Surgical Correction
by andmybodytosurgeons (ao3)
Chapter 1: Part One
Ana isn't surprised when she follows the doctor downstairs to the basement of his house, into a room that he unlocks with a key. She says nothing when all she sees is just darkness, smells only chemical cleanliness. When he flips on the lights, she's inside a dim operating room. The walls and floor are tiled pale green. The cabinets and counter tops and surgical lamps are stainless steel.
There is someone on the operating table, body covered by a starched white sheet. The only parts of her visible, her slim wrists and her ankles, are restrained by leather straps. Ana can't take her eyes off of her. The doctor has told her everything, about this girl, about this room. Ana asked if she could see her. Now that she has, she asks, hushed, "Can I touch her?"
They are both dressed in evening wear and have hints of wine on their breath. They're just returning from the winter gala at the university where he teaches. She was his plus one, and a medical student herself. She rubbed shoulders with all of the faculty members and met all of his close colleagues who shook her hand and gave her knowing smiles. The doctor has told all of them about her and she's been a subject of intense discussion amongst them, these past few months. Ana is interesting to them because she's failed practically all of her ethics exams. Whether or not she's done so purposefully is for only the doctor to know. She has all of his recommendations and he is her biggest proponent under the scrutiny of those cautious decision-makers they are trying to impress, but with test scores and clinical skills like hers, his word is merely an encouraging nudge towards a unanimous sign-off. She's the front-runner of a stack full of promising candidates for their exclusive circle.
Ana gathers up her blonde hair with a fuzzy hairtie and the doctor passes her a box of latex exam gloves. She tugs on a pair while the doctor takes off his suit jacket, hangs it over a chairback, and rolls up his sleeves. She hands the box back and watches patiently as he dons his gloves.
He reaches up and powers on the operating lamp, then lifts the end of the sheet up past her knees, her bare thighs and her jutting hips, exposing her pelvis completely, and leaves the bunched up cloth over her abdomen. It rises and falls, as much as the leather restraint securing her in place will let it, and Ana can hear short, shallow breaths just barely muffled by the sheet. The doctor checks the belt and with a sudden tug, pulls the strap tighter. Ana hears a pained groan from the completely immobilized girl. She's been told not to speak to the patient.
The doctor, standing to one side of her, grips her knees and forces them apart, pressing them flat against the operating table in froggy (supine) position so that her bare vulva is directly underneath the light, fully accessible to their touch and view. "Go ahead and examine her."
Ana takes her place on the opposite side. The first thing she notices is how smooth she is, her groin devoid of hair. She feels the skin with her latex fingertip, her cold touch causing the girl to pull against the restraints to get away but she can't do much except strain her muscles helplessly. Seeing the full range of her motion, Ana becomes a little more brazen, inspecting her pubic mound with both hands now.
"She's young, but developed sexual characteristics suggests the patient's post-puberty. The lack of hair may be due to hormone imbalance. Texture isn't consistent with a shave or a wax." Ana pulls the skin taut. "Electrolysis, maybe."
The doctor nods, letting her off the hook. "Full marks," he says.
Ana appreciates the answer and admires the work. A useful thing to do for hygienic reasons, and having the area hairless should cut down on time needed for any surgical prep... for whatever procedures the doctor is planning for her.
She examines the girl's external genitalia, thumbs and forefingers separating the outer labia so she can see the small opening of the vagina better. She pulls the labia in different directions, identifying the teeny urethral meatus, exploring her little inner folds, seeing if she can spread the hymeneal opening using just labial traction. Nothing too invasive yet. The orifice remains tight and she notes this to the doctor, and also that she'd like to perform an interior vaginal exam in a minute. He has no objections, and keeps her legs spread apart and still for Ana to resume.
Continuing, she inspects the clitoris next, moving the skin around the hood to take a look at the head without directly touching it. She frowns when she finds that she can't, or it's difficult to. The clitoral hood remains fully covering the glans. She places her fingertip directly on it but it still doesn't retract. Increasing her pressure, moving her finger in a circular motion around the hood to test her, Ana silently notes there is little reaction in the girl's pelvic muscles despite her touching her this way. With one last attempt, Ana pinches down hard, squeezing the clit underneath all that extra skin between her fingernails until she feels it squirm faintly. Ana smiles. There she is. The muscles around the girl's vagina and anus visibly contract, tighter and tighter the longer Ana has her trapped between her fingers and she hears her groan from underneath the sheet. The girl tries to shut her legs but the doctor doesn't let her.
Ana finally releases her, and her pelvic muscles loosen up and relax too though they pulse intermittently, out of her control as the painful sensation subsides. Her fingernails have left indents in the skin around the clitoral hood, and it flushes with reddening colour. Ana takes a renewed interest in the vaginal opening that has begun to leak slightly with discharge. She feels the slippery skin between the vagina and anus which twitches, ticklish and unfamiliar with anyone's touch. Ana wonders if this is the first sexual experience for the girl, if she has been intimately examined by a doctor or gynecologist before, or if she has even masturbated.
She traces the trail of fluid back to the vaginal entrance and slips a finger into the hole, producing a sob from the girl who tenses up around her digit. She doesn't get very far; Ana is slow and gentle, feeling around the hymeneal edge, finding what she thinks is an opening in the thin membrane. She doesn't want to go any deeper but is nonetheless intrigued by this finding. She tells the doctor, "Hymen seems to be unruptured."
"Would you like to continue with the exam?" the doctor asks. Ana nods. For completeness. Because the evening simply can't end like this.
The doctor motions to the back counter and says, "Check that drawer. Second from the left."
Ana removes her finger from the girl and takes off her gloves. She crosses the operating room and takes a look inside the drawer. Arranged neatly are different sized speculums and rectal spreaders, all sorts of instruments to insert into small holes and expand for examiners to work with. She makes her selection and gathers up a few things and brings them back to the operating table on a tray.
The girl has mostly stopped fighting the doctor and lies motionless while he checks her genitals for himself. Ana helps herself to new gloves and lubricates the tip of a steel, funnel-like vaginoscope that she chose from the drawer. Smaller than the smallest speculum, used on young patients or virgins, if successfully inserted, would not do any damage to the girl. It will suffice, since Ana intends only a brief inspection of the vaginal canal, that's all. The doctor seems to agree with her decision. His latex fingertips that are now slick and shiny under the light, return back to the girl's knees, and he holds her down for Ana. She uses two fingers to spread her labia and guides in the cold instrument.
Entering the vagina she feels a bit of resistance and the girl begins to make panicked, incoherent noises, begging for her to stop. The doctor says matter-of-factly it's just a bit of pressure and keeps her from moving too much. He tells Ana to proceed. Carefully threading the narrow end of the vaginoscope into the sensitive, natural hymeneal perforation Ana pushes deeper into the frightened girl.
By now she's gone completely still, her rapid, whimpered breaths letting her examiners know she's still awake and enduring the procedure, just waiting for it to end because there's nothing she can do to stop Ana's determined fingers from forcing her open and putting the foreign gynecological instrument inside her body.
Ana hasn't pushed it in very far but it feels neverending to the girl. She feels like she's being stretched out but not torn. Needing to identify where to stop, Ana leaves the vaginoscope in place and generously lubricates two fingers of her non-dominant hand. She smears it over the girl's anus, rubbing it into the dark, wrinkly creases. She places her finger on it and pushes in. As expected, the girl, unsure of what to do, automatically clenches, her muscles on instinct trying to fight her because she is violating both of her holes. She begins to shriek but is unable to pull away, fearful of what will happen if she makes any sudden movements with the vaginoscope still inside her, threatening to tear her open. She's frozen and feels only sharp, blinding pain as Ana buries her digit inside the hole to the last knuckle in one motion.
Her long finger feels around her throbbing anal passage, upturned, until Ana identifies the position of her cervix as well as the rounded tip of the vaginoscope inside the canal some inches away. She adjusts the instrument until she's satisfied. She pulls out her finger, checks there is no sign of rectal bleeding, changes her glove, and removes the blunt-tipped inner section of the vaginoscope so that she is free to see inside of the girl now. She shines a pen light down the length of the tube, illuminating the pink entrance of the uterus hidden away at the end of it.
"Cervix looks normal. Good colour. No sign of infection." Ana picks up a long handled swab and a collection jar from off of her metal tray and takes a sample of the cervical mucosa. For thoroughness' sake. The completionist in her. It's one of her best qualities.
The doctor knows this too. As Ana tenderly removes the vaginoscope from the orifice and cleans the girl's sore vagina and anus with a cotton swab, her examination complete, he asks her: "Any closing remarks?"
Ana wipes the sticky discharge off her gloves. "I think she's a perfectly healthy young woman."
"But?"
"But... I did notice one thing. One concern."
"And what might that be?"
Ana points to the problem area on the girl's vulva. She spreads the labial folds around the clitoris and brushes a fingertip across it. There is little reaction from the girl. She then handles it roughly, squeezing it in between two knuckles."The clitoris is small, possibly underdeveloped. I couldn't manually retract the clitoral hood to determine its size. The prepuce is abnormally tight and there's a lot of skin in the way."
"Good eye. Are you thinking there might be some nerve damage there?"
"It's possible. Trauma from a groin injury as a young girl," Ana says, again inspecting the crease where the labia meet for any scars, "or a lack of growth hormone to the organ through puberty. Or it's simply a birth defect, something happened to her in the womb."
"And you'd like to find out what exactly."
Ana strokes the girl's clit. "I think it bears investigation."
"What do you propose we do?"
"The clitoral hood needs to be pulled back before anyone can fully assess her and make a determination. But to do that safely... I recommend surgical correction, to actually see what we're dealing with here."
Hearing this, the girl recoils, jerking away from Ana's fingers. She tries to fight her restraints, making ugly, muffled noises and writhing beneath the sheet.The doctor is silent in thought. Then he says, "She's your patient too now. Would you like to be the one to carry out the surgery?"
Ana looks up at him, surprised. "May I? When?"
"Right now."
Ana swallows, then she slowly nods. She's assisted with several surgeries at the university but she knows this one is a unique case. She's not sure when or if she'll have another opportunity like this. But she believes the doctor will (among other things she can't begin to fathom) perform the procedure on the girl with or without Ana's help.
The doctor tells Ana she'll find everything she needs to get ready behind the privacy screen over in the corner of the room while he gets the patient ready.
She takes off her gloves and finds in this corner a cubby with a variety of surgical clothing and, hanging from hooks, rubber aprons and other protective garments. She picks out a surgical cap she likes and ties a mask securely around her face, adjusting her glasses the way she's used to. She removes her wristwatch and washes her hands and arms at a sink a few steps over, using the stiff brush provided to make sure there's nothing under her fingernails. She dries off and helps herself to a light green surgical gown that's in her size, putting it on right over her black dress, and doing up the ties behind her back.
When she steps out from behind the screen, the doctor is just about finished doing his preparations. He smooths out the sheet near the girl's chest where wires run into a cardiac monitor that he has wheeled over to the operating table. It records her beats per minute, beeping a steady but nervous pace, heart rate elevated because she only has a vague idea of what they are about to do to her but she has given up struggling for now. It's too difficult. The doctor has tied her knees open with tough, knotted fabric connected to the underside of the operating table. All she can do is uselessly wiggle under the belt strapped across her stomach, digging into her skin. The cloth over her has been pulled back farther over her midriff but her waist and legs are now covered with sheets of shiny silicone surgical draping that clings to her body like rubber.
The doctor has also left Ana sterile packages of surgical instruments on the counter. She hears him in the corner washing his hands as well, and she gets to work prepping a tray full of things she will need for their little operation.
He emerges now similarly dressed in the surgical gown, the mask and cap. He glances at Ana's instrument stand with tacit approval and goes to glove. Ana does the same, opening her package of sterile latex surgeon's gloves and pulling them over her hands one at a time. They take their places by the operating table, he by the instrument stand at the patient's side, and she at the foot of the table, seated on a stool, positioned over the patient's exposed vulva and anus. They look her over and adjust their gloves, pulling tight the rubber and interlocking their fingers so their hands are smooth and white.
Sensing the two nearby her once again, the girl begins breathing quicker, almost hyperventilating. The beeping coming from the cardiac monitor also picks up in pace. Ana and the doctor cast a look over at the screen but it's nothing concerning. That amount of stress on the heart is within acceptable levels. From a quick auscultation with a stethoscope he had performed when the patient first came to be under his care, the doctor didn't detect any noticeable irregularities, nothing to suggest she didn't have a strong heart muscle for a girl her age and size. The recorded data from the cardiac monitor was to gauge her body's reactions and level of discomfort. The doctor picks up two pairs of surgical forceps and places them on the girl's draped abdomen and then selects two blunt-tipped forceps for himself.
Ana checks the girl's labia and clitoral hood with her gloved fingers, testing again the thickness of the skin, identifying the glans that is hidden away underneath. She retrieves her instruments and asks the doctor to help hold her open. He leans over and uses his forceps to get a hold of the labia and pull them apart. The cold metal on skin makes the girl flinch and whimper, and she feels herself being splayed, her vagina again helpless to their small instruments that pick at and pinch her sensitive areas. Ana grasps an edge of the tiny clitoral prepuce with her thumb-forceps, the fine tips deftly manipulating the skin with a far greater degree of control than she had with just her finger. She tries again to slowly retract the hood and see where exactly the problem is, where the tightness is impeding the movement. It's painful for the girl and she begs them to please stop. Ana inserts the tip of her second pair of clamping forceps just into the preputial opening, opening up the blades a minuscule amount, testing the elasticity of the skin, if it can be forced open or stretched with the help of steroid cream, thus negating surgery. The skin becomes tougher as one grows older, making that course of treatment much more difficult, but even so the area is fragile and Ana knows applying too much pressure will create a rip.
She slides the tip in more, trying to get it in as far as it will go. It moves beneath the clitoral foreskin, rubbing against the surface of what she believes is the patient's glans; an unpleasant feeling made all that more intense and painful by making contact with the cluster of nervous erectile tissue that's never been directly touched before. This causes the girl to let out a scream, upper body thrashing, trying to get away from hands she can't see hurting her in ways she's never been hurt—from these complete strangers torturing her cunt and asshole with surgical steel and rubber gloved fingers for no other discernible reason than their own personal enjoyment. She's a fascinating toy to them. A doll to undress and abuse.
Despite all this, her crying and screams, the girl's vagina is soaked and sticky. Ana presses down with a controlled lightness with the very tip of her forceps wedged between the hood and the clit. The girl's muscles contract and with it more fluid leaks from her hole onto the operating table. It doesn't go unnoticed by Ana or the doctor who also study the cardiac monitor, satisfied, the uptick clearly evident by sight and sound. Their examination shows promise. The nervous tissue seems intact and working well.
Ana removes her instruments from the clitoral hood and the doctor withdraws from spreading the labia. She asks the doctor for gauze and uses it to sop up the clear discharge coming from the vaginal opening. She separates the girl's buttocks with two fingers and wipes clean her anus. Still holding her open, she now has the doctor pass her gauze soaked in antiseptic solution scrub that he's prepared. She grips the forceps and paints the exposed vulva with the cold, dark liquid, repeatedly passing the gauze over the clitoral hood to circle the prepuce, and finishing with the perineum and anus. She passes the swab back to the doctor who hands her a long-handled applicator, the tip coated with benzocaine, a topical anesthetic. Ana applies it to the clitoral hood and waits for it to kick in.
When it's time to carry out the procedure, Ana replaces her soiled surgical gloves with new ones and takes a seat once again. She is given curved locking forceps by the doctor. She does a little test to see if there is any feeling in the clitoral hood. The girl doesn't seem to react, nor does there seem to be any change noted on the screen monitoring her heart rate. Ana grasps one side of the preputial opening with the forceps, locks it, and has the doctor hold onto it. She does the same for the other side so the numb clitoral hood is laterally stretched. Between the two tips of the instruments gripping the skin there's a tiny bit of room here. She asks the doctor for the tissue dissection forceps, a pair of Metzenbaum scissors. He complies.
She makes a confident cut in the soft tissue, only two millimetres in length, but it's enough. The clitoral hood finally gives way and with the doctor holding both edges of the surgically widened prepuce open, the naked glans is revealed, fully exposed to their view. Ana smiles at her work. She notes the shape of the clitoris that is already beginning to swell and stiffen, freed from the tight hood.
"The clitoral head looks good. She just needed a little help," Ana says to the doctor.
She presses gauze to the site of the incision but there is almost no blood. This causes the girl to squirm, her heart rate to quicken, and the doctor tells Ana it was a weak dose of anesthetic they used. Their patient can still feel everything around the hood and now her clitoris is experiencing an all-time high in sensitivity that might never be felt again the same way. Although their surgery would help in producing more intense sexual feelings upon stimulation when it is healed, all exposed nerve endings become less sensitive eventually—like the glans of a circumcised penis. In this case, they've only reduced the hood, not excised it completely.
Ana studies the girl's pelvis and asks him, "Would you say it's possible the patient has never experienced an orgasm?"
"It's possible. Or if she has, it wouldn't have come easy. Any sensation felt by the clitoris would have been mixed with a level of pain, given how thick the clitoral hood is. Rubbing it did virtually nothing, if you'll remember."
"And we know she's never been penetrated vaginally. Given her age, any real increase in masturbatory habits would normally have led to... exploration. Breaking her hymen." Ana trailed off. She was speaking from personal experience. "Probably."
"I suppose anal stimulation to achieve orgasm could be the last probable consideration."
"Any way to definitively tell?"
"Elasticity of the sphincter can be tested, visible marks around the anal passage and rectum could be indicators... presence of microscopic foreign material inside the cavity, even. But no. No way to be sure."
While he spoke Ana's gloved hands came to rest on the girl's buttocks; they twitch when she strokes her anus with a curious fingernail. "Unless we see for ourselves it can be done."
"Well, we've got about a ninety minute window before the anesthetic wears off and I prescribe antibiotics, a cold pack, and recommend bed rest to our patient," the doctor says, looking at the clock on the wall. "It might be the perfect time to do a little testing. Keep her retracted, please."
While the doctor moves to the back counter, Ana rotates positions around the operating table and picks up a roll of surgical tape. She secures the locking forceps in place to rest on the girl's abdomen, keeping the clitoral hood pulled back and out of the way.
The doctor returns with some equipment he has retrieved from the cabinets. The first device Ana recognizes as a two pronged vibratory stimulation system—a high-freq and amplitude medical vibrator, used to produce ejaculate from men mainly in the case of spinal injury. The next is a portable TENS unit he places between the spread legs of the patient in front of Ana. Attached to it is a metal probe. He changes his surgical gloves and covers the prongs of the vibrator with a sterile condom and lubricates the head of the probe.
Since Ana checked the rectal mucosa previously, the doctor tells her to go ahead and insert the electric probe through the patient's anus. Ana places the cold head against the girl's anal opening and begins applying pressure, steadily forcing it into her. Though the probe isn't very large, it still stretches her hole by a fair margin. The girl cries out in pain and Ana carefully rubs her exposed clit, as if to quiet her and make the sensation a little bit more bearable as she pushes in deeper. The girl's confusion and difficulty accommodating the probe suggests to Ana that anal stimulation is a brand new experience for her. She wonders if, before this, her gloved middle finger was the only thing to ever fuck this girl's completely virgin asshole. The doctor lets her know when she's far enough inside.
He switches on the vibrator and places it on the patient's mons, near her clitoris but not on it. Immediately the cardiac monitor picks up the effect it has on the patient. She lets out a soft, grunted moan. The doctor tests her, pressing harder and then easing up, eyes watching the screen. He turns to Ana and instructs her to turn on the TENS unit and adjust the settings. "Twelve volts at a frequency of sixty Hertz. Current set at five hundred milliamps."
"Yes, Doctor."
Low to start, then they'll go from there.
When he tells her to, Ana activates the probe for two seconds. The electrical pulse makes the girl's pelvic muscles lock up and Ana can see both of her holes squeeze together tightly, forced involuntarily to contract and hold. The girl gasps, unable to control anything down there. When the machine deactivates, stimulus cycle complete, she continues to shake, holes tensing and loosening up as the intense feeling travels like aftershocks through her pelvis. The doctor keeps the vibrator in place, stimulating her clit the whole time. The doctor tells Ana to increase the voltage, mentally keeping track of the cardiac monitor's readings.
Ana wipes up the girl's vagina that's been leaking, her discharge running over the shiny surface of the rectal probe that sticks out of her anus, and more seems to ooze out every time her muscles contract, continually reacting to stimulation from the doctor's vibrator. Ana sends another pulse from the electrical unit, and it seems to jolt the girl who again clenches all of her pelvic muscles at once, the charge more powerful than last time. Her back arches as far as it will go as she tries to twist away from their assault on her erotic nerve endings. The thick probe inside her has begun to feel good as it forces her to close her stretched out hole around it again and again and she can't tell if she's the one doing it or not.
She is again wiped clean, with Ana pulling apart her inner labia to dab at her hymen. She tests its resiliency with a finger, seeing if the opening will widen any more, now that her muscles have been properly stimulated. Even just feeling Ana moving around inside of her causes the girl's heart to beat faster. She feels lightheaded and moans weakly, taking in more shallow breaths. Ana can spot the signs of a girl on the verge of orgasm. The finger of Ana's glove comes away soaked. Meanwhile the doctor has pulled the cloth sheet all the way up to the girl's neck so that her breasts are exposed. Like her clit, her nipples have stiffened, and the doctor examines them with his fingertips.
Ana increases the power of the electrical unit once more and warns the doctor the girl is almost there. The doctor nods, and Ana activates the probe and leaves it to pulse at regular intervals. It keeps the girl on the edge, her tightening muscles having almost no time to relax before the next pulse. Her heart is hammering now and the doctor leaves his hand on her chest, feeling it work and her ribcage rising and falling. Ana picks up a pair of forceps and focuses on her hard clitoral glans. She presses on it with the tips. She circles it. The beeping cardiac monitor lets her know all that her tiny movements are doing to the girl's body. She tweezes the glans between the fine metal tips and tugs on it. She feels her little clit pulsing, trying to wiggle free from the forceps as she squeezes it harder. The doctor also presses in with the vibrator so it almost touches the clit. Maybe it does. Ana pulls on the glans until the girl finally has her first orgasm. She loses all control of her muscles and limbs that buck against their restraints and slap down on the operating table, her knees desperate to close but aren't allowed to. Ana hovers above her, not touching her at all, and the doctor has switched off the vibrator. Ana powers down the TENS unit and begins to remove the probe from the exhausted and dizzy girl, but she's still tight, muscles still tense as the orgasm takes its time in subsiding.
To complete the procedure, Ana sutures the girl's numb clitoral hood, taking care to make sure it can be successfully retracted after it heals.
Nearly three weeks later Ana returns to the doctor's home. She lets herself in and takes off her jacket. She's got her scrubs on already underneath, and she goes to the basement where a group of men and women wait inside the operating room, surgical gowns and masks on. She greets them and goes to get ready.
She and the doctor had met for lunch some days before, when he broke the news: "They want you," he said.
Ana stopped chewing. "I made the cut?"
"You blew them away."
"I had a little help. Didn't I?"
"Only a little." The doctor chuckled. "But they saw the same thing I did—you were the one calling the shots. Not me."
"How much did they see?"
"Everything. I told them they'd be impressed, and they were. Turns out I'm not a liar, and you're a real doctor, lady."
"Shit. Do you want a drink? Bubbly or something?"
"Mazel."
Before they went their separate ways, the doctor said he could get her a sit down meeting with the program director in a day or two, if she could drum up a proposal—she'd made a killer demo, now it was time to start on the album. She asked what the guidelines were and he told her "none whatsoever."
Their program, Ana knew, was buried deep somewhere within the university. It thrived on its members' creativity and willingness to leave any kind of ethical hangups at the door. There were doctors from all departments working on a dozen different projects each under the program's umbrella, doing their best to translate their research into something the larger university would pay attention to: money-making potential. If not that, then prestige. If the research was good and the results could be replicated safely, the data was handed over to be cleaned and repackaged as purely hypothetical innovation from brilliant thought-leaders, good for attracting big spenders—federal programs, corporate Pharma, philanthropists—in the form of research grants. The university liked the extra funding and having their name in the news and the medical journals. Seeing their rivals come in perpetual second place because they simply couldn't compete was an added perk. They were sore winners. It in turn attracted the greatest talents and, especially what the program was looking for, people who were surprisingly okay with unspeakable things. Complicit at best, sadists at worst. The doctor had told her this and Ana didn’t bat an eye.
The doctor is letting Ana use the operating room in his basement for the time being, while her new place undergoes renovations courtesy of the university. She gets into her surgical gear and takes a look at her patient who is covered under a sheet. Nobody is allowed to touch her until Ana is there. The girl's clit has recovered nicely, having barely a visible scar where the hood was cut. It retracts without an issue, Ana is delighted to see. She looks up at the camera she knows is there and then asks the scrub nurse to prep the patient for surgery. The team puts the girl's legs into gynecological stirrups and drape her so that only her vulva and anus are showing. They keep her restraints slack. She doesn’t have any more fight left in her.
A nurse helps Ana put on her surgical gloves.
Chapter 2: Part Two
Ana and Doctor Shen watch the hard-hatted subcontractors work on the walls and floors and fiddle with dangling wires hanging from holes in the ceiling. Her new surgical lamp has just been mounted and screwed in, the new operating table bolted to the floor. The pipe people were here yesterday installing drainage in the floor. Ana wants a curtain track put in next. The builders say another week and the room will be all ready. Doctor Shen has assured her that budget and schedule is not her concern, and that their next order of business is figuring out who this operating room will actually be for.
Before he heads off to teach a class, he sticks a phone number on Ana's fridge and tells her to give this person a call. "She's a friend of the program," he says.
Ana dials her, and the woman at the other end of the line asks Ana to meet her at an address. The area code takes her to the suburbs, and when she parks on the street, the woman walks over and introduces herself as Veronica. She's in her thirties, wears a button down shirt, narrow skirt, and a silk scarf around her neck. Ana, by comparison, threw on jeans with a ripped knee that didn't come like that and a baseball cap over scrunchied-back hair that she didn't have time to wash that morning. Or the previous morning.
Veronica leads Ana up the driveway and rings on the doorbell of the house.
"You don't live here?" Ana asks Veronica.
"God no."
They're greeted by the homeowner, a Kaytlin: pink skinny arms, halter dress and pink lipstick. She and Veronica are already acquainted. Ana has no idea why they're here until Kaytlin shows her up the stairs and into the study, a room she and her husband keep sealed shut and for good reason.
On a single bed in the corner of the room, there's a girl tied to the headboard, face down, limbs bound together. She hears their footsteps and begins to jerk against the restraints, shouting into her cloth gag, her voice already hoarse.
Veronica takes a seat on the mattress by the girl's head and asks Kaytlin, "Ted? The kids?"
"Weekend in Whistler. Take as long as you need."
