The Institute Pt 4 The Surrogate: For Your Own Good
When I removed my bathrobe to step into the hot tub at my brother Phil's glass and steel residence nestled in the foothills of the mountains, I looked down at my top and shook my head. The bra was little more than bottle caps connected held in place by a string tied in a bow behind me. I sighed. Little of my rounded boobs was left to the imagination. The bottom with less fabric than an eye patch acted as the `snatch hatch.'
Entering the room with the tails of his loosely belted plaid bathrobe swirling with a flourish, Phil paused to look on the mantle over the fireplace at the bill for my shopping junket in capital land. Raising his eyebrows, Phil said nothing. Phil ignored the neatly folded grey suit and matching satchel upon which the bill laid. Proceeding to whip off his robe, Phil dangled his penis in front of me. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm generally alone here. I'll run back to my room to fetch a bathing suit, if you wish."
Rather enjoying the sight, I reminded Phil, "No need, Phil. I'm a nurse. As a nurse, I've seen plenty of those things." Chuckling to myself indeed, before my husband Tom's accident, I earned good tip money teasing patients. Like Phil's ablaze fixed on my nipple tips, the eyes of male patients who liked to dangle their accoutrements twinkled as my magic filled their brains with the illusion of what might be possible.
"Now, that you've been calmed down, had a chance to do some shopping," Phil introduced the topic, "we can discuss your situation." When I nodded, Phil continued, "Let me get to the point. You owe a considerable amount of money and are cut off from funds you ought to be entitled to."
Phil spoke authoritatively with the lordly self -- assuredness of a medical doctor, but his eyes told a different story. They wandered to the bubbling froth of the surface of the hot tub and the steam rising from it. Phil was imagining the snatch patch beneath. I still had the magic.
"Phil, darling brother," I cast a loving smile on him, "I didn't need my brilliant brother, a medical doctor, the jewel of our family to tell me that soon I'll be in default and facing compulsory indenture. I suspect I know where I'm headed, but what could become of my children, your nieces and your nephew, and my husband Tom whose award is tied up in a trust?"
Yes, our family produced both a prince and a pauper. In the tumult of this new age, Phil had emerged as a member of the new aristocracy with glorious country estates and attended by an obsequious servant class while I had presented to my brother a beggar.
Nodding his head gravely, presenting that practiced air of detached but present concern that doctors are taught to project, Phil replied, "I didn't call you up here to commiserate. I have some mutually beneficial alternatives I'd like to present. Let's see what we can come up with for your own good and the good of all concerned."
`For my own good' and `for the good of all concerned' were terms I had heard often of late since this maudlin act in my life story began. Looking out on the twilight in the great Northern forest, still leafy green in the final bloom of late summer, I remarked, "Without curtains, I feel exposed like I'm on stage."
Only yesterday, after arrival in my brother's woodland retreat, I voiced a similar sentiment as I sat with my brother in his living room.
"Without shades on a room in a glass windowed house," I paused and shook myself, "you feel eh--exposed," I told my brother Phil as we sat on black leather furniture in a glass walled living room perched atop a treed hillside.
Extending a palm as if he were presenting to me the breathtaking vista overlooking a ravine, Phil chuckled, "There's nothing out there in the glorious northern forest but trees, deer, and an occasional coyote. I do keep my medical consultarium just beyond that ridge, but they're out of our line of sight."
Darkness was approaching outside but inside was lit by recessed lighting, glaring down on a sterile, white linoleum floor, more like what you might find in a doctor's waiting room than in a home. It makes sense I thought to myself. My brother Phil with a grey fringe creeping into his dark brown hair was a doctor, a good one or at least a successful one. With his money, why hadn't Phil attracted a suitable woman to add a feminine, homier touch to his palace? Perhaps Phil fell in love with himself.
"Meg, you've ugh--fallen into some eh--difficulties," Phil broke into the purpose of the meeting. "Y'know Mom and Dad, before they died, asked me to look after you. They were concerned."
"Concerned? They tossed me out -- age 20 and pregnant, just short of completing my nursing program. Fortunately, Tom was a good as his word," I recounted, "And Tom and I were doing good. Tom worked construction. He made a good buck -- until the accident..." I broke down and couldn't continue speaking.
I didn't want to show weakness in front of Phil. I couldn't help myself. For the past few years, I've been like a brick wall holding up a front for my children and my injured husband, borrowing money against the prospect of a recovery for Tom and then finding all the funds recovered tied up "for our own good."
