by April Hill
The doctor had also resumed his position, seated on the edge of the examining table—the picture of composure and innocence. Together. We looked like a Norman Rockwell magazine cover. When Debbie gave me a slightly odd look, the doctor explained: "Try to be especially careful with Miss Johnson, will you, Deb? She's still in pain. I think there may be some bruising."
I sat sullenly (and gingerly) as Debbie removed the remains of the old cast and did a remake—also in light blue. This one, on the doctor's direct order, was even longer and heavier than the original. When the new cast was done and she left the room, I immediately exploded with anger. Whispered anger, but anger, nonetheless. "I can't believe you did that!" I hissed.
"I did warn you," he replied pleasantly.
"Warn me! You can't be serious!" He grinned. "Why? Didn't that feel serious? I suppose I could have put a little more muscle into it, but for a first shot, I thought it was pretty impressive."
"Impressive! Is that what you call it? Damn you! You can't go around beating your patients like that! It's illegal! Patient abuse or malpractice or….Well, something!" I didn't know what it was, legally, or under the Hippocratic oath or whatever, but it had sure as hell felt illegal. Every agonizing smack of it.
"So, does this mean lunch is off?" he asked, when I began to cool down. (That's only a figure of speech, of course. My rear end still felt like I’d sat down on a kitchen burner.) Ah, I was such a babe in the woods, back then. A total wimp. In retrospect, and with quite a large number of truly impressive spankings under my belt, so to speak, I realize what a lightweight event that first one really was. No bright red palm prints, no visible welts, no two-day ache. Nothing. Nothing except embarrassment, hurt feelings, and a definite sting where there hadn't been one before.
Yes, I went out to lunch with Dr. Morgan, despite a few misgivings. I think I finally agreed to go because I was hoping for an apology. Something on the order of, "You must realize by now that I've fallen hopelessly in love with you, my darling. I don't know what came over me to abuse you in such a heinous fashion. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, I swear on everything I hold sacred that it will never happen again!"
No such apology was forthcoming, of course, but my chicken salad sandwich was very good. Moreover, for reasons I didn't really understand at the time, the missing apology didn't even seem all that important. We had left his office in what can best be described as semi-silence, with me blushing like crazy and still embarrassed as hell. But after we'd been alone together for maybe a half an hour, even the embarrassment began to disappear. By the time we'd finished lunch and coffee and started back to my apartment, the spanking simply didn't seem that significant. It didn't even hurt. Just a vague tingling sensation when I sat down on just the right—or wrong—spot. And despite the tingling and the slightly uncomfortable memory, I knew that I was falling in love with Doctor Morgan.
Part Two
After lunch, Doctor Morgan drove me back to my apartment, where we sat in the car for more than an hour, just talking. It was beginning to get dark when he gave the new cast on my wrist a quick once-over, then leaned over and opened the car door. "Do I have to remind you how annoyed I'm going to be if that cast gets damaged, again?" he asked cheerfully.
"No, thank you," I said sweetly. "The memory of how annoyed you can get is still quite fresh."
He smiled. "I'm glad to hear it. Just keep in mind that what happened today was absolutely nothing compared to what's going to happen next time. Not only will you get spanked, again, but I won't submit the claim to your insurance company, either. I can promise you won't like my bill. Who knows, it might even be worse than having your butt blistered." He grinned. "But I doubt it."
"That's very low, Doc," I growled. "But if I were you, I'd save myself the stamp. Some of my past due bills have been around since the first Bush administration. If it weren't for all those friendly bill collectors, I’d have no social life at all."
"Maybe," he agreed, with a grin. "But you'll find my collection methods a little different from theirs. No threatening phone calls or letters, just a short, not-so friendly house call." I rolled my eyes. "I'll keep that in mind when I hear a knock at the door." "All right, then," he said. "Call the office first thing in the morning and make an appointment for early next week. Now, go on inside before it gets dark, and remember to lock your door."
