when the job requires it. Seldom, that is, as the patient is usually not clothed.
`But it’s not “Mrs Long”, Doctor. I am usually called “Maureen”.’
`”Maureen” it is. This is Dagmar. Roast, meet Alice; Alice, meet Roast. And Pixel,
too, Dagmar. He’s the one with the short legs.’
`Howdy, Maureen. Hi, Pixel.’
‘Mee-ow.’
`Hi, Dagmar. Sorry to keep you late.’
‘De nada, ducks.’
`Dagmar, either I am out of my skull, or Maureen is. Which is it?’
`Couldn’t it be both? I’ve had my doubts about you for a long time, Boss.’
`Understandable. But she really does seem to have lost a chunk of her memory. At
least. Plus possible hallucinations. You’ve studied materia medica much more
recently than I have; if someone wanted to cause a few hours temporary amnesia, what
drug would he choose?’
‘Huh? Don’t give me your barefoot boy act. Alcohol, of course. But it might be
almost anything, the way the kids nowadays eat, drink, snort, smoke, or shoot
anything that doesn’t shoot back.’
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Heinlein, Robert A – To Sail Beyond the Sunset.txt
`Not alcohol. Enough alcohol to do that produces a horrible hangover, with
halitosis, twitches and shakes, and bloodshot eyes. But look at her – clear eyes,
healthy as a horse, and innocent as a pup in the clean laundry. Pixel! Stay out of
that! So what do we look for?’
`I dunno; let’s operate and find out. Urine sample. Blood sample. Saliva, too?’
`Certainly. And sweat, if you can find enough:
`Vaginal specimen?’
‘Yes.’
`Wait,’ I objected. `If you intend to poke around inside me, I want a chance to
douche and wash:
`Not bleedin’ likely, ducks,’ Dagmar answered gently. ‘What we need is whatever is
in there now… not after you’ve washed your sins away. Don’t argue; I wouldn’t want
to break your arm:
I shut up. I do indeed want to smell good, or not smell at all, when being examined.
But as a doctor’s daughter (and a therapist myself) I knew that what Dagmar said
made sense… since they were looking for drugs. I didn’t expect that they would
find any… but they might; I certainly was missing some hours. Days? Anything could
have happened.
Dagmar had me pee in a cup and took my blood and saliva, then told me to climb on to
the table and into the stirrups. `Shall I do it? Or the Boss? Out of the way, Pixel!
And stop that.’
‘Either of you.’ (A truly considerate nurse. Some female patients can’t stand to be
touched down below by females, others are shy with males. Me, I was cured of all
such nonsense by my father before I was ten.)
Dagmar came back with a dilator… and I noticed something. Brunette, I said she
was. She had remained undressed save for scanty panties – which were not opaque. she
should have shown a dark, built-in fig leaf, no?
No. Just skin shade and a hint of the Great Divide.
A woman who shaves or otherwise depilates her pubic curls has a profound interest in
recreational sex. My beloved first husband Brian pointed this out to me in the Mauve
Decade, circa 905 Gregorian. I’ve checked Brian’s assertion through a century and a
half, endless examples. (I am not counting prepping for surgery or for childbirth.)
The ones who did it because they preferred that styling were without exception
hearty, healthy, uninhibited hedonists.
Dagmar wasn’t prepared for surgery; she (obviously!) was not about to give birth.
No, she was about to take part in a saturnalia. QED.
It made me feel warm toward her. Brian, bless his lecherous soul, would have
appreciated her.
By now, in the course of chatting while she took samples, she knew the essentials of
my `hallucination’, so she knew that I was a stranger in town. As she was adjusting
that damned dilator (I have always detested them, although this one was blood
temperature and was being handled with the gentle care that a woman can bring to the
task, having been there herself) – while she was busy with this, I asked a question
in order to ignore what she was doing. ‘Dagmar, tell me about this festival.’