“For which part?” the doctor asked as the nurse popped a thermometer in his mouth.
“Mucking stalls,” Peyton answered around the thermometer. It came out a lot like “fucking stalls” but that was how he felt about them. The nurse tutted at him and adjusted the thermometer to get it back under his tongue.
“So your muscles ache?” the doctor asked. “Anything else?”
Peyton debated, then decided not to throw Tex under the bus. The spanking had been unorthodox, but it’d done its job. He’d accomplished something difficult for the first time in a long time, and he was grateful to Tex for that.
“No, nothing else.”
“Excellent. Glad to hear it. Not all our clients weather their first punishment so well.”
“Um.” Peyton glanced between doctor and nurse as the nurse removed the thermometer and fastened on a blood pressure cuff. “Punishment?”
“I assume you were punished? Very few people get through their first day without doing something worth being punished for. And if they did, I suspect their trainers would just make something up.”
The doctor smirked at the nurse who smirked back.
“Your vitals look good,” the doctor continued as Peyton sat there gaping at him. “I’ll just check for bruising and you can be on your way.” He made a circular motion with his finger, asking Peyton to roll onto his stomach.
Peyton sucked in a breath. So theydidknow what Tex had done to him. This was really the program. This fucking ranch had brought him here to beat him. That wasn’t right. He would call a lawyer. He would call consumer protection. Well, no, he probably wouldn’t call anyone. That sounded like a lot of work. Bettina! That was it. He would call Bettina.
And then she would say I told you so. She would order a car to take him to the airport in Dallas, then pick him up at the other end and go on enabling his well-oiled slide into self-destruction courtesy of nothing worse than wishy-washiness.
The doctor made a circular motion again and Peyton rolled over, like he always did. He didn’t know what to do about The Bars and Stars or about Tex or about the rest of his life. All he knew was how to take the path of least resistance, which at this moment meant rolling over.
The nurse flipped up the back of his gown, exposing his ass for the doctor’s evaluation. Peyton hid his face in his arms and pretended this wasn’t happening.
“Hmm,” the doctor said. “Nice color, very even. Tex always does good work. Does this hurt?” He tapped Peyton’s right ass cheek lightly with a gloved hand.
Peyton shrieked.“What do you think?” he asked once he’d pulled himself back together.
“A little bruising on the right glute,” the doctor said to the nurse, who was typing his comments into a computer. Great, there was going to be a permanent record of his humiliation. “Make a note for Tex to tread lightly in that area for the next few days.”
“Um,” Peyton said, because that comment suggested he was going to be getting his ass beat on the regular, but the doctor ignored him to insert his thumbs into Peyton’s crack and separate his cheeks widely.
“No intra-gluteal marks. Sphincter appears untouched.”
“My sphincter was definitely untouched,” Peyton grumbled. “Is that supposed to be part of the program too?” Because Tex had sure acted like it wasn’t.
“In extreme cases, some trainers find it an effective spot for delivering punishment.”
“What?” Peyton scrambled back into a sitting position to hide his sphincter from any such possibility. “You don’t mean he’d… right on my…? Is that allowed? I’m not allowing that. No.”
The doctor shrugged. “Then I would advise you to follow the program. Punishment is the result of deviation.”
“But you said trainers make shit up.”
The nurse smirked again. Peyton wanted to smack the expression right off his face.
“Just a joke,” the doctor said reassuringly. “Everything Tex did was exactly to protocol, I’m sure. Let’s see. According to this, you showed up late, then attempted to leave without completing your assigned work. Is that correct?”
That was, unfortunately, correct.
“Then it sounds like punishment was warranted. And it was administered with the prescribed effectiveness. Patient is cleared for tomorrow,” he said to the nurse as he started to peel off his rubber gloves.
“Wait!”
The doctor turned back to him with a questioning look.
