Where Nerves End

give anyone a free pass to ask away as long as they didnt jump on the “which deity did you piss off?” bandwagon. I couldnt figure out how any of the information he requested was relevant to fixing my damned shoulder, but I answered without hesitation.
Car batteries and waterboarding indeed…
“Usually Id have you lie down,” he said, “but Im going to have you sit up so I can access points on the front and back of your shoulder. Ill need you to take off your shirt. Shoes and socks too.”
I did as he asked while he reached into a small chest of drawers and pulled out a handful of plastic packets. When I looked closer, I realized each packet contained an individually wrapped needle. They looked more like two-inch long antennae. A little less than half of the needle was thicker than the other, resembling a thin coiled spring with a small loop on the end. Since that end wasnt sharp, I assumed the other end would be the one to go into my skin, but that half of the needle looked so fine, I couldnt imagine it breaking through anything before it bent itself.
As he laid out the needles, he glanced at my upper arm and did a double take. “Wow, thats quite a tattoo. Seths work?” I almost expected him to run his fingers over it like some guys did. Kind of hoped he would. Really hoped he would.
“Yeah,” I said, hoping he was oblivious to the phantom tingling where he, being a professional, hadn’t run his fingers across my inked skin, “hes done an amazing job on this one.”
“I dont think Ive ever seen him do a tattoo that wasnt amazing.” He met my eyes, and laughed softly as he said, “So this means you dont have a problem with needles, then?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Needles didnt usually bother me, but admittedly, my stomach knotted up a little as he tore free one of the packets. “So, um, tell me how this works?”
“The body has energy flowing through it,” he said. “Qi, as the Chinese call it. Sometimes the channels get blocked, or interrupted, and the needles”—he gestured with the hairthin needle hed just freed from the package—“help with those blockages. If youll pardon the pun, the point of acupuncture is to get the Qi flowing properly.”
In my minds eye, I saw him using the needle to unblock some unseen channel beneath my skin, digging at it with the sharp instrument until hed bent the channel o Qi to his will. I was pretty sure that wasnt how it worked, but the mental image didnt do much to relax me.
Evidently seeing my apprehension written across my face, he said, “Trust me on this.” Our eyes met, and his half-smile combined with what the low, warm light did to his already dark brown eyes certainly stimulated my heart. Among other things, but then he took a seat and focused his attention to my foot, and I remembered the needles he hadnt yet put in.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as he slid the needle, which was about two inches long into a thin plastic tube. As he pressed the tubed needle against my foot just below my ankle, I held my breath. While I wasnt afraid of pain or needles, this was something new, a sensation I couldnt entirely predict, an unknown.
Then he tapped the end of the needle, and a second later, slid the tube off, leaving the needle sticking out of my skin at a sharp angle.
The needle didnt hurt. Well, that wasnt entirely true. I supposed it hurt, but not like I expected it to. There was the briefest sting, there and gone so quickly I barely noticed it, but the ache that followed was…strange. It was a dull feeling, but almost electric at the same time, and I flexed my ankle a few times.
“Doing all right?” Michael asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “It just feels weird.”
He laughed softly and leaned down, furrowing his brow as he positioned another needle. “Its different, especially the first time.” He tapped the second needle into place, this one almost perpendicular to my skin, and the same warm, achy sensation with electric edges bloomed around its point. “What youre feeling is deqi.”
I raised aneyebrow. “The what now?”
“Deqi.” He looked up from freeing a third needle from the packaging. “The sensation of the Qi arriving.”
“I see.” I watched him slide the needle into the plastic tube. “So is this the kind of thing where I have to be a believer for it to work?”
“Its acupuncture, Jason.” He tapped the needle into place. “Not Santa Claus. Itll still work even if you dont believe.”
“Good to