The Right Treatment (8 page)

“Well, am I fit for it, doc?” Aoife asked. Matt stiffened. For a brief moment he misunderstood her, he thought she could see into his soul. He panicked, coughed, and then breathed again as he realised his error.

“Dr. McDaid. Yes, tomorrow we run rather than jog,” he managed to force out. To him his voice seemed high-pitched and flustered. He wondered if Aoife noticed.

“Tomorrow I will also do that exam you are due. You’ll come to the hospital after rehab. And now I am going to grab a shower then prepare some dinner. You may shower, but just put on your pyjama tops or a tee shirt and bathrobe. After dinner you have some lines to write.”

He left before she could protest. And before her delicious, feminine, heady scent drove him to do something he would definitely regret.

Chapter Six

Hate was a new emotion to Aoife. Even when she considered her parents, the strongest emotion seemed to be scorn, or bitterness. But right now she was pretty damn sure she hated Matt McDaid as he sat opposite her, watching her squirm on his hard dining chair as she wrote out her lines.

She handed him over the first sheet with ‘I must show courtesy and respect to those who are good enough to help me’ hurriedly scrawled out twenty times. He looked it over and then looked over the top of the page at her. She knew it was full of spelling mistakes; when she was under pressure, she got confused. She waited for him to berate her for it, her dander up.

“By rights, I should bin this for sloppiness. You had better neaten up, unless you want to start over.”

“That’s not fair. You know I can’t help it.”

“Aoife, I don’t give a damn if your letters are backwards, upside down, or what the spelling is like. What matters is the attitude with which it was undertaken and we both know you’ve bashed this out from anger. A new line should get a new line; if you don’t like what you’ve written, you don’t need to scribble it out until the page tears. I’m not asking for perfection. I just want a real effort.”

She wanted to choke him. Bastard. But she wouldn’t. Nor would she even whisper a word of discontent. She was way too exposed, sitting across the table from him in nothing but a short tee shirt. She was dying for a glass of water but there was no way she was standing up in her state of undress. Absolutely everything below the waist was on display. She wondered when he had developed his cruel sadistic streak—it was certainly new to her. Her hand ached as she neatly penned the remaining eighty lines and handed them over page by page, terrified he might reject them. Just as she was on the last page, he told her she had some more lines. She wanted to cry as she handed over the last page of the first lot.

“This time you will write: Rectal temperature is not affected by gulping hot tea.”

“That’s not fair, I wasn’t trying to…”

“Don’t take me for a fool, Aoife. I saw you gulping your tea.”

“Miserable, uptight, control-freak bastard,” Aoife muttered under her breath. But unfortunately not quite quietly enough. He rose and crossed to her side of the table. Aoife rose to run, but he was way ahead of her and grabbed her as she kicked the chair back.

“What did you say?” he asked. Aoife denied all. He pushed her across his dining chair and spanked her already throbbing behind five times more, repeating each word of the insult with each swat, ignoring her screams and begging.

“You haven’t learned a lot about respect after all; you can repeat those lines another two hundred times tomorrow night. Now get on with the next ones.” His face was red with fury as she sat on her even more scorched ass. Hatred didn’t even touch how she was feeling right now; murderous was closer to it. He sat down next to her this time, watching over her shoulder as she wrote out the new, humiliating line. Each time she wrote rectal, she relived the horror of him inserting that thermometer in her bottom, squirming with shame and degradation. She was damn sure he knew that too, as he had her repeat each line as soon as she finished writing it out. She wondered if he planned on living a long healthy life, because right now, the odds were not in his favour.

Even after the lines were finished, she couldn’t leave—as long as Matt stayed sitting, Aoife did too. She had to. The exhibitionist in her got a bit of a weird kick being half naked and watched and in spite of the humiliation of calling out that line over and over, her pussy had started to weep—lightly, but weep nonetheless. She knew if she got up off the chair, there would be a little pool of creaminess underneath her bottom. And no way was she going to let Matt see her wash it clean. Finally, he left the table, clearing the way for her to get a drink of water and go to bed.

