There are some lies that are believed just because they’re so convincing, so credible that they’re impossible to see through. Other lies just aren’t questioned, because the listener desperately want them to be true. Both kinds are only easy to see once it’s too late.

This particular set of lies started as many do, on the internet. They’d met on a website for fetishes. Jack’s profile told of a fascination with anesthesia, filled with images he’d found on the internet. Images of masks, operating rooms, and dental chairs with blurry eyed patients in them. Everything to do with it, his interest list said. Kelly messaged him to compliment him on one of his finds.

Kelly’s profile was more sparse. She’d listed a lot of medical-related interests; operating rooms, medical uniforms chief among them. She had a couple pictures of gloves, masks, needles and surgical tools, but they all looked like stock photos. She listed a nearby city as her address, though, and they’d started talking.

Jack had anesthesia as a child, she learned, but didn’t remember much about the experience. She had been a nurse, she said, and had really enjoyed working in the OR. But she’d been fired (unfairly, she said) and moved into a different career; something to do with medical supplies. Kelly was vague on details, and Jack didn’t press, since he was happy to have someone to talk to about his fetish. He probably should have asked more questions.

Over a month or two, they exchanged pictures of themselves. Kelly and Jack were roughly same age; Jack was well built, not an athlete but well groomed, with short black hair and stubble of a beard. Kelly was thin, athletic, with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes which seemed, well, a little cold in the picture. But both were attractive enough to the other. Interspersed with personal details, descriptions of the minor ongoings of their lives, they became internet friends, or at least it seemed so.

One night, she shared a picture of a room she was building; her fetish playroom, she wrote brazenly. For a medical fetishist, the picture was enticing; an overhead view of a white operating table, coils of EKG wires laid out on it, a folded patient gown, surrounded by monitoring machines. It didn’t show the whole room, but it looked extremely realistic. She said she’d been building it for years but had never shown it to anyone else. It wasn’t completely true, but he had no way to know he wasn’t the first person she’d befriended and shown.

Then, the next day, apparently out of the blue, Kelly sent Jack an invitation; did he want to meet in real life? Come over, get the tour, see her playroom himself? He accepted.

The address Kelly gave Jack was a small two-story house on a main road. He parked his car in a marked space in the small, wide driveway, and walked up the short path to the door. Jack hesitated for a moment; maybe a moment of nervousness, of hesitation. Was it really a good idea to meet someone from the internet in private? Someone he’d never met before? He wasn’t really sure what Kelly wanted or what she expected… but he thought he wanted to find out. He knocked.

Kelly opened the door immediately. She’d been waiting, watching him approach the door. She had noted his moment of indecision, and put on her most disarming, innocent smile.

“Jack! I’m glad you came. Come in,” Kelly invited. She looked just like her picture, but Jack immediately understood a little of what she had in mind, because she was dressed in dark blue scrubs and a doctor’s white coat, her blond hair pulled back in a pony tail. His eyes almost popped out of his head as he stared at her for a second too long. Then, he stepped inside, already feeling the early stirrings of excitement.

“Hello Kelly; I like the outfit!” He told her.

“I thought you would. I do, too; I told you how much I like medical costumes… and I thought I’d set the tone right up front. Follow me!” Kelly had always been bad at small-talk in-person, which Jack had gathered from their previous correspondence.

Kelly led him into the front room of the house, and he looked around. To his surprise, it seemed like a storage area; rows of plastic storage containers and cardboard boxes filled the room. It was dimly lit and a little disorganized, like a well organized but over-full garage. “What is all of this?” He asked her.

“Inventory,” she explained, leading him deeper through a row of plastic containers. “After my job as a nurse ended, I went into the medical supply business. This is the world headquarters, such as it is, of my medical supply company. All of the actual customers do business over the internet, so an old office like this is plenty of space to run the business. This used to be the lobby, but now, boxes.”

The old carpet and boxes gave way to fake wood floors and faded white walls. She led him down a short hallway. On either side of the hallway were several little empty alcoves, not quite separated from the hall by rows of cabinetry and free-standing drawers. Jack had seen this sort of floor-plan before, and it took Jack only a few seconds to place it; the layout, the size of the alcoves. “This… this used to be a dentist’s office? Those are, what, exam rooms?”