When I agreed, he waved once, and pulled away. Later that evening, though, he called me with a surprising suggestion. "Here's the thing," he began, and for the first time since I’d met the guy, he sounded a little nervous. "There's this article I need to finish—for a medical journal. So, I'm going to take off next weekend and fly down to my sister's place in Florida. I'll be there for around ten days, and I thought maybe you’d like to come with me. Just take it easy, you know? Rest, eat, sleep, just do nothing for a few days."
Eat, sleep, and do nothing. Three of my all-time favorite activities. Throw in room service, free, in-room classic movies, and imaginative sex on a vibrating bed, and you're looking at my idea of a dream vacation.
"I can't do that!" I exclaimed. (This was probably my mother speaking, by the way, not me.)
"Why not?" he asked.
There were a couple of reasons, actually, neither of which I told him. Firstly, there was the not unpleasant possibility that there was no medical journal article, and that this was "doctorese" for showing me his etchings, although this scenario hardly seemed likely. This guy was clearly not the kind who needed to lure ladies into his bed with free vacation packages. And even if he was, why me? With fully half of my extremities swathed in plaster and bandages, I looked like I'd just trudged in from Valley Forge. Not a look that would normally incite lust. Besides that, I badly needed a haircut, and hadn’t shaved my legs since the accident. But those weren't the reasons I gave, of course. "Well, for one thing, I do have a job, you know. A lousy job, but the only one I have, and…"
"I've already signed the paperwork to qualify you for disability," he countered. "Four weeks, minimum. They can’t fire you. It’s the law. " He was making it very hard to say no, and to tell you absolute truth, "no" has really never been one of my favorite words. In my experience, elderly women who've said "yes" to offers of this nature in the past almost always end up writing more interesting memoirs.
With my resistance crumbling, I next tried to sound logical and thrifty. "Thank you, but after I pay this month's rent…."
"The whole trip's on me, of course," he said quickly.
"I appreciate the offer, but I can’t do that, either. Take money from…Well, not a stranger, exactly, but…. "
"Okay, so we'll call it a loan. Pay me back when you can."
I sighed. "Yeah, sure, Doc. Would you like me to tell you a little something about my credit rating?"
He paused for a moment, looking a bit flushed, now. "Look, if it's the sleeping arrangement that's worrying you, the place has three bedrooms, each with its own bath—and working locks on all the doors."
I tried not to blush at the implication—or the inherent possibilities. "I'm not worried about that, honestly. It’s just that…"
"What?" he asked, frowning.
"I just don’t understand why you’re being so nice to me. Do you do stuff like this for all your patients?"
There was a deep sigh and another pause. "Okay," he said finally. "If you want to go on pretending there's nothing going on between us, I'll try to keep up my part—for now. What I'm most interested in right now is that you start taking care of yourself, and stop trying to sabotage all my hard work. And it looks like the only way that's going to happen is with some sort of …intervention. Anyway, I promise you this trip will be one-hundred-percent platonic. Scout's honor."
I tired hard not to giggle when I replied. "Well, you don’t have to get fanatic about it. One thing, though. Do you promise to be a good host and not spank me?"
Another heartfelt sigh. "That depends. Do you promise to do what I tell you? Medically speaking, of course?"
"I guess."
He shook his head. "Not exactly the answer I was looking for."
Now it was my turn to sigh. "It’s the best I can do, Doc. Rome wasn't built in a day, you know. I've been doing things my own way for a long time. I know I'm a major screw-up, and I also know you mean well by trying to help me…or to intervene, as you call it, but…"
"But…?" he repeated.
"You know what?" I said, finally. "I'm just going to shut up, now. I'd love to go to Florida with you… Will. When it blows up n your face, just try to remember one thing: You were warned."
