Billie wasn't surprised when she got the call.
It was the first Friday night that she had been scheduled off in longer than she could remember, which was more than slightly irritating, but the young and ambitious doctor was definitely not surprised when the pager buzzed halfway through dinner. Sod's law, really. There once was a time when everything was quiet in the tiny insulated world of her forensic ward. The other, faster paced specialities used to call them the accountancy department on the fourth floor. She almost fondly missed those days. Since the law clamped down on the practice of training submissives into servicehood for the highest bidder as a means to pay off their debt it had been all systems go. This new, more equal world needed more forensic doctors than there were presently on the registry. Her services were constantly required, not that Billie begrudged it when push came to shove. A few more years of this and the board would no doubt give her an entire institution to run. She was making headway, so the big wigs reassured.
"How many this time?" Billie shook the rain off and hurried down the empty hallway, her coat and handbag palmed off to the young trainee from Danbridge, Doctor Samson, who scuttled beside her. The sleep-deprived intern unfortunate enough to be stuck on the grave shift kept up as best he could beside her, leafing through the mercifully-slender admissions file.
"Just the two so far, Doctor Stone." Samson confirmed and came to a halt as his boss pulled on her white lab coat. "The first girl was in bad shape. They sent her downstairs straight away for an echocardiogram, angiogram, the works. I doubt Cardio will be giving her back any time soon. I've got the second patient set up in a suite. Full restraints, she's feisty." The corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
Billie paused as she fixed her stethoscope neatly around her neck. She looked her young, eager trainee up and down. It wasn't that she disliked Samson but on the list of the top five people she would kick off of a cliff given half the chance, Samson took up at least three spaces on the list on an exceedingly good day. He was just... too unreserved
.
Billie understood it, how difficult it could be to compartmentalise the primal urge to view the submissives through a sexualised gaze but compartmentalise it they had to. Still, Samson wasn't the worst by far. His heart was in the right place for the most part, although his lingering stare usually wasn't. But, Billie could abide it considering he was still so new into his residency. A forensic neuro-programming specialist she would make of him yet.
"I take it you think you're scrubbing in?" Billie kept her tone measured and cool.
"Well." Samson pursed his lips. "I submitted the research assignment you asked me to do, all ten thousand words of it and then some."
"Did you chase the psych evaluation I ordered for the young woman in room four?" Billie folded her arms expectantly.
"They said there was no jumping the line."
"We decondition and desensitize people who have been trained for sexual servitude, Samson. Time is money. Get my ducks in a row so we can push on with her treatment and I'll think about letting you scrub in on the next intake." Billie pushed a small, curt smile and headed down the hallway towards her newest patient. "Oh, and Samson?" She turned over her shoulder to the doldrum, sheepish intern with his hands dug firmly in his pockets. "You did a good job getting the patients brought in and sent to the right place, and for calling me as quickly as you did. I'm impressed. Next time you're up to bat, I mean it." She couldn't help but soften, slightly.
"Thanks, Billie." His mouth pushed into a shallow smile.
"We're not on a first name basis, Samson. Never call me that again." She turned on her heels and became icy cool.
Billie walked through the silent veins of the department until she arrived at the right door. She stopped in the reflection of a window, checking herself over quickly. Her light blonde hair was softly coiffed and pushed off her face, like she had maybe styled it but got caught up doing other things before she could finish making it pristine. Her lipstick was a palatable colour, somewhere between a nude pink and salmon tone. She was wearing blush along her slender cheekbones but not too much, just enough to make her blue eyes gleam a little brighter in contrast with her makeup. Vanity aside, these were all important things to double-check and preen over before meeting a new patient. Billie knew she was in the business of first impressions. Considering most of her patients were either terrified or completely broken into submission depending on how long they had been kept in the dungeons—as they were colloquially known—it was important that the first face they saw on the road to recovery was one they could trust. A face that was both soft but professionally distant, warm but cool, feeling but unfeeling. Billie knew she ticked all the boxes.
Billie glanced down to the file in her hand and read the brief notes that Samson had put together for her.
The patient was a twenty year old female, Amelia Hopkins, a former college gymnastics scholarship hopeful before a badly torn ligament took her out of contention. That was when the debts started climbing, for physiotherapy to get back on the glass knee in the beginning, then for snake oils once the physiotherapy only went so far. Billie rubbed the back of her neck and actually felt sorry for the kid. Her case wasn't the usual run of the mill opioid addiction or bratty girl who ran up the credit cards and mistakenly thought daddy back home in the suburbs would foot the bill, not that those women deserved it any more or less. Amelia just sounded like an innocent bystander, maybe. Billie knew better than to make personal assessments on clinical cases, and so despite her own first take on the situation she pushed the most human parts of herself away and forced herself to be concerned with only the job at hand.
She opened the door to the suite and flipped on the light switch. The patient, Amelia, was restrained in a prone, jackknife position on the hospital bed. She was laying in a manner which faintly resembled a nude doggy position with a soft foam cushion shoved beneath her belly. It was degrading. It was embarrassing. It was absolutely necessary in order to prevent the intake patients hurting either themselves or hospital personnel — considering most of them had been conditioned by the dungeon masters to resist law enforcement and medical help at all costs. Amelia's wrists and ankles were restrained with soft padded cuffs while a blindfold remained affixed around her head to prevent sensory overstimulation. It helped to keep patients in the jackknife position for that reason too. The pressure of body weight resting against the abdomen helped soothe the sense of panic that came with having their thighs restrained open for any procedures that may be deemed necessary, like being kept in a foetal position of sorts.
Billie noticed the heightened, fastened rhythm on the heart monitor. Amelia was clearly aware someone had entered the room, though she couldn't see whom the click of high heels belonged to. Billie paused for a moment and watched her patient's spine push up and down with the heaviness of her breathing. The dutiful doctor walked around and hushed the little patient who had gotten herself caught up in things far too big for herself with low crooning noises, careful not to touch her skin or startle her with direct contact just yet.
"It's okay. You're okay. Everything is alright, Amelia. My name is Doctor Stone and you're here with me, safe, in my reconditioning programme." Billie kept a safe distance as she incessantly reassured the trembling young woman straining against the padded cuffs. "Would you like me to remove your blindfold, Amelia?" Billie asked calmly.
The young woman chuntered and whimpered but could not form coherent words. She was a slight young woman, slender but with the dips of muscles flexing each time she strained. Strong girl, Billie thought to herself. It was a fantastic sign, all things considered. She had seen girls come through her doors either grossly malnourished or dangerously overweight depending on the appetite of the buyer they were being trained for. Billie remained hopeful it was a symptom that her new patient hadn't been kept in the dungeons for any considerable length of time. She clasped her hands and waited for Amelia to answer whether she would like the blindfold removed or not.
