Anthony and Ava

"Ava?" Her name was called and she looked up. She was so tense she was almost paralyzed. It was Anthony, that same technician. A small part of her flashed excitement to see that it was him, but the rest of her froze. She forced herself to get up and walk to the door. It was like being a robot, someone else's body was moving under her command.

He was pleasant and smiling wide. "I'm Anthony. From last week. I'm surprised to see you here, I didn't expect it. But I'm pleased to see you again!" It was too much gushing for her.

"Yes, hello," she said politely.

"I hope your grandmother is well." When she nodded but didn't respond, he seemed embarrassed to have come on too strong. "Yes, well, you know the routine here, same as last time. Follow me this way to the echo room."

She walked after him, watching. He walked confidently, tall, with an athletic build. He hadn't cut his hair since last time and it flowed even further down past his neck. Would she ever date a guy like this, she wondered? If she wanted someone to introduce her to the pleasures of the flesh, he seemed like the right kind of candidate! Her mood was balanced somewhere between shyness and horniness, watching him. She even tried a peek at his ass, although it was mostly covered by the tails of his sharp lab suit. He was a well-dressed man and didn't lack self confidence, that was sure; there must be plenty of notches on his belt, and he surely knows it, she thought.

He led her down to the right turn and into that same dingy room, giving the instructions as he had given her grandmother, to gown up for him. She nodded, he closed the door behind him, and then there she was. Again.

It was the same exam room she had remembered, crammed with the same old junky equipment, and the same dim lighting. Anthony had met her in the lobby, seemingly quite happy to see her again, and they took the journey down the hallway just like last time. But this time, she thought—with a rising sense of indignation—he had casually instructed me to strip from the waist up and put on this flimsy gown. It was too conveniently routine. You know, like hi, I'm that hot guy again, nice to see you again, you sure are a pretty girl, how's your grandma, you look great in that sweater, by the way, how about you just strip naked for me now so I can take a good look at your tits, that would be great, thanks.

She sighed. What did she expect? He didn't really say all that, of course, that she was pretty and so forth, but at twenty years of age she'd seen the effect she could have on guys, and she was sure that he hadn't overlooked the attractiveness of his young patient. The guy was quite a looker himself, too. Maybe it would have been easier with some nerdy tech who wouldn't have noticed her with his smouldering eyes. They probably didn't even have a woman doing this job at such a small office, but she was annoyed with herself for trusting the system blindly, not thinking fast enough to ask about it.

Looking around here, this room was indeed a mess. It didn't seem like it had been organized for years. A treadmill occupied the main portion of the room. She hoped he wouldn't make her use that thing, because she hadn't brought running shoes or a sports bra that would be suitable. Cords of thick twisted black plastic dangled from its dashboard over to several monitors on wheeled metal frames. One desk was against the wall to the left of the door past the chairs, and on the right side another desk and small sink. Both desks were full of papers, and the cabinets above were jammed full of gloves and other medical supplies, with doors heralding the standard assortment of messages of what to do in case of emergency, how to get help translating into your language, how to file a complaint. Hmm, she thought with a little smile, maybe that last one would come in handy if he gets too frisky with me.

On the wall next to the exam table was a large, plastic-coated poster of the heart, exploded to show each compartment with a hundred arrows and names written here and there in tiny font, and cartoons of cute blood cells being pumped around, picking up and delivering oxygen around the body. On the far side of the treadmill, occupying the rest of the room was the faded tan exam table covered by a long sheet of that crinkly white doctor office paper. She knew that was where she was going to be in a few minutes, wearing only the gown over her please-get-yourself-naked-from-the-waist-up, and she thought with dread of Anthony right beside her, maybe too eagerly, running that wand over her chest like a boy with his favorite toy car.

Then she noticed the small mirror by the sink. I can make sure I am presentable, at least, she sighed, motivating herself to go take a look. Her reflection confirmed that her mascera hadn't smeared, her hair was relatively in order aside from a few stray strands which she tucked back in, and a quick pulling back of her lips showed no lipstick stains on her teeth. Then she turned her head back and forth and stood on her tiptoes to check out the profile of her chest. She was a pretty young woman. What did she have to be nervous about? This wouldn't bother most women. Certainly not Adriana.

