Two West

Great addition, Mark thought.

He didn’t generally pay attention to new recruits. He just did his job and went home, or back to the office. Best that way, he thought, what with the politics of the unit being complex and more than a little hostile towards someone who wouldn’t tow the line - wouldn’t brown nose, as they used to call it. Both the image and the concept made him flinch.

It’s not he intended to be this way. He could do team: played baseball, basketball, knew the concept. But hospital administration was a contradiction in terms. He just wanted to take care of his patients, not spend useless time pleasing the uppity-ups. Besides, his patients, at least, were human.

But when he saw her down the hall he thought to himself, boy, now that will certainly be an improvement in the scenery around here. Then went about his business. He had three eyelids and a breast to do that day.

Half-way into his second eyelid Alice brought her in the room. “This is Allison,” she said. “And this, Allison, is Doctor Mark Dodson Clark,” almost bowing as she said it in mock affection. “He’s from Wyoming. He’s the renegade around here.”

“Guilty as charged,” Mark said. And then he nodded to the same woman he had nodded to before, only she didn’t - or come to think of it, may, not have - noticed. Never underestimate a woman, he thought. “Yes, by all means,” he said into the surgical field, “don’t let me lead you astray.”

Playing the role of renegade was enjoyable. And he guessed, in case it mattered, it was more interesting to others to have a little rebelliousness about. It was his inborn error of metabolism. Blessed error. Nothing more boring than an organization man.

Allison had the look of confidence about her. He no more than glanced at her but he could see that much.

“We feel very lucky to be adding Allison to our staff,” Alice droned on.

Mark concentrated on his incision which, he was sure, would greatly improve the looks of Mrs. Magillicutty, who, god knows, needed it. Any slightly bloody field was more interesting than whatever it was Alice had to say.

“She’s had a lot of experience in surgical units back in New Jersey and is quite a find for us.”

We’ll see about that, thought Mark. He grunted.

“We’re really glad to have her here on Two West.”

Allison disappeared. Alice, thank god, disappeared. Mark finished his cases and went to his office hours to view the beauty of his handiwork on parade. It promised to be an ego-building afternoon.

Two weeks later, Allison was assigned to one of Mark’s cases. She knew her way around all right, gave him the surgical hand with just the right amount of snap. Love that pop of hemostat against his ruddy palm. Sock it to me. Sock it to me... It had, when done properly, an almost artistic gesture to it. Allison did it well. And not only that, she anticipated his moves with accuracy. Usually it takes a surgeon and nurse a little while to synch up their actions. Some never do. But with Allison it was like their brains were locked.

He noticed - not exactly noticed, felt is a better word - her movements around the room. She was mid-twenties, he imagined, nice tight figure, rounding out from the scrub greens she wore. And when she leaned over the side counter after a surgery, writing the endless notes they now make the nurses write, her curves emerged in graceful suggestions which electrified his imagination. It seemed to him that she was actually conscious how her body emerged from the amorphous green in front of him, her hips cocked, waist kinked to one side in absolute confidence, and might have been showing off, or at least was in possession of that unconscious sexuality that just couldn’t help itself. He liked that, whatever the hell it was. He liked the mystery and the basic animal nature of her presence in a world of over-refined sterility. He made it a point not to pay attention. Attention makes it self-conscious. Less attention eggs it on.

Mark had a bad habit of making last minute changes in his schedule. Not his doing so much as that of his patients, included in which were many of the elite of Los Angeles who had the elite habits that led to unpredictability. Mark was constantly adding patients to the operating schedule at the last minute. These seemingly unacceptable gestures set up an inevitable power struggle between him and the head nurse, Alice, who by now was none too fond of him.

“No additions after noon the previous day,” she said.

“Nonsense,” Mark said. “You’ve got the space, the staff, and a hospital occupancy disaster all of which benefits from whatever I bring and whenever I bring it.” The head nurse was not impressed. And she had the power. And the backing of the chief surgeon, Dr. Peterson, who was one of those wimpy, despicable organization men. Mark had his cases refused or bumped way too often. A lot more often than the chief surgeon.

