Anthony and Ava

"Nick . . . I'm sorry. I tried to stop it, but you're right, I could have . . . shoved her away or something. That was bad. That was really bad."

Nick paused and glared at the street, away from Anthony's apologetic eyes. "Fuck it," he said with disgust into the air. "Just go. I don't want to see you again."

The whole next week he tried to talk it out with Nick, but there was no fixing this. Not even a week later when he and Laura broke up, which of course wasn't a surprise to Anthony. For whatever reasons, Nick didn't give his cousin a pass, no second chance on this one, and their friendship was on an indefinite holding pattern, if not ruined for life. He didn't know what else he could have done, though. Shit. He hadn't even been that attracted to the girl; she just started grabbing at his dick in the stairwell. Now he lost the one person in his life he could confide in, share his thoughts.

He was interrupted by Nadine who had returned to their little cluster of desks and put her hands on his shoulders.

"Your eleven o'clock is waiting," she said. "And Ricardo isn't here, can you cover for him for the next slot if he doesn't show?"

He nodded, slowly, coming out of his remembrances, trying to pop back to life in the office. He was at work, not hauling a fish tank down the stairs and getting a blow job.

Juggling echo slots was something they did fairly often, Anthony lately covering more and more for his senior tech than vice versa. He took his hands out of his hair and stood up from the desk. "Nadine, I'll tell you more about Jennifer later. I know you can't wait to hear all the juicy details," he said, a little peeved. He had gotten very little sleep.

"No no, Anthony. I want you to be happy," she said earnestly. "To get married. To have little Anthonies with all this gorgeous hair! Next time you try harder to make it work. Okay?"

"Okay, I promise," he said, resigned to her concern, and made his way over to grab the clipboard from the wall rack. He'd have to figure some way to get back on terms with Nick, whatever it took. The world was too big and uncaring for them to lose what they had built up all these years.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and tried to focus back on his duties. As he looked around at the faded paint on the walls and stained carpet, he mused with a smirk that Baltimore Cardiology certainly deserved only his very best. But that was a passing jest. In fact, he was good at his job as an echo tech and worked hard at it. It was a role that was important and that he enjoyed, took pride in.

The patient meet-and-greet was a favorite part of his job. He was a people person and he enjoyed the window into each stranger's world that he was privileged to access in his medical role. Maybe it was voyeuristic in a deeper way than just getting to see their flesh. What were they like as a person, where were they in their journey in life, where had they been, what were their vulnerabilities, what was their family like, and then of course there was the medical aspect of seeing what trouble they were facing and how Doc Michaels' office could help them. Most cardiac patients were older, and they had many life experiences to share. He suspected a lot of them were lonely because they enjoyed talking with him and he always let them go on as much as they wished, within the appointment time constraints.

He poked his head into the waiting room. There were only two people sitting there, a frail woman in the corner chair by the aisle and a younger woman beside her, leaned in so closely to her that he couldn't make out much about her.

"Gham. . .zeh?" he slowly pronounced from the printout and looked up at the old woman.

"Ghamzeh," the young woman corrected him with the proper inflection, and nodded. Then she turned to the older woman. "Maamaan, can you stand up now? The doctor is ready to see you." She added some more directions in a language that Anthony didn't recognize, and the old woman responded by gathering herself together.

He looked at the pair of them as they shuffled closer. The young woman, wow, she was beautiful! A lump caught in his throat as he attempted not to stare. It wasn't often that he found himself at a loss when seeing someone with such striking features; more typically, he was the one causing others to notice and falter. But this young woman hadn't paid any attention to him. He waited to see if this would change as they approached, but it didn't; this annoyed him a little. He cleared his throat.

"Hi. I'm Anthony. I'm actually not the doctor; he will see you later. First we will do an ultrasound of your heart." The young beauty hadn't even looked up at him; her attention was still completely fixed on the older woman, who he guessed was her grandmother or other relative. "I'm the ultrasound tech," he added. There was still no reaction so he swiveled and began the walk around the office to the echo room. He went slowly so they could keep up behind him.

