Dosing Danika

It only took me five years to become a physician's assistant. I took the accelerated path, but it didn't feel that way to me. To earn a combined BS/MS dual degree, I had to commit myself wholly to education to the exclusion of things like keggers, friends, dating, hook-ups, or intimacy of any kind.

By the time my PANCE certification had gone through and I'd gotten the proper insurance credentials, I'd been grinding with full balls for five and a half years. Imagine that? A doctor has to spend 15 years and half a million dollars on undergraduate, med school, residency and fellowship, and here I am legally able to write scripts for stimulants and oxycodone after five years and some debt forgiveness. Wild.

I kept telling myself that was the payoff, why those five lonely years were worth it, but it was getting harder to convince myself as I crept toward my mid-twenties. Particularly when all I had waiting for me at the end of the day was a bunch of unpaid bills and an empty bed.

There were times when I would opt to stay up all night volunteering at the urgent care clinic downtown rather than go home alone. The apartment was a sad place, it had all the latest technological conveniences but little else; I never had a flair for interior design or art, so all of the furnishings were either drab or accidentally minimalist.

When I wasn't working or volunteering, I was at the gym, trying to push myself to the limit, doing all that I could to transform into something I would fuck.

Power cleaning, front squats, back squats, overhead press, push-ups, squat jumps, split-squat jumps, and planks. Five reps of each, resting only for 90 seconds to regulate breathing and hydrate. Then it was time for strongman finishers—sprint-pushing a push sled for four sets followed by a sixty-second break before wrapping up with a farmer's walk, grabbing the heaviest fucking dumbbells in the gym and walking until my grip would fail.

It was working. The other day, I came in ten seconds looking at myself in the mirror naked and imagining myself fucking a cougar. But after I came all over my chiseled abs and wiped myself clean with a water wipe, I was alone and bored and just wanted to work out until I was sore enough to sleep.

The gym I go to is mostly frequented by men around my age, which I have nothing in common with, so I keep my ear buds in and pump jock jams to avoid cringe small talk. You always gotta keep yourself in the zone.

The nursing staff at Dr. Wakeman's office like to joke that “Dr. Ethan” is looksmaxing, which I don't really get, but they usually say it in a playful, teasing way that makes it clear they are DTF. Which only makes them less appealing to me.

I guess I could fuck them, if I wanted to, but I hate everything about them; they are young, dumb, and lack so much as a semblance of class or culture. They prance around the office with their dyed pink hair, bullshitting all day about social media influencers and the latest episode of some lame-ass reality TV competition. I didn't spend five years and change studying at Hofstra so I could be with some fucking little idiot, thank you.

My personal life may have been depressing, but I was not depressed. At least, I didn't let that part of me show; the outward-facing me was optimized to my environment. To my patients I was charming, caring, optimistic Ethan or, as some of them insisted on calling me, “Dr. Ethan,” even though I wasn't a doctor and it only succeeded in making me sound like a little boy with a furtive imagination.

The office is a contemporary low-rise suburban structure with a pedimented gable roof supported by monumental, smooth round columns, which give it a formal and welcoming focal point. The recessed main doorway consists of modern double glass doors framed by large storefront-style glass panels displaying the name of the practice and the address.

I always feel important walking through its doors because of how unremarkable it looks amid the many similar medical offices that dot the surrounding landscape. I feel even more important when I realize how many patients have asked to see me personally.

Most patients would prefer to see a man and some would most certainly prefer to see a young man. This is especially true in the case of our practice because the only primary care physician is Dr. Muriel Wakeman, a woman and, worse, an old woman. Many patients have confided in me that they don't trust Dr. Wakeman. In fact, one has even gone so far as to suggest that she suffers from senility.

None of this is true, of course, Dr. Wakeman is eminently competent if a bit flighty, and she's actually a fairly sexy woman in her early-seventies. Matter of fact, I've thought about dating her on occasion, and am keenly aware that she finds me attractive, but I always come just shy of asking her out due to our significant age gap and the looming threat of being fired.

Recently it has become blatantly apparent that Dr. Wakeman resents my poaching of her patients. She hasn't come right out and said this, but she's made a fair amount of passive-aggressive comments that made her true feelings about the matter clear.

For this reason, I am currently not accepting any new patients. I have informed the administrative staff of this, so as to send an unspoken message to Dr. Wakeman that I respect her authority.

Why not? I think. I've already got the lion's share of the regulars anyway. Let her have this imaginary victory.

The front desk knows not to book any new patients with me, which is why I am taken by surprise when I ask the little idiot at the check-in window who's up next.

She hands me a chart and says, “She's in Room Three.” I recognize the patient's name immediately—Janssen, Danika... my best friend's mom.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say up front that I had no idea that she was still living in Turner Heights or that she was a patient of Dr. Wakeman's. I hadn't seen her in six years, not since shortly after her son and I had an acrimonious falling out.

But I remembered her, I could have never forgotten. She was the first woman for whom I remember being intensely attracted. I wouldn't say I cultivated an obsession, that seems to overstate it, but you could say I was a keen admirer of the career weather forecaster and single mother.

I had watched her every morning on Local 11, giving myself something for the spank bank, something that would carry me through the school day and the long bus ride home. She didn't look like any other weather lady, she was tall and slender and raven-haired, with smoky dark brown eyes and a striking, distinctive face.

In the medical field, we would call her flawless bone structure—sharp contours and defined jawline—a dolichofacial marvel, noting its leptoprosopic nature and focusing on its high-index skeletal framework. In lay terms, she was a fucking twelve if there ever was a ten.

She was in her mid-thirties the last time I saw her and I was still eighteen. She had been stunning in every way, but I don't know what to expect as I he