Veronica gestures to Ana now. "Have a look."
Kaytlin says, "You're a doctor, right?"
Ana hesitates, not entirely sure of the two women she's just met, but they seem to have a complete understanding of what's going on here. She clears her throat and approaches the bed rather awkwardly.
Veronica opens up her big purse and finds a plastic bag full of latex gloves. She hands Ana a pair, and puts on her own. She also reaches in and retrieves a hypodermic needle, pulls down the waistband of the girl's stretchy leggings, and sticks it in her butt cheek. The girl yells out but eventually calms, laying her head back down while Veronica rests a hand on the small of her back. Like it's routine, she re-caps the needle and tucks it away in her purse and slaps a bandaid on the injection site. Ana wonders what else she carries around.
Ana takes a seat on the mattress. She hooks her gloved fingers into the elastic and pulls down the girl's leggings to just below her bum. Using only her thumbs she separates her buttocks for a cursory inspection of the girl's anus. Her crease opens up, the sweaty skin peeling away from itself to reveal the puckered little hole. Aside from the faint chemical isopropyl scent Ana recognizes as baby wipes coming from the girl, she smells unwashed. Ana wrinkles her nose and Veronica, ever ready, hands her a disposable surgical mask. She fits the loops around her ears and pulls it down over her mouth and nose, and continues her inspection. There's a bit of redness around the anus, some swelling. It looks like it's been scratched more than once. If Ana were to touch her there she expects it to be painful for the girl. She kneads the mounds of flesh with her fingers, stretching her, seeing how the hole reacts to this manipulation, and testing muscle tone. She looks and feels trim, athletic. Her skin is rosy and healthy-looking. At least she's been kept well-fed. Spreading apart her cheeks, Ana can also see the entrance of her vagina opening up for her as well. The girl makes a drugged, frustrated noise, aware of her forced nakedness, but she remains docile to Ana's examination.
"Let's get her on her back."
Veronica nods and the two roll her over. She's nice and loose for them to position. Ana untethers her ankles from the bedpost but keeps them bound together. The girl moves her legs weakly but Ana handles her without issue. She pulls her grey university hockey t-shirt past her breasts and behind her head. Veronica holds onto her tied arms positioned above her head, keeping her from moving around while Ana tugs her leggings and underwear all the way down to her white running shoes. Ana takes a closer look at the inside of the girl's underwear that are stained with her own discharge in the distinct pattern of her dirty slit and ass. Ana's grateful for the latex gloves Veronica provided her. That she's come so prepared makes Ana wonder how regular this is for her, but she can't say she's surprised.
Ana does a head-to-toe, starting with the girl's scalp. Free of lice, but everyone knows lice prefer clean, well-kempt hair. She feels her glands under the jaw and inspects the skin, looking for marks or bruises. She finds some that go all the way around her throat in a shape resembling that of a dog collar. She presses along it for signs of tenderness, looking for any airway or spinal damage. Too little oxygen and she could already be a vegetable, for all Ana knows. And with her senses dulled by drugs, it'll be hard to test her basic brain functions now.
She continues downwards regardless, fingertips feeling her breasts, palpating in a circular motion around the girl's pink areolas, her right and then her left, checking for lumps. She pinches the skin and rolls it. She cups her breasts that fit perfectly in the palms of her hands, squeezing the fatty tissue until her tiny nipples stick out. She checks how sensitive they are, petting them with the pad of her finger and they remain hard and firm. Ana pinches them both and begins to pull on them until the girl is in clear discomfort. She moans and whimpers through her gag.
Rib cage next. Ana presses on each one but nothing is broken. She feels around her belly but everything seems in order. Now the pelvic exam. She feels her sharp, protruding hip bones through the skin; she touches her patch of pubic hair. Nudging the girl's thighs apart, she carries out her inspection of her genitals. Ana uses her phone's flashlight to illuminate the area and sees light smears of pink around her large labia that continue to her perineum and even around the anus. She rubs at one of the smears and examines closely the fingertip of her glove. It's not blood or vaginal fluid, she's certain of this. It's lipstick. Further inspection of the folds of skin reveals dark indents that look like teeth marks—the area around her clitoris looks swollen, like it's been bitten. Ana becomes suddenly very aware of Kaytlin who sits a few feet away, hands folded over her knees, watching intently as Ana touches and explores between the girl's legs, and she puts together pieces of what seems like a probable story.
Veronica offers to hold Ana's phone for her. With two free hands now Ana uses her thumbs to pull apart the girl's sticky labia. She examines the size and shape of her lips, gripping and pulling the skin as far as it'll go. She uses her index fingers to feel her clit, squeezing it between her fingertips, and then pushing back the clitoral hood in one easy motion. She moves the area in a circular motion, testing her sensitivity now. She presses her fingers together on her exposed glans and feels the girl's reaction. Good. Nerve damage seems unlikely. Still spreading her with her thumbs, Ana uses the tips of her index fingers to locate her urethral opening. She asks Veronica to angle the light a bit more.
She inspects the girl's littlest hole, using the nails of her gloved fingers to prod around the meatus. Whether she's feeling pain or just sensitive to what Ana's doing to her, the girl grunts quietly and her belly jerks as she takes a sharp breath. Ana tries to see if the opening has been used at all, played with or somehow fucked, if anything has been put inside of her that isn't supposed to be there—dirty fingernails or other long, thin things lying around the house that haven't been sterilized but are forcefully, recklessly shoved inside the tiny opening anyway by inexperienced hands. A possible bladder infection or UTI is Ana's chief concern and given the state of her genital hygiene she doesn't think it's too far-fetched to be on the lookout for signs. The meatus looks a little raw but despite doing what she can to stretch out and see inside the urethral passage, she won't be 100 percent sure until she can obtain a urine sample and does a thorough bladder flushing. But to do that she'll need the right equipment. She strokes the urethral opening and feels her vagina trying to close but she keeps the girl spread with her thumbs.
Ana spots a string poking out of the vaginal opening. She follows it inside with a finger and pulls out a tampon. Looking it over, Ana can tell it's just been shoved deep into her hole as a precaution, to soak up any leakage. Veronica holds out an outstretched hand and Ana deposits it onto her glove. Using her elbows to further widen the girl's thighs, Ana reaches in a bit and slowly digs her thumbs into the vaginal opening. It gapes nicely and she can see a little ways into the canal. With the hymen stretched out or broken fully, it does mean Ana needs to check for diseases—or possible signs of pregnancy. She doesn't know the full extent of her sexual history, nor what's been done to her.
The girl is already wet. Ana tests her with a fingertip, feeling around the vaginal opening first and then evaluating the slippery texture of her natural lubrication between her thumb and forefinger. It coats her vaginal walls and Ana effortlessly slides a finger in. She rotates her wrist, feeling all around inside her. The girl feels her stroke the underside of her clit and she squeezes her vaginal muscles together. Ana notes her strength despite her drugged state. She introduces a second finger that the girl, try as she might, is unable to keep out of her clenched vagina. She's too well-lubed to put up any resistance and she groans helplessly as Ana's two fingers penetrate her and the very tip of her middle finger makes contact with her cervix. Ana places her other hand at the top of the girl's pelvis and feels around for her ovaries while her middle finger locates the uterine opening. Everything feels normal. She rotates her wrist again and presses down on her pelvic floor, spreading her fingers and again gaping the vagina. She slowly removes her spread fingers and feels to see if and how the vaginal canal closes up behind them.
Now Ana moves onto her rectal examination. She brushes the girl's anus with her soaked middle finger and as she expects, the girl gives visible signs of pain or tenderness, the body itself reflexively trying to somehow stop Ana from touching her there. She'll just have to go slow. She massages the anus before pressing in but as she gets to the first knuckle, she realizes her digit hasn't been lubricated well enough. The girl has tensed around her finger, not allowing her to go forward or backward, and she sounds like she's in pain. She tries to move her legs, to push herself away from Ana, but Ana pins her down with her other hand, pushing her flat against the mattress while she struggles.
Veronica asks Kaytlin to get Ana some lube—quickly. The woman moves to the desk, pulls a key from off a bookshelf, and unlocks one of the drawers. She comes back with a bottle of lube. She squeezes out an amount on Ana's finger and around the girl's anus. Without being asked, Kaytlin grabs the girl's knees and pulls them to her chest so she's in perfect position for Ana to finish her exam. The girl's buttocks come apart automatically and Ana feels her rectal passage open up for her. The girl, feeling a third pair of hands on her, begins to yell through her gag, as if she can tell it's Kaytlin just by the way she's being handled, and this seems to make her furious. But she's still too weak to do anything about it. Ana pushes in all the way, feeling the underside of her uterus first, then inserting her index finger back into the vagina and firmly palpating the rectovaginal septum between her two fingers. Every time her fingers come together, pinching the tissue separating her vaginal and rectal passages, the girl lets out a soft, shuddery moan.
After Ana removes her fingers from both of the girl's holes, Veronica asks her to do her a favour. From her purse once more she produces a clear plastic speculum, three long and skinny collection kits, and an empty syringe fitted with a detachable section for blood collection. Ana changes gloves for her right hand and accepts the speculum from Veronica. She immediately notices that it's not the right size for this girl, and it'll be a tight fit if she forces it in. Kaytlin seems to have noticed as well, eyeing the instrument, and she pulls back the girl's limp legs to nearly over her head so that the vagina can more readily accept the object insertion. Again, the girl, all too familiar with Kaytlin's touch, groans defiantly and fusses, but with two women holding her down there is really nothing she can do but wait as Ana lubricates the blades of the speculum as well as she can. Then she feels it entering her. It's uncomfortably large and Ana pushes it in as steadily as she can, fully aware how much her vaginal opening is being stretched, the skin of her labia pulled tight against the odd curves of the speculum. When it is far enough in, Ana begins to adjust the dial. The blades force the girl's vaginal cavity wide open and expand with every turn. She can't get it to go even half of the way before the girl begins to pant and freak out, the sensation too much for her to handle, but even at this position, it's more than enough for Ana to see deep into her vagina.
She takes a long-handled swab and first directs it to the girl's urethral opening above the speculum. She inserts it one centimetre inside, the sensation sharp and unpleasant enough to make the girl cry out in pain, and pulls it back out. The next swab she uses to scrape the girl's cervix, around the dark red uterine opening. This is uncomfortable for her as well, and Ana can see the girl's anus contract every time she makes contact with the sensitive area.
One more to go, but for the last swab, Ana removes the speculum from the vagina and applies lubrication to it once again. When she places it at the girl's anal entrance, she makes sure to rub her clitoris as she begins to push it in. The girl, limbs heavy and barely responsive, can do nothing but cope with the speculum in her tight asshole. It was already large for her vagina, and she feels like she is about to pass out from the burning pain that only grows more intense as her sphincter muscle is pushed beyond any size of object that's ever been put inside her before. The feeling only gets worse as Ana manages a half-turn of the dial to widen the speculum blades. Pain shoots through the girl's pelvis and into her stomach.
Now Ana uses her phone's flashlight to take a close look inside the girl's opened up rectum. She collects her sample from around the rectal wall and caps the container. Looking closer, moving the light, she examines the anal cavity, noting splotchiness, raw areas, and tiny scrapes and scars all along the rectum that Ana was careful not to irritate with the speculum. Ana knows it hurts but it's important to her that she be able to see the condition the girl is in, the reason for her soreness. Like the rest of her holes, it's clearly been subjected to rough, forced penetration and all other kinds of trauma and abuse from fingers or objects. Her suffering was the objective. Ana slowly eases out the speculum and the girl whimpers, the removal just as painful, and waits for whatever they'll do to her next.
Ana picks up the empty syringe however and Veronica takes this to mean the end of the exam. She says to Kaytlin, "We're almost finished up here. I wouldn't say no to a fresh pot of coffee."
Kaytlin lets go of the girl's legs, gives one lingering look at her thoroughly inspected, slightly gaping holes that are leaking lube and juices onto the mattress, and leaves the room. The moment the door closes, Veronica is standing and she goes to the desk. Ana begins to draw blood from the girl's arm, but watches Veronica unlock the drawer with the key and start digging through everything.
She comes up with a video camera belonging to Kaytlin and her husband and starts flipping through the files stored on the card. She stops on one, shakes her head, and makes a quiet sound of rebuke. She uses her phone to snap photos of the small screen. Ana finishes what she's doing, withdraws the needle, and approaches Veronica, curious. She pulls her mask down under her chin.
Wordlessly Veronica angles the camera so they can both see. She starts from the beginning. Through the screen Ana sees Kaytlin on the same bed with the same girl. Kaytlin's wearing boutique lingerie and a pair of shiny black latex gloves. The girl has been stripped naked, spread-eagled on the mattress by restraints. Kaytlin's in between the girl's legs, her hands holding open her thighs, her glossy mouth on her anus. When the girl struggles too much, her hips trying to buck her off, Kaytlin gets up, bends over her and flicks a nipple. She jerks around, fighting her restraints. Kaytlin pinches the nipple and plays with it, tormenting the sensitive skin with the sharp fingernail of her other gloved hand. She gropes the girl's breasts, then suddenly slaps them. When she pulls away, Kaytlin drags her back towards her by the shoulder and slaps her cheek twice. She leans in, planting kisses all over her red face around her blindfold and gag. Grinning at the camera, she smooches her upper lip and puts a hand around her jaw to keep her turning away. The girl strains, screaming through her gag, and then something breaks.
In a moment, the girl rips a hand free and all hell breaks loose. Kaytlin gets a sharp elbow to her mouth and stumbles backwards off of her. The girl already has her blindfold and the rest of her restraints off of her arms and legs by the time three men appear onscreen, frantic. The girl gets a good long look at all of their faces. Rising from the bed she bodychecks the first and gets in a knee-weakening hit on another because she knows how to throw a punch like a pro. He hits the ground around the same time she does as they wrestle her down in the end and she's a mess of testicle-buster kicks and nails and teeth before they get her under control once more. Kaytlin, bloody-nosed, screeches at Ted to turn off the fucking camera. The screen goes black and the next file autoplays—a soccer tournament at the park.
Veronica powers off the camera and deposits it back in the drawer where she found it. Ana is quiet for a minute, contemplating everything she's just seen. Veronica cleans the girl with a tissue and pulls her underwear and leggings back up. She puts her shirt back down over her chest, allowing her that small measure of modesty once more. She gathers up her things, her dripping speculum and samples, and she beckons to Ana and says, "Gloves." They remove them from their hands and Veronica stuffs them into her purse.
The two women leave the room and head back down the stairs. Veronica stops by the kitchen where Kaytlin is waiting with steaming mugs and a sugar-dusted plate of snickerdoodles. Ana keeps walking all the way to her car and gets inside. There's a loud rap on the window that startles Ana, and it’s Veronica who climbs into the passenger seat.
Veronica stares at Ana. She says, "If you need a moment I get that. You're new at this. But I feel like you wanna peel out of here in a hurry and that makes me nervous."
"I can't imagine why."
Veronica points to herself. "Sausage maker." She points at Ana. "Sausage eater. Sausage enthusiast. Sausage buyer-in-bulk. Don't even give me this bullshit right now. Your university is our largest account by far. By far. And I mean customer-rewards levels of loyalty. Where did you think—"
"I know."
"I don't ask you about whatever it is you people do. I'm not sure I want to know."
Ana says nothing.
"So what do you think of her?" Veronica asks. "She's a fixer-upper but I think she'll work out okay."
"What did Dr. Shen tell you?"
"Nothing, really. There are others for you to look at. They're not all like her. She's got a little bit of fire to her—a little bit of fight."
"She's got a lot of fight. She's full-up with fight."
"Yeah, unfortunately for her."
"What happens to her if I don't take her?"
"Do you even have to ask?" Veronica says. "She's damaged goods. Too hot to hold onto. When I brought you here I didn't know why Kaytlin wanted to get rid of her. But now I do, and because of what she did—what she saw—it's the end of the line for her. You wanna know what'll happen to her? Well, your university... they're not very picky. I'd say it's usually where girls like her end up, statistically speaking. And I'm not convinced that's a good thing. I don't know much about your program, but what I do know is that when they're buying, a beating heart isn't always a prerequisite. The bottom line is, if she's not yours then she's somebody else's. Maybe even a colleague of yours, and I know that thought should scare you as much as it already does me. So I'm really hoping, Ana, that it's you."
Ana stares over the top of her steering wheel and down the suburban street.
Veronica gestures back to the house. "Coffee's getting cold..."
"Okay," Ana says. "Yes."
"Great." Veronica grabs the door handle.
"What happens to Kaytlin now? I mean, this is all her fault."
Veronica pauses. "I could lie to you, if you want. Say that she and her husband get blacklisted. Run out of town by an angry mob, pitchforks, torches. Or, ooh, banished to a hell dimension." She swings a leg out of the car. "But they won't."
#
It's begun to snow, and Ana's guests start heading out into the evening. They cheek-kiss her goodbye and congratulate her again as they drift past the kitchen. Doctor Shen had let her in on the good news, and they shared it with their colleagues at her housewarming: her proposal's been greenlit. She'll have a blank slate and her own staff, rather than play research assistant to a more senior member of the program. Everyone who is left now converges on the kitchen to kill off open bottles of Pinot and dishes of cold, picked-over hors d'oeuvres and cheese.
Ana scoops bean dip and says to Dr. Shen, "Find me a neurochemist, show me his credentials, and I'll call him a quack if he can’t—"
"The research exists already. Sourced, referenced, everything."
Another party-goer smiles. "I think there was a line about it in Trainspotting."
Ana arches an eyebrow. "Wow."
"Don't help me." Shen shoots him an exasperated look.
"What are we arguing about?" Margot and Greg, a married couple in the program, come into the kitchen and top off their wineglasses.
"A difference in belief," Shen says. "We'll be having this argument tomorrow and ten years from now."
"With all due respect, Dr. Shen, probably not in ten years because I am going to prove you wrong." Ana half-smiles. “I’d better. I only budgeted out six months.”
"This is about your proposal, isn't it?" Margot asks. "Watch out for her. I have a feeling our woman of the hour is just a big old shark."
"It's all brain chemistry," Shen continues. "The amount of dopamine released during orgasms is similar to the effect of heroin. Tell me that doesn't have any bearing on temperament."
"So in other words, keep 'em stoned," someone else says. "Sign me up."
"Therein lies the problem of modern medicine." Ana shakes her head. "Throw drugs at it. Keep the senses dulled. The biggest band-aid solution."
"But it's a natural process. Much less harmful in the long run."
"And what happens when the dopamine high wears off? When the stimulus becomes unsatisfying? I'm not saying it's total bunk, but there's a reason regressive 'hysteria' treatments died out."
"There's also a reason why surgical masturbation-prevention measures went the same way. Circumcision without anesthetic... clitoridectomy..."
"It was uncouth," Ana says, "but I'm not convinced their science was completely without merit."
"It's psychology. A soft science."
"But it's also neuroscience. Like a flood of dopamine that makes you feel good, fear is just another reaction in the brain," Ana says. "Pain as well. Two of three of these things can make someone learn real quick, fundamentally change the way they are as people."
Shen doesn't seem convinced by his former pupil, and neither do the others.
Ana looks at each of her guests. "Would you like a demonstration?"
Nobody says no so they all set down their wineglasses and the group of doctors, six men and women, follow Ana downstairs to her newly-completed operating room. It's connected via a smaller prep room, and the doctors find surgical gowns here to put on. They tie on surgical masks and caps. When they are all ready, Ana takes them inside. She pulls back the curtain obscuring the operating table and shows them her new patient. The girl, whose name is Rylan (Ana managed to coax out of her), is already in dorsal-lithotomy position on the table, legs spread wide apart in gynecological stirrups. Blindfolded, she hears the doctors approach the table but doesn't react.
Ana switches on the operating lamp, and the girl flinches from the sudden noise, the sudden burst of light and warmth. Although she can't see anything, her head swivels from side to side. Ana pulls the white sheet off of her body so that she's fully naked and exposed. Her nipples begin to stiffen in the cold air.
Ana distributes packages of surgical gloves to each person in the room and invites them to put them on. Once she and the doctors have covered their hands and sleeves with white latex, Ana walks around the patient and begins to undo the girl's restraints except for one across her abdomen. This aside, she has full movement of her arms and legs. If she really wants to escape, she can. Easily. If she really wants to fight them, she definitely can. The doctors look on with a bit of apprehension, but Ana stands next to her and puts a gloved hand on the girl's bare shoulder.
"Feel free to touch," she tells them.
The doctors adjust their gloves and begin to inspect her body. Hesitantly, at first. Some check the girl's breasts, pinching her hard nipples. Others touch her clean-shaven vagina, taking turns spreading her labia for others to view and feel around the opening.
Ana's thumb goes to the girl's lips and nudges open her jaw. She sticks a finger deep inside her mouth. The girl gags but still does nothing. Ana waits a moment, then does it again, testing her reflex until she can do it without gagging. When she withdraws her saliva-covered hand, she explains to the group, "She has a rebellious streak that needs to be fixed. I'm happy to say she's responding well to her treatments. She's not on anything. Not diminished in any kind of mental capacity."
One doctor pulls back the hood of the girl's clitoris. She and others each touch the exposed clit, stroking or pinching it, feeling it harden and throb in their fingertips while they examine it. Margot lubricates her fingers and is the first to slide them into the girl's vagina. The girl draws a sharp breath, and doctors put their hands on her thighs and pelvis and stomach, holding her steady. Margot feels around inside of her and removes her fingers but the girl's vagina is very quickly filled with another set of fingers testing the depth of her canal and the way her vaginal walls feel. When these are removed, new ones take their place. Some are meaty men's fingers, others are wiry and feminine and sometimes the girl feels their fingernails or rings underneath their latex gloves.
Someone touches her anus. Just a fingertip that travels from the sensitive skin at the bottom of her vagina and tickles her asshole. Then she feels a smear of cold lube there and someone forces the whole finger inside whether she's ready or not. It makes her jump slightly, raising her hips, but she feels the extra hands that are on her body push her back down to the operating table and the fingers moving in and out of her cunt continue their exploration of her hole. Her labia is pulled in different directions, sometimes gently and sometimes harshly. Gloved hands on her breasts keep tugging on her rigid nipples. The doctor examining her rectum adds another finger and tries stretching her anal opening as wide as it can go. It hurts. She sucks in air through gritted teeth and curls her toes. She folds her arms across her flat stomach and she feels a hand rest firmly on top of them. She knows it belongs to Ana. It forces her to lie still and say and do nothing as she is held down, fingered and touched. The doctors make murmured, clinical observations to each other about how hard her clitoris is getting, how fat and swollen her labia is, how wet her hole is, how many fingers they can fit inside her dilated rectum, and how much pain or discomfort she'll feel. This doesn't stop them.
Out of morbid curiosity the surgeons work on distending her orifices with little regard for the natural size and shape of her holes, methodically destroying her like they are performing a violent surgery where she is pulled apart, retracted, so they can reach deep inside and feel all of her vulnerable, womanly things, things like her uterus and her little tubes and her ovaries. She is tissue, muscle, and fat in their rubber gloved hands. She owns and controls nothing; her body is theirs. She is invaded.
Margot plunges a finger back into the girl's vagina where there are already two from someone else filling her. The passage still yields after some effort, stretching for her, and the girl lets out a low moan, unable to help herself. She is helpless. Margot's fingernail finds her clitoris, and a little lower, her small urethral opening.
The girl feels the woman rub her sensitive peehole and she starts, nearly sitting up in a panic but is held down too well by men who are too strong. She is reminded of Kaytlin’s perfume and the snap of her latex gloves and hands around her throat and arms, of hairy thighs and the damp stink of used condoms and Kaytlin calling her a stupid cunt while she put hard things into small openings that made her scream and want to throw up and die. She can’t help how wet this makes her. She can’t help how hot her cheeks feel and her shameful tears. She is ashamed of how good it feels inside her belly. She reaches to grab the surgeon’s inquisitive hand and stop it but it's too late. She shakes and a shudder rolls through her whole body. The doctors need to grab hold of her legs to stop her from shutting them. They force her back down on the operating table. Her vagina and anus clench around the fingers stuck inside her and don't let them go. The sensation of the orgasm doesn't seem to end and she still feels it throbbing, radiating from her groin and spreading throughout her body. Her toes flex and uncurl, and she's gripped Ana's hand. She didn't mean to. She lets go and immediately she whispers, breathlessly, "I'm sorry. Please, I'm sorry."
The surgeons remove their hands from between her legs and Margot looks at the girl's shiny juices that leak down the wrist of her surgical glove. She felt her cum right on her fingers. Margot informs Ana what the girl has just done and lets her have a look for herself.
Ana eyes the girl who is still breathing unsteadily, her sweaty chest heaving. She places her hands on her thighs and tells the others, "She knows that she's not allowed." With that she does up the girl's leg restraints. The girl weakly reaches for her, still mumbling her hasty apologies, but Ana grabs her wrists and secures them as well.
Moving to a cabinet on one side of the operating room and reaching up, Ana winces. Her side still gives her a bit of trouble, a twinge of soreness from bruised skin. She had bathed the girl when she arrived—washed her hair and gently cleaned her raw, painful areas with a soapy shammy. For the most part, the girl let her. She dried her off and stroked her hair and asked her what her name was. Shortly after, Ana let down her guard once and got kicked in the ribs, hard, by the tough university athlete. While Ana was doubled over, momentarily unsure if anything had been broken, the girl sneered at her.
She gathers things from the operating room cabinet now. Surgical instruments and supplies. When she shuts the cabinet, the girl shrinks back on the table, beginning to quiver. She's terrified of that noise that it makes and her body reacts viscerally.
Ana explains to her colleagues, as she starts to set up a sterile field, "I've tried the carrot, and I've tried the rod. So far I've had very promising initial results, the director would agree."
She removes her gloves and puts on new ones. She paints the girl's reddened vulva with antiseptic, places a speculum into her vagina, and brushes her exposed cervix with the solution-soaked gauze. The girl jolts, and with her voice breaking she begs Ana to please stop—she promises she'll be good. She didn’t mean to.
Ana ignores her.
"Misbehaviour," Ana says, "is an affliction. As I'm sure you're all aware, sociopaths are usually wired differently than other people. They may be missing parts in their brain that inhibit regular human beings. Whether this is a good or bad thing is up to that person's nurturing in most cases. But people who feel the need to act out, who need to fight against some kind of authority, are wired differently as well. Our personalities are the product of a mix of chemicals in our brain. On that I agree. Contentedness and docility stemming from high levels of dopamine, for instance." She glances over her shoulder to meet Doctor Shen's eyes. "Just as problematic temperaments, maladjusted or incompatible personalities, are bourne from, really, a lack of fear. A complete disregard for consequences of any kind. Here's what I think. Strong-headedness can be remedied, surgically of course. The firmest wills can always be broken."
