To every gentleman in need of female companionship and affection...your dream doctor. Literally.
*The Hypnothe-Rapist*
STARR SCORES II: "The Impotence Strikes Back"
***
February 12th, 4:02 p.m.
Angela put the finishing updates on the file of her 2:00 returning patient, deposited it in the appropriate section of her cabinet, shut it, and pushed herself off it to roll her chair back across the office to her desk.
She held down the intercom button. "Hi Paula! One more today, right?"
Paula's voice crackled through. "Hi Doc! Yeah, I've got a Kevin Grant right here for 4:00, but he hasn't shown up yet."
"Oh," said Angela. "All right, well, let's give him a few minutes."
"10-4," Paula confirmed. Click.
Paula kept the appointment book right on her desk in front of her. The sign-in sheet was on a clipboard just outside the front receptionist window, with a pen chained to it. The waiting room was empty. Having completed the daily patient billing and rescheduling of appointments, Paula consulted her mental list of down-time activities to carry out while they waited on their tardy patient. She looked at the shelf on the left wall. No files were out of order. Nothing was amiss or askew in the rest of her window. Her desk drawer was as organized as could be.
All right, Solitaire time
, she thought, popping open the computer application. Solitaire was where Paula went when absolutely everything else was done and nothing more was sitting in her in-box. Fortunately, Angela knew how gifted a receptionist Paula was, so whenever she might wander in on her playing Solitaire, she trusted all was well and didn't say a word. Paula never let her down.
Two hands in, her eyes fell on the bottom right-hand corner of her screen. It was 4:10. She stood up and poked her head outside the receptionist window and looked out one of the building windows. The part of the parking lot she could see remained empty.
Paula hit
her
intercom button. "Hey, Starr. Mr. Grant still hasn't arrived just yet."
Angela responded after a beat. "Oh, gosh, I hope nothing happened."
Paula heard the concern in her voice. "Ange, you are the most caring, sensitive, considerate person I know."
"Tell me something of which I'm
not
aware," Angela repeated. She chuckled benevolently. "Well, he has been informed of the lateness rules, yes?"
"That he has."
"Good woman."
"You know, Angie," said Paula, "That's really understanding of you not to charge late or absence fees. The last doctor I worked for had a late fee after fifteen minutes of $25, and after a half hour it was
$100
."
"Heaven's sake," said Angela. "Well, yeah, I mean, you never know what might've happened to someone."
Click. Paula spent her down time at work playing Solitaire when everything else was finished. Angela spent hers reviewing old patient files, either hard copies or digital. On her laptop she could organize her database spreadsheet according to chronology, patient names, or first-timers versus returning. Apart from her family members and loved ones, her patients were the most important and beloved people in the world to her. And because 98% of them were gents, she had developed an enormous affection for men in general, having met and worked her magic on all different kinds of them. Understandably, the feeling was pretty mutual. For the most part, the men were really rather charmed by her and her heart of gold as well.
One of the free-time activities she enjoyed most was having a laptop feature of hers choose a random business day in her database, scrolling through it and reliving that given day. Sometimes it was five years ago, sometimes it was the previous month. It didn't matter a patient's age or ethnicity or issues or other characteristics; she loved them all. Occasionally, it was true, a fellow she saw would behave inappropriately, coming on to her, making an unwelcome comment or innuendo or such, but even should one not conduct himself in a gentlemanly manner, she was very tolerant and forgiving, her philosophy remained that the patient is priority number one, and she had never once refused to see a client a second time. She simply didn't have it in her. Besides, the vast majority of them were perfectly nice, decent gentlemen who regarded her with the same courtesy and professionalism she did them. Really all most of them wanted, be their issues behavioral, physical or mental, was just to be able to confidentially and privately share their feelings with someone who genuinely wanted to listen. And then they would undergo the hypnosis.
At 4:14, a car zoomed into a parking space with a screeching sound, and a young man jumped out and ran to the building. He made it into the waiting room, panting his way up to Paula's window. He had a small coffee stain on his fortunately dark-colored pants, a loose necktie and his white work shirt was partially untucked and stained with random drops of perspiration.
"Hi," he breathed, reaching for his wallet. "I'm
so
sorry I'm late."
Paula started to say, "Oh, sir, that's al—"
"Y'know, I just had a bazillion things to do, and then traffic was a freakin' nightmare, and just..." He fished out his wallet, making a gesture with his other hand that reinforced the nature of his busy day.
"It's okay, Mr. Grant, don't worry about it," said Paula calmly. "We don't close the office until 7:00. It's only a quarter after 4:00, so you're fine." She collected his identification. "So this is your first visit?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it is," said Kevin, as Paula Xeroxed his insurance card and license. He looked around anxiously, mumbling to himself. "W-where...where's my wal—" He remembered he had set his wallet down on the counter to give Paula his info. "Oh—!" he said. He gave himself a light slap on the forehead.
Glancing back at him from the Xerox machine, Paula said, "It's all right, Mr. Grant, really, everything's okay. You're not actually
that
late." Finished scanning, she returned the cards and handed him a personal information form. "Here you are—you don't have to fill this out right this second," she told him, pointing behind her. "You can go and see her right now. Dr. Starr's all the way down the hall and on the left, right across the corner from the restroom."
