They never told us how ungainly it seems to have to bandage oneself. They always tell us to wind the strip tightly, holding the cotton swab with the other hand. This takes on a new difficulty when what you wish to wrap is the wrist attached to the hand that was intending to hold the swab in place.

It added another element of complexity when I was trembling as I attempted this feat. Something warm and dark was dripping down my arm, onto my trousers and the floorboards beneath me—was it wine, perhaps, or—? I could hardly recall then; my mind was swimming, and it could have been wine for all I knew. And yet—it had the smell of copper and pain and an indescribable bitterness. For all my sensibilities, it fascinated me, and my mind drifted to the experiments carried out across the Channel by a fellow named Blundell. What did they concern?—my mind couldn’t focus—I suppose it involved transfusions. Yes, that must be it…postpartal transfusions.

Leeches. I glanced at the shelf above my desk, where my instruments lay spilling from my bag. Yes, of course, there was the jar of the slimy creatures. I tried not to think of them as I struggled with the bandages; even the cold lancet feels more steady in my hand than the wriggling leeches. And, I might argue, the lancet itself requires some skill, more so than those reprehensible little animals.

Where was my lancet?—Ah, good, I’d simply let it fall beside my knee. The handle was slick with that dark wetness, and I wiped my hand on my trousers so that I might get a better grip on it; as I’ve said, it takes a graceful and steady hand to wield that instrument. I’d given up on the bandages, and I stripped them away again with a grunt of frustration. I had more faith in that blade than in the clumsiness of my sticky fingers, and I let the lancet guide me, rather than vice versa. A gasp choked from me as the blade teased my wrist, dancing playfully along my vein, writing in its own spidery calligraphy, spinning those oozing webs across my skin. It licked me, then nipped me with a sudden display of audacity, and I could hear my own shuddering breaths groan in my ears. There was that wine again, tickling my arm—it must have been wine, I felt terribly intoxicated—and the blade seemed to laugh and drink deeply of this wine. I could not grasp the shapeless, merciless tingling that raced from my fingertips down my spine, and pleasure was exploding behind my eyeballs. I forced myself to pay attention, and supervise the blade in its caprices, lest it decide on a deeper course of action.

As the lancet began to slip, my mind jolted back to reality. Time stopped as the blade dragged itself across my skin, and I bit my collar to keep from screaming. I allowed a glittering string of curses to push out instead, accompanied by ragged breaths rasping up my throat. Then, suddenly, there was light.

It was everywhere, flooding the room and giving it that sterile look of the dissection room in the medical wing. My eyes squeezed shut of their own volition, unable to support the blinding brightness, and the only thing that really pierced my consciousness was the incredible volume of liquid that felt as though it was now gushing down my arm and pooling about my knees. Even the nagging desperation of that matter could not induce me to expose my sensitive eyes to that fierce yellow light. It was a voice, rough and urgent and in rather close proximity, that startled me into opening my eyes.

"Mon dieu! What in hell d’you suppose you’re up to?"

It was such a familiar voice, but words sounded as grating against my ears as the light had against my eyes. The accent was rhythmically provincial in nature, with that eloquent, sing-song syntax and quaintly handsome pronunciation. I knew the speaker immediately by the peculiar sweetness and strength of baritone, which could only belong to one person on earth. Despite the fact that the accent was not usually so pronounced, it could only be Enjolras, my young roommate. Even the colloquialism, ‘What d’you suppose you’re up to,’ was typical of the region from which Enjolras hailed—the countryside near Nice, in the south of the country. They were the only words that I could truly understand in my present state. I, however, had no similar colloquialism to answer him with.

"I love you."

I still, to this day, have not figured out exactly why I said it to him. I think that it was that exact moment perhaps that I saw the gruesome pool I was kneeling in, and I realized that I might swoon without ever having the chance to say that to someone. Enjolras, of course, did not understand any complexity behind my words. He was, I need not say, no philosopher.

Through my hazy vision, I saw fear plainly reflected in his eyes. "Je t’aime bien," he echoed, "mais…" He ran to the door, but to my eyes, he seemed to move sluggishly, as though underwater. "Madame Lacour! Amenez-vous un docteur! Madame!" he screamed at our landlady, whose room was located at the bottom of the stairwell. He reached my side again just as I managed to get a hold of the bandages I had cast aside earlier and was feebly attempting to staunch my gash with them.

"Uhn," was all I said to him then, quite unable to form coherent words.

"Combeferre, mon cher, ne parle pas, ça va, ça va, mon ami, je suis là. Je t’aime aussi. Est-ce que je te peux aider avec ces bandages?" Instead of kneeling beside me, he pulled me from the crimson pool, leading me to the nearest bed—his—and sitting me down on the edge of it. I couldn’t force myself to understand a word he was saying…it all sounded like gibberish to me, and yet, I nodded dumbly in response to his questioning look. "Bien, bien, ça va," he murmured repeatedly, and I just watched with glazed eyes as he wrapped my wrists in cloth. Every time his fingertips brushed my skin, I could not help but wonder what his agile hand would feel like, guiding the lancet over my wrist, and I shivered in barely concealed pleasure at the very thought. Having been his roommate for two and a half years, I knew as well as anyone that Enjolras was one of those men who could be extremely and unwittingly erotic. I don’t think he was even aware of his own power, or rather, the power that he could have had, over me.

"N’aie peur, n’aie jamais peur," he was whispering, even as a middle aged man burst into our room with a black bag tucked under one arm. He went immediately to Enjolras, saying something incomprehensible like: "Je m’appelle Dr. Sorel, messieur. Comment va-t-il?" All this jumbled speech was making me dizzy; my head swam, and I slid down against my roommate’s shoulder, whimpering. I felt Enjolras’s hand on my shoulder, rubbing gently to keep me still, but he was ignorant of the cause of my distress, as he began to talk to the man in quick, breaking phrases. I could not concentrate on a single word, but his accent somehow seemed thicker and more obvious than I’d ever heard it before, and that was the strongest indication that he was deeply upset—he ordinarily took the strictest precautions to make certain that that provincial accent remained veiled behind a carefully adopted Parisian dialect.

"Please…please stop…" I muttered, and I think I was speaking in Latin, although it could have been Persian for all I knew by that point. "You’re confusing me…"

The older man stared at me, then turned to Enjolras. "Qu’est-ce qu’il a parlé?"

"Il a parlé latin," Enjolras explained. He spoke to me slowly, with a tone like one that he might use with a child, of patience stretched skillfully to fit a situation. "Montre-les-il." And when I gave him a blank look, he added, "Tes poignets," taking my poorly-bound wrists and extending them towards the stranger. I was far too weak to resist, half-fainting as I was in Enjolras’s lap, but the older man took my wrists, examining them quickly and opening his mysterious bag, which I recognized as the same sort that I was learning to use at the university. Out leapt a roll of sterile, dove-white bandages and a bottle carrying an unidentified chemical, which was soon applied to my wounds. The gashes shrieked for mercy, and my tongue translated this into a sort of soulless cry, a rebellion against whatever foul substance he was smearing onto me. Enjolras squeezed my shoulder ever-so-slightly, perhaps as a measure of comfort, but it was too much. I faded out of consciousness, leaving behind those concerned bystanders and their maddening, puzzling speech.