On the way he glanced at the case history, his life worries from a few minutes ago drifting to the background. The patient was a woman in her early eighties who presented with persistent fluttering in her chest. At this age, a problem like this is most likely A-fib, which is not life threatening but can sometimes drain a person's energy and make life suck, especially if one is older and the body's metabolism is slowing anyway. The atrium beats irregularly and, depending on the severity, people can either notice it and have it fuck up their lives, or not. Sometimes a younger person can go for years without detecting or treating it. He thought it amazing how well the human body can work even when major parts of it are dysfunctional.

He opened the echo room door and let them go in first, guiding them to sit in the plastic chairs on the left.

"I'm Ava" the young woman said after getting them both settled, looking at him briefly and then back to the older woman, with concern. "Ghamzeh is my grandmother. She fell two days ago, and seems tired all the time."

Anthony could not help staring at Ava. Wow. Drop dead gorgeous! This young woman was not just pretty, she was a spectacular beauty. Long flowing black hair, beautiful eyes, perfect nose, red lips, and a compact and curvy figure hidden under a sweater and pastel blue leggings of some kind. He was instantly more curious than after his quick glance in the lobby.

"Ghamzeh is a beautiful name," he said, sincerely.

"It's Persian," said Ava, finally looking at him for a longer moment. "Our family is from Iran, a while back." That explained Ava's gorgeous olive skin tone and oval face. Did he notice her slight blush and turn away from him? Had she finally not just looked at him as part of the medical office but seen him as an attractive man? He nursed a small hope.

The grandma did look wiped out by the journey down the hallway, and maybe by the trip here from home before that.

"Would she like some water? I'm happy to get her some. We have plenty of time."

Ava conversed with her in what he now guessed was an Iranian—or Persian—language, wasn't it called Farsi? He tried to remember. The two held hands gently. It was a delicate, caring motion. Then back to Anthony, "Thank you. She's fine, maybe just a minute to rest here and she'll be ready."

Oh my God, Ava was pretty. He hoped his staring at her wasn't too obvious.

"Yes, that's fine. In the meantime, I can tell you what we'll be doing here, in this room. I'll be running an echocardiogram on your grandmother. It's an ultrasound that takes pictures of her heart, with that machine." He pointed towards the far side of the room to a big machine with display screens next to a tan vinyl-covered bed. "It's not an X-ray, so there is no radiation. Many people ask if it's safe and the answer is yes, it's very safe; it's the same machine they use for scanning pregnant women, but in this office we use it only to look at the human heart. It emits high frequency sound waves and captures how they reflect off the tissues, giving us a picture in real time."

Ava nodded. He probably said more than normal because he wanted to impress her.

"As you can expect, there is a lot of bone from the rib cage surrounding the heart. Sometimes it can be difficult to find a good way to 'see' in with the sound, if you get what I mean. There are four ways we can look in, they are called acoustic windows, two from the top," and he pointed to his own sternum for illustration, "one from the side, and one from below." He pointed up from his abdomen.

She nodded again, taking it in with only moderate interest. He reached over to the counter to take a gown from the top of a stack.

"I'll leave the room; go ahead and get your grandmother into this gown. We need all clothes removed from the waist up. I'll be right outside."

The exam went smoothly. The old lady was graceful and slender, and it was straightforward to capture images of her heart through the fragile, thinning bones of her eighty-plus-year-old rib cage. Echo techs even have a name for this, it's called having a glass window; Anthony mentioned that to Ava. Ghamzeh must have been a looker in her young days; he saw the resemblance to Ava's current beauty especially in her high cheekbones and eyes which, despite her aging, radiated an attractive sparkle and intelligence.

There were two frustrations, though. The first was that during the exam, Ava positioned herself standing behind his chair, with a hand reached out to her grandmother's leg on the exam table. It was sweet; Anthony could see out of the corner of his eye how she consoled her grandma with her loving touch, gently squeezing her ankle or making little rubs up and down her lower calf with her slender fingers. What sucked was he felt self-conscious of her watching him on the computer the entire time, and more importantly it meant that he had no way to look at her.

