Chapter 2

“That’s it…niiiice easy breaths,” breathed Irina soothingly as she turned the car onto the road. “In and out…in and out.”

Warren was sitting in the passenger seat, staring straight forward as he felt his chest heave and deflate, over and over, from the herculean effort he was putting in to remain composed. It had been a full half hour since he had realized that he had a fever, and it had taken nearly all of that time for Irina to calm him down and convince him that the best course of action was for her to drive him to the doctor’s office. Somehow, Warren had been able to stave off a panic attack, though he was fairly certain that it had been Irina’s gently embracing body against his that had finally pulled him back from the brink. Her breasts were so big and soft and warm, and her steady, gentle embrace had been so insistent and so caring, that Warren had actually gotten his breathing under control. If he had been alone, he knew that upon realizing he had a symptom of this new and frightening virus, he would have probably collapsed on his kitchen floor, clutching his tightening chest in blind panic…heck, he would have probably passed out. It had happened before, when he had been particularly stressed.

Irina kept her eye on him as she drove down the road, glancing over to check on him often. Once or twice, when his breathing quickened, she actually reached over and squeezed his knee tenderly with her hand in a gesture of reassurance. Whenever she touched him, there was something almost electric that seemed to spark up inside her, and this internal