‘How are your concerns manifesting themselves? I take it that you haven’t complained to your mother that you see a less than exciting intimate life ahead of you?’
‘I have, actually. She’s no shrinking violet herself. She says I’ll just have to teach him how to please me.’
‘What do you think about that?’
‘Nervous. Unsure that’d work.’
Dr Sullivan tapped his chin with his pen. ‘And the immediate effect?’
‘I fantasise, Doctor.’
‘Sexual fantasies? About your fiancé?’
‘Sexual, yes: about Henry, no.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
She blurted, ‘All the time. I forget things, miss appointments, don’t feel safe driving.’
‘Obsessive fantasies, then?’
‘Yes,’ Wanda admitted. ‘Obsessive.’
‘Then perhaps our first goal should be to bring your imagination under your control. If you control your fantasies, they can’t control you. You could establish boundaries.’
Wanda nodded. It was fascinating how he seemed to be shrinking fifty or so pounds and growing a small beard.
In a slightly Germanic accent, he asked her, ‘How about masturbation?’
‘Yes please.’
He got out of his chair and came around to where she sat. With his left arm resting on the back of her chair, he plucked her skirt up her thighs with his right hand and slid his fingers higher, to the gusset of her panties. It was eased aside. A satisfyingly thick finger worked up into her and started pumping. Would it be polite to offer him a handjob in return or was what he was doing simply a part of her treatment?
His voice, slightly raised and with that Boston accent again, said, ‘Wanda!’
‘Yes, Doctor?’ She blinked and he was back in his chair, back the way he had been.
Very quietly, he said, ‘You were drifting off into a fantasy, weren’t you?’
‘Sorry.’
‘No problem. Did you hear my advice?’
‘Advice?’
‘I asked you to keep a journal of your fantasies, totally uncensored, and bring it in with you the same time a week from now. Can you do that for me? Then we can discuss specifics.’
Yeah, and then he’d jerk off while he read them and he wouldn’t even let her watch. She said, ‘I can do that, Doctor. Thank you.’
A chime sounded.
‘That’s our time up, I’m afraid. Try to relax, Wanda. All will be well.’
On the subway ride home, Wanda still felt needy from the doctor’s interrupted attentions. She pulled her skirt up, her panties down, and touched herself to a nice little climax that was greeted by the other passengers with cheers, claps and stamping feet.
Chapter Three
Wanda woke on her back in her own comfortable bed with her sheet pulled up over her face. Or she assumed that she did. She hadn’t woken in someone else’s bed since she’d met Henry. Still, until she opened her eyes and pulled the sheet down she wouldn’t be absolutely certain she was in her own bed, would she? She might have had an accident that she didn’t remember because of retrograde amnesia – was there any other kind? You couldn’t very well forget your future, could you?
Perhaps she’d been in a coma, but there didn’t seem to be any wires or tubes attached to her. Could they be trying something new on her? Wireless monitoring of some sort?
A pleasant baritone said, ‘And this is Wanda. She’s a very special patient. We are trying some new techniques on her, very hush-hush, somewhat controversial, so you don’t talk about her case outside this room.’
A variety of voices said, ‘We understand,’ ‘Of course, Doctor,’ ‘Mum’s the word,’ and things like that.
The first voice continued, ‘Note the tone of her muscles.’
Her sheet was folded down to Wanda’s waist, immodestly exposing her naked breasts. She kept her eyelids as slits so that she could see but they wouldn’t know that she could.
Someone said, ‘Excellent.’
Someone else sighed, ‘Lovely.’
Wanda resisted taking a deep breath.
‘Wanda is paralysed,’ the voice continued, ‘but she responds to touch and seems to be thinking. Under the Electrical Brain Scanner Device, the pleasure centres of her brain show activity if she is stroked: like this.’
A firm but very soft hand caressed her bare shoulder.
‘If the touch is more intimate, like this –’ he cupped and compressed her breast ‘– her brain lights up like a Christmas tree.’
‘A sexual response?’ someone asked.
‘Certainly. We are maintaining her muscle tone by frequent massage. That’s experimental, but more radical; we theorise that the continuing sexual stimulation will eventually bring her up out of her coma. She’s already responded with twitches and flexed muscles.’
A higher-pitched voice asked, ‘Is she still capable of achieving climax?’
‘So far, four times, for sure. Two more possibles.’
A second female voice asked, ‘What will our duties be, as interns, regarding this patient, Doctor?’
‘We want to expose her to as much stimulus as possible, in intensity, kind and frequency. While you are about your duties, whenever you get the chance, I want you to stop by to visit Wanda. If you have reservations, just hold her hand and talk to her. If it won’t offend you, give her gentle caresses or whatever else you feel comfortable with.’
A much deeper voice asked, ‘Within what parameters, Doctor?’
‘Do no harm. Don’t hurt her or endanger her in any way, but otherwise …’
‘Intercourse?’ the deep voice asked.
‘By all means. Just don’t talk about it, right?’
There was a chorus of eager assurances that what happened in Wanda’s Ward stayed in Wanda’s Ward.
The doctor said, ‘That’s it for you people, for today. You can go, unless you’d like to stay here and get to know Wanda a little better?’
The deep voice said, ‘Seems like the charitable thing to do, don’t it, Doc. I’ll gladly give up some of my free time to help this poor girl.’
Apparently, he wasn’t the only Good Samaritan. They all declared their willingness to tend to poor Wanda. The doctor left. There was a click, as of a door locking.
Someone folded her sheet down to her feet, leaving her naked and ashamed.
Six faces swam into Wanda’s restricted view. Even paralysed, she managed to focus.
To her left, standing beside her head and holding her hand gently, stood a man who might have stepped out of just about any cop show on TV. He was of mixed Caucasian and African blood, with a shaved scalp, a neck that was as wide as his head and deltoid muscles that formed 45-degree angles with his incredibly broad shoulders. Wanda decided that his name was ‘Don’. No – ‘Dan’. That suited him better.
Dan said, ‘I wonder if what they’ve tried so far has all been tactile?’ He leaned down over her, lips close to her ear. ‘Wanda, baby, you’re such a tasty piece of ass, I’d