Okay, I'd said my piece and staked my claim for independence, and now, the proverbial ball was officially in Dr. Morgan's court. If he wanted to waste a lot of time and money trying to nurse me back to health or improve my bad habits, when we could be writhing around naked on a moonlit beach instead, that was his problem. As things turned out, I had seriously underestimated the situation. It was Dr. Morgan's intention to do all three of those things. It didn't take long to discover my mistake. The night before we were scheduled to leave for Florida, he came by my apartment to help me pack, help I really needed. Doing just about anything is hard with one hand; packing and closing an overstuffed suitcase with a damaged zipper is next to impossible. We were almost finished when he came out of my bathroom carrying the plastic shoebox full of pills I call The Corner Drugstore. (Yeah, I know I said at the beginning that I was a really healthy person, but even I get colds and annoying bladder infections and the flu, now and then.) And then, Doctor Morgan posed the question that would lead, inexorably, to the second spanking of my life.
"Most of this stuff has been expired for a couple of years or more," he observed, understating the age of some of my pharmaceuticals by several years. "Why are you keeping it?"
I had this very strong feeling he wasn't going to like my answer. "I always stop taking pills after I start feeling better," I explained. "That way, I have some left over for the next time. And the best part is, since I already have the pills I need, I don’t have to waste time and money I don’t have going to a lot of doctors I don’t need." Somehow, my explanation didn’t sound as reasonable and intelligent out loud as it had in my head.
Will shook his head in a most disapproving manner. "That's not the way it works. All drugs take a certain amount of time to get into your system and to work properly. Didn't the doctors who gave you all these pills tell you to finish the entire prescription?"
"I always thought they did that so they could sell more pills," said I.
"Good physicians are not in the business of pushing pills," he said sternly.
"Oh, yeah, like I believe that!" I exclaimed. "I read on the Internet that most pills never really expire at all. They have this fantastically long shelf life, but the medical/pharmaceutical industry is in a huge secret conspiracy to convince everyone to buy more drugs than they actually need."
He rolled his eyes heavenward. "We’ll talk about that idiotic theory later. Meanwhile, what’s the story with these?" He held out several more little brown and green prescription bottles, not one of which, by remarkable coincidence, had my name on it.
"Those are the borrowed ones."
"Borrowed?"
"Yeah. You know, from friends and people I know. Why go out and buy stuff if someone you know already has the same stuff that they're about to throw out? We all get basically the same colds, doctor," I continued, explaining it all very slowly and patiently, like I would to a not-very-bright child. "And the same viruses, too. So, what's the difference? My friends are all the same species as I am—most of them, anyway. My God, you’d think we were dealing illegal narcotics back and forth."
"What you’re doing is illegal, and it’s also dangerous, and you're not going to be able to convince me that you don’t know better." Since his tone had turned a bit grim, I decided it was time to "inject" some common sense and humor into the medical discussion.
I rolled my eyes heavenward, precisely the way he had. "Oh, come on, Doc! I was joking. Are you always such a humorless prick about everything?" And then, with my well-known, world-class talent for making things worse, I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes. To be funny, you know? Okay, so Doctor Morgan didn’t seem to think it was funny, and since we were in the living room, standing next to my work-bench during this unhumorous exchange, it took him about three seconds flat to show his displeasure by dumping me face-down over the bench and flipping up the tail of my short bathrobe. And since I had recently emerged clean and warm and damp from the shower, I was totally naked, making my rosy bare ass an easy target.
With me pinned down, the Doctor started looking around for a weapon, and it was just my luck that the closest weapon at hand happened to be this really thick, really wide, really heavy wooden office ruler. (Solid oak, eighteen inches long, and stolen from the office of my last employer as a kind of self-help Christmas bonus.) It was very useful for my larger art projects, and easily the best, sturdiest, most durable, ruler I'd ever owned—or stolen. A truly admirable workplace tool. But, then, how could I have foreseen the disagreeable use such a praiseworthy implement might eventually be put to, or visualize the wide, flame-red welts it would leave on my bare backside? Yes, maybe it was poetic justice—"The Revenge of the Ruler."
The thing about wooden office rulers is that they're specifically designed to be strong and to take a lot of abuse. And the thing about a workbench is that it makes a very convenient spanking venue. Just the right height—for him anyway. I'm on the short side, and once I was bent over the bench, my bare feet didn't quite touch the floor, making escape unlikely, especially with Doctor Morgan's hand pressing firmly down on the small of my back. And since we were not in a busy medical office, now, but in the privacy of my own little home, he apparently felt freed of the usual polite constraints. He undid his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and—to make an unpleasant story short— took his sweet time to wallop the absolute holy shit out of me. Not that it took all that long, by the clock. Up one side and down the other in maybe forty-five seconds, start to finish, and at least that many hard swats.