He thanked her briefly and headed back. When he saw her in her office, he knocked on the open door. Angela turned to see him. She was dressed in one of her long-sleeved ankle-length nightgowns with a light violet-colored robe over it, her bunny slippers, and a fraction of her wavy locks tied back with a large nighttime-blue hair ribbon. One of the dozens of reasons she loved her job was that wearing her jammies at work was not only okay, it was helpful, for the benefit of her patients.
"Oh, hello there," she said, "You must be Mr. Grant?"
He nodded anxiously. "Yup, that's me."
She hopped up from her chair. "Hi!" she greeted in her usual extremely friendly and bubbly manner. She took his hand, gave it a quick peck and proceeded to shake it. "I am so happy to meet you!" she beamed with her trademark charm-'em-every-time smile.
Kevin wasn't exactly prepared for her enthusiasm. "Wow," he said, "Seems like you were particularly expecting me. I mean, I know I made the appointment and all, but..."
Angela knew what he meant. "Oh, I just love people," she proclaimed. "I know it may make me kind of sappy, but I can't help it; I just love people. I love loving people, I love meeting people...I love loving meeting people," she finally said, tying it all together.
Kevin felt a bit taken aback. Nonetheless, he continued, "Hey, listen, I'm
really
sorry about my tardiness."
Angela shrugged, looking at him with a fake bemused face. "What tardiness?" she asked innocently. Then she again smiled cordially with a trustworthy wink. Something about her soft emerald-like green eyes made Kevin suddenly feel very much at ease. He had a feeling he might be comfortable with her—easier said than done, considering the purpose of his presence.
He remembered the form he was holding. "Oh, yeah, and, this here..." he sheepishly started to say.
"Oh!" Angela waved it off. "'S perfectly fine. Since it's your first time, we're going to conduct an introductory interview, and most of the same questions in our interview are on that form. It's really more something for our new patients to do to pass the time while they're in the waiting room. Anyway then..." she welcomed him in with a flourish of the hand. "Bienvenue! Go on, have a seat." She motioned to the sofa bed taking up much of the open space in the middle of her office. It was sitting in sofa form. He did as she said.
Angela sat down in her desk chair and closed the lid on the laptop. "If you or any other patient arrived more than 30 minutes after your appointment was scheduled, we would need to cancel it and schedule again, but no hugie. It's..." She checked her desk clock. "...4:22 right now," as she turned back to Kevin, "And this is our first meeting, so I'm going to give you the full two hours, assuming you want the treatment, and so you'll probably be finished at about 6:30-ish. Maybe a bit later." She slipped on her oval-shaped eyeglasses, picked up her pen and pad and crossed her right leg over her left. "Now, what I normally like to do with patients is give them a quick explanation of my craft, what it is I do, what they can expect from me, et cetera.
"So, Mr. Grant—do you prefer Mr. Grant or Kevin?"
"Oh, Kevin, please."
"Kevin; outstanding. What I do, Kevin, is hypnosis. It's a less conventional but more personal form of therapy in which the patient is very gently and gradually soothed into an unconscious state, commonly known as a trance, at which point I communicate with him through his subconscious." She paused a moment. "Have you ever been hypnotized before, Kevin?"
He shook his head.
"All right. I've been practicing in hypnotherapy for five years. And I do not consider it immodest to say that I am very skilled at what I do, because what I do is improve the quality of my patients' lives. Some patients can be cured within as little as one to two sessions, but I can't guarantee that, so you shouldn't expect it. Some patients require multiple sessions, and some patients have been coming to me regularly for several months. It all depends. Now, were you referred to me by...?" she let the question float out.
"Oh, the Yellow Pages," he said. "Although...I...don't know if I should've come, honestly. It's really pretty embarrassing, actually."
"Aw," said Angela sympathetically, "My friend, if it helps, you needn't feel embarrassed with me at all. 'Tis not in my job description to humiliate clients. 'S bad for business. And if you don't feel the treatment is working for you, the decision shall always be no one's except yours whether you would like to continue with your sessions, although I've agreed with all patients whom I'm no longer seeing that their progress has become sufficient to go on without me."
He nodded. "Okay..."
"Okay. And hypnotherapy is extremely gentle and soothing, and while not a 100% miracle cure, is nonetheless quite effective, but you will need to know, this process is more intimate than traditional therapy is. There is a degree of physical contact involved."
"So..." he said, "There's...touching?"
"Yes," she nodded. "If you choose to undergo my procedure, I will be physically touching you. Yes."
"How?" he inquired.
"Well," she put down the pad and pen for a moment, opened one of her desk drawers and took out a small tube of hypoallergenic lotion. She squirted a bit out and gave her hands a little covering with it. "First of all, with very soft, warm hands," she went on, indicating the lotion, "And the opening step, once I would have begun relaxing you is monitoring your pulse and your heartbeat. Once they are constantly where I want them to be, I would be
very
, very lightly smoothing my fingertips over your skin, which is helpful to patients in order to relax any tense muscles and nerve endings—