Ana gathers the girl's clit between her thumb and forefinger. She says, "You’re right, though, Doctor, that excision of a woman's most sensitive, most vulnerable piece of anatomy is largely unhelpful and backwards. Especially something that has so much influence over the human brain. Still, not dissimilar to male anatomy... if one can control her genitals, one can control the girl."
She injects a generous amount of lubricant into the sobbing girl’s urethral opening. Next she opens up a sterile urinary catheter she’s prepared and inserts the tube into the urethra, advancing it into her bladder using forceps. She clamps the end of the catheter and tapes it to her thigh so she doesn’t have an accident and leak everywhere. Her treatments can be very taxing on the girl’s body.
She picks up a long pair of forceps from her steel tray and a thin surgical sound—the first of graduating sizes she has all neatly laid out on her tray—that she coats with lubricant. "I have found that cervical dilation is a useful, if intense, therapy. The sharp, subduing effect it has on the patient is immediate but also remarkably long-remembered.
"Let's begin. Margot, please gag the patient."
Chapter 3: Part Three
Ana sits rink-side in the stands watching the girls rifle their pucks up to the blue line, taking turns, and swooping in for a shot on net. The goalie's good but the backup's better—Ana knows this (winces just now, when one tic-tac-toes feebly through the five) and she's only been watching for a few weeks. The regional decider is coming up in a month and their university is poised to take it. A lot of eyes on that game, and with it, a lot of chequebooks in conveniently accessible pockets.
At ten minutes to puck drop, Dr. Shen spots her, makes his way over and takes a seat next to her, shivering. He's dressed for the unusual spring warmth this city's been going through outside while Ana's all prepared in her sweater and gloves. Blanket over her lap, she drinks steaming tea, looking bundled up and cozy.
"How's she doing?" Shen knows why Ana is here.
"Better than okay." Ana looks proud, almost. "Thirty-three, she's got the C, but she's got a glass ankle. She's done in three games. I can tell."
"Look at you with the hot takes already. But you know who I'm talking about, right?"
"My girl's going to get them a ring. Have you seen her play? She hits like a truck."
They were talking about Rylan, the commodity she'd taken off Veronica's hands. The problematic little thing more or less foisted on Ana to do anything she wanted to. And make no mistake, Ana had her on her operating table often, carefully carrying out her experiments, mask on, cap on, gloved fingers between her forced open legs, hot lights on her vulva and shining deep inside her while she was beautifully pried apart with a speculum.
Her anus twitched every time Ana pushed apart her buttocks, awaiting the inevitable tickle of a greasy fingertip, then the whole finger, an enema nozzle, or other times a rectal probe thermometer that would stay buried inside her the entire procedure. These procedures were various therapies she subjected the girl's holes to, always painful, sometimes bloody. She put her under general anesthesia twice. They were minor surgeries, both successful. Both times she woke up sore and tearful, apologetic, and more eager to please than the day before.
Rylan was a success and Ana is pleased with all the progress she's made with her. When she was finished for good with her on her table, she let fellow doctors Margot and Greg use her for their own work. The husband and wife duo were studying memory and the human brain—how things can be forgotten or misconstrued... experiences un-experienced. A chemical cocktail injected into the brain stem (or a series of them, until they got it right) and the girl began to think maybe it was all a dream because it didn't make sense. This whole thing was far too outlandish and who would believe her? It wasn't a perfect science but it was enough.
A patrol car found her wandering the downtown east side with no shoes and needle marks on her arm.
She wasn't a mess, though, and bounced right back. Retook her place on the university hockey team and resumed all of her classes, once the initial haze wore off. Her doctor had declared the missing time a fugue state she'd experienced and nobody asked any questions. But Ana's work with a scalpel had, in basic terms, put her at odds with her own body. It betrayed her. It had caused her to suffer by just existing, stupid and helpless. She doesn't remember what exactly, but she remembers pain. She remembers shame and punishment. But she doesn't touch herself. She doesn't think about sex. Ana is certain of that. That part of her brain Rylan's ignoring like an unwelcome houseguest. Instead she's thrown herself into everything else, just productivity and mental discipline at the forefront ("be better than you are, you stupid cunt," she mumbles to herself sometimes, and doesn't know where or who she ever picked that up from). This was what Ana had hypothesized would happen. Once, chronic masturbators—misbehaved boys—were taken to surgeons to be corrected. Their pants were pulled down in front of their mothers, their foreskins clamped and severed, all while being admonished for their disobedience. The deep shame and unbelievable pain would scar—in theory. Ana left Rylan intact though she'd had her fat little clitoris gathered up between her steel forceps while she cried and begged many times, thinking maybe tonight was the night. The thought excited Ana more than she cared to admit, and the avenues it opened up for her research would be enlightening, but she could not bring herself to mutilate the fleshy bud. Whenever she released it from her grasp and the girl thanked her profusely, Ana smiled and let it throb and ache without relief. It was hers to take if she wanted to. Never forget that, sweet girl.
"So everything is taken care of?"
Ana scans the player numbers once again and frowns. "She'll turn up."
Except Shen looks perturbed. "No, she won't. You don't know?"
"Know what?"
"Had this sent to me an hour ago," Shen says, pulling out his phone. He passes it over and Ana scrutinizes what's on his screen. It's blurry paperwork, a quickly snapped photo somewhere in a dim room—because of course he would have people everywhere, a network of information gatherers protecting the interests of their institute—but the text is readable enough and Rylan’s name is on it.
Ana stared. "What the hell is this?"
"It's a patient intake form at the university hospital. That's her, isn't it? According to this she was admitted to the psych ward last night."
"The fuck." Ana claws angrily at the screen, looking for more answers. "She was fine. She's been fine. Do you have anything else? Nurses station reports? Session notes?"
Shen shakes his head. "You know everything I do now."
"I'm gonna need a favour."
"Or two. I'll make some calls."
Ana stuffs her blanket back into her handbag and scurries out of the rink. She rides her bike across the campus and is out of breath and sweaty by the time she gets to the hospital. When she gets to the psych ward, she struts down the halls and flashes her security lanyard and nobody on staff looks at her twice. The secretive program she and Shen are a part of has its benefits, allowing her full access to the hospital's different wards.
She peers into each room until she spots Rylan. She's under a blanket, lying sedately on the bed. Ana reaches for the door handle when she hears a woman ask, "Can I help you?"
She's a doctor in purple scrubs and a lab coat. She's in her forties, sandy haired, and wears pearls around her neck.
Ana's always been a quick thinker. She holds out a hand. "I'm Doctor Prazsky. I'm with a research firm working with the 'Birds. They sent me over to see how she's doing."
"Doctor Peeters," the woman says, taking her hand. "She's under my care. What's the study, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Sport psychology. She’s special. For someone with a... history like hers, she's—"
The doctor nods. "I've spoken to her family. They told me what she's been through."
"Then you'll know how critical to the work it is she be available to us. I don't mean to be insensitive."
"I'm an academic just like you." She looks suspicious when she asks, "Which research firm did you say—?"
"I'm with the Belgium Institute. Right here on campus."
"I've heard of it. So you're working with the university on this?"
Ana nods.
The doctor seems to drop her guard and ushers her into the room, but her sudden shift in tone doesn't let Ana feel completely off the hook. "Call me Lillian," she says.
"Ana."
"You want to know why we're keeping Rylan here under observation."
"Please."
"She was at the hospital yesterday for hip soreness. “
“She had a hard fall. I saw.”
“A completely routine checkup—as is the burden of athletes. The doctor decided a pelvic examination was needed and she just... lashed out. She jumped up from the table and put him into a wall. She was sedated and restrained shortly after. Made quite a scene. A reaction like that and the hospital has a responsibility to make sure her mental health is in order. That's where I come in."
"Is there anything to suggest why she reacted that way?" Ana asks. "Did she say anything to you?"
Lillian shakes her head. "We've spoken briefly, but she's reluctant to open up to me. I'd say she needs hours of therapy, but if a patient is unwilling, there's only so much we can do. My job is to make sure she's... stable. And as far as the team is concerned—the university—"
"They need their star in left wing. Yesterday."
"So we're on the same page," Lillian says.
"What now? Do you have a preliminary diagnosis?"
Lillian thinks for a moment, then tells Ana, "My guess is a severe degree of vaginismus. Patients with milder forms of the disorder will show a physical aversion to a gynecological exam, pulling away from the examiner, closing her legs. And those in the fifth degree—"
"Attack their doctors."
"Right. Most studies show vaginismus as being caused by extreme anxiety, in some cases brought on by suffered trauma. Sexual assault, maybe. We don't know what happened to Rylan when she was missing but I've found some troubling evidence that I don't think even her physician knows. I'm told she's refused all vaginal or rectal examinations since she reappeared."
Ana swallows and says, "What have you found?"
Lillian, ever forthcoming, beckons for Ana to follow her over to the sedated patient. She helps herself to a pair of latex examination gloves from the dispenser and puts them on. Leaning over the girl on the bed, she pulls the blanket off of her body. Ana is surprised by what she sees. Completely naked, Rylan's been strapped in tight, her wrists and legs and waist held securely by the white SEGUFIX system of buckles. A catheter runs from between her legs over the side of the bed.
Lillian explains, "With her sedated, it allows me to determine the extent of her trauma and I've completed a satisfactory full body examination. She wouldn't let me when she was awake."
She undoes the restraints around her ankles and spreads her legs open wide so Ana can see everything. In a moment Ana feels the same feeling of excitement she'd felt every time she put on her surgical attire, her shallow breaths loud inside her tied on mask, snapped her sterile rubber gloves over the sleeves of her operating gown, and took her place at the foot of her operating table. Rylan's legs would be forced apart, her shaved bare vagina and asshole completely vulnerable for her to touch and manipulate, and she would speak sweetly to her young patient, her captive surgical slave, explaining what procedures she had in mind and what she would be doing to her momentarily. Asking her throughout how much it hurt. On the pain scale. Rylan would say ten, and Ana would call her a liar. She punished her for this.
Lillian, using her gloved index fingers, spreads Rylan's labia so Ana can see her clit, the urethral opening that is filled with the diameter of the catheter, and her pink vaginal opening. She holds her open and says to Ana, "I've found extensive scarring in her pubic region. The clitoral hood has been stretched and I see evidence of partial tears in the skin. She was pinched here multiple times, or perhaps clamped. The marks are in line with the teeth of surgical forceps, of all things. Likewise, her labia—" Lillian tugs on the girl's vaginal lips, rolling the skin in her fingertips. "—show similar markings, and what I think are the marks of recent sutures. And these are also possible injection sites. It could all be consensual, mind you, evidence of painful, kinky sex she engaged in that she possibly doesn’t remember or doesn’t want to talk about. Although looking deeper within the vaginal canal, I'm inclined to believe this isn't quite the case." Now Lillian places her fingers at the opening of her vagina and with a tugging motion, begins to gape her. "It may be hard to see from where you're standing, Ana, but what I found were thin, almost invisible scars on the tissue inside. Combined with suture marks, it looks like the work of a surgeon. It most resembles a procedure in cosmetic surgery: vaginal tightening. A few precise incisions and a surgeon can radically change the length and calibre of the vagina. And she's really very tight." Lillian slips a finger into her vagina and slowly pumps it in and out a few times. She wiggles it around inside, feeling the walls of her canal hug against her. "Almost unnaturally so, which might be a contributing factor to her apparent vaginismus. For some women, a smaller opening is necessary to achieve easier orgasms, but it can also result in painful intercourse. It may even be an unintended side effect of a common non-cosmetic procedure like vesicovaginal fistula repair. Who’s to say? But surgical trauma can be just as damaging as sexual abuse. And combined with whatever horrors she might have been awake to suffer... it's a wonder that this psychotic episode has only occurred now."
Ana murmurs, "She's a tough girl."
"But I plan on treating her to the best of my ability. I'm coming up with a regimen at the moment. There is some medication that can help with vaginismus. There are promising peer-reviewed journal articles about Valium, for instance."
"You want to keep her drugged up?"
"If it comes to it."
This is undesirable for Ana. Her study hinges on Rylan being completely normal and high-functioning, this hurdle aside, and in terms of results, there could be no greater one than Rylan achieving greatness due to, theoretically, Ana's surgical ministrations. Her painful therapies. She had broken her. She was convinced of it. She made her better for it. She had tortured her without mercy and the ensuing dissociative state she gave birth to was a no-nonsense go-getter. She was perfect, so Ana thought. Rylan being hopped up on Valium could spell the end of her sports career. There was nothing more worrying to Ana than her experiment resulting in a useless, fucked up girl with nothing to show for weeks worth of work on her. What would the director say?
"Does this answer your questions?" Lillian asks. She takes off her gloves, the demonstration over.
Ana says, "The most immediate ones. Thanks. But I need to make a call."
"Of course."
Ana steps out and immediately dials Dr. Shen. He picks up and she says, "Tell me we can do something here."
"I know you don't want to hear this, but I spoke to the director and it's a no go. Our hands are tied."
She lowers her voice in a growl. "So what the fuck happens now?"
"She's in the system now. We make a move and any way you look at it, it's suspicious. It'll have the institute's fingerprints all over it."
"Wear gloves."
"Ana."
"And you can't get Lillian Peeters reassigned?"
"Unfortunately not. If we'd known yesterday, we could have moved fast and done it. But now it's too late. Our sources say she's had meetings with the president of the university already. He's entrusting the girl's care to Doctor Peeters and Doctor Peeters alone. If she's suddenly without a patient, she's going to start asking questions."
"God dammit."
"Ana," Shen asks slowly, "has she said anything? Does she remember anything?"
He's asking if Rylan has already talked. Ana says, "Unless Peeters is lying, that's a no. She's been mostly sedated."
"That's a relief." Shen himself doesn't sound very relieved. "Because if she's been talking... the thought's made the director kind of nervous. You understand."
If Rylan remembered, and she recounted her experiences with Kaytlin and Ted, the suburban couple with a perverse streak, then her missing months might not be dismissed as simply a fugue state. Authorities might be a lot more interested in what she had to say. Veronica and her shady business of trafficking would suddenly be thrust out of the shadows—and if her organization was particularly vindictive, it would probably mean the very public reveal of what sort of illegal experimentation that went on under the Belgium Institute's outward prestigious banner and funding. Mutually assured destruction and a dead man's switch.
"And you trust this doctor, Peeters?" Shen asks.
Ana admits, "I don't know. She's observant. She already suspects something's not on the level with her patient. There's a chance she's not telling me everything—if Rylan said something that made her want to investigate in the first place. It's not every day a psych ward doctor performs an intensive pelvic exam."
"I'd keep an eye on her. If this gets back to the director..."
"I'll handle it."
"Will you?"
"Yes." She makes herself sound as resolute as she can.
Shen says, "All right. I'll stall for the time being. But you need to get some definitive answers. Do what you got to."
Ana finishes her call and returns to the room where Lillian is scribbling down observations and checking Rylan's vitals. She's still sleeping peacefully. As Lillian replaces the blanket over her naked form and tucks her in, Ana says, "We'd like to continue our study. We'd like your permission to be a part of her forthcoming treatments." Ana is quick to add: "It's important to the team. Truth be told, and you likely understand where I'm coming from, the university's leaning on me. Hard. They want our girl back in pads and on the ice as soon as humanly possible."
Lillian relents. "I suppose her current condition could have been brought on by a great many things. Perhaps just stress. Whatever did or didn't happen to her genital region is just a working theory. It'd be helpful to have another expert to consult with. I'd be quite happy to work with you."
"Thank you, Lillian." That was her in. Ana would have access to Rylan and see for herself how much she remembered, and how willing she was to divulge all of that. If anything, though, Ana consoles herself with the thought that she could maybe steer Lillian towards treatments on Rylan that wouldn't undo all of her work.
"It's been suggested to me as well that she gets better by any means necessary," Lillian says. "She needs to get her head on straight. Vaginismus is linked to harm-avoidance personalities, and our patient in question being who she is—"
"She's in the thick of it, down in the corners. She's a bruiser."
"—could lead to another episode. Yes. Maybe this time during a game. In public. Which makes her a danger to others. I told the president this because I wanted to be truthful, and I could tell it wasn't what he wanted to hear. And Rylan's parents were privy to this conversation. They agreed with him. They wouldn't accept that their daughter was a headcase. So they've already signed and faxed over consent forms allowing me to subject Rylan to any and all possible treatments to beat this thing and right quick."
"Before the regional championship."
Lillian nods. "Bird pride."
For Ana, she's most concerned about her own project for the institute, getting the results she wants. But everything is relative and it all trickles down. If Rylan leads the hockey team to victory, it means big money moving directly into the pockets of the university. And some select few in charge, come the next budget meeting, would make happen an allocation of funds as a thank you to the ones responsible for this success and good press. It would go directly into the Belgium Institute. This meant an A+ grade for Ana in the director's books, something well remembered the next time Ana pitched a new project to him.
But still, it’ll all be for naught if Rylan remembers. And talks. The institute needs to survive this potential time bomb, first and foremost.
#
At night, Ana returns to the hospital. She slips through security again and into the psych ward. In her jacket pocket she has a hypodermic syringe she's filled with potassium chloride. It would claim whoever it was injected into in mere minutes. She really hopes she doesn't need to use it tonight. She intends to speak with Rylan, and see what she knows. If it's Ana she remembers after all.
When she gets to Rylan's room, she isn't there. Ana walks down the hallway and feels desperation creeping in, until she suddenly nearly runs down Doctor Lillian Peeters who's just coming from her office. She's here late, far past the end of shift, Ana notes. She has someone next to her this time, a younger woman she hasn't met. She’s a nurse, from the look of her.
"Doctor Prazsky—Ana?" Lillian says, surprised to see her again. "What brings you back?"
Ana tells a half-truth: "I was hoping to catch our patient after the sedatives have worn off. Is she awake?"
"She is." Lillian shares a look with the nurse beside her.
Ana says, "I'll take any amount of time I can get with her. Where is she?"
"We've moved Rylan down the hall, into one of our treatment rooms," Lillian says matter of factly. "We thought it best to begin treating her immediately. Tonight. I was going to tell you the results of this tomorrow and you could see for yourself if there was any improvement."
"I see."
"...Would you like to observe? Assist us, even?"
Ana is taken aback by the sudden offer but quickly agrees, and the three women proceed to where Rylan is being kept. As they walk Ana learns that this new woman is a nurse specialist called Jane. She was brought in from outside the hospital by Lillian.
When they get to the treatment room, Lillian pulls open the door and there's a muffled shouting that escapes into the hallway. Ana glances around but none of the night staff nearby in the ward react. The way they carry on, Ana suspects they're used to similar noises emanating from the psych ward's various rooms. They close the door behind them. The room itself is small, the floor tiled. It would resemble an examination room of a GP's practice if not for the peculiar table at the centre of it.
Rylan is positioned on it, and as far as Ana can see, the table sports all manner of straps and restraints to use at its operators' discretion. There were straps that could go across the occupant of the table's head, neck, waist, arms and legs, and leather manacles for the ankles and wrists, and they do. Their hapless patient is completely tied down to the table in a way that's so familiar to Ana. Her legs are spread, although not with the usual stirrups—this room isn't meant for gynecological examinations or surgeries after all. From the look of things, the electrical equipment off to the side, Ana surmises the main purpose of this room is to carry out electro-convulsive therapies or other psychiatric treatments.
But they have complete and easy access to Rylan's exposed pelvis and just about everything else. Aside from the straps across her body, Ana is not used to how glaringly white the fully naked Rylan looks under these lights. She can't help but stare. She would normally have her covered with surgical drape from head to toe except for the areas of her body she had prepped for procedures. Doctor Lillian didn't seem to have much concern for the patient's modesty and Ana wonders how usual this might be for all those under her care. She can't help but think about earlier that day, how Lillian separated Rylan's legs and showed off the sleeping girl's vagina to a complete stranger with such ease, spreading her and sticking her gloved fingers deep inside her. Telling Ana so clinically how Rylan had adamantly refused any sort of touching by anyone, and that it was easier to examine her when she was rather unaware and of course unable to say otherwise or resist.
And Lillian was able to do so because Rylan was not in control of her own body—it'd been signed over to the hospital by her own mother and father who hadn't even bothered to make a trip to the campus to visit her. They were letting Lillian, and any medical professionals who were able to cure their problem child, have free reign so long as they got their desired results, and the issue went away. So with that in mind Lillian begins the course of treatment.
Rylan now is wide awake and she makes her displeasure well known through her gag. It's a leather device that goes across her mouth with a rubber pump dangling down from one side. Ana guesses there's an inflatable balloon that's been forced into her mouth and it's doing its best to silence the feisty girl but she's not making it easy. She still struggles against the restraints and the table creaks under her frantic movements which only increase as the women enter the room and Nurse Jane sets up her things. Rylan watches her with seething contempt, her eyes narrowing the way they do when she gets ready to put up a fight.
Lillian shows Ana to the corner of the room where they can get "scrubbed in" to carry out the therapy. Ana's wearing her regular street clothes so she puts on a surgical gown and gets a bouffant cap and a tie-on mask. Lillian does the same but remains in her lab coat. Jane tucks her own red hair beneath a cap and soon she too is masked so only her green eyes show. She’s pretty and tatted, her muscular arms intricate full-sleeves. She elects to put on a surgical gown over her scrubs.
Ana has a look over to see what Jane set up and is intrigued by what she sees. On an instrument tray, there is an arrangement of smooth, cylindrical objects in white and pink. Ana recognizes them as vaginal dilators. Lacking perhaps the anatomical features of consumer-friendly sex toys, oversized silicone and stainless steel penises of varying shapes, they were still used the same way but by medical professionals. On the tray they are arranged from small to large, and Jane and Lillian plan to use them all.
Lillian reaches over to the wall and hands them all latex exam gloves. These are different than the ones used anywhere else in the hospital, not white or powder blue latex or nitrile, but instead black, another peculiar feature of this treatment room. They are dark and intimidating and Rylan quiets momentarily when the three pull them on over their hands in full view of her, the only sounds in the room are that of rubber eagerly stretching and snapping into place.
Rylan is hushed by the sight of them, their black spidery gloves a sharp contrast to their baby blue gowns and colourful scrubs, and for the first time today she looks frightened. Ana meets her eyes while she extends and curls her tightly latex-covered fingers and can only think: yes, we're ready to begin your treatment.
Doctor Lillian stands between Rylan's opened legs and explains to Jane and Ana, "I've diagnosed the patient as a sufferer of vaginismus, with her pelvic examination resulting in visceral reactions in line with other confirmed cases." As she reaches slowly towards Rylan's bare vulva, Rylan shrieks and attempts to pull away. The restraints don't let her, but she can't help herself. Lillian's gloved hand hovers nearby her vagina, careful not to touch her skin, and she points out the area in question. "The pubococcygeus muscle, or PC muscle, is thought to be responsible for the condition, although there are two additional spastic muscles studies showed in patients even under sedation: the bulbocavernosum right here, and deeper inside, the puborectalis. Right now the thought of being touched anywhere here is so unwanted by the patient that the body manifests its revulsion in its own way, protecting itself. She's not in control of this reflex, and in fact may feel like she's being held hostage by it. It's clear she's in great discomfort and pain during these spasms. And for us out here, penetration will be difficult, maybe even impossible, as the vagina tightens considerably. But I believe this proposed course of treatment, vaginal dilation, will over time force her to become used to the sensation and it won't be so debilitating. As for her suspiciously small vaginal calibre, this treatment will help two-fold."
Lillian puts her hand down by her side and Rylan seems to relax, but beads of sweat have gathered all over her body. Lillian takes a finger and swipes it up from near her mons to her sternum and she looks carefully at the slick moisture against the darkness of the glove. Profuse sweating is just another reaction caused by vaginismus, and she directs Jane and Ana's attention towards this, as well as Rylan's nearing-hyperventilation and almost visible heart palpitations throbbing between her breasts.
Then she allows Nurse Jane to tend to the patient. Jane speaks in a low, soothing tone and Ana can't make out what she's saying to Rylan. While she watches, Lillian stands next to Ana and explains, "Jane specializes in caring for patients with cases of vaginal agenesis. Do you know what that is?"
"Non, or well, partial, creation of the vagina," Ana says.
Lillian nods. "For patients diagnosed with this condition, they'll often have nothing between their legs except for an introit dimple instead of a full vaginal opening. Some girls will go all the way into their teens until they find out they have difficulties having sex, but many doctors will correctly diagnose the problem early on. If it's not surgically corrected—which is usually inadvisable until the patient has sexually matured—the most recommended course of therapy is called the Frank technique which can be done as early as possible. By using graduated dilators to increase the depth and calibre of the vagina, it gets rid of the need for surgical intervention."
Nurse Jane picks up the thinnest dilator off the tray and shows it to Rylan. When she realizes what's about to happen, she protests through her gag, screaming no. Nurse Jane lubricates her vaginal opening as well as the dilator and pushes it against her tightly straining hole. Using her other hand, she presses down on her perineum to help increase the pressure she's putting on the dilator. Rylan shrieks but Jane coldly continues forcing it inside of her.
"But our patient doesn't have vaginal agenesis," Ana says, continuing to watch.
"No, but the Frank technique is still viable. Jane has spent months with girls and women, providing this kind of therapy, until they see results. Her success rate is admirable. For Rylan, I'm attempting a form of cognitive behavioural therapy using the same principles."
"You're making her confront her anxiety directly. Like it's a phobia."
"What do you think? Do you agree with my approach, Doctor?"
Ana nods but she's not entirely convinced this is what's best. If anything, their harsh treatment could actually reinforce her own work on Rylan, keeping her mentally shut off to any sexual interaction. But she's extremely curious to see if Lillian's plan holds water. She'll eventually be forced to discharge Rylan due to university politics, so Ana decides all she has to do is wait her out. She'll determine the damage they are or aren't doing to Rylan later.
Jane has managed to work the smallest dilator inside her vagina and she leaves it inside her while she examines the taut muscles by inserting a finger into her rectum to feel around. She says to Lillian, "She's still so tight."
"Let's keep going," Lillian says. She walks around the table while Ana observes for now.
Jane withdraws the dilator and drops it back onto the tray. She selects the next size up and continues. She starts slow and gently shoves it inside the girl's vagina as deep as it will go, until she can't squeeze herself shut, and then she pumps it in and out. Rylan manages to whimper as the length of the dilator is buried inside her, stretching her narrowed opening and filling her vaginal canal to the point of pain.
Her head begins to loll and Lillian tells Jane to ease off. She grips Rylan's chin and makes sure her airway is open. Her eyelids flutter. "Stay with me, Rylan," Lillian says. "We can't have you fainting on us."
