left leg.”

Nicola gently turned over her friend, and gasped at the mess on Anna’s left thigh. The slide had somehow ripped open the leg in a ragged four-inch gash, and dark blood was welling out onto the dusty skin, already soaking Anna’s hiking shorts.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” she offered, lamely.

“Liar.” Anna eased herself out of her backpack, and let it slide off her. “Medical kit is in the right side large pocket.”

Nicola pulled out her water flask and dribbled some of the precious resource over the injury. Most of the dirt washed away, but fresh blood quickly replaced the earlier mess.

“Let me get the iodine...” She retrived the small bottle from the kit, along with a pack of swabs. Wriggling her hands into a pair of gloves, she soaked a swab with the brown liquid, then hesitated. “This is going to hurt, honey, I’m so sorry...”

“Just do it...” Anna gritted her teeth, but the sharp sting as the iodine smeared along her wound was too much. “Ow! Dammit! Motherf... ”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” Nicola was soaking another swab. “Nearly done....” She leaned forward again.

“Gnnh! You’re done! You’re frickin’ done!” Tears ran from Anna’s eyes.

Nicola dumped the bloody swabs in a bag, and leaned over to kiss her friend. “All done, honey. All done.” She dabbed at Anna’s eyes with a clean swab.

“Damn right you’re done....” Anna was nearly hyperventilating, but focused herself to slow down breathing. Eventually she felt her hammering pulse return to something close to normal.

Nicola had retrieved a pack of butterfly sutures, and was delicately fastening them along the line of the wound. As the skin became pinned together, the dripping blood started to choke off.

“Does it still hurt?” she asked, looking through the medkit for a large dressing.

“Stings and aches like a bastard,” Anna confirmed. “But I reckon I can walk on it. No broken bones?”

“Well, nothing I can see...” Nicola pushed two capsules from their foil enclosure, and passed them over with a flask. “Take some Advil .“

Anna gulped down the capsules. “Can I try standing?”

“Not yet. Just wait...” Nicola finally located the large dressing, pressed it firmly onto the wound, and started to wrap the bandage around her friend’s leg. “Let me know if this is too tight, okay?”

Anna grunted. “I can live with it.” Something tightened around her leg, and she rapidly back-tracked. “Mmmff! That’s tight.”

“I’ve got to keep pressure on the wound,” Nicola apologized. She took several more wraps around her friend’s leg, then tied off with the reef knot she remembered from Girl Scouts. “I’m done! Try standing, babe.”

Anna took hold of her friend’s proffered hand and pulled hard, rising up to something close to a standing position before letting go. “Honey, I owe you.” She reached for her pack, but Nicola pulled it away.

“Uh-huh, sweetie. I think a bit of redistribution is needed.” She opened her own pack, and pulled out her bulky but light sleeping bag; in its place she added some of the heavier items from Anna’s pack. Once repacked, she hefted Anna’s pack and nodded, satisfied at the change in weight.

“Let me help you get it on...” She eased the straps over Anna’s shoulders and stood back. “Is that okay?”

“I’ll be all right—it’s you I’m worried about.” Anna looked at Nicola’s pack with misgivings. “Are you sure you can manage it?”

With a grunt, Nicola pulled her pack off the ground and onto her shoulders. She staggered slightly, but caught herself, and adjusted the pack into a better position, ignoring her friend’s concerned look. “No problem. And it’s downhill from here. Let’s check out that castle.”

The trail down from the mountain led to the end of an anonymous dusty road. The girls paused at the edge of the forest, but more due to the change in scenery than any particular concern about being seen. The building was just under a mile away along the track.

“How’s your leg?” Nicola peered under Anna’s bloodstained shorts.

“Aches a bit,” Anna admitted, “but it’s okay to walk on. It will be easier on this road anyway. Any signal on the phone?”

Nicola rooted around in her pockets until she located the device. Unfortunately, when she pulled it out, the screen was blank.

“Crap! Did it power off?” She held the power button down for a few seconds, then released it to stare the the screen. The device stubbornly remained blank.

“Sorry, honey. Out of battery. It’s just us and our wits.”

There was tree cover on both sides of the road, so the girls stuck to the relatively shady side. The flat road helped them make good time despite their packs and injury, and it was only about twenty minutes before the building came into view.

The girls slowed as they approached the wall; it was built in an irregular pattern of dark stone, and roughly mortared together. About fifteen feet high, there were no windows, and no clues as to what was on the other side.

“Look, the door.” Anna pointed about forty yards down the wall. An imposing double gate, ten feet high, was installed, ancient wood bound with iron clamps. On the left gate a normal-sized door was embedded, and a decorative iron knocker invited use.

“I don’t see any company name,” Nicola mused, looking either side of the gate. “Not even an address number, or mailbox.”

“The postal service might not come out this far,” Anna pointed out. “They probably pick up from the nearby village.” She pointed at the dusty road; tire tracks entering and exiting the gate were apparent. “They’ve got access to a motor vehicle of some kind.”

“Well, let’s see what they’ve got to say.” Nicola rapped the knocker three times.

Nothing happened for a minute, and the pair were starting to feel discouraged, when a wooden panel in the door slid back to reveal a woman’s face.