If she were here, what would she say? She wouldn't be scared, or nervous, that's for sure, Ava thought. She'd be like, Ava, relax . . . you know you've got a hot bod with those great assets, just whip off your shirt and be like, whoo-hoo hot ultrasound boy, check out these awesome tits! Then she might lean forward and use her hands to open an imaginary flimsy paper gown, and shake her chest in some embarrassing imitation of Ava gone wild, or something.

The vision made Ava chortle audibly, which she stifled with hand over her mouth. A small grin spread from one side of her mouth, and she shook her head back and forth. She realized how much she cherished the relationship with her crazy and spunky younger sister, and how she'd missed her while she was at college.

But damn, Adriana wasn't here and she was stuck in this room, alone. And there really was a tall, dark, handsome guy waiting outside in the hallway for her to get naked, and she didn't have any desire to shake her assets anywhere near him.

The knock-knock brought her abruptly out of her thoughts. The handle turned and the door opened just a crack. "Ava, are you ready?" came Anthony's resonant voice. Shit, she had stalled too long and was embarrassed. She imagined his smokey eyes just a few feet from her, on the other side of the door, penetrating into the room and right through her sweater to her naked body. In an unconscious reflex, even though he couldn't see, she brought her hands up over her chest.

"Uh . . . not yet. Sorry."

"It's no problem," he said through the slightly ajar door. It was a voice she could fall in love with. "I'll give you another minute."

She looked down at her hands covering the curves of her chest. Yeah, maybe I just can't do this. Not today and not in front of this guy. She held that pose for a few seconds as her mind raced for what kind of excuse she could give that wouldn't make it sound like she was an embarrassed little girl. She couldn't think of one. It was not going to be easy to get out of this.

She brought up her hands to her temple and covered her eyes and forehead. Oh, damn it. It was sinking in that, in fact, she was just going to have to harden up and do this, and just get through it.

Having made the decision to take the plunge, she moved to gown herself before this guy walked in on her. Even though there was nobody in the room, out of reflex she faced the corner and discretely pulled her sweater over her head. She folded it quickly and tossed it on the chair that was tucked in between the door and the desk. As she slipped on the gown, yes, being a good girl to have it open in front as the almighty Anthony had commanded, she was relieved to feel it was thick enough to be opaque. She knew he'd have to paw at her to put on those damn electrodes, she remembered from last week, and he might get a peek while he does that, but otherwise she should be covered for the exam. And the light was low in the room.

She tidied up her sweater on the seat of the chair by the door, unnecessarily, and went over to sit nervously on the edge of the high chair by the cabinets and sink. She gave Anthony the okay to come in.

He confidently strode into the room, all business like, carrying a clipboard, and gave Ava a brief courtesy nod. One could tell that this was his domain. He had that easy familiarity that came with working in this room every day, while conversely for each patient it was each time a fresh experience of discomfort. He pivoted around to pull over a machine on tall metal legs and rollers that snagged in its own dangling coils of cords.

She took a long look at the back of his head as he attended to the machine, the luxurious dark hair flowing over his shoulders. He looked a bit tired, but sharply dressed in his long white lab coat, crisply pleated pants, and shiny black shoes. He wasn't one of those medical guys slobbing around his job in scrubs and sneakers. With some surprise, she realized that she was gripping the edges of the chair, hard. She forced herself to relax or she would blow out an artery. No better place than here at a cardiac doctor's office, though, she thought ironically.

The gown was a little tight on her. Her chest was large enough that it gapped in front. She felt for some kind of way to tie it but didn't find any, so she rocked her weight back and forth to free up slack where she had sat on the gown tails. She pulled the front as tightly together as tight as she could. It still showed a thin line of skin down the center of her chest and abdomen and she could see just a hint of the curve of her boobs. Well, it's as good as I'll get, she thought, with a slight shrug.

