TANNER

“Okay, I’m going to listen to your breathing now,” she said, her graceful hands plugging in her stethoscope. Moving to my side, she placed a light hand on my left shoulder, then placed the cold diaphragm on my back, starting at the upper left and then right, then right to left, then the laterals. “Sorry if my hands are cold,” she said as she applied gentle pressure to get a good listen. Her hushed directions to breathe in and out were so fucking arousing I was worried I wouldn’t be able to hide it much longer.

“Okay,” I heard her say. The next thing I knew, she had spread both of her hands across my torso from behind. “Take a nice deep breath for me, please,” she said, then nodded and asked me to do it again. I could feel my lungs expanding underneath her hands, and all I could think of was how she was standing behind me with that stethoscope hanging from her neck.

“That’s good,” she said, coming around to face me once again. “Let’s have a listen on the front now.” She looked up as she was reinserting the earpieces into her ears, and it felt like she held my gaze for just a beat longer than normal before diverting her eyes. What’s this? Very interesting ….

“Deep breath in and out, that’s it. Good. Again … ,” she instructed, carefully listening to my upper and lower lung fields. “Very good. And, once more for me …,” she said, before removing the earpieces and hanging the stethoscope from her neck again. I felt a gentle hand on my forearm. “Are you doing okay? Feeling alright?” she asked, bending in to me to get a better look at my face as she visually inspected my breathing pattern.

I’d started to say yes, but was then overtaken by a strange vacuous feeling in my head that expanded, wider and wider, until I felt quite dizzy. She noticed and responded immediately.

“Okay, alright,” Dr. Valero said with an authority I hadn’t heard in her voice before now. Damn. That was sexy as fuck. “I want you to lie back,” she said, lowering the head of the exam table and helping me to a fully supine position, a small pillow under my head. Her right hand was snaked around my neck to palpate my left carotid as I laid there with my eyes closed.

“Mr. Jacobs, has this ever happened before during a lung auscultation?” she asked evenly. I shook my head. “No,” I said absently. Because it wasn’t with you.

When I opened my eyes she was looking down at me with an unreadable expression on her face. Placing a BP cuff around my upper arm, she plugged in her stethoscope, set the diaphragm in the crook of my elbow, quickly inflated the cuff, and released it slowly. As she listened intently her brow furrowed in concentration, creating a small “v” in between her eyebrows. She pumped it up rapidly again, and slowly deflated it, ultimately pulling the stethoscope from her ears and removing the cuff from my arm.

“Well, your blood pressure seems fine,” she said, returning the cuff to a basket on the counter. “How are you feeling right now?” My eyes were fixed on her stethoscope, hanging heavily from her petite neck, imagining where it was headed next.

“I feel okay,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows. “But I’m not sure what happened. That was really strange,” I added warily.

“Easy,” she said firmly, placing her hand on my chest and making it clear that I was to lie back. “Stay put for me. It’s not that uncommon to get a little lightheaded after a lot of deep breathing like that. Just relax for a second or two, until I see some color return to your face.”

She stepped away and I watched as she moved gracefully about the room, picking up the phone on the counter and quickly dialing a four-digit extension. “Yeah, I’m in 4. Can you bring me the EKG machine please? Thanks.”

The room was silent as she made a few notes, and then rolled her chair over to where I was still lying down. Her stethoscope, still hanging from her neck, fell heavily between her breasts, making it easier to appreciate her form, and their size. Damn.

“How’re we doing here?” she asked, a look of concern on her face. Before I had a chance to reply, she had plugged her stethoscope back in and was placing it purposefully over my aortic valve. But not just with purpose. With such deliberate care that it almost felt to me like … reverence. Then she closed her eyes as she listened, and this amazing and unexpected feeling washed over me. It began as a giddy flutter in my stomach and erupted into the most incredible wave of arousal. I could feel my heart pounding hard in my chest as she shifted over the pulmonic, then to Erb’s point, where she stopped and listened for what seemed an eternity.

Every now and then she would nod her head and smile. When she opened her eyes she looked right at me and held my gaze as she shifted to my mitral valve, where she listened for a good thirty seconds or more. Fuck. This is intense.

Then she took a deep breath and removed the stethoscope from her ears. “Doing okay?” she asked quietly, draping the stethoscope over her shoulders once more.

