My wife returned from the doctor looking a little shaken. She’d only gone to check out a sore throat that didn’t seem to go away, but for a second as I stopped loading the dishwasher I started to get worried.
“How’d it go? You going to be okay?”
“Yeah. He says it’s just bad allergies,” she said, a little too abruptly. She started to leave the kitchen, then kind of lingered, as if she had something to tell me.
“What is it then?” I asked, now giving her my full attention.
“Nothing really. It just…got a little weird with him during the exam.”
“Dr. Hollon? Weird how?” As our GP ever since we’ve lived in this town, he was now in his late-40’s like us and almost a kind of friend. Both of our teenaged daughters played on the same field hockey team. I talk to him sometimes at practice, and Nicolette has good rapport with his wife.
“During the exam…he kind of…got a little sexual,” she said. I could tell by her not making eye contact she seemed to feel a little ashamed about what ever happened.
“Sexual? Did he try something!” Of course I was concerned, but at the same time a little turned on. Okay, a lot turned on. There’s something about a beautiful and usually self-assured woman like my wife in the submissive position as a patient that for some time has been a real turn on for me. I think it goes back to when I was kid, “playing doctor” with my older and very attractive female cousin. Recently I’d actually discovered a porn category with such scenarios, which I instantly associated with what she was telling me.
“He didn’t exactly ‘try’ something, she replied, “but at certain moments during my exam it’s like he stopped being just a doctor examining a patient. I could tell he was also, you know, a man…wanting sex with me.”
“I just can’t buy it.” I replied. “I mean, you know his wife, Sheila, and the two of us talk now and then outside his office, at the field hockey games. I can’t imagine him risking that kind of trouble. But then again, you are incredibly attractive.”
“Stop it,” she said, still a little shaken up, but at least glad I was paying attention.
“What exactly did he do?”
“Well,” she continued, “it started off with him just talking to me, you know, about my sore throat. That was normal enough I guess, but even then, as I was telling him about it, how I had no other symptoms, how it got worse at night, he sort of kept looking me up and down.”
“Well isn’t that normal? I mean, you are there to get examined.”
“Robert, a woman knows when a guy’s into her. He checked me out the way you do.”
“Well, you did go in there looking ravishingly beautiful, with that pink lipstick on and your blouse showing a little cleavage. For a conservative woman like you, that’s pretty racy, don’t you think?”
“Ugh!” She said, opening up the fridge to get a can of seltzer. “I knew you’d somehow make this about me looking hot, for your stupid fantasies. So now it’s my fault, right?”
“I’m not saying that at all,” I replied. “I’m just acknowledging that, yes, he is a man, exactly your age, and you are a smoking hot field hockey mom.”
“Oh my god that’s not even a thing. It’s just soccer moms…maybe hockey moms, but definitely not field hockey moms.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, hoping she’d calm down to tell me the rest of what happened. “So he’s looking at you a little sexually, then what?”
“Well, he reached to my neck, you know, to feel my lymph nodes.”
“I’m not a doctor, but that sounds reasonable when you complain of a bad sore throat.”
“Yes, in theory, of course. But it was the way he felt them. Like he was excited to touch me. Then he recorded his initial exam on that little speaker that transcribes his notes.”
“Oh yeah, he always does that. He told me how much time that saves him.”
“Normal right? Only, he says in the thing something like, ‘female patient in good health with lingering sore throat, exam of her supple neck reveals no swelling in the lymph nodes.’ It was the way he said ‘supple’ as he looked at me, and left his hands there on my neck. His eyes followed his hands, down to my lower neck, then I noticed him deliberately, almost kind of forcibly, looking down my blouse. I was leaning forward a little on the exam table, and I know he could see the tops of my breasts in my bra. It wasn’t just a peak. Every guy does that. He was outright staring.”
Even standing in front of her now, since I’m taller than her, I could see a version of what he must have enjoyed. She was wearing one of her shelf bras, a black one with lace around the sides, which now and then shows off the tops of her perfectly pert, smallish breasts, and even a little of her full pink nipples.