When they have her back to a semi-normal state, Jane moves on. Throughout, she speaks to Rylan the way she might to her patients, reassuring her that she's doing so good, taking so much of the dilator, and look how wide she's getting. She coaxes her to continue as a habit but it's not really up to Rylan, and she's looking more dilated by the minute. Rylan babbles incoherently but Jane keeps on training her hole to accept more and more in length and diameter. Lillian strokes her cheek, wiping her tears, insisting to her this is preferable to having surgery done on her genitals, a doctor cutting her and mutilating her vagina, and how much more that will hurt. Jane laughs and says what a pretty hole she'll soon have. She asks if Rylan has a boyfriend. She asks if there are any cute boys in her class. She teases her like she’s a little girl. Rylan can't answer and just bites down harder on the mouthpiece of her gag and endures it.
While it still hurts Rylan, Jane points at a pool of wetness on the exam table that she's sure isn't lube. It looks like their perseverance is paying off, and it becomes easier to penetrate her despite the increase in size of the dilators. "She's getting better at it. Look how she sucks it right up," remarks Jane. The shiny dilator slides in and out of her vagina with little resistance now. She wipes her brow with the sleeve of her gown, the repeated motion she's performing having worked up a sweat over the past hour or so.
By the time she reaches the last size of dilator, Rylan barely makes a sound and just takes a defeated breath as Jane inserts it all the way in, her swollen, red labia parting to accept it. With a finger stuck in her anus, Jane rechecks the PC muscle but it's weakened now after this continued penetration, too overworked. Even with this examination, Rylan doesn't have the same reaction to it as she did before. Jane is free to poke and prod her, admiring what they've done to her.
When she places the soggy dilator onto the tray, finished with it, she says to Lillian, "She is at a normal depth and size now, Doctor. There's one more test I'd like to perform if you'll let me. Something much larger than what she's experienced so far."
"Go ahead." Lillian looks pleased with how the session has gone, gazing down over Rylan's body.
Jane takes off her sopping exam gloves and drops them amidst the used instruments, all wet and sticky with lube and Rylan's juices. She has, among her things she brought, surgical gloves. She puts them on, the white latex stretching nicely to cover the sleeves of her gown. Sterile procedure was unnecessary for this therapy but the extra few inches of protection is always a benefit.
She holds out both gloved hands and has Lillian squirt lubrication from the bottle onto her open palms. She lathers it all over, rubbing her hands together until they make a squelching noise as she clasps and interlocks her fingers, her gloves glistening under the lights. She makes sure they're nice and oily all the way up to her wrists.
Using two fingers to start, she guides them into the girl's vagina and eases them back and forth. Her messy hole feels nice and warm, and excess lubrication oozes out, dribbling down past her shiny and wet anus. She adds a third finger and she feels the vaginal opening start to feel constricting around her digits. Together they're beyond the size of the largest dilator she used now.
Jane asks Lillian to help her hold her open. On the instrument tray are two hook-shaped Sims speculums. Lillian picks them up, greases the ends, and with her left hand, Jane helps her insert them into Rylan's vaginal opening around her fingers, further widening her. She can feel the orifice deform slightly as Lillian firmly grasps the handles of the speculums and with a lateral pulling motion stretches her around Jane's fingers. Jane adds her pinkie and soon she begins trying to reach even deeper, but she has a bit of trouble with the last knuckles. She tries rocking them inside her as Lillian does her best to keep pulling and widening her hole. Jane turns her wrist, retreats, and then pushes forward again. Better this time.
Rylan has gone dead quiet, the feeling of fullness overwhelming her senses, the pain of being obscenely stuffed replacing the spasms of her hyperactive muscles. She has no choice but to look up and stare at the bright operating lamp, her vision dimming at the corners with every passing second she feels these women slowly and methodically working a hand inside her. Between her legs Jane is completely concentrated behind her surgical mask, and Rylan feels her fingers move around and tickle her somewhere in her pelvis. Jane has no intention of stopping because the whole point of this twisted exercise is to push her past her limits and she's been able to fit so much already. It's nearing the point Rylan is willing herself to accommodate Jane's hand so maybe, just maybe, this can all be over. The speculums feel like they might create a tear in the sensitive perineal skin between her enlarged fuck hole and violated anus, the sensation paralyzing and white hot the more pressure Lillian adds. It makes her curl her toes but that’s all she can do. They’ve ignored her screams and will continue to do so.
Jane can tell this is going to be difficult. Rylan needs more time to get used to the thickness so she doesn't go too fast, but she's confident they'll have dilated her well enough soon. The constricting muscles are less of an issue now, thanks to the graduated sizes of dilators, but her hand is definitely a jump up. What's left to deal with is the elasticity of her skin, which does need time to stretch out. She turns to Ana now and asks her, "Doctor Prazsky, can you please stimulate her clit? It might help her loosen up."
Ana complies, and hesitantly reaches between Lillian's hands holding the speculums to find Rylan's little bud. Touching it causes her to jump and Lillian nearly loses her grip on the gynecological tools with the sudden movement. Jane feels Rylan clench against her fingers for a second, but this is only a brief spasm. A jolt. Reaching down, Ana scoops a glob of used lube from Rylan's labia onto the fingertip of her glove and brushes it over her clit. Some girls with sensitive clits (like the one Ana knows Rylan possesses) couldn't handle the feeling of it being clumsily mashed by an inattentive lover and needed a more deft touch to find it even remotely an erogenous zone. Ana delivers small, upward strokes to her and Rylan lets out a moan.
It must have worked because Jane finally manages to tuck in her thumb so her hand resembles more of a duck-bill shape, and gripping her outer thigh with one hand, with what feels like a little pop, she sinks her whole fist into Rylan's vagina, finally stopping just past her wrist.
"There we go," Jane whispers. "Look how big you got for me. Such a pretty girl-hole."
She’s not finished with her. Jane starts to fuck her with her fist, pushing in a slightly downward motion. Rylan's labia expand and contract as Jane's gloved knuckles disappear and re-emerge, to get swallowed up again and again. As this continues, Ana thinks Jane has been told about the agreement Lillian has. She thinks she has most likely been looking forward to trying this out on a helpless patient under the right circumstances because she finds the act fascinating or even arousing. The nurse specialist could do whatever she pleased because Rylan was nobody to her, a random psych ward patient who didn't know any better. She takes pleasure in this. She and Lillian have solved the issue of Rylan's vaginismus, at least on the surface, by physical force. The actual acts of penetration and now this, Jane's surgical gloved fist pumping into an orifice that earlier was no bigger than a couple inches, looked and felt violent. Certainly it had all been very painful.
Beaten, Rylan lies still and just lets Jane enjoy her body. Jane takes pride in her work and this patient was one of her greatest triumphs. She is a trophy. Ana can see it in Jane's eyes. She wants to try more fingers, add another hand, and Lillian shows no sign of stopping her. The treatment is working, after all. But it's time to put an end to this. In one quick motion, Ana pinches Rylan's clit as hard as she can between her fingernails. The girl sucks in a gasp of air and her limbs quiver. Jane feels her muscles come together, squeezing tight her whole hand, and then she goes limp. A small mercy.
Lillian removes the speculums when she sees Rylan's eyelids droop and she inspects her pupils. She's fainted from the intensity of every bit of stimulus she experienced in that moment. Lillian orders Jane to stop what she's doing and the nurse specialist pulls her dripping hand free. Their patient is still breathing at least. The doctor deflates the gag and works it from her mouth, and checks her pulse. Lillian suspects Rylan had climaxed, and a painful spasm (if not a tear) from any of her troublesome perineal muscles would have been enough to cause her to black out. But she won't be sure until more tests are carried out and that will need to be sooner rather than later. Rylan’s health is her top priority now, and she’s been told in no uncertain terms by those in charge of her job she had better succeed.
She thanks both women for their help. She says tonight was very good progress.
Jane strips off her sweaty, stained surgical gloves and drops them on Rylan's steadily rising and falling midsection. They let their masks down. The smallish treatment room is warmer than it was before, and it smells heavily of perspiration, latex, and heady vaginal secretion. When Nurse Jane stands and removes her gown, Ana can't help but notice the large dark spot on the crotch of her scrub bottoms. The vinyl cover of the stool she'd been sitting on is damp.
Chapter 4: Part Four
It's been two weeks since Rylan was involuntarily committed to the university hospital's psych ward and her treatments as prescribed by Doctor Lillian are in full swing. She suffers from extreme anxiety, PTSD from traumatic events she can't really remember (but her body clearly does), and her behaviour often leads to outbursts of violent aggression if pressed to some limit—she'd been deemed a threat to others and locked up here.
Her daily treatment regimen is as follows: modified and unmodified forms of electro-convulsive therapy, physical medical examinations and counterconditioning, mental health examinations (counseling and other unorthodox therapies), and then Rylan is forcibly put to sleep for the night—narcosis, deep sleep treatment—so Lillian may subject her to yet another round of ECT and introduce new drugs into her system so their effects and changes on her behaviour could be monitored overnight and through the next day. The ECT, as it is with many other patients, contributes greatly to her anxiety and accute mania but provides useful insight into her mental state when she is conscious to experience it.
Yes, of course she dreads it when we strap her down on the table and hook her up, Lillian has told Ana, but the narcosis must be helping somewhat, as Rylan is becoming less resistant and hostile to all the treatments visited on her body—invasive ones included. She's just making less of a fuss. Lillian says Rylan's becoming a very good little girl.
A Canadian psychiatrist had developed into the '60s Lillian's chosen course of treatment for Rylan and as far as Ana could tell, she was following it to a T. It was a process he called depatterning and re-mothering. Electricity applied to the brain could do wonderful, terrible things to a person and he was criticized for (among other things) turning a young, college-aged honours student into a thumb-sucking, incontinent mess who'd even unlearned her ability to speak. So the story went.
Ana is present at all of these scheduled sessions and she too has noticed a change in Rylan. She arrives to the ward today in time to see Nurse Jane and Lillian escorting Rylan from her room down the hall to the treatment room.
Jane brushes hair from Rylan's face and says, "What do we say to Doctor Ana?"
Rylan only grunts in response.
"She says good morning."
The women have their arms hooked underneath Rylan's—she can barely stand. Ana follows them into the room where they place her onto the table. While Lillian and Jane put on their rubber gloves Ana leans over Rylan. She puts the back of her hand to her forehead. She doesn't feel feverish, and she looks pale. She'd been looking greyer and unhealthier in the past week but Lillian had dismissed this simply as a lack of sunlight. Ana lifts one of her eyelids, shines a light at her pupil. She's completely fucking out of it. Drugged, maybe. At least in the past week she could carry a conversation, could insist she was better and that she wanted to leave (and when told that wasn't possible, called them bitches and threatened to punch them in the mouth). That was Rylan. She was sprightly. But they'd done their treatments and it'd clearly taken its toll. Lillian called this good progress. Made for a calmer mind.
She stands behind Ana now, patiently waiting for her to stand back up and move aside so she can begin attaching the electrical probes to Rylan's head, sensors to her body. Jane pulls her gown down to reveal her bare chest and breasts. Ana watches Jane's gloved hands press the sticky pads onto her chest. She can see her ribs underneath her skin.
"Is she eating?" Ana asks them.
Lillian pauses fiddling with the equipment then answers, "She hasn't been able to keep solid food down. We've been giving her PPN for the last few—"
"She's throwing up?" The drugs they pump into her at night... that's the only thing happening without Ana seeing. "What is she on? She's not sick. What's making her so nauseous?"
"I'll be happy to walk you through my notes a little later," Lillian says. "For now we're on a tight schedule."
Ana settles into a chair at the back of the room, finally taking off her coat and setting it down next to her backpack and bike helmet. She retrieves a camcorder and sets it down on the countertop, recording the session for posterity as she did all of them at Lillian's insistence. Ana was representing her research firm, the Belgium Institute, after all. And Lillian said it would be incredibly useful data to her own work as a psychiatrist. So Ana films them as they go through the motions of restraining Rylan's arms and legs to the steel frame of the table, securing her head, forcing the rubber puck between her teeth so she didn't hurt herself when her body seized and convulsed. Rylan makes a quiet gagging noise but like Ana she is used to this by now.
Lillian sets the charge on the machine and looks at her watch. She delivers the pulse and Rylan tenses on the table, contorting her hands and feet as if she is being squeezed to death. Her breathing hitches and her eyes don't even close, the electrical shock that debilitating. Then it stops and Ana can see the drugged-up haze sort of clear up in Rylan's eyes that become wide and wet. Her pupils dart over to Ana, then Lillian standing above her. They're filled with dread. She tries to speak but the puck is crammed way into her mouth and her tongue pushes uselessly against it. She gasps for air, half choking, chest ballooning out and in. The heart monitor collects readings from the sensors and pulse-ox, another screen displays her brainwaves.
Taking down the values on a clipboard, Lillian nods to Jane and says, "Normal levels. Fear of the ECT will do that. Let's go again—you're up."
"Yes, Doctor." Jane reaches down and lifts the bottom of Rylan's gown past her thighs, revealing to the room her vagina. It looks unnaturally white under the procedure lamp above and it's been meticulously groomed. Someone has been keeping Rylan nice and clean-shaven. There isn't a single hair around her vulva or perineal region. Ana notices for the first time Rylan's fingernails have been painted as well. Jane pushes Rylan's knees apart with little effort, briefly examines and spreads her labia before lubricating a fingertip and placing it on the clitoris.
Rylan's eyes worriedly follow her finger and when she touches her she squeezes her eyes shut and flinches but her legs stay open. Ana wonders if this is a conscious effort by Rylan, fighting her instincts to curl up defensively like she'd been doing before. She's begun to sweat and Ana can see her leg muscles twitching. Lillian keeps monitoring her body's reaction, writing down values. Maybe the treatment is working. Or maybe Rylan, underweight and grey-looking, is simply too weak to put up a fight. Only Lillian knew and she wasn't telling.
Lillian turns to the machine and Jane strokes Rylan's tiny clit. While Rylan is racked again by the throes of electricity Jane keeps up the motion, tickling her nub, her other hand forcing her hips to the table. When this is over, Rylan begins gyrating her hips in time with Jane's gently circling fingertip, lifting to meet her and rub against more but instead humping at nothing. Her clit, engorged, starts to emerge from under the hood bit by bit.
"Good baby girl," Jane coos. "Look at you squirming all over the table. You love when Nurse Jane and Doctor Lillian and Doctor Ana play with you, don't you? You love when we make you feel good. Of course you do. You're trying to fuck my hand, horny girl." She smiles and presses a little harder.
Dirty talk was something Lillian and Ana had discussed when the treatments began. As Rylan's psychological problems seemed to stem from things of a sexual nature, Lillian believed total sensory immersion was the key to her rehabilitation. Jane had a mouth on her and a whole bunch of fetishes—baby talk included—and she agreed to keep the content light, affirming. There was to be no reminder that Rylan was essentially their captive patient and could be stripped and touched whenever they wanted. There was to be nothing that reminded Rylan she had been (and still was) a victim, and that sex was scary or intimidating. No, she was safe and being cared for. Ana had no real say against it, other than thinking it was unconventional and—well—kind of weird, but this was Lillian's ward in the end. She is the one in charge here.
It isn't so out of place, however. The ECT is meant to strip the "incorrect” brain pathways in the receiving patient's brain, essentially undoing learned lessons or conditioning from one's life taught by their mothers and fathers, so they can be re-taught another—maybe better—way. Re-mothered, as that Canadian psychiatrist had deemed it. So these lingering moments during her treatment, with Jane rubbing Rylan's sensitive clit and repeating how much fun they were having, were critical in impressing and reinforcing the idea that it was okay to feel good. That there was no shame or anger that should come with her pleasure. And touching her in this way was an added form of systematic desensitization, as Lillian had used to justify Jane's initial, invasive vaginal dilation treatment two weeks ago. But this was being done with more comfort, more care. Arguably (and Lillian did) more a relaxation technique and ECT aside, less "shock" therapy.
Jane attempts to insert her fingers into Rylan's vagina but her anxiety returns interpreted by a huge spiking reading on her screens and Lillian urges the nurse to retreat. They return to clitoral stimulation and Rylan somewhat calms. They'd been trying for a while now but Rylan would always just tear up and tighten up down there. Still this is forward movement, Lillian says when they're finished. They've worked their way up to external vaginal examinations now and that's something to celebrate. She strokes Rylan's cheek and calls her a good girl again and lets Jane finish up, removing her gloves and leaving the room. Jane ekes out what might be a little orgasm from Rylan because her breathing gets heavy and then she tries to get away from the nurse's finger, and then Jane cleans her up and frees her arms and legs. Ana grabs her things, helps her up and starts to get her back to her room. She slings Rylan's arm around her neck and holds her by her waist.
There are a few hours in between her treatments where Ana gets to sit with Rylan and monitor her general behaviour—she brings her her homework from all the classes she is missing. She doesn't want her to fall behind. While Rylan read and scratched out perfectly acceptable B- papers, Ana usually spent most of this time assessing how much damage Lillian might be doing to this girl, how her own work on Rylan could be salvaged, and if her employers were getting impatient with her. In principal, Lillian and Ana had explored behavioural conditioning on Rylan through very different means but both had explored two polar opposite methods of control. Hypersexuality versus chastity—physical aversion to sex akin (Ana theorized) to stomach stapling. She just didn't count on vaginismus being an effect, and couldn't really know if it was her own fault or Rylan's time spent as a sex slave to a couple of rich suburban perverts that was the true cause of it. Or they were both at fault. She felt a little guilty and ultimately responsible for Rylan's well-being. But make no mistake, she would put her under the knife again in an instant if she thought she could cure her. Call it tough love. She would get right with the Belgium Institute, and they would come out ahead. But all she could hope for now was that Lillian held up her end of the deal and got Rylan back onto the ice. The university was gambling heavily on that hockey game. She didn't need to be whole, really. That part could come later. She just needed to have her patched up to the point she was no longer branded four-two-five—court-ordered, involuntary psychiatric patient—and the psych ward could discharge her. That deadline was drawing closer, and at this point Ana would be happy if Rylan could even just lace up, float around the slot for a shift, pull a hammy and head back to the dressing room. Or drop her gloves a couple times and get thrown out. This was more likely because Ana had seen her play. She was a damn goon out there. The thought made her smile.
There are times Rylan looks at Ana, squints her eyes in that suspicious way like she's figured everything out, and Ana is convinced that Rylan has suddenly remembered her. And that she could expect to be jumped shortly after, lunged at and taken down. But for now Rylan rests her head against Ana's shoulder. Ana puts a hand on Rylan's stomach as they hobble down the hallway. "Are you hungry? I, uh, made you a sandwich. If you want."
Rylan groans. "Yeah. Maybe. I don't know."
"Do you want to take a nap?"
She nods but they get to the room and they are met by Lillian and three new faces waiting inside for them. Two men and a woman. They're young looking, dressed in blue scrubs and Lillian introduces them as doctors who are completing their residencies at the university hospital: Doctors Spencer, Coleman, and Casey.
"They were students of mine from back East," Lillian says. "They'll be assisting in your physical examination today. We're going to be doing something... a little different. There's nothing to worry about, Rylan. I'll be with you every step of the way. So will Doctor Ana and Nurse Jane."
Ana can just about feel the hairs on Rylan's neck stand up—like she's gotten the sense that there's nowhere to run, and she needs to run. She clings onto Ana, nonverbally pleading for her to get her the hell out of here, say something on her behalf. Do something. Behind them Jane has appeared, as if summoned—demonically invoked like Bloody Mary. She’s got red hair. When Rylan nor Ana don't move, Lillian crosses the room in two strides and takes her by the arm. With an impatient tug Lillian pulls her away and thrusts her into the centre of her room into the middle of the doctors. With the exception of Spencer, the female resident, the other two are muscular, broad-shouldered and they tower over her. They're good looking but they look like frat boys. Spencer herself looks pretty and done-up. Hot and popular at some point, probably still is. Rylan brushes away the strands of messy hair that's covering her eyes and looks back at Ana, unsure of anything that's happening right now. Lillian blocks her escape, and Jane slips into the room and shuts the door.
"Go with them," Ana has no choice but to echo, holding up her hands. "It'll be okay."
Rylan looks unconvinced but this is fleeting because her attention is drawn back to the doctors who have begun to look her up and down. Lillian hands them all surgical masks and gloves and Rylan is forced to wait while they put them on. They don't take their eyes off her body and she seems to shrink in place. Latex gloves stretch and slip over their hands and wiggling fingers, cuffs and elastic ear loops snap into place. Lillian looks over her shoulder at Ana and says, "You can start recording now."
Ana had forgotten about her camera. Reluctantly she reaches into her bag.
They begin when Lillian instructs them to check her scalp. Doctor Casey starts, reaching out and placing his gloved hands on Rylan's head. He's taller than her by nearly a head and can see easily. He feels around the base of her skull. Next her eyes and Doctor Spencer uses her thumbs to separate her lids, looking carefully at the skin and tissue while Casey holds her head steady, one and then the other. Her eyes water from the examination. Spencer also checks her mouth, pinching her lips and looking at her teeth. She prods at her gums then at her tongue. They let her go and Doctor Coleman places his hands under her jaw, palpating her glands. He lightly squeezes her throat between his palms and Rylan lets out a raspy sort of breath. He checks her pulse with two fingers.
Lillian informs the group that their patient suffers from anxiety so her nervousness is to be expected so her pulse and heartrate would be somewhat elevated. Pay it no mind.
Then Lillian says, "Let's look at the rest of her. Could one of you get her gown?"
Doctor Casey is standing behind her so he pulls the strings free on Rylan's gown and removes the garment. The doctors seem momentarily surprised when she's left standing completely naked before them. No bra or underwear, and they stare at her chest and hips before Rylan tries to cover herself up.
"The patient is an athlete here at the university, so it's important that we give her a full physical every day, make sure she stays strong and healthy. We need to check her flexibility and muscles," Lillian tells them. "Arms down, hands by your side please."
Rylan does as she is told.
Doctor Casey starts again. He feels the muscles in her arms, squeezing her biceps and traps, reaching over and touching her pectoral muscles, pressing against them with his large thumbs. He examines her stomach, her abs. Her muscular thighs. He places his hands on her hips, feeling the bony ridges.
"Make sure they're level," Lillian says. "It's easiest to do from a sitting position." She scoots a stool over to Doctor Casey and he sits down.
He asks Rylan to turn around. Hands again on her hips, he gets her to bend down and grab her ankles. Rylan looks like she wants to die. Her pink little anus comes into view as she stiffly bends lower and lower. Doctor Casey looks but doesn't touch, his masked face only inches away from the puckered hole. He feels down her spine and rests his hand on her tailbone. He gets her to straighten up and turn around and face him again. He orders her to squat. He places his hands on her shoulders and gets her to go as far down as she can and Doctors Spencer and Coleman get a good look at her too albeit from afar.
When Rylan stands back up Lillian tells Doctor Casey to also examine her breasts. She tells the doctors that Rylan, as per her treatment, is on a special drug therapy (Ana knows whatever it is is making her lose her appetite) that's zapping her strength—but this is deliberate for the purpose of tempering her apparent ability to lash out, conditioning her to associate and call back these feelings, impressing the idea on her psyche that perceived sexual contact should be largely non-confrontational whether it's in the bedroom or simply at the doctor's office.
Doctor Casey has her put her arms behind her head while he feels around the breast tissue, pushing and rolling the skin to check for lumps. He pinches her nipples and rubs them with his latex-covered fingertips until they're hard. Finally she's allowed to put her arms back down.
"Since this is critical to her wellbeing, I'd like you all to take a turn," Lillian says. "She doesn't mind. Do you, Rylan?"
Rylan says nothing, but it wasn't really a question from Lillian. She finds a chair for Doctor Spencer while Doctor Casey slides the stool over to Coleman who is next.
"Go to the doctor," Lillian says. "Come on, Rylan. He's waiting."
She walks barefoot on the linoleum, steps that feel like they last forever, and stops in front of him. He repeats the same examination Doctor Casey did, putting his gloved hands all over her, groping her body parts. She bends over for him too. He does the breast exam. Rylan shuts her eyes. He sends her over to Doctor Spencer who takes her turn with her.
When she bends over for Spencer, the young doctor puts her fingers on Rylan's thighs and pushes them slightly apart. "Doctor Peeters," she says, "um, the patient is dripping."
Sure enough, Lillian comes over and sees a bead of clear discharge leaking down Rylan's leg. Spencer swipes at it with her fingertip but a drop ends up on the floor. Rylan turns completely red. Lillian hands Spencer something to wipe off her glove with and tells her to continue with the exam. Hands on her hips. Hands on her spine. Turn around now. Her nipples are beginning to get sore. Spencer is especially thorough, squeezing each of her breasts so hard Rylan winces. The male doctors watch avidly. Doctor Casey's hands are folded on top of each other over the crotch of his scrub bottoms. Doctor Coleman, sitting, crosses his legs.
"What do we think?" Lillian asks Doctor Spencer. "Anything feel out of place?"
Doctor Spencer shakes her head no. She pinches Rylan's nipples and rolls their swollen, wrinkly surfaces between her fingertips. She glances down between Rylan's legs and the girl looks away and presses her thighs together tight, trying her best to keep her vagina from showing. She tries to pull away but Spencer won't let go—she increases her grip between her thumb and forefinger and subtly tugs them closer so that Rylan has to lean in, completely at her mercy. She's almost at eye-level with Spencer now and the doctor doesn't let her go until Rylan parts her thighs and when she does there's a thin, sticky string of her juices spiderwebbed between them. Spencer reaches down with one hand and smears the vaginal fluid, examining its texture and colour between the fingers of her glove. The colour seeps back into Rylan's nipples that are creased with Spencer's nail marks. The doctor tells Lillian, "She has very pretty breasts. Sensitivity doesn't seem to be an issue."
"Good observation, Doctor Spencer," Lillian says, gaze transfixed—like everyone else—on Rylan's shiny vulva and inner thighs.
There's an awkward silence. Nobody knows if the examination is over or not, until Lillian tells Rylan they're going to move onto the next stage of her desensitization because she looks ready enough. And that she must be brave.
"Rylan, honey, come stand by the edge of the bed." Lillian beckons, and pats the mattress of her hospital bed.
"Could I please just sleep?" Rylan asks. "I'm feeling a little tired."
"Come over here right now."
Rylan doesn't move. Lillian tells the doctors to bring her, then Rylan has no choice but to move as the two male doctors take her arms and march her over to where Lillian is standing. She stiffened up when they put their hands on her, taking hold of her firmly, and for a second Ana thought she would finally snap out of this drugged up, half-starved stupour she was in and fucking do something, but her body is in no state to do anything but comply. Submit. They have her right where they want her.
Lillian puts her hands on Rylan's shoulders and says she believes she can do this. Be strong, she says. Then she guides her so she's bent over the bed, arms sticking out over one side and legs planted on the ground. Jane knows what's going to happen next and Ana sees her approach the bed, snapping on a pair of gloves in that practiced, smooth way. Ana is suddenly breathless, confused. Lillian hadn't told her anything about this. This was a steep ramping up of anything they had done before.
