Bad Doctor

33

“Lie down on your back,” she says.

“Why?”

“Just do it, Gideon. I’ve come a long way to be here.”

“If you’re looking for money-”

“Don’t insult me. I’m here because I have nowhere else to turn. Yeah, I was dying of cancer before you ever blew into town. But thanks to you, I’ve lost my boyfriend, my job, my best friend, and my apartment. Now lie down!”

I lie on my back and say, “Think this over before you do something stupid. I’m in a position to help you get the finest treatment available.”

“Take off your clothes,” she says.

“ What?”

“You heard me. Strip. Now!”

“No.”

She leans over and slaps my face, hard. Then slaps it again, paying me back for slapping her at Chris Fowler’s house.

“I’m dead serious, Gideon.”

I remove my clothes but place them on my crotch.

“Toss them toward the couch,” she says.

I toss them.

She sits on the stool and points the gun at my crotch and says, Spread your legs wide apart.

I do.

“It’s humiliating, isn’t it,” she says. A statement, not a question.

I say, “Yes. It’s humiliating. You’ve made your point. But you’re a stripper. Making you strip isn’t far from what you do for a living.”

“Oh, really? Well, you’re a surgeon, right? Maybe I should force you to perform surgery on yourself at gunpoint.”

“What do you want from me?”

She sighs. “I bet when you walk in the hospital you have total power. The nurses probably pee their pants worrying what you might do, or say, and your bosses have to bend over backwards to make sure you’re happy.”

“If you’re planning to shoot me, can we skip the lecture?”

“Know what, Gideon?”

“What?”

“You don’t look so powerful right now. You know how you look?”

“Like a naked guy?”

“Like a very average middle-aged man with a very flaccid penis.”

She leans over me and flicks my dick.

“Ow!”

“I bet if a total stranger saw you like this, she wouldn’t be able to tell you’re a world-class surgeon. She’d probably guess you’re a janitor, a pest control guy, or a TV repairman.”

I’m lying on the floor on my back naked, my legs spread wide apart while an eighteen-year-old woman talks trash and stares at my genitals. The one thing that makes it almost bearable, we both know she has every right to do it. I close my eyes in deep humiliation and shame, and neither of us speaks for a full minute until I say, “How long do you expect me to lie here like this?”

“We’re almost done.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I haven’t robbed you yet.”