"Good morning, Miss Morales, and how are you this fine Christmas Eve morning?"
"Good morning, Mr. Lowell. I'm just fine, thank-you. Doctor's running just a bit behind so please have a seat. She'll be with you as soon as she can. Are you all set for the holiday?"
"Oh, I'll spend Christmas just about like I do any other day off. I'll put a log on the hearth, pour myself a single malt or two since it's a holiday and put some eighteenth century Christmas music on the stereo and toast the season. What will you be doing?"
"You're going to
what
? Aren't you going home for the holidays? It's only an hour to Boston. Why are you staying here?" Leticia Morales folded her arms and glared at the patient.
Everett Lowell sighed. "I don't get on with my family. My sister is an investment banker and she's outraged that I'm not taking charge of the family trust. My mother is disgusted that I am quite happy living modestly on my late aunt's trust fund when I could be emulating my 'late, noble father who dashed around the world doing wonderful things for the underprivileged.' My grandmother despairs of my ever getting married and carrying on the family name so she's always trying to line me up with some vacuous debutante. I gave up trying to be civil to them years ago. It's just better this way."
"Poor Mr. Lowell! Don't you even have any pets?"
"Miss Morales, I'm sorry but I'm so absent-minded a pet would have to pour out kibble for me. If some poor creature moved in with me it would probably starve to death before spring. I am, as my mother so pithily put it, a natural academic drone. I'll finish my doctorate in a year or so, probably find a junior professorship somewhere in a small college in the South or Mid-West and live out my days boring undergraduates to death with my interpretations of Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers."
Leticia was aghast. Everett was still so young and so dashing looking in his tweeds and tattersall. He should be the object of coed daydreams and faculty wives' conspiracies instead of moping about like some octogenarian emeritus. He certainly made her all warm and misty-eyed whenever he came in.
"Doctor will see you now."
Everett stood and followed the white starched figure down the hall. His mind wandered as he watched the firm backside ahead of him. Dr. Lee's nurse, Susan, was old enough to be his mother but somehow managed to keep the atmosphere around her charged. He wondered how she did it.
"Hello, Mr. Lowell," Doctor Kim Lee was a China doll of a woman. "I'm glad you could wait. You're my last patient for the day so we don't have to rush. Now take off your shirt and let me have a listen." Dr. Lee nodded to herself mentally. Leticia was right; Everett was a fine figure of a man. All that rowing and squash was obviously good for him.
As the physical exam wore on, Dr. Lee became more chatty and personable, setting Everett at his ease and joking with him mildly. By the time it came for him to drop his trousers and be checked for any hernia, he was feeling positively jovial. Then she pulled out a surgical glove and told him to turn around.
"Hey! I'm only twenty-seven. Men aren't supposed to need prostate exams until they turn fifty. What . . .?"
The slap on his butt stung. Thinking back on the incident later, Everett was sure she had left a red hand print.
"Funny, as I understand it," Dr. Lee was growling, "
I
am the doctor and
you
are the patient. I decide what you need and you do what I say. Is that not correct? Why, bless me, so it is. Now, turn around, spread your feet and bend over!"
Stunned, Everett complied. He heard the cap of the lubricant bottle pop open and a glooping sound as Dr. Lee applied some to her fingers. He felt the cool gel on his anus and the gentle massaging pressure as she rubbed around. Oddly, she was making no attempt to penetrate. The sensations were startling, exciting. Unfortunately, he thought, they were also arousing and his physical response was embarrassing.
"Ah, a healthy male response." Dr. Lee's voice was light. "That's a good sign. Perhaps we ought to do a sperm count while we're at it." She slipped a latex covered finger inside and gently stroked his prostate. "Well, that feels healthy. Does it feel good, too, Mr. Lowell?"
Everett gulped. "Dr. Lee?"
"Hush. We need that sperm count."
She withdrew the finger, added more lubricant and then pushed in two fingers. His eyes widened just as his sphincters were widened, stretched, loosened. Now the stroking was firmer and so was his response. Within in seconds his cock was ramrod stiff.
"Oh, very good, Mr. Lowell. That
is
a healthy male response. It's always gratifying to see one's patients in fine physical condition."
