It was 5:30 PM in the cinder-blocked ante-room to the Fertility Experiment. My secretary Sherry and I were giggling. "Dr Barton, I never expected," Sherry laughed, "when I took a job in a hospital to find myself bare assed, bumping butts with my boss, bent over being poked and prodded by Nurse Wretched, that bitch on duty."
I whispered my reply, "Oh, I'm sure the nurse enjoys this. The witch made us take all our clothes off. I wore slacks so that I could just pull them down."
"It's good she goes off duty in a few minutes. Taking an appointment in a doctor's office is no different from picking a good time with a personal shopper in a lingerie store," Sherry quipped, "get the earliest or latest appointment possible. You get either the most attention or the quickest service, whichever you want on that day."
My laughter changed to a gasp when the nurse plunged the rectal thermometer in.
"I heard that," snapped the nurse.
I looked over at Sherry who cussed when the thermometer was rammed into her. "Hold still," warned the nurse, "If you wiggle your little tushes, I may have to take a second reading."
After the nurse left the room for a moment, I giggled like a teenager with Sherry. It was my turn to study her body. I looked over at Shelly bent over with upper extremities reaching for the floor. Her mammaries (breasts) so small and compact they clung to her slight thoracic cavity (chest). Slender and petit, barely an ounce of fat, Sherry boasted of a gluteal prominence (butt) was little more than a round bump.
"When I was in High School, Dr Barton," her face turned a deep red as her voice trailed off ...
Just two days ago, the morning after Sherry's ovam (egg) donation, Sherry and I met in the Lingerie Shop in the Crossways Mall for a fitting.
Early that morning, I had found myself at my desk reviewing my meeting schedule for the morning with the instructors in the medical, nursing and undergraduate college over the upcoming exercise. The Fire Department was coming to see me that afternoon. "A meeting is the occasion to pool collective ignorance and expound upon it." Who told me that? Could it have been my ex - friend and current oppressor gritty Erica Ehrlich or was it sweet little Sherry, my Secretary?
Right now, I wished Sherry were here to cheer me with a clever play on words. With the disaster in October which led to Erica's malpractice lawsuit against me and the hospital, tension was building about the upcoming emergency medical disaster response exercise. While I as director in teaching Emergency Response to the Sick and Injured, had to confront stern faces trying to push blame off on me, I would have to stare them down alone.
I expected that Sherry would sleep that day away. During her ovam (egg) donation, the previous evening in the hospital's sub - basement Fertility Experiment, the nurse had given 40.8 KG (90 lbs) Sherry a shot that would have, in Sherry's own words, knocked three women and a baby elephant out. What was it about bouncy little Sherry that made her fill the slot in my life Erica had left vacant?
How could I compare Sherry to Erica Ehrlich? Both were glib, masters of hyperbole. Whenever I spoke or wrote, I used such clinically inflated terms, Sherry advised me to provide English translations. "I can't help it. Those are the terms I think in," I rationalized.
As the God that I was I could never admit wrong. Indeed, in retrospect, it was that rigidity of thinking that led me to the current predicament. The cover up of an insignificant, accidental dust off that Erica sustained at the October exercise blossomed lead to severe injuries charged a multi - count lawsuit.
What would Erica have said? Erica phrased her `constructive criticism' by belittling my pretentiousness with the challenge "Come off your pedestal and act human for a minute."
Both would have been regarded as a little down - market by Father's standards. Even assuming that , in those times, Father might have accepted a same sex attraction, much less a same sex relationship, I have to admit people generally then, even Father, were more inclined to overlook a girl - girl liaison than a homosexual connection between men..
Both Sherry and Erica had an intangible power I really don't understand, an instinct the wholly logical, rational, pseudo - scientific world of medicine does not recognize: the ability to read my mind and express in a whimsical way an idea I was formulating but steadfast in my reluctance to embrace. Both brought out my best. With that capacity, Erica was an even more dangerous enemy than she had been complementary as a friend.
At that, the phone rang. I almost called out to Sherry to pick it up. Undecided, I pondered, should a god do such a mundane task as answer her own phone? Oops, I answered the phone with a hello.
"Oh, Dr Barton." Sherry's high - pitched sing - song immature voice greeted me. "I'm glad you picked up the phone. I'm taking my free day off, today. I'm the opening girl at THE SLEEPY TIME GAL..."
"Sleepy Time Gal?" I questioned.
"That's the body shop," Sherry paused to await confirmation. "The lingerie store you wanted to visit?" Sherry's voice went into the alto soprano range lost in maturity. Assured I understood, Sherry added, "Get here before 9. We'll have the place to ourselves for an hour." Before I could reply, Sherry, voice racing, answered my unasked question. "I'd pick you up, but I pitched such a bitch to get out of the sub - basement dungeon at 6AM that I dare not wiggle my little tushie past that hospital this morning..."
