After I hadn't heard from either of them for nearly two weeks, I determined to hunt down Myra and get some answers before I did another thing! It took me three days to track her down and I had to do it the old fashioned private eye way with a 24 hour stakeout and tailing them that eventually led me to the serpent's lair, literally.
The Serpents Lair (wasn't that also the name of a late 70's video game?) was down in the basement of the old Psych building on the Rice University campus. In the 60's wild-eyed professors with fat government grants ran testing labs down there and when this funding dried up by the mid-70's the graduate students turned this equipment junkyard into their official drinking and hangout den. With the obtainment of a legitimate beer & wine license in the early 1980's and named the Serpents Lair, this became the primary watering hole for the liberal arts and social sciences graduate students. Legal concerns shut the bar down for good a few years ago and the place had remained empty ever since, except for irregular shipments of boxes sent down for storage and then promptly forgotten about, by all parties concerned.
This place had been Myra's primary college home and she had witnessed its rise from obscurity, its heyday and final shutdown, had spent hundreds of hours here, bringing books from the library just across the street and reading until last call when the doors were padlocked. I had heard Myra mention the place often nostalgically so when I followed her car and saw her enter the building, I knew right where she was headed. As a valued alumnus, an occasional visiting teacher and guest lecturer, she had enough clout in the Psych department, to get a little 'research space' and where better than her old study den which was now only a semi-forgotten storage area?
Myra had apparently been a very busy little beaver; all of the old clutter had been moved into the corners and near the center of the room, where the old bar once stood was a large gleaming chrome metal tank, with several computer screen readouts, a printer, dials, hoses and instrument holders that seemed medical in purpose. There were wires everywhere, headphones and more still a few more individual computers, running along the right side wall on top of the original bar carpet covered bench seating that ringed 3 walls of the room.
The floor was bare concrete, and four large cement pillars lay in awkward spots near the corners of the room. The lighting was dim and irregular, about par for a nighttime bar level. Frankly the computer screens probably gave off more light than the fixed light fixtures did. I had never seen anything like this equipment before in any hospital or military base anywhere I had ever been.
"It's a sensory deprivation water chamber." Myra said, "Completely state of the art and it allows only one or two people to handle what used to take a staff of half-a-dozen. If there is anything better for reaching an alpha state trance, I've never found it. I had to get more help and spend more money to set this up than I would have preferred but that can't be helped, time is of the essence. Your Mr. "M" was a very, very smart man and he kept Allison in one of these for a long time while giving her drugs to reshape her entire personality. I'm betting that I'm smarter, and can undo at least some of his programming. Will you go away now?"
"Ummm, No." I replied. "We really need to talk."
"No… we don't," she snapped, "You're just mad because you're not getting laid and I am, unfortunately involving the same woman who loves us both. But don't worry about that, if push came to shove she would and will, choose you over me in a heartbeat. You're Mr Right, I'm Ms. Right now. We can yell and call each other names or you can leave me to my work and just maybe you'll get to fuck her someday again five minutes sooner than you would otherwise, so stop being a selfish bastard and let me do what I need to do."
I gave the attempt at conversation one last try.
"Myra, I
know
you want to help, it seems to drive your every waking moments these days… but is sleeping with your patient really necessary and or at all helpful to the situation?"
"For the millionth time, she is not 'technically' my patient. It's technically true, but other doctors, nurses and therapists actually sign all the paperwork, and she is my friend too, not just my lover." She angrily barked at me, and added more slowly and sadly, "Things just... happened. But now we have complete trust with each other and that really seems to really help and make a difference."
I wish I could have thought of something else clever to use as a leaving line, but I couldn't think of anything worthwhile, so I just said "Ok, fine." and left.
Now I was really sure there was something going on man speak vs. women speak that I wasn't comprehending. Under other circumstances, it would have been Myra I would have asked to get a proper female to male translation, this wasn't likely at the moment. Isn't the age long battle between the sexes really annoying sometimes?
I realized much later that Myra had said something very important that I should have asked a question or two about. It bothered me at the time but I didn't know quite why. I didn't have to wait much longer to get that answer but by then it was definitely the wrong question.
**********
Another month slipped by, things did seem to be improving, my very irregular dinners with Allison (never with Myra along) seemed to become more frequent and we established a semi-firm 'Date night' now for every Monday night. Our sex schedule, however did not improve. Weekends seemed to remain strictly off-limits and I never saw (or seldom spoke to) her during those times at all. We managed little more than a few occasional 'quickies' and one interesting (but cramped) interlude in my car.
My mood at work, volatile these days at best, was becoming volcanic and I often thought about quitting, or loudly offering to do so to my Assistant Chief who still wanted me to assume the soon to be vacated Medical Director position when my useless boss finally retired, hopefully sometime in the next year. Fifteen years ago that was my dream job and was what I had driven myself towards my entire EMT career. More and more I became convinced that now I didn't want the job at all.
As the Divisional Training Manager (and pretty much the de facto Director of Training), I got to do a little bit of 'good,' I felt. I could encourage and groom young EMT's with potential, get rid of the occasional bad apple, give a gentle hand with our 'burnouts' and saved more than a few from quitting. Once in a while I even managed another ride in the "box" and accompanied young EMT-I's and EMT's on a few calls for service but those occasions seemed to become fewer and farther between.
I was alone in my office at work on a miserable Friday afternoon dreading another weekend without Allison, just staring at the four walls of my offices at what seemed to be my endless certificates and certifications. I felt at that moment that I was little more than another "burnout" case myself and I had no clue as to how I could fix it. Myra was of course all busy with her crusade to save Allison.
