Chapter 6: The day after the first examination.
The drive back from the clinic was a tunnel of quiet. The mist had thickened, swallowing the edges of the road and the tops of the firs, making the world feel small and closed-in. Inside the car, the silence was a third passenger, heavier than before.
Jason kept his eyes on the grey ribbon of asphalt. “He seemed very thorough. Confident.”
“Yes,” I said, the word tasting of antiseptic and guilt. My body still felt like it wasn’t entirely my own. A faint, persistent ache, a lingering thrum between my thighs, was a ghost of his touch. I crossed my legs, the pressure a feeble attempt to erase the memory. The moisture I’d cleaned away in the clinic seemed to have returned, a secret slickness that hummed with every slight movement of the car.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, glancing over. “You’ve been quiet.”
“Just tired. And… it’s a lot. Being poked and prodded.” It wasn’t a lie, but it was a shield. Behind it, my mind replayed the last few minutes in the examination chair on a feverish loop: the cold snap of the glove, the professional tone, the shocking, deliberate curl of his fingers, the precise circle of his thumb. The climax that had torn through me, silent and violent. I had come on a stranger’s hand while my husband held my other hand. The shame was a hot, solid weight in my stomach.
“I know, honey. It’ll be over soon.” He reached over and patted my knee, a gesture of comfort that felt miles away.
When we got back to Daryl’s, the house felt different. The unfinished spaces, the smell of sawdust and fresh paint, it all seemed charged with a new potential for exposure. I walked carefully, as if my secret was a physical thing I might spill. Daryl was in the kitchen with Olivia, their voices a low, pleasant murmur. They smiled as we entered, a picture of domestic normalcy that felt like a reproach.
“How did it go?” Olivia asked, wiping her hands on a towel. She was chopping vegetables, her movements efficient and graceful.
“Fine. Everything’s fine,” Jason answered for me, dropping his keys on the counter.
I just nodded, forcing a smile, and escaped upstairs to the bathroom. I locked the door and leaned against it, closing my eyes. My breath came in shallow hits. In the mirror, my reflection looked back, flushed, eyes too bright. The woman in the glass was a stranger, her lips slightly parted, a sheen of sweat on her upper lip. I pressed my thighs together, and the resulting spark of sensation made me gasp softly.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The clinical setting somehow made it worse, more illicit. It wasn’t about passion or love; it was about skill and power. He had known. He had known exactly how to touch me, where to press, how to move, to unravel me completely. And I had let him. Worse, my body had begged for it.
A vibration from Jason’s phone on the bedside table buzzed through the quiet room later that afternoon. He was downstairs, looking at building plans with Daryl. I saw the screen light up. A text message. From Agnes.
My heart did a strange, sluggish thump. I shouldn’t look. It was his phone. But her name was there, a small blue beacon in the dim room.
Curiosity, oily and insistent, won. I picked it up. The message was brief.
“Jason, clinic policy update due to COVID. Only patients allowed in exam rooms now, no partners. Sorry! For Sarah’s next appointment, you can drop her off and maybe come back in two hours? It’s a longer consult. Just want to keep everyone safe. – Agnes.”
Two hours. Alone.
I put the phone down, my fingers tingling. A part of me recoiled. This was a sign, a chance to stop this before it went further. I could tell Jason I was uncomfortable, that we should find another doctor. But another part, a deeper, hungrier part, uncoiled inside me. Two hours in that room, with those mirrors, with him. No Jason to hold my hand. No witness.
The debate raged silently in my head all evening. Through dinner, where Olivia’s hearty stew tasted like ash. Through the mundane conversation about lumber prices and lockdown rumors. I watched Jason, his kind, tired face, and felt a love so fierce it was painful, twisted together with a betrayal so profound I could barely breathe.
Later, in the shower, the hot water sluicing over my swollen belly, my thoughts crystallized. The memory of his touch was a brand. I craved its repetition with a desperation that overrode my fear, my faith, my vows. My hand drifted down, over the taut curve of my stomach, through the wet thatch of dark hair below. My fingers found the swollen flesh beneath. I imagined his hands, older, skilled, not Jason’s. I imagined the gloves, the gel, the unrelgentless, professional precision. My breath hitched. A few frantic, shameful strokes of my own fingers, thinking of his thumb circling my clit, and I came against the shower wall, biting my fist to silence the cry, the water washing away the evidence but not the sin.
