八十八回目の婚礼キャンセルのあとで

Kimberly POV

“Take them off and lie down.” The doctor said, rubbing both palms together, as a way to spread the creamy substance evenly in his palms.

How did I even end up here? If not for the state of hysteria I found myself in, tell me why I would be standing in a room letting a man talk to me like that…Knowing fully well what he meant by ‘take off’. I mean, I should go naked because of some medical examination. You could imagine how that landed.

You know, one minute…I had sat in the waiting room longer than I needed to, staring at the wall clock like it owed me an explanation for how my life had turned into this. Married for a year. Untouched for a year. And now here I was, about to let a stranger examine parts of me my own husband hadn't cared to look at in months.

The receptionist had called my name twice before I realized she meant me.

"Room three," she said, not even glancing up from her screen. "Dr. Horace Adams will see you shortly."

Dr. Horace. Not Dr. Lisa? That was initially written there.

I frowned at my file, at the name that had been crossed out and replaced in blue ink, and told myself it didn't matter. A doctor was a doctor. Male or female, they'd seen worse than whatever I was about to show them. I repeated that to myself the whole walk down the hallway, like a prayer I didn't quite believe.

Then I pushed the door open, and every ounce of that confidence packed up and left without me.

He wasn't what I expected. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and had a white coat that somehow made him look less like a healer and more like a man used to being obeyed. His mask covered half his face, but his eyes did enough work on their own … sharp, assessing, the kind of eyes that made you feel like you were being graded before you'd even said a word.

"Take them off and lie down." He rubbed both palms together, working some kind of cream into his gloves, not sparing me a second look, like the instruction was the most ordinary thing in the world.

Right there, my eyes caught the small red tube in his hand before I could stop myself. ‘Play feel.’ I didn't know what that meant, and some small, sane part of me decided I didn't want to.

"Sit," he said again, when I hadn't moved. Not unkind though. He sounded just certain, like there was no version of this where I said ‘no.’

I walked to the bed anyway. It was half-upright, adjustable, and felt cold under my palms when I finally sat.

I squeezed the fabric of my gown without meaning to. "Do I… really have to take it off?"

"That's usually how examinations work." He didn't even look up as he said it, rubbing the cream deeper into his palms, unbothered, like he'd said this exact sentence to a hundred women before me and would say it to a hundred more after.

I wanted to laugh at how absurd it sounded out loud. But I didn't. I just sat there, running through every possible way to back out of this without looking like a coward in front of a man who clearly had no patience for cowardice.

‘You made the appointment. You drove here. You're a grown woman.’ I tried so much to convince myself with those words.

I untied the gown with fingers that weren't as steady as I wanted them to be.

"Prop your legs on the side rails," he said, and this time his voice had dropped lower, the kind of low that had nothing to do with volume and everything to do with control.

I hesitated, and he lifted his gaze … just briefly but it was just enough to pin me in place … before going back to whatever he was doing with the cotton swab.

I did as he said. My dress rode up as I moved, and I hated how exposed that small motion made me feel, hated more that some part of me wasn't entirely unhappy about it. I pushed that thought down fast, buried it somewhere I wouldn't have to look at it again.

He stepped closer.

"Where does it hurt?" he asked, and God, the question alone made my throat go dry. I swallowed before I could answer, and I was almost certain he saw it, the way his eyes flicked up for half a second like he was cataloguing every reaction I tried to hide.

I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me rattled. I was a married woman. I had nothing to be ashamed of here. This was medicine. Or better still, this was routine.

"It hurts right there," I said, "where your hand is."

"Any recent changes in your intimate life?"

"No … no." The words came out faster than I meant them to. "I'm a virgin."

I felt ridiculous the second it left my mouth. 26 years old, married a full year, and still saying that sentence out loud to a stranger in a white coat.

"We've been married a year," I added, because the silence that followed felt worse than the confession itself, "but my husband hasn't touched me."

Something shifted across his face and was gone as fast as it came, but I caught it. Surprise, maybe. Or something closer to disbelief. Either way, he didn't comment on it, and somehow that felt worse than if he had.

"Hold still," was all he said, already holding a cotton swab coated in something faintly glossy.

I wanted to ask what that was. I wanted to ask a lot of things. But instead I sat there, as I was already feeling my heart thudding somewhere near my throat, trying to remember the last time I'd felt this out of control of my own body in a room with another person.

For one dizzy second, I actually considered asking if there was a female doctor available. The thought sat on the tip of my tongue, and I turned it over, weighing it. But something about the way he moved … efficient, unbothered, like he did this a hundred times a week and thought nothing of it … made the question feel small in my mouth. And almost childish. I didn't want to be the woman who couldn't get through a routine exam without flinching. I swallowed the request along with my pride and told myself I could survive the next ten minutes.

He must have clocked the hesitation on my face anyway, because he paused, just briefly, one gloved hand hovering near my knee.

"You can breathe," he said, and it wasn't gentle exactly, but it wasn't cruel either. "This is the part where most people forget to."

I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath until he said it. I let it out slow, embarrassed at how much that small observation unsettled me … that he'd noticed something about me I hadn't noticed myself.

"I didn't think it would be this…" I trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence in a way that didn't sound completely unhinged.

"Uncomfortable?" he offered in a clinical flat tone, like he was reading it off a chart. "It usually is, the first time someone actually pays attention to what's wrong instead of ignoring it."

I didn't know if that was meant for me or for whatever had brought me into this office to begin with, but it landed somewhere it shouldn't have. Let's say, somewhere close to the ache I'd been carrying around for weeks and hadn't said out loud to anyone.

"You say that like you already know what's wrong with me."

"I have a few ideas." His voice didn't change, but something in his eyes did … a shift of something closer to interest than clinical duty, there and gone before I could decide if I'd imagined it. "You'll tell me if I'm right."

I didn't answer that. I wasn't sure I trusted my own voice at that point.

He closed the space between us again, still having the cotton swab in his hand, and every nerve in my body seemed to wake up at once in anticipation of something I couldn't name and didn't want to.

"This might feel strange," he said, which felt like the understatement of the century, given everything already felt strange. "Tell me if it's too much."

I appreciated that he said it, even if some stubborn, prideful part of me had already decided I wasn't going to admit it, whatever ‘it’ turned out to be.

"I'm fine," I said, which was a lie the second it left my mouth.

He didn't call me on it. He just moved forward, steady and sure, the way he seemed to do everything since I got in here, and I held onto the edge of the gown like it was the only thing keeping me stable in the room.

On insertion, at first, I held on to my dress tightly, blinking my eyes from time to time and then mouthed my lips without necessarily intending to.

And as soon as it went in properly, I completely lost every ounce of control I had. Managed to hold onto nothing and helplessly fell back on the bed completely, both my eyes and mouth opened so widely as if I was searching for any available air.

Somewhere above me, I heard him go quiet … not the clinical or unbothered quiet from before, but something else. It was something I didn't have the courage to name on a first thought.

It all felt like some irresistible mistake in the first place, and if you must know, I might as well be in for a 'lonnnggggg thing,' because the feeling was heavenly.