My uncle, a doctor, hoped I would be a minister. A strange thought. You see, he spent much of his life in the developing world on a religious mission to eradicate polio. He saved lives and brought happiness to the world. He also prayed for those who suffered.
I'm different. I had given myself fully to the practical and not the spiritual. Ethics, after all, isn't really all that metaphysical. You reduce pain. You increase happiness. It's quite that simple. People ask if doctors must ever consider moral costs. Well yes, I recognize that animal testing is required in research. That is a serious amount of suffering. Now I ask you, as a rational person, what amount of utility has been gained by that? If it could be quantified, it would be infinite.
My devout uncle delivered vaccinations to the masses. Soon, I'd make my contributions too. I'd give so much more than I could as a minister.
Oh, I'd almost forgotten, my name is Jeri McSweeny. Yes, like the macabre musical. I've heard it all before.
Now there's one thing about the medical profession: we take our health and our stress level quite seriously. I don't mean that we need to be on our feet and away from a soul crushing desk. I don't mean only nutrition. What I mean is our emotional and physical health requires extra care. There is one thing above all that gets that done as efficiently as a flu shot.
I fuck. Specifically, I fuck Elliot Crooker. Elliot Crooker had a dick that exceeded average size and stuffed me better than any of my penetration toys. His other great asset? His shoulders. You see, Elliot got into the medical field after working as a young EMT. He developed the kind of body that once waded into turbulent flood waters, retrieved an exhausted woman clinging to a tree branch, and carried her to safety. Not since that time had he once let his stamina and muscular physique go. Not even through six years of school.
I experienced that stamina for myself after our usual dinner date. Elliot had me bent over his bed, exposing my vagina. The first penetration stung with that stretch. Then, I couldn't do anything other than relax and accept that euphoric insertion.
"Fuck me harder," I stammered.
"Like this?"
He spanked me. The sensation went right up to my head.
"Yes! Like that!"
Slap. Slap. Elliot's palm thudded. My pussy was so damn wet at that point and he slipped out from me.
"You're all warmed up now," he said while his fingers found my clit. I moaned for it. Ahh, it was so good. An entire day's worth of tension evaporated with a simple caress there. Interesting historical fact: did you know that doctors provided that as a professional service in the years of Victorian prudes?
"You ready for a ride?"
"Fuck yes," I said.
Cow girl never gets old. I mounted Elliot, taking his girth up inside my cunny. Oh let me tell you how much I enjoyed looking down on him. His pectorals and shoulders widened out as he relaxed. His face? He had these hot blue eyes underneath dense eyebrows. Something about his stubble always made sex better too. It shaded the contours of his jaw and his cheekbones like an airbrushed model on a billboard. He could've been one.
"Take it!" he said shoving himself up into me. I winced and gasped. Then, I thumped my pelvis up and down on him. Taking control, I pleasured myself on his shaft as he watched my body shake. After resting, he tried to roll over, but I held him down and possessed his cock once again. It's fun when he climaxes.
I curled my body next to Elliot post consummation. The sex was good. It always was.
"Hell of a day for you, huh?" he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh I can tell, Jeri," he chuckled. "It's the way you orgasmed that second time. That, and how we got right to it after dinner."
I thought about it. Yes, he'd been right. It's strange when you're in the middle of doing work of medicine that you forget exactly how it drains you. The nervous systems still knows though. That must be what Elliot noticed.
"Today was more stressful than normal," I added. I wondered how he felt as I stroked his chest. Was it possible for nerves to sense each other like this? Perhaps someday I could understand his nervous systems too.
"You are, extra happy today?" I guessed based on his smile. It looked prouder and more relaxed than the usual.
"Chicago Adventist Oncology," he said.
"What?" I half jumped out of the bed. Chicago Adventist was a top ten Oncology institute in the country. Well funded. Well staffed. They had developed a new way to detect liver cancer. That technique was pending peer review, but it was promising. "What about it?"
"I'm on the short list for a residency there," he replied.
"Chicago Adventist. Amazing Elliot."
I cuddled close with him again. To get short listed for a position there was already an honor. One that I had hoped for myself. Treating cancer is something that I've wanted to do since my uncle's work had eliminated polio in an entire country. You see, the medical community should ever rest on our laurels. There will also be a new disease to eradicate. Cancer remained one of the most persistent.
I am to be a doctor. I will do my part to make things better.
We spent the night, though my sleep was inconsistent. In the morning, Elliot and I showered in an efficient manner and he drove off to the university. Me? I headed to my car and it opened with the familiar chirp.