Afterwards, trembling and hollow, I knew. I would go. Alone.
I stood before the steamed mirror, wiping a clear patch with my towel. My pubic hair was dark, thick. It felt suddenly vulgar, untidy. A barrier. If—when—he touched me again, I didn’t want to be… unkempt. It was a practical thought, a preparatory one. It was also an admission of intent.
It was also an admission of intent.
The decision lodged itself in my mind, cold and sharp. I fetched the small pink razor from my toiletry bag, the one labeled for sensitive skin I’d packed but never used here. The shower was still running, a private white noise against the quiet house. I knew Jason was deep in conversation with Daryl about load-bearing walls. I had time.
Steam clouded the glass door as I stepped back inside, the hot water needling my skin. I lathered the soap in my hands, working it into a slick, white foam. My heart was a frantic bird against my ribs. My hands trembled as I smoothed the suds over my mound, the coarse, dark hair matting under my palms. I took a steadying breath that did nothing to calm me.
The razor looked innocuous, a frivolous thing. I positioned the blade at the very top of my pubic bone, where the hair grew thickest. With a slow, deliberate pressure, I drew it downward. The sound was a soft, grinding whisper, lost in the shower’s patter. A wide, clean path of pale skin emerged in its wake, strangely vulnerable. The nakedness felt immediate and profound.
I worked methodically, one trembling stroke after another, stretching the skin taut with my other hand. Each pass felt like stripping away a layer of my old self, the dutiful wife, the good Christian. The foam grew gray with clippings, swirling at my feet before disappearing down the drain. The new skin felt shockingly smooth, hypersensitive to the mist and the air.
I spread my legs wider, bracing one foot on the side of the tub. The angle was awkward around the swell of my belly. I soaped again, my fingers slipping into the wet folds beneath the remaining hair. A jolt went through me, a direct line to that deep, hidden ache that had not left since the clinic. I focused on the task, shaving the outer lips with meticulous care, the blade gliding perilously close to the tender, swollen flesh beneath.
My breath came in shallow pants now. The clearing landscape of my own body was a revelation. I felt exposed even to myself. With the main area bare, I attended to the finer details, the sparse hairs along the inner thighs, the final stubble. My cunt was now completely bare, a smooth, split mound. I ran my hand over it, and the sensation was electric, alien. It felt illicit, made for a purpose, made for a specific touch that was not my husband’s.
The clean, pink skin glistened under the water. I let my fingers explore what I had revealed. They trailed over the smooth, plump outer lips, then parted them. The flesh beneath was slick, not just from the shower. My own wetness mixed with the water. My clit was a hard, desperate pearl under my questing fingertip. A low groan escaped my lips, swallowed by the steam.
I thought of his hands, those skilled, gloved hands. I imagined them now, not with a speculum, but just his fingers, slick with gel, parting me exactly like this. The fantasy was vivid, garish. His thumb, circling. His voice, calm and instructional, telling me to breathe. My own fingers mimicked the memory, pressing inside myself, first one, then two. They felt clumsy, insufficient. They weren’t his.
I fucked myself with my own hand, my back against the cold tile, eyes squeezed shut. The images were relentless: the mirrors, his focused face, the crinkle of the paper, Jason’s oblivious presence. My hips began a shallow, frantic rhythm, chasing the ghost of that clinical, devastating pleasure. The coil tightened, a familiar, terrifying heat building in my core. It would be so easy to tip over, to let the wave crash.
But I stopped.
My fingers stilled, buried inside me. I pulled them out, shaky and wet. I would not give myself the release. That privilege, that punishment, belonged to the memory. It belonged to him. The denial was its own brutal ache, a hollow throb that felt more consequential than any climax. I turned my face into the hot spray, letting it wash over me. The clean, bare flesh between my legs felt like a fresh page, waiting for a script I was now complicit in writing.