“Hey guys, this a service organization.” Mark would almost shout his indictment in frustration, standing at the scheduling board seeing the red line drawn through his eleven o’clock case. But the line stood. He went over the head of the chief only once. For that effort he got back a letter stating that if he were more cooperative with the unit rules there wouldn’t be a problem. The administrator must have talked to all the wrong people. If he interviewed anyone at all, that is. Boilerplate. Company Hoo-Hah on a stick. Mark was stubborn but not stupid. He went underground and swallowed his discontent.

Meanwhile Allison was gliding through his rooms like a zephyr. He wasn’t looking for anything, he had no expectations, he didn’t even want to be effected by Allison but it was physical, beyond intelligence and beyond control.

She felt it too. He knew that. He could tell by the way she hesitated at his elbow, remaining there, close, longer than necessary. As if proximity were hard to break.

Sheeba raised her eyebrow. Sheeba was the only “human” in the unit. She had a no-nonsense, don’t give-me-any-bullshit attitude which wasn’t popular with the administrators who, by now, were much more accustomed to dealing with people who dealt daily bullshit. It was, after all, the local currency. Sheeba and Mark complained to each other, regularly. Ventilation, they call it, decompression, therapy... but she raised her eyebrows and said, “now you watch out for that little new one.”

“How come?”

“She’ll be just like the rest.”

“Naw, she’s harmless. She doesn’t look enough like a troll to act like one.”

Sheeba was from Texas. Close enough to Louisiana to be laced with a little Southern voodoo, that invisible kind of undercurrent knowledge that doesn’t show on the radar screen. Sheeba watched the stars. Wouldn’t take the full moon shifts in the ER or OB wards. “You just mark my words,” she said and rolled her eyes.

Mark knew enough to shut up at the right time.

But Sheeba went on anyway. “You don’t deserve to know this but I’ll tell you anyhow. Do you know how I know she’s one of them?”

“How?”

“She’s been writing us up.”

“What the hell is that?”

“You know. Writing us up. Writing us up.”

“I’ve got ears. It’s just the Portuguese I can’t penetrate.”

“Really! It’s what nurses do, diddlehead, when they want to get ahead. They write down your mistakes and turn you in. It makes little Nazi’s out of everybody.”

“Ouch!”

“Yeah, that’s that sweet-assed little Jersey kid you see prancin’ down these halls.”

Just as well, Mark thought to himself. He hadn’t found it easy to

like her, just easy to covet her body. That was easy but would lead to no good.

Next day, Mark walked in to see that his one o’clock had been bumped. “Who’s charge nurse today,” he asked a passing aid.

“Allison,” came the reply.

“So Allison, what’s the deal. Here I am ready to go and I’m bumped.”

“Dr. Peterson has your room.”

“He has room three. I’m supposed to be in two.”

“He’s in three and two.”

Mark looked at her with his head tilted. “Three and two?”

“Well he was here and his patients were here so I put them in.”

“He can’t be in two places at once.”

“He’ll move to room two when he’s done. You can follow him in room three.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Jim Peterson is the slowest ENT this side of Kokomo and you want me to stand around for an hour while he diddles his way into my room. I could be in and out of there with my tattoo removal before he starts breathing hard.”

“It’s been decided.”

“What I’m saying is that it makes no damn sense. And furthermore, that’s my room!”

“You can’t have it. There’s a patient in it.”

“Well, move the patient out.”

“Can’t do that. We’ve already started pre-op meds.”

“You can do pre-op’s in recovery.”

“It’s my decision and that’s how it’s going to be.”

It was the absolute frustration for Mark, to be beaten not by logic but by power. “Just do me a favor will you fancy pants.”

“What?”

“Just get my patient in my room before next Thursday?”

As Mark stormed down the hall he passed Sheeba. She gave him that “I warned you” look.

“Don’t you say a goddamned word,” he said.

Two days later Allison was working with Mark again. They hadn’t spoken, through there were several occasions in which they could have spoken, occasions which Mark ducked with a capital D. Now she shows up in my room, he thought. Somebody out there has a sense of humor.

It was all official business from Mark. No small talk. Just the crisp words needed to keep the flow of surgery headed in the right direction. If this is how she likes it, thought Mark. So be it. Clearly she has no remorse.

