Chapter 3

“Wake up, studmuffin,” I heard a voice waking me up.

“You are?” I asked the stranger.

“Your nurse, Abigail Hitchens. You really pissed someone off, didn’t you? A woman to be sure. Only a woman would devise a punishment directly to the cock. Well, you did the crime, you did the time, as it were, so I won’t beat you up about it. That’s not my job, anyway. You’ve been punished enough,” the nurse took a kind of chiding tone mixed with humor and sympathy.

“Let me ask you something, Nurse Hitchens. If you cheated on your boyfriend or husband or fiance or girlfriend, fiancee, or wife ... would you think him or her justified in taking out their pain and anger on your private parts? Would you accept as justice or retribution the cutting up of your genitals, whether your clit, your labia, or any other part of your vulva? Or would that perhaps come across as severe overkill, sadism, and a criminal assault?” I went for the jugular there.

I could tell that I struck home. Abigail’s alabaster face turned crimson as she contemplated what it would be like to be “punished” in such a vicious manner. She shook her head, realizing that she was a hypocrite. I could tell that in her horrified eyes and her biting of the lower lip. She shook her head again and sighed.

“Damn, you really did have to have a good point! Maybe that’s why she attacked you. We ladies hate to be wrong or proven wrong. At least in my experience. That’s why we try to get men to apologize, even when we’re wrong. The more we get our way, the harder it is on us when it doesn’t work. Don’t ask me why we women don’t want to admit being wrong. We just don’t. I can’t explain it, either,” Abigail found herself obviously flirting with me, though I wasn’t really in a mood to flirt with a woman who had just judged me that way.

It tended to hurt her bedside manner now, didn’t it? Anyway, seeing that I was in a rather brusque mood, she quit her banter and focused on strictly professional matters. That was good, since I really wanted to be in the best of health to testify at Lisa’s and Steven’s trials and his medical ethics hearing. I didn’t want to waste time arguing the ethics of marital revenge with some priggish nurse.

I fell back asleep and had pretty rough dreams for who knew how long. I still felt a lot of pain whenever the drugs wore off and had to be replaced. When I awoke again, someone brought me my first proper meal in said hospital and I decided to ask about release. I didn’t know how much longer I needed to be hospitalized and what they intended to observe before discharge.

The door to my room opened and in walked an obvious doctor. He was a wiry, middle-aged guy, probably late thirties from the look of him. He cleared his throat and looked at the chart for a little bit before staring at me, and then back at his chart. Then he pulled back the sheet and lifted my robe just enough to inspect my groin.

“So ... you were the victim of an unauthorized circumcision, by a trained and licensed medical professional, at the behest of your own wife, is that correct? Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. I’m Dr. Jason Gottlieb. So, Alexander Mulligan, is that right?” the doctor asked me now.

“Correct. I guess that I’m lucky that he was a trained surgeon, a urologist, even if he deserves to lose his license for this. I suppose that Lisa wanted to make sure not to lose her favorite toy. I don’t think that she realized that she would now have bigger problems than divorce,” I smirked.

“You’re Catholic, aren’t you? I thought that Catholics don’t do divorce?” Dr. Gottlieb expressed surprise.

“Fuck that noise. I don’t care about the sacraments. I would rather burn in Hell than take her back at this point. So, tell me, can my ... prick be saved?” I cornered him on that most sensitive of matters.

“Of course. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll need more just time to recover and heal. Sorry, but no intercourse, at least not in the regular sense, during your recovery. Can’t risk an infection. Vagina, mouth, anus, all have bacteria that could infect the injured penis. It will pay off later when you have most of your normal function back.