As he spoke, he pivoted to face her. "Ava, first we're going to check your blood pressure. Just sit back where you are and take a few deep breaths to relax." He unfolded the black cuff in sections, the last one with a jarringly loud rip as he pulled the velcro free, and unwound the cord which was tangled around it.

"How about your right arm," he stated, rather than asked. As she raised her arm towards him for the cuff, she noticed that her gown cracked further open down the front. She thought about reaching with her left arm to try to hold it closed, but she didn't want to seem prudish, like, I'm sorry, I'm too shy to have you take my blood pressure on my arm, she thought. She was pathetic, that's what Adriana would say. But it wasn't her fault that she was so shy. Anthony wasn't looking at her chest anyway, so she told herself it wasn't worth worrying about.

He secured the cuff and turned back to the machine to start the automated sequence. It began puffing air into the cuff in its program of clicks and pumps.

"So how is your grandma doing now?" he asked casually while the machine was working.

She hadn't spoken in a while and cleared her throat first. "She's doing all right. Thank you for asking," she squeaked out. The pressure grew to an uncomfortable level on her arm. She hated these machines that grabbed and squeezed. She always felt trapped. She tried to think back about Maamaan and how she had been doing. "The meds seem to be keeping the fluttering down. And we're still thinking about whether we want to do the ablation or not."

"That's a big decision," he said, with a sincere nod. He was looking right at her now with those smokey eyes and she had a hard time holding his gaze without feeling like it was burning into her. He continued confidently.

"A lot of patients do get a benefit, but it is a major surgery, and you know, at an advanced age any procedure can be stressful." He turned from the machine and started to unfasten the cuff. "But she has you for support, that's a really big thing." He flashed a smile. She felt awkward sitting here in a gown on his table, but she could not deny that he was an attractive man.

In another context, she would have had a calm mind to make small talk. She wasn't so painfully shy that she couldn't talk to a guy like a normal person. It was just that she had a hard time chatting when he was dressed nicely in his suit and she was wearing this humiliating medical garb, with a part of her chest showing and her arm trapped in a squeezing cuff. Also, her mind couldn't help but think of what was going to happen on the exam table in a few moments. She knew that's why she was on pins and needles, and managed only to mumble an "Uh huh" in response. She wished medical techs wouldn't always try to make small talk with people who were obviously uncomfortable.

Anthony swung back to look at the machine, with a furrowed brow. "Hmm, your blood pressure is on the high side, 130 over 90. Is this normal for you or do you think you are nervous? Visiting the doctor's office makes a lot of people nervous."

*****

Anthony

When Anthony had seen the name Ava Iravani in the morning's schedule, his heart jumped. The last name didn't match the grandmother's from what he remembered, but it looked like it could be Persian and he held out some hope. Sure, it was a pleasure to do an exam on a healthy young woman, which was rare compared to his normal clientele of older folks, many of them not in great shape, but his excitement was more than that. It was because it was her. She was an exceptional caring and loving woman. He wanted to spend more time with this woman in any way he could. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her since the appointment the previous week.

The only spanner in the works was that she was scheduled for Ricardo's room. His heart fell. There were multiple reasons that he could not let this pass, including that he didn't want that guy's paws on this delicate beauty. It required some quick engineering to sweet talk Marsha into the switch. Luckily for Anthony, Ricardo was on another one of his breaks and hopefully would stay out there a while. "I'm going to cover for Ricardo's 10 o'clock, can you just switch the schedules, he can take my 10:15." He had done this often enough as a favor to her that she complied without any objections. Ricardo would be none the wiser, anyway, and probably happy that Anthony took on some of his workload. If he had known what he was giving up he might have thought differently.

She was there in the waiting room, dressed conservatively in a sweater and those same powder blue leggings. She was the same as he remembered, gorgeous, although she seemed more reserved and self conscious this time by herself. Anthony guessed correctly that she was more comfortable taking care of others than having the attention on herself.

When she gowned and let him into the echo room, he started the usual chit-chat as he took her blood pressure. He had found that it was a good way to break the ice with patients if they are asked about any small things: their weekend plans or what they do for a living. In this case, he was honestly curious about her grandmother. A lot of the parts of medical exams are routine. As a patient, it may be a little boring to have your blood pressure taken, he thought, or your blood drawn, but that's nothing compared to how the techs feel doing it a hundred times a week! He could feel himself relaxing as he entered the familiar routine of his regular procedures.

