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John sat back in his chair as if she had slapped him. His mind was reeling in shock.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “I thought you grew up on some kind of commune, and then became an herbalist.”
Rain nodded, pausing to express her thanks to Elaine as she brought her a cup of coffee. John’s coffee didn’t appear to be forthcoming. Maybe it was for the best, the waitress still looked pissed at him.
“Both of those things are true,” she said. “But for a long time in the middle, I was one of the top pharmaceutical reps on the west coast.”
John looked at her in confusion, trying to reconcile the liberal and casual Rain he knew with his image of an uber-professional pharmaceutical rep. He gripped his hands together under the table, knowing instinctively that he wouldn’t like what he was about to hear.
“Tell me more.”
She shifted in her chair, clearly uncomfortable. He knew her well enough to know that she was annoyed with herself for bringing it up. Whatever “it” was.
“When I went to college I decided to leave my hippie family behind and see what else was out there in the big world,” she began. “I quickly realized I was different. Weird. I was desperate to fit in with the regular people, to move beyond the world I grew up in, where everything was a struggle. Where we were always worried about going hungry, about surviving.”
She sighed. “I started calling myself Marie, my middle name, to sound less woo-woo and more like what I thought was a normal person. I replaced all my hand-made clothes with the type of things my friend wore. I cut off my dreadlocks. I started eating meat and junk food and drinking soda.”
“It turns out I really liked this new world,” she continued. “I studied business, because I thought it was my best shot for security, and I discovered that I had a natural aptitude for it. I was recruited right out of school by Jackson Pharmaceuticals.”
John felt his eyes widen. Jackson was a well-known company, specializing in cancer treatment and immune suppressant drugs for autoimmune diseases. “That’s a great company,” he said.
Rain nodded. “I moved to San Francisco and spent my days traveling around in my fancy business suit and heels, convincing doctors like you to use our drugs. I was making an obscene amount of money, which I invested and turned into more money, setting myself up comfortably for life. I ate at the best restaurants and had all the latest gadgets. I thought I had it all.”
John felt a trickle of unease. “What happened?” he asked softly.
“One day I found a lump.” Rain’s face was as serious as he’d ever seen it, but her voice was completely emotionless, as if she was separating herself from the pain.
“I actually wasn’t worried at all at first, I figured it had to be benign. They’d just cut it out and I’d go on with my life. After all, I was only 37 years old, with no history of breast cancer on either side of the family. I was raised on all organic food. I never even tasted fast food or processed foods until I went to college. There was nothing in my history that would suggest I was at risk.”
She paused.
“But it wasn’t benign?” he confirmed.
She shook her head, the movement stiff. “It wasn’t. All of the sudden there I was, facing cancer. Alone.”
He could see her hand trembling on the table and slid her hand into his, resting them both on the table between them. She gave him a small smile, but her eyes looked like she was a million miles away.
“My doctor wanted me to start chemo and meds right away, so I did. I had a....,” she paused to draw a deep shuddering breath and he squeezed her hand comfortingly. “I had a bad reaction to the chemo meds. My body rejected them, and I went into shock. It was so bad that my heart stopped, and they had to defibrillate me. I woke up in the hospital, and they told me I had almost died. I felt so awful I was almost sorry I hadn’t died.”
John felt a wave of nausea rise up in his stomach.
“After I’d recovered from that, they convinced me to try again, with a different kind of chemo. As it dripped into my veins I could feel it poisoning me. I could feel my body violently rebelling against it,” she said earnestly. “It made me so sick, sicker than it was supposed to, yet they wanted me to keep going. Instinctively I knew, I just knew, that the treatments weren’t going to help. How could they when my body was rejecting them?”
Elaine came by and dropped their food on the table, but neither of them looked at their plates, their eyes still locked on each other as Rain continued her story.
“I was so scared John. I went back home to my parents, wondering if I would die there.”
She took a deep breath in, and slowly blew it out through her nose. “My parents convinced me to try natural medicine. I consulted with the healers and herbalists we knew. I researched exhaustively, reading every study and every article from every country to find what had helped people there.”
“We hit that fucking tumor with everything we had, from herbs to visualization to diet to energy work to detox wraps,” she went on. “After the first month, I could feel my body starting to heal. I could feel the tumor shrinking. My strength started to come back. And six months later it was gone. Totally gone. I felt reborn. I had faced down death and won. I had been given a second chance, and I knew I had to take advantage of that gift.”
“Wow,” he said, the word inadequate.
“I went back to my doctors in San Francisco. They tested me and couldn’t believe it. There wasn’t a trace of cancer left in my system. They couldn’t explain it, but I knew what I had done had made the difference,” Rain continued.
“I tried to go back to my job. That had been my work for so long. I was one of their top-producing reps and the money was insane. They’d held my job for me for months, hoping for me to come back,” she explained. “But my experience had changed me. I realized I couldn’t continue to shill drugs I didn’t believe in. I couldn’t encourage doctors to put someone else through what I had been through.”
She gave John a fierce look like he might argue, but he stayed silent, turning her words over in his mind, trying to reconcile them with his own training and experience.
