Flashes in the Dark - Rebecca

"It tears me up from inside, but I do it every day. Before Perry Taylor, there was Tommy Dunn. Before him, Isabel Garcia. Before her, Jonathan Carr. Before him... well you get the point. Now tell me, these are children I didn't know before they came in. My only attachment to them is as their doctor and yet, each leaves an indelible scar. Imagine if that was my own child."

Heather pursed her lips and nodded in understanding.

"Right from the first grieving parents I saw as a resident, I knew that the smallest chance of me being in their place, however insignificant, is too high a chance for me. I'm sorry if it sounds improbable and unreasonable, but that's how I am. The world can think it's because I'm a baby-hating career woman hell-bent on rising in my job. I can live with that."

The emotion had choked her voice, rendering it a semi-coherent stream of syllables. Heather moved beside her and stroked her hair softly. Her body shook with a few more sobs. They held each other tightly and Heather let her friend cry some more.

"Let it out, Rebecca. Let it all out," she whispered, running her fingers through her scalp. Heather felt a strange warmth within her, feeling connected to a woman she didn't know an hour ago.

Dr Rebecca Maitland, MD, walked with the weight of the world on her shoulders. For once, she had the opportunity to share some of it.

**

"Really?"

"Yes, there's nothing legally we can do," said Heather, making sure the bottle was empty before rolling it away. "Perry's parents left him to die all alone in a hospital. As inhuman as that sounds, you'd be hard-pressed to find an actual law that they broke."

"What about parental neglect, or emotional cruelty or something else?" said the doctor.

"Trust me, it's not a case worth fighting."

Heather walked to her cabinet and took out a swirled red decanter. The design on the glass was as intricate as it was unique, etched in a thin layer of amethyst and crystal. Rebecca let her gaze wander over the fine details.

"I present to you my original Remy Martin Black Pearl," said Heather with a flourish. "One of the world's most expensive cognacs. This particular bottle came to me at an auction in Abu Dhabi a few months back. You do not want to know for how much."

"I can hazard a guess," laughed the doctor, watching her hostess pour out two glasses filled to the brim with the inky black liquid.

They leaned back on the couch, facing each other. Heather took a sip from her glass and let her fingers wander over her date's palm. The doctor looked on longingly before she leaned in for a kiss. The kiss was slow and exploratory, each of them getting a feel for the other. Rebecca let her tongue gently feel the inside of the lawyer's mouth.

The kiss continued, undeterred by the heavy stench of nicotine. Heather's arms went around her paramour's neck and she softly caressed her scalp.

"How long has it been since you last did this?"

Rebecca did not answer, kissing more urgently now. She detached her lips from Heather's and began trailing a series of gentle of kisses down her neck.

She stopped to pull Heather's dress away. Her eyes waited a moment to appraise the breasts laid out before her. They were plump and firm, yet inadequate to Heather. Rebecca lowered her lips to the swell of her left breast and began a slow lick on the pliable flesh.

Heather threw her head back and groaned with pleasure as the tip of Rebecca's tongue traced the underside of her breast, moving up along the side in a single agonizingly slow motion. Rebecca went on, tracing a long ellipse repeatedly. Gently, she brought her hand to the nipple and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, making Heather moan again.

The oblong licks gradually spiralled inwards as she approached the nipple, rolled and tweaked in anticipation. Abruptly, she let go of the nipple, letting her tongue scrub the areola instead. The tip of Rebecca's tongue fluttered over the nipple, flicking it back and forth before she took it in her mouth.

Her tongue lashed the sensitive bud, causing a burst of pleasure to course through Heather, moistening her below. Rebecca took the nipple between her teeth and stretched it out before slurping it once more.

Heather's eyes widened and her pulse quickened. Rebecca let her free hand tweak and pinch the nipples of her other breast. Her mouth followed her hand and her hand nestled between Heather's legs, feeling the nascent dampness. Her roving fingers played with her puffy lips before centring on her clit. She rubbed it with her thumb, not relenting the delicious feel of her tongue on Heather's nipple.