* * *

Aoife gingerly extricated herself from her nice warm bed. Examining her bottom in the full-length mirror, she was amazed to see there were absolutely no aftereffects of the spanking, save for a slight pink hue on the underside of each bottom cheek, the tender spots where he seemed to favour as he spanked. She was almost disappointed. She had wanted to be able to throw it in his face, how he had battered her until she was black and blue. Now she was denied that ammunition.

Sluggishly, she dragged herself to the bathroom and dragged on her running clothes. It felt like the bloody army. Who the hell got up at six-thirty to go for a goddamn run? But his lordship, bringer of all evil, had insisted. She was starting her voluntary work and he who called the shots said she had to exercise before work. Annoying, pushy bully. She was tempted to hit the snooze button and roll over and steal another half an hour in bed. Matt would most likely still be sleeping; it was earlier than his normal wake-up time and he had said nothing about going with her. She could take a shorter route, and he would never know. Aoife headed straight for the front door without bothering with breakfast; her body hadn’t woken up enough for her to be able to face food.

“Aoife, get in here,” Matt shouted as she turned the door handle.
Fuck and double fuck. What the hell is he doing up at this hour? Dammit, what has a woman to do to get a little trust around here?

“You can’t run on empty.”

“I haven’t time to let it digest either, it will make me feel sick,” she countered.

“Sit down. Now,” he insisted. The toaster popped and he handed her two slices of wholemeal toast and a banana. “This will keep you going; you may wait for your porridge until after the run.” Stupid porridge! Aoife hadn’t intended eating any breakfast there that morning. The shorter route she planned was to give her time for a chocolate croissant and double espresso on her way to that hell-hole Matt was forcing her to attend.

“I hear they are looking for a new dictator in North Korea, you fit the bill perfectly.” Aoife muttered, her brain not awake enough to see the folly of her words. Fortunately he let it pass; in fact, there was almost a hint of a smirk on his face as he replied:

“Thank you. Now eat, unless you want a spanking to spread on your toast.”

Aoife used her knife to smash the banana down on top of her toast, taking all her anger and frustration out on the innocent piece of fruit. She wished it were Matt’s head. She angrily bit into her food and swallowed it without chewing.

Aoife did the entire three miles route in less than forty minutes, running half of it, a new record for her. Although Matt ran alongside her, she didn’t speak to him, nor did he to her. She gritted her teeth and got on with her torture. She wondered how he intended to torment her for the remaining twenty minutes.

“You’ve done enough for this morning. Go back to the apartment at a slow pace to cool down, then get ready for work. I’m doing another mile but I’ll be back on time to bring you to the rehab clinic. Do not leave without me.”

Of course you will,
she thought.
God forbid that I might not go. And bang goes my café stop.
She was sick at the prospect of the day ahead, and Matt knew it but he didn’t seem to care. Aoife knew she should be eternally grateful to Matt for all he had done for her, including taking time off work, and she was, but just once in a while, she wished he could show a slightly more human side. For a doctor, his bedside manner sucked. While she was waiting for Matt to return, Aoife heard her phone ping with an incoming text.

“Wishing you well today. Don’t over-stress about it.”

No name, and a number that she didn’t recognise, but there was only one other person who knew Matt’s plans for her and that was her psychiatrist. Aoife smiled. He was a kind man. He knew how anxious she was. Aoife had never expected that she would be able to open up to anyone like she had with him, but something about him was so approachable, so understanding. If only he were twenty years younger and single. Or better, if only he were Matt! Aoife almost envied Paul’s wife, another first as she was dead set against marriage of any sort. She had seen first-hand what it could do to people. She wished she could talk to Matt like that. She would even settle for being able to talk to him like she used to, back when they were kids, when he told her his problems and he supported her learning difficulties. Of course back then, she had still lied to him, pretended everything was fine, but he had known how hard it was for her, even though she wouldn’t admit it. Now Aoife was older and ready to talk, Matt never questioned her. He just assumed she was a spoiled little madam after her next high. He looked after her physically and he sacrificed his time, but he never once asked her why. The old Matt would have wanted to help more than her body, he would have wanted to help her soul. She missed that.

