Chapter 3: Intimate Medical Care

NIH Clinical Center, mid-day on Monday

Now that Marie was mobile again, she had decided to experiment with her appearance. Her usual look was an elegant European one. To visit Nancy for a follow-up visit, she found an old pair of jeans, faded to incredible softness, which she managed to slide into. They looked painted on by a very fine artist. She complemented them with a silky cowboy shirt and black boots, on the fashionable side of Western. Marie was happy to be walking on her own, and happy to be getting admiring looks. She was confident that anyone who interacted her would admire her intellect, but she had been sick too long to feel as confident about her physical appeal.

Nancy smiled as Marie walked in. “You realize, of course, that the worst thing about stretchy pants, with an ass like yours, is that you yourself can’t easily appreciate it? Let me simply say that those jeans don’t make your butt look too large. They make it look delicious.

Nancy, however, was distinctly not happy. “My life, however, is not as delicious. My funding has been cut completely, although I still have privileges there to use research facilities. Don’t worry, you’ll still get the medication, but I’m not sure there will be active research on your condition.”

“But what about you personally? Do they have another position for you?”

“Not so far. I’ll land on my feet. Government doctors don’t get paid as much as in the private sector. At the very least, I can fill in at an ER, or something else on an on-demand basis, while I look for more permanent things in my field, or at least something that’s interesting.”

“Outside your current field, what would interest you?”

“Well, the sexual rehab with Nathan is increasingly interesting. Neurology is close enough to rehabilitation medicine that I might well be able to get a post in a rehab hospital, although there’s not yet much demand for that specific area.”

“Do other aspects of sexuality interest you?”

“Oh yes. I’ve wondered about studying the sexuality in people with good sex lives and trying to understand the neurology of it. There’s also how disease interferes with sexuality; I’ve found lots of patients with multiple sclerosis have trouble as the disease progresses. I’d also like to look into how emotional things get into physical sexuality.”

“Maybe, Nancy, I, or at least a foundation with which I work, just might be able to provide you with an opportunity. Could you and Nathan join us at my apartment, for dinner? I might get one or two other people in our program. Carol and Curt, I’m afraid, mentioned they were doing something tonight.”

“Sure. Shall I change first?” She was in white coat over the sort of nondescript dress often worn by NIH female physicians.

“That might not be a bad idea. With us would be pretty difficult to go too far, as long as you could wear it on the street. In fact, if you didn’t dress sexily, some people might think of it as an implicit putdown of their style. It’s funny that in some places, you can dress more sexily once people know you. Here, we’d have the opposite.”

“I’ll have to go home for a suitable outfit.”

Carol’s apartment, mid-day on Monday

“Hey, Carol? Have you been to other local clubs? How do our regular shows and mingling compare?”

“We’re a lot more quiet, in a nice way. Now, a club like This Is It has lots of traffic, some hustle and pissed off customers, and probably not much return business. There are a couple of clubs on M Street, over in the shopping district, which are just different -- they’re more for businesspeople at lunch and after work. No mingling to speak of. They pay decent dancer salaries and make up the mingling losses with lots of drink volume.

“Probably closest to us is the Blue Mirror, around the corner and on the other side of the street. Some feature dancers from the circuit, club dancers, and maybe some bar girls. Bigger than we are, probably less mingling. I’ve heard they’re couples friendly -- want to go look? They are open at lunchtime.”

“Sure! I sat in there for a drink or two once, but nothing happened.”

“Give me a few minutes to change into something that might be right for that. I was thinking sexy casual or club -- leather mini, sheer blouse, maybe a jacket...”

“I’m starting to think slightly Domme, more for dealing with management than with Joni if she’s there. Leather bar vest rather than a jacket? Boots over stockings?”

“I like that. Back soon.”

Marie’s apartment, early evening

As Nancy took off her coat, Marie first worried that Nancy had dressed too formally for the evening. Marie herself had changed to something looser, and, to be blunt, more provocative. Marie had put on a minidress in her trademark electric blue, black hose, and white go-go boots. She wore nothing else underneath.

Marie relaxed when she looked more closely at the suit that Nancy wore. It was of light blue leather, with a skirt that went to mid-thigh. Marie realized that she had never seen Nancy with her pale blonde hair, usually bound up, cascading, layered, down her chest, a white-gold waterfall. A petite woman, she increased her height with color-matched light blue, high-heeled boots, with a moderate platform.

Nathan Campbell, her Significant Other, was even more surprising. He wore a tweed sport coat, a soft sweater, and a kilt with sporran. Marie noticed that he had proper Scots knee-high stockings with a skean dhu dagger, which, all too often in clubs, was the second argument that a wearer of the kilt wasn’t being anything other than masculine. She did take a moment to appreciate what appeared to be his muscular legs and suppressed a giggle when she realized that when he sat down, she would be looking in his direction much as men looked at miniskirted women in chairs.

Marie was further surprised to see that Nancy’s jacket and blouse were tailored to emphasize her small waist and very large bust. There was even a hint of nipple under the translucent blouse. All in all, her outfit would have worked as club wear, yet could fit into some office environments. She appreciated Nancy for a moment, and then spoke. “Don’t think of this as formal interview. In a lot of respects, decisions in the program come from a consensus in what is an extended family. The key people for this would be, I think, Carol and Abie. They’d expect opinions from Curt and me. How the function would operate as a business could involve Tana and Melody. We also have a number of people, mostly performers, who have some pretty deep and relevant social science knowledge. Betty would almost certainly talk to you.

“The culture, to put it mildly, is highly sex-positive, which you seem to be. The way you took off your coat before you talked sexuality, and had at least a mildly provocative outfit, was sensitive.”

She smiled. “Yes. It was hard to decide on the right level.”

“How would you feel if someone talked about your sexuality? Or, going further touched you?”

“Interesting, Marie. Normally, it would piss me off in a professional interview. But I’m hearing that here, it would be a test if I fit into the local culture.”

“Yes it would. You wouldn’t be required to do anything, but my guess would be that ordinary professional rules about no sexual contact would be counterproductive here. Consensual sex is going to raise the comfort level with this crew. I have asked our lawyers to come up with some framework in which that would not break professional ethical rules--maybe get someone else to be physician of record. Don’t assume that I’ve got that right.”