Love and Sex Ch. 02

"Is it?"

"Yes, it's Easter."

"No, I meant, is it happy?"

The exhausted nurse and I set to work. Between the two of us, we managed to get one patient after another hooked up to a ventilator. One challenge I had not appreciated because the technician had dealt with the issue was that the hospital had at least five or six different types of ventilators. The essential function was the same, but the controls were significantly different. Of course, some of the units were broken, while others required coaxing to get them to operate. Between intubations, the nurse and I made the rounds of ventilated patients to monitor their status and adjust the airflow settings as required.

Some genius had even figured out how to modify anesthesia units to serve as ventilators. When they ran out of those, they'd brought in CPAP machines designed for sleep apnea patients. Unfortunately, those did not provide for the sophisticated control of air pressure that a ventilator did, but when you're desperate, you'll settle for anything. You go into war with the weapons you have.

#

Just when I thought the situation in the hospital couldn't get any worse, it somehow got a little better. It wasn't because we were past the peak which we were, barely. No, our hopes for easier times once we passed the peak were dashed when the summit turned into a plateau. New admissions declined slowly, if at all. Since deaths lagged admissions by three or four weeks, the number of fatalities was still climbing, as were the number of patients requiring a ventilator.

What made our lives a little more tolerable in the coronavirus ward was the arrival of volunteers and resources from every corner of the country. The governor had issued a desperate plea for help during one of his daily press briefings. He promised to return the favor once New York City recovered. Doctors, nurses, EMTs, and every kind of health care worker from around the country responded in significant numbers. The relief came just in time to prevent the collapse of the city's health care system. I welcomed the hospital administrator's command to take a day off.

#

My hopes of connecting with my wife were dashed when I checked my text messages on the long bus ride home. It seemed her hospital was now requiring their health care workers to stay at nearby hotels. Their stated goal was to minimize exposing civilians to the virus since many of the doctors and nurses were infected but asymptomatic. There still wasn't enough testing capacity to screen the hospital staff regularly. After weeks and months of daily exposure to the virus, everyone at the hospital was presumed to be carriers. My wife said she thought the real reason was to eliminate problems with travel to the hospital. Too many members of the health care team were arriving late for their shifts.

The next morning, I slept late, took a long shower, and made myself a large batch of scrambled eggs with cheese, fried onions, and peppers. After I ate my special breakfast, I checked my email for the first time in weeks.

I was happy to find a recent email from John. He had interviewed a couple of dozen health care workers who worked in coronavirus wards. He'd written an article and asked if I could review it for accuracy. He provided a link to a file stored in the cloud. Cathy and I had been impressed with his articles about the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, and I was eager to see what he had written about the still ongoing fight in New York City.

I was surprised when I followed the link and entered the password. Instead of a single file, my computer challenged friend had provided me access to his entire coronavirus interview folder. Luckily, he had provided me with the file name since I would never have found the article buried in one of a couple of dozen sub-folders. I read the article and made a few minor edits. I was excited to see that Cathy and I received extensive coverage in his story as nurse 'B' and doctor 'Y.' I couldn't wait to show John's piece to my wife.

I was curious about how John had turned our interviews into a story. I noticed that there was a folder for everyone he talked with. My folder contained a small audio file of my original interview. There was a text file containing the transcript of the conversation and a third file containing a summary and notes on significant findings. John had interviewed over twenty doctors and nurses as well as EMTs, lab technicians, and other hospital support staff. All of their folders had a structure similar to mine.

All of the folders were similar except for my wife's folder. Hers contained a huge 92 GByte encrypted file instead of the small audio file in my folder. All the other files in her folder were similar to mine. I was intrigued by the large file. I tried the password he'd included in his email without success. I tried a few simple passwords like 123456 but realized I was shooting in the dark.

I made a sandwich and ate it while savoring one of the few remaining beers brought by John. I explored other parts of the main folder. I found a subfolder of pictures. There were several headshots of me as well as Cathy, and other people who I assumed were the other interview subjects.