It was all too much for the lawyer. The combination of the thumb grinding against her engorged clit and the experienced mouth drove her over the edge. Her clenched shut, seeing sparks and flares dance before them. Her climax sent her into orbit, looking down at the world from a hazy vantage point. When she opened her eyes again, her vision was blurry. Rebecca brought her palm up and painted Heather's face in her own flood of arousal.

The doctor enclosed her lover's face in her hands and licked all over her, tasting the unique taste of her juices melded with the sheen of sweat clinging to her skin. Her tongue was insistent, but kittenish in the way it lapped over her face, culminating in a deep kiss. Heather tasted her own arousal in that kiss.

"Not long enough to be out of practice."

**

"The view is spectacular," reaffirmed Rebecca. She sat on two deck chairs, facing outwards on the balcony, wrapped in a flimsy sheet with Heather. Twilight was rapidly losing ground to the inky blackness of night. Heather leaned on her lover and gently kissed her neck.

The two of them faced the glittery metropolis ahead of them. The skyscrapers at the far end of Central Park were lit, looking like a montage of indistinct shapes lit in a continuous incandescent glow. Rebecca took a sip of her cognac, letting the acid taste burn past her tongue. Heather took a long drag from her latest cigarette, making sure it was a stump before she tossed it off the balcony.

She looked to her left and sensed so much whirling around in her new friend's mind. She had seen that look of holding too much inside in the mirror and knew Rebecca was afraid to open the floodgates. They looked at the horizon wistfully.

"Heather, is there any real justice in the world?"

"Not really. What passes for justice is what the rich and powerful have put in place. If you have money, you can get away with anything. The laws have specific weak points you can use to drag the case on indefinitely, if not get the charges dropped. The system is only there to serve the ones who can afford it."

"Sounds a lot like healthcare," Rebecca smirked. The lawyer took out a new cigarette and lit it. Her eyes beheld the ephemeral shroud of cigarette smoke before it dispersed into the night air. They sat in silence for a while.

"Do you always assume your client is innocent, or do you ask them first?"

"Rule number one of being a lawyer - never ask a question you don't want the answer to," she said, sending a thin stream of smoke into the cold, unforgiving night.

"Don't ask, don't tell," Rebecca said. "I'm familiar with the concept."

Heather turned to face her lover curiously. She looked straight ahead at the jagged skyline in the distance, her milky skin washed in moonlight. She began talking in a disenchanted voice trying to hide the burden of pain she brought up from the nadir of her soul.

"There's this word. We oncologists think about it. It's a weight we walk under, a nagging feeling that refuses to go. We don't use the word, preferring to cloak it in barely understood technical jargon, or don't speak of it at all. But it's always there - that evil word."

The lawyer looked at her for a few moments, trying to read her mind. Rebecca continued staring in the distance. For the first time in her life, she did not feel the need to keep that straight face. For once, she felt the presence of a kindred spirit.

"Euthanasia."

Heather looked down and bit her lip. A private part of her had sensed this coming.

"Oliver Barksdale, a 65 year old former police officer with end stage lung cancer. The pain was so intense that I couldn't even pretend to lessen it. I sat beside him and showed him how to use the morphine pump. I told him that too much would kill him, but not to worry since the pump only gave out morphine within safe bounds. To override the limit, one had to enter a special code into the electronic keypad. I left his side, went to the head nurse and told her the code was 6743 loudly. Then I went back to my office and cried where no one could see it."

"When did it happen?" asked Heather, wrapping her non-smoking arm around the doctor's neck and drawing her closer.

"Last week. It's not the first time."

"Did it make you feel better?"

"I know I gave that man everything I could. I know that he knew that too. It should have given me some measure of peace knowing I had done the humane thing in the end."

There was silence for a few seconds, interspersed by the sound of cicadas from Heather's landscape garden as the words hung in the air.

"At least you're legally covered. Any defence lawyer can prove that there are no reasonable grounds to arrest you. You gave a suicidal man a loaded gun, but you didn't pull the trigger. Big difference."

"Morally, is there a difference?"

"I'm the last person you want to come to for moral advice," said Heather quietly, finishing off her latest fag. "I have learnt that there are grey areas to everything, even murder."

"Like with Mrs Belvedere," Rebecca remarked.

"I don't want to talk about her."