Solicitously, Phil did not interrupt my caterwauling. After I apologized for a bout of self -- indulgence. "A woman with children mustn't feel sorry for herself."
I knew I had few options open to me. After Tom's accident, I was left without a paycheck -- Both Tom and I found ourselves out of work. Tending to Tom and three children, I couldn't work. To obtain loans I was reduced to pledging my body as collateral. I needed the money to support children. Two hadn't reached school age. I took the chance Tom's case would collect. Now it was time to pay.
Unexpectedly, contacted by my brother, I jumped at his invitation for a short vacation at his mountain retreat. Honestly, I hadn't come to beg. I needed a rest before I faced whatever lie ahead.
What lie ahead was it grim? These days many masters kept slaves and indenturees naked even in public in warm weather. Naked slaves were less likely to run. My proven ability to carry children to term might consign me to Surrogacy; my figure might put me in a brothel. As much as I resigned myself to my fate, I couldn't turn down a potential opportunity out of pride.
"Why don't we put off this discussion -- for another time," Phil clapped his hands on his knees preparing to rise, "Often I find after some time working out in the gym, doing laps in the pool or simply relaxing in the hot tub, solutions will manifest themselves. Why don't we adjourn to the sauna?"
"I didn't know--I didn't bring a suit?" I protested.
"A suit?" Phil chuckled, "there's no one about. My personal staff is off duty. Your children are abed. It's just you and me." Phil paused for a sweep of the second hand on his antique clock on a table. Would my brother dare to expect me to join him in the hot tub without a suit? What should I do if he insisted? Phil's money could bail me out.
However, Phil suggested instead, "if you think it necessary, I'll have Angie my administrative assistant bring you to town early in the morning to select a suit or whatever other items of clothing you might require." Thinking aloud, Phil added, "The Head Housekeeper can pinch hit for Angie for a day."
At that point, Phil was interrupted by Angie, Phil's tall impassive crew cut aide. The swishing of her grey pantlegs warned of her approach.. Cold and distant, Angie had resisted small talk driving my family from the airport in the capital to Phil's mountain retreat.
"A problem in my study?" Phil asked. His expression was grave.
I was terror struck. "My husband?" I cried.
"No, Mrs Morgan, Mr Tom Morgan, your husband settled in well enough to his new environment in the Institute's consultarium," Angie turned to my brother to report, "Because the incident involves conduct of Dr Trystan Throop --."
When Phil raised his eyebrow, Angie, glancing quickly at me, waited for Phil's nod to proceed before she added with emphasis, "Dr Throop with an indentured nurse," Angie looked toward me, "security suggests you review interim action taken."
"Well, medicine calls," Phil rose. "Oh, Angie you won't mind taking Mrs Morgan to the capital in the morning for a little shopping."
Early the next morning, promptly at 8AM, arms crossed, Angie, in a more formal grey skirted suit, was waiting cross-armed outside my room. In a friendly tone, I tried to place ourselves on a familiar basis, "We didn't talk much in the car yesterday. I'm Margaret Morgan, but everyone calls me Meg. It's kind of a cross between Peg for Margaret and Meg for Megan. My brother told me you're Angie. Is it Angie a first name or Ms Angie your last name?"
"Angie should suffice," Angie replied tartly, "shall we go?" We drove me in a Phil's company car, a black limousine. Angie ushered me into the back seat. "Ah-hem, Mrs Morgan, deference to your position is required," Angie managed to express respect intoned with an imperious ah-hem.
It was hard to size Angie up. She held an important position, but was she an employee or an indenturee? Indenturees could hold important positions. In the Hospital where I worked, the number of indenturees increased among nurses, housekeepers, and even doctors on staff increased as time went on. Salaried employees were told to accord the indenturee the same respect accorded a co-employee. Did we? It depended.
Respect was one thing I haven't experienced in quite a while. Deference was an unfamiliar quality in the world of obtaining loans using your body as collateral. The world I had descended into was designed to insult middle class affectations. "If you're so sure our husband's injury case will collect, then pledging your person as security for the loan shouldn't be a problem," I was told. I sighed. My life was in a tail -- spin.
Careening down what Angie described as "former logging roads which Dr Crenshaw's Institute has paved over and straightened," I gulped. Only my seat belt restrained me from rolling round the clothed backseat of the limo. Maneuvering a sharp turn followed by a rough rutted patch, Angie, looking up at me in her rear-view mirror and raising her penciled in eyebrows, added without expression, "paved over and straightened -- hmm--for the most part."
