Pain can come in many different forms.
It can be the sharp stinging sensation from a slap, shallow cut or needle.
It can be the slow throbbing agony of a headache, infection or healing wound.
It can be the clenching hand that grips your heart after a death, divorce or break-up that slowly releases it after a few months, years or perhaps decades.
It can even be an indicator of good, such as when antibacterials are killing the germs trying to harm you.
John would like to think he knows much more about pain than many people. Being a surgeon on the battlefield brought him into all kinds of situations where he encountered other people's pain. And then, after getting shot, there was the pain of physical therapy and healing.
But John has never come into contact with the kind of pain he feels now before.
The best way to describe it would be like saying that there is a cold and merciless beast slowly devouring his heart and soul constantly, even when it seems that there is nothing more of him to take, ripping and tearing and finally after a time leaving a dull, empty ache that is a reminder of all that he's lost and everything he used to be even after he's moved on.
They say time heals all wounds, but really, the sight of seeing him after those three long years started healing the pain in his heart that he had long given up on ever removing.
Even after he punched him in the face.