Dr. Lee's other hand began to stroke the underside of his manhood. The stroking from outside and in soon had Everett on the edge of climax. She reached to one side and placed a large test tube at the tip of his cock. A couple of rubs more on his prostate and Everett shot into the test tube with a groan. Again she stroked and again he ejaculated and again.
"A very,
very
healthy male response, Mr. Lowell. Now don't move . . ."
There was a sudden sharp pain in his buttock. "What?"
"Nembutal, Mr. Lowell. Nighty-night—and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lowell."
Everett woke to the sound of eighteenth century Christmas music but the bed was not his. Sitting up in alarm he found himself not in his genteelly threadbare bachelor flat but in a room in a first rate, modern and anonymous hotel. Warily he folded the covers back and got out of bed. He was naked but the room was warm. That was good because a thorough examination of the place turned up not a thread of clothing. There wasn't even a complimentary bathrobe.
I've been kidnapped. Dr. Lee drugged me and I've been kidnapped. Are they holding me for ransom? Damn, that doesn't make sense. If they were I would be tied up somewhere uncomfortable, not here with a working telephone.
A moment later his estimate changed. The phone didn't work. When he went to the door, he saw that not only was it locked but that there was no knob on the inside. Perhaps he really was being held for ransom. Oh, that was just great. His mother would pay whatever was demanded, all right, and then hold it over him for the rest of her life. He had to get away but first, Nature called.
When he came out of the bathroom there was a covered plate on a cart sitting by his bed. Someone, somewhere, was watching him. It was creepy enough to make him want to wrap up in a towel. However, lifting the cover revealed a sumptuous breakfast and since he had eaten nothing for the last twenty-four hours, the Inner Man prevailed and he finished it off in record time.
Everett began to regret his refined taste in literature. If only he'd condescended to read more mysteries and spy novels, a solution to his dilemma might be obvious. Unfortunately, it was not so he sat in the club chair by the window and watched the snow fall. The city was having a white Christmas and he wasn't having any kind of Christmas at all—and then he heard a door open.
Whipping around, the man saw Nurse Susan fetchingly dressed in a form-fitting Santa suit. Behind her Dr. Lee, the sexiest elf in Cambridge, pushed a tall gaudily-wrapped box on a furniture dolly into the room.
"Everett Lowell," 'Santa' announced sternly, "you've been a very naughty boy!"
"I what? What have I done?" Everett felt that he should be embarrassed, standing there naked in front of the two women but Susan's words took him off balance.
"Not 'what have you done', Mr. Lowell, 'what have you failed to do'. Remember Dickens "Christmas Carol"? Ebenezer Scrooge got mugged by the Spirits of Christmas for being a miser and all he hoarded was money. You hoard yourself and that's a whole lot worse. There are people out in the world with needs, both physical and emotional, that you could answer but what do you do? You wrap yourself in your comfortable little sterile, academic world and ignore everyone else. Your father did the family fortune proud; your sister gives you the tools to continue his legacy and more but no, all you can think about are musty, depressing stories about pathetic people in hard times past. Well I've got news for you, Mister; there are still lots of people out there having tough times and we think it is high time you started doing something about it. Get into the box."
"Now see here . . ."
Dr. Lee's green eyes flashed lightning and she snarled, "Santa said get in the box!"
Outnumbered and overwhelmed, Everett stepped into the tall box. The front shut and snapped behind him. Through cloth-covered air holes he heard them say, "There are handholds on the side you can steady yourself with. Use them." And he felt himself being rolled out of the room and down the hall.
Since he had no idea where he started from there was absolutely no way he could tell where he was being taken. All he was aware of was rolling along, presumably down a hall, the dropping feeling one gets in an elevator, more rolling and then, to his surprise, the sound of a subway. He was being loaded onto the MBTA! The train rumbled along for a couple of stops and then he once again was rolled out onto the platform and into an elevator. The lift went up several floors and then was he rolled down what might be a hall. Was he in another hotel? An apartment building? God forbid that it might be an office tower . . .
A doorbell rang and a door opened.
"Susan? Dr. Lee? What is . . .?"
"Merry Christmas, Leticia. It's your Christmas bonus, young lady. You've worked very hard this year and since we know you're saving up to bring the rest of your family out of Honduras we thought you really needed a present. Here it is."
"
