Chapter 3
Eve modulates what she wants to say out of consideration for the girl's anxiety. She knows she's scared and self-conscious and worried there's something permanently, painfully wrong with her. Eve recognizes that, even empathize with that, but she's also enchanted by Harper's v****a. She wants to tell the girl how cute it is.
Strange, really. This is her job. She treats women day in and day out, and she very, very rarely lets her personal feelings influence her decisions in the office...but ever since she saw Harper nearly keel over in the parking lot she's been irresistibly drawn to the girl. It's more than base attraction, though Eve has always been drawn to softer, more feminine women than herself (and Harper is as innocently feminine as they come); there's something else, something hopeful and alluring in the girl's eyes. She's prettier than she knows, and her freckles in the gray morning light glowed like spots of molten copper. She's painfully shy--as shy as Eve was when she was first afflicted with her special condition--and Eve must fight the urge to kiss the girl on her perfectly pink lips. Both sets of them.
It's not professional. She knows that. She also can't help it. She wants to be good to this girl--this patient, she reminds herself--like a cool big sister, perhaps. But that's not all she wants. She wants more. Much more.
She thinks Harper knows. Judging from her smiles and her wandering eyes it's possible that Harper wants more, too.
Still, she has a job to do.
"I have good news and I have bad news," she finally says.
Harper has been staring at the ceiling and biting her nails for a full minute, her other hand wrapped around the edge of the table, knuckles white. Her gown pushed up to her hips, feet locked in the stirrups, she could not look more uncomfortable. When she hears the doctor's words, she chances a single, furtive glance in her direction. "How bad is the bad news?" she asks.
Eve fights the urge to caress the girl's thigh. "Not bad at all."
Relief breaks across her sweet face. "Okay, um...bad news first?"
Eve brushes the neat little flame of the girl's pubic mound. Then she clasps her latex gloves. "Well, your vaginal opening is small--but not any smaller than it should be, considering your lack of activity down there for the last two decades." To illustrate, she forms a ring with her fingers. Her gloves squeak as she tightens the ring. "Right now, at rest, your opening is about the size of a pea-"
"A pea?!" Harper squeaks.
"Calm down, honey."
"A pea?" she hisses.
Eve grins. "We tighten up when we're nervous. Men's p*****s do the same thing. They go flaccid and shrivel up like slugs. You're not thrilled about me examining you, so you're a bit smaller than you'd normally be. Now, if you were aroused, you'd be bigger, but not by much. You're 'virginally small,' to use the layperson's term. But that by itself wouldn't have stopped Mr. Philosophy from getting in there."
"Oh God here it comes," moans Harper.
Eve shakes her head, fighting back laughter. "Honey. Honey, breathe. This is really okay. I mean it. I suspect that you've got a little bit of emotional vaginismus going on."
Harper's brow wrinkles. "That sounds...gross. Is it a disease?"
"No. It's an involuntary contraction of the pelvic floor muscles. Right around here," Eve brushes the girl's vulva with her fingers (eliciting a quick gasp from the girl), "in your pubococcygeus muscle group. You probably experienced muscle spasms when he tried to get in. Did you have trouble breathing?"
Harper nods briskly.
"I think vaginismus is a good bet. This would actually make it very difficult and probably painful for you to insert a tampon."
"Does it go away?"
"It can, but it takes patience. I suspect that for you it's more of a mind over matter thing. You're so nervous and, well, probably carrying a little bit of guilt and some other emotional baggage. That's enough to make you cinch up like a drawstring."
The girl looks crestfallen. Eve bites her lip, afraid she's hurt her feelings. "Hey, I'm serious, though, you can beat this. It just takes time."
Harper sighs. "So what can I do? I don't know how big Bill is but I know he's not the size of a pea."
"I have two things to say to that. One, the v****a is extremely elastic and can accommodate objects of much larger size. Remember, babies. But two, and more importantly, are you sure you want Bill to be the one?"
Harper's toes squirm in the stirrups. Another long, mournful sigh. "I don't know..."
Eve slides back on her rolling chair. "There are dilator kits you can use to stretch your opening, and I always encourage masturbation." Her conspiratorial smile is not quite reciprocated. The girl is disappointed.
"You said there was good news," she says softly.
"Oh," remembers Eve. She wants to tell the girl that her v****a is beautiful, that her labia is a succulent pink and her neatly trimmed bush of copper hair is adorable. She wants to tell her that the pale skin of her inner thighs looks yummy, that the way she trembled as Eve prodded her virgin body made her be a bit gentler and a teensy bit more sensuous in her touches than was entirely, clinically necessary. Instead she says, "I can help you...if you want."
She suddenly realizes that isn't what she meant to say at all. She meant to say they have dilator kits in the office. She meant to say her v****a is otherwise impeccable. She meant to say she's clean and undamaged and ready to be broken in.
But now her words are hovering between them invisible and enticing, and Harper is staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and desire. "What do you mean?" she asks quietly.
Eve licks her lips. "I can show you how to stretch yourself."
It's so quiet in the room they can hear Carol answer the phone outside. For the first time since getting on the table Harper isn't trembling. She's braced on her elbows, thin gown sticking to her small, pert breasts. She's thinking. Considering.
"Will it hurt?" she finally asks.
"Maybe at first," says Eve. "You've never m*********d before, right?"
Harper shakes her head.
"Can you lie back for me?"
Harper's heart is beating against her ribs like a caged horse. It kicks, bucks, beats, beats, beats like it wants out, like it wants to throw her body into the mud. There is no mud, though. There's only this sterile room, the cold stirrups, and Eve's sparkling red eyes.
"What if someone walks in?" she asks.
Eve's hand glides up the girl's inner thigh. "This is a medical service I'm providing, honey. I'll just be showing you how to please yourself. But if it'll make you feel better..." She pushes off with her toes, sailing on the rolling chair to the door and then, eyes still locked on the girl, flips the lock in the door.
Then, just for good measure, she dims the lights. Ever so slightly.