One picture didn't fit with the rest. It was an old picture of John holding the tomcat we had adopted when we were roommates living off-campus. My friend was standing in front of the apartment building while he rubbed the cat's chin. You could see the street address over his shoulder. Finding that picture with the others was strange. It took me a minute to realize why it was there. Before I bought an app to manage passwords, I used to save pictures of random houses using Google Street View. I would embed the street address in the image and use the picture as a reminder of my password based upon the street name and address. I had taught John the trick after I caught him using 123456 as a password.

The hard part was remembering the damn cat's name. Hell, John had taken care of that as well. He had a pack of Winston cigarettes sticking out of his shirt pocket despite the fact he didn't smoke. The scraggly cat's name was Winston. I went back and clicked on the sizeable encrypted file in my wife's interview folder. I stuck in Winston and the street number for the apartment building, but it wouldn't open. I reversed the order and struck out again. I tapped my fingers on the desk for a moment until I remembered watching him type in a password long ago. John liked to substitute a one for an 'i' and a zero for an 'o' in passwords. Bingo. I was inside.

The large encrypted file was a folder with dozens of video files with sequential numbers. I played the first file. It started with the camera pointed at me. I heard my wife enter the apartment and curse me out.

"Paul, what the fuck is going on?"

After a bit of heated back and forth between my wife and me, John offered to use the bathroom while she disrobed in preparation for a decontamination shower.

He finished by saying, "I promise on my word of honor, I won't peek."

There was silence for a moment before my wife said, "I hope that thing isn't making a movie."

My best friend replied. "There's a light that comes on when it's recording a video."

The video spun around the room as John demonstrated that a light came on when the iPhone was recording video. When he set the camera down, my wife was centered in the frame. She was dressed in green scrubs, and a colorful mask covered her face. An apprehensive look had replaced the anger in her weary eyes. Somehow, despite my friend's reassurance, the camera was recording Cathy standing by the door in glorious 4K super high definition video. The clever bastard had disabled the light.

I heard him walk into the bathroom and turn on the light and noisy fan. It wasn't long before he yelled, "Where's the damn door?"

I laughed as I remembered his surprise at the total lack of privacy in our tiny apartment. I quickly stopped laughing as I watched Cathy disrobe until she was wearing only her panties. I was treated to the sight of her large gorgeous breasts jiggling unfettered. The video was incredible. I could see light freckles sprinkled across her chest and the red marks left by her tight support bra. I hadn't remembered her rubbing the irritated skin, causing her pert breasts to bounce around delightfully.

I rewound the video and replayed it in slow motion. This time, I watched as Cathy's nipples became hard. I knew it wasn't from any cool breeze in our perpetually overheated apartment. My wife was staring in the direction of the bathroom. Off-screen, I could hear John pissing like a racehorse. I saw the shock on her face at what had to be the sight of my best friend's big, black, uncircumcised cock. It was the largest cock I'd ever seen, and I doubted my wife had seen any larger even in her duties as a nurse.

At the time, I hadn't noticed her lick her lips when he finished because I had also been watching John. I remembered him giving his huge cock a couple of shakes. I could still picture his equally massive balls jiggling as he shook his member before he lowered the towel over his semi-hard cock. This time I watched my wife's body tremble. She was frozen in place with her thumbs in the waistband of her panties.

My wife came out of her trance when John yelled, "Cathy, are you ready for your shower?"

I watched my wife cough as she struggled to respond.

"Almost. Give me a second, please."

In the video, I saw her look at me with wild eyes and whisper, "Oh my God, it's real. I thought you were just making up stories about your old roommate's monstrous black cock to get me excited."

The video showed my wife swallowing hard as she fought to control her anxiety. She stared at the floor as she hooked her fingers in the waistband of her panties and pushed them down her long, athletic legs. She bent over and stepped out of her last piece of clothing. She added them to the bag and stood up. For a second, the video provided a high definition view of her arousal. I saw her glistening pussy before she covered her breasts and sex with her hands and arms.