Yet, she was physical in the room, her body demonstrating its keen awareness of itself. Maybe her body and her mind don’t talk to each other, he thought. Doesn’t it know she just shat on me?

He ignored her. Well, not really ignored, just made it a point to be looking elsewhere when there was the remotest chance she might catch his eye. But when her back was turned he stole looks at her bottom and waist. It felt good to him, almost like he was, stealing, taking something valuable from her, using her for his purpose and his pleasure without her knowledge or consent. That was the part that made it all feel better.

As time went on that “she doesn’t know business” became more questionable. Maybe her mind might be oblivious but her body was in rare form. She almost pranced and glided like a supermodel on a runway without missing a beat in her surgical accuracy. He pondered the paradox watching her ass as she bent over, drooping her waist in such a way that the fabric tightened over her privates. Enticing. Very. Shit!

They finished the case with the minimum of language. He sat in the corner of the room in the little computer cubby fashioned for doctors to write their notes in the chart. Allison came alongside and, unannounced, reached over him to get something out of the cabinet overhead. She was standing to his right side and instead of going around him, stretched over him to a deep recess in the cabinet off to his left. As she did so her breast touched his temple and rubbed there as she fished delicately for whatever it was she was looking for. Mark, under most circumstances would have politely drifted away, but something made him stay put. Perhaps determination, perhaps curiosity to see just how long she would stay there, perhaps a pay-back of sorts, perhaps throwing gasoline on a little fire burning.

If it was curiosity he got more than he bargained for, for she stayed for what seemed like a minute or two, rubbing his hair with the tip of her breast. He lost his place in his note and had to try really hard to conceal his fumbling. He would never give her the satisfaction of response to her breast nudgie, intended or unintended.

Eventually she turned away, leaving the room and he went about doing what he was doing already, whatever the hell that was.

It ran this way for weeks. Glares and not much speaking. Body dance and temptation. The tension grew and grew.

Sheeba was giving Mark grief in the hallway one day about the boots he was wearing.

“Whatsamatter, cowpoke,” she said. “Not enough cows to punch lately?”

“Comfort, Sheeba. Comfort on the half-shell. “

“Naw,” she said. “Don’t you tell me that. You’re making a statement of some sort. I know you better’n you think. You just want to be different from all those slippery shoes around here.

As they were standing there Allison walked by, eyes forward, so close she almost brushed against Mark.

“What’s got into her?” Sheeba said.

Mark looked after Allison walking down the hall. “She’s got a thing for my body,” he said.

“You wish.”

“I’m not shittin’ you.”

“Sure.” But she looked at him like Yeah, I been noticing something weird, and would you please tell me the rest of this little story. Instead she just nodded. “That explains lot,” she said.

Friday afternoon after a long week and Mark had a late case. Jim Peterson was in the rooms, as usual, and the schedule was a train wreck. Mark told Alice that Peterson’s the one you ought to be controlling with your goddamned regulations. Then he went away for coffee. Three times. He answered messages, went to the library. Finally just sat down in the waiting room to wait for his case.

Allison was his nurse. Oh great, he thought. Perfect! End of the week, end of insulation against barbarism. Everybody’s tired and angry as hell and he has to get Allison.

The receptionist and the nurse’s aids were going home as they finally started their case. Allison seemed to be more whipped up into her efficiency mode than he had seen her before. Maybe it’s transference, he thought, energy she’d like to use throttling my ass, subverted into high level performance. Burning shit for fuel. He even considered she might be trying to impress him. He dismissed that thought quicker than it came.

The case was a plastic reconstruction of the lower ear lobe. It was tedious and would require some time. The patient was a nervous Nellie, so squeamish that Mark had promised to add a little extra sedation in the IV. The procedure was done under local but the patient wanted to be out.

Allison positioned herself to Mark’s right. Ordinarily she worked across the table but since the patient was turned away she stood by his side. Flimsy reasoning, Mark thought, but she can stand wherever the hell she wants.