“May I help you?” Her Spanish was pure Castillian, lisping and well enunciated.

Nicola stepped forward, marshalling her own Spanish. “Madame, we request your help. We are walking in the mountains, but have no water. May we buy some?”

The woman smiled. When she next spoke, it was in accented but clear English. “You may not buy water here, but you are welcome to it. Come in, young women.” There was the sound of a lock turning, and the embedded door swung open.

Nicola led the way, finding herself in a small stone-flagged courtyard. A couple of buildings hid the rest of the compound from her view. To the side, an ancient and dusty Mercedes-Benz van was parked up.

The woman closed the door behind Anna, revealing herself to be dressed in a long gray nun’s habit, white toque, and short gray veil. She might have been in her forties, with metal eyeglasses hanging from a chain around her neck.

“I’m sorry, Sister, I didn’t realize this was a convent,” Anna blurted out, suddenly embarrassed. She glanced down at her bare arms and legs.

The nun chuckled. “Would you have been less thirsty?” She indicated a pump at the side of the courtyard. “I hope that you do not mind pumping water; we have some water and electricity in this retreat, but we try to only use it where necessary.”

“Not at all, thank you, Sister.” Nicola eased her pack off her shoulders and propped it against the wall. “Here honey, let me help you...” She lifted Anna’s pack off, and put it alongside, then dug inside both bags to retrieve their water flasks.

Anna inspected the pump and gave the handle a trial pull. A small amount of water spurted from the metal nozzle, and she nodded in satisfaction.

“I’ll pump, Nic, you fill.” She carefully oscillated the lever up and down while Nicola worked her way through the flasks, filling them to the brim before screwing their caps in place. “Thank you so much for this, Sister.”

“You are welcome, child.” The nun indicated the clear blue sky. “A beautiful day, no? But Andalusia can be very hot, even in Spring.”

“Absolutely,” confirmed Nicola, taking a swig from the last flask before refilling it. “We were planning to refill from the well in the mountains, but it wasn’t flowing.”

“Ah, I think I can explain.” The nun pointed over in the general direction of the well. “There was a landslide after the snow melted this year; it likely stopped the source of the water.”

She put on her glasses and looked at Anna. “Is something wrong, my child?” She bent down to look at the girl’s leg. “Ay! You are hurt. What happened?”

“I slipped,” Anna said vaguely. “It’s fine, Sister. I’ve walked on it for a few miles already.”

The nun tutted, and poked Anna’s chest. “You need that looked at, little one.”

“We’ll find a doctor in the next village, Sister,” Nicola said defensively. “We promise.”

“We have a doctor here.” The nun walked over to the nearby building, and poked her head into the doorway. ”Sor Esperanza!“

A second, younger nun came out. The first nun talked to her in rapid-fire Castillian, and the younger nun nodded, then took Anna’s hand.

“Please go with Sister Esperanza,” the older nun requested. “She will take you to the Doctor.”

Esperanza gave Anna’s hand a gentle tug, and Anna reluctantly followed her down an alley between the buildings. Nicola deposited her flasks of water by the backpacks, and followed.

They came out into an open garden area, filling most of the compound. To one side were a series of low buildings, and the high wall enclosed everything, but the garden was the main focus of the space. It was clearly a working garden, with neatly arranged rows of vegetables and fruits, various leafy herbs, and several glass enclosures at the edge for the more weather-sensitive crops.

A number of women were working in the various areas, dressed in dull brown smocks and taupe headscarves. Nicole greeted them with a bright ”Buenos dias!”, and they smiled in return, but did not speak.

“Dummy!” said Anna, rolling her eyes at her friend. “They’re not allowed to talk, remember?”

“We’re not a silent order,” said Esperanza, blandly. Her accent was somewhere from England. “We’re a contemplative order—encouraged to speak ‘only when the words outperform silence’.”

“I’m sorry,” apologized Anna. “I didn’t know. It’s nice to meet you, Esperanza—but you’re English, aren’t you? How did you end up here?”

Esperanza gave a small smile. “Talking about our individual selves is self-centered, we try not to do that. But it’s nice to meet you, too.”

She turned left and crossed something that looked like a parsley patch to get to a path between two of the low buildings.

“The Doctor is down here....” She turned behind one of the buildings, and followed a broad stone stairway down into a tunnel. Anna slowed down as her wounded leg pulsed in pain on the stairs, and Esperanza slowed too.

“I’m sorry; take your time. Can I help you down?”

“No, thank you, I can do this...” Anna eased herself down the stairs, a worried Nicola following behind.

The floor of the tunnel was concrete rather than flagstone, and the walls were squared off, anonymous gray in color. Esperanza took them about twenty yards along, then opened a door on the right.

“Doctora, the America girl.” She ushered the two women into the room, closing the door behind them.

The room was green-painted, a tiled floor, with fluorescent lights in the ceiling. A strong, sharp scent of antiseptic matched the severe expression of the woman in a green medical tunic, who was standing by an exam table.

“Sister says that one of you has an injured leg.” She pointed at Anna. “Boots and shorts off, I want you on this table, on your front.” Her tone didn’t brook argument.

