Hypochondria

The words for Phil Ambler's Friday Prediction this week are vaccine, ground and address and since vaccine wasn't invented until a century after the time of the blacksmith's wife, I had to abandon them this week.
Herewith my alternative:

Hypochondria

‘Vaccine?  Don’t be ridiculous!’

Contempt in every angle of her sprawled limbs, the flare of her nostrils and her lightly-raised eyebrows, the depth of her slutty depravity further exaggerated by the slatted shadows which striped both her and the screwed-up sheets.   Another half-hour and there’d be sufficient light to turn this chiaroscuro soft-ground etching to something more common-place.   For the moment he was both mesmerised and horrified as was apparent from the higher-than-usual pitch of his voice, addressing her from where he stood naked by the sink.

‘I’ve run cold water on it’ he said plaintively, ‘and it still stings.’