Aoife missed Fiona too. It was definitely time to see if she could fix things there. Aoife knew the only person to blame for the breakdown in that friendship was herself. Fiona had given her so much support, and Aoife had given her nothing but grief and worry.

When Matt didn’t turn up by the time she should be leaving, Aoife panicked a little. She knew the location and that she was to report to Doctor Steward. If she didn’t leave she was going to be late, but if she left without Matt’s approval, she risked his wrath. Either way, she could end up with a toasted butt and a spanking from Dr. McDaid was not a prospect to take too lightly. In the end, she decided to leave without him on the grounds that if she didn’t stick to her program he would be much angrier. When she sent him a text to explain her decision, his phone beeped right there in the apartment. At that point she became concerned, and sent him another text for his return.

“Please text me as soon as you get this. Aoife.” She tried to block all sorts of panic images of Matt having been knocked down or injured out of her mind as she set off for her morning’s ‘voluntary’ work.

Aoife was shocked when she entered the rehab. She was put shadowing Katie for the morning. Katie, a tough-looking but kindly thirty-something-year-old with a tight haircut and combats, was receptionist cum cleaner cum unofficial counsellor and most important, security woman. Although it was only nine-thirty, already there was a queue of people. One woman in particular broke Aoife’s heart. She was obviously pregnant, and trembling all over. When she came to register, she said it was her first visit and she was sent by her GP. She was signed up for the methadone program.

Aoife wanted to be sick. Not from disgust at the patient, but from the realisation it could so easily have been her who had got into that mess. She had often lost all sense of responsibility, and the only thing that had prevented Aoife from trying heroin had been fear of needles. No matter how high she was, luckily for Aoife, that fear had prevailed. She had to hand it to Matt—he had just given her the wake-up call she so badly needed. Which reminded her, she still hadn’t heard from him. Once there was a lull in reception, Aoife checked her phone, which was on silent, and was alarmed to see no message from him.

They shut the doors for the morning, heralding what was soon to be the end of her first day. Her final job before leaving was cleaning duty. When she entered the toilets, she was disgusted. Someone had vomited in one of the cubicles, missing the bowl entirely. In the next, a soiled sanitary napkin lay on the floor where the user had decided the disposal unit was there for decorative purposes only and the bowl was splattered with excrement. Gritting her teeth, Aoife went to the cleaning cupboard to get supplies. She pulled a big fat wad of toilet tissue off the roll and bent down to pick up the soiled wad. Katie shouted at her.

“Stop! Don’t touch any bodily fluids without gloves. Many of the users share needles.”

Aoife couldn’t believe how stupid she had just been. Sure she knew that, but her first reaction had just been to get rid of the disgusting mess. The reality of everything came crashing in and she broke down and sobbed her heart out. God knows why, but somehow or other, she was sitting on the floor, first crying about the mess she had got herself in, then spilling all the stuff she had kept locked up for years. Katie sat on the floor beside her and cradled her in her arms like a baby as she poured out what a disappointment she had been to her parents, how her dyspraxia, or clumsy child syndrome, meant she was always spilling or breaking stuff, and how she would be shouted at and berated for it. About how her parents made her rewrite each word she got wrong in her weekly school spelling tests, until she had managed to get each of them perfect twenty times in a row. And how hard that was, because she just couldn’t recognise letters like others could. About how her siblings had laughed at her and told tales to get her in trouble so they would be off the hook for that day. If Katie resented her entire lunch break being wasted in listening to twenty-five years’ worth of woe, she never for one second let it show as she comforted and listened to the broken Aoife acknowledge the wrongs she had buried so deep. The tap Dr. Smith had started dripping was now in full flow and there was no turning it off until the well had run dry. Even then Katie just held her, even after the tears and the talking had stopped.

Aoife’s phone vibrating between them eventually broke the spell.