It was evident to me why my wife was trembling from intense arousal. She was stark naked in the same room as the virile black man who had been the focus of her fantasies for the last year. Watching her reaction had me strangely excited, just like when it originally happened. Once again, my cock responded to her gorgeous naked body. I gave my erection a couple of strokes as I stared at the intimate video.

I had to admire John's camera work. At the time, I didn't notice what he was doing. After he left the bathroom, he immediately went for his smartphone. It wasn't just my eyes that followed my wife's curvaceous ass into the shower.

I fast-forwarded through some boring video of John talking to me while I prepared dinner, and Cathy took her shower. I started playing the recording after my wife stepped out of the shower, her pale white body sparkling with drops of water everywhere. I enjoyed watching her dry herself with an old threadbare bath towel, which was the only clean one left after I gave our best one to my guest.

My wife struggled to cover herself with the tattered piece of cotton that wasn't large enough for the task. She managed to tuck in the frayed top corners just above the swell of her ample breasts. The small towel left a gap down her right side, exposing a long strip of pink flesh. She checked herself in the mirror and blushed at the sight of her ass cheeks peeking out below the bottom of the towel. She adjusted the thread-bare cloth to cover the bottom of her gorgeous butt. The new position exposed so much soft breast flesh she was close to displaying her dark pink areoles. Cathy slinked back into the room and headed for the chest of drawers containing her clothes.

I said, "Dinners getting cold."

John was smiling when he said, "Cathy, I hope you're not going to get formal on me. It wouldn't be fair for you to dress up since I'm stuck wearing a towel while my clothes dry. If anything, Mike is overdressed."

My wife looked at John's muscular, barely-covered, mahogany-colored body, and blushed.

"You can't expect me to eat dinner wearing nothing more than this old rag."

I'm not sure what came over me. Maybe it was three beers on top of weeks of twenty-hour shifts watching patients die despite our best efforts to fight a disease for which we had no effective medications. Maybe it was a desire to flaunt my beautiful, unobtainable wife in my former roommate's face after having spent college watching him parade one gorgeous conquest after another in front of me.

I said, "A hostess should never make their guests uncomfortable. Besides, it wouldn't be polite for us to start eating before you join us. Come on. Dinner's getting cold, and there's nothing worse than cold, greasy noodles."

"Mike, I'm barely covered."

It was my turn to laugh. "Don't be so modest. John already saw your naked butt when you ran into the bathroom."

Cathy glared at me for a moment.

"Mike, you are such a jerk."

I enjoyed listening to my feeble arguments that somehow convinced my intelligent wife to eat dinner sitting next to a stranger, wearing nothing more than a skimpy, threadbare towel. Maybe, all the erotic fantasies involving John, we'd role played, had something to do with her uncharacteristic behavior. Undoubtedly, the rapid rise and fall of her chest revealed how agitated she was by my big black friend's all too obvious gaze.

Before my wife sat on the couch, John quickly adjusted the camera. He managed to catch my wife's face and upper torso as she flopped her cute ass down so hard the knot holding the towel together fell apart. I heard her squeal as she made a belated grab for the ragged piece of cloth covering her naked body. The camera caught my friend's lustful gaze as Cathy exposed herself. Sitting by her side, John had a better view than the camera, but the video still provided an ultra high definition view of most of my wife's exposed right side from her full breasts down to her hip.

I rewound the video and watched the nipple slip in slow motion. I saw that Cathy's pink nipple was erect, confirming my impression that she was aroused by the idea of sitting next to the man in her fantasies wearing nothing more than a ragged bit of cotton. I watched her hand tremble as she took a big gulp of the cold wine my friend had brought.

John was adjusting the camera again as he asked my wife if she would consent to an interview. With the new camera angle, I could see her long pale thighs pressed together and uncovered almost up to her crotch. The gap in her wrap left her right hip bared. I saw how nervous she was at the time. Her legs were raised on the balls of her feet and nervously bouncing up and down.

When her naked thigh accidentally brushed John's equally bare leg, she recoiled like she'd touched a live wire. She pressed her body against mine. I put my arm around her and felt her heart beating wildly. I hoped she could relax enough to eat.