Allison seemed especially attentive to the patient. She leaned over from time to time to peer at the wound and with an almost enchanted quality of attention. Half-way through the surgery he noticed that Allison was leaning in to him on his right side. He was charged by the feeling of her standing against his body, possibly for more reasons than he could think of... he stood his ground. Maybe it will keep me from going to sleep, late Friday, late case, la, la, la...

“That reminds me,” he said out of nowhere. “Why does Peterson get to run late all the time with his patients?”

He had become more aware of the part of her body that was touching him and imagined her anatomy from the small puzzle piece he was given, the taught curve of the thigh along the hillside approaching her hips. Muscle in there, he thought.

“He’s the chief of the unit,” Allison said.

He now realized that it was the inside, INSIDE of her thigh that rubbed against him. He visualized the slope upward and inward, curving to the heat of her sex. He thought he could feel warmth radiating into him.

“So why doesn’t he obey the same rules the rest of us do?” He rotated his arm out like an opening gate. “Hemostat,” he said.

Snap went the hemostat in his outstretched hand.

“No rules were broken,” she said.

“5-0 nylon,” he said.

5-0 was fixed to the hemostat and snapped back in is hand. “No rules broken! What about the rule that constant overage on room time begets fewer cases scheduled.”

He discovered - amazing discovery - that as he opened his arm away from his body it came up against hers. At first nothing much, just a little cloth. But as he paid attention and started directing his arm, it came against identifiable parts of her -

“That rule is off the books,” she said.

- her upper abdomen just above her belly button, then her shoulder - and with increasing courage, and because she was giving him no indication he should do otherwise, the door, if not being opened, exactly, nonetheless not closing either, meaning, in some perverse way, it was his decision... well then, push it until it pushes back - her breasts, first the left and then the right.

“What do you mean, off the books.” Mark was getting steamed. His energy of steaming went into a firm push against her chest. “I was there when it was voted into policy.”

Allison stood against his arm pressing her breast back against his push against her. What the hell, he thought. Small payment for all this grief she gives. And he pushed harder.

“We voted it off at the last meeting,” said Allison, bearing her teeth and pushing back at him.

“Why the hell did you do that?” His arm had decided to go all out. Fine. Let it go the limit or make her stop him.

“Obsolete.”

“Which translates as, protect the king who protects you,” said Mark and this time he pushed his arm against the lower curve of her breast and lifted it. That would get her attention.

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t move away a fraction and if anything leaned harder into him. “You could have been at the goddamned meeting,” she said. “You sonofabitch. You could have voiced your opinions right there where it might have showed a little responsibility on your part and might even have done something positive instead of this bullshit attitude of yours, hanging at the periphery and then bitching about what doesn’t come your way all the time.” Her face grew red and as she spoke the last words, spittle would have certainly contaminated the wound were it not for her mask, seething and sucking with her hard words.

A surge swept over him. He couldn’t tell what it was except that it was extreme feeling, a mix of rage and pleasure, which, curiously, seemed not only compatible together but somehow made for each other. His body agitated, fidgeting from the waist down as he struggled to maintain a smooth grace of surgical maneuvers up above.

Something was happening to her too, because she turned more directly toward him, rotating her pelvis so that it faced straight on and leaned into his side. He felt her mons, the fleshy mound above the portal of her sex pressing against his hip, rubbing there.

“You know very well why I wasn’t there. Peterson removed me from his prissy little committee three months ago. It’s called thinning the herd. In this case it’s just a euphemism for a sinister plan so you nurses can take over.”

He elbowed her with each word and she body-bumped him back.

“Okay. Now we’re getting to the real stuff,” she said. “It’s a nurse control issue.” And on her last word she put her knee up behind his right leg.

“Goddamned right, it’s a nurse control issue. Isn’t it always? Contrary to what you think I don’t mind if the nurses make the decisions, as long as they are the right decisions. The problem is that the nurses are so concerned that someone is going to control them” - at this point he pushed his right thigh into the gap between her legs - “that they spend enormous efforts trying to control everybody else.”

“Just like a goddamned doctor,” she said and locked her leg around his, “always afraid of a little power to the nurses.”

They were all over each other. In case there was any doubt remaining there was no disguising the hormones rising.

The procedure was almost finished. Somehow, tangled together, they found the unoccupied appendage necessary to tidy up the wound and tie the last knot.

