… TANNER

“Mr. Jacobs, nice to see you again …. Mr. Jacobs?”

As it dawned on me what had happened and where I was, Dr. Valero came into view perched in the chair next to me, leaning in with concern. She was wearing a lovely, understated floral scent that reminded me vaguely of island air. “Mr. Jacobs? Are you feeling okay?” Oh shit. Not exactly the reunion I’d imagined. I tried to get my bearings quickly and then looked at her.

“Yeah. Yes. I’m feeling just fine,” I said, letting out a shy, nervous chuckle. “Must’ve just been daydreaming,” I smiled. She looked relieved and sat back in the chair. “Well,” she said, “that means you were waiting too long and I apologize for that.” She surprised me by staying where she was rather than getting up and taking the seat on the other side of the table as Susan had.

“So,” she said with a smile. “Let’s start over, shall we? It’s good to see you back,” she said, making a quick visual inspection from head to toe before shifting to turn on her laptop. “Let’s see …” I watched as she appeared to review the record from our last visit to refresh her memory. Perhaps she didn’t even remember our last encounter, and the heart homework she assigned to me. The thought made me sad.

Today she wore a pair of black skinny style dress pants that were belted at the waist, and an emerald green top of sheer silk with a matching camisole underneath. She had a different stethoscope around her shoulders today – a Littmann Cardiology IV – and it made me wonder how she chose which one to use on a given day. Her hair was up in the French twist as before, and it made me wonder if she was one of those women who rarely wore their hair down.

I’m sure she wears it down in bed.

I admired her legs as she sat there, one of her high-heel-clad feet bobbing distractedly as she read off of the computer screen. She abruptly pushed away from the table and rolled closer to me where I was sitting, stopping along the way to take two or three pumps from the hand sanitizer dispenser on the wall. When she stopped our knees were nearly touching.

“So tell me, how did your research go?” Something about the way she asked made me think that she wasn’t expecting much of a response from me. I think my response surprised her.

“It went very well. I’ve actually been eager to … to see you again …” the back of my neck was heating up and I stopped awkwardly for a moment, “to … talk with you about it,” I finished, making a deliberate effort not to break eye contact with her. I wanted her to know I’d taken the assignment seriously.

A genuine smile emerged and lit up her entire face, and it almost took my breath away.

“Well, then. I’m all ears. Tell me all about it,” she said, settling comfortably back into her chair. “I gather you ended up finding a suitable stethoscope to use?”

“Yeah, I did. It’s just a nursing stethoscope of decent quality,” I answered. “And it was inexpensive.” Then I hesitated and leaned in toward her ever so slightly. “I’m going to be forthright here … I don’t really know what it is you want to know, or what it may or may not be important for me to share with you. I mean, you …” I struggled momentarily “… all you told me to do was listen.”

Her eyes sparkled, animating her face even though she wasn’t smiling. “And did you?” she asked, eyebrows raised in question. I took a deep breath and inhaled the lovely scent of her again. That’s how close we were.

“I did,” I answered. “In the morning and the evening, for thirty days.”

“Tell me what you heard,” she said simply, compulsively uncapping and recapping the pen she held in her right hand.

“I heard my heart beating steadily, and I noted over time that there were certain places where I could hear it more loudly than others.” She nodded in acknowledgement and had an expectant expression on her face, like she was eager for more details.

When I didn’t continue right away, she said, “How did you feel?”

“I felt fine,” I answered honestly. “I didn’t have any chest pain or trouble breathing or anything like that, all month.” She nodded.

“Good. I’m glad to hear that. What else did you feel? Anything?”

I looked at her questioningly and the silence expanded between us, a silence that seemed much more comfortable for her than it was for me. When I didn’t speak, she said, “Let me ask you this. At your last appointment, when you listened, how did you feel then? I’m not asking you if you felt sick or light- headed or even short of breath. I’m asking how the listening itself made you feel.” There was something so soulful in her eyes, and it made me wonder if maybe we had more in common that either one of us realized. Maybe that’s why I’d been so captivated by her from the beginning. Her voice pulled me back to the present. “Do you remember?”

Of course I remembered. I had been swept up by an onslaught of emotions: wonder, curiosity, embarrassment, arousal … and they’d continued to hit me, and hit with more intensity as the month went on. I was feeling aroused and desperate to conceal my inevitable erection from her view. When I looked up at her, she was studying me so earnestly, her lovely blue eyes squinting slightly as she waited for me to answer.

“Yeah. It was … incredible,” I finally said. “And it still is,” I added more quietly. She smiled, got up to close the exam room door, and came back to sit in front of me. “Mr. Jacobs,” she said, taking her stethoscope from around her shoulders and holding it in her hands. “The reason I wanted to see you after a month of listening was to confirm a working diagnosis of sorts.”

