Open Legs Said Daddy & His Best Friend I'm Their Biology Teaching Aid novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Volunteer
Eli lies on the table in front of the residents while Gabe teaches, and Kessling watches from the door as Eli's body answers; in the hall Gabe tells him to get in his car.
Eleven residents filed into the teaching room at nine sharp, and Eli Winslow was already on the table in a paper gown.
He had been there ten minutes, staring at a ceiling tile with a water stain shaped like Ohio.
His phone sat on the chair by his folded jeans.
It buzzed once, and he turned his head to read it.
It was a text from his dad.
Proud of you, kiddo. Don't let him talk you out of it.
Eli smiled at the screen.
His dad had been after him for a month to do something useful with his Thursdays.
The volunteer fee was four hundred dollars, which was his whole rent gap this month.
That was the reason he had given himself.
The other reason was standing at the sink with his back turned, washing his hands for the third time.
Dr. Gabriel Kelleher was forty-two and wore a white coat over a navy sweater, and the coat was too tight across the shoulders.
Eli had called him Uncle Gabe for twenty-two years.
Gabe had taught him to ride a bike on the Winslows' street and picked the gravel out of his eyebrow afterward.
Gabe had sat in the third row at Eli's graduation two years ago, in a gray suit, and had not looked at him once during the party after.
Eli had not been able to stop looking at him since.
"All right," Gabe said to the room, still facing the sink.
"Today's volunteer is a healthy twenty-four-year-old male."
He dried his hands and turned around.
His eyes went across the residents, across the clipboard on the counter, across the sheet over Eli's knees.
They did not touch Eli's face.
"You'll call him Mr. Winslow," Gabe said. "He is a patient. He is not a prop."
A man near the back wrote that down, which struck Eli as funny.
The man next to him was a freckled redhead with a lanyard full of pins, and he gave Eli a small friendly wave.
Eli waved back with two fingers.
Gabe pulled on gloves.
"We begin with inspection," he said. "Mr. Winslow, I'm going to ask you to bring your knees up and open your legs, please."
The room was quiet.
Eli had practiced for this in the shower, and in his head it had sounded like a doctor's request.
In the room, in Gabe's low steady voice, it sounded like something else.
He put his feet flat on the table and let his knees fall apart.
The sheet slid.
Gabe's gloved hands settled on the inside of his thigh, warm through the latex.
"Note the skin," Gabe said. "Note symmetry. Mr. Winslow, tell me if anything is uncomfortable."
"It isn't," Eli said, and his voice came out rough.
A muscle moved in Gabe's jaw.
He went on talking, and Eli stopped hearing the words.
He heard only the voice and felt only the two broad hands, moving slowly and exactly where the voice said they would.
Eli had told himself he could do this like a patient.
He could not do it like a patient.
He felt his body answer, hard and fast and in front of everyone, and he put his forearm over his eyes.
Somebody in the back coughed.
Gabe's hands stopped moving.
For one second they held perfectly still on his skin, and Eli felt them shake.
Then Gabe drew the sheet up over his hips with one smooth pull.
"This is a normal physiologic response," he told the room in a flat clinical voice. "It happens. It is not a finding. Write down nothing."
Nobody wrote anything.
"Mr. Winslow, you're doing well. We are almost finished."
Eli lowered his arm, and over the residents' heads he saw a man standing in the open doorway.
He was in his forties, sandy-haired, in a pressed coat with a clipboard against his chest.
He had been watching for a while.
His name tag said Dr. Simon Kessling, and he was smiling pleasantly.
"Gabriel," he said, loud enough for everyone. "I didn't know you were using family friends for this."
Gabe did not turn around.
"Simon."
"I only ask because the volunteer form says conflict of interest in bold." Kessling tapped his clipboard. "I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure you've disclosed it."
Eli's face went hot.
He had not known the form said that.
Gabe stripped off his gloves and dropped them in the bin.
"Session's over," he said to the residents. "Out. Read chapter nine."
They left fast, the redhead last, throwing Eli a look that was almost an apology.
Kessling stayed in the doorway one beat longer than anyone else.
Then he nodded to Gabe, very politely, and walked away.
Eli sat up with the sheet clutched in his fist.
He had meant to say something clever.
What came out was, "Did I just ruin your job?"
Gabe stood with his back to him, both hands flat on the counter.
"Get dressed," he said.
"Uncle Gabe."
"Don't call me that in here."
Eli slid off the table, found his jeans, and pulled them on with shaking fingers.
When he looked up, Gabe was at the door with his car keys in his hand and his reading glasses pushed up into his gray-streaked hair.
His face was white.
"Get in my car," he said. "Now."
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