Anna quickly unlaced her boots, and Nicola helped her ease them off her feet. She dropped her stained shorts on the floor, then gingerly climbed onto the exam table. Prone, she tried to look around to see what the Doctor was doing.

The Doctor was examining the bandage—now showing fresh blood—wrapped around Anna’s thigh. She looked at Nicola. “Did you put this on, child?” Her tone was accusatory.

Nicola nodded, nervously.

“Not bad. You held sufficient pressure on the injury. Most people are too tentative, and their dressing achieves little.” She pulled out a pair of scissors. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

She quickly and efficiently sliced through the bandage above and below the dressing, removing the fabric trails and tossing them into a hazmat bin, then pulled on a pair of gloves and cracked open a liter bottle of saline solution.

“I don’t want to break up any clotting.” She slowly saturated the dressing with saline until the bottle ran dry, then very gently peeled away the dressing from the wound.

Anna was craning her neck trying to see the injury, but the Doctor firmly pushed her head back.

“Stop trying to look!” She poked at the butterfly sutures. “Nice try, child, but we’re going to have to stitch this. First, however...” She switched gloves, and opened a small fridge, drawing up a syringe from a vial.

“The soil in this area is riddled with tetanus, and you’ve got a good measure of it in your wound, American girl.”

Despite herself, Anna was indignant. “My name’s Anna!”

“I’m sure it is.” The Doctor pulled down Anna’s pink panties to expose her left cheek, swabbed an area, and stuck the needle in without ceremony or warning. Anna squeaked in surprise, and her face turned red with a combination of pain and embarrassment.

The Doctor turned her laser glare on Nicola. “When did you last get a tetanus shot, child?”

“Umm... A few years back?” Nicola offered, lamely.

“Stand up, undo your shorts. Lean on your chair.” Nicola reflexively obeyed the brusque instruction.

“Your English is very good, Doctor....” She felt a cold sensation on her left cheek. “Have you been to America?”

“Three years residency in Baltimore.” There was a sting, and then a burn. “I eventually despaired of making a difference, and decided to go somewhere where I could improve good people, rather than just push injured bad people back into the battle.” Nicola heard the exasperation in the Doctor’s voice.

“All done. You can sit down.” The Doctor turned her attention back to Anna’s leg. “This is going to take a while, child.”

The Doctor was as good as her word. A precise, pitiless cleaning of the wound was just the preamble to her inserting small, precise boluses of local anesthetic along the line of the wound.

Nicola, despite sitting on a hard wooden chair, was starting to feel sleepy. The room was quite warm, and the stresses of the day had been hard on her. No wonder that she was struggling to keep her eyes open.

The Doctor was apparently talking to Anna as she worked her way along the wound. “That’s right, all you have to do is relax... You’re in good hands, you can let yourself go... I’m here, I’ve got you... There’s nothing for you to think about, simply clear your mind...”

Nicola twitched awake as a gentle hand touched her shoulder. She turned to see a smiling Sister Esperanza.

“Why don’t you go with Sister Esperanza?” the Doctor suggested softly. “Let her look after you. I’ll be finished here soon, and you can both rest.”

Resting sounded very attractive. Nicola was finding it very hard to think, and was grateful for Sister Esperanza’s arm guiding her up from the chair and towards the door.

“That’s right,” purred the Doctor, “Sister will take good care of you...”

Her memory seemed to be going in and out. Nicola found herself standing in a stone-floored bathroom, being undressed by Sister Esperanza. She mindlessly cooperated, letting the woman remove all her clothes and lay her down on a towel on a broad, low stone table.

“I didn’t really wash this morning,” she said, aimlessly. Esperanza smiled but didn’t reply, running water into a bucket. “It’s hard to wash in camp....”

Esperanza carefully sloshed water through her hair, rubbed in a fresh-smelling shampoo, and sloshed more through to rinse it out. Nicola felt her eyes closing in reaction to the soothing warm water across her face.

“Is Anna okay? She seemed okay. Maybe she’s just tired.” Esperanza was carefully washing her from top to bottom with a pair of cloths. Nicola sighed as the rubbing on her skin warmed her. “Oh, that’s nice...”

Her eyelids were much too heavy to open now, and so even when her legs were gently placed apart and a soft finger started to explore her sex, she barely reacted.

“If you see something, say something. No, that’s not right... Hnnnggh! Oh, again...” She was burbling now random words coming from her mouth as her body twitched from the careful invasions.

There was the feeling of a warm, scratchy towel covering her and gently rubbing her dry. A soft shirt coming over her head, and something wrapping around her waist.

She was vaguely aware of walking, leaning on someone—Esperanza? They didn’t seem to go far. All of a sudden, she was lying on a bed. Her wrists and ankles felt strange, but investigating what was happening was beyond her.

A sleep mask slipped over her already closed eyes, to and a soft sheet over her body.

“Sleep...” A whispered instruction was the final cue she needed before plunging into a deep, dreamless coma.

Nicola never heard the door to her room close, nor did she even twitch when it opened again. A figure stood over her peaceful body, scrutinizing her, for what might have been hours.