“Yeah, I think so …” I answered.

“Good,” she said with a smile. “It’s important to slow down and take the time to listen really closely now and again. I wanted to do a thorough examination of your heart after that little episode. I asked my tech to bring the EKG machine in so that we can run that while I have you here, but in the meantime I’m going to move on. Just relax for me,” she said. She auscultated first for bowel sounds and then listened briefly to my femoral arteries before percussing and palpating thoroughly.

She didn’t speak much as she worked, rather focusing all of her attention on the task at hand. As she finished checking my peripheral pulses, I knew where things were likely headed and my heart rate started to pick up again. She ran the EKG next, then had me sit up and auscultated my heart in that position, before unceremoniously advising me to drop my drawers. Truth be told, it was blessedly anticlimactic. I watched as her conservatively manicured, ungloved hands palpated and probed between my legs with confidence and detached precision, ultimately proclaiming me to be “in good shape.”

I could still feel my body humming after that stethoscope exam. It was the strangest thing. And what was even stranger was that I really wanted to talk with her about it. But that didn’t seem entirely appropriate. I mean, it was quite possible that what I’d experienced as an other-worldly auscultation was really just a typical exam for her, right? I got dressed as she completed her documentation, and we spoke briefly about her findings. She wanted to see me again in six months for a check-up in light of what had happened. She began to wrap things up, piling up her paper files and closing down the laptop she’d brought in with her. But I couldn’t move. I really tried. I just couldn’t. There were a few moments of awkward silence before she spoke.

“Is there anything more you’d like to talk about?” she asked, swinging her stethoscope over her head and coiling it before setting it in her lap. I had no idea what I was doing, or what I even wanted to say. I just …

“Yes, actually. I … well, I wanted to ask ….” I was fumbling so badly and feared that it was only going to get worse. When I looked up, Dr. Valero was staring at me inquisitively. Her blue eyes were so bright and animated, even though she wasn’t smiling. She was waiting patiently for me to continue.

“It’s alright, Mr. Jacobs. What is it?”

“Did you feel it?” I asked the question so earnestly, leaning in and resting my elbows on my knees. She leaned in to me in like fashion, still grasping the stethoscope between her hands.

“I felt quite a lot, Mr. Jacobs. I did a pretty thorough physical exam today,” she replied lightly. “Could you help me out a little?”

I knew I was treading on thin ice. If I overstepped I would be mortified. I’d also need to find a new doctor. I looked at her, willing her to acknowledge whatever this was so that I wouldn’t have to. I felt I’d already been exposed quite enough for one afternoon.

CELIA

He was aroused and conflicted about the feelings he was having. Dear God. His carotid artery on the left side was pulsing visibly, and his dilating pupils and shallower breathing made it plain enough to my practiced eye.

“Mr. Jacobs, how is your heart doing right now?” I asked because I wanted to know, clinically speaking. But I also wanted to take note of how his body reacted to my question, before he ever verbalized a response.

He looked up at me, and then he did something thoroughly unexpected. He reached for my hand, gingerly at first as though asking my permission, and then more decisively, placing it flat on his chest. Then he rested his other hand on top of mine. I could feel his heartbeat thumping into my palm and it brought a contented smile to my face. Bliss.

“I’m not sure,” he answered tentatively. “What’s happening here?”

“You have a reactive heart, that’s all,” I answered simply.

We were silent for several moments, and then I slid my hand off of his chest and uncoiled my stethoscope as I got up from my chair. “It’s uncommon …” I said, moving behind him and securing the earpieces of my stethoscope into his ears, “… and kind of special,” I added. “Lift your shirt for me.” With my left hand resting lightly on his left shoulder, I took the diaphragm of my stethoscope with my right hand and placed it directly at Erb’s point. “Here, have a listen.”

I witnessed what was happening as if from above, watching his reactions with interest as my hand moved ever so slightly from Erb’s to the tricuspid, and then to the mitral. The encounter had become so erotic that I was grateful to be standing behind him, where I could discreetly savor my own intense feelings without being watched.

After a good five minutes or more, I took the earpieces from my patient’s ears and reclaimed my stethoscope, settling back into the chair facing him. The look of pure wonder that I saw on his face made me smile.