Smoke Signals (19 page)

“VIKTORIYA CHAMBERS?” THE
nurse called out, standing in the open doorway with a clipboard in her hands. She looked up and scanned the room.

It took me a moment to recognize that she meant me. I wasn’t used to having Razor’s surname as my own. Nerves might have played into it, too. I’d come to hate going to the doctor in America. They always treated me…well, like I was a porn star. Which I was. It was demoralizing, to say the least, to have my line of work thrown back in my face when I just wanted to get tested for STDs and get a shot for birth control, though. Now I would have to go through it all over again. I doubted this time would be any different, despite the fact that I was now a married woman and no longer working in that industry.

The stigma remained, whether I was actively engaged in that field or if it was well in the past.

Razor reached for my hand and got to his feet. I took it, slinging the strap of my purse over my shoulder and tucking it tight against my body.

“It’s all right if I come in with her?” he asked when we reached the nurse.

She met my eyes. “As long as it’s okay with you?”

I nodded. Maybe, if he was with me, they wouldn’t pry as much. Maybe they’d treat me as if I were any other woman, not a piece of filth. I doubted it, but allowing myself to hope, even if only for a brief slip of time, calmed me somewhat.

“Right this way,” she said, waving an arm down a long hallway. She led us into a corner examination room and had me sit on a table that had stirrups on the end. I tried not to panic with the stirrups right there. This was a doctor’s office. They would only use them for an exam. It wouldn’t be like what I’d been through in the porn world. Even though my rational mind knew that if they put me in them, it was only for medical reasons and not to torture me just for the hell of it, there was something inside me that couldn’t get on board with that. My pulse was pounding so hard it was like a lion’s roar in my head. I could barely hear the questions she was asking, let alone figure out how to answer them. Maybe it was for the best that Razor was in here with me, after all.

“Viktoriya?” the nurse said, and the way she said it made it clear I’d completely missed her most recent question.

Too lost in my own thoughts. Trapped in my head. I swallowed hard and sent a panicked look in Razor’s direction.

He took my hand and squeezed before looking at the nurse. “We’re here because Tori’s having pain during intercourse.”

She flashed her eyes over to me. “What kind of pain?”

I shrugged and shook my head, unable to find words. No doctor or nurse had ever bothered to ask that before. They’d always just made snarky comments like, “Maybe you should stop letting them use baseball bats inside you,” or, “I’d be uncomfortable, too, if I had a roomful of people watching and cameras capturing everything.” They seemed to think if I would just get out of the business, it would all go away. Like it was my fault.

But since no one had ever asked, I didn’t know how to answer.

“Stinging or burning?” she asked. “Or is it more like a cramp? Stabbing, clenching, throbbing? And how bad is it, on a scale of one to ten?”

I glanced at Razor, and he nodded while rubbing his thumb over the same spot in a soothing manner.

“Burning?” I paused to think. “Usually burns. And I get too tight, like stretch too much.”

She scribbled some notes on the chart. “How bad is it?”

“Different every time. Maybe five. Maybe nine or ten.”

“How often does it get up to a nine or ten?”

Almost every time.
But I said, “Sometimes.”

“It’s like her muscles down there are trying to keep me out,” Razor added.

The nurse kept scribbling, not looking up. “All right. Let’s talk about your sexual history.”

This was when she would start judging me. This was when everything would change. My chest suddenly felt too small to contain both my heart and my lungs.

“How old were you when you first had intercourse?”

“Sixteen? No, fifteen.” Probably too young.

No reaction, but that wasn’t the question that would cause her to raise her eyebrows. “And how many partners have you had?”

Now for the shock. Razor kept up smoothing circles over my hand with his thumb.

“No idea,” I said, my voice thick. “Hundreds. Maybe more.”

She didn’t look up, just kept jotting down notes. “Unprotected?”

“No condom usually. I was porn star.”

She nodded, as if it was something she heard every day. “So you were tested regularly, then? I think that industry insists on monthly testing, right? And you’re on birth control?”

“I’m clean. Get shots for birth control.”

“Depo-Provera?”

“Yes.”

For several more minutes, she continued asking her questions, never once making me feel as though I were a freak or an idiot for having lived the life I’d lived. The whole time, Razor never released my hand.

“All right,” the nurse said. She stood up and handed me a paper gown. “I’ll go over all of this with Dr. Rodriguez before she comes in to examine you. She’s going to want to do a full exam, so I need you to undress completely and cover yourself with this. And I’m guessing that even though you’ve had STD testing done recently, she’ll want to do some more blood work just to be sure it’s not something like that at the root of your issues. I’ll leave you for a few minutes and then we’ll be back.” She ducked out of the room and closed the door.

“Want me to give you a few minutes to change?” Razor asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want to be alone in this cold, sterile room. Not with those stirrups. “Stay,” I said. “Help me tie it.”

“Okay.”

I got up and made quick work of stripping off my clothes. Once I had the gown unfolded and in place, I turned so he could secure it in place for me. His fingers fumbled with the strings, but after a moment, he finished and rested his hands on my shoulders.

“What’s got you so scared?” he asked.

I shrugged and shook my head.

“I can feel your heart trying to jump out of your chest, Tori, and you’ve been near panic since we came into this room.”

I leaned back into him, not wanting to let him see my face. There was no chance I’d ever convince him I wasn’t scared out of my mind if he could look in my eyes. He immediately put his arms around my waist and held me close.

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Tell me. Let me know so I can help you.”

“Fear makes no sense.”

“No one ever said it did. Doesn’t stop us from getting scared.”

“You’re not scared.”

