Hydrotherapy

I was moving back into the dorms. My roommate turned out to be okay, slight, brunette and scared. Not much of a problem. We had gotten one of the bigger rooms like I requested last year. In fact, it was the largest room in Carson Dorm. It was adjacent to the old hydrotherapy room.

I noticed this because the walls were tiled, rather than painted as is customary. The room was as big as a regular large Carson room, except instead of one wall, there was a ditch. The room extended beyond, yards and yards of tile and bathroom fixtures.

The ditch looked nasty. It was about four feet wide and filled with murky, sinister water. Some people told me that the last time anyone'd used the U of O hydrotherapy room had been in the 1950s. This water looked like it had been attempting to drain since then. I suppose all the spilled water from the room was meant to collect there, then flow out through a drain, but it must have been plugged.

It was taken as a given that we, having the room next to it, could put stuff in the hydrotherapy rooms.

My roommate said she hadn't bothered to explore, and her tone suggested she never would. She had the bed farthest from the ditch/absence of wall.

I went down to the loading dock and got a bunch of sturdy boards. I bridged the ditch and walked across.

Man! The hydrotherapy area was huge! There were walls of showers, mysterious nozzles bursting from the floor or from tiled kiosks in the center of rooms. The light was a little dim, from lime fluorescents on the ceiling, protected by wires. Some appeared burnt out, but they were 40 years old. It was to be expected.

There were hot tubs and swimming pools, as well as some fountains that looked like ziggurats designed for sitting on, down which warm water lazily flowed.

Everything seemed to work, too.

There were a couple of dry rooms, too. One was a locker room and one a coach's office, another an equipment storage room. They were empty enough (other than some tools and equipment) that I decided then and there that I was going to just live in the hydrotherapy room.

I spent most of the time naked, with all of the water going. I'd write papers and study in the dry rooms, but I somehow found a lot of time to run full tilt through the various sprays and jets of water of varying temperatures.

My roommate bought tapestries for the walls of the actual dorm room, and complained of the cold.

I noticed I was beginning to grow scales and fins.