Chapter 2: True Confessions

We went on, after that, with the questions, and "Dr. Lucy" went on with the physical examination, including some pretty personal palpitating of private portions of my person. In the course of all this, my nether appendage was frequently exposed to view under the flimsy paper gown, and Lucy, no doubt, got an excellent look at it.

I didn't grow a bone in her honor -- for which fact I was inordinately grateful to whatever Gods were looking after my welfare and dignity at that moment. I guess finding out that Dr. Lucy was an old high school friend helped to humanize her enough that I temporarily gained a small amount of extra Libido Control.

She even got out the old rubber glove and the lubricant, and, asking me to lie on my side facing away, I got the dreaded finger-up-the-ass treatment -- just as I had earlier anticipated. If anyone had told me, back in high school, that Lucy Kendricks was someday going to stick a finger way up my ass, I'd have thought they were smoking something interesting.

Well, it just goes to show, you never know.

Dr. Lucy was in and out of my examination room repeatedly all morning and into the early afternoon, and she sent me off hither and yon as well, for additional procedures and tests.

Finally, after any number of invasive procedures -- some of them involving machinery that I was unable to identify by name -- I found myself with my clothes all back on and seated in front of her desk in a handsome office, just on the other side of the door to my cold little examination room.

"Well, Billy, unless your blood work shows something untoward, it looks as if the Orioles have themselves a brand-new shortstop."

"Good to hear, Dr. Lucy. Don't worry about the blood work. I'm pretty sure there are no strange microbes in there, and I'm positive there are no steroids. Whoops! Maybe 'positive' isn't a word I should be using in connection with steroids! Seriously, even my cholesterol should be in pretty decent shape. I'm very confident that the Birds won't find anything to cause me to get shipped back to Wrigley Field."

"I'm glad. It'll be nice to have you here in Baltimore."

"How'd you ever end up here yourself?" I asked her.

"Princeton undergrad got me out of Ohio," she said, "followed by medical school at Johns Hopkins, and my internship and residency right here at the University's hospital. After all that, it seemed natural to join a practice right here in Charm City."

"I hope by now you've dropped your foolish allegiance to the Cleveland Indians, and have become a faithful Orioles fan."

"Don't worry. I've been an Orioles fan ever since I moved to Maryland," she said. "And of course I've followed your career -- in the Other League. I'll be an even bigger Birds fan, now that I am personally acquainted with one of the players."

"Can you get loose for lunch?" I asked her. "I'm not even close to being finished talking about old times with you yet."

"I don't want to talk -- too much -- about old times," Lucy said. "For me, some of the old times were a little painful. But, yes, I can get away for lunch. If you can hang around here, in the waiting room, for another half hour or forty-five minutes, I'm pretty sure we can escape for a reasonably leisurely late lunch!"

"I am at your disposal," I told her. "My only reason for being in Baltimore at all right now is to submit to this examination. I have nothing vital to do for the rest of the month of February, except maybe check in with a Realtor to get started on house-hunting, and then to report -- two weeks from now -- to Ft. Lauderdale for Spring Training."

"No family? No wife and kids to go back to?"

"I'm free as the orange-and-black bird I'm about to become," I said. "Hell, I haven't even got a local family doctor. Hey -- maybe I could become a patient of yours. What do you think?"

"We can discuss that at lunch," she said.

It was a little more than 45 minutes before Lucy got free for lunch, but I was OK. I'd caught up on all the two-year-old Newsweeks in the waiting room, and had checked out the prices of 55-foot yachts in Boating Magazine. Even at my inflated annual salary, the prices seemed shockingly high.

It was Lucy's town, so she chose the restaurant. She took us, in my Hertz car, to an unpretentious nearby family-style franchise eatery. The waitresses there all greeted Lucy like an old friend. "This must be your regular place," I said.

"One of them, yes. We generally go somewhere close to the office. There are only about three feasible places that are close, and serve decent-enough food to merit consideration."

I ordered a small steak, salad, and a baked potato. I had skipped breakfast -- as instructed -- in honor of the physical examination, and by now I was more than ready to eat. To my surprise, Lucy ordered a full-bore meal that could have served as dinner, and not just as lunch fare.

She noticed me noticing what she'd ordered, and smiled. "I'm not dieting," she said. "I've learned that regular hard exercise is enough to keep me fit, even with a pretty healthy food intake... And when I say "healthy," I don't mean nutritionally balanced -- I mean hefty! I was always a big eater, and I pretty much still am. I've just learned what it takes to prevent the weight from being piled on."

"It must be a tremendous source of satisfaction -- and pride -- to have managed to lose all that weight the way you have," I said.

"Yes. It was -- and is. I received a lot of positive feedback during my weight-loss campaign. I did it the right way -- no shortcuts, no panic-driven, too-fast weight-drops. Just a slow, steady attack. The longer it went on, the easier it became to sustain. I learned to love the exercise regimen, instead of hating every minute of it, as I had at the outset."

"Do you ever see any of the old gang from Ohio? Do you get the satisfaction of showing them The New Lucy?"

"Two years ago I did -- at the tenth high school reunion. I had just reached my current weight -- around 120 -- a few months earlier. I was glorying in it -- the way I felt physically; the way I was feeling about myself! And I went back for the reunion and really knocked their socks off! The whole bunch of them!"

"It must have been incredible!" I agreed.

"You have no idea!" she said, laughing. "The best, for me, was the fact that several of our class beauties had managed to put on a few pounds. Nothing remotely to match the way I had been, but certainly they'd gone up from their size sixes to around a size ten or twelve, in just that decade! It was like my experience with you -- today. Nobody recognized me right away! And when I'd give them my name, and they realized who I was -- well, it was a very rewarding night for my little ego, I can tell you!"

Lucy, reliving her own pleasure, blushed at the thought of that night. "Part of me hated myself for being so superficial -- for putting such a high value on something like personal appearance. I knew, better than most people, that looks shouldn't count for so much."

She was quiet for a moment. "... But when you've spent most of your life on the other side -- when you were one of the outcasts, because of personal appearance. Well, I guess it's understandable that a person would take some satisfaction in having the shoe on the other foot."

"I wish I'd have been there," I told her.

Lucy frowned. "I wish you'd have been there, too. You were the one I most wanted to show off for! All the time I was preparing for the reunion, I pictured myself running into you there and making your mouth drop open and your eyes get bigger!"