6. The Gown
Hale pulled out of her mouth and came on her tongue first.
Diane held still for it, church-committee mouth open, pearls ticking, and the first hot stripe hit the back of her teeth and ran over her lip onto her chin.
She swallowed what she could and stuck her tongue out so he’d see it sitting there, white on pink, the doctor who’d said it wasn’t necessary finishing on the patient who’d hiked her own skirt.
The first trainee stepped in and came on her tits.
A thick pulse across the beige cups and the swell he’d sucked when Hale was down the hall, striping a nipple, the pearls, the open blouse. Diane looked down at it and moaned, a filthy grateful sound, and used two fingers to smear him into the skin like lotion the chart hadn’t ordered.
The second trainee took the shaved pink.
He stroked over the neat split she’d spread on the paper — clean, swollen, dripping them already — and came across the bead and the lips in two heavy stripes that clung in the smoothness her husband never stayed to look at.
Diane jerked when the heat hit her clit and another little squirt mixed with him on the vinyl, a tick onto shredded paper.
Hale came again, smaller, on her cheek.
Leftover, ugly, aghast, a doctor painting his own patient while his trainees watched. She turned her face and took that too.
The first trainee added a last pulse to her open mouth.
She held it beside Hale’s, two men on one church-committee tongue, and let it run before she swallowed.
The second trainee rubbed the head through the mess on her pink and wiped the last of it into her, a filthy signature on the appointment.
Diane sat in it — face, tits, clean-shaven cunt shining — and laughed, wrecked.
“That’s the check,” she said. “Write it up. Don’t you write it up.”
Nobody wrote it up.
She pulled the gown on over the load and tied it once. Wet ran down her thigh under the modest paper. Room 3 smelled like wipes and the end of a secret. The clipboard still said routine.
She walked to the desk in the gown and her pumps.
The navy skirt was wadded in her bag, modest again, a costume.
The ripped hose were in the Room 3 trash under alcohol wipes and shredded paper.
Wet ran down her inner thigh under the paper tie — Hale, two trainees, her own mess — and she let it tick the inside of her pump.
The receptionist did not look at her face long enough to see the shine Hale had left at the hairline, or the mouth that had held three men.
Diane smiled the church-committee smile, the potluck smile, the minutes smile, and booked a follow-up with the voice she used when someone’s baby grabbed her necklace.
“Four weeks,” she said. “Same time if Dr. Hale has it. Routine is fine.”
The computer beeped. A slot opened on a Tuesday.
Nobody asked why a patient was in a gown in the hall.
A nurse passed — not the one from the door, or maybe the one from the door with her eyes welded to the linoleum — and Diane said thank you like a good patient, pearls ticking, knot rebuilt with her fingers in the exam-room mirror.
Behind her, Room 3’s door clicked. Water ran.
Trainees washing their hands of a chart that would never exist.
Hale filing nothing, aghast worn down to paperwork he wouldn’t write.
She signed the tablet.
The signature was steady. The thigh was not. She took the after-visit summary that listed blood pressure and no complaints and folded it over the ruined skirt in her bag like a cover sheet. The gown gaped when she reached. She pinched it shut. No one said *that’s not necessary.*
The automatic doors opened on sun and minivans.
She already had the next chart in her head before she found her keys. Four weeks. Same room if they gave it to her. Same hook for the gown. Same lie on the clipboard. Her husband would ask how the appointment went and she would say *fine* and he would check a box.
The car was hot from sitting in the lot.
Diane sat down on her own mess and shut the door and did not start the engine.
The gown was still on over Hale and the trainees, paper tie damp.
Pumps spotted from the tick that had run to the sole.
She looked at the clinic brick and at Room 3’s window — blinds down, a professional blank — and she laughed once, silent, mean, church-committee, the same laugh as a woman who had hiked her own skirt and then booked the next slot.
She pulled the gown off in the driver’s seat.
Wiped her face with the after-visit summary: blood pressure, no complaints, a cover sheet for a chin Hale had painted.
She dragged the navy skirt up over the clean-shaven pink that still shone with them, modest again, parked, a conservative woman putting the costume back on in a minivan row.
Her husband texted.
How was it?
She watched the cursor. The pearls were crooked. The knot would pass in the rearview if she didn’t look too long.
Fine, she typed. Blood pressure’s good. Follow-up in four weeks. Routine.
She started the car.
Between her legs the appointment was still wet and she drove with it that way on purpose — spanked hips on hot upholstery, hose in the clinic trash, gown in the bag like evidence she would throw away at home.
Already thinking about Hale’s mouth when he said it wasn’t necessary.
Already thinking about the nurse’s three seconds.
Already thinking about the hook on the wall and the chart that would say routine again.
He would check a box.
She had hiked the skirt.