Rebecca read the heavy tone and understood not to probe any further in that direction. The grim silence hung in the air long enough for Heather to dispense with her current cigarette. She was half-way through the next one when the doctor spoke up, having contemplated other topics in the interlude.

"Who was your first lover?"

Heather stared at her incredulously for a few seconds.

"You know mine, so it's only fair you return the favour," the doctor said, slightly tipsy.

"Did we suddenly land back in freshman year?"

"Oh... c'mon."

"Fine. It was a professor at Yale. Satisfied now?"

"Hardly," mocked Rebecca. "Details, woman. Details."

"Professor Charlotte van Dyke," Heather said with a mock flourish. "Ironically enough, she was entrusted with teaching Legal Ethics."

"Is the first ethical guideline to sleep with your student?"

"If she had written it, I guess it would have been. The lady had Dyke in her name. In retrospect, I can see why."

"So... was it all soft and tender between you and your professor?"

"Hardly," said Heather, blowing a ringlet of smoke. "She is not one for the delicate niceties of sex. She is a predator in the truest sense of the term. As I found out eventually, she takes a naïve, young female student in hand at the beginning of their freshman year. It was mutually beneficial in my case as I learned a lot more about the law in her secluded mansion than I did in four years of tedious classes."

"Secluded mansion? She sounds like someone out of a Stephen King book."

"Charlotte is independently wealthy. She teaches only as a pastime, and because she actually wrote that damn textbook on ethics. She still takes that course and still lures unsuspecting freshman girls into her bedroom."

Rebecca paused to take a deep gulp of her cognac. The sky had finally given in to darkness, dotted with twinkling stars looking down on them.

"What did she do to you?"

"She spent the first month schmaltzing me on campus grounds. Some coffee, friendly banter and the like. It's amazing how much I confided in her and trusted her. It was a confusing time for me, coming to terms with my lesbian identity."

The doctor nodded in unspoken understanding.

"I always knew where this was going. Charlotte never had the gift of subtlety. Sitting across the table, I could sense her itching to drag me back to her place. Not that I would've turned her down. The clandestine thrill of a professor-student relationship was intoxicating."

"So did she drag you back to her place, kicking and screaming?"

"In a way. She promised to show me her rare, first-edition Anaïs Nin. Based on what she had told me, I just had to see it. It was then that she presented me with what would define our relationship - a silver collar."

Rebecca choked on her drink, sending trails of invaluable cognac to the floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, all the while staring at Heather like she was an other-worldly being. Heather simply shrugged back.

"Told you she doesn't care for the delicate niceties of sex. After that, it became a rule. Whenever I was inside the house, I had to wear that collar," spoke the lawyer, pausing to light a fresh Marlboro. "Am I making you uncomfortable?"

"Not by a long shot. I mean, BDSM isn't my thing, but I know enough about it not to be scandalised."

"Even on the Yale campus, I was always under her thumb. She had inventive tasks for me - from wearing a custom made vibe during a seminar where I was the speaker, to gritting my teeth into silence with my face pressed against the library window while she pounded me with her strap-on. These were two of the less colourful ones."

"It's a good thing we're both drunk," muttered Rebecca. "There's no other way we could be having this conversation."

"The best part was when she asked me to name complex rulings and important judgements from memory. Even the slightest mistake and I would feel all nine tails of her flogger against my bare ass. Most of the law I know now, I learnt on my hands and knees with my rear end exposed."

"How long did it go on?"

"Right up to the beginning of my sophomore year. I had lost my novelty to Charlotte and she had already settled on her next project - a certain Faye Burnett."

"Faye Burnett? The divorce attorney to the rich and famous?"

"Yeah, she's done well for herself. Although the only way I can picture her is masturbating with a Sharpie while trying to remember the countries where a no-fault divorce can hold. One wrong country and she had to restart her list. She only got to orgasm after saying all of them correctly."

"Charlotte invited you to watch, I presume."

"She frequently invited her previous initiates back to be part of the making of a new one. Faye and I had to perform several scenes for her Ladyship's viewing pleasure. The one universal rule was that neither of us got to cum until Charlotte van Dyke said so."

"She sounds like a fascinating woman. I wish I had the chance to meet her."

