Medical Assistance

The first sign was the pain.

It wasn’t all the time, it hit him at different times during the day. A kind of throbbing and aching that increased, and gradually lessened. It started a few years ago, after he had quit church.

When the pastor had gotten caught banging the choir director after hours, Derek James had finally seen the light, so to speak. All these years, growing up in the church, people told him that sex was bad, that you shouldn’t touch yourself, that you waited for marriage and stayed faithful to your wife. Well, if the pastor couldn’t do it, who could?

He kept his discontent to himself for a while, but then he started noticing how much money they were asking for and how often, and he thought about how fancy the church was and how the pastor still drove a Caddy and had a gold watch in spite of his supposed disgrace. It crept up on him, and finally he left.

It was a relief more than anything else. But there was no relief for one thing. That was the pain. It shot through his crotch, and was only relieved by his occasional dreams of women, who he didn’t know how to relate to at all. Derek loved women, but he didn’t know what to say to them.

So he said nothing. He stayed in his cubicle at work and tried not to think about Debbie the receptionist, with her red-blonde hair and voluptuous breasts, or Kaniesha who worked in Accounting with her perfectly round ass that bounced when she walked, or Lena in Shipping with her muscular, tanned body, her low husky laugh and her lips that put Angelina Jolie to shame. But he did dream about them, often, and awakened to find a mess in the bed and thoughts that he didn’t know how to handle swirling through his head. And then the pain would go away, for a while.

He still couldn’t bring himself to masturbate. He felt always like someone was watching him.

And now there was the pain. Right “there.” Where the only time he touched himself was to wash.

The day he had to stay home from work because of the pain, Derek got scared and called the doctor. He had no choice of physicians due to his insurance plan, and after 45 minutes on the phone he was finally directed to a Dr. Farren as his “primary care” physician. At that point he didn’t care if it was Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Lecter, as long as they could get rid of the pain.

On the way to Dr. Farren’s office he visualized horrible things, some kind of terrible problem, some rare disease or creeping crud that was destroying his manhood, even though he thought bitterly about how since he didn’t use it anyway, it’d make no difference.

The office was white and clean and the waiting room was filled with People. The magazine, that is. Along with Sports Illustrated and Woman’s Day and little booklets with cheerful titles like “How To Deal With Your Spondylitic Ankylosis,” and “What To Do About Edematic Praxitelitis” and “Coping With Your Pyloric Chondritis.” None of the magazines was any newer than 2003 and he didn’t want to chance the booklets; his hypochondria was already in high gear.

The nurse called him into the examining room, and he waited. Dr. Farren showed up and he groaned inwardly. A woman. He was going to have to tell a woman about this…pain.

She was friendly but businesslike. “The nurse tells me you have pain in your groin area,” she said. “If you want a male doctor to examine you, I think we can arrange for that, if you’d be more comfortable?”

“N…No!” Derek said. As embarrassing as it was for a woman to look at his…you know…it would be even worse if some guy were to do it. “I think I can cope, um, you know?”

“All right,” Dr. Farren replied. There was a silence in the room. She looked at him. He looked at her. A moment passed. Then another one.

“Mr. James?” she said gently. “I can’t examine you with your clothes on.”

“Oh right, right,” he said. I’m a perfect idiot, he thought. He quickly stripped down while she made notes of some sort. Then he sat on the examining table, which was cold as ice. She looked up and immediately her brow wrinkled.

Derek felt ill. He knew it. This was some horrid disease.

“Mr. James,” Dr. Farren said, “I can see from here that you must be in a lot of pain.”

“Yes,” he said. BUT FROM WHAT! He screamed mentally. What horrible disease do I have?

“This is the most advanced case of Puteulanus Orbis Res I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Do you ever ejaculate?”

Derek died even more inside.