“I’m not naïve enough to think there’s never a place for pharmaceuticals, John,” she added, “I know that not everyone would have the same results as me. But I do believe we should try natural approaches first in most cases. That natural medicine is complementary.”
She looked down at her plate. “As I researched I learned that in many countries around the world, places in Europe, China, India, it was completely normal to combine natural remedies with the more western allopathic medicine and see what works best,” she said, her voice taking on a passionate quality. “That’s when I decided to learn how to help people heal themselves. To help empower people to be more active in their own health.”
She pulled her hand away, and John felt the loss of her warmth.
“So that’s why I do what I do,” she said, picking up her fork, clearly ready to change the subject.
He opened his mouth to respond but she cut him off. “Let’s eat.”
They spent the rest of their lunch in comfortable conversation, but John couldn’t get Rain’s breast cancer story out of his head. As a doctor he’d often encountered things that couldn’t be understood by medical science. People you thought had no chance had miraculous recoveries, others with minor illnesses inexplicably died.
As a surgeon he was trained to cut, and not get too involved in his patients and their stories. He didn’t understand how or why Rain had recovered, but he was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that there might be cases where surgery wasn’t the best option. There were too many things that medical science hadn’t found an explanation for. As he walked Rain back to her shop, he vowed to be more open-minded about her work.
He followed her in as she unlocked the shop. “Mind if I look around?” he asked.
Rain’s head whipped around in surprise, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Go ahead,” she said.
John walked around, examining the jars of herbs and tincture bottles without a comment. He had to admit that he was impressed by her extensive inventory. There were shelves and shelves of items. Small, neatly typed cards listed the supposed benefits of each item. Each description preceded, he noted with approval, by the term “may be helpful for”.
He held up one card and turned to look at Rain, who was leaning against the counter watching him. “May be helpful for?” he inquired.
Rain moved towards him and looked at the card in his hand. “Nothing is 100%, just like with conventional medications we don’t always know whether a certain illness will respond to one treatment over another. Or which treatment will work best for one person over another.”
He nodded but didn’t respond. He continued his slow perusal until he came to a massage table hidden behind a screen. “You do massages?” he asked curiously.
Rain shook her head. “No, the table is for energy work, like reiki,” she explained. “Sometimes people are more comfortable if they can lay down.”
John boosted himself on the table, then crooked a finger, giving her a small smile. Her eyes flared, and she reached behind her to lock the front door before walking towards him, slowly and purposefully. She stopped to pull the screen in front of the table more fully, blocking them from any curious eyes passing by on the street.
Rain moved to stand in front of him, meeting his eyes, her gaze intense. Without looking away she dropped her hands to his knees and pushed them apart, moving to stand between then. Her hand slid up on thigh before moving up to cup his now-erect cock.
“Looks like you have something that needs my attention, Dr. White,” she said, her voice low and seductive as she stroked him through his pants. Suddenly his zipper rasped, the sound loud in the quiet shop. Rain reached in and pulled his cock out of his briefs. He inhaled sharply as her warm little hand touched his throbbing cock.
Still holding his gaze, she slid to her knees in front of him. “Rain, what are you doing?” he asked, his voice sounding choked to his own ears.
“Is that a rhetorical question?” she teased with a sweet smile.
She leaned forward and licked him from crown to tip, swirling her tongue around the head a few times before moving back up. He groaned loudly.
Rain’s hands tightened on his thighs as she took his cock more fully into her mouth, stopping when she hit the back of her throat. She began bobbing back and forth, licking and applying steady suction.
“Oh my god, Rain,” he gasped, one hand coming down to wrap in her hair as he moved her head closer to his crotch. “That feels so damn good. Please. Don’t stop.”
She continued moving her mouth back and forth on him, reaching one hand around to massage his aching balls. Her eyes were dark and seductive as she looked up at him, her mouth stretched wide to accommodate the girth of his cock. She looked beautiful, like something out of his dreams.
Her finger began to stroke his taint and he could feel his balls tightening, his orgasm near. “Rain, honey,” he gasped. “You need to stop, I’m gonna come.”
She quickened the pace, humming against him as she took him as deep as she could. She dug her nails into one thigh, causing a sting of pain, while giving his balls a firm squeeze with her other hand.
“Fuck,” he shouted as his seed shot from his body into her mouth. “Take it Rain, drink it all down.” He didn’t recognize his own voice, or the primal urge that passed through his as he coated her throat with his come.
Rain continued her ministrations until she had sucked him dry. She released him with a pop, rubbing her mouth with her hand and sitting back on her heels, watching him as he tried to catch his breath.
He leaned back on his hands, his heart pounding like he had run a marathon. “Jesus,” he gasped. “That was incredible.”
As his heartrate slowed, he sat up and tucked himself carefully back into his pants. Sliding to standing, he offered her a hand and pulled her up. She turned, clearly thinking they were done. She was wrong.
“Get your ass on that table,” he ordered, his voice deep and bossy as he pulled her closer to him. “I want dessert.”