Chapter 5: Aftermath shower
The silence in Daryl’s house after the clinic felt thicker than the fog outside. Jason had gone into town for some errands, saying something about a hardware store and a potential lead on a rental. His absence was a physical relief. I couldn’t have borne his comforting touch, his innocent kisses. My skin felt like a foreign landscape, mapped with secrets.
I stood under the showerhead, the water beating a chaotic rhythm on the porcelain tiles. The initial blast was cold, a shocking slap that made me gasp. I twisted the knob, seeking heat, but the old pipes only grudgingly yielded a lukewarm stream. It didn’t matter. The physical discomfort was a welcome distraction from the riot inside my head.
I squeezed a dollop of generic lavender body wash into my palm. The scent was cheap, cloying. I started scrubbing my arms, my shoulders, the rough loofah scraping over my skin as if I could scour away the memory of that room, those mirrors, his hands. The soap sluiced down my body, a phantom echo of the cold gel he’d used. I flinched.
My hands moved over my swollen belly, the curve firm and alien under my slick fingers. I tried to think of the baby, of my husband, of prayer. But my mind was a traitor. It replayed the feel of the paper crinkling beneath me, the sterile smell giving way to something muskier, the precise, clinical pressure of his gloved fingers that morphed, so seamlessly, into something else.
I stopped scrubbing. My hands, slick with soap, simply rested on my skin. The loofah lay forgotten at my feet. The thought of washing him away… it felt like a lie. I didn’t want to wash it away. I wanted to understand it.
My soapy palm slid down from my belly, over the rise of my pubic bone. The water plastered my dark hair flat against my skin. My touch was tentative at first, just the pads of my fingers tracing the outer lips. A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the tepid water. I closed my eyes.
In the darkness behind my lids, I wasn’t in Daryl’s cramped shower. I was back in that padded chair, my legs splayed, reflected a dozen times in the cruel mirrors. I could see the top of Dr. Taylor’s bald head, the professional slope of his shoulders. I felt it again—not the speculum, not the ultrasound probe. I felt his touch. The way his finger had curled inside me, finding a spot that made my breath catch. The way his thumb had circled, slow and knowing, right there.
My own fingers mimicked the memory. I parted myself, the soap making the slide effortless. One finger, then two, slipped inside. It was nothing like Jason’s earnest, hurried fumbling. This was a exploration. I crooked my fingers, searching, and a soft whimper escaped my lips, lost in the spray. There. A jolt of pure, undiluted sensation sparked deep in my core. My knees buckled slightly, my free hand slapping against the wet tile for support.
“Oh, Doctor,” I breathed.
I worked my fingers slowly, learning my own geography. My other hand came up, soap-slicked, and found the swollen nub of my clit. I circled it, not the first time not with the impatient rhythm, but with the slow, relentless pace Dr. Taylor had used. A pace that built, that coiled, that promised something I’d never reached.
The fantasy crystallized, dark and vivid. It wasn’t just his hands. It was his eyes, those pale, knowing eyes watching me in the mirror as I came apart. It was the absolute power of it, the violation so complete it tipped over into a kind of sacred surrender. He’d seen me, all of me, in a way Jason never had. He’d known exactly what to do, and my body, my treacherous, hungry body, had obeyed.
My fingers fucked into myself with a new urgency, a wet, squelching sound joining the drumbeat of the shower. My thumb pressed hard on my clit, grinding in tight circles. I thought of his voice, low and calm, saying, “Just breathe through it, Sarah.” I thought of the damp paper beneath my ass, the smell of my own arousal cutting through the antiseptic. I thought of his thumb, slick with gel, working me open.
“Fuck,” I hissed, my head falling back against the cool tile. “Oh, fuck, Dr. Taylor..”
The coil was tightening again, that same terrifying, exquisite pressure from the clinic. My hips began to move of their own accord, fucking back against my own hand, chasing it. The images fractured—Daryl’s startled face in the bathroom doorway, the smug curve of Agnes’s smile, Jason’s oblivious concern—but they all burned away, leaving only the doctor’s implacable, skilled hands. In my mind, he wasn’t old. He was just authority. He was the one who knew.
My breath came in ragged gasps, fogging the shower stall. My fingers were soaked, my cunt clenching around them in rhythmic pulses. I was so close. So fucking close. I pictured him leaning over me, his breath on my neck, his other hand pinning my hip down to the paper. I imagined him whispering something filthy, something clinical and obscene all at once.
With a choked cry that was part sob, part scream, I came.
It ripped through me, a silent convulsion that arched my back and sent my toes curling against the slick tub. My walls clamped viciously around my thrusting fingers, milking them, a series of deep, internal spasms that left me shuddering. Pleasure, white-hot and shocking, flooded every nerve ending. It was even more intense than in the clinic, because this time I was an active participant in my own ruin. I rode it out, whimpering, my body convulsing under the relentless spray until the last aftershock faded into a deep, throbbing ache.
I slumped against the wall, spent. The water began to run cold, a proper chill this time. My fingers slipped out of me, and I looked at my hand as if it belonged to someone else. The soap was long gone, washed away. I felt raw, exposed, and utterly hollowed out.
The haze of pleasure receded, leaving a frigid clarity. What had I done? I had just masturbated, vividly, ferociously, to the memory of another man’s touch. A man who had violated his oath, my trust, my marriage. A man whose face I could see with perfect, damning clarity.
I had wanted it. I had craved the memory. I had made myself come, screaming into the steam, thinking of his hands.
A wave of nausea twisted my stomach, bile rising hot in my throat. I fumbled for the knob, turning the water off. The sudden silence was deafening. Dripping, shivering, I stared at the fogged glass door. My reflection was a blurry ghost.
I had not washed anything away. I had baptized myself in the memory. And now, clean and trembling, I had to face the fact that the woman who would step out of this shower was not the same one who had stepped in. She was someone who knew what she was capable of wanting. She was someone who had a secret, burning appointment in two days’ time.