“I’m not following. Is there a problem of some kind?” I asked, anxiety creeping slowly up my spine.

“No, no, I don’t want you to worry at all,” she said, putting her hand on mine reassuringly. “Your heart is completely healthy. Do you remember when I said that having a reactive heart is a pretty uncommon thing?”

“Yes.”

“There’s actually a name for it. It’s called cardiophilia. Have you ever heard that term before?”

“No,” I answered honestly.

“Cardiophiles experience pleasure at the sight, sound, or feeling of the heartbeat, or anything related to the heart. Cardiophilia isn’t a health condition or illness requiring treatment. It just is. In fact, I view it as a kind of special gift. Sort of akin to how synesthetes experience the use of their senses differently than most. Have you heard of that phenomenon? ”

“No, I can’t say that I have,” I answered, a bit awestruck by the conversation we were having, and still pulsing with relief that I didn’t have a heart defect.

“During your physical last month I noted some responses from you that are indicative of cardiophilia. If you recall, we’d discussed the reactivity, or responsiveness, of your heart. And that’s certainly part of it. But there’s a significant psychological and sexual component as well.”

My mouth went dry. Sexual component? Well that certainly explained some stuff. I hadn’t come in to this encounter expecting to discuss my arousal with her, though it was certainly top of mind. I sensed that she was waiting for me to react, so that she’d know how best to proceed with the conversation.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” she said directly, maintaining eye contact with me. It was damned intense, made more so by the sight of her delicate hands clasping that stethoscope. The fact that she’s taken it from her shoulders suggested that she planned to use it at some point soon, and the thought of that was almost painfully distracting. “Is that something you’ve experienced at all, or experienced differently in the past month?”

“What? In particular?” I asked too quickly, my anxiety getting away from me.

“Did you notice that you became aroused while listening to your heart?” she asked quite directly. I was both mortified and excited in equal measure, to be asked this question.

“Yes,” I responded honestly, doing my best to maintain eye contact with her. I wasn’t going to let her win the staring contest. She nodded appreciatively, behaving no differently than if we were discussing my bowel habits. “Would you say that it intensified over the course of the month?”

“It … became … both more frequent and more intense,” I said, having to take a deep breath afterward. She nodded again, studying my face. “Did you have an erection?”

Holy shit. Now we were really talking. I felt like I might need to dissociate if I was going to make it through the rest of this appointment. There she sat, all professional and hot, the sparkling in her eyes captivating me like it had before. I couldn’t imagine any other circumstance where I’d be having this kind of discussion with this kind of a woman and … not be in a position to close the deal.

Tanner, she’s your doctor for Christ’s sake.

“I did,” I answered, actually a little stunned at how good it felt to admit it. To admit it to her.

“Okay,” she said simply. “How did it make you feel?” My silence and the confused look that she probably saw on my face made her smile just a bit.

“What I mean, Mr. Jacobs, is, how did having that kind of physical response to the sound of your own heart make you feel? I’m not asking how the erection felt. I’m asking how you felt to be having one, as you listened to your heart beating. Did it make you uncomfortable at all?”

“Oh,” I sighed, somewhat relieved that I didn’t have to try to explain to a woman what it felt like to have an erection. Without also getting one. “No, it didn’t. It actually felt … pretty natural to me,” I replied.

“Fine. Okay. Can you tell me, roughly, how many times your listening led to an erection?”

“If you’re asking if it happened every time, then the answer is yes, it did,” I said, my confidence in responding to her invasive questions growing with each one she asked.

“Okay. I suspected that would be your answer. It’s actually quite common among cardiophiles.” She rose from her chair and indicated that I should do the same, and then gestured for me to walk to the other side of the room. She pumped some hand sanitizer and, while she was massaging it into her hands, she pointed to the exam table. “Sit.”

Fuck. That was hot. Was I imagining it? An almost imperceptible edge in her tone? I watched as she uncoiled her stethoscope and hung it from her neck.

“Remove your shirt, please, so I can take a brief listen.” Her pupils had dilated a tad and I found myself momentarily paralyzed by the intensity of her gaze. I ducked my head and then took my shirt off as she’d requested, setting it down beside me on the exam table. My breathing was shallow.

She plugged in the earpieces and landed with purpose directly over my pulmonic valve, dipping her head down as she listened closely. She shifted down ever so slightly and pressed into my chest a bit more firmly, this time anchoring her left hand at the center of my back. It sent a chill up my spine. Then she nodded to herself and moved the diaphragm of the stethoscope over my tricuspid valve.