Kelly still had her smile carefully fixed on her face as she turned to him. “It sure was! Apparently practice here wasn’t good, and the dentist was forced to shut down. I, or, rather the company I built, bought the whole thing. It seemed an appropriate place to buy for my new career after being forced out as a nurse. Shame for you that they didn’t leave any dental chairs behind, isn’t it? Maybe ‘my company’ will have to buy one sooner or later…”

Jack laughed, and they arrived at a closed door, apparently locked. Kelly produced a key from a pocket, and opened the door wide. They stepped inside, into a well-lit room much larger than the dental alcoves had been.

“Wow…..” Jack said, almost speechless.

Kelly smiled. “I thought you might have that reaction. This used to be the main dental surgery. They took the dental chair along with most of the equipment when I bought the property, and frankly, I’m just not that interested in dental chairs. Instead, I replaced a few things; some stuff I found on the internet, some stuff from my medical supply business. I’ve turned it into, well, a proper operating room.”

This was an absolutely fair description. In the middle of the room was an imposing metal T-shaped operating table, topped with a thin white pad, which covered both the body of the table and two armboards but didn’t conceal the gleaming steel beneath. Instead of faded white walls and fake wood like the rest of the office, the walls gleamed of fresh paint and Jack could see reflections in the shiny blue tile floor. Two massive surgical spotlights hung from the ceiling above the table.

The table was surrounded by medical machines, and just like the picture, had wires and a gown waiting on it. It was clearly the same room in the picture she’d sent, but seemed even more genuine in-person. This was clearly the room of someone with an obsession; someone that knew what they wanted and that every detail needed to be right. Jack’s jaw was almost hung open as he took in the whole scene.

“It looks almost exactly like the ORs I used to work in,” Kelly said. “I guess I really missed the atmosphere, the feeling of precision and power in this sort of space. I think I’ve captured it. The only thing that’s slightly out of place is the dental cabinetry and counter over there against that wall.” It was the sort typical of dentists offices; rows of drawers and cabinets, a sink for hand-washing.

“In a real OR, you’d likely just have rolling carts and less fixed furniture, and handwashing would be outside the room.” Kelly caught herself before she went off on a full explanation. Better not to rant too much while she was trying to make Jack comfortable.

Jack wasn’t really listening anyways; he stood in the doorway, just taking in the whole scene. This was an operating room just like in the pictures he’d look at, all medical white and medical blue. Kelly touched his arm to get his attention. “Do you want the tour?” She asked, almost startling him.

“Of course I do!”

She led him around the room slowly, pointing out every detail. She explained a squat white wheeled machine was a surgical suction machine, with empty pressure vessels hanging on it. Next, there was a rack with several electrical sources on it, “For a number of different operating room uses,” she said. Kelly remembered the moment of nervousness she’d seen and decided not to tell him that she had a variety of electrical tools, from cautery pens for some and stimulation probes for others. “The dentist actually left this small autoclave,” she pointed out a boxy machine on the counter.

She showed him one of a couple of the patient monitors, this one a big screen mounted on a pole, wires, electrodes, and pressure cuffs stored in baskets nearby. “My company bought this one as a demo unit. It does everything, even 5-lead EKG and rectal temperature. Watch out, or you’ll find out how big that sensor is!”

Jack laughed awkwardly; he couldn’t tell if she was kidding about the rectal sensor. Kelly wasn’t kidding.

Jack followed her around, looking at all the devices she explained. Everything seemed to be real and working; some even had lights indicating they were powered on. Apart from machines, there were IV poles and roller-stands around the room, too, and he found himself looking at one that held a green-draped tray, that had been pushed into a corner. The tray was covered in gleaming metal surgical tools; each had been laid out carefully. He recognized scalpels of several different shapes, tissue retractors, curved suturing needles.

Kelly felt a moment’s fear, and regret she’d left the tray uncovered. If Jack freaked out, it could ruin everything. She quickly offered an explanation; “Do you like my prop? It just sets the atmosphere a bit, don’t you think? Makes it feel even more authentic?”

“And here, of course,” Kelly said with some drama, pulling Jack away from the intimidating tray of tools, “Is what I’m sure you wanted to see. Come look!”

The last stop on the tour was a large anesthesia machine, positioned at the head of the operating table. It was large and boxy, with “Narkomed” in big letters on its bright blue frame. “This is the Drager Narkomed, an anesthesia machine from the late 1990s. My company sells these mostly for veterinary uses now, but in previous decades these machines have put a lot of humans under for surgery.”

