Cold Comfort

"Well, Mrs. Lee, this treatment is experimental, but we feel it will improve your condition. All you need to do is sign on the dotted line, and we can schedule you for the first of the week."

The Doctor tapped the form like a used car salesman trying to sell a sports car with no engine.

The kind of salesman who thinks you're too stupid to look under the hood and too desperate to believe the deal is anything but genuine.

That was the beginning of the end of my life.

My name is Pandora Lee, and this is my story.

Two years ago, I was diagnosed with a debilitating bone disease. The kind that causes your bones to be very weak. My doctor sent me to a specialist, and after running some tests and running up a small fortune in bills, he wanted to try an experimental treatment to harden my bones.

I was hesitant; who wouldn't be, but could I really afford to be in my condition?

The following week I arrived for my first treatment. The waiting room was the same bland area I'd seen a thousand times. The sort of forgetable facade that hides the work that goes on behind that unassuming blue door between the show floor and the butcher's shop. Children moved beads along a wire maze as parents and patients looked through magazines that had been current ten years ago. The smiling face of President Obama looked up from a small table as I sat there, he and Martha Stewart sharing space with Better Homes and Gardens and Highlights magazine.

The magazines were only slightly more interesting than the paperwork on the clipboard I was muddling through, but I tried my best to ignore them.

"Mrs. Lee? We're ready for you. "

A young blonde-haired woman in scrubs called to me, smiling brightly as she led me through that oddly dark blue door and into a hallway of the same color. Despite the buzzing overhead lights, the paint scheme made the whole space look shadowy, and I shuddered as she led me to a little room farther down. She showed me to a small sterile room with only a Gurnee and an IV stand to break up the emptiness. The room was blessedly brighter, a kind of eggshell white that verged on eye-watering, and I stepped inside and handed her my clipboard.

"Please take a seat and get comfortable, Mrs. Lee. The Doctor will be with you shortly."

As I lay there waiting, the clean white paper crinkling under me, I had a gut feeling that this was a bad idea. I chalked it up to nerves, though. It was just another exam, just another series of tests, just another meeting that would end predictably.

I should have listened to my gut.

As the doctor walked in, he smiled his best crest kids grin, and I imagined I could see the spit stains on his teeth. I wish I could tell you that he was an ugly little man, some goblin who scared me or made me wish a nurse had stayed to observe our interaction, but he was actually very plain looking. Thinking back now, I can't tell you anything about him other than his big grin and neat little mustache. It might have been easier if he were a monster, but I guess life is rarely easy.

"Well, Mrs. Lee, as you know, this is still experimental. It's in the early trial phase, you'd honestly be one of our first human trials for the treatment, but we feel you are the perfect candidate."

I stare at him blankly, unsure whether he expects me to be flattered or break into applause.

He looked uncomfortable, clearly not getting the response he was expecting. Calling the pretty blond nurse from earlier, he asked her to strap me down so they could begin, and told me to just relax. The straps were scratchy, the clasps sitting cold against my arm, and I found it hard not to squirm as she slid the IV in. The Doctor reached into the hall and wheeled in a large metal canister. It looked like a fire extinguisher, the old kind that you had to crank, except for the face mask on the end that was undoubtedly going over my face.

He must have noticed my apprehension because the too-big teeth made a return appearance.

"Don't worry, Mrs. Lee. It's all very safe."

He placed the mask over my face, the smell of cleaner mixing with something sickly sweet and acidic.

"Breath deep," he prompted, and as I took my first breath, his voice already sounded as if it were coming to me from the lip of a deep hole, "you will wake up in no time."

Then it all went black, my last memory being that the stuff I breathed in tasted like the smell of the cleaner my mother used when I was young.

Then, I didn't think about anything for a while.

I was floating for a while, my body as light as a feather, and I could have gladly floated in that void forever.

When I dropped back into my body, however, it was worse than any falling dream I'd ever had. I opened my eyes and looked around frantically, my body still splayed across the Gurnee as the canister pumped whatever was in the tank into my lungs. I felt a surge of pain rip through my whole body and jerked fitfully against the restraints. A scream ripped up my lungs, the gas clouding my mouth as I choked on my anguish. The nurse ran in, trying to calm me to no avail.

"Calm down, Mrs. Lee. We don't want you to damage your bones while the treatment is doing its job! The pain is only temporary. The doctor will be in to give you something for it and explain everything."

