Silently, she was sitting on her shower chair, eyes closed, leaning against his upper body as his soapy hands spread the slippery film on her skin. Attentively, he lathered every inch of her, yet kept his professional distance when his fingers ran over her more intimate places.
He hummed a soothing tune to appease her spirits. She found this procedure still somewhat upsetting, albeit a lot less than she had used to. He was patient with her; she had to give him that—initial caprices considered.
He thought he heard a moan of protest from her when he was washing her crotch. She didn’t say anything, but he felt how this part of his job was still uncomfortable to her regardless of his sobriety. He couldn’t reproach her with that. This, too, only served as a daily reminder of her inability to look after herself.
When he was done scrubbing her body, he cracked open the shampoo bottle he had bought for the occasion. Not breaking his melody, he worked the expensive lotion into her hair carefully. While he massaged it into her scalp and worked it into every strand, he felt her spirits finally calm.
With great care, he rinsed her down, paying special attention to her hair, running his fingers through it, to let the conditioner do its magic, knowing it wouldn’t pass unnoticed. Soon, she chimed into his murmur. After the cleansing, she seemed to be a lot more at ease. By the time he was rinsing the conditioner off, she kept humming alone, the theme gradually changing to more jovial notes.
“May I rub the princess dry with the most delicate towel on this estate?” he asked, breaking his sobriety just enough to let her briefly forget the awkwardness of her predicament.
“Uh-huh,” she replied, a merrier tone in her voice that carried an air of ‘Yes, you may, silly man.’ He knew from working with her that his servant act let her forget her condition for a moment.
Once dried, he first helped her into her underwear. Preserving her modesty and dignity was the most important. As she had chosen, he had prepared her simple, light blue panties with the red strawberry print, ornated with a rose-colored ribbon below the belly button and a laced cream seam. Who said disabled girls weren’t allowed to feel cute? One of the first notions he had taught her—the first of many interactions between the two that had alleviated her spirits—after trying on several he had bought for her. “We don’t have to go through all of them but you know I’m going to see you naked every day, so we may as well,” had been his casual argumentation that had sold her to his idea. It also gave her something to distract her from her hardship during their bathroom ritual.
Once he had turned off the hair dryer, he moved her wheelchair in front of the full-body mirror. Her straight, silky hair was cascading down her upper body—a gossamer veil over her breasts. From the draft of cool air evaporating tiniest droplets, her nipples were poking through the curtain of her hair. She preferred sitting in front of her mirror topless, as it gave her a hint of freedom and reminded her not all her body was dysfunctional. She had learned to embrace her looks, focus on what she found pretty, and had become rather fond of her bust.
He ran his hands through her hair; those shiny platinum strands he had nurtured into a shiny cloak. He took the brush and gently let it slide through thick strands that readily disentangled and fell back over her shoulders light as a feather. Once her hair was properly brushed, he parted her hair in the middle and began Dutch-braiding both halves. He made sure to let both braids fall over her nipples, which made her comment with a joyous chuckle.
He caressed her hair as he knew made her feel sheltered, cared for and beautiful. It was he who had managed to coax her out of her depressed shell when he had begun seeing her after all the all-too-clinical caretakers before him. Him, too; her parents had employed out of sheer desperation over their daughter’s frequent mood swings. And him too, she had initially treated like a lesser being, only tending to her out of pity.
…until he had cracked her shell with his approach, little quirks as well as his seemingly limitless understanding.
It was with a shaking voice and a tone he found difficult to interpret that she tried to articulate, “Draah-uhr.”
“Drawer?” he asked. “Want me to get something in the drawer?”
“Uh-huh,” she affirmed, chuckling in excitement and shame alike.
In the bedside table’s top drawer lay an envelope containing a stack of memo cards. The first was labeled ‘1’ on the top left corner and had six large letters that read, “Fuck me.”
He closely inspected the two words over and over, expecting to find some kind of crude joke but the way she was awaiting his reaction told him she was being serious. Only after the third glance, he noticed, the card came with a small print of three options and instructions:
Yes. What are you waiting for?
No. Bummer. You may take the rest of the day off.
Don’t know but…. Read the next card.
With every line, his face flushed a deeper shade. Her content giggling didn’t make it any better. Clearly, someone had helped her prepare those cards. Someone who supported her idea of getting laid by her caretaker. The maid? The cook? Her younger sister? Her… parents? Oh, they’d kill him if they even found him just reading those notes, regardless of who was the author.
Awkwardly, he flipped the top card under the pile, throwing her a quick glance to see if she was still getting the kicks out of his little discomfort. Evidently, she was.