"Are you quite well enough to do this?" I interjected.
"You don't think," Sherry sharply shot back, "I'd waste my day off, drugged up, lying around naked? If I wanted to lie around naked spaced out, the guy gets a room and champagne. I have to keep up with my boss."
I couldn't quite respond to that.
Sherry rattled off instructions, "from downtown take the 10 or 12 bus to the Crossways Mall, last stop, edge of town."
Did Sherry hang up without saying good-bye? She talked so fast I couldn't tell. I was so used to having Sherry take care of such mundane details that I actually called out her name, before I realized I'd have to personally push my morning appointments to the afternoon.
Somehow, I managed to clear my agenda for the morning to get away. Downstairs at the barrier, a friendly guard greeted me, "Taking off early, Dr Barton?"
"House call," I quipped with a smile, "I'll be back."
I boarded the first bus that came. It trudged up the giant hill at State Street, cut over to Western Avenue for a stop at Capitol Station. Just past there, was the first of many monuments straight out to the edge of town. Then, unlike the iconoclasm today, the statues stood on the pedestals. In the post - Vietnam recovery, everyone was talking about building new monuments to `the forgotten war' in Korean. - When the heck was that? And of course, there was a proposal for a Vietnam memorial in Capital land.
Vietnam? Every guy of standing dodged the draft. Father made phone calls to get my brothers Josh and Ian out of the draft.
As we passed my former convent school on the trip to the Crossways Mall on the Western edge of capital land, I reflected that ritualized, pseudo - scientific purposes of the showers regulating access to the Fertility Institute were simply fooling around among the alley cats in the convent school. Being smart, short and fat, I was blessed by being blissfully ignored when I wasn't an object of ridicule.
"Nice rack," one of the alley cats might have snickered, "wasted on such a blimp."
The Push Ahead Program that sought to swell ranks of women in medicine had rescued me from that. In college, it was my turn to snicker. I'd chuckle at the cool girls, the ratskeller alley cats, who strode through the semester on their looks. All the money those chic girls earned stripping in the clubs, nude modelling or working topless in bars just flowed right into the mall.
Inside the concourse of the mall, no one was about. Most shops were still closed. When I reached "The Sleepy Time Girl," the door was locked but Sherry, booming smile as bright as the smile on the button - sized, yellow clock face of the time - piece that dangled on a pendant from a chain around her neck, opened the door to admit me. I heard her dark, tight - fitting polyester slacks which revealed every curve swish when she gripped the door. Casting a suspicious glance up and down the promenade before she shuttered the door. "Good!" Sherry exclaimed, "You've arrived a full hour before opening."
I was about to apologize but Sherry's machine gun mouth rattled away, "We have the place to ourselves. No one noticed you. The store has been talking about installing spy cameras in the store, but no one has yet to do done anything. Get in the changing room in the back. Start getting undressed."
"Undressed?" I questioned.
"Everything off. I'm measuring you for intimate apparel, lacy frillies." Sherry paused to gauge my understanding before she added, "Lacy frillies go under your clothes. I'll be back in a moment to take your measurements." Pointing to a corridor set off from the sale's floor by barroom styled, swinging louvered doors, Sherry ordered. "Now, hurry along, get ready. We haven't all day."
In one of the small booths in a hidden corridor branching off from the sales floor, I started to undress. This is the second time in 24 hours that I had to exhibit my corpus for examination. Just the previous afternoon, I had to enter the Fertility Experiment in an unclothed condition to observe Sherry's ovam (egg) donation. I just dropped my size 42 dress to the floor when Sherry breezed into the fitting room.
"Oops I almost. About your guy, how did you meet?" Sherry asked. To my protests about the relevancy to the sale, Sherry nonplussed officiously explained, "Personal interest, none; I need to select intimate apparel for a," Sherry raised her eyebrows, "date in bed. What the guy is like is important. Are you to be a cuddly, lovie - dovey, baby doll, a vamp, or a slut? How did you guys make it a happening?"
"A friend, he picked me up from the hospital after my release. To walk out of the hospital, I took some scrubs and borrowed haz - mat boots. I needed his help to pull the boots off. Next thing I knew we were tussling in the sheets...," I looked away and blushed. "I really shouldn't be telling you this."
"I'm dressing you for a date in the boudoir, nothing very shy about that," Sherry assured me, "And why not! Sex is fun. I do this all the time. And the secrets of the dressing room are never discussed beyond."
"Hmm, sounds like the doctor - patient privilege," I observed.
"Sex is fun." Sherry and I giggled together. "And you have the advantage. The morning after the ovam donation," Sherry joked, "the egg crate was empty."
Ah yes, sex, in those glorious days of the Vietnam era, was fun. All you had to worry about is getting pregnant. Morbus venereus (venereal disease) was treatable. No one had to worry about AIDS.