The clean, bare flesh between my legs felt like a fresh page, waiting for a script I was now complicit in writing. I stepped out of the shower, patting myself dry with a towel that felt coarse against my new sensitivity. In the foggy mirror, my reflection was blurred, a ghost of a woman who had just carefully prepared herself for a violation she craved.
I pulled on my softest pajamas, the cotton a mild shock against my skin. Downstairs, the murmur of male voices had faded. I found Jason alone on the couch, his glasses perched on his nose, scrolling through job listings on his laptop. The blue light etched tired lines around his eyes.
“You look wiped,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady.
He glanced up and offered a thin smile. “Just feels like every lead hits a wall right now. Pandemic hiring freeze.” He closed the laptop with a soft click. “You’re the one who had the big day. How are you holding up?”
“Tired,” I said, and it was the truth. A deep, soul-level fatigue had settled into my bones alongside the restless, humming energy. I settled next to him, the cushions sighing. “Agnes texted you.”
“Oh, right.” He fetched his phone, squinting at the screen. “Huh. New clinic rule. No partners in the room.” He scratched his cheek. “Two-hour appointment? That’s long. You okay going in alone?”
The question hung in the air. A last exit, presented as casual concern.
“It’s fine,” I heard myself say. The words felt automatic, bypassing any conscious gatekeeper. “Just more COVID precautions. I’ll be a big girl.”
He slipped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. I nestled there, inhaling his familiar scent of laundry soap and faint sweat. My head fit perfectly in the hollow of his shoulder. “My brave wife,” he murmured into my hair. His lips brushed my temple. “I’ll drop you off and pick you up. Maybe I will look for our apartment here in Port Townsend.”
I closed my eyes, letting the solid warmth of him anchor me. This was real. This was my life. The love I felt for him in that moment was a physical ache, a vast and tender thing that filled my chest. It was indescribable. He loved me. I loved him. The simplicity of it was a sanctuary.
And yet, beneath my ribs, a separate, liquid excitement pulsed, thinking of the sterile room, the angled mirrors, the slow, sure movement of ungloved hands. Tomorrow.
We trudged upstairs together, our movements synced from years of shared routine. The bed in Daryl’s guest room was an island in the dim light. We got in, the sheets cool. He turned on his side, facing away from me, with a soft, exhausted groan.
“My back is killing me,” he muttered. “That drive.”
“Come here,” I whispered.
I curled my body around his, spooning him, pressing my belly gently into the small of his back. I draped an arm over his waist. He sighed, contented, and patted my hand. “Thanks, honey.”
This was our intimacy now. A closed loop of comfort and fatigue. There was no sexual current, not even a faint hum. He didn’t try. I didn’t want him to. My desire was pointed elsewhere, a laser aimed at tomorrow afternoon.
I lay awake, listening to his breathing even into sleep. My mind replayed the examination from that morning, but now, in the dark, the memory had shed its clinical shell. It was just sensation. The shocking, perfect friction. The way my body had clenched, of its own volition, around his probing fingers. The silent, violent crest of a feeling I’d never touched with my own husband. I re-lived the wet sound when his fingers left me and I moaned so silently when he done his special exam in me, the clean finality of it.
A soft heat spread through my pelvis, a low throb echoing the memory. I pressed my forehead between Jason’s shoulder blades, feeling the rhythm of his sleep. I loved him. I did. And with a clarity that felt both monstrous and pure, I knew I held no guilt for what I anticipated. The two truths existed side-by-side: the deep, steadfast love for the man sleeping beside me, and the thrilling, specific hunger for what the tomorrow promised.
The excitement was a live wire under my skin. I saw the doctor’s pale, knowing eyes in the mirrors. I felt the crinkle of paper beneath me. My own breath, loud behind the FFP2 mask. I shifted slightly, and the smooth, bare skin of my inner thighs slid together, a secret reminder of my preparation. A shudder ran through me, sharp and sweet.
Tomorrow.
A deep, calm certainty settled over me as I finally drifted toward sleep, my body molded to my husband’s, my mind dancing in a mirrored room a world away.