(Over a decade ago…)

I hear them whispering.  Every word.  My eyes are closed.  I already know this room.  There’s nothing new to see here.

“Medically she’s fine.  The damage was all confined to parts of the brain we don’t even use.”

Why do doctors whisper about you when they think you’re in a coma?  Seriously.  Doctors are supposed to be educated.

“You never know.  Sometimes they just wake up.  Sometimes…well, she’s stable.  Perfect vitals.”

Sure, medically fine.  Fine besides the skull fracture that’s only 80% healed per the specialist who left the room 2 hours and forty-six minutes ago.  

“Best case scenario is 100% recovery.  Yes, absolutely that happens.”

Here we go.  The sales pitch for more research grants.  Health care in the free enterprise economy is such a fucking bottom line corporate hustle.  Fuck these leaches.  I’ll wake up when I’m done making plans here.  

“That’s true.  There have been times when certain conditions…lingered.”

I mean, this place is so full of good stuff!  It’s just not organized.  It’s not getting used.  But I’ll fix that…

------------------------

(Happening now…)

“I wonder what story you’re dreaming up now, Katie.”  She drifts off sometimes.  We can only talk about current events for so long.  A mind like Katie’s needs to be stimulated.  She’s so creative.  She has plots and characters and entire worlds forming back there behind those glassy hazel pools.  

I pop up from my spot seated on the ground in front of her and walk over to the “heap” of property from our pre-hu-cow existences.  I’ve been through every single discarded item and found a few useful things.  But the crown jewel of them was Katie’s writing journal.  I slid it out of its place between a sun dress and hoodie.  Everything has to go back exactly where it was.  Every single night.   I hold the journal up above my head,smiling, and give it a shake so that the crisp pages rustle.

“Look what I have, Katie!!”  My best friend chews on her bit briefly and then…. nothing.  My arm and my enthusiasm lower. I usually at least get a glance.  Today I get nothing but a few strands of drool sliding out of her mouth.  It’s getting harder and harder to find ways to spark her interest.  I flip through the journal.  I hurry past a love story she wrote and apparently thought was crap based on the scribbled notes in the margins.  I pause once I get to a section of sketches.  Pretty landscapes.  Here’s one of a house.  There are quite a few of cats.  Katie REALLY seems to like this cat.  There’s one image where a dainty hand strokes the peaceful pet’s head.  

“Is that what you need, Sweetie?  Some tactile input?”  I stroke Katie’s hair, slowly.  I drag my fingers down through it.  The hormones they put in our feed to make us lactate must contribute to the luscious sheen me and the hu-cows all have.  

“Ah-hah.  There it is.  Did I find the spot?”  Katie’s head nudges back into my fingers.  I switch from petting to scratching around the base of her neck and up around her ears.  Katie releases the softest of whimpers.  I’ve carefully observed and categorized all of her responses.  I know her twitches.  I know her flinches.  I know her shutters, her gurgles, her blinks, and her mummers.  This one, the whimper…it’s the best!  It’s the one she makes when I’ve made contact.  It’s when the real Katie is closest to the surface.  I quickly slide back down to my place on the ground in front of her.

“Hey pretty girl.  I was missing you!”  Both eyes are clearly fixed on me.  I know it’s my imagination, but they sparkle a little.  I lean up to her holding her face in my hands and kiss her forehead.  I switch from sitting to kneeling so I can be eye-level with her.    

“How do you manage to do it, Kate?  How’d you protect yourself from everything?”  I can’t explain why but I feel certain Katie is hearing my questions.  I just know she understands.  She’s just created so much insulation for her mind to keep herself from becoming what these other truly broken women have turned into that she can’t communicate through it to me.  At least not with words.  Just with the twitches, the whimpers…those beautiful signs that she can see me.  

Not even my Masters and Mistresses ever saw me.  But she can.

There’s a change in the light.  A slight tinge of yellow as the moon retreats and the sun blazes a warning that it’s time.  

“Sorry pretty girl.  I need to go.  But I got something planned.  Something special.”  I see a shutter trace down Katie’s back.  I tell myself that she understands, and I smile.  “You’re not going to believe it!”

I hug her around the neck and then pull myself away to go about my routine, retracing my steps from my nightly activities, erasing footprints, replacing the journal, and eventually returning to my milking frame.  

(Featuring Guest damsel @KatieBlake )