The next year his nurse gave me the exam, again in view of my wife. This is what happened on that exam. The nurse was the opposite personality of the ...doctor, hers is a much gentler approach. When it came time for the exam, the nurse took me into the exam room leaving the door into the doctor’s office open; just in case my wife wanted to watch.As the nurse put on a pair of exam gloves, she said, “I’d like to check your groin area first.” I had already dropped my pants and turned to face her. She. Told stories. Played games with the kids. As for going places, well, where the hell would you want to go? And with gasoline at ten cents a gallon, how could you afford it? Bill figured out how to afford it, though, when it meant he’d get some time with her. Every Sunday afternoon he’d show up in his daddy’s old Ford and he’d have some kind of little gift for her. Maybe a peppermint stick or a little sack of horehound drops. Sometimes a bunch of pretty flowers tied up with a ribbon, and you just. “Cecily. Don’t touch me like that.”“Did I what, Pike?” she asked again, ignoring him.“Did you mean it like men use it?”“I did and I’ll use words that are worse than that too, when we’re married. I wish our first time was tonight, Pike. Don’t you?”“Yes, but please come up here and stop doing that. I can’t take much more.”Over on the other bed, Ezra was having an even tougher time trying to get Samantha to stop. Before he wasn’t able stop her.“Sam, I warn you. I can’t resist you the way Pike can. This was a little harder, as the dogs were already winding down and starting to get their naps. On most of the dogs he'd bootied earlier, he removed the booties; he didn't want the dogs to spend good sleep time trying to get them off. Most of the paws got salve, more as a preventative, than anything else, because everybody's paws seemed in good shape, even Pumper's, who tended to be a little tender.At that, it went fairly quickly; there'd be another paw inspection before they left, and a lot.