"Now, Rylan, you've said you were heterosexual and enjoyed sex with men in the past. It could be the presence of males here today that might explain your obvious arousal. Of course, your psychotic break was caused in part by a male doctor during a routine pelvic examination so Doctor Ana, Nurse Jane and myself have kept your medical rehabilitation to female contact so far, to focus on making you better before anything else. Your anxiety re-appears and at its worst when faced with the prospect of vaginal and anal penetration, so we must slowly reintroduce the feeling of non-medical, erotic contact to normalize the idea of sex and not just stimulation."
As quick as anything, Jane's gloved hands have taken a hold of Rylan's wrists—not in a threatening way, but Rylan couldn't pull back or get off the bed without a struggle.
"Again," Lillian reassures her, "there will be no penetration of any kind. Just relax. Just think about how excited you're getting." While she speaks she pushes Rylan's knees open. Her labia separate partly, her slick vagina and clenched anus fully visible. "Don't move now. Doctor Casey, would you like to go first?"
"Yes, Doctor Peeters," he says.
"Stand behind her."
He did as he was told.
"Do you need a minute?"
"No ma'am."
"Good. You can put your hands on her hips or her back, or even her head." Casey chooses her hips, and his big, gloved hands nearly wrap around her abdomen. "And just lean into her," Lillian whispers. "That's it. Good boy."
Ana can't see much from where she's sitting but Doctor Casey's hips move to touch Rylan's backside. She'd seen the bulge in his pants when he stood. He presses his covered erection into Rylan's exposed, helpless groin and she jolts, as if electrified like she had been this morning, but Jane is there to make sure she takes her treatment and doesn't move. The thin material of his scrub bottoms allow Rylan to feel every ridge and bump of an eager cock straining underneath. He lifts his heels and Rylan feels it rub down her vagina and up into her butt crack where it settles. The length of his penis she feels as it digs slightly between the fleshy mounds of her buttocks, hard like bone. The rounded head she feels the most as it explores her crease and her asshole twitches and clenches when it's touched and he feels this too. He adjusts his hips so the tip of his penis is right up against her anus and every time he presses into her, she tightens up and doesn't let him in but she feels the straining of her own muscles and it matches the rhythm of his would-be thrusts. If not for his pants he is positioned perfectly to bury the length of his cock inside her and everyone knows it. Jane continues to grip Rylan's wrists as she watches from the opposite side of the bed and it's unclear to Ana if Rylan actually needs to be held down at this point.
Lillian asks Doctor Casey to ease off and he does, albeit reluctantly. For a moment or two afterwards, Rylan can't seem to control her hips, wanting to push against him and feel him there. Lillian notes this to the room and everyone nods, smiling. Rylan stops suddenly and seems to deflate, her knees buckling. On Lillian's order, Doctor Coleman takes his place and eases his weight onto the girl. He puts a hand on the back of Rylan's head, pushing the side of her face against the mattress. He rubs his crotch against Rylan's genitals and she feels him pulsating, twitching. A different shape and size. They feel each other out, get used to each other until he too finds a spot he likes where Rylan finds herself meeting him halfway.
Eventually Lillian, studying Rylan's reactions, calls it. There's only so far they can go with this treatment without the men pulling down their pants and sodomizing her right there and the doctors themselves come away looking a little embarrassed, having their semi-intimate moments shared with a room full of people and a camera. That's not to say they didn't enjoy themselves but Lillian had explicitly said there would be no penetration. They doted on Lillian, though. That much was clear. They seemed to be more familiar with her than Ana was—these past two weeks, eye-opening as they were, she had come to believe were just the tip of the iceberg. Her seeming perversions, meticulously explained away and justified under the guise of radical treatment, could get darker, more twisted. She'd been, as you do when you have house guests, on her very best behaviour. And Ana went along with everything because one, she had no choice; and two, she was genuinely curious if her methods were worth their salt—the first far overrode the second even if she felt Lillian was going too far. But Rylan hadn't screamed or cried, and she looked like she was tolerating all of this quite well.
The thought must have been on everyone's mind because Doctor Spencer, looking flustered and red-faced herself, says to Lillian, "This has to be a marked improvement from her previous state, when you said she was violent and resistant, Doctor. If she could stand simulated sex and be as aroused as she currently is, couldn't we test how she is with those factors of the previous test still in play? Obviously they can't fuck her—it would be grossly unprofessional—" Ana thinks she looked right into the camera when she said this. "—but if male presence excites her, perhaps that part of her brain is overriding her fight or flight response. Being horny's better than crack, right?"
This draws chuckles. Lillian thinks about it for a moment and glances down at Rylan, who is still quivering, winding down from everything. She says, "It would have to be controlled. It's true we haven't been able to successfully penetrate her without the use of restraints and extreme vocal and muscular resistance but she hasn't been attended to by a male doctor or male nurse since her episode. This may prove she is healing, overcoming her mental blocks. And we could alter the course of her treatment moving forward if this pans out. All right, let's do it. We've already determined she can tolerate an external examination of her genitalia, so we'll try digital examinations now. Rylan, sweetie—"
"No."
This takes Lillian completely off guard. Ana too. She sits up in her chair. Lillian says, "Rylan, we're just going to—"
"I don't want you to."
"It's going to be all right."
"I'm not ready."
"That's what we're going to find out..."
"I swear to god I'll fucking scream."
Lillian, in her calm way, just stares down at Rylan. This defiance from her she has not witnessed before and she doesn't like it. She won't accept it. Not in her ward. She tells Doctor Casey and Doctor Coleman to hold her down. Rylan's too slow to summon a burst of energy and get out of this and fight for her life so the two men descend on her while Nurse Jane never lets her out of her grasp. Lillian walks off and retrieves a pair of latex gloves for herself and a tube of lubricant. She snaps at Ana to make sure she films this. Ana's throat tightens as she walks over to the bed. Lillian says, "The patient, if she shows any sign of distress, may be doing so to get out of what may be necessary treatments required for her own mental wellness and has admitted as such. We'll carry out the examination of her vagina and rectum to completion and assess the body's reactions."
She pulls her gloves over her hands and without warning Rylan, jams a finger into her vagina. She howls but it slips in without much effort, on account of how wet Rylan had gotten before, and Lillian says, "The patient was committed to the ward diagnosed with stage five vaginismus and displayed violent tendencies, having assaulted a doctor during a routine pelvic examination. The patient now tolerates vaginal examinations with little to no negative, reflexive reactions where this was impossible before. Vaginal dilators were used previously, but the patient had been extremely resistant." Lillian sticks a second finger inside Rylan. "After sufficient erotic stimulation, the vaginal muscles seem relaxed and digital penetration is quite effortless." She works her fingers in and out a few times before removing them and telling Doctor Casey to examine the patient.
"Don't," Rylan sobs. "Don't—I don't consent."
Doctor Casey hangs back and casts a look at Lillian, suddenly uncomfortable. Even Doctor Coleman appears confused and waits for Lillian to clear things up.
But their hesitation evaporates quickly when Lillian leans over Rylan and says, almost recites like it's a line she's used often, "An involuntary psychiatric patient can be treated without their consent because they may not understand or realize that they need treatment. Doctor Casey, please proceed."
Rylan has already begun screaming by the time Lillian finishes speaking. Doctor Casey adjusts his gloves and performs a bimanual examination of Rylan's vagina. He agrees with Lillian's assessment that her vaginismus doesn't seem to be present, despite her protests. Lillian tells him to examine her rectum as well, and after lubing a finger, he plunges it into her anus. He remarks that it's nice and tight, but her muscular reaction to having something in both of her holes feels like any girl's—she's no more resistant to it than any other girl. Rylan begs Nurse Jane to help her—stop them. But the nurse specialist just shushes her.
Doctor Coleman follows up, exploring her in the same manner and he too agrees. He points out how receptive her holes are now, how wet her vagina has gotten. How dilated she is. She could probably take a couple dicks in here, she's getting so stretched out. Rylan pants, breathing heavier and heavier, and she moans softly. It sounds like a quiet mewing. The doctors grin behind their masks and say maybe she's cured.
When Doctor Spencer goes, she puts two fingers into Rylan's asshole and this makes her scream and try to struggle but the men press her down on the bed, fascinated as Spencer continues with two hands, stretching out her sphincter. Rylan's hips buck and dig into the mattress, trying to get away from her fingers that feel like they're tearing her ass apart. Spencer asks her what's the matter—she'd wanted to be stretched out and filled a little while ago, didn't she?
She can't do much else but Rylan twists her head just enough to meet Spencer's eyes and manages to spit out a "fuck you."
For this Spencer reaches forward and fish-hooks a gloved finger slick with her vaginal secretions and lube into Rylan's mouth. For a second she's frozen, catching a taste of the bitter latex and her own juices and it seems to coat the whole inside of her mouth. It feels violated. The finger circles her tongue and pulls hard on her cheek so she can't turn from the woman whose digits are crammed into her ass. Tears fall from her eyes that are still narrowed in defiance. When Spencer feels Rylan's teeth threatening to clamp down she rips free her hand and delivers a hard smack to the side of Rylan's face. It's enough to cause Rylan to see stars and she looks dazed, already weakened and lightheaded since this morning. She needs to eat, regain her strength, but she can't. They're poisoning her. When they no longer feel her twisting around, fighting to get free from their hands, the men and Nurse Jane quickly release her.
Lillian says that's enough for one day. They lift her legs and reposition her on her bed. Rylan stares at the wall vacantly while Lillian tosses her gown across her splayed legs and she and the other doctors and Nurse Jane dispose of their masks and gloves and exit the room—a ward nurse would be by later to clean her up and help her back into her gown. But it's Ana instead who does the latter, helping her get her arms in and tying up the strings for her. While she did this she glanced out the door and saw Lillian shaking hands with the three doctors, thanking them for coming in. She thinks she overheard Lillian say "she'll be ready next time."
Ana puts a hand on Rylan's shoulder but the girl shrugs her off. She curls up into a little ball and buries her face in her pillow. Maybe, Ana thinks—and not for the first time since meeting her—Lillian is full of shit.
Rylan is asleep now and Ana sits at a desk in the corner of the room, reviewing the footage, getting other work done on her laptop (just because her project is stalled doesn't mean she can't contribute her academic expertise to the Institute in the meantime). It's late at night and Lillian has already gone home. Ana is about to leave when she hears somebody come into the ward. By the sound of it, it's Jane. She'd left around the same time Lillian did. What was she doing back? Ana watches through the gap in the door.
Jane makes small-talk with one of the night shift nurses, handing her a coffee cup from one of the late-night campus java joints popular with students. The nurse thanks her and asks if the doc's got her on "gimp duty again." Jane nods and they both laugh. She proceeds into the ward and Ana slips out of Rylan's room. She follows Jane down the hallways and the nurse specialist unlocks a room. Ana is caught, however, when Jane looks over her shoulder and spots her. Except Jane waves to her and asks her to help her with something quick.
Part of her brain tells her to run—get as far away as possible. Jane was tall and clearly worked out. Could overpower her if she wanted to. But she was curious. She'd seen Lillian unlock this door countless other times, coming and going between Rylan's and other patients' treatments. So she heads down the hall and into the room with Jane.
On the bed Ana sees a patient, a woman, but her face is covered by a tight rubber hood. There are no eye holes, only ones for her nostrils and mouth although she's been fitted with an inflatable gag, much like the one they had used on Rylan during her first vaginal dilation treatment. But aside from being tethered to an IV pole, she's been left unrestrained. She stirs when Jane walks around the bed. Ana understands why she was referred to as the "gimp" now, and she'd seen her before, hands bound to a wheelchair and being moved into the treatment and ECT room. She always seemed unresponsive, catatonic even.
Jane gets to work. She removes the gag from the woman's mouth and asks Ana to hold her mouth open. Jane puts a rubber apron on, ties herself up, puts on gloves and offers a pair to Ana, and prepares what she says is her medication. Ana eases open her jaw and Jane puts a pill on her tongue.
"Swallow," Jane tells the patient. "No?" When she doesn't, Jane fishes around inside her mouth with her gloved finger and she tells Ana sometimes she can be difficult. She's been bitten by her before. The patient gags when Jane forces down the pill and quickly massages her throat.
Next she hands Ana a jar of blue nail polish. "Do you mind? This is her favourite."
Ana says she doesn't and reaches for her hand. There's already a coat there, but it's scratchy, peeling off. She dips the brush into the jar and starts, when she notices a chip in one fingernail. Underneath looks like dirt or something drier, redder. She glances at Jane who lifts the woman's gown to reveal a diaper underneath. Jane undoes this and checks for wetness. She puts a towel underneath her buttocks and begins to lather shaving cream around her pubic region. While Ana finishes her hands and moves onto her toes, Jane shaves around vagina with a disposable razor. She does a quick job of it, swiping carefully around the labia and clitoral hood. The woman has curly, dark pubic hair. Jane spreads her buttcheeks and lathers her anus, tidying her up there too.
When Jane dries her off and leaves to wash her hands, Ana moves fast. She finds a tongue depressor and scrapes underneath the patient's fingernail and drops it into a baggie. She stuffs this sample in her pocket as Jane returns to the room. She has brought supplies with her. She re-gloves and inspects her handiwork, spreading her vagina and pulling back her clitoral hood. She even gets close and sniffs, presumably to check for any smelliness—sign of infection or just general lack of hygiene. All seems in order so she turns to her things. She prepares an enema and waits for Ana to finish painting her toenails. Ana’s hands can’t seem to stop shaking.
Rubbing Vicks into a surgical mask before putting it on, Jane asks Ana to help get the patient onto her side so she can "clean her out." She squirts lube onto her finger and pauses. "Before we get too messy, do you mind..." She points to the tray filled with beauty products—manicure and pedicure supplies, makeup. Jane tells her the lipstick. Dark cherry. Ana obliges, taking the woman's face into her hands and slowly applying the colour to her lips.
"Doesn't she look tasty?" Jane hums. "You could just take a bite out of her."
Ana notices there's a camera mounted near the ceiling watching their every move.
"What is this... all for?" Ana finally asks, winding the lipstick back into its tube and capping the lid.
"Hot date," Jane says with a cheeky grin, greasing the enema nozzle with her finger. "Just kidding. It helps them feel normal again. A bit of self-care always helps, no matter what anyone says."
"What is this patient in here for? If I can ask."
"Well, Lillian told me she was a student here. In fact, the circumstances of her winding up in the psych ward aren't all that different from Rylan's. Mental illness just reared its ugly head one day. She had an episode."
Jane rubs surgical lube into the woman's anus and begins to push the nozzle of the enema inside.
"But why the need for the gag, the hood? Why keep her isolated like this?"
"We keep her room locked because she's potentially violent, and keeping her nice and relaxed is really the best way to keep the staff safe and able to do their jobs. The hood simply helps her sleep, taking away her vision for most of the day so her mind can focus on repairing itself. She requires a lot more care than many of the other patients, given her state."
Jane has begun the flow of water and the patient lets out a pained gasp from the sensation.
"Actually," Jane says, "I hear she's something of a VIP here. Put the university hospital on the map."
"Why's that?"
"The media was following her story for a while, a few years back. Her case was so prolific and the university so ill-equipped to handle such a patient that they brought Doctor Lillian all the way out from the East. She's been in her care ever since."
"What's her name?"
"Um, Vega I think. Misty Vega."
Ana was helping by massaging the patient's swelling belly to alleviate her of any cramps, but she suddenly stops what she was doing. Jane asks if she's okay. Ana says she's just remembered that she needs to be somewhere. She strips off her gloves, casts another look at the patient, and leaves Jane holding the hose, mystified. When she exits the hospital she calls Doctor Shen, nearly dropping her phone on the pavement because her hands are trembling so much.
When Ana shows up at Shen's house late at night (she took a cab) she is nearly incoherent. She says, "I don't know what she's doing to these women but she's doing something to them, and whatever it is it's not right." She hands him the sample she collected from Misty Vega and asks him to analyze this as soon as possible. She tells him not to ask her any questions but to just do it—quietly—and give her the results.
"This aside," Shen says, placing the baggie inside his refrigerator, "how are things?"
"...Good. Shen. They're good. How are you?"
She spends the night on the pullout couch because he lives a ways out of the city.
#
When Ana meets Shen a day later, he's worked fast. Ana doesn't know how he does it but his people at the lab don't let him down. Ana finds Shen at a diner they like, in a booth in the back, forking through a plate of all-day-breakfast food. He has someone bring her a cup of coffee and he slides over the lab results.
Ana opens the envelope and glances through it. She comes away with a name, and Shen knows it too. He continues to chew while Ana leans back in her seat. She says, "You looked through this?"
"Yeah."
"Do you know what I know?"
"I got some idea," Shen says. "That Misty Vega, they have up there in the psych ward?"
Ana nods. "It is."
"I thought as much. Media never really followed up what happened to her after. Figured her parents were keeping her out of the spotlight 'til the big second act."
"Her parents are dead."
"Convenient."
"Hm."
"So, you called me," Shen says. " What's the play?"
Ana did call him. To inquire whether or not the results were in (they were), and because everything was going tits up regarding Rylan. During one of today's treatments, they were interrupted when Lillian's assistant reached her over the intercom. She said, "I have a Doctor Glaser for you on line 1."
Lillian said she needed to take this, leaving Jane in charge of the Rylan's treatments. Ana followed Lillian out into the hall and demanded, "What are you doing talking to a neurosurgeon?" Doctor Glaser is a well-regarded local surgeon Ana knows of but has never met. Hearing his name troubled Ana tremendously.
Lillian stopped mid-stride, pondered, as if choosing to tell Ana or not, then did after all. "I was going to tell you eventually. I'm not so sure our current treatments are working on Rylan quite the way I want them to. I've decided to schedule Rylan for psychosurgery. Leucotomy, or anterior capsulotomy—we'll discuss further on this call. You're very welcome to listen in, if you'd like."
She wanted to drill into Rylan's skull and start picking at and cutting away parts of her brain.
"What about our deadline?" Ana asked. "The university needs her ready to go in thirteen days."
"I'm afraid we'll need to revise our treatment schedule. This takes precedence and I'm sure the president will agree with me. I'm concerned about the girl's health, and her issues may be far more serious than we first suspected," Lillian replied. "In the long run I believe this will be the better course of action."
So that's how it was going to be.
Ana excused herself and once again got on the phone with Doctor Shen. She needed to go on the offensive.
"We'll make a fuss," she tells Shen at the diner. "Blow the lid off of what goes on in her little shop of horrors. Misty was one. Rylan's about to be another. Who knows how many others. And I've got video proof."
"Could you leak it without implicating yourself?"
"Maybe. I'm the one behind the camera, not in front of it."
"She have any dirt on you?"
"I was nobody. I was an observer. If someone made allegations of misconduct, she'd be tied up in litigation right? She might not even suspect it was me if we do this right."
"I looked into Rylan's legal situation. Even if we had a judge issue an injunction tonight, Lillian Peeters could easily fight it. The university will come out in full favour of her—they don't want to look stupid for betting on the wrong horse in the first place. She's their gal. She's a public figure and we're not—we can't be. And like it or not, NMD is a legitimate procedure and Doctor Peeters won't have any trouble convincing a court of that. We'd reveal our hand and Rylan still won't get any closer to leaving that hospital."
"Then maybe we need to remind the president who he answers to. He pisses off the wrong people, his ass gets put before a formal inquiry. And those people care if the students care. Rylan's one of their own. What Lillian is doing to her is... she's killing her. The story is there. If it ends up in the hands of the right reporter, then..."
"I assume you've got that someone in mind already, to write the takedown. And knowing you, you've already met with them."
Ana nods.
"Are you going to tell me who?"
"No, not if you don't think it's a good idea."
Shen sets his fork down. "Maybe I don't, but that's because I might know something you don't. About Lillian Peeters. She's more dangerous than she seems."
"You don't need to tell me that. I'm the one telling you that."
"No. I mean she's part of something maybe you don't want to fuck with. Because I'm not sure I do."
"Tell me. I'm a big girl, Shen."
"Heard from someone I had doing background on Peeters a few weeks back. It was a rumour then and it's a rumour now, but it has to do with the reason why she came here."
"It was for Misty. I know that."
Shen slowly nods. "Yes, but you know the man of the hour—the guy whose name popped up in our lab results? What she really came for was him. Five years ago Misty Vega accuses him of rape and she's set to testify against him when she all of a sudden suffers a debilitating mental break. Lillian Peeters comes in and very surgically dismantles her character, diagnoses her as a paranoid schizophrenic. Has witnesses and a second doctor to verify and everything. Guy goes on to win an election. Wasn't until today you could draw that direct line between Peeters and the councilman—DNA wasn't old. Whenever she nicked him with her nail, it was recently."
Ana's face grows hot for a moment but she remains silent.
He continues, "And his buddies—lawmakers, lawyers and judges, bankers and CEOs—well Peeters is in regular contact with them as well. She's got her hands in all their pockets—various small and large donations from all manner of folks who've never set foot on the university grounds in their lives. These guys we have photos of in and out of clubs with various women and uh, girls. Young. Too young, in some cases. And some of them end up missing, some of them are found dead. As recently as last week."
Ana asks if Shen has some of these photos on hand, and he lets her take a look at his phone. He'd come prepared to show her—warn her about the woman she was working so closely with. That was never conditional. Ana swipes through the album of surveillance photos: men, young and old alike but equally as powerful, walking women back to cars. They wear short dresses and heels, clutch glittery, sequinned purses. And then there are photos from the medical examiners. Blue-grey faces against steel autopsy tables. Ana cycles back to the photos of the men and women taken with telescopic lenses. She spots something. There's a girl in her 20s in a shiny blue dress. There's something distinctive about it and it draws her eyes to it. It’s the kind of dress that made everyone's heads turn when whoever was wearing it entered a room first of all but there is something else about it.
She'd seen it before. In Lillian's ward. Ana had stayed late last Saturday to keep Rylan company when there was an unexpected flurry of activity in the ward, and the night shift nurses were mustered, all-hands-on-deck, to deal with a number of new patients wheeled in on stretchers, some sedated, some yelling their heads off until they too were rendered unconscious. Ana was told they were on something—meth probably. The psych ward holds them when the cops can't handle them... too unstable for the drunk tank so a judge grants the hospital a temporary, involuntary hold. And then Ana saw the nurses picking through a bin of clothing. They pulled out a gorgeous blue dress, held it up against their scrubs and grinned. Then they dumped everything, dresses, shoes, purses, and even bras into medical waste bags the hospital provided, a one-way route to the incinerator. Lillian came back later that night too. She looked like she had come from a party herself, and when she saw Ana she pulled her long jacket tighter around herself and asked what she was still doing here. She seemed suspicious that Ana was spending so much time with Rylan—for a neutral observer—but she had other matters to attend to, and both women went their separate ways. Since then Ana noticed her treatments on Rylan were becoming more intense, took much more out of her each time. Sometimes they were downright abusive, and she made Ana sit through each one and not say a word.
Ana finishes with Shen's phone. There isn't an "after" photo of the girl in the blue dress, thankfully, but it might not mean all was well, thinks Ana grimly. The psych ward had many more rooms she wasn't permitted to enter.
"So, what, you're saying Lillian is secretly some kind of mastermind? She has these people wrapped around her finger?" Ana says.
"Or she's just a fixer. Or being blackmailed into helping these guys, I don't know. But if these connections are everything that they appear to be, we think she's got ties to a pretty formidable group. You ever hear of the Summer Orchestra?"
"What is that?"
"They're a pretty tight-knit club. We don't know too much, but we know they exist, and you're not going to like hearing this, but the Institute has come up against them once or twice before. So if Peeters is really part of the Orchestra, she likely knows everything about us. About you."
"She knows who I represent already."
"Not just the public face of the Institute—the mild-mannered research firm. I'm saying she knows everything. I'm saying she's got your number, Ana. To the point I'm not sure it's safe for you to go back into her ward, and if you do you'd better watch your back. The Institute and the Orchestra don't get along for a reason. They're from the East. They're old money, made up of Ivy-league family dynasties that ride their names all the way down. They've never given us the time of day or a single cent and they never will—it's our research and work that keeps the world changing, growing. They want to be kings in every sense of the word. They want to keep the walls high and the moat deep and the commoners out. So they dump their money into the most regressive cesspits they can find and they've got their ways of making so many others do the same. We've lost backers to them. A lot of doors closed on us when they came to this city and set up shop. And this all started with Misty Vega. She was patient zero, and they parachuted Peeters' infrastructure in to make a play for the city. I think they’re winning. If you run your story, you're putting a target on your back. Maybe the Institute's too. And then I couldn't say what happens after that."
"Or maybe," Ana says, "the Institute is tired of losing out. And maybe we've got the plans to the Death Star right here." She taps the envelope containing the lab report. "If they somehow know what Rylan is to me—to us—that's them making a move into the Sudetenland. Those are panzers right on the border. If they're a threat and we can see them coming, what the hell are we doing sitting on our hands?"
Shen says nothing to this. He wants to hear her out.
"The Belgium Institute runs deep too, doesn't it? Has connections, friends in high places. Maybe it's time it flexed its muscle. They don't roll over on Rylan. That's Institute time and money spent. If this surgery goes forward, Lillian's going to torpedo the university's moneymaker. Surely the director realizes this."
Shen considers this, mulling through his options. Even if he shuts her down, he knows Ana won't go quietly. Nothing she says is incorrect, despite being clearly driven by her emotional attachment to the girl—her passion project. And he knows it's worth a discussion with the director at the very least. If the Institute is to survive, it needs to start making ballsier moves. Things moved faster and harder during a war. The spoils, too, were much sweeter.
While he tells Ana this, he also leaves her a word of warning: "You're young and angry. That's what I’ve always liked about you. You're an upstart. New blood. Maybe we need that right now. Maybe that makes some people nervous. If Rylan is our Gulf of Tonkin—our casus belli—and they recognize that, the Institute is just as likely to keep its house in fucking order."
Ana knows the risks. The Belgium Institute is new and radical, but she must never forget that it operates just as ruthlessly.
Chapter 5: Part Five
Content Warning: Sexual violence, descriptions of surgery. It gets dark.
Neurosurgery conjures up the grainy, black and white imagery of a shadowy operating theatre in some insane asylum, a patient in a straightjacket—bound by straps and buckles to the table—surrounded by the ghoulish surgeons who dwell within. Featureless behind their masks and ghostly white gowns they are imposing and their hands and wrists sheathed in dark latex rubber have a sickly sheen to them, adding a certain menace to it all. One surgeon holds a trepan—a hand-operated drill from back then to bust through the skull—the others hold syringes or scalpels and sharp picks or even nothing at all; they are there during the procedure simply to hold the patient still while the doctor works. The patient will be awake and conscious whilst undergoing the leucotomy. They might protest but their frantic pleas will not stop or slow the surgeons—they might be admonished, told that the doctor knows what's best for their health and to quiet down, or they might be ignored altogether, regarded only as tissue, nerves and bone to experiment on, decidedly not human because something is wrong with their heads. Or the surgeons may opt to attempt to access the brain with steel rods inserted through the patient's eye sockets, psychosurgery by another name. Lobotomy.