Her words did nothing for the pain that drilled into my bones, and after what seemed hours, the doctor finally came in. He had a needle in his hand, and the tip slid easily into the IV he filled the saline bag with something. It was cold, the liquid flowing in like ice, but the relief was immediate. I lay back gasping, the sudden lack of pain almost as jarring as the pain had been, and the big smile hovered over me like a specter.

"The first treatment is always the most painful, but it seems to be a success so far! You might have some joint stiffness for a few days, but that is to be expected as the treatment hardens your bones."

As the gas hissed and the ice brought sweet relief to my inflamed bones, I lay there drinking in grateful lungfuls of air. The lack of pain was hard to quantify, but I became aware, over time, that it wasn't just the sudden burning that had gone away. The everyday pain I had gotten used to, the enflamed joints and deep ache of weakened bones, was also gone. It was like someone had flipped a switch in me, and suddenly I was exactly like I had been before. This may seem like a small thing, but when you've lived with the pain, made it a day-to-day part of your life, its absence is like a physical loss. I was like a kid who's had his tooth pulled, my tongue probing at the vacancy where something solid had been before.

When he spoke, I had to shake myself back to reality and ask him to repeat himself.

"We will see you in two weeks for your next treatment. The nurse will give you a prescription when you leave. Take it twice a day in order to keep your body from rejecting the treatment. Understand?"

I nodded, still a little dazed, and agreed to take the pills. I made another appointment with a similarly pretty brunette and took the nondescript little bag she handed me. She smiled, saying they would see me in two weeks, and I headed home.

As I drove home, I expected the pain to rear its head again with every press of the pedal or turn of the wheel. The pain had become like a swarm of gnats, ever-present and buzzing. You never got used to it, but you became accustomed to it. It's never comfortable, but you look forward to the times when it isn't there. Now it was just gone. I was driving with nary a pain or wince, something I hadn't done in years.

I should have been happy, but I kept waiting for it to disappear.

Maybe that makes me a pessimist, but I don't care.

When you live like this long enough, you constantly wait for the other shoe to drop.

I walked into the house, my bones still feeling like nothing so much as normal bones, and took the pills out of the bag. Reading over the label for side effects or warnings, I found nothing but instructions on the outside. No name, no ingredients, no warnings, just eight words in bold font.

Take one pill with food twice a day.

I opened the bottle and let a few of the pills roll out onto my palm. They were white a blue gel capsules, the contents looking like the stuff on top of the Snowcaps my husband always ate at the movies. As they sat in my hand, I noticed that they were oddly cold to the touch, and the feeling reminded me of the way the liquid had felt as it entered my IV. When they didn't immediately appear dangerous or try to bite me, I let them tumble back into the bottle and closed the lid. I set a reminder on my phone for seven am and started fixing dinner. When I went to bed that night, I had already forgotten about them, but as I pulled the blanket around myself, I felt a sudden chill arrow through me.

It should have raised some sort of red flag, but I was still riding the high of moving about my home without any of the pain I'd had earlier that day.

A few hours later, I was woken up by an icy chill going through my body, followed by an intense ache in my joints. As I tried to get up, I felt every bone in my body tighten. It was almost impossible to walk, but after a few minutes, it eased up, and I was able to make it to the bathroom. I figured this was just a side effect of the stiffness the doctor was talking about, and after a warm bath, some of the pain had abated. With some of my mobility returned, I shuffled back to bed, hoping to sleep off the pain until it was time for my first dose of the medication.

The next day, the pain of the night before was just a fleeting memory, and I took my first pill and started getting ready for my day. It usually took me several hours to get my legs to cooperate enough to make breakfast, but today I moved about my kitchen in a way I hadn't in years. My joints felt fluid, my bones were as forgettable as they should be, and when I woke my husband for work around ten, he looked at me a little shocked to find breakfast already on the table and the kitchen dishes cleaned and put away.

"Wow, those treatments really did the trick." he said, taking my hands in his big calloused one, intending to kiss them.

He dropped them in surprise as a shudder ran through him. “Jeez, babe. Your hands are so cold!"

There was worry on his face, but I waved his worries away and told him it was nothing.

"It's just a side effect of the treatment. I'll be fine, sweetie."

Deep down, though, I was worried. I should have called the doctor's office right then and there and told them about my side effects. After the weirdness that had happened the night before, I should have been more concerned, but it all comes back to one thing. Despite the stiffness, despite the cold hands, despite the next two weeks where I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night and hobbled into a warm bath, the intense pain in my bones was all but a distant memory. I would have given anything to be done with pain like that, and it turns out the cost was more than I could have known.

