Burning Up

May 7, 2020. The next day.

“I went seven more out of you, sonny, come on, how are you slowing down already? It’s fucking air and steel, sonny, AIR AND STEEL!”

I don’t have seven more in me. I can’t do this.

The barbell hovers an inch above the ground, my grip growing laxer by the second. The trainer continuers to prowl around me, a disappointed look growing on his face. My muscles ache, burn, scream, and I scream as I press the weight into the air, my arms shaking, wobbling, fuck I’m going to collapse…

The trainer spots me, supporting the weight, gradually taking it off of me.

He racks it, shaking his head.

“You injure yourself or something, sonny? What’s going on? That’s some shoddy performance we’ve been getting these last few sessions.”

“I’m not feeling great,” I admit. “But hopefully it’ll pass soon.”

These last few days have been rough. I’ve been feeling stabs of pain in my chest, my joints have ached, and the sex last night had me feeling like I was **** to sprint a marathon when I woke up this morning.

The fifty points I got from bringing Tiffany’s score up to one hundred puts me a hundred points away from reaching Internal Defences II. That’s two more people I need to bring to the big fifty or one hundred breakpoints before I can fully recover.

“Well, doctor said he’d swing by some time today, so maybe he can check it out,” the trainer says. “But I reckon you’ve been pushed enough today. Air and steel’s a good mantra, but you can’t be going past your limits, you hear?”

“Got any good ideas for sore muscles?” I ask. “My chest is murdering me.”

“Let’s go to the sauna,” the trainer says. “The heat will rejuvenate your body.”

I sit facing the trainer in the small wooden room, both us wearing only towels around our waists to preserve our modesty, sweltering away in the sauna.

“Now this isn’t any good. Let’s make it hotter,” the trainer says, seeming unimpressed by the temperature.

I am sweating so much that I swear I would have drowned in my own sweat, if not for the fact that the beads of water seem to evaporate only seconds after splattering on the wood bench that I’m sitting on.

“I think the current temperature is great,” I reply, scarcely able to imagine what hotter would even mean now.

A second later, I learn what hotter means.

The trainer dumps a bucketful of water onto the hot rocks, enveloping us in a cloud of steam, and it feels like I’m surrounded by a firestorm.

I cough, responding to the sudden thick humidity, and I wave my hand in front me, trying to clear the thick white steam. After a couple seconds frantically swatting the air, the steam eventually clears, and I realise with a start that Dr. Kee is standing in front of me.

The doctor is swathed in only a small white towel. His skin, from top to bottom, is flawless, his body perfectly proportionate. Has he undergone plastic surgery himself? He must have.

His dark eyes seem to pierce the clouds in the room, once again surveying me. His gaze always seems to find something interesting about me. I notice with a start that the trainer is gone.

It’s just him and me in here.

“You’re not well,” Dr. Kee says, a small frown on his face. “That’s some serious inflammation going on. The swelling, that discoloration—your body may be rejecting the implants.”

“I feel like shit,” I say. “You botched the job.”

He stares at me flatly.

“I think that releases me from my contractual obligation,” I say. “You didn’t hold up your end of the deal, so I don’t need to keep up mine.”

“So you want to protect Tiffany, is that right? There’s only one problem with that,” Dr. Kee says, raising a single finger. “I never fuck up.”

He drops his towel, revealing his clean-shaven manhood. It’s not erect, but the act itself…

Yeah, he’s the big dick around here.

“I could sue you,” I say. “You did this to me.”

I poke my own chest.

He seems to take humour in that.

“I can fix you,” he says. “But you need to deliver. You can’t tell me that you don’t have Tiffany’s ear. The two of you went to the Getty Ball together.”

Fuck. That’s not how this conversation was meant to go.

“What if I refuse?” I say.

“Then the world finds out the truth about Claude Ashworth,” Dr. Kee says, as if it’s as simple as that.

In some ways, it is.

I grit my teeth. Time to change tactics then.

“She doesn’t want to,” I say. “I’ve talked to her about it. She’s made up her mind.”

“Not my business,” Dr. Kee shrugs.

“But I think she has a bit of a point,” I say. “She doesn’t want to because she doesn’t know what changes she would get. Come on, Dr. Kee, you have a good eye. You’ve seen Tiffany Najbreit before. Her face, her figure, what would you change about her?”

“There are always cosmetic changes that can be made. Fingers slightly more slender, for example.”

“But that’s not what you’re looking for,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re not looking for Tiffany Najbreit as a client so that you can make her fingers slimmer. That’s not real work. That’s not your art. Your art is this.”

I point at myself.

“Now, what if I gave you the chance to work on somebody better? Somebody who has plenty of room to… improve, shall we say. Somebody who’s just as famous as Tiffany. And I promise I’ll deliver,” I say.

Dr. Kee looks intrigued now. He steeples his fingers together.

“There aren’t many people who would be a match for Tiffany,” he says.

“This person does,” I say.

“Who?”

I smile, standing up. I drop my towel, mirroring him, exposing myself, and I cross the small wooden room until I stand abreast of him. I whisper a name into his ear.

He smiles.

“You have one month,” he says.

“Then it’s a deal.”

“So long as you can take the heat,” Dr. Kee smiles.

He leaves the sauna then, leaving me to sweat it out alone in there.