Private Therapy

Chapter Four-1

Chapter Four

Karl’s legal adulthood dawned in drabness and disinterest.

A heavy ceiling of clouds covered the sky visible from his window, and strolling in to see to his morning routine was not the sainted Nurse Drake but Jeremy Something-or-other.

Unlike Doreen, who always wore a classic (if a bit short and low-cut) white uniform right to the traditional cap (which was actually derived from a nun’s habit she once told him), Jeremy dressed in plain institutional scrubs. Like her however he was a thoroughly capable professional, up to the standards of this upscale clinic. He was super-competent, courteous and friendly without being intrusive. But of course he was no Nurse Drake. Karl missed her acutely throughout his exercises and hygiene, dressing and feeding.

Despite being used to it by now, he still felt a lingering discomfort with having another man provide such intimate assistance. He was no homophobe of course, and there was no s****l undercurrent to what were pretty mundane proceedings without Doreen. But ingrained attitudes, misguided as they were, persisted. After all, he was the guy who’d refused to let the love of his life seek climactic satisfaction by climbing atop him for intercourse.

He’d not only killed her with his selfishness, irresponsibility and bullying, he’d also dragged her to her gruesome death without her ever having experienced orgasm. Now, macho asshole that he still apparently was, Karl endured his morning ablutions and the application of his condom with a stoic indifference. And while he did he cheered himself as Doreen suggested by concentrating on the fact that this was the last time for an entire year that anyone other than she would touch or have access to his helplessness. This filled him with anticipation as well as relief, and by the time he was up and dressed for the day and had finished breakfast he was as full of butterflies as a boy awaiting his first date: a party with the hottest cheerleader on the squad perhaps. Twenty minutes passed like an entire wasted life. By the time Nurse Drake finally arrived (still wearing her uniform though she was now officially on sabbatical), Karl returned her smile of doting fondness with all the gratitude, love and determination to match her commitment that he’d been nurturing all morning. In response she clucked disapprovingly over his appearance and petted his head with a familiarity and affection that sent shivers through his immobility. Right away she dug in her purse for a comb.

“My goodness darling, what did Jeremy do to your hair? You’re going to have to look hotter than that if you’re going out into the world with this discerning lady.”

She began combing him out, tutted again at the results, and at last resorted to tying his ultra-hip soccer player’s locks back into a ponytail. Though Karl often resisted this (it pulled on his scalp after a while and of course he was incapable of adjusting or relieving it himself) he didn’t dream of refusing his incredible benefactor anything she wanted.

“There!” she finally declared. “I like you better this way anyways. With the shape of your face it makes you much more attractive. And that shirt really brings out the blue in your eyes. I’m going to have to defend you from hordes of estrus females all day today. Now, let’s blow this popsicle stand! It’s the first day of the rest of your life, as they say. And oh my God, I can’t believe I’ve been so remiss! Happy eighteenth birthday darling!”

Leaning over the back of the wheelchair she’d been about to start pushing, Doreen granted him another wonderful kiss, this one an unbelievably hearty smack right on the cheek. His conflict and even self-despite forgotten for the time, Karl felt himself go all gooey inside.

That was twice she’d called him ‘darling’ this morning, and twice in twenty-four hours she’d actually kissed him. Clearly the strictures of propriety were being eased, the previously necessary barriers coming down. Perhaps his wild imaginings of physical intimacy blooming between them were not so wild after all. Karl seemed to float on a cushion of euphoria as Doreen closed the computer on his lap and rolled him out of the room that had been his cell for over a year and a half. Then they were headed on down the corridor, and his heart soared accordingly.

Some of the staff they crossed paths with stopped them briefly to give Doreen a quick hug, to wish her goodbye and say good luck. Some voiced the same sentiments to Karl, though in a mystifying variety of manner.

Some urged him sincerely to devote himself to his recovery. Some looked on him with pity as if he were truly going to the state home. Some failed to conceal the same faint sneers he’d endured the day before, and some even smirked at him with a kind of knowing mirth. Perhaps there were clues to his future to be gleaned here; perhaps not. Karl cared neither way. All he cared about was getting outside again after so long. Yet even after they’d run the gauntlet of Nurse Drake’s colleagues there was one last pain-in-the-ass delay to endure.

Doreen pushed his wheelchair up to the reception desk. There under the lens of the building’s security cameras he reiterated his request to be released into her exclusive care. He even held a pen in his teeth and signed with an x. Doreen witnessed this and signed a few other papers too. There was a little muttering and fretting from a legal type about ‘extraordinary latitude’ and ‘liability concerns’, and at last they were allowed to make their escape.

Outside even the parking lot looked like paradise. The sky had cleared. Hard and bright, the eleven a.m. sunshine bounced from glass and chrome, dazzling the eye. Yet the tears that smeared Karl’s sight of vehicles, light poles, and decorative landscaping had more to do with joy and relief. He was outdoors at last! He’d been freed from not only the walls and ceilings that had enclosed him ever since the accident but of the constraints of institutional living too. He’d been rescued from the company of functionaries, of doctors and technicians, orderlies and nurses to whom he was but one case among many, a name on a chart and a lump in a chair. Now he was answerable only to this angel. Sensing his poignant joy and even exhilaration, Doreen sped up until she was running, pushing Karl in his wheelchair across the tarmac in a giddy celebration of freedom that he would have found terrifying had he not known to the core of his being that Doreen would never allow any harm to come to him. All the way to the end they flew, to the staff parking area separated from the main lot by a bougainvillea-draped stucco wall. There, sitting between a van and a huge SUV (both of which seemed far better suited to transporting the wheelchair-bound) was a mid-priced, mid-size sedan. Spotlessly clean and heliographing vicious darts of light, its depthless blue finish made it appear new despite being a model from about three years ago. Doreen slowed at last and pushed Karl into the gap by the passenger side door.