“I could see why that upsets you, but I mean, if that’s all there is, like you’re kind of saying ultimately he is a man in addition to being a doctor.”
“Aren’t you upset by it?” she asked, obviously wanting me to be.
“Well, it’s just that I understand. I can’t blame him. Sure, I’m a little jealous, but I’m also a lot more turned on.”
“You’re the worst!” she said, turning to leave.
“Okay okay, hold on!” She stopped. “If you’re upset, then I’m sorry. What do you want to do, not see him again? He’s a great doctor, and he’s on our insurance. I just think if that’s all that happened…”
“You haven’t let me finish!” she replied. “You got too caught up in some fantasy of his having sex with me!”
“Sorry, go on,” thankfully we now both sat down at the kitchen table.
“Well, he had me open my mouth and say ah with that wooden stick holding my tongue down. It’s very professional again, and I’m relieved when he tells me it looks red in there. But he’s holding my mouth open for a while, and a little saliva forms on the side of my lips. I’m instinctually going to wipe it away, because I’m embarrassed I guess. But he reaches with his fingers and beats me to it.”
At this point I’m glad I’m sitting down, so I can hide my emerging hard on in my sweatpants.
“You could make the case that was just a kind of doctor gentleman thing to do,” I replied in his defense, though even I didn’t buy that line of reasoning.
“I guess, but he left the tip of his fingers on my lips like an extra second, or more like a few long seconds. And again, it wasn’t casual, like he would act in a regular exam. There was something in the way he controlled me like that. And it got worse later, during the rest of the exam.”
“There’s more?” I asked. “Now I am concerned.” I really was, in a way, since I didn’t want to lose this doctor. More than that, though, I was kind of torn with desire. I wanted her to feel safe and all, but I was also admittedly really getting off on where this story was headed.
” ‘The nurse says no fever. Have you felt warm at all?’ he asked, now putting his palm on my forehead, the way he did earlier with my neck, and mouth. I told him no, thinking we were done.
“Let’s have a listen to your heart,” he said, “just to make sure. Unbutton your blouse for me.”
She paused, and I waited for more.
“And?” I asked.
“Don’t you get it? He didn’t ask me to please take off my blouse, or to please get undressed. He said it firmly, kind of commanding it, like an order, plus he requested that I do it ‘for him.’ Again, in the way you ask for things during sex.”
“Yeah but usually you just ignore me, unless it’s on your terms,” I replied, something that made this scenario with him all the hotter.
“I know, but he is a doctor, and I do have a sore throat that won’t go away.”
“So you did what you were told?” I asked, putting it that way more to get myself excited than to provoke her.
“Yes, you perv, if you want to say it like that.”
“Please tell me he didn’t feel your breasts,” I said, my own heartbeat now pounding through my body.
“No, of course not, but he did, as he listened to my heart, hold my shoulder with his free hand. I wasn’t moving or anything, so it’s not like I had to be held still. He did the same thing when he put the stethoscope on my back and told me to breathe.”
“I see why it got to you,” I said. “Something definitely happened, but it’s still enough of a grey area that I can’t see it as completely sexual. I mean, it wouldn’t hold up in court. Not that you would even try to sue him or call him out publicly.”
“Of course not,” she replied. “But it was when the exam was over, and I started to think that maybe I made too big of a deal about it, that it got the worst.”
“What happened?” I asked
“When he told me my lungs sounded clear and my heart was fine, he said I could get dressed.”
“That sounds standard. He’s said that to me in my physicals.”
“Yeah, but that’s when he watched me. I mean really watched me, staring at my breasts in my bra. It was so brazen, like he wanted me to know that he was watching me. My hands shook a little, and the blood rushed through me from the shame. I actually felt dizzy. I looked away, to send a signal that it made me feel awkward I guess, but when I looked back he was still looking. Then, as he dictated the prescription in his machine, I saw him reach down and adjust his hard on.”
Looking as concerned as I could at the end of her story, under the table I had to adjust my hard on too.