“Wow, it’s real? It works?” Kelly nodded. She could see Jack’s fascination. Year’s of lurking on the internet, and here was a real anesthesia machine, being shown to him by someone dressed just like a real live nurse. This was a dream come true, or so he thought. He examined the machine; he could see the columnar flow gauges, showing O2, Air, and Nitrous. A small, 90s-looking display looked like it had flow alarms and ventilator settings, but mostly analog dials and knobs covered the front of the machine. A blue rebreathing bag hung off of a plastic breathing circuit already connected, and a few different sizes of clear anesthesia masks sat on the cart which supported the machine, still in their clear bags. A yellow-ringed stainless steel vaporizer hung off the machine’s top, with a bright label that said “Sevoflurane”. Jack didn’t think Kelly could really have any of the anesthetic, though.

“Well, it mostly works,” Kelly had decided, beforehand, to tell exactly the lie she was about to. “The machine itself is fully functional, I’ve been able to buy replacement parts, and you can see I have breathing circuits. A whole box of them in the lobby, actually. But anesthesia machines don’t really work without drugs, and you can’t really get your hands on those without special medical licensing. So having a vaporizer doesn’t mean having any sevo.”

“But….” Kelly hesitated, as if letting Jack in on a little secret. “Come look at this closer.” Jack saw she was indicating that the machine was connected to the wall; multicolored cables, tubes, connected to ports. “See, Jack, this was a dental surgery, and they had a central distribution system for oxygen and nitrous oxide, to all the exam rooms and especially this operatory. And, guess what… they left several cylinders of both. So I do have oxygen, and I do have nitrous.”

This was, actually, a partial lie. She had actually had her medical supply company simply order the cylinders she had connected, with their ‘special medical licensing’. But it would be easier if Jack didn’t know that. Because she was about to ask the question that she wanted, needed, him to accept.

“So, Jack. I’m going to offer you something special. Do you want to try some nitrous?”

Jack hesitated. On the other hand, this was the first time they’d met in person. What did he really know about Kelly? Sid he really trust her? On the other hand, this was an amazing opportunity; this playroom was amazing and Kelly seemed amazing. Maybe, he thought, he’d accept, but be careful? He could set boundaries. Surely she’d think that was totally normal.

“OK, Kelly. But, uh… not too much? And if I want to stop, we have to stop. And, nothing kinky this time, OK? No restraints or anything like that. ”

Kelly nodded; “Of course! We’ll start you off really low, and you can see how it feels, and we’ll talk before turning anything up. Nitrous won’t really make you fall asleep or anything, you know. I can see you’re nervous, so you can even hold the mask. We’’ll get you hooked up to all the monitors, too; safety first.” This sounded acceptable… and quite exciting to Jack, and they agreed.

“Let me get my uniform a little more complete, and I left a change of clothes for you on the table. I’ll turn my back! You remember how much I enjoy these outfits,” a flirtatious smile accompanied a slightly husky tone of voice. “Take off all your clothes and put the gown on.”

Jack laughed this time. He had expected to end up with some clothes off at some point, maybe not exactly these circumstances. He sat up on the side of the operating table; he had correctly intuited that Kelly wanted to treat him like her patient in this little game. He was excited by the idea, especially if it made her happy while he was getting to enjoy this unique opportunity. She turned her back, as she’d said, and opened one of the cabinets as Jack took off his clothes. Dropping them in a pile on the floor, where he thought they’d be out of the way, he put on the shear white patient gown, held together by snaps. It was long enough to cover the sign of his increasing arousal at the entire situation. He shivered, maybe because the room was cold, maybe out of the increasing tension in the room.

He watched Kelly pull things out of the cabinet; it looked like it was filled with boxes of gloves, masks, and PPE, all different kinds and colors. Kelly did like her medical uniforms. Kelly first looped her pony-tail up into a bun, then tied a blue cap over her hair. It was clearly a practiced motion, and for a moment Jack thought about asking her more about her time as a nurse. Maybe later, he decided. A white mask with elastic loops completed her ensemble. Turning back to him, she made a show of pulling on a set of purple gloves, letting them slowly stretch and snap back onto her fingers.

“This is yours, too” she handed him a pale blue bouffant cap. He pulled it over his hair dutifully.