There wasn't much I could do during any of this, other than to open my mouth and howl my brains out at every scorching, "well-measured" stroke, but I did that very well. After he'd finished, I hopped round the room yelping in pain and shrieking obscene insults, and that's when I noticed the kitchen window wide open. It says a lot about of the kind of neighborhood I live in that nobody in the entire building felt compelled to call the cops, or even to come upstairs and tell me to turn the TV down. My dream vacation had gotten off to a very rocky start.
* * * *
For those of you who are wondering why I chose to fly off for a week with a man I hardly knew, a man who seemed willing to spank the living daylights out of me at the drop of a hat, let me try to explain.
I have no idea. None. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Not a freaking clue. Except that my heart beat faster every time he smiled, and I kept getting this funny, familiar little twist in my private regions whenever and wherever he touched me. Even the two spankings, as disagreeable as they both had been, didn't seem to worry me. I knew in my heart and in my gut that this guy wasn't going to really hurt me. (As opposed to hurting certain specific parts of me a lot.) And I was beginning to think his interest in me went well beyond your usual doctor/patient relationship.
What was becoming clear was that, for reasons I wasn't sure of, Will Morgan did care about me. He cared enough to stick around, and enough to try to help me when I couldn’t seem to help myself. At this point in my life, I'd been swimming alone, metaphorically speaking, and I'd been doing it for a very long time. Swimming upstream and against the current. Let's face it. I was going nowhere, and I was damned close to drowning. Maybe it was time to put my trust in someone other than myself, and to grab onto the only real lifeline in sight. How could I be worse off than I was already was? And though I suspected that Dr. Morgan didn't really know what he was getting into by trying to rescue me from the flood, he seemed to want th
e job. So, off we went to Florida.
* * *
I discovered right away that Will's "medical journal article" wasn't like showing me his etchings. He really did have an article to write, and a deadline to meet. Which meant, from my point of view, that he was spending way too much time at the computer screen, and nowhere near enough time attending to my erotic needs. What's even worse, I suspected it was my initial hesitation about going with him that may have thrown a wrench in the works, romantically speaking. His sister's place was beautiful, right on the beach, with gorgeous views from every window.
I sunbathed, read, napped, lazed around—almost everything I had planned to do. The only thing missing from my perfect vacation was the intimate physical moments I had hoped to share with my handsome host. Will and I had breakfast and lunch together each day, and at night, we went out to eat somewhere. Sometimes, after lunch, he'd take a break from work to join me down on the beach or sitting out on the deck, but the rest of the time, I was pretty much on my own. By day four, I was absolutely sure I'd been wrong. Will wasn't interested in me as a woman. He was interested in me first as a recovering patient, and second, as a challenge.
I was so depressed by his inattention that I began to think I'd be thrilled just to be spanked! Have you ever heard that old adage that says, "Be careful what you wish for."? On day four, I borrowed the keys to the rental car, left a brief note for Will, and went for a drive. I was miffed, and my feelings were hurt. I wanted to sulk.
I sulked for close to a hundred miles, just wandering up and down side roads, then stopped and sat on a deserted beach until it was nearly dark. I had brought along a fifth of premixed margaritas in which to drown my sorrows, but since I don’t usually drink a lot, I didn't know exactly how much tequila it would take to drown them. So, I just started sipping, figuring I'd know when I got there.
Will had lent me a cell phone when we first arrived, and I had his sister's phone number in my purse, but I was still too annoyed to call and tell him where I was, or that I'd be I'd be late. Let him worry a little, I thought vengefully. Maybe he'd even begin missing me. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that I was probably flirting with Spanking Number Three, or that Will just might be prepared to up the ante, now that he knew me better. It's funny how the tequila-soaked brain works, isn't it?