"It's not what you think. That year you spend with her changes you. You come naïve and unworldly wise and leave... someone else. She takes any innocence or goodness you have and kills it quietly. She made me a better lawyer, but a much worse person."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," said Heather coldly, taking a deep pull from her Marlboro. "I couldn't have been one-tenth the lawyer I am now if I still had a conscience worth mentioning. Charlotte took my conscience and crushed it like a child's dreams."

"Are you still in touch with her?"

"Only when I need advice. Sometimes, when I need some guidance and other times when I want her to tell me that I'm nothing more than one in her assembly line of monsters. Everybody can praise me, but I need her to tell me who I really am. To remind me."

"Bound by the shackles of your past," quoted Rebecca.

"Always."

**

Heather leaned back against the plush bed, her legs parted and her wet sex glistening in the dim light of the room. She saw the respectable doctor drain what was left of her glass in one gulp before letting her eyes roam over the temptation laid out so elegantly on the bed.

The tipsy doctor clambered up to her and they kissed. The kiss was hungry and passionate, expressing an unfed need in both women. Rebecca kissed down her neck and shoulder blade, allowing herself the liberty of a sharp nip at the skin every now and again. Heather moaned at the bites, her fingers enmeshed in her lover's hair, directing the movements.

Rebecca dipped lower, bringing her attentions to Heather's torso. The lawyer disentangled her fingers and lit up a fresh Marlboro. She took a pull, feeling the cocktail of nicotine flow through her and out of her mouth in a brief puff. Her brain was shaken back to the moment when she felt her nipple pinched and tweaked again. The doctor sucked her right nub into her mouth and sent recently familiar feelings tingling through her nervous system.

Heather groaned, feeling a desperate ache within her finally sated. She took another long drag and let her cigarette dangle off her hand. The doctor zigzagged across the length and breadth of her torso in a series of tortuously slow licks. Her tongue went lower with every passing sweep of her lover's stomach. Heather let out a low moan, deciding to sit back and be a spectator to the deconstruction of her own body.

The first time Rebecca's tongue made contact with her clit, Heather momentarily lost control. The cigarette slipped from her hand and burnt a neat hole through the inordinately expensive Ziegler Mahal carpet under them. Her eyes rolled back and her toes curled at the exquisite sensations imparted by her tongue.

The dexterous tongue made a trip down her inflamed lower lips. Rebecca licked and slurped down the length of her wet slit, teasing the fleshy insides. Heather put her fingers on either side of her opening and pulled the lips apart, revealing her pink interior. The doctor smiled and locked her lips to the opening, sending her wondrous tongue as deep inside as possible. The fleshy tongue thrust in and out of her before pulling out suddenly.

Heather's eyes snapped open in shock and she felt a vacuous emptiness. The feeling was soon dismissed by the good doctor inserting her index and middle fingers into the gaping orifice. She reached back and found the lawyer's G spot and rubbed against it. She turned, twisted and corkscrewed the fingers inside her, coaxing sinful pleasure out of the bedraggled lawyer.

The room reeked of sexual secretions. The air seemed thick with the smell of their carnality. Heather continued holding herself apart, struggling to stay still amidst the chaotic bursts of pleasure coursing through her nervous system.

She finally let out a guttural moan and let loose. Her body slumped and a dizzying orgasm swept through her. Her skin stuck to her lover's.

Gasping and panting for breath, she could barely make out the words "It's your turn next" over the pounding of her own heart. She lay on her back, her breasts rising and falling with each breath. The chilly air enveloped her sweaty frame, cooling the sweaty sheen plastered over her body.

"I have a better idea," mumbled Heather. "But give me a break to catch my breath."

She pulled herself and rested against the cushioned headboard. Her right hand reached out and pulled a new cigarette from the bureau behind her.

"Just a point of interest, but where do you get the Zoloft from? I know it's a taboo among doctors to prescribe themselves."

"Attorney-client privilege?"

"You're not my client, but sure."

"Fake prescriptions for a fake patient," she admitted. "I pay one of my orderlies to pick it up. The fake file exists in the records in case anyone cares."

"You will probably lose your medical license if someone ever investigates this fake file."

"I don't care. I need the Zoloft and no one else can know about it."

"I know a guy. It's the same guy who gets me Desyrel."

"You know quite a few criminals, Heather."