I said, “No one can fix me.”
He said, “I can, but you’ll have to be brave.”
I nodded slowly. I could do brave. He led me by the hand into the bathroom and he took a towel down off of the hook on the back of the door and folded it into a long strip. He handed it to me. “Bite down on this,” he said, and helped me stand in the tub and face into the corner, to count the grid of tiles and the greenish mildew in the grout.
“Hold still and bite down,” he said, and I heard the door close behind me. Reverent fingertips on my wing, unfolding it, holding it away from my body.
“Be brave,” he said. And then he cut off my wing.
It hurt so much, I pitched forward involuntarily and cracked my head against the tile. It hurt so much I bit through two thicknesses of towel. It hurt so much my legs went to mush and I began to sit down quickly, like I was fainting.
He caught me, under my armpits, and held me up, and I felt something icy pressed to where my wing had been—I closed my eyes, but I heard the leathery thump as my wing hit the tile floor, a wet sound—and gauzy fabric was wrapped around my chest, holding the icy towel in place over the wound, once twice thrice, between my tits.
“Hold still,” he said. And he cut off the other one.
I screamed this time, because he brushed the wound he’d left the first time, but I managed to stay upright and to not crack my head on anything. I felt myself crying but couldn’t hear it, I couldn’t hear anything, nothing except a high sound in my ears like a dog whistle.
He kissed my cheek after he’d wound a second bandage, holding a second cold compress over my second wound. “You’re a very brave girl,” he said. “Come on.”