Episode 17: Ned puts his swollen foot in an ice-bath

Wednesday

Ned puts his swollen foot in an ice-bath in the afternoons. He’s brought in, from home, a bright pink, plastic container that looks like it should fit a loaf of bread perfectly; instead, it fits his loaf-like foot. The iceblock, roughly the size of a grapefruit, he makes in the office freezer. When the ice melts, he hobbles back into the kitchen to dump the water down the sink.

He’s often joked about me drinking his used foot-water, and that it would taste, as he puts it, “like a fine wine.” We’ve taken to calling this fetid liquid his vin de chaussette, or pinot pied. Today, he offers me a cruel ultimatum: “If you take a sip of this,” he says with a grin, “we’ll call it even.” To my shame, I choose to endure his guilt some more.