He chuckled. “I’m not scared of anything in this room, no. But there are plenty of things I’m scared of.”

“What?”

“Motorcycles. Driving over bridges. Clowns. Spiders. Failure. Letting my mom down.”

“Normal things,” I pointed out. Well, most of them were. Motorcycles? I’d never heard of anyone being afraid of that. Anyway, my fears weren’t normal.

“Maybe so. Still, for the most part, they’re irrational.” He tightened his grip on me, and somehow that helped slow my pulse. “So what is it?” he asked.

I shook my head, but I said, “Stirrups.” A shiver raced up my spine even as the word left my lips.

“Stirrups?” he repeated. I felt his head turn toward the examination table. “Mm-hmm. Well, I’ll be right here with you. I’ll hold your hand through the whole thing.”

I couldn’t say that his reassurances made me feel all that much better about what was to come, but there wasn’t time for my panic to fully ensnare me. A knock sounded at the door, and the nurse poked her head in.

“All ready?” she asked.

“All ready,” Razor repeated.

She and the doctor came into the room.

“Okay, Viktoriya,” Dr. Rodriguez said. “Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on with you, shall we?”

They instructed me to lie down on the table, inching my ass toward the end of it as they settled my legs into the stirrups. My heart thundered. Only shallow, shaking breaths made their way into my lungs.

Razor took my hand and held on tight enough I could feel it over the electrical jolts of terror pinging my body.

I pressed my eyes closed. Only my body. It was only my body, and she was only a doctor, and this was only an exam. The words bounced around in my head, and I tried desperately to cling to them the way I was clinging to Razor.

No use.

She widened the angle of the stirrups, and the icy touch of the speculum met my flesh.

Breathe. Breathe. In and out.
I found a spot on the ceiling and focused all my attention there. Nothing helped.

My pussy clenched and clamped down, just like it always did, and the sharp sting followed. I blinked back tears of pain and frustration.

Razor said something in my ear, his deep voice somehow getting through the fog. I couldn’t make out his words, but the sound of his voice helped bring me down. He smoothed my hair and kept talking, and somehow the breaths kept flowing through my lungs—shallow and shaky, yes, but at least there was movement.

Finally, the doctor removed the speculum, and the pain began to ebb.

“Get her out of the stirrups,” Razor barked at them.

“She can—”

“Just do it. Get her out of them.” He kissed the center of my forehead, just above the bridge of my nose. “It’s okay. It’s over now.”

It might be over, but it was far from okay.

Once I was free of the stirrups, they draped a blanket over my legs, and Razor helped me to sit. I expected he would go back to his seat near the exam table, but he didn’t. He squeezed onto the table behind me and ran his hands up and down my arms, allowing me to lean back against him.

“Well,” Dr. Rodriguez said, looking from me to Razor and back. “It appears you have vaginismus.”

Still in a daze from what had just happened, I asked. “What is vaginismus?”

She took off her gloves and tossed them in a bin and then washed her hands. “It’s where your PC muscles—the ones at the opening of your vagina—have an involuntary physical reaction when something attempts entry. In some cases, it’s so severe that nothing can get through. In other cases, like yours, there’s more tightness than there should be, and it’s accompanied by a lot of pain. The good news is it’s treatable, and most women are able to go on to have a normal sex life after treatment. The bad news is there’s no way of knowing how long it might take for you to get to that point, and we might have to try a few different therapies before we find the right one for your situation.”

“So where do we get started?” Razor asked. He sounded so eager.

I wasn’t eager. I was dreading whatever it might be, because I was sure it would hurt. Everything that had to do with my pussy hurt, and it had for years now. Whatever she was going to suggest, I didn’t want to do it.

The doctor smiled. “It’s really nice to see you have such a supportive partner in all of this. That’s going to help, along with a lot of patience on both of your parts.” She sat down across from us and jotted down a few notes on my chart. “All right, I think—based on your past—we need to start with a two-pronged approach. The first is physical therapy. There’s a therapist in town who specializes in these kinds of cases, so I want you to see her.”

“And other part?” I asked, already trying to come up with excuses to avoid the first piece of her treatment plan. Would I like to be able to have sex pain free again? Of course. But did I believe for even one second that it was possible? No. Not at all.

“The other part of the plan is that you need counseling. We don’t know exactly what causes vaginismus, but we often find that a traumatic event is involved. Given your past, I think it’s highly likely that you’ve experienced any number of traumas, and quite possibly a number of them have been sexual experiences. I think it’s going to be a necessary part of your treatment plan.”

I didn’t want to see a counselor. I didn’t want to talk about the things I’d been through. It was difficult enough to tell Razor even the small bits and pieces I’d told him, but to tell a stranger? I didn’t think I could do it.

“You could try a family counselor,” she said, oblivious to the panic rising within me, “but I think a sex therapist would actually be a better choice. And I think it would be best if you two go together, actually. It’s going to be important for your husband to truly understand everything you’ve been through and all the ways it’s still affecting you. And I’m not just talking about physical stuff. I’ve worked with several sex workers over the years—enough of them to know that no one comes out of that business unscathed.”

This was just getting worse. “I don’t want counseling,” I insisted. “No therapy. None of it. I don’t need—”

“No one’s going to make you do any of it,” Dr. Rodriguez cut in. “But if you want to be able to have a normal sex life, you’re going to have to do something. This isn’t likely to clear up on its own. Some women live with it for decades without realizing they can get help.”

This wasn’t a kind of help I could handle, though. I shook my head. “No therapy.”

She gave me a sad look before glancing over at Razor. “All right. I’ll go ahead and write down the information for those services in case you change your mind.”