“Lean forward …,” she said. Her command hung in the air as though there was more to come, and then a second later she told me to straighten up again. Shifting quickly to my upper chest, she listened to my anterior lung fields. “Deep breath in for me …” she said, “… and out.” I complied, and she repeated the process once more on the left side, “And again …” listening closely and then nodding “… and out. Very good.”

She did the same on my lower and lateral lung fields, then moved to my back and listened in four places. When she was finished she nudged the side of my knee slightly and said, “lie back.” As she plugged the earpieces of her stethoscope in once again she added, “and go ahead and unbutton and unzip your pants for me.” Sweet Jesus.

She auscultated at my aortic, pulmonic, and tricuspid points again, and then leaned over me to listen at the mitral for a good twenty seconds. If listening to myself was arousing, then watching her listen to me could only be described as downright mind-blowing. And she knew this, which made it all the more intense. I felt my cock stir restlessly in my pants and prayed that the erection that we both knew was inevitable might at least wait until I was upright again.

Her eyes shifted to mine, and she pulled one of the earpieces from her ear. “Doing okay?” she asked, a small smile playing on her lips. They were beautiful – plump and well hydrated. I imagined what it would be like to take her lower lip gently into my mouth, to taste her as my tongue slowly explored the inside of her mouth.

She moved on to palpate my abdomen working her way methodically down toward my hip bones, and then expertly slipped a hand on either side of my groin to assess my femoral pulses. “Alright, then,” she said, her voice piercing the charged silence and jolting me back to reality.

“Everything seems just fine, Mr. Jacobs. Your heart sounds healthy. I didn’t detect any gallops or murmurs. You likely had a vasovagal reaction the last time I saw you, which does happen sometimes but is not indicative of anything more serious. So, that should put your mind at ease,” she said calmly.

“As for the cardiophilia …”

“Yeah, about that,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows from my supine position on the table. Her eyebrows rose in … anticipation? Curiosity? Indignation at having been interrupted? “Yes?” she answered, coming closer to the exam table.

“Is there anything to be done for it?” It wasn’t the question I wanted to ask, but it’s what came out. She looked at me with an unreadable expression, and then rested her palm lightly on my torso. After a moment or two of highly charged silence, she said, “Is that what you really want to know Mr. Jacobs?”

“In a way, yes,” I answered cautiously. “I guess I want to know if …”

“Yes?”

“… if you are a cardiophile?” I asked, somewhat surprised I’d let the question escape me.

If I’m not mistaken, I thought I saw a wave of relief pass over her features, and she moved away from me to go retrieve something from a nearby desk. When she returned she handed it to me without comment and I sat up to look at it more closely. It was a discharge letter. I looked up at her, somewhat confused.

“I don’t understand,” I said carefully. “Is this like … a referral or something?” I was a bit lost.

“You asked if I am a cardiophile.” A stray strand of her blonde hair fell behind one ear. “I am,” she said simply. I must’ve had a bit of the deer in headlights look because she continued.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, my mouth drying up and my cock springing to life again, “I guess because …” I could hardy tell her it was because I was dying to finger her with a cold stethoscope on her chest. “I wanted to …”

Before I could say another word, I saw her moving toward the exam room door and turning the lock. Holy shit. Was she … ? She approached me slowly where I was still sitting on the table, until she was standing directly in front of me. “If you’re inclined to sign this discharge letter, Mr. Jacobs, then we can speak more freely.”

I looked down at the letter again. “But … I need a doctor,” I said, feeling a bit like a blockhead but not knowing how else to respond. "It actually took me quite a while to find you, and the thought of starting over is …” I was short on words even though lots of things were running through my mind. “So, I’d need to find another primary if I sign this, correct? And for what? For … ?”

She looked at me with a gaze that seemed to intensify as each moment passed, and then she surprised me by taking the letter from my hands and placing it beside me on the table, then removing her stethoscope from her neck. She hung it from my neck, and then slipped quietly out of her high heels, never breaking her eye contact with me. And then …

… then she blew my fucking mind by slowly unbuttoning her silk blouse and letting it slide languidly off of her milky white shoulders and down to the floor, leaving her standing in front of me in her bra. She sighed softly.

“For this,” she said simply.

Then she unclasped her bra, baring her phenomenally beautiful breasts to me. “Isn’t this what you really want to know about?” she asked seriously. Taking both of my hands in hers, she cupped them against each of her breasts, and then put the earpieces of her stethoscope securely in my ears. I felt like a puppet on a string, my limbs moving precisely how and where she wanted them. Then she placed the diaphragm of her stethoscope on her chest at Erb’s point, and closed her eyes.

I must be daydreaming again. Is this really happening?