Whumptober 11 - Stitches [Content warning: eye scream]
“Don’t wriggle,” she warns him with a smile. “You’re really not going to want my hand to slip.” He wriggles anyway, thrashing against the straps that hold him to the table and tossing his head back and forth. His attempts at shouting make desperate, strained noise behind the tape across his mouth.
She grabs his chin to hold him still. When that doesn’t work, to his absolute shock, she jams two fingers up his nose. Her nails scrape the delicate tissues as she curls the fingers and shoves them as far as they’ll go into the gaps in the bone. Trying to toss his head about is abruptly rather unexpectedly painful.
It only takes a second to realise that he can’t breathe any more. Not the slightest whistle of air. And perhaps he would have started struggling again at that, but she takes advantage of his momentary freeze to bring the curved needle right up to his eye. Reflex scrunches both eyes shut tight, but he feels the tip of the needle brush through the lashes and just barely scrape - cold and sharp - across the delicate skin of the eyelid.
He tries to suck air in but his chest heaves uselessly, refusing to expand. He twitches helplessly. The tape is a seal over his mouth, her fingers an effective plug in his nose. He works his jaw but the tape won’t shift, and he daren’t try to move any further, acutely aware of the sharp point at his eye. His heart hammers in his chest, feeling fit to burst.
“Stay still for me, sweetie, and I’ll let you breathe. Trust me, wiggling about really isn’t in your best interests.” He is still, he is, but she’s not letting up. What kind of assurance does she want? He tries to moan but without any way to expel air all he can make is a desperate, strangled squeak. He taps his fingers frantically against the table, trying to signal surrender, but nothing happens and he can’t tell if she understands, or if she’s just toying with him -
A few seconds more of suffering, and she finally allows him air. He sucks it in frantically - he can’t really get enough through his nose, his chest still burns, he has to take fast, tiny breaths - but it’s better than none at all, a thousand times better than none at all.
And while his attention is consumed by breathing, she pinches his eyelids together between thumb and forefinger, pulls them away from the eye, and pushes the needle through the folds, top to bottom. He whines urgently through his nose at the stabbing pain, and still more desperately as he realises what she is about. Even that helpless noise has to be broken up into sharp, frantic sounds a little like sobs as he still struggles to get enough oxygen.
The thread burns as it pulls through the fresh puncture, and then burns again, differently, as she releases the skin and the thread touches the surface of the eye. He strains to turn the eyeballs as far from that corner as possible, squeaking out vain, wretched protests. Her fingers tug at the thread, fiddling, pulling. As soon as she releases it, she pinches the skin again, and the needle stabs in for a second time.
She puts eight stitches across the eye, from outer corner to inner. His hot tears streak down the side of his face in a continuous flow. The back of his mouth is salty with them. His noises settle into a steady rhythm of fast whimpers as he struggles for breath. He can’t get enough, not while panicking, and he comes close to fainting several times. His eyes are rolled back behind the lids as far as they’ll go, trying to escape the line of scratchy thread.
When the eighth stitch is tied, she takes her hands off his face for a minute. His whole body is twitching, fingers scrabbling helplessly at the surface of the table. Every involuntary twitch of the eyelids makes the burning pain worse. He tries to keep them still, but it’s futile.
The feel of her fingers on his other eye provokes a drawn-out keen of despair. But she is merciless. Her fingers press the lids together and pull them away from the eye, the needle goes in, and the nightmare continues.