When Priya woke the next morning, she felt sore all over and tired, her butt still felt like she was sitting on a hot stove. Without a mirror it was hard to see how her rear looked, but, when she looked at the next cot, she could see that Sarah's was swollen and heavily bruised, the cuts and wheals beginning to scab over, but still wet with fluid. Since they had had the same number of strokes, she assumed hers looked similar.
Priya worked her body into a standing position, finding that as long as she didn't make any sudden unplanned motions, it was just bearable. From the standing position, she could tell that Jen's ass looked similar to Sarah's but Susan's looked worse, even more swollen, with many more cuts.
As Priya was considering this, a guard entered with breakfast trays and laid them on the table. Jennifer and Sarah were able to get up fairly quickly, but Priya saw that Susan, with her more serious wounds, was having some difficulty, so she hurried over to support her teacher by clasping her arms around her chest. The close contact between Susan's naked body and her own felt delightful. With Priya's help, Susan was able to get to her feet, though her grimacing face made clear how difficult it was for her to move.
As they were eating, the women heard female voices nearby, the sounds of other women awakening and getting breakfast. "Obviously we aren't the only poor suckers in this hell-hole," Sarah remarked.
"Yeah," Jennifer added, "I'm sure there are tons of them getting caned for stuff like having a joint, stealing a trinket from a store, even traffic tickets. Perhaps the Trabbians even give you a few strokes for not feeding a parking meter. What a country!"
"It's funny that we haven't seen any of them," Priya interjected.
"I bet they want to keep it hush-hush to prevent any possibility of the international press getting ahold of the story of four American women being caned. Imagine the field day they would have back home on the morning talk shows," Susan postulated.
"You are a very smart lady, Dr. Gelden," a male voice piped in. "Unfortunately not smart enough to have stayed out of trouble in our country or kept your students out of trouble."
The women turned their heads to see that Dr. Fong and his nurse had entered the hut. "But you have indeed figured out the thinking of the big bosses back in Pranda. Everything about you and your students is hush-hush. If anyone breaths a word, they are in big trouble. I want my job and my pension, so my lips are sealed. Now, how is everyone doing this fine morning?" The good doctor laughed loudly.
"My ass is aching. In fact my whole body aches," Jennifer complained.
"Well, that is sort of the point of a caning, is it not?" Fong chuckled. "But let's have a look." He had the women line up and went around their backsides. "Nothing at all unusual. I've seen much worse many times. You are all healing well."
"Could we at least have some Tylenol or ibuprofen?" Priya asked, already in the mindset of a pill-pusher, though only a pre-med.
Fong roared with laughter. "Oh, you Americans are a riot! Tylenol! Ibuprofen! Surely you know that pain killers are strictly forbidden following corporal punishment. The entire purpose is for you to feel pain so that you learn a valuable lesson. Giving pain killers would defeat the entire purpose. No, you can have as much cream on your butt to promote rapid healing as you would like, but no pain pills. Nurse will wash your butts and apply a generous helping. But I must be going. A young lady about your age is getting 20 strokes. They offered her 6 if she would testify against her boyfriend, but she wouldn't. Brave girl, but very foolish. You can imagine how she will suffer. My presence is definitely required. You ladies have a wonderful day."
And with that, Fong left, leaving the nurse to tend to the foreign women. The nurse washed each of the women's butts in turn and applied healthy doses of the cream, leaving them a large stack of gauze pads and a couple of jars of the cream, along with instructions about washing themselves and applying cream as she had done three times/day so as to speed the healing as much as possible.
A little while after the nurse left, they heard, coming from some distance away, the sound that all of them had heard the day before, to their dread and sorrow, the shout of the guard announcing a punishment, followed by the unmistakable thwack of the cane hitting someone's buttock flesh.
As best Priya could tell from counting, there was a 6 stroke caning, followed by a pause, followed by a second 6 stroke caning, followed by another pause. Then there was a caning that just seemed to go on and on, each stroke accompanied by screams, which eventually diminished to silence as, presumably, the poor offender exhausted herself. It seemed that this was the 20 stroke punishment that Dr. Fong had mentioned.
Priya was glad that she didn't have to look at the poor girl's butt, which would almost certainly look more like raw hamburger than human flesh.
"The poor girl, whoever she is," Susan said, shaking her head. "That's almost twice what I got. These people are just unbelievable."
"Yes," Priya nodded. "They are." It seemed that was hard to dispute. The day passed slowly. Boredom was the main enemy-as modern young women, Priya and her classmates found being deprived of cell phones, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to be perhaps not as painful as the caning, but still unpleasant.
By the next morning, it was clear that whatever the cream from Dr. Fong's clinic had in it worked pretty well-it seemed to promote new growth of skin, such that the abraded areas and cuts were healing and the swelling and bruising were diminished. Normal motions were becoming possible again, though sitting for more than a brief time was very uncomfortable and the skin still burned and itched as the healing proceeded.