Modern neurosurgery for mental disorder (NMD) is different in surgical technique and more precise in instrumentation. They use electrical probes and radiation imaging and computer accuracy now. But they are still cutting into, targeting, and destroying parts of the brain they consider problem areas. Its effectiveness (and the ethics behind it) is argued for and against by health professionals and government officials as well but as always, more data is needed. Two things are agreed upon and certain, however: it changes a person's behaviour, and the changes are irreversible.
There are six days until Rylan's scheduled psychosurgery.
Ana has no problem with the science behind the procedure—it's the reason behind the surgery that's the issue... it's unclear if Rylan needs it, but Doctor Lillian insists that she does and, she is quick (almost smug) to remind her, Rylan is legally not allowed to refuse treatment. She belongs to Doctor Lillian in no uncertain terms, and the doctor likes to play with her toys. This surgery will be just another item in a long list of violations visited upon her body under the guise of compassionate psychiatric care.
Ana leaves Doctor Shen a handscribbled sticky note every morning counting down the days left until the surgery when she passes by the door of his office on her way to the psych ward on the other side of campus. She goes out of her way to do this, peddling furiously her bike through the university's many plazas and knolls for students to go and hang out at between classes during the day, in as direct a route to and from the hospital as she can manage. She weaves around groups of young people, showering their picnic blankets and backs and necks with grass and dirt as her rear wheel digs into the muddy flowerbeds and she is screamed at often to slow the hell down. Now more than ever she spends most of her time at Lillian's ward, worrying what might happen when she's not present, watching over Lillian's shoulder as that woman discovered new and inventive ways to torture and humiliate the poor girl.
If he's in his office Shen catches her on her way out of the building and crumples up her sticky note and tosses it at her head. It plinks off her bike helmet and he says, "Working on it."
"Work faster."
"A watched pot, Ana. So... back the fuck off, okay? Thanks."
He was deep in talks, he assures her every time she asks. The director is aware of the Rylan situation and they're discussing their options. Now was a time for caution, is all.
"He hates me," she says. "Does he hate me?"
"You're no longer his favourite, no."
When she gets to two days left, she has news for Shen—a stunning new development maybe the director would wanna hear.
She's coming back from an impromptu coffee date she'd been asked to by—surprise—Lillian herself. Ana had readied herself for a dirty, spiked-bat kind of fight because she felt personally ambushed but Lillian started out with an apology. They sat outside (it was quaint) on the street corner, drank dark roast and munched on sugar-dusted blueberry danishes—Lillian's treat. She apologized for how strained their professional relationship has become. She felt she had sprung the surgery on Ana, and she knows how important Rylan's appearance in the upcoming university hockey championship was to be. Not sorry enough to cancel the surgery altogether, but she acknowledged it steamrolled over Ana's sport psychology study if her subject didn't actually get out there and, y'know, do sports. She said she still believed the NMD procedure was the right step for Rylan in the long run, it would lead to greater success and contentedness later on in life, and she would never send her back out onto the ice in her current condition because it would be irresponsible as a medical practitioner. Ana made a noise (it could have been interpreted as a hum of agreement, or a derisive grunt), her mouth full of pastry.
"Let me make it up to you," Lillian said.
Ana swallowed but kept her mouth shut. She was a little curious, too much to even feign politeness and turn her down right off.
"There's a private event happening tonight that a very dear girlfriend of mine is hosting—a fundraiser. It all goes to charity, but it's mostly an excuse for some wealthy, influential people to schmooze and shake hands, have too much champagne and stay up too late to function correctly the next morning. I would love to bring you as my plus one. You could kick back and simply enjoy the open bar and the pleasure of my company, or if you'd like you could go and represent your research firm—or yourself—and no doubt find plenty of interested ears in your work tonight. Please say you'll come." Lillian added, "Your seat will of course be covered by me."
"In that case I'd love to." Ana chuckled. "Sure."
Lillian smiled at her. "Thank you, Ana. I mean that. You know, I'll admit I did want you by my side so I could show you off to all my friends."
"Like a toy poodle."
"No, that's not—"
"I'm kidding."
"You see, I've read almost all of your published papers now. I started the night we met and I couldn't put them down—like a good book. Just fascinating, brilliant stuff. Really. In fact there'll be people there who I frequently work with who I'm sure will be more than pleased to make your acquaintance. If you do go strictly to fish for business they'd be lucky to end up on your line."
"Tell you what. You help me reel in a whale or two—" Ana lifted her coffee cup. "—and keep feeding me treats, I'll jump through just about any damn hoop you want to put in front of me."
Lillian laughed. "Deal."
"This is a trap," Shen tells Ana.
"Without a doubt."
Shen ushers Ana into his office and Ana says, "Lillian sent me a rough guest list—if I wanted to rep the Institute and zero in on one or more of these guys. Headhunt, attract as investors, whatever. Any of them jump out at you? As members?" She hands Shen her phone and sits in his chair. They are certainly the upper crust as well as people Ana has never even heard of, but the ones she does recognize are lawmakers, public officials, and businessmen and women.
Shen glances up. "Yeah. At least two of these guys we have pictures of. Doesn't necessarily mean they're members of the Summer Orchestra, but this is a pattern. For a private event, these two ending up in the same room together is odd. Completely different professions and no personal ties either."
"They don't go hit the links on weekends? Pass around the same escorts? Maybe they've got the same VDs."
"Do you know who's hosting this thing?"
Ana shakes her head. "I don't even know where it is. Lillian's going to send a car."
Shen gives her a stare. "And you're still going to do this?"
"I'm running out of time, Shen. Nothing I can say will persuade her not to cut Rylan's head open—she won't be challenged or admit she's wrong on this. So maybe she'll do it for me as a personal favour—delay the surgery at least, give us more time to think—if I get on my knees and tongue enough ass, maybe show some boob while I'm at it... treat her like a priest. I'm not going to have another opportunity to ingratiate myself to Lillian."
"If she knows what you really do—"
"I won't let my drink out of my sight. Dad."
"Why is she giving you access to these people? It doesn't make sense. If she's part of the Orchestra, she wants to destroy us. Even if you rubbed shoulders until they bled, they won't work with the Institute—they're not allowed. They're just bait, Ana."
"Are you going to show the director that list?"
"I'm going to have to."
"He'll tell you I should go. You two are all about cost/benefit, right? Risk versus reward?"
"Why the hell would you want to walk into this? —Knowingly?"
"You and the director have been discussing what to do with Rylan for four, five days? Where are you now? What's your amazing plan you're putting together?"
Shen says nothing. Ana has a suspicion that she's right. It came down to money. No matter the work that went into Rylan, the director didn't care enough to spend more time or resources on saving her from a forced brain surgery. She'd be written off as a failed experiment and the Institute would wash its hands of her. Ana would be moved onto a new project (if not dismissed entirely) and they would remain in the safety of the shadows while the Summer Orchestra completed its political takeover and starved them out. They're under siege.
"I care about her, Shen. If we get nothing else out of this, I'm going to try to get her back. You know I'm going to try."
#
A car shows up at 8 o'clock in the evening outside of Ana's residence. She makes her way down the steps to the curb in her high heels. Her dress is graphic-patterned with leafy plums and exotic-looking flowers, her short leather gloves a radiant cyan colour. When the driver steps out and opens the door for her, Lillian is there in the backseat. She is dressed in a silk purple evening gown and gracefully long, shiny black leather gloves. She has grey fur draped around her shoulders and holds a monogrammed wallet-style purse. She extends a hand as Ana climbs in and touches the material of her dress. She tells Ana she looks absolutely gorgeous. Ana tells her the same and can't help but blush when she says it.
They drive up the block and Lillian produces a scarf from her purse. She folds it a few times and tells Ana she needs to blindfold her. Ana is incredulous but eventually relents. Lillian tells her to turn around. Glasses. Ana takes them off and holds them in her hands as Lillian ties off the scarf, covering her eyes. "Not too tight?"
Ana shakes her head.
"Good. It's kind of a ways out of the city. Do you want some water? Or a snack?"
"I'll be fine."
"If you're sure. All you have to do is ask."
They drive for about fifty minutes. Lillian's friend lives a little bit up the coast. There's a ballgame happening on the radio. The car gets off the highway and Ana hears less traffic now. The road winds a little more. Ana carries a bottle of mace spray in her purse and her hand inches towards the zipper when the car slows to a stop. Lillian tells the driver here is fine—we'll walk up to the house. Ana reaches up and pulls down her blindfold before Lillian can do it herself and quickly looks around. The road is fairly well lit, although forlorn in that suburban sort of way. As if she senses Ana's trepidation, Lillian simply exits the car and waits for Ana to do the same.
The warm, night air smells like bonfire, and the sound of waves carry far. The houses Ana can see are shrouded by shrubs and Pacific North West evergreens and they're upscale, designer buildings and when Lillian points out where they're headed, Ana gawks. They start down a lamp-lined stone pathway leading them to the house that sits on the bay but the place looks more like a fishing lodge with dozens of rooms and windows everywhere. The lights dotting the grounds and on the exterior of the house show off its rustic beams, log-cabin sidings and masonwork everywhere else.
There are other houses farther down the shore and these too are big and lit up. Showy. There are guests on the pathway in their formalwear making their way down they follow, and Lillian nods hello to some men and women who lean against the wooden fence with cigarettes in one hand and highball cocktail glasses in the other. Ana looks past them into the bay that's illuminated by a number of boats scattered all over the water or lazily coming in to dock at the house's pier, ferrying attending guests from god knows where. Bigger boats off the coast? From the harbour in the city? Only now does Ana begin to think this gathering might be a big deal.
"How do you know the host again? Your friend, I mean," Ana asks Lillian as they approach the front door. There are greeters and even a bouncer-looking motherfucker checking names on a list.
"We shared a dorm room together back in college. She always loved to party. Didn't matter if it was raunchy solo cups with the boys in the front lawns of the Greeks, or some swanky old soiree. Believe me when I say this could well be a bit of both."
"You warned me about the dress code," Ana says, glancing down at her dress and gloves, "but I'm going to assume then this is closer to the latter."
There is a faint hint of a smile on Lillian's lips but she doesn't say anything more.
Inside, the earthy tones of the house seem to overwhelm all the body's senses and pull you in. There's a fire in the hearth, a jazz pianist on the Petrof, and servers moving around the massive room topping off wineglasses. On one side there's an incredible view of the back lot: the patio area, the rocky shoreline and the dark water of the bay. Outside that, massive tanker ships loom and light up their own silhouettes on the horizon. Lillian lifts two drinks from the first tray that comes by and hands one off to Ana before showing her around. When she introduces her to guests she starts with the hostess of the party (a pleasant enough, done-up woman) but this is all smalltalk and catching up between friends. She is a socialite, and that's all she is. Lillian then points out to Ana who they should meet with next as she spies potentially important figures from across the room. Lillian gives her something of a scouting report before bringing her over. Her surgical research for the Institute (the publicly released stuff anyway) speaks for itself and Ana impresses. Lillian tells her she's doing amazing.
After a few hours, Ana and Lillian sit at the bar to rest their heels. Ana tries again to persuade Lillian to hold off on subjecting Rylan to psychosurgery. She brings up her other treatments worthy of trying first. She makes a strong case and Lillian says she'll think about it. If Rylan is forced to undergo the procedure after all, Ana would like to convince Lillian to do the least amount of damage and in the safest way. If she decides to be too experimental, Ana worries that something might just "go wrong." She believes a botched surgery means next to nothing to Lillian and she wonders what sort of treatments Lillian tried on Misty Vega to put her in her current state. All of this nicety aside, the fancy dresses and luxurious atmosphere, this is supposedly a gathering for (or at least paid for by) political operatives. That was the bottom line. There was a link between them and Lillian Peeters, and whatever she was doing to young women in her ward. There was no telling who was a member of the Summer Orchestra except for the faces Shen had identified earlier. They were here too and Ana had spoken with them briefly, although they had little interest in science. They took their dates (young, young women) elsewhere with their drinks to be alone.
They weren't the only ones who had disappeared over the course of the evening. Ana had watched as the main area of the house became less crowded, less boisterous, the way a party winds down. But Ana is certain she hasn't seen anyone actually leaving or saying their goodbyes. She's seen more guests heading upstairs, coming back to the bar, then making themselves scarce again. It's here where the night begins to reveal itself.
When Lillian leaves her alone for a little bit, she witnesses a woman approach a man in the lounge area, drape her long arms around his shoulders and whisper something into his ear. When he stands, he throws back his drink and grins to his buddies and she leads him by the hand up the stairs like somebody just bought him a dance. Now Ana is too curious not to follow. She crosses the room and pads up the stairs. There are a few floors to this house and down a hallway on the second Ana sees the pair head into a room and shut the door. Before they do this, though, Ana sees her plunge a hand down the front of his pants to grab hold of something and she tugs him in the direction she wants. Ana steps close to the door and hears his voice on the other side, low and murmuring.
She hears other voices from down the hallway, from other rooms. Laughs and giggles. Moans from both women and men. A muffled scream that turns into an excited gasp. Begging and whimpering. She's startled when a champagne cork goes off like a shot and people whoop. Ana realizes she's shaking with adrenaline, feeling a little dizzy. Some doors are cracked open ajar and light flits out into the darkened hall, some are thrown wide open. She can't help but glance into the first room she walks past. A man stands naked at the foot of a bed, back facing the door. A woman steps behind him and slaps handcuffs onto his wrists. She asks if they're too tight and he shakes his head. She walks around and inspects him, reaching down and playfully squeezing his butt. She has a seat on the edge of the bed and spreads open her legs, holds her dress out of the way and pushes the crotch of her underwear aside. She tells him to come and give her a kiss. As he sinks to his knees and buries his face in her crotch she notices Ana standing in the hallway and she motions for her to join them. Ana almost trips over her own feet to take a step back, pretending she didn't see and moving on. She had suspected what kind of party this fundraiser would turn out to be, as did Shen, and he told her for good measure: "Don't do whatever's the female equivalent of sticking your dick in anything while you're there. Just assume there are cameras. Or that they want to kill you."
But he didn't say she couldn't look—she was scoping the place out, is all.
She wanders by the other rooms. Those with the open doors seemed to be disorganized free-for-alls with all manner of different combinations of participants. All or mostly naked, in various positions. Clothes and half empty liquor bottles litter the floors of each. It was in the rooms with only a gap in their doors farther down that things got a little more interesting, a lot more perverse. She discovers this when she rounds a corner and nearly walks into a woman here. Ana almost apologizes when she notices she has her dress hiked up to her thighs and a hand inside her panties between her legs while she peeps through the crack in the door. The woman glances at Ana and smiles, beckoning for her to come and watch beside her.
There’s a girl in this room, arms tied to the chair by the wrists, gagged. A woman circles, inspecting her. She takes slow, deliberate steps and the girl watches her every movement. Her shiny latex gloves creak when she reaches out and takes her face into her hand, traces her lips with her thumb. Standing behind her, she slips a hand down the front of her shirt and takes her time feeling both breasts. She shushes the girl when she jerks away and grunts, trying to turn from her. She unbuttons the girl's shirt slowly, reveling in the gasps of anticipation that come with each loosened clasp. She runs her gloved finger down the girl's sternum, stroking her collarbone with her nail, before having a look at her bra. It's very cute, she says, but it's just getting in the way of our fun. She pulls down the bra, freeing the girl's breasts to play with. She tells her she has such pretty pink little nipples and then takes one into her mouth. The girl whimpers.
Ana feels the woman watching alongside her suddenly take her by the hand and give her a gentle tug, leading her away. She wants to show her down the rest of the hallway.
The next rooms, more costumes. More fantasies being played out. There are pink rubber nurses, a group of men in ski masks and a struggling, screaming, grinning woman tied down on the bed, nuns both on their knees and standing tall with a Sunday school switch clutched in their hands. A woman halfway under the covers, quietly masturbating while an older, square-jawed man sits next to her on the edge of the bed ignoring her, just reading his newspaper with his jacket off and tie loosened, a lit cigarette and an Old Fashioned in hand. And then a petite, twenty-something schoolgirl and three posh-looking ladies fawning over her like she were a prized pekingese... they stroke her hair with their satin gloves and make her sit on their laps and order her to give them hugs and kisses, coaxing and forcing her when she hesitates, first on the cheeks then later on the lips. They put their tongues in her mouth and feel her up, touching her all over her nervous and quivering body. She's light enough they can pick her up and lay her down on the bed. They take the hem of her skirt in their hands and get a better view of her thighs and knees and frilly socks around her ankles, subtly nudging her legs apart but she doesn't want them to. One of the women puts a hand over her thumping chest and asks if she's a little frightened. She tells her that Mommy will give her just a big sip of her wine so she's more cooperative for them. When they kiss and lick her inner thighs and labia they ask her how it feels. They say her little pussy tastes sweet and sticky, like strawberries.
There is suddenly a hand on Ana's upper arm—or something like it. It's completely smooth but rubbery and she whirls around. She comes face to face with a ghostly reflection of her own surprised expression seemingly emerging from the darkness of the hallway. Light glints off a tall, shiny body allowing Ana to make out a womanish figure standing over her sealed from head to toe in a dark latex catsuit and gas mask. There are two of them that have snuck up on her with the second one in a slightly different mask but it’s still just as unnerving. They have cut off any escape. They say nothing, only take their muffled breaths and study Ana.
But Ana doesn't try to leave. She's waiting to see what they do. They both step closer and Ana backs up until she feels the wall behind her. The one in front of her raises its hands and places them against the wall on either side of Ana's head. She is trapped staring into those reflective lenses just inches away at herself. With no hint of who it is behind those masks they have no faces, not really. They are nothing resembling human; they are coldly dead-eyed and snouted. Long limbed and almost unnaturally so, the black rubbered figures move in a stiff, deliberate way like store mannequins or dolls. It terrifies her. It makes her shiver. It excites her. All she can hear is the creak of their latex suits.
The one in front brings its body closer to Ana's and something pokes her in the belly. She glances down to see the thing's strapped-on rubber cock pressing against her. It's stiff and imposing and its owner wants Ana to take in the sight of it. Both of these rubber creatures have to know how unsettling they look. They play it up. The second one reaches in very slowly for the hem of Ana's dress and Ana lets it push it up above her thighs. She feels rubber gloved finger tips on her sweaty skin, circling around her thigh to trace the bumpy outline of her pussy lips poking out through the crotch of her underwear, playfully groping her. The first takes Ana’s leather-gloved hand, inspecting it briefly, then guides her to its cock. Ana grips the rubber shaft. In their own way they are inviting her to initiate whatever comes next. Her hallway companion has even turned her attention to whatever is unfolding right next to her, eyeing her the same way she watched those women inside the room.
If Lillian didn't show up when she does, Ana isn't sure what would have happened. She never imagined herself in this situation and couldn't explain why she felt the way she did. But Lillian appears behind the two latex-suited women and Ana immediately slaps the gently exploring, rubber gloved hand away.
"Should I come back?" Lillian asks. There's a faint smile on her face.
"I was looking for you."
"I see that."
Ana looks embarrassed, still wedged between these two. Neither she nor Lillian stare at the rubber cock dangling out in the middle of everything. It was now obscene and awkward.
"Do you want to come with me?" Lillian said. "I have something to show you. But if you'd like, it can wait."
"I'm good."
Lillian patted the two women on their backs and told them to keep moving, like she was shooing away two simple-minded creatures. At first it looked like they wouldn't budge, and they were menacing like this, but almost as if something clicked, recognition of Lillian took hold and they stepped away from Ana. Wordless, again. They turned to the woman Ana met in the hallway, the confused voyeur, and took hold of her by the arms and wrists. Almost violently dragging her away into the dark like demons. The woman has to pause to yank up her underwear but there are no complaints from her about where they're going.
Lillian looks amused. She says to Ana, "Shall we?"
"Lead the way." While Lillian walks ahead of her, Ana fixes her hair and her dress.
"Not your kink?"
"Too early to say."
"I like you," Lillian says with a laugh.
"Look, you said this place might get a little wild. Orgy is a whole other thing. Still getting my head around it."
"When in Rome, my dear. Are you sure you don't want me to call them back? They seemed just as disappointed as you."
"What did you want to show me? I appreciate you introducing me to all these people, but if the rest of the night is just this... I think I'm done rubbing shoulders for today. And glad to have done it when they were all... y'know, not naked."
"I admit I specifically left tonight's 'festivities' out of my big sell to get you to come out here. If you're feeling uncomfortable, I do apologize. There's just one favour I'd like to ask of you."
"You want me to blow someone."
"No." Lillian chuckles. "It's something both in your wheelhouse, and something not. In both of our wheelhouses, actually. We need your particular skillset... as a doctor."
"Go on."
"Used in an erotic setting."
"And nobody's blowing anybody? What kind of orgy is this?"
"It's a bondage and sadomasochism scene with a medical flavour."
"If it's all pretend anyway, why don't you get an actual dominatrix to do it?" Ana jerks a thumb over her shoulder. "There are a few ladies back there who seemed to know what they were doing."
"Not the same. It would be better if we had someone with a bit of experience, and not the 'play' kind either."
"Okay, what the hell is going on here? Because this all sounds sketchy as shit."
Lillian takes a deep breath before answering her. "No surprise, but there are guests here that like a little more exotic offerings than what you see upstairs. More extreme ways to get themselves off, if you know what I mean."
"I really don't."
"It's usually a spectacle they put on. Costumes, props, everything. Theatre of a sort. But the pain is real, and most of all, desired. And sometimes there's no pain at all. There's a guest with desires here who could prove to be very, very valuable to not just the charity but in terms of opportunities. Connections."
"So you want me to do what, stick needles in his balls because... that's what friends are for?"
"She, not he. And, well... yes. Anytime these people throw a party like this, it's all a show. You know this. It's who can get who together in the same room at a time and these people want you. Believe it or not, at this moment you are somebody. Doubtless your work at the Institute has been pored over by department heads by now and they've called their bosses in the last couple of hours to say you're the real deal. If you come with me downstairs, you will be inside one such room whose doors may only open to you once. But once you're in, you are in—in every sense of the word. Consider this an audition."
"So it's an initiation killing. Before I wear their colours I gotta bloody my hands so all of us are in this together? Show that I'm one of them?"
"In as many words. But nobody is killing anybody. And it's nothing illegal. Let's be clear."
"But let me guess. It'll be recorded, and you'll hold it over my head anytime I don't want to play nice because it's a contract. Honest question, Lillian: do you think I'm stupid?"
"Excuse me?"
Ana breaks off, heading for the entrance of the mansion.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to call a cab."
"Ana, please don't. Ana!"
Ana marches out onto the driveway and stares at her phone. Lillian comes out after her, lingering by the door. Ana says, "Give me the damn address, Lillian."
"I'll hold off on Rylan's surgery."
She's speechless for a moment. Then, "You're going to hold that girl's brain functions hostage over this? What's the matter with you people?"
"Rylan's treatment is important. On that we agree. I may be wrong, but I may be right. It's a difference of opinion, and I'll admit that I've been opportunistic with her. She shouldn't be a guinea pig but I genuinely think there's trauma there that needs to be treated. Sometimes it's not pretty. And if I'm taking her hostage, like you say, then that's how big of a deal this is to me. I'm only trying to help you. It's in both of our best interests. If it's your career you're worried about, the very last thing I want to see is you ruining your reputation. You, your name, everything, will be protected. I'll make sure of it."
Ana thinks for a while. Lillian is dangling the only thing she wants in front of her. In return for something, she isn't sure what, she is assured is a harmless little show. Again for someone to flex their muscles and demonstrate that they had Ana's talent at their disposal to a select few people because they could make her do anything they wanted. They could make her do this. Participate in some hedonistic display. And how much does she even trust Lillian to keep her word? It's whoring yourself out, she can't help but feel. But it's for someone who shouldn't even be in this mess to begin with. So she agrees.
Lillian says she's grateful and leads her back to the party. She asks Ana if she'd like another drink before they go down, but Ana just wants to get this over with. They head downstairs.
Downstairs is another lounge. No, a parlour. Exposed brick work, another bar, couches and coffee tables. They are offered things in the doorway to help conceal their identities. Most guests down here choose to wear them. Only a select few with outrageous amounts of fuck-you money, who you never crossed ever, chose to go in with their identities out in the open. Because in here, people could be ruined if photos got out. The guests chat at the bar or on couches, or play card games and are surrounded by all sorts of mostly topless, or mostly bottomless women and men. They wear identifying ribbons to denote that they are here for the guests' pleasure, to be bought for the evening like an escort. Although with the way they are dressed and the vibe of the room, probably more like a sexual slave. They follow their owners around and are shown off and touched. It recalls Rome.
Ana and Lillian opt for disposable surgical masks over the usual intricate masquerade masks. Ana barely gets the loops over her ears before reaching the far side of the room, a set of double doors and a queue. Lillian has not even bothered to put hers on, simply holding it over her face as she walks in case there are any prying cameras. She is known to the attendant here, and he opens the doors for them. Ana notices that the lights in the parlour dim for a moment, and guests stand and head towards the doors. Like the lobby of a theatre, the show is about to begin. Once inside, the guests are directed one way, but Lillian and Ana head the other.
Lillian explains that it costs guests an entry fee and they are allowed to bring in a plus one from the lounge outside as long as they paid for a second seat to watch the proceedings. All of the fees go towards the charity. When Lillian reveals the cost of a seat in this room, Ana can't believe what she hears. Feels like she needs to laugh or sit down. But it was as Lillian said... doors to a room that may never be open to the likes of her again.
They enter what looks like a prep room adjoining a surgical suite. Definitely not a new facility. Wood paneled in some places and an old stained and rusty hospital sink. In a cubby are folded disposable blue surgical gowns, caps and tie-up surgical masks.
"Not your average dominatrix gear," Lillian says with a smile.
Ana takes off her leather gloves and puts them on a table. "Shoes on or off?"
Lillian glances at her feet. Ana's wearing high heeled pumps, Lillian in leather boots. "Definitely on."
She and Lillian do up their caps and masks and wash their hands out of habit, getting all the dirt out from under their nails and lathering up their forearms. And then they help each other gown.
"I told you your identity would be protected."
Ana looks at the mirror. Her blonde hair is tucked completely into her cap, and only her eyes and glasses show. Her mask hides her face, the gown her body. She is vaguely female at a glance. Still, she is Doctor Ana Praszky. She has always looked like this.
"And we take leaks pretty seriously," Lillian says.
"Tell me this isn't all just a big practical joke."
"It's very much not."
"I have no idea what I'm doing here."
"Just follow my instructions. I'll get you through this. But I have a feeling you'll be much more at home here than you think."
