Tubby was starting to get aches in her hips and back from sitting hooked up to the Bio-E machine. When she tried to read, the motions of her arms made the electrodes fall off, and she hated everything on Chinese TV. She tried lying down, but lying still while wide awake made her feel like she was in a coffin.

She would have slept, but the contact gel for the electrodes burned like a salted cut after half an hour. The pain lingered longer and longer after each Bio-E session until eventually it never stopped hurting. She complained to Tingting and got some topical ointment. That numbed the pain a bit, which made Tubby feel as though she had the beginnings of eighteen poker-chip-sized patches of gangrene, and it still felt like sunburn when she touched it.

She complained again. They gave her ibuprofen, which constipated her for a fearsome week. She gave up and endured, for a while.