Do You Know Deanna?

“Take off your blouse, please,” he said, as he turned to write a notation on the chart.

“What?”

“Remove your blouse, please.” he repeated.

Deanna straightened up on the table, making her back as rigid as possible. She looked straight ahead and snapped, “I don’t take off my blouse, Doctor!”

“But I need to listen to your chest and your back,” he said, looking perplexed.

“You may listen through the blouse, Doctor,” Deanna said, holding herself primly erect.

Nurse Wilson looked from Deanna to the doctor, then lowered her eyes, waiting for whatever was coming next.

The doctor reached out his right hand to the back of Deanna’s neck, saying, “Believe me, Miss Ford, it will be perfectly all right. Miss Wilson will be in the room the whole time—”

“Young man!” exploded Deanna, as she slapped his hand smartly.

Nurse Wilson suppressed a giggle. The stunned young doctor appeared on the verge of laughing himself but gained control.

“Young man,” continued Deanna, clutching her throat with both hands as though guarding a valuable possession.  “No man has ever looked at or touched my chest! You may examine me through the blouse.”

When he had finished the examination, he wrote out a prescription for penicillin, one for a decongestant, and one for pain. He handed the forms to Deanna, asking her to see the receptionist on her way out, and dismissed her. She thanked him, slid from the table, picked up her purse, and as she flounced from the room, muttered an audible, “I miss the sterile, white uniforms.”

She smiled to herself as peals of laughter emanated from the small examining room. Twenty minutes later she was repeating her performance in another doctor’s office. 

Now she sterilized everything that Jared used and wore  a mask over her nose and mouth as she tended to his needs.  She cut the penicillin tablets into quarters and gave one to  him every six hours. She held him in her arms and gently  tapped his back and chest. She urged liquids on him all day long, getting him to take only small amounts at a time. She sat by his pallet and watched him through the night. At a certain point she resolved that if he wasn’t improved by noon the next day, she would admit him to a hospital. It’s all over, she thought.