No nightsticks for you

Author notes

In the psychiatrist's chair

ag47

on Dec. 4, 2009

I love Gail's mouth in the first panel of this for some reason.

While researching amputation and the associated issues it brings with it I got to learn a bit more about phantom pain and was surprised by the huge discrepancy between the accounts of phantom pain by people who've felt it and how it is generally depicted in fiction. While not all people experience phantom pain and it is a variable phenomenon the pain can be so bad that morphine is the only useful painkiller and one account I read by a lady who had a lower-leg amputation described how even ten years later the pain could be bad enough to induce vomiting.

My general feeling was that if I wanted to have a disabled character (Gail may hate that term, but she is) then I was going to jolly well do the research and make sure that I didn't make any really insulting mistakes. So it is that Gail has her problems, but they don't stop her from earning a living doing a job she loves and from having friends or a normal life.

Originally Gail was only meant to show up for three panels in this chapter, but as I started drawing up the proper version I changed the pacing, taking my time over things a bit more. The old version of this chapter was ten pages long, the new version is WIP but could be half as much again.