“Lie back, and we’ll get you hooked up to the monitors.” Kelly ordered. Jack lay back on the operating table, as Kelly turned on the patient monitor she’d showed him, and flipped a switch on the anesthesia machine. The anesthesia machine she’d already pressure-tested, so powering it would only take a few moments. Jack looked up at the lights above him, looked around the room. This all seemed so real. There was no hiding his excitement and arousal now, but he wasn’t embarrassed. Surely that was what Kelly had expected. “I’ll get you a pillow, and leave the overhead lights off,” Kelly offered, and slipped a small, round pillow under his head, careful not to let him look directly at it.

“Now some sensors,” Jack watched her closely as she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his left arm, clipped an oxygen sensor on the pointer-finger. Taking the curl of EKG wires, she reached into his gown to put electrodes on his chest; three of them, one at a time. Jack watched the monitor trace his heart-beat, elevated now, and felt the pressure cuff inflating and deflating. To him, this was an exciting and new experience, being hooked up to medical monitors by a sexy nurse. To her, this part was routine. She’d done this a thousand times to patients in operating rooms before the bastards had fired her, and she’d done this to several patients in this very ‘playroom’.

Kelly considered. Maybe should could make an excuse to get Jack to put his arms out in the T shape; to pull his arms down, attach them, even lightly, to the armboards. But he’d seemed hesitant; he’d specifically mentioned that he wanted nothing ‘kinky’. She decided she’d better not risk it. Safer to proceed to the main event. Kelly chose a plastic mask, attached it the anesthesia circuit. She then twisted the anesthesia machine’s oxygen knob open, then the N20 knob. The sound of flowing gas hissed throughout the room. She watched that the bobbins rose as expected, and she adjusted them to a 30% nitrous mix. This would be enough that Jack would feel the effects but wouldn’t at all be overwhelming. A good, pleasant mix.

“Alright, Jack. Are you ready? What I want you to do is hold this mask over your face and breath normally,” she appeared over his head, and he reached up and took the anesthesia mask from her. This was really happening. He pulled the mask over his nose and mouth, and took a first, tentative, breath. Everything seemed normal, no unexpected or noxious smells. He took a deep breath through his nose, trying to detect any odor; maybe there was a little sweetness? He took another deep breath; the cool gas flow filling his nose and mouth.

“That’s it, great. You won’t feel anything for a little bit, but soon maybe a little tingling?”

Jack took a few more breaths, then blinked; the room was changing somewhat. Maybe getting brighter, maybe a comfortable glow? This was surely the first effect of the gas, and he liked it. He kept breathing, just lying there, holding the mask tight over his face, occasionally looking around the room at all the machines, at Kelly, at the lights on ceiling.

He wasn’t sure how long it took. Maybe two minutes, maybe five, but as Kelly predicted, he starting feeling a light tingling in his limbs. It was an amazing feeling. He looked up at Kelly, attractive and dressed just like the nurses in his fantasies. He looked around at the machines again, taking the whole situation in. He listened to the anesthesia machine humming, the monitor beeping. He was the luckiest anesthesia fetishist in history, he thought. And somehow very relaxing. The visible sign of his arousal relaxed, too, as the nitrous started creeping into his fingertips and toes.

He thought he was starting to feel comfortably buzzed, like he’d had a glass of scotch. He pulled in more and more of the gas, and wanted to try a higher setting.

Right as he had the thought, Kelly spoke. “Alright, Jack. You seem to be enjoying this. What do you say we try just a little more nitrous? Just enough to make you comfortably drowsy?”

Jack nodded beneath the mask, still enjoying the feeling. He didn’t feel like he was in any danger of losing control, and making this buzz a little more intense sounded just fine. He lifted the mask off his face for a minute. “I could try a little more gas…” he almost giggled before replacing the mask, greedily.

Kelly turned back the anesthesia machine, standing between her patient and the machine’s controls. She smoothly turned the nitrous flow way up, setting a ratio between 60 and 70% nitrous oxide, almost as high as this machine would let it go.

“Just hold the mask on your face and keep breathing normally, Jack. I’m turning the nitrous up to 50%” she lied, as she tried to keep the anticipation from her voice.

“I’m adjusting the volume of gas a little, so it’ll smell a bit sweeter, like strawberries” she hesitated for second, fighting the urge to turn and see if she was properly blocking his view with her body. This was a critical moment; she told herself that if she acted naturally, he wouldn’t question what she was about to do. Smoothly, like a cat about to pounce on unsuspecting prey, she reached for the sevoflurane vaporizer, and without saying anything else, twisted it open to 4%, the vaporizer’s halfway setting.

