Private Therapy

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

It was before breakfast the next morning, before bathing even, when the board member Doreen had mentioned stopped in. Stripped of his gown and wearing only a condom catheter and collection bag adhered to his p***s (hence the need for such conscientious scrubbing), Karl was in bed with Nurse Drake. Kneeling half atop him on the narrow mattress, skirt riding high on her thighs, she raised and bent his legs repeatedly, putting his inert body through passive range of motion exercises. This was done daily in addition to physical therapy to try to preserve his limberness and muscle tone. It involved no little exertion on her part. After twenty minutes her lovely oval of a face was flushed and a lock of honey-brown hair had escaped her cap. This hung by one ruddy cheek with a fetching curl, a stunning accent to the overall flawless perfection of her features and complexion. Breathing heavily and even glowing with a faint sheen of sweat, Nurse Drake seemed oblivious as always to the effect she had on her patient. Of course the rubber of the condom was stretched obscenely before it managed to painfully crimp off Karl’s attempted swelling. Yet blind she was not. When a knock came at the door she set down his leg, moved aside and pulled the sheet up over his immodesty before answering.

“We’re decent; come on in.”

The woman who entered was about fifty. Elegantly – and expensively – attired in a black silk suit, white blouse and pearls, she was severely beautiful and intimidatingly dictatorial in bearing. Yet taking in Nurse Drake tugging her uniform into place as she climbed flushed and breathing heavily from the bed (and Karl could swear noting the way the sheet stood up at his waist), she expressed only cold satisfaction. Her arched eyebrows lifted.

“Yes, I see,” she said, apropos of apparently nothing. Then she nodded and came straight to the point. “Well, you are quite right Doreen. This looks like an excellent candidate for your techniques. And after studying the case I can’t imagine any other hope. Approval is granted. We’ll see to the paperwork today, and you can have him tomorrow. That should be quite the birthday gift for our little victim here.”

This nod toward Karl was openly disdainful, shocking in health care circles. He was left humbled and disregarded and parsing this potentate’s word choices while Doreen expressed her gratitude and confidence. They referred to a few obscure procedural details he couldn’t be bothered to follow, and then both formidable women turned to him. The elder held up a cell phone, obviously recording him on video.

“Very well, Mister Jensen, I understand that you wish to be released into the sole care and custody of Nurse Drake here. All legal responsibility for your upkeep and treatment will be hers for a year. She will report to this clinic quarterly but will otherwise operate without oversight. Is all this in accordance with your wishes?”

“Absolutely ma’am!”

Doreen beamed at him, her approval flushing Karl with warmth. The older woman merely nodded sternly. “In that case, I urge you to hang on her every word. You must submit to this treatment heart and soul if you wish to heal your mind and body. Nurse Drake here is the best there is. You are extremely lucky she has committed herself to your redemption.”

“I know that, ma’am.”

“Yes…well, see that you remember that throughout the year.”

Again came that shaming look of disdain, the faint sneer of contempt that Karl knew he merited yet had somehow ceased to expect in this setting. He lowered his eyes, and was further chagrined to see the sheet still tented up at his waist. A faint but unmistakably derogatory sniff closed these proceedings.

“Nurse Drake, good luck. I’ll see you in three months for your first report.”

“Of course! Thank you so much once again. I won’t let you down.”

“You never have.”

With that the board member (Karl never did get her name) left. Still effervescent with joy and now filled with a fervor of purpose, Doreen climbed back onto the bed, deliberately hiking her skirt back up. She stripped the sheet back and for once Karl caught a fleeting smirk cross her face at the sight of his crimped-off hard -on still jutting adamantly up. She lifted his right leg, set the calf on her shoulder and leaned over his torso, stretching his hamstring in the manner of a distance runner preparing for a marathon. Smiling down at him on the bed below her, she was immediately all personal affection, professional integrity, quietly confident authority and irresistible erotic appeal again. Karl basked in her approval like a plant granted sunlight.

“Wonderful! That couldn’t have gone better. I’ve made your situation plain, and that I’m uniquely suited to take command of it. The circumstances truly are ideal: my poor little cripple is an orphan, an indigent and by this time tomorrow a legal adult. I will check you out of here shortly after breakfast young Karl, and I will redeem your life with ease!”