The second minor annoyance was that Nadine, trying to be helpful, poked her nose in at the end of the exam. "Anthony, I can take Mrs. Gharabaghi if you are done. Doc Michaels wants her in six instead."

What else could he say, but, sure, thanks Nadine, and goodbye Ava. How could he say, no please, Nadine, leave them to me because I want to gawk at her lovely granddaughter for a while more, to gaze at her face and try to figure out what's under that sweater, not to mention her ass?

Actually, later he smiled, ironically, Nadine probably would have conspired to let him spend more time with Ava, in her quest to help him find a good girl. But the interaction was too fast, without time to engineer anything, and before he knew it Ava was walking away from him down the hallway with her beautiful backside swishing gently to and fro in those tight leggings. God, he wanted that girl.

Later he tried to "happen" to intercept them in the hallway after they saw the doc in room six, but he had another echo to do and by then it was too late. They had already left the office.

The rest of the day was hard for Anthony. Working on almost no sleep, the image of Ava's face and body flitted into his mind at any pause in his work. He finally got off at six pm, covering for Ricardo instead of getting off at three like he was supposed to, which would have left him time for a little walk outside. By the time he got out to his car it was darkening and he slumped in the front seat with his arms draped over the steering wheel and stared, exhausted.

God, she was so pretty. Did he have a major case of blue balls or what? He'd ruminated over the thought of her so much all day and so intensely that he wasn't entirely sure if he was even remembering her face correctly. But no, he had her eyes right; he was never going to forget those.

There were multiple facets to his attraction to her, his fascination with her. She was so sweet and caring and he yearned so hard for her companionship, ached for it down deep in his soul. But he was also a young man with a large sexual appetite, and it could not be denied that carnal desires played a large role. He really wanted to fuck this girl. He closed his eyes.

There she was, kneeling before him, looking up with those darkly mascaraed eyes, blinking, her mouth half-open with the bright red lipstick, wanting to please him but unsure how. He'd run his hands through her hair and slowly pull her head towards his body. She would resist but he'd gently persuade her, drawing his fingers down her cheeks to where he'd play with her lips and encourage her to open for him. Go ahead and unzip me, take it out now, he would say. It's going to be big, but you can do it. Then her lips would wrap around him and she would slide on for a ride. He'd feel teeth and tongue as he went deeper. Maybe she would gag, because she hadn't done this before, and he would say calmly, soothingly—running his hands through her hair—go easy, girl, we have all the time in the world, you can learn to take all of me.

He opened his eyes. Fuck, that was hot. But it was only a fantasy. In the real world, she was gone, and completely inaccessible to him. It was a foreign concept, and unsettling, that such a beautiful woman could drive him so wild, so tantalize him, yet leave him hanging with no recourse. He was used to getting what he wanted. He put a hand to his lap and pushed against the rising bulge. Completely hard. Jesus. He hadn't masturbated in a car since high school; he'd better get the fuck home and take care of business there before something embarrassing happened in the Baltimore Cardiology parking lot. Doc Michaels waddling by and seeing him shaking hands with the milkman would not be a strong career move.

Maybe this was an occasion to pull out the proverbial little black book for tonight. He had a few friends with benefits on tap; one would surely be available on short notice, even be excited to get the shot. It would be a normal reaction to breaking up with Jennifer, anyway, nobody could blame him. He wouldn't even need any special excuse or explaining; a sympathetic fuck is a good fuck and lots of girls would love to "heal" him from his suffering, right? It would only take a four-character text to the right recipient to set that into motion—"DTF?"—and he looked down at his phone, considering.

He ran through a few obvious candidates in his mind, one by one, but he realized they just didn't compare. They were attractive girls, of course—he didn't go out with anybody who wasn't—but not one of them was in the same league as Ava. They just weren't the same type of woman. What if he invited one of them over, got them all stripped down, then took a look at their face or tits, comparing them unfavorably to his new beauty dream; who knows how he'd react then. Like one of those movie scenes where he'd shout out "Ava!" wrongly as they climaxed and the girl would say, "Who the fuck is Ava?" and slap him. He laughed.