Two weeks later, I arrived at my next appointment. I was curious to see if it hurt the same way it had the time before, but my reasons for going were also twofold. I had taken the last of my pills that morning, and I knew I would need more if I wanted to maintain this lack of joint pain. So, I smiled at the nurse, let them strap me down again, let them slide the needle into my arm, and breathed in the gas like the good doctor told me to.

The treatment was performed the same as the first, but I gritted my teeth through the pain as I waited for him to inject my IV with the sweet icy liquid as the gas did its work. As the straps slid off, I nodded through the closing instructions and shuffled up to the desk to make my appointment and get my pills. I moved as if in a dream, my body feeling strangely heavy as I climbed in my car and drove home.

I jerked awake in my driveway, unsure how I'd arrived home. I had never fallen asleep at the wheel, much less sleep drove home, and the thought made me shiver. I grabbed my prescription as I headed inside, wanting to get as far from the vehicle as possible at that moment. I thought about starting dinner as I trudged in but decided to have a nap instead. It was early still, only mid-afternoon, but I was suddenly exhausted. I could barely keep my eyes open, and as I slid into bed with the same clothes I'd left the house in, I thought I was settling in for nothing but a couple of hours of rest.

Ten hours later, I shuddered awake into total darkness as an arctic chill shot through my nerve endings. It was worse than any of the ones before it, and as I tried to climb out of bed, my legs froze up and sent me spilling to the floor. I lay there, unable to bend my legs or arms, only able to pull them towards me like palsied claws.

I was overjoyed when I heard my husband's soft snores from the bed beside me. He would help me, he could get me to the hospital, he could get me into a warm bath, and I opened my mouth to scream his name. My lips trembled as I prepared to cry out for him, but no sound escaped my chilly maw. I gasped weakly, his name lost amongst the short barks of sound while he slept peacefully feet away. I lay there with tears of fear dripping down my face, certain he would wake up the next morning to find me dead. I almost expected to see them freeze against my cheeks, but they did little more than pool beneath my head and wet the side of my face.

I spent that night drifting in and out of my new painful existence. It felt like I lay there for weeks, listening to the contented snores of my spouse as my body was racked with freezing chills. I thought I would die again and again, and as the sun began to rise, I almost wished for it. The colder I became, the less the shivers seemed to blow through me. I still felt them, but my body had stopped responding. I was powerless to move, incapable of doing much besides watching the day begin.

I must have fallen asleep at some point because when my husband yelled my name, my eyes were startled open.

"What...what the hell is," but he seemed to lose his words as he stood over me.

I mouthed at him, asking him to help me, but he looked unsure.

"I don't...I don't know how."

I wanted to ask him what he meant, but instead, he turned to my vanity and fetched a small hand mirror.

I looked back at myself, not sure it was me for a moment. I was looking at a perfect china doll as she lay curled up on the floor. Her skin was a perfect alabaster, broken only by the slight spider cracks that ran through it. As I watched, another chill coursed through me, and I saw the cracks lengthen as my fragile form tried to shiver. I wanted to cry, but I had no tears left.

Instead, I told him to put my phone on text to speak and lay it next to my head.

I wanted him to understand, wanted to explain how this had happened while I could still explain anything.

He did as I asked, saying he would get help, but I don't think help will get here in time.

It took a surprisingly short time to lay all this out, but I can feel the change beginning to affect my face now. My blinks are coming slower and slower, and my throat is beginning to tighten as it stiffens like my skin. My lips have started to flake as I speak, the cracks in my arms likely running through the lips my husband loved to kiss. I'll be nothing but a beautiful statue soon, a curiosity piece for people to speculate over, but with the time I have left, I want people to understand how I came to this point.

I don't know if it was the treatment or the pills, maybe it was even both, but it doesn't appear to be as ready for human trials as they believed.

If they ask you to sign your life away as I did, make sure you know what you're agreeing to.

The short respite from pain isn't worth the hell I find myself in now.

It's getting hard to breathe now. My lungs are laboring to pull in breath, and I can feel the same shivers running through them with each gasping pull. My eyes are fixed forward, my fingers forever locked together, and I fear that every word may be my last. If you make it home, Jason, know I love you, and I'm sorry that this is where we must part.