“Your coach-and-four, sir!”

She positioned him right by the door, moved around in front of him, opened and swung it wide. She eased him forward a bit more and engaged the chair’s brakes. Gently Nurse Drake lifted Karl’s legs from the foot pedals, removed the leg rests from the chair and set his feet down on the pavement. Then she squeezed into the tight space between his legs, the interior of the car and the open door. Looming over him closer than ever, Doreen smiled down reassuringly. The light of happiness and excitement in her eyes shone as brilliant as the sunshine.

“You’ve been transferred without a lift before of course.”

“Sure, all the time in physical therapy.”

“Okay then, here we go!”

Nurse Drake hiked her uniform up, higher on her thighs than Karl had ever seen it, until he even caught sight of the elastic tops of her stockings. Responding to the widening of Karl’s eyes, Doreen gave him a mischievous grin.

“This is so much easier wearing pants. But I won’t complain if you don’t.”

“It’s a deal,” Karl croaked, his heart suddenly drumming with excitement only slightly tinged with anxiety.

He had no rational fear of Doreen dropping him, but his utter helplessness always made this a nervy experience regardless of the competence and even expertise of the person he was trusting himself to. Yet not even this perfectly natural fear of injury could compete with his anticipation of the physical intimacy imminent as Doreen set her feet, squatted down and spread her knees. Clutching his own between these, she used Karl’s arms to lean his body forward, draping those arms over her back while she took the weight of his torso on her shoulder. Her arms came around him in a heavenly embrace and her hands slid down his back and under him until they were clutching his buttocks. Bodies pressed together, his head over her shoulder like a baby being burped and her oh-so evocative smell filling his nostrils, Karl felt so cosseted and secure, so excited and yes, so helplessly in love that his voice cracked again when Doreen addressed him.

“Ready, cutie?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“All right, then!”

Nurse Drake’s arms and legs tightened about him. Then, though they were likely about the same weight (Karl was an inch or so taller but had already lost some muscle mass), she used practiced technique and expert body mechanics to pick him up, pivot him around and deposit him sideways on the car seat.

One arm came solicitously about his shoulders while the other snaked under his legs and she lifted these into the car even as she shifted him around to face forward on the seat. Too soon his head came off her shoulder and the weight of his torso left her embrace for that of the bucket seat. Face to face with his beloved again as she still leaned over him in the close quarters of the car, Karl tried to quiet his pounding heart as she smiled inquiringly at him.

“Okay, then? Comfy?”

“Yes, Doreen, thank you. That was well done.”

“Of course it was. You’re in good hands for the next year darling. Have no unnecessary fears with me!”

For second Karl wondered if this was just a turn of phrase, or whether she was subtly indicating that there were things he necessarily should fear. The strange variation in the way Doreen’s friends on the staff regarded his departure recurred. But then he was given something far more thrilling and immediate to occupy him.

Nurse Drake pulled the lap and shoulder belts across him and buckled him in. This gave Karl a kind of kinky twinge: his iconic female sovereign was putting him in restraints. But then Doreen took a quick look around.

“You know what? I’m going to ditch this uniform right here. Thanks to that wall and these vehicles no one should see a thing.” She leaned way over, nearly lying across Karl’s lap in order to grab a bag from behind the front seat. Then she was pulling back out of the car.

“I didn’t want to wear it in the first place, and was planning to change at the first opportunity. I thought we might spend your birthday out here in the world: seeing some sights and doing some stuff in full view of the sun and public, before we disappear into my demesne for the next twelve months. And I don’t want to burden you with the stigma of my uniform. But I thought I ought to wear it at least to take official custody of you. It makes a better impression.”

Doreen swung his door shut and stepped to the back of the car. In the rear view mirror Karl saw her load his collapsible wheelchair into the trunk and then poke her head around the van for a more thorough look about. Then she hurried back to stand by the rear fender again. With her back to the lot and not even a glance to ensure that her teenage charge (strapped in place facing helplessly forward as he was) wasn’t peeking, Doreen swiftly unbuttoned her one-piece uniform and stripped it off.

Helpless not to peek (and unaffectedly goggle), Karl gloried in his brief view of that wonderfully voluptuous yet still fit and firm form revealed in only the lace-trimmed white bra he’d glimpsed any number of times, matching panties that were neither skimpy nor matronly and the stockings he’d felt sliding along his own bare legs every morning for the past year or more. The trimness of Doreen’s belly below the heavy rounds of her half-exposed breasts made him keen a bit unconsciously until he heard himself and clamped it off. Then his nurse from heaven quickly pulled on a short (and highly flattering) summer dress of green and yellow. She toed off her sensible white nurse’s shoes and stepped into pair of stylish sandals. Carefully unpinning the hat from her hair, she stuffed this, shoes and uniform into the bag and then circled around to the driver’s side. Opening the door, Doreen stowed this behind the seat and climbed in.

“There!” She gave him a smile of gleaming satisfaction. “Now you won’t be mistaken for a patient on a day pass being herded around by a nurse. Let’s show the world you’re just another handsome guy out on an afternoon date with his best gal, wheelchair and all. Now come on! We’ve got a birthday to celebrate – not to mention the beginning of an incredibly impactful new relationship that’s going to save your life and profoundly enrich mine!”

Doreen socked the key in and started the car. Karl could only sit there: amazed and demeaned yet again by Nurse Drake’s generosity, consideration, kindness – and immense s*x appeal. Then they were on their way, the clinic behind him forever and at least a year (and hopefully about seventy more) of paradise ahead.