“Call the recovery nurse,” Mark said, running his hand up her smock to her breast.

They both knew everyone would be home by now. After hours the surgical suite recovers their patients in the OR recovery areas.

Allison broke away. “You keep your Montana ass right where it is.”

“Wyoming ass.”

She glared at him and he didn’t move.

She called Recovery and wheeled the patient out to the transport nurse. Then shot back in the room, bringing in a clean gurney. She leaned up against the counter opposite Mark and reestablished her glare at him.

“Well,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

At her last word and in what seemed to Mark like a single, unified motion, she flung off her top and peeled off her bra.

Mark found himself in front of a rapidly-becoming-naked woman. It was a no-brainier. He started taking off his clothes, all the while watching the amazing revelation of a beautiful woman’s body emerging from its linens.

She was fully naked, her eyes burning. She came over and stood inches away watching him disrobe. As he stood up after struggling off his pant leg, made awkward by her close scrutiny, she pressed into him and grabbed his root, squeezing and rubbing.

“How do you want it?” he said, clawing her breasts with both hands.

She half smiled, half-sneered. “Just so I don’t have to look at your face,” she said.

“Well that would be...” and he dropped one hand between her legs, slipping his finger inside her lifting her whole body and turning her around, cinching her butt up against his leg... “that would be this way.” He pushed her over on the gurney and lifted her bottom up in a cocked position.

“How’s this?”

“Getting better,” she said. “Let’s find out what you’ve got.”

With that he took his rod in hand and stuck it in her all the way in lifting her with the thrust of his pelvis. As he raced into the extreme penetration of her she let out a loud groan as if someone stood on her, forcing air out of the bag of her lungs. “Oh my god. Oh my god,” through clenched teeth.

To his surprise, when she recovered her breath the first thing she said was, “is that all you got?”

“Damn you,” he said. And pulled out.

He reached into the drawer and pulled out a tube of K-Y jelly and squirted a big cold wad in his hand. Without warning he slathered her behind, all over, from buttock to her upper thigh through her valley to the front side, then down between her legs to her folds, squeezing them together, rubbing his hand, then wrist, then forearm against her now slippery folds, as he reached his hand all the way up her belly to her ribcage.

He slathered himself as well. This time as he penetrated her he pushed against her back hole. She moaned and flipped her head to the side, She gripped the surface of the gurney and held on fast.

His head was in. It caused such great pressure against his member that he stopped for a minute.

“Don’t stop, you silly bastard,” she said. Whereupon he forced himself in to the base of his root. She arched her back, tensed her muscles up and down her spine, rippling like tow ropes, rocking her torso upwards like a huge erection.

For some reason he wanted badly to make her come. She was resisting for she seemed to shake off the surges that got her engines going. He took her hand and forced it down to their joining spot, spreading her fingers so that her folds slipped between them. Together, he fanned and closed their fingers pinching her lips between them, forced her own hand against her clitoris, bobbing it between his forefinger and hers.

She was rising through the increasing stiffness of her back, now she repeatedly arched her back, her shoulders and at the same time rolled her hips up to press against him. It seemed involuntary, pulsitile, out of control. Something, just the right thing, would put her over the top.

He pressed her middle finger with his middle finger deep into her sex, hard against the back wall where the pumping inside her could be felt. She grasped hard at the means of her fuck. And she went off, suddenly, quickly.

The rhythmic squeezing of her muscles against his already painful cock made it easy. So much more exciting to come into a woman who’s in the middle of an orgasm. There was a helplessness about that moment when her eyes were closed and she was taken over by her own pleasure. No resistance, not sharp tongue, she was there for the taking.

As they were getting dressed he looked at her.

She averted his eyes.

“Well,’ he said, “have you been fucked?”

She smiled a crooked smile. “Yeah, I’ve been fucked, have you?”

The question caught him off guard, made him think from a completely different direction. “Seems like I have,” he said, and he felt his hard shell softening. Something that felt a little like affection was taking over inside him.

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad we got that out of our system.”

He turned to say something but she moved to the door and snapped it open.

“Now,” she said, “we can go back to hating each other.”