Under her touch, her machine responded. A soft click of the vaporizer engaging was the only immediate signal of her deception, but it was inaudible under the hum of the monitors and the hiss of the airflow. The oxygen and nitrous oxide continued to rush out of their tanks, mixing in the gas manifold and with leftover gas from the rebreathing bag. But now the mixed gas also flowed down the machine and into the vaporizer Kelly had just engaged. In the small vertical cylinder of the vaporizer, some of the gas was diverted into a chamber, which, despite her earlier excuse, was quite full of the potent anesthetic. The diverted gas picked up the sevoflurane vapor from the liquid, and from there, filled the mask that Jack was enjoying.

Jack watched as Kelly turned back towards him. He’d watched her adjust the machine, but couldn’t see exactly how, from his angle. He could tell she was now smiling down at him, the light around her head glowing softly from the intoxication. His lack of immediate reaction meant she’d gotten away with it; he still held the mask on his face.

Jack took a few more breaths as she finished adjusting the flow, and the gas was now smelling noticeably different. At its previous level, the nitrous has been barely perceptible, but now it was very easy to smell. He took a breath and thought he could almost taste it on the back of his tongue. Fascinated by the change, he took his next breath deeply, breathing through his nose to smell it fully. He thought it smelled more like a dry-erase marker than the strawberries Kelly had suggested. It was vaguely sweet, but sharper that it was before. Was that odd? She’d warned him that higher settings would smell more, and it wasn’t unpleasant. He thought he could already feel the intoxicating buzz in his head getting a little heavier, just like he’d expected.

The flow of nitrous oxide alone would cause sedation, amnesia, and maybe loss of consciousness if Jack inhaled it for a long enough. But with the introduction of the sevoflurane, his time was ticking down. He was putting himself under, and he had no idea. Kelly watched him continue to breath normally, and knew she almost had him.

“You’re doing great, Jack,” she told him, trying to keep him from questioning the feelings that would start soon. Her voice echoed in his head, just a bit. “Things will start to feel a little more fuzzy and distant. Stay relaxed and try to enjoy it.” He took another breath and looked up at the attractive nurse. Her purple gloved hands were touching his cheek as he held the mask on his own face, noticeably less firmly now. The buzzing in his head had given way to an odder, detached feeling. He no longer wanted to look around; just like Kelly had said, the authentic monitors and machines of Kelly’s playroom had become too fuzzy and far away. The blood pressure cuff inflated again, taking another reading, but he didn’t even notice it.

He took another breath, the marker smell still noticeable but also getting harder to focus on. Really, even Kelly, her eyes still transfixed on him, was getting harder to see. Compared to the first increment of nitrous she’d given him, things were happening fast. He could feel his eyelids getting heavier; already the giddiness he’d felt before had turned into a pleasant, warm drowsiness. But the drowsiness was still deepening, getting stronger. Maybe this was too much gas?

Kelly could see Jack’s eyes turning glassy as he struggled to focus. As he gazed up at his internet-friend, the surgical lights, and the tiled ceiling, he realized he was starting to feel seriously dizzy. Whenever he looked around, a wave of vertigo hit him. The feeling was starting to be overwhelming. This was too out of control. He no longer liked it. He decided this was enough gas. With a substantial effort, he pulled, pushed, dragged the mask off his face. His hand was leaden, the light plastic seemed to weigh a ton as it fell awkwardly to the operating table beside him. Clean air! A couple of breaths of room air would surely clear his head.

But Kelly didn’t give him the chance.

“I’ll help you, Jack. Here you go; I’ll hold it for you,” she said. She was trying to sound innocent, but Kelly’s mask hid a predator’s smile as she retrieved the dropped anesthesia mask and, without fanfare, pressed it back over Jack’s nose and mouth. “Nooo” he mumbled. Kelly heard him clearly, but it was easy enough to pretend the objection was muffled by the clear plastic.

Kelly pushed away one of Jack’s arms, as she pulled back on his chin with her gloved hands, extending his neck. The movement positioned him in the middle of the pillow and black rubber harness that was attached to the pillow’s bottom. With movements she’d done many times, she deftly pulled the harness’s ends over his head and onto the mask. With the dizziness and disorientation, by the time he realized what she was doing, two of the ends were already attached. Kelly fended off another ineffective attempt to grab at her, and a moment later snapped on the third and fourth rubber strip, affixing the mask tightly to his face.