Well, he'd go have dinner first and see if he even had the energy to deal with some random fuckable chick tonight anyway. His fascination with Ava had consumed him, and he didn't look forward to another sleepless night, this night for a different reason than last.

*****

Ava

A week later, Ava found herself back in the waiting room at Baltimore Cardiology. It had nothing to do with her grandmother, at least not directly. She had made an appointment for herself. It was the result of a promise to her mother—in what she now considered a mistake after a reluctant drive here and giving her name at the counter, suppressing all reactions to flee the place. Why did she get into this? She'd noticed her own heart flutterings since about Christmas. She had meant to do something about it at some point; the scare with Maamaan and follow-up discussion with her mother just moved it to the top of her "to do" list.

Their family had a history of heart troubles. Her biological father, the asshole that she never knew—who left her mother after Adriana was born in Canada—died at an unexpectedly young age from a cardiac arrest. And then this now A-fib with Maamaan. She didn't think that she was in any real danger at her age, but it was true she sometimes noticed a skipped beat while lying on her back in the morning bed; so to reassure her mother, and herself, she made the promise to be seen.

She hated going to the doctor, though. Just dreaded it. She always had, since being a small child. The feeling of being processed, that someone was going to come take control of your destiny, tell you what you must do; the lack of self control, and loss of dignity. And that was even without adding the specific embarrassment of nudity and having your body inspected and invaded by some stranger. She was an intensely personal and modest woman.

It was much different being here last week with Maamaan. At that point she had been consumed by her caretaking role and didn't experience any of the negative emotions that hit her so strongly this time. It had been a distraction, maybe even a protection, to be the supporter. This time there was no hiding; she was the main event. The main course. She shook her head in disapproval. That wasn't good imagery of being consumed.

At least the results for Maamaan weren't disastrous. Yes, she had atrial fibrillation, but the doctor said that a lot of people, even older folks, do pop out of it on their own. There were some meds they prescribed, and later on they could consider a surgery—what they called an ablation—if her energy level remained low and the family thought it was impacting her life, although with Maamaan's age that didn't sound like a practical solution to Ava. But all the thinking about it was all done for now, and there was time to reflect over the spring and summer before the next move on that front. What was on Ava's mind at the moment was what was next for her, and to be honest, she was thinking about that ultrasound tech.

She hadn't noticed him much last time until they were well into the appointment. Then she realized that he was a hot guy. A really smoking hot guy. She might have shown some signs of being nervous at that point, she couldn't remember exactly, but she hoped that he hadn't noticed her reaction. A knot tightened in her stomach. Would he be the guy to work on her today?

Why hadn't she thought this through before she let her mother convince her to make the appointment? Even if she had been waiting for a female doctor she'd be nervous, the tension of knowing what was to come in the next few minutes, someone to stride in with all their official gowns and stethoscopes and confident manner and sense of unquestioned authority, ask to see your body and command you to move this way and that like a lab rat and do whatever they want. But to have it be that guy? That gorgeous, dark-haired tech who might come take her to a room in a few moments and ask her to strip for him?

She had trouble with anxiety and this train of thought wasn't helping her relax. Let's think about something pleasant instead while I wait, she thought. Her grandmother was a good choice.

She remembered all the trips to the ocean and museums and parks when she was a child, laughing and dancing around Maamaan, with the sparkles in her eyes. Ava was her favorite, because she reminded Maamaan of herself when she was young and beautiful. Plus she loved to sit on her lap and listen to the old family stories, in Persian. She was the only grandchild that learned the language well enough to speak it. And the fairy tales, of course, all these strange animals that would get possessed and wander around in the desert and take on a demented form. She wanted to go to the Middle East someday and see her heritage firsthand—she had never been anywhere near her birth place even though she had been to the house in Canada where she had lived as a baby—but honestly she was scared of things out of her control and wasn't sure if she would ever get up the courage to make the trip.