What does she mean by this? Before Ana can ask, Lillian heads through the doors, hands raised and kept as clean as possible. Ana follows, doing the same. It's dark and she can only see Lillian's ghostly figure from behind. The room quickly reveals itself when a retro-looking operating lamp switches on.
The operating theatre they enter has been constructed this way, or was seemingly lifted from out of history, or perhaps has always existed under this mansion like a dark secret. The floor is tiled, the seats and benches that rise up all around them are wood, and the design is of a teaching hospital from the Victorian era. Where young doctors would normally sit and observe dissections and even vivisections are filled with the glittery and black-eyed masked faces of the guests and their companions, a few dozen men and women just spectating from their shadowy seats. Their eyes are on the surgeons Lillian and Ana and their patient on the retro-looking operating table. There's already a person here dressed in surgical scrubs and a mask and cap. Ana sees just her red hair from behind, and when she turns she recognizes Nurse Specialist Jane from the hospital. She's already got an IV line into the arm of the patient and she welcomes Ana in.
When Ana steps closer to the operating table, she notices that the patient is a young woman, judging by her petite body. Her face—rather, her entire head—is covered by a black gas mask like the ones Ana had encountered earlier. Her eyes are two glassy, impenetrable lenses, the rest of her face an alien nose and mouth. She has a couple of brown braids that just stick out under the mask and rest on her pronounced collarbones, and she wears a pretty, white little dress. Her arms and hands are secured in a T-pose, belt strapped across her midsection, and legs tied into stirrups in lithotomy position. Whatever they have in store for her, she is ready for the doctors.
Lillian offers her a seat on the stool between the patient's legs. When she sits she notices a film projector displaying a running feed of a camera pointed over her shoulder between the patient's legs. Nurse Jane selects the right sized surgical gloves for the two doctors and helps Lillian and Ana put them on. As Ana plunges one hand and the other into the held-open gloves, she tries to see what Lillian has on her instrument stand but her back is to them. When Ana's gloves are on, Lillian joins Ana by the patient and Jane takes her place next to the mayo stand.
"We should do a preliminary assessment of the patient," Lillian suggests. She passes a pair of shears to Ana and tells her to take off her dress.
Ana gets to work, snipping from the bottom near her thigh. When the metal makes contact with the girl's skin, she jolts and lets out a muffled cry. Like she has snapped out of a daze, now she tugs at her restraints. Ana continues cutting away her pretty dress and Jane and Lillian pull the shreds of shorn fabric from under the girl's body and dump them directly into a wastebin. She is left topless, her breasts and pale upper body overcome with goosebumps. Her bony chest heaves, the gas mask constricting every breath she takes. Then Ana cuts away her pair of underwear, passing it to Lillian to discard in the wastebin.
Stripped naked, the patient stops moving around, as if trying her hardest to sink through the floor. Her nakedness embarrasses her. This puzzles Ana but she's heard of people who get turned on by being humiliated this way. Exposed in front of all these people silently enjoying her body and her vulnerability. Ana herself takes in the sight of all of her flesh almost stark white under the lamp. Lillian is right. It is a familiar view. Already she is lost in her skin and her curves, her thin limbs, her breasts and genitalia. She wants to know this stranger. She wants to discover and explore her and touch her and feel how she feels in her gloved hands. Hers is a fascination that isn't sexual, or at least she doesn't think so. She admires her anatomy.
"Why don’t you make your observations, Doctor?" Lillian tells her.
Ana begins, circling the table, not taking her eyes off the girl's body. "Patient is a young, caucasian female, aged 18-21 based on signs of post-pubertal development. Judging by breast size, coarse pubic stubble and appearance of the external genitalia, that is to say her more pronounced labia minora." Ana reaches out a hand and feels along the girl's sternum, pressing on her right breast slightly and feeling the tissue and fat. She notes any asymmetry between both breasts and says she's on the smaller side. Nipples... responsive—they're hard and pink and only seem to get harder the more she examines her chest and abdomen. A visible heartbeat through her skin.
Slipping a finger under the neck of the latex gasmask she takes a measure of her pulse. Lillian and Jane stirred when she touched the mask, but Ana knew not to move it. The girl had an excitable, strong BPM count, felt only by Ana's fingertips pressing around her left breast. The nipples are pinched and declared free of discharge. Normal, but revealing about her current body chemistry. Flat tummy and no hard masses when palpated.
"Continuing with a recto-vaginal examination," she announces, but says more to herself than anything. She's already lost in her work.
She sits between the girl's legs. When she puts her thumbs and fingers on her vulva, the girl's toes curl. She conveys and points out this perceived anxiousness and discomfort from being touched to the room. Shyness, or past trauma she muses. She continues: clitoris, small. Tucked away under an ample hood. Hood can be retracted fully and clitoris exposed. Labia spread to reveal the introitus and—Ana pauses. She stares to make sure she's identifying what she sees correctly. "Hymen is intact. The patient is seemingly a virgin."
Now she hears murmurs from the audience. Amazement and excited whispers. Once more Ana is left puzzled, wondering why this girl even agreed to play the part of patient if she was inexperienced. Unless it was a religious or cultural thing, but with whatever's going on here, Ana has her doubts. It's possible she's a thrillseeker and simply enjoys non-penetrative sex. Or maybe that's just it... Lillian has brought Ana here for this reason. A minor surgery. A little cut. She can't help but think about that idea. It fascinates her mostly because it's something she's never done before. She supposes she will just have to wait and see.
She announces that because this girl is a virgin, they cannot proceed with a gynecological exam as a speculum simply will not be able to be inserted into her vagina. She holds open the girl's labia as wide as possible and catches a glimpse of the projection above clearly showing off the hymeneal perforation for everyone to see in crisp detail. Her little opening. She uses the finger tip of her glove to stroke and press on the pink membrane, feeling its thickness. It doesn't seem like it will be a problem—medical intervention and surgical correction would not be at all necessary. She is surprised at how disappointed she sounds making this deduction.
She proceeds with her rectal examination, and after lubing her middle finger, firmly works it inside the girl's asshole. She notes her remarkable tightness and size, how smooth she feels. No signs of fissures or enlarged hemorrhoids around her anus—a good, healthy diet this one must have—just a pleasing little pink and pinched hole Ana can't help but compliment when she removes her finger and watches it shrink and tighten up. She even spreads apart the girl's buttocks so the camera has a good view of the rosy pink colour of it and the way the wrinkly puckered skin stretches out due to her manipulations to inspect it fully.
Jane is all ready to go with a new pair of surgical gloves for her. Ana pulls off the dirty one, turning it inside out in the process, then the other and tosses them both into the wastebin.
Lillian says to Ana, "This patient needs some piercings, so we're going to give them to her today. Who better to do it than a few trained medical professionals?"
Ana can't argue with that. She clasps her freshly sterile-gloved hands, not touching anything else that could contaminate them. Lillian brings her instrument stand in closer and Ana can finally make out what's arranged on it. A variety of metal rings and barbells in all sizes, pliers and grasping instruments like ring-tipped forceps, and an array of large-gauge needles and plastic cannulas, or sheaths. Ana has never given anyone piercings but Lillian assures her it's little different from any surgery Ana's done before. Requires a similar skillset.
She hands Ana an antiseptic-soaked gauze held by forceps and instructs her to brush the patient's vulva. Ana does so, then spreads her vaginal lips to get at her urethral opening, her hymen, and finishes by dabbing around her anus and pushing slightly into her asshole. She hands it back to Lillian who drops the soiled gauze in the wastebin and sets the now-dirty forceps aside. It doesn't take long for the fluid to dry. Ana inspects it briefly and tells Lillian, "Let's begin."
Lillian adjusts the overhead light and hands Ana the ring-tipped forceps. She instructs her to locate a spot on the girl's upper right labia minora. When she tugs on the labia the girl’s anus clenches uncontrollably. Ana makes adjustments with Lillian pointing and telling her exactly where, and locks it in place. The skin here is thinner and doesn't require a large needle to puncture. Ana goes for it, pushing the needle point in one end and out through the other. The girl thrashes, shrieks, and tries to close her legs. Ana operates with precision, removing the needle so only the cannula remains. One end of the metal ring goes into the hollow end of the sheath, and Ana pulls it back the way it came in leaving only the ring its place. With pliers she closes up the ring with a fastener piece connecting the two ends so it stays in place. She leans back and she, Lillian, and Jane all pause to admire how it looks.
Her first genital piercing—both the girl and for Ana. The girl squirms on the table, still in obvious pain from something she's never experienced before. The audience seem to be enjoying themselves, pointing at the close-up projection of her vulva and anus and whispering things into the ears of their companions or friends. There are a couple of chuckles, lots of smiles. They know they are watching something special. A total first-timer, maybe who's never even been touched by someone down there before. Now she was being played with and her most intimate body parts shown off and seen in high definition.
Ana doesn't think this is an act. Her skin is unblemished and not scarred, and not marked with tattoos. She is a "good girl" at a glance. Ana prepares the next needle and glances around. She wonders what would possess someone to want this. Someone with too much money, she thinks. But she admits the experience would be a memorable one. Might as well make it count.
Ana does the next piercing on the opposite side of the vagina, followed by two more a little bit lower making it two on each fold of her labia minora. Ana notices the girl has slumped in her restraints, barely reacting to the fourth piercing. She worries that she's passed out.
Jane however simply leans over and delivers an open-palmed slap on the girl's sore pussy. Her legs jerk in the stirrups and she moans through her gas mask. Jane takes hold of the top two piercings and gives them a little tug. It looks painful for her. She gets all up in the girl’s gas mask and says, "Wake up. We're not finished with you, babe."
Lillian selects a slightly larger needle and pinches the girl's larger, outside labia majora feeling how meaty they are. Simple straight barbells for these. The same procedure all the way through, and Ana completes the task. One and then the other. Lillian smiles behind her mask and says she's looking good.
She asks what Jane thinks and she simply says, "Yum."
"What's next?" Ana says.
Lillian has a few more piercings she's picked out on her stand. She comes around to where Ana sits and studies the girl's genitalia. She consults with Jane and the two of them discuss three different terms: a Christina, a Princess Albertina, and a fourchette piercing. The latter is self-explanatory to Ana—a piercing that goes through the bottom of the vagina and out through the perineum. The Christina piercing is a L-shaped piercing that goes through where the labia meet near the clitoral hood and out just below the pubic mound, and the Princess Albertina through the urethra and out through the vagina. For some women it is not anatomically possible to receive all three of these piercings, and they are all a little more intensive than the previous ones. Ana suspects this is why they wanted her to be a part of this session.
They decide that a Christina piercing will work here, but between the others... Lillian places a pair of forceps against the girl's vulva, eyeballing the distance required considering her hymen that was getting in the way of everything. She goes a step further and recklessly inserts the tip of the forceps through the perforation, feeling around and locating where exactly the tip ends up with her gloved finger from the outside, how much space they have to work with once inside. The girl doesn't like the feeling of the instrument inside her and she struggles in place. Ana thinks she sees Lillian adjusting the forceps, opening the tips ever so slightly so it feels like she’s stretching out the small opening and creating a tear in her right here. The girl’s wrists and ankles strain because it hurts. Lillian eventually removes the forceps and determines that since the opening is closer to the urethra, they'll go with the Princess Albertina first but Jane thinks they should try for all three. The patient is completely at Lillian and Jane's mercy.
The patient is given a catheter first by Ana. Because the pain, Lillian says, is much more intense for this one. Next, the sensitive tissue around the urethral opening is grasped. The needle goes in and Ana ignores the patient's screams. Lillian holds the needle in place with forceps while Ana needs to get in as close as possible to reach through the hymeneal opening with a her own forceps to locate the exiting needle point. Very delicately, with deft, surgical hands she and Lillian work together to thread through the ring and attach the caps so it stays in place. Now it sounds like the patient is sobbing, but it's hard to tell. They wipe up the blood and Lillian and Ana get to work on the patient's Christina and fourchette piercings. These are easier to complete. Still painful looking, though. Pinching the skin above the clitoris and driving the needle through. Pinching the skin at the bottom of the vagina and giving her a ring. Jane said before this one if there’s not enough space (if her hymen protruded too far) they could pierce her asshole instead. Lillian waved her off, however.
Once done these two, Ana straightens out, allowing herself a break, wondering how much more this girl can possibly take. Lillian and Jane share pleased looks with each other, touching and admiring the girl's vulva that was now adorned with new jewellery.
Jane says they need to give her something for her pretty little titties. A few swipes with antiseptic fluid by her on both nipples and Ana stands and starts with her right breast. The nipple is already stiff when Ana clamps it with her forceps. In goes the needle, and when Lillian hands Ana the piercing, this one looks different than all of the others. Attached to the piercing is a metal tag with an engraving of a flower surrounded by vines on it. She pops it in and closes off the end. Upon closer inspection Ana stops what she's doing to stare. She recognizes the graphic but can't fathom why she knows it. It looks like a medieval sigil, an elegant design for a wax seal at the very least. And then Ana realizes. Doctor Shen has shown it to her before. In his report about the Summer Orchestra. It was an incommunicado sign off. A brand of ownership. Ana doesn't say anything, but when she glances at Lillian, she gets a chill because she's staring right back at her, waiting to see her reaction. Ana's certain the woman is smiling faintly behind her mask. Jane is as well, smiling like they have a nasty secret between them. If Ana pretended to not know what the symbol was, she wasn't fooling them. It’s this reaction from her they were looking for.
Lillian takes her time when she reaches up and pulls the gas mask off the patient. Underneath, the girl's mouth is gagged and taped over, her eyes squeezed shut and puffy-looking. When Ana places her face, she begins to feel ill. Like she needs to throw up. She moves to rip off the tape over the girl's mouth but Jane cuts her off, standing in her way. Jane produces a pair of glasses from her scrub shirt pocket and puts them on the girl's face. Lillian rests a hand on the girl's forehead and forces her to look at Ana.
"We caught this one snooping around, asking all kinds of questions about what's going on in my ward," Lillian says. "She says she has video proof of abuses perpetrated by myself and my staff. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
Ana says nothing. They know each other, she and this poor patient.
They first met at a function held by the director of the Belgium Institute a year ago. She was 17 then and Ana spied her across the courtyard of some garden party, awkward and out of place, having been dragged along by her parents. She was the director's daughter, Sarah, and they'd been introduced briefly earlier in the evening. She was keeping to herself by a classical-looking fountain, nose in a book, and Ana dropped down on the bench beside her and kicked off her heels.
Ana had tired of shaking hands and small-talking guests as the function was one of the more public-facing ones meant to make the university look good in the newsletters. To them Ana was just some academic. To Ana they were small-timers who donated to the university to get their names on buildings and wings. But when she spoke to the director's daughter, she was surprised by this young woman. She read deeply and spoke passionately, seemed a moral opposite of her father and their conversation made Ana unsure if the young woman knew what kind of outfit her father was running. It could have gone either way. She had lots of barely veiled scorn—for the outmoded power structures of old white men—and other big ideas. From looking at her you wouldn't guess she had a rebellious streak, what with her big glasses and the way she still wore girlish braids in her hair, a demure cardigan over a quietly loud kitty cat patterned dress.
She kept hardcore socio-political analysis tucked into her purse and all it took was a conversation and Ana could tell she wanted nothing more than to start a goddamned revolution, and she could do it too. If she put her mind to it. And if she had a bit of luck and a little help along the way—but only a little. She was just one of those people, the smartest one in the room if Ana wasn't present.
But Ana also had an effect on her as well. The vaguest, tiniest bit her father told her about Ana's new theoretical and practical surgical approaches still made her seem already larger than life. A visionary woman of science, someone who could change the world one day—someone "I'd probably do a pretty bitchin' essay about if I were a little girl," she said with a laugh. Still, she blushed after. She was about to go to university and she had some choice picks but she wanted to go far from here, far from home. Before she left Ana shook her hand and resolved to change her mind on that.
Now that girl is laid out on the table before Ana, naked and quivering. Not in shock yet but getting there. In pain, having been coldly and clinically tortured by Ana and Lillian for the past forty minutes or so. She could see through her black gas mask that it was all Ana, acutely aware that it was Ana's hands that violated her body and touched her vagina and stuck piercings in her labia and nipples while she begged and cried and was ignored. She thought she had been betrayed by Ana, and that Ana was going to kill her on this table. Now she realizes Ana is in just as much trouble as she is.
Lillian says, "You are going to finish up here and then we're going to have a talk."
Ana drops her forceps to the floor. The clank of metal on tile is deafening. “Do it yourself.”
Lillian wordlessly picks up a scalpel and passes it to Jane who places the blade against Sarah's throat. She holds it correctly like a pencil, ready to make a deep incision across if Lillian says to. She stares down Ana. Lillian picks up a new pair of forceps from the stand and a clean needle. She places them one at a time on Sarah's bare chest and tells Ana to pick them up.
Seeing Sarah this way, Ana thinks of Rylan stretched out and on display before her on her operating table and the things she did to her and then made her forget—and she thinks of her now, kept under lock and key by Lillian. She thinks of the things Lillian does to her and what she will do to her after she's finished with Sarah (and Ana, for that matter). But for now Ana has no doubt Jane will not hesitate to do Lillian's bidding so she grudgingly does as she is told, and clamps Sarah's right nipple. Lillian grabs hold of Sarah's face and makes sure she is watching as Ana drives the needle through her nipple. Sarah screams again into her gag. She has tear streaks all down her cheeks. Ana works fast, wanting this to be over. When the barbell is in place Lillian looks satisfied, inspecting the piercing with her gloved fingers. They no longer look pretty on Sarah's body to Ana, nothing to be proud of. They are only marks of shame and sick torment.
"It's done," Ana says. "You need to let her go, Lillian. Alive."
"She'll live," Lillian replies. This answer unsettles Ana.
Jane makes Ana back up into the corner of the room and sit down on a chair. She and Lillian force her wrists into zipties. Jane and Lillian share a look, and then the nurse disappears somewhere. Lillian stands above Ana with her arms crossed, leaning against a steel table.
"She's had enough."
"We'll be the judge of that," Lillian says.
"What is it that you think you know about her?"
"We know her name is Sarah Vaughn. Reporter at the university's student newspaper. We also know she's the daughter of Bill Vaughn. Someone you should be pretty familiar with."
Ana allows a nod. Bill Vaughn is the director of the Belgium Institute himself—her and Doctor Shen's boss.
"I'll give Sarah her due. She won't give up her source. I thought she'd be an easy one to get to. She certainly went down without much of a fight—not like Rylan. But we kept her at the hospital, just for a few days, and while Jane would have liked to look after her little patient a while longer, I'm personally convinced Sarah really doesn't know who's been feeding her all this information. If it was you, bravo." Lillian tuts Ana. "But I don't think it's a coincidence, you and her turning up on my doorstep when you did. We always thought the Belgium Institute went deep. And I'm sure you've been aware of who my employers are for some time now. We know Rylan means something to your people—an experiment of your own or some kind of patented property you're developing right under my nose—and that you want me out of your way. So the way my people see it, this was a sanctioned move by your institute. Sending Sarah after me was your opening play."
"She's just a girl."
"She's a journalist."
"For a student newspaper, Lillian."
"Unwitting or not, she can do damage. I suspect you—or your institute—know this. It's a grass roots, outrage movement in waiting, and that is a strategy. Somebody out there thought of it and thought to use it against us. Especially if she's asking questions about Misty Vega. Misty Vega's a ghost. Long buried. Sarah Vaughn just tried to weaponize her, so Sarah Vaughn isn't just some girl. She's her father's daughter. And for our purposes that's all she is."
While Ana and Lillian spoke, Ana noticed that Jane returned. Now there was another person on the floor with them in the operating theatre, a man in scrubs like Jane. The pair wheel extra machinery on carts onto the floor and plug in extension cables. From the look of things, a ventilator and a heartbeat monitor. They strap a blood pressure cuff around Sarah's arm and attach sensors to her chest.
"What are you going to do to her?" Ana asks Lillian.
"We're going to send a message."
Jane sets up an entirely new mayo stand with different instruments and brushes more antiseptic fluid over the patient's genitalia, pubic area, buttocks and anus, painting right over her new piercings.
While she waits for these areas to dry, she walks around to the head of the table. Sarah watches her nervously—as does Ana. Jane has in her hands scissors, shaving cream, and a razor. She starts with her braids, snipping them off and holding them up by their ends in front of her. She says they were cute on her before she dumps them in the wastebin. She grabs handfuls of her hair, yanks and shears it all off, tosses the clumps in the trash next to her head. Sarah cries and Jane carries on, clipping and forcing her head this way and that. She tells her to stay very still when she brings out the shaving cream and razor.
Two more men dressed in full surgical attire enter the room seemingly from the dark, their green gowns making them seem like shadowy approximations of men apparating into the light. Their hands are already gloved. All eyes in the audience are on these two as they assist in setting up the OR. They work in tandem, unfolding surgical drape and covering the patient's body, leaving her vulva exposed. Sarah watches all of this, eyes wide with fright, tracking them as they walked around her, savouring the sight of her: a body like hers completely under their control—they got to decide whatever they wanted to do to it.
They certainly acted like real doctors. Real professionals. The three men and Jane take their places around the operating table. Two surgeons at the foot of the table, one (presumably the anesthesiologist or anesthetist) at the head, and Jane in charge of handing them their instruments. The head surgeon is an older, grey-haired man. His assistant and the anesthesiologist are younger and middle-aged, respectively. The head surgeon begins by inspecting the patient's vagina, spreading her labia with his gloved fingers.
When he speaks to his team, it's in German. A low, throaty voice he has on him coming from his mask. Ana can understand him. He makes his own observations about Sarah's vagina. Confirms that she's a bonafide virgin. He touches her hymen. Rubs it. Tickles the opening and her around her peehole that's stuffed full with a catheter. This makes Sarah squirm on the table almost involuntarily. She's experienced an inordinate amount of pain tonight, but she's also been fingered and touched in places that make her feel good by hands other than her own and can't help how her body reacts to this. It makes her feel ashamed.
The surgeon motions for Jane to hand him a syringe. Sarah jumps and squeezes her eyes shut when he sticks it directly into her hymen and injects a small amount of the nerve block in few areas. Just enough to numb the tissue in question but not the entire vagina. While they wait for the drug to work, he and his assistant adjust her catheter and get her labia out the way.
Urological surgeons sometimes used a hooked needle to pull thread through the labia and then tied the ends off and clamped them with forceps to the surgical draping at the base of the thigh. These surgeons improvised, using the fresh piercings Ana had given her by looping thread through the rings and spreading her vaginal lips. The threads are tied off and clamped the same way and soon Sarah's hymen is completely exposed. The head surgeon begins to massage it with a finger, making sure the drug has seeped into the tissue. He discusses with his assistant what techniques they will be utilizing, making demonstrative motions with the tip of a pair of forceps and his hands.
"Don't do this," Ana says to Lillian. "You've made your point. You're the biggest and baddest motherfuckers on the block. Now stop."
Lillian says nothing, focused deeply on the close-up image projected above them of the patient's spread vagina. Jane hands the surgeon thumb-forceps and a scalpel.
"Lillian..."
The surgeon makes the first cut, grasping a section of the hymen with the forceps and making just a tiny knick with his scalpel to start before pausing, deciding how to proceed. The operating room becomes red-tinged, lit up by the projection above showing every gory detail of the patient's surgical deflowering. Ana feels the incision like a blow to the stomach. There are a few amazed gasps from the audience. The surgeons continue cutting away at the girl’s virginal opening. The graphic imagery doesn't make Ana nauseous—she's used to blood and surgery—it's Sarah's eyes that make her uneasy. They're frantic-looking and seem to be trained directly on her, silently begging Ana to do something. Sarah can't see what's going on between her legs but she feels the surgeons' hands on her and hears everything. She hears their low voices and the clatter and clink of surgical instruments being picked up, used, and set down.
The surgeons methodically cut away her hymen, widening the opening. The assistant holds two forceps clamped to her inner labia while two more dangle freely from the bottom, and he readjusts them when they need to reassess what needs to be removed, seeing if she opens nicely. They shove a wad of gauze into her vagina to soak up the blood and keep on cutting. Every so often the surgeon will use his thumbs to spread her open to inspect the orifice and he and his assistant determine if she is "ready" or not.
He removes the gauze and pushes a finger deep inside her vagina, wiggling it around. His assistant waits patiently for him and he is told "Fuck it. Good enough." The finger of his glove comes back coated in a mixture of blood and gooey arousal. The surgeon asks Jane for the syringe filled with saline and a pan. He and his assistant clean out Sarah's vagina, letting her drip into the pan held underneath her butt. They put it aside and then the head surgeon stands up from the stool. There's a look on his face—all of their faces—that is animalistic and predatory. His hand goes to his groin and Ana notices for the first time the man had become aroused during the hymenectomy.
Lillian sees the horrified look in Ana's eyes and says, "I want you to know we have friends in places all over the world who do good work for us. It's only fair to keep them happy and let them have some fun every once in a while... no matter how perverse their indulgences."
Ana was never one to jump into action. She never fantasized about being a hero and saving the day. So she sits in fear and complete helplessness.
The surgeon lifts up his gown and lowers his scrub pants. Jane matter of factly passes him a condom and moves to hold down the patient. The anesthesiologist has a stethoscope ready and slips it under the surgical draping to place it on the girl's chest. The head surgeon gives himself a couple of strokes before putting the condom on himself. His penis is visible for only a couple of blinks and is only mediocre-looking, before he places the head against the patient's vagina and without warning pushes into her right there on the table.
Every muscle in Sarah's body stiffens at the shock of feeling this kind of penetration for the first time and she lets out a muffled "aah." The hands holding her down tighten their grip, forcing her aggressively onto him almost. Exploring hands find her pubic mound and feel her vaginal lips bulging around the man’s penis. The surgeon's finger had been the only previous thing inside her she felt but it was not the same as an erect cock. It fills her. Despite him not being very big. Rather, she was very small. The surgeon felt this with his gloved finger upon examining her freshly opened and bloody cunt and he couldn't wait to try her out.
The older surgeon teases in his raspy German, "No longer a virgin, my little lamb."
Sarah's heart pounds and the man listening with his steth enjoys this immensely, placing it in his favourite spots on her chest. It's the heartbeat of a young girl experiencing such a unique feeling—even masturbation sounded differently—for the first time in her life mixed with fear, mixed with revulsion and pain. To him it's a high, listening to her scared pump. It picks up in pace when she begins to be fucked.
The surgeon thrusts slowly and awkwardly. His ass is hanging out from where the gown opens up in the back. He is not a porn star. This is not glamorous or rehearsed. He is attempting to pleasure himself inside a hole and that's all. The audience doesn't seem to mind. It's clumsy but it's depraved and it's real. Sarah's tears are real. Ana sees several of the spectators masturbating in their seats or getting blowjobs from their paid companions while they watch the show.