Nurse Drake leaned into him further, one stocking-clad leg coming down across Karl’s previously free one to keep it from rising as she held the other straight and stretched it above his head. The weight of her torso pressed down on his up-flung leg, crushing him into the bed. The front of her uniform belled out again and the swell of one impressive breast (trimmed in white lace) bulged in the opening. The look of loving possessiveness she focused on him from only a foot or so away was so hot and fierce that Karl throbbed harder than ever in his painful confinement. Though he still felt a sickening wave of self-hatred embittering his arousal, his excitement was as automatic as his fealty to the impossibly alluring authority eliciting it. For as long as he could stand to Karl met that oh-so evocative regard, gasping a bit with more than just the distress in his muscles and tendons. Finally he took refuge in practicalities.

“So we just wheel me down the hall and check me out of here?”

Doreen’s smile widened, became almost smug again.

“That’s right young man. Since you can’t really sign out and have no parent or guardian or legal representative to do so for you, we’ll just make a quick video of you checking out freely on your own recognizance. Then it’s out the door, into my car, and on your way back into life again, my precious young victim of fate and your own mistakes.”

That was the second time Karl had been called a victim this morning. And that he certainly was: a victim as much of his own selfishness, recklessness, thoughtlessness, meanness, weakness and lust as physics and fate. Yet the word still pricked his unease. It wasn’t lost on him that he was both supremely vulnerable and alone in the world. He could disappear tomorrow and no one would notice. In fact, that was basically what he had just agreed to do. For all he knew, these people planned to chop him into hamburger and serve him in the cafeteria. Yet what did any of that matter? What fate could be worse than the one he’d apparently already condemned himself too? What could be worse than he deserved? He’d killed his whole family and the girl he loved in one fell swoop. And seriously, when it came to his well-being, who better could he trust with it than this professionally conscientious, obviously extremely devoted nurse who’d done so well at it so far that he’d come to love and practically worship her for it?

“I can’t wait,” he responded sincerely.

“Good!”

For a moment as he held that gaze again Karl thought he saw a certain curve to her smile, a hint of erotic promise in the loaded look she focused on him. This may have been his teenage imagination however; the next moment he was panting with relief as Doreen finally let his leg back down and moved to pick up the other one.

With the subject of his immediate future settled, a companionable silence fell between them as they continued with his exercises. Still a current of s****l tension persisted.

The laptop computer salvaged from Karl’s old life sat plugged in nearby, unspooling the passionate paeans of Inner Secrets. Doreen had loaded this and several other Santana albums onto it herself. Among so many other blessings, she’d been introducing Karl to tons of fantastic old seventies’ music – stuff that was before his time, closer to hers, and unbelievably hot. Now as she bent and flexed, bent and flexed his legs to the sultry but charged “Open Invitation”, her uniform kept shifting progressively up at the bottom and gaping open up top.

She sang along softly and nodded her head to the beat, that single curling lock brushing her flushed cheek in time with her movements. Her warm smile offered comfort while her honest eyes insisted on endurance. Relentlessly, even rhythmically she worked his flaccid helplessness, and the springs of the bed creaked and twanged suggestively with their demands on the mattress. And all the while Karl’s nudity and vulnerability under his beloved’s assured manipulations evoked that familiar humiliated submissiveness. Again he found himself unsettlingly reveling in this, no longer so mortified or reluctant. By the time they were finished and he was due for another shower he uneasily realized how fraught the coming year was sure to be.

Still dealing with lingering grief and trapped in self-recrimination as he was, Karl was also awash in all the accumulated testosterone most adolescent males purged themselves of daily – sometimes twice daily. And despite the un-settle-able debt he owed his lost mate, he finally accepted that he was also (almost unforgivably) only about one step removed from being in mawkish puppy love with this new woman in his life. The prospect of even closer, prolonged, entirely exclusive and no doubt far more intense interaction with such a consummate erotic sovereign was suddenly as daunting as it was exciting.

He was in for as much anguish as arousal, he had no doubt. Still Nurse Drake made no more mention of her plans for treating him, and was as gentle and considerate and circumspect as always while performing his morning hygiene. It wasn’t until Karl was dressed and presentable (and damned handsome, she assured him) and set up in his rolling throne for the day that she brought up the matter again at all. A tray was attached to the armrests of his wheelchair and his breakfast laid out on it. As she forked chunks of melon into his mouth (never slopping or even dripping much on him as others did hurrying through this chore), Doreen smiled fondly.

