It is a machine that manufactures exactly the resistance it claims to be frustrated by.

What I understood, watching that terror on her face over one accidental touch, was that Edith’s back was not a task at all.

It was the most sensitive place in her whole life — more sensitive than the skin, which was only scar tissue and felt very little.

What was sensitive was everything underneath the skin: forty years of shame, and privacy, and a self she had built entirely around not being seen.

Reaching for her back was reaching for all of that at once.