The three surgeons remain speaking in their native language while they violate her and Ana picks up sentences here and there. It's full of filth and not meant for anyone's ears but their own, and makes them only hornier:
"She is not yet used to a man's thing."
"First dick, darling."
The assistant retrieves a hypodermic needle filled with saline and the surgeon pauses for him to locate the patient's clitoris and stick the needle through it. This makes Sarah flinch in agony and tighten her cunt around the man's penis. It stings her and makes her clit look swollen. The assistant places his hand on the patient's chin and says, "This damned gag. It's too bad we cannot hear her beautiful screams."
The surgeon says they will keep her little mouth busy soon enough anyway. He reaches up and pulls the surgical draping from the patient's body, letting it fall to the floor and exposing her breasts and stomach and thighs, before continuing to fuck her. Without the draping she looks tiny. His gloved hands look large on her body, his thumbs digging in below her rib cage, fingers wrapped all the way around her sides.
The assistant gropes her breasts and tugs on her pierced nipples before injecting saline into the areolas one at a time, making them look slightly puffy. He caps the needle and tosses it onto the used surgical instruments pile. His hand goes over her gag and he asks the anesthesiologist if he can use her mouth now. The man nods and the two work together at the head of the table for their special oral procedure.
She is given a shot through her IV line and it only takes minutes for it to take effect. It's a neuromuscular block to induce temporary paralysis throughout her body. Soon she cannot move, scream, or even breathe. They quickly cut away the gag and jam a laryngoscope into her mouth. The anesthesiologist feeds a long endotracheal tube down her throat and switches on the ventilator. The machine does her breathing for her but while she has air in her lungs again, Sarah's frozen-open eyes give away her fear and discomfort. The block does not take away any pain and she is still able to feel everything. The anesthesiologist removes Sarah's glasses and places them safely on the instrument stand. He asks Jane to help give the patient eye-drops and to tape her eyelids shut so she doesn't dry out. Once she's done, he tells the assistant that she's ready.
The assistant and Jane adjust the detachable headrest of the operating table so the patient's head hangs off the edge. Now he pulls down his scrub bottoms and lifts up his gown. Jane helps him put on his condom, rolling the latex up his semi-erect shaft. For a minute Jane holds his penis in her gloved hands, feeling him grow and marveling at it. He's larger than the older surgeon and is able to utilize this hole in ways some men simply, anatomically, can't.
When he steps closer the anesthesiologist holds open Sarah's mouth and keeps her breathing tube out of his way and her tongue depressed. The man works himself inside her, carefully avoiding her teeth. He and the anesthesiologist share a chuckle when his penis brushes against the other man's gloved fingers. The tip of his penis touches the back of her throat but there is no gagging, just a yielding passage. It isn't oral sex in the traditional sense. Their method of course loses the sensation of the receiving person's lips and ability to suck on the member as well as any added stimulation from the tongue, but it's a trade off—with a bit of effort, he pushes his penis deeper in and it starts down the patient's airway which is an untold pleasure.
There is no negotiation or needing to ease it in when she is like this, completely paralyzed and forced to accept what he gives her. Her throat bulges as it opens up fully and he's still not all the way in. With a grunt he forces the last couple of inches down, mashing her face and nose against his scrotum. The ventilator continues its measured wheeze regardless of whatever is happening to her nose and mouth. Jane enjoys the sight of Sarah's throat, murmuring that it looked hot as fuck. She places a gloved finger on it, measuring how far the man has gotten inside her. She shares an amazed look with him and begins to massage the long bulge, stroking the entire length of it and feeling his hardness just underneath.
Now Sarah was being shared by two men from both ends. The older surgeon got a few more forceful pumps in while he took in the view of his assistant starting to ease back and forth down the girl's throat. He pulls out of her vagina and tells the anesthesiologist to come and try her. The man asks if he is tired and the surgeon laughs, says of course—he is an old timer now. He steps aside for the anesthesiologist who gives him a polite "danke schon" and exposes his penis to put on a condom. Standing between her legs he rubs the covered head of his cock against the labial piercings before putting it inside her vagina. He comments that she is still tight despite the drugs they gave her.
"Doesn't she feel wonderful?"
"As small as the little virgin in Trausnitz."
"Oh yes I remember." The older surgeon strokes his cock. "The lovely games we played with that one."
The anesthesiologist puts his thumb on the patient's clit and pulls back the hood in between thrusts. "Maybe they will allow us to circumcise her..."
The older surgeon squeezes Sarah's skinny butt cheek and tells the man fucking her to see how her bottom feels next—he hasn't tried her there yet and he's curious. The anesthesiologist withdraws his cock and positions the tip at the cleft of her buttocks. Even with a squirt of lube rubbed into the entrance he has a bit of trouble getting it in. Both men are surprised by how long it's taking him. The older man spreads her buttocks as much as possible to reveal all of the small, puckered hole for his friend. It’s not as welcoming as the cunt is. She would be nearly impossible to enter through here if she could resist him. But as she is paralyzed for the moment all they have to contend with is her hole size and natural tightness. The anesthesiologist needs to use his thumb to just stuff the head of his penis inside, finally getting past the muscular ring of the anus only with constant applied pressure. He takes her one inch at a time out of necessity. He says he is worried about creating a rip in her back passage. He does not begin to fuck her yet. Once he buries his length nearly to the balls, he sort of just admires the sight and sensation of being in her like this, her grip and warmth. The older man asks him how it is.
"Innocent in this hole too," he replies.
"Good. Stretch the little ass."
The anesthesiologist starts to fuck it, wrapping his gloved hands around her thighs for support. He goes for a good few minutes and then gives her back to the older surgeon for him to take his turn. While he steps away, he mutters something about how he is never able to cum inside. He pulls off his dirty condom and drops it in the wastebin. Then he stands to the side of the operating table and begins to jerk himself off and, after a few minutes of tugging on and playing with one of her pierced nipples, shoots onto her breasts. The two other surgeons seem to increase the speed and power of their thrusts in their respective holes, turned on by the sight of his thick orgasm splattered on her small, sweaty chest. They breathe heavily through their surgical masks, hold her down harder and continue pounding away.
The anesthesiologist wipes his gloves off on his pants and then he goes to check the patient's vitals, her heart rate and blood pressure, and that the machine is still breathing for her. It was a small dose of muscle block she received and the effects wouldn't last more than a half hour or so. He waits patiently for the other men to finish.
The patient's asshole is grippy enough for the older surgeon to use without issue and with a grunt he cums while still stuffed inside her. When he takes his penis out he leans in to take a lingering look at her freshly fucked, leaking holes, spreading her open and getting a good view of her deflowered pussy and raw-looking and dilated asshole.
The assistant can last longer than the others but he is helped along by Jane whose gloved hand is applying gentle pressure to Sarah's windpipe. Her other hand is down her pants. Her kneading fingers and encouragements to him and compliments on how sexy their little patient looks with his dick wedged so far down her throat send him over the edge. He pumps his load into his condom and eases up fucking Sarah's face, but he doesn't remove his penis yet. Jane milks every last drop from him, stroking the bulge in Sarah's throat. Now they're done.
The men strip off their condoms and discard them. They tuck their penises back in their pants and take off their stained and sweaty rubber gloves. They take one last look at their well-fucked patient—her stretched out and glistening holes, her slobbery chin and shiny face, her cum-splashed chest—and file out of the room. Sarah can't move, but she's still very much awake and very sore. Jane gets her head back into a resting position, wipes drool and lube from the corner of her mouth. She puts her face next to her ear and whispers something but all Ana catches is: "Ready for round two, babe?"
Jane looks up at the audience, many of whom are now on their phones. She catches Ana looking at them too and she grins at her from behind her mask.
"You have no idea what you've just done," Ana finally says to Lillian.
"Doing. As in, currently in progress," Lillian says. "Her night's not over yet, Ana."
"There is nothing more you need to do to her. She doesn't deserve any of this."
Lillian says nothing. Only stares at Ana, studying her in her dissecting way.
"If you want the Institute, you want Bill Vaughn." Ana swallows. "You want me."
"You want to take her place on the table?" Lillian asks, a mischievous look in her eye.
"You'd torture me like that? Or worse?"
After a long silence, Lillian shakes her head. But it looked as if she were seriously contemplating it.
"Why wouldn't you?"
"Because you, my dear, are somebody."
"She's somebody too."
"To her father, maybe... to you, probably. But she's nobody to us. Not like you."
Ana is tired of her cryptic replies. She growls, "What is the message? The one you want to send to her father."
"The message isn't for him. It's for you."
Ana looks confused as hell.
Lillian clarifies: "'Look at us. Look at what we can do.'"
"You didn't need to hurt her."
"Yes we did."
Ana takes in a breath. "You're right. You did. Because message received."
Lillian nods. It's all she wanted to hear. “Now, was that so hard?”
She pulls off her gloves, dropping them on the table, and walks up into the viewing section and shares a quick word with a woman in the audience—she has a masquerade mask on but Ana thinks it's the woman she met earlier, the hostess of the party—and returns to Ana. When Ana asks what's happening, Lillian shushes her. The woman stands up and addresses the room. She announces they've reached the end of the bidding period and thanks all those who participated—and that the winner of this lot prefers to remain anonymous. There are a few disappointed grumbles from the men and women in the audience, but they begin to leave the operating theatre. When Ana realizes what the auction was for, she feels sick. She seethes.
Lillian takes hold of Ana's arm and pulls her into the prep room.
"Don't fucking touch me," Ana hisses.
But Lillian snips off her ziptie, freeing Ana's hands. Ana angrily tears off her mask and starts taking off her surgical gloves. She thrashes out of her gown and drops it to the floor as well. She glowers at Lillian.
Lillian says, "Do you want to hit me?"
Ana does, but remains perfectly still. She knows better than to.
"Do you want to kill me?" Lillian asks.
"No."
"Why not?"
"That's not what I do."
"Good answer."
Ana says, "So what now? You keep me as your sex slave? Like Sarah? Like Rylan and Misty Vega? You keep me drugged up and pissing myself and confined to a hospital bed?"
"Actually, you're free to leave. There's a car waiting for you outside. You have my word you won't be harmed."
"And Sarah? Who'd you sell her to?"
"No one. You take her home. I killed the auction. It took a chunk of change out of my own wallet and a favour to be named later to do it, though. You're welcome, by the way."
"Why? Why would you?"
"Consider it a professional courtesy from me to you. I did want you to witness everything we did to Sarah. But I also want you to know there are mixed feelings towards you. My employers are still talking, figuring you out. I wasn't lying when I told you earlier you needed to do everything I told you tonight. Because if you walked out the door when you said you were going to, I think things would have gone badly for you. It’d be such a waste. I convinced them I could keep you... in hand. The truth is, I admire you. You've got one hell of a head on those shoulders of yours. I don't trust you just yet, but I admire you."
"Doesn't that make me dangerous?"
"If you had an army at your back, maybe. But even if you did... mine's the biggest. And all things considered, it's well within the realm of possibility that you end up working alongside me, for my employer. I will always champion you."
Ana snorts. As derisively as she can manage.
"You want to know what I think, Ana?" Lillian says. "I think I don't need to say anything more. I don't need to seduce you, lure you over here. You've seen. You'll come over all by yourself because you are no goddamn saint. Rylan's in and out of it sometimes, but when she's in... she tells me things. Memories she has that seem like dreams and sound like nightmares. I've examined her myself—you know I have. Somebody did something to her. I'm not saying it was you, but you didn't hate tonight as much as you say you do. If we had a look at you right this second I think we'll find you just dripping wet under your dress. I don't think you're attracted to girls, or rubber gloves, or even blood and gore. You're attracted to power. Not even money. Just power and the freedom to do whatever the fuck you want, and there's nobody more powerful than my employer. They control heads of state, for fuck's sake. So you take Sarah and hell, you take Rylan too. From there you have a couple of options. What you decide to do next is up to you, but my employer has bigger things to worry about than a couple of stupid little girls. You want to tell Bill Vaughn what you did to his daughter tonight? You go ahead. If he wants to take his shot at us, we’ll come right back and you've seen what we can do. The only difference is I won't be around to call them off next time... or maybe I just won't want to. If the next Sarah Vaughn ends up back on my table I will let them be skullfucked to death and watch with carnal, libidinous pleasure."
"And option two?"
"Or you let things lie. Sarah's hit piece will be killed, we'll make sure of it—have put protections in place. You take Sarah and you take Rylan, and no damage will have been done. Your institute goes its way and we go ours."
"Except for the part where somebody did get hurt."
"She'll be fine... if you tell her to be fine. For her sake and yours, she'd better be fine."
Lillian is true to her word and Ana is given a ride home with Sarah wrapped up in a blanket next to her. She helps Sarah inside and helps her onto the couch. Sarah was quiet the whole drive over, probably still recovering from the effects of the paralysis, but she could walk and talk—more, give sullen, single-word answers—and most importantly, was alive. For most of the evening Ana wasn't sure how things would play out. If anybody was counting, there was a large probability of both of them being "disappeared" by Lillian tonight. They had a bit of luck on their side. She let them go (and Ana had called Shen and made sure Rylan was on her way out of the hospital) as sort of a loyalty test and power move—a cocky intimidation tactic. She wanted Ana to know she was special, but her affability towards her had its limits. Today she was merciful but only because the Belgium Institute didn't scare her. She would hurt Sarah Vaughn and not fear reprisal because they should be glad she left her alive at all. Lillian—and the Summer Orchestra—were old school this way. Run like the Mafia. Relied on threats of violence.
But Ana isn't scared. Sarah however is understandably shaken up. The first thing she says to Ana, when she is brought a cup of tea, is "I never gave you up." She can't stop herself from crying and Ana hugs her tightly and strokes her shaved head and tells her "I know." She tells her she was so brave, and she needs her to be brave for a little while longer.
An hour after Ana arrives home, she receives a text from Doctor Shen. He's outside her apartment. Ana lets him in, unsure why he's here. She asked him to keep an eye on Rylan but she was expecting periodic updates over the phone, not in person. At first she fears the worst, but he says Rylan was successfully transferred out of Lillian's psych ward and from there, moved to the Belgium Institute for protection. That's a relief—she’ll be able to look after her and start her treatment and recovery when she visits her. As soon as it’s light out, she promises. But this still doesn't explain why he's here and he doesn’t look like he’s leaving anytime soon.
"So how did the fundraiser go?" Shen asks. "I assume you managed to change Lillian Peeters' mind, what with Rylan the hell out of there."
"That... is exactly what happened. And uneventful—the fundraiser was uneventful."
"Anybody interesting there?"
Ana shakes her head. "Nope."
"Well, you're lying."
"What would I be lying about? Who would I be lying about?"
"Sarah Vaughn."
Ana purses her lips. "What does she have to do with this?"
"Because she's missing and I have a pretty good idea who took her. Is she okay?"
"Shen—"
"The director is perturbed. They'd had dinner plans and suddenly she wasn't picking up her phone. And now she hasn't been seen for the last three days. Trail's gone cold. —Well, that's not quite true. Because I had a look at her apartment. I know what she was working on last. An expose about Lillian's house of 1000 corpses. Lots of pretty specific notes. Almost as if she had a super secret source on the inside."
"Okay. God dammit. I approached her to get a story out."
"And?"
"She went to get a quote from Lillian."
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Lillian drugged her and kept her in her ward until tonight. She wanted to make an example of her."
"And did she?"
Ana nods.
"Where is she?"
"Sent her home."
"No, you didn't."
"No, she didn't." They both turn to see Sarah standing in the doorway leading down to the basement. She's wearing a loose hospital gown and is barefoot. She says, sheepishly, "Hey, Doctor Shen."
"Hey, kid. It's good to see you." Shen has known her since she was little, having worked with her father for decades. He instantly knows something's up from the way she holds herself when she stands, her slight limp. She looks like she's in pain.
"Do you guys want to take this thing downstairs? Because I'm, uh, getting bored," she says to Ana with a sad smile.
Without waiting for a reply from Ana, Shen follows Sarah. He softly growls as he passes Ana, "Don't fucking lie to me again."
Sarah is waiting in Ana's home-setup operating room. Shen, expecting answers, turns to Ana. Ana tells him everything from the start—well, almost everything. She summarizes the ordeal Sarah was put through, but tells him about her talk with Lillian. About either shutting Sarah up or letting the truth come out—and Lillian all but warned if they chose to tell the truth, would anyone believe them?
And they tell him about what they're doing now... Ana is performing a sexual assault forensic exam, putting together a rape kit. They're in the midst of documenting the evidence of all the different violations visited upon her body and taking her statement and account of the evening. Ana intends to put together the report and bring it to the director herself. It can't go through normal channels, done by the police, because if everything Shen's told her about the Summer Orchestra is true then it's not safe. They have their hands in everything and rape kits go missing or become inadmissible in court all the time. And Ana and Sarah know there is nothing the police can realistically do against Lillian or her employer. They've rigged the game from the start.
Shen considers Lillian's ultimatum and reminds them there's only one outcome here if they show the director of the Belgium Institute everything that was done to Sarah: it will set him on the warpath. There will be consequences. If it doesn't destroy their organization, it might end Ana's career. Because she was the one who made a mistake with Rylan and crossed paths with Lillian Peeters, and she was the one who had a hand—inadvertently—in Sarah's prolonged sexual torment... they do not intend to omit this detail. But still, it's the right thing to do, Ana quietly argues.
If Shen disagreed, ever practical and the opposite of impulsive, he does not voice this when Sarah takes off her hospital gown and stands naked before the two doctors to put an end to the discussion. Apart from the obvious tortures, her genital and nipple piercings and the wads of bloody gauze stuffed into her vagina and rectum, there is bruising all over her body. There is no question she was brutally and sexually assaulted. Shen doesn't dare say she should be silenced or scared into submission, not after seeing this. It’s an insult to even think it. He asks Sarah if she'd like him to wait outside, but she asks him to stay.
So he takes a seat while Ana puts on her gloves, asks her to lay back, and continues with her exam. She takes photos of Sarah's battered body and records videos, asking her to tell her about each wound she sustained in detail. When she gets to the pelvic exam, Shen finds it hard to watch as Ana shows off the condition of her vagina and anus. They have a quick but heavy discussion about if she’d like to choose to surgically repair her hymen but Sarah doesn’t want to decide right now. Ana collects swabs from both orifices, as well as off her breasts where they will locate splotches of dried semen. Her abusers wore condoms and rubber gloves of course but it seemed to be more for protection against venereal diseases rather than mindfulness in not getting their DNA on their rape victim. These men were that confident she would be disposed of by the Summer Orchestra, auctioned off and trafficked to some far part of the world and never heard from again (if not outright murdered).
Ana checks the condition of Sarah's throat and how it looks from the inside, finding signs of trauma there too. Lillian and her employer are counting on them to keep things hushed—that's why they chose to come after Sarah this way. The abuses she suffered are not readily apparent, able to be covered up by long sleeves and so much shame, not blatant like a beating or a killing... those masculine things impossible to play down or ignore and must be answered with proportional violence. It is another level of calculated evil and malevolence uniquely targeting her femininity. But Ana and Sarah are going present this evidence, no matter how humiliating and shameful, to the director of the Belgium Institute because she needs justice and retribution over what was done. He is the only person who can feasibly provide these things for her.
When she is finished her extensive examination, Ana lets Sarah take a shower and tells her to sleep in her bed. Ana doesn't mind the couch. Sarah has already drifted off by the time Ana leaves the room and very carefully eases the door closed. Shen is waiting just outside her bedroom. He has a look on his face like he knows something about her and doesn’t wait to hit her with it.
"She did it for you," Shen says. His accusatory glare puts Ana off balance. She doesn't want to lie to him again so she just pushes past him and walks down the hall. "I've known her for thirteen years and never once have I thought she was stupid, or did stupid things... like ask someone as dangerous as Lillian for a quote for a story in a goddamn, motherfucking student newspaper. So either you didn't do a good enough job telling her how fond the Summer Orchestra is of casual murder—even though I explained this to you—or you told her to do it. And here's the thing. I've known you for a few years now and never once have I thought you were stupid or did stupid things. Reckless, yes—not stupid. So I'm thinking what happened to Sarah... is on you. Does she even know why?"
"Do you?"
"Yeah I got a version. It's coming together. Slowly, but surely. If I'm wrong, you need to tell me. Because I'm the one standing between you and the director. Right now I'm the United-fucking-States Congress and it's my signature you need to launch the aircraft carriers. And you need this to happen... it's all part of your plan."
Ana crosses her arms. "All right. Shoot."
[Recommended music: The National - Light Years]
"Misty Vega was never just a convenient name in a story. It wasn't luck you found her. You didn't stumble across her one day and decide to use her against Lillian Peeters. She was always locked away in a tower somewhere, guarded by an evil witch. You knew exactly where. You just didn't have the means to go and get her. So you became a goddamn doctor and got yourself noticed by the Belgium Institute any way you could. Somehow you heard there were people like you who were always looking out for like-minded individuals, and they had money and power. Not as much as the people holding Misty Vega, no, but enough to start a fight and maybe not get knocked out in the first round. So you joined up and you waited and put pieces in play. Rylan was no accident. She was always a timed implosion. You put her under Lillian's care and slipped in past the gates, caused all kinds of friction over there, and then you armed Sarah Vaughn with knowledge—the story of you—and sent her on a very important mission because you thought you had Lillian figured. You didn't expect damage to this extent but planned for a kidnapping at the very least. You got lucky tonight. And now you've got everything you need to pit the institute against the Orchestra. Then we beat up on each other, all the while you're breaking Misty Vega out of the hospital. It's all an elaborate heist."
"I'll be honest if you tell me one thing, Shen. Do you have any proof?"
Shen brings up his phone. Shows her a single photo. It's old, heavily compressed, but it's of two young women: Ana, younger—a university freshman—and Misty Vega. Their arms are wrapped around each other as they goof off and pose for the photo. "You deleted this one a long time ago. Tried to scrub it from all social media. I have it because we do a deep dive on all of our people. Didn't mean anything when you started out because nobody knew who Misty Vega was. And nobody cared."
Hearing this makes Ana's face flash with anger for a moment.
Shen continues: "Except for you. You were friends. Maybe for a long time, from before camera phones were a thing. But this is the oldest piece of digital evidence that tells me you and her were friends—if nothing more. That night you found her again and came to me upset because you found out what Lillian was doing to her... that wasn't an act. You have built a career—no, a life—around this woman. She was always the endgame. So, tell me I'm wrong."
"Had a bit of luck tonight," Ana admits. "All we need is a little help—but only a little. Hoping it comes from you."
"And you'll have your war."
"I just want her back."
"All right. Then let's go get her."
People have been arriving to the Belgium Institute campus building all day. There have been two helicopters since this morning while a steady stream of black cars come and go, dropping off or picking up men and women in the underground parking for not-so-secret meetings. Some linger around making phone calls or to make small talk amongst each other and smoke cigarettes. They all know of each other at least by reputation.
The director, Bill Vaughn, has stepped outside his conference room to ask for a briefing from Shen and Ana lingers nearby as Shen's appointed lieutenant. Shen has updates on progress, movement, and who is on who's side. His intelligence-gathering has never been more crucial to the institute as it is now. Shen has never told her, but Ana suspects he used to be a spy. Vaughn asks him who the Summer Orchestra's got, should things escalate. Shen tells him, "Crown prosecution is a write off, but the provincial supreme court is being contested."
"That'll be a fight."
"And a half. It won't come cheap, finding skeletons, cleaning house."
"I brought in Briggs-Benson a half hour ago. Whatever you need, you'll get it."
"Well fucking done."
"Spare no expense. What about the federal court?"
"Full of bad guys."
"So we win it here. Anything else?"
"What I know you do now."
From outside the glass walls of the conference room they can see the state of the director's war room. It's essentially a buffet table of never-ending provisions and extra-strength coffee, and a group of liaisons and lieutenants, men and women—with more over video chat—talking financial and political strategy all working to mobilize whatever assets and munitions they could muster, favours to trade and call in, to inject cash into the entire effort; and figuring out how most of all to hurt those aligned against them—their businesses and capital funds.
All of these people have seen what happened to Sarah Vaughn because the director is transparent about this. They are warned this is what they are up against—this is who the Summer Orchestra are. They are aware this is a vengeful war. Many are in it for the simple thrill of the fight because that’s just who they are, and they have seen projections about how lucrative it may prove. They are likely aware of the shadier aspects of the institute and not here for moral reasons.
And there are some who have joined up because of what happened to Sarah. It makes them uncomfortable, but it also upsets them deeply. They should be mad. For Sarah, and the countless others like her. This is not only a financial fight but an ideological one as well. They needed to pick a side and they did. But they all come with the potential risk of finding out that the Belgium Institute’s hands are far from clean themselves. If there were leaks there would be damage, that was certain.
Before Vaughn heads back in, he tells Shen and Ana to keep developing their own projects for the institute no matter what it took. Now's the time to dream big. Their research has always been the organization's money-makers and they will always find people just crazy enough to bet on them. People wanted to see big ideas and change. Bonus if there was a solid return on investment. Above all these kinds of people wanted to go in on ideas that made history and bettered society, not just benefited themselves and kept the age-old ivory towers high above the filth and shit. Despite the ugly things the Belgium Institute has done in secret, it would serve as a lightning rod, then, for those who were betting on the future, not a regressive dark age that threatened to re-emerge like some buried, ancient evil if things continued the way they were going... "the way things used to be," or "the good old days." So it would be young money versus old—juniors versus seniors. He tells them that the American League is going to war with the National League... now get to work.
Shen and Ana share a look before he walks off. His expression says he hopes she knows what she's doing. He was with her when she informed the director about what happened to his daughter, and he convinced Mr. Vaughn this was a good fight—a good undertaking. She doesn't know if the decision the director made was purely for revenge or purely monetary or somewhere in between, but Shen wouldn't complain about his new command. Always the analyst, he said there was a lot of upside to this war. A lot of danger, too, but he'd made a promise to help Ana and he did this by simply keeping his mouth shut and standing behind her when she needed him to. Sarah Vaughn was always on board. She knew about Misty Vega before anyone did. She would do anything Ana asked (and did put her body on the line) because it was for a good cause: Sarah, like Ana, believed Misty Vega had come up unlucky, was taken advantage of, used and systematically buried. Not the first and not the last. Sarah would give anything to buck the broken system. She confessed this to Ana, and Ana decided then to put her to work. She wanted her revolution so Ana provided one for her.
Sarah was Ana's first soldier and now—she glances at the room full of suited, powerful people putting their heads together, getting shit done—Ana has her army.
Harvey: Congratulations on allowing us to crawl into the female mind for the final stampede to nirvana. But the people watching this movie, or should I say the men jerkin' off to this movie, they don't want to be in a woman's head, not really. They want to be in their own heads. They want to be watching a couple of dicks that might be their own fill up a woman.
Candy: Porn.
Harvey: Our raison d’etre.
-HBO’s The Deuce (2018)