“I’m sure you’ll want your laptop for the day. But while you’re at PT I should pack up everything you won’t need and load it in my car. We don’t want to be bothered with it tomorrow. And tonight I can set things up so you can settle in quick and easy when we arrive at my place.”

Smug possessiveness was back in her expression as Nurse Drake blotted his lips with the napkin for him. Karl felt the usual wave of cosseted bliss at being the object of such a look.

There could be no heaven like her loving custody. For a moment he thought to pursue the subject, wondering about the size and accessibility of her home and what kind of accommodations she had planned for him. He couldn’t think of a tactful way to frame his questions however, so he stuck to the original subject.

“All I need here is a single change of clothes, a few toiletries and my computer. Thank you again by the way for setting up that voice recognition software for me, and installing all the music, movies and books. It helps pass the time wonderfully when you’re not here.”

“My pleasure, Karl. It’s all shared files though. I trust you won’t turn me into the authorities for a little copyright violation.”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t turn you in for anything. You are the only authority I recognize.” Karl felt a blush of embarrassment at this confession, and another swoony rush of favor as the older woman who meant so much to him gave him another charged and even suggestive smile in response.

“Good boy. I may hold you to that. Now, is there anything you want from the storage locker where the rest of your things were left when the bank foreclosed on your parent’s house?”

“No ma’am. You still have the key though, right?”

“Of course I do. And incidentally, I may take some of your clothes there. You really won’t be needing much at my place. I prefer you naked in any case. It makes you so much meeker and eager to please for some reason. And you really do have a lovely young body, though you’re letting it waste away. I will put a stop to that, Karl. You can take it to the bank.”

Again came that hot prickly rush at this downright risqué talk, and for the first time Karl allowed himself to really wonder just how intimate this private therapy his nurse had in mind for him was going to be.

He’d been dutifully reading a lot of psychology texts since his accident, enough to know that most men consistently over-interpret the s****l signals of women. He mustn’t let his dirty imagination run away with him. Still the impish twinkle in his beloved’s eyes as she dropped these hints made Karl twitch toward erection again.

Of course the new condom catheter fitted over his p***s made this as much an ordeal of pain and frustration as a compelling carnal yearning. To take his mind off this (or conversely give fodder to the monster) he wanted to question her again, this time about her supposedly rare and unorthodox and wonderfully effective treatment techniques. But again Karl found himself unable to frame his queries in a way that might not hint at doubt or ingratitude on his part. He could only smile back at Doreen with timid trust and hopefulness as she set down the fork, held up a cup for him to drink from and then blotted his lips again.

“Okay Master Jensen, breakfast is finished. And they should be coming to take you to physical therapy soon.

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I won’t be here when you get back. Once I load up your stuff I have a number of meetings with the rest of the staff to attend to. This is my last day here until you’re cured after all. Then I’m going straight home to prepare for my new roommate. God I can’t wait to have you all to myself! So Marybeth will be here for you this afternoon and evening, and Jeremy will get you up tomorrow morning.

“Don’t fret now, Karl. I know you prefer female nurses. So does every other guy in here. But after Jeremy you’re going to have the best nurse in the whole world, male or female, day and night until you’re all better. Isn’t that something to look forward to? I know I’m looking forward to having just one patient, my favorite patient ever, under my loving care around the clock!”

Doreen lifted his breakfast tray from Karl’s lap tray. With her other hand she deftly unplugged his laptop and set it in front of him, though he had only a manner of minutes to kill until his own next appointment.

“So I’ll see you about this time tomorrow, cutie. Think of me while I’m gone, and prepare yourself for a year or less of very intense, one-on-one continuous therapy at my hands. We have a lot of work – and fun – ahead of us.”

With that Doreen gave her soon-to-be exclusive charge a final look that brimmed with mischievousness. Then for the first time ever she breached professional etiquette by planting a soul-soaring kiss on his forehead.

“Have a nice day now, Karl. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With that Nurse Drake gave him a grinning wink and carried the tray from the room.