My former roommate tried to help by moving as far away as possible on the overcrowded couch. He even kept his legs together to give her a little more room.

John picked up his iPhone and said, "Cathy, your husband was very accommodating. He answered all my questions about his experiences as a fledgling resident at the hospital. It would help my story if I could get a nurse's viewpoint on the Coronavirus crisis. Could I interview you while we eat?"

I skipped forward over my wife's recollections of the first time we met and our wedding in Minnesota and my retelling of the medicine man's strange prophecy. I let the video play when she stood up and reached toward the camera to fetch the half-empty wine bottle she was polishing off by herself. The camera didn't have the sweet view of her gorgeous ass and shaven pussy that John and I had from behind her. However, it did catch her shocked expression when her hand slid down her lower back and discovered she was treating John to a view no one in the world, but I had ever seen.

She squealed when her fingers encountered the exposed crack between her luscious ass cheeks and brushed over the moist opening to her vagina. She threw herself back onto the couch with the same disastrous results as the first time she sat down too hard. Once again, the knot flew open only this time the towel fell to her waist.

My wife looked at me with a stunned expression.

"Oh, my God."

Somehow, Cathy had managed to hold on to the half-empty wine bottle. She took her time as she carefully set it next to her glass with a shaky hand. The camera captured a breathtaking view of my wife's generous breasts heaving with her rapid breathing. It also showed John intently watching her every move. My innocent wife's face was red as she fumbled with the towel for what seemed an eternity before she managed to retie it.

She filled her glass quickly and took a couple of big gulps. Her legs were bouncing around on the balls of her feet again.

John said, "Thanks, Paul, for sharing the old medicine man's scary vision. I asked Cathy about the wedding to relax her. Now I have to start all over."

I saw myself raising my fingers to my lips and mimicked zipping them shut. My friend put his hand on my wife's jouncing leg just above her knee and gave it a firm squeeze. Cathy stared at the large black hand wrapped around her trim white thigh and poured more wine into her glass.

Thanks to the video, I now understood why John had kept his hand on my wife's leg. Not only was he squeezing the tender flesh just above her knee, but he was also gently rocking her leg side to side. At the time, I'd thought he was trying to calm her. Now I realize the licentious rogue was slowly spreading her thighs to expose her bare pussy to the camera that was aimed straight up the widening gap between her long slender legs. From where we sat on the couch, the towel hid my wife's sex, but the camera saw everything. At the time, neither Cathy nor I had a clue what my friend was doing.

My wife's engorged pussy was on full display in luscious super high definition color. She was so aroused, her labia were dripping-wet and beginning to flower. Her sex was more inflamed than it had been only a few minutes earlier when Cathy had accidentally exposed her bare pussy by leaning over the coffee table. I wondered if the towel falling to her waist had indeed been an accident. Her seemingly innocent mishap had ignited both her mind and body.

There wasn't anything fascinating in the next video file. Somehow, John had missed me finger fucking my wife in the kitchen. The file concluded when I turned the lights out and got into the middle of the bed. Once we settled down, the camera stopped recording. I remembered John saying it had a motion-sensing trigger.

#

The next video file started around 3:30 in the morning, which was about thirty minutes before my alarm would go off. The room was a little darker, but the video quality was still decent, thanks to the light from the marquee across the street.

It was my wife who had triggered the camera. She slid out of bed and watched John for a minute. He was lying on his side, facing away from me, and I could hear both of us snoring. The video showed my wife pulling her nightshirt over her head. Her bikini panties quickly followed her gown to the floor.

She carefully climbed back into the bed and knelt beside me. Her hand slipped inside my boxers. After a bit of slow rubbing, her hand reappeared, holding my partially erect cock. She leaned over and took the mushroom head into her mouth. From memory, I knew how fantastic it felt to have her tongue licking the tip while her hand was sliding up and down my shaft. After a minute or so, she worked her mouth down to the base of my seven-inch cock. I recalled all the hard work she had put into achieving that skill. None of my previous casual sex partners had ever bothered to learn how to deep throat a large cock. It was an example of love triumphing over lust.