I turned the ignition. There wasn't a click or a sputter. It was a nothing. For almost the last decade, I'd studied to make human organs work together. Yet the metal oiliness under the hood of my car remained a mystery. Also, why had the interior dome light popped like that? Was that a cause or an effect? Correlation does not prove causation.
I called a tow and waited forty five minutes. Dammit. I sent several e-mails and text messages, apologizing for appointments I'd missed that day. Including Marley, my drinking buddy and occasional lover.
"What do you mean you'll have to cancel the lunch?"
"My car," I muttered from the inside of the tow truck. "I can't meet you at 12:30 like we planned."
"Well what about 1:00 or 2:00?"
That surprised me.
"Aren't you working?"
"I'm working for myself now. New law firm, didn't I tell you?"
"What happened to Allegiant Business Law?"
"Wasn't for me," said Marley. Yeah, that was true. The bags under her eyes and her frequent sighs spoke enough. She never cared for that position, but Marley doesn't quit either.
"So what are you doing now?"
"Nothing today," Marley continued a laid back tone. I hardly believed this was the woman who was on her third vodka cranberry when I met her. "Text me where the mechanic is. I'll pick you up."
Marley took me to our favorite bar, and we shared overpriced vegetarian tapas. Her anticipated new position was in immigration law. That's a bold move, and one that would produce much positive utility. Every successfully settled migrant reduced suffering of at least one person. Yet it paid less. Marley had law school debts to pay. The corporate world helped with that. Work that might as well be pro bono could not.
"It'll be fine. Really," she said. The new position pays only about ten thousand less than what I'm earning now."
"Only ten thousand?" I said.
"Plus the loan forgiveness after four years," she explained.
My eyes opened wide.
"I had help getting it," Marley added. "Ever heard of Grey Temple Career Wellness?"
"Yes," I said with skepticism. They advocated company sponsored yoga, proper ergonomics, and encouraging office employees to make sand sculptures. Grey was fitting for their name. They occupied the strange area between evidence based health practices, and new age practices that -to be perfectly precise- had not yet been supported by peer reviewed research.
"They're more than new age mumbo jumbo, Jeri." She read my mind. Lawyers. They're so good at body language. "Here."
She handed me a card for Grey Temple. It displayed a confident, beautiful, and professional woman with a bold light sparkle to her eyeshadow. Illaria Cortez.
"Have some consultant time," Marley encouraged.
"Why?"
"Because your car is broken," she added. "Because your schedule is messed up. You might as well fill the time."
Hard to argue with that, but I could at least manage to catch up on some studies. I might need to clean up my apartment too. Wait, no. This was the week I had finally broken down and hired cleaning services. I yanked out my phone. My critical tasks had been pushed back another day. Now, without having to travel across town to the hospital, I had a three hour gap in my day. It had been empirically verified.
"Okay, Marley. I'll see her this afternoon."
My ride share took me out of downtown and to a neighborhood in rapid transition. New construction surrounded me. That's a healthy sign even as it meant that people had to relocate. When a depressed area of a city is revitalized with new construction, a city can be better planned. This means more taxes for the common good and ultimately more benefit for everyone, including those who were forced to move as the older buildings were torn down.
Besides, those old buildings probably contained lead.
There was one building that stood out among the others. Grey bricks and arched windows made up the most of it. It had high steeples and arched doorways. Stained glass? It had that too. Though I could see some of the glass was new. A sleek modern sign out front proclaimed "Grey Temple Career Wellness." They must've taken their name from the bricks.
Inside, it had been remodeled. Hallways had been added, cubicles had replaced pews, and bright stained glass windows overlooked a lobby. After waiting, I recognized Illaria as soon as she greeted me. Her outfit is what you would get if a sari made a baby with a CEO and then took his job.
"I've been expecting you," she said. Her voice soothed as it projected around the room.
"How could you?"
"Intuition."
"I'm Jeri. Pleased to meet you."
"Charmed. Come into my office," she began.
Illaria reclined on a comfortable couch and asked me to sit on a nearby armchair. Her desk was tucked away in the corner. She asked several questions such as how I knew Marley. Before long, we slipped into the taboo subject of workplace romances. I let slip that I'd been sleeping with Elliot, and apologized for bringing my sex life into a work consultant conversation.
"Oh it needn't be so taboo," said Illaria. "We needn't spend everyday of our lives doing constant risk assessment, cost benefit analysis, when it comes to our empowerment."
She stressed the word empowerment. Illaria had a strong sense of making the world better. Empowerment -specifically the term 'integrated empowerment'- was the word she used to connect sexual life, career life, relationship life. Everything was drawn together for her.