Ava was legitimately anxious and she spiked her blood pressure test. He'd seen that happen not just when pretty young women are being seen by male techs, but with patients of all genders and ages. Somehow being in the exam room heightens the body's alerting system, and blood pressure readings can be wildly inaccurate compared to ones taken quietly at home. When he asked her about being nervous, she gave him an "I'm sorry" with a quick and repeated nod, biting her lower red lip gently. He found her adorable, and falling again for her demure manners like he started to last time. Damn, she was attractive.

"Okay, let's go over to the table, now," he said, and wheeled the blood pressure machine out of the way back towards the sink. As she stood up and stepped gingerly to the back of the room, it was obvious that she was self-conscious about being in the medical gown in front of him. This didn't stop him from taking a good look at her nicely rounded figure, though. As any guy does, he'd been trying to piece together what her body looked like. It was like a puzzle men can't resist, the difficulty level and intrigue heightened by the blurring effect of loose clothing: a contour here as she leaned, detecting a shape moving there as she walked.

She was very modest. Was it part of her conservative Persian upbringing? Her grandmother was from old school Iran, though, and from what he had read it was actually quite liberal in pre-revolutionary times there, women going through the same sexual liberation as in the west. But who knows if she was brought up that way, or more with modern Iranian conservative values. He didn't know yet how she would react to being examined by a man. But he would find out shortly, he thought, with some feeling of anticipation.

"Go ahead and sit up here." He patted the exam table and she moved over and shimmied up. "Swing your legs up and then lean. Yes, that's it. I'll bring this pillow up higher if you like." Ava adjusted the headrest with her left hand as she discreetly held her gown together with her right, and swung her feet out and her torso back to a reclined position. "We'll start with you on your back like that," he said.

He brought his stethoscope to her sternum, the upper part of her chest, and hovered it over the gap in her gown. As he held it just an inch from her creamy skin, he could see her heart beating with a faint pulsing of the skin. This was called a visible heartbeat and it wasn't that common, but she had delicate skin and her heart must have been beating hard with nerves. There was nothing wrong with it from a medical point of view, it was just unusual. He found it sexy, like many did—there was even a whole porn subset dedicated to the kink—but tried to put those thoughts aside.

"I'm going to take a listen with the stethoscope. Sorry, it might be cold."

He touched the larger end of scope head down to her skin and pushed down gently. A very fast, strong beat. He listened for a few seconds.

"You have a strong, regular heartbeat, which is good, but it's fast, as you can probably tell." He paused a second. Later he wondered what prompted him to ask, "Do you want to hear your own heart?" He had never asked a patient to try this. Ricardo must have given him the idea after he raved about doing this with a patient that turned him on. Looking back, he realized this was the moment where the exam got off the rails.

She seemed surprised to be given this option. "Uh . . . I guess?" She shook her head in some confusion.

"It might help you relax. Some people find it sensual—" He stopped. Shit, that wasn't what he wanted to say, although it was true. "I mean, it's a sensory experience, like those isolation tanks, being back in the womb."

"Okay," she said, unsure, but willing to be a cooperative patient. She didn't know if this was a standard procedure but she suspected perhaps not. It's true that her heart was racing, though, she could even feel it herself, so she would try anything to relax.

He pulled the scope's tips from his own ears and put them gently onto hers, trying to move smoothly so he wouldn't alarm her with the motion near her face. Placing the diaphragm in the middle of her sternum, the flat part of her chest up high towards her neck, he said, "This is your aortic valve. Just take a few deep breaths and listen." She did.

Then he slid it laterally to the fleshy part of her upper left breast a little bit under the gown and held it there. When she breathed in, her flesh pressed up into the stethoscope, which he held steady with a slight pressure so her skin pushed up around it. He saw the bulge of her breast through the crack in the gown and couldn't help getting turned on by how sexy she was.