He tried to tell Kelly that this was not what he wanted, that he’d stopped on purpose, but all that came out was a slurred string of constants, and the dizziness got worse. He wanted to stop, had to tell her to stop. He tried again, but the slurred noise was gibberish, even to him. She knew what he was trying to say, but simply ignored it, looking down as she held his chin and the top of his head. He tried to sit up, but with the effort came another wave of vertigo. He thrashed his head from side to side, trying to shake the mask off, but the harness held it on. Then Kelly was pushing his head back down onto the table, holding it still.

But he wanted to stop. This was going way too far. His fear pushed the drowsiness back a little as he struggled. Kelly could hear his agitation as the heart-monitor beeped faster.

“It’s OK; just relax and let it happen. You’re safe,” she lied to him, thinking of the instrument tray in the corner covered with sharp metal. Kelly knew if she could get him to take just a couple more breaths, Jack’s fate would be inevitable.

He went to pull the mask off his face again, to pull it off the harness, but Kelly had been expecting this. Before he even touched the mask, her gloved hands had caught his wrists, pushing his arms back down to his sides. He knew the gas was making him weak and slow, but she seemed really strong, towering over him. With the harness holding the anesthesia mask firmly, Kelly could use both hands to easily stop him from struggling.

“Don’t fight it, Jack. There’s no escape,” she told him, her voice more firm than before. Her words didn’t sound very reassuring, and he didn’t understand why she was holding him. Again he reached to pull the mask off, but again her gloved hands were there, easily pushing his hands away, then pushing his head down on the the table as he thrashed back and forth. He made a third useless attempt, but with each exertion he breathed more and more gas, and the next attempt was completely uncoordinated as fog started seeping into the edges of his vision.

“Just let go, Jack, “ Kelly’s voice echoing far more than before. “Stop fighting. You’ll be asleep very soon.” It took him effort to process what she was saying from beneath the increasing fog in his head, but he knew he didn’t want to sleep. He continued to try to pull the mask off his face but his arms were so heavy, they might as well have been made of iron. Kelly no longer needed to fend them off; they flopped around weakly, now as useless as if he’d let Kelly restrain him like she’d wanted.

He let them hang off the sides of the table, or they fell on their own. He tried to think of something else to do, some way of escaping the iron grip of the anesthesia, of getting the woman to stop, but thinking at all was getting hard. He tried to clear his throat, to remind her he didn’t want to sleep, but all that came out was a moan.

Kelly laughed, softly, which was confusing to him and drew his (increasingly limited) attention. Kelly turned to the anesthesia machine and turned the top of the vaporizer. She set the sevoflurane vaporizer to the maximum 8% setting, not bothering with subterfuge anymore. She knew she had him where she wanted. There wasn’t anything he could do about it, except breath more of the vapor and soon go under. He twitched weakly, aimlessly, as the sweet solvent smell in his mask got stronger. In his sedated state, it was hard make sense of what had just happened, what he’d just seen. It was upside-down from his perspective, but adjusting the vaporizer meant she was gassing him with real anesthetic. She’d said it was empty, hadn’t she?

Another breath of the higher dose of anesthetic, and his thoughts seemed to spin away from him. He suddenly stopped fighting; he couldn’t remember why he had been. Where he was, how he’d gotten here, what was happening, all slipped from his mind. He was so dizzy, everything was spinning. There was only spinning, and his vision was darkening. Kelly could see the spark of consciousness fading from his eyes.

“Just a couple more breaths, Jack. It’s all over. You’re mine now,” the masked woman, whose name he no longer knew, massaged the rebreathing bag, her hands not needed to hold Jack in place anymore. Every time she squeezed the bag, it forced Jack to take big breaths of the vapor, and the sound of his breathing echoed in his ears.

Another breath. The entire room was spinning away into darkness now, black shadows dancing into his vision from every side. Another breath; the machines faded completely away, then the giant lights above him. Another breath, and there was only a masked woman looking down at him, and the sounds of rhythmic beeping and someone breathing incredibly loudly. Another breath, and the woman was gone. Everything fading. Darkness enveloped him.

“That’s it…. You’re going out…. Sleep now….. I’m going to have so much fun with you,” a voice in the distance, the sound barely audible beyond the thick, dark mist. The sound of breathing faded. The voice was the last thing he perceived before there was only silence.

Kelly watched as his eyes, already unfocused and halfway closed, slowly rolled backwards as he fell into nothingness.

Kelly took a minute to admire her victim. He breathed in, evenly and slowly, going deeper and deeper into blackness, as the heart monitor’s noise slowed to a steady pace. She felt delight that her trickery had been so successful. He’d gassed himself nearly all the way out, and had been no match for her once he’d wanted to stop.

A gloved finger against Jack’s eyelash got no reaction. He was unconscious now, totally and completely. She checked the wall clock; hardly more than a minute had actually passed since she’d introduced the sevoflurane. The tension had made it seem a lot longer to her. Kelly let her sleeping patient take a few more breaths, to make sure he wouldn’t be waking up until she wanted, but then she lightened the nitrous mix, and turned the vaporizer back down. Kelly knew from previous experience that after induction, a lower setting, say, 1%, would keep Jack in an oblivious state as long as she needed. She left him breathing spontaneously, and set her anesthesia machine to alarm if he stopped for too long. She wouldn’t be intubating or paralyzing him… yet.

It was a moment’s work to unsnap and remove the patient gown Jack wore, leaving him naked except for the bouffant cap that covered his hair. A quick check showed that none of Jack’s struggles had dislodged any of the sensors or electrodes; the monitor screens still traced his vital signs safely. She checked his oxygenation, blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and was pleased that all signs still looked good. All the time she’d spent befriending Jack would be wasted if Jack expired the very first time she anesthetized him.

She had work to do while he was helpless, and her next priority was making sure he stayed that way when she let him wake up. Kelly opened one of the top drawers in the cabinetry the dental practice had left behind. Before, it’d stored boxes of brochures on gum disease, toothbrushes and standard dental floss to give to happy dental patients. But now it stored four very non-standard restraint cuffs. Made from two layers of white leather and nickeled buckles, they resembled those in old mental wards; soft and padded, but unyielding and unescapable.

She savored the feeling of control as she stretched Jack’s unresisting arms out onto the operating table’s armboards and one at a time, buckled his wrists into the cuffs. Then each cuff was, in turn, buckled to the table, through immovable eye sockets welded on the underside of the metal arms. Cuffs on both ankles followed, in a similar fashion. She took her time, careful to get the leather flat and tight against Jack’s limbs. She knew that a terrified man could move their arms and legs only about an inch in each direction before the leather held them. She smiled at the memory of Jack protesting that he didn’t want to be restrained. He wasn’t objecting now, only slowly breathing more and more gas that kept him deeply asleep.

Stepping away from the operating table, she let the tension of her successful trap fall away from her, and thought about all the things she’d do to her new patient. Kelly had really missed operating, and now she had a man she could do whatever she wanted to. A simple surgery to start out?

She imagined what his terror would look like if he woke up without his appendix or his gallbladder. An open appendectomy seemed about right; Jack surely knew that you could live without your appendix, so he wouldn’t fall into complete despair. But it was serious enough and irreversible, so Kelly would get the thrill she wanted. She decided she’d wake him up and tell him what she was going to do first, so she could see him terrified going to sleep again, too. A twist of the vaporizer and gas mix knobs shut off the anesthesia, leaving him breathing oxygen.

It’d be a few minutes before Jack came back up to consciousness. Leaving her victim to start waking, Kelly re-hung her white coat up on a hook by the door. She discarded her purple exam gloves and white mask in a countertop trash receptacle, and tossed her blue cap on the counter to launder later. They weren’t really dirty, and she didn’t carefully maintain sterility; her patients were in no position to complain about her safety practices. But it was time for a costume change.

She re-covered her mouth with a larger, dark green surgical mask.. A matching green cap she tied over her hair. Next, ripping open a plastic package, Kelly covered her dark blue scrubs with a green isolation gown. She tied it tightly closed, careful to cover her whole body. The gown was impermeable and disposable; she didn’t want the surgeries she had planned to soil her scrubs.

With none of the sensual fanfare she’d used to impress Jack, she carefully snapped on a pair of long, off-white latex gloves, fresh from a sterile package. With the gloves, gown, mask and cap, only her eyes were exposed. The doctor’s coat had been a fun outfit until now, but the uniform she wanted now was that of a demon in operating-room green, the same outfit she’d used to wear when she’d been caught in the real OR, doing her own surgeries on patients after-hours. They’d frowned on nurses playing at surgeon, and quietly fired her to avoid the scandal.

But there was nobody to stop her here. She wheeled the cart full of surgical tools closer to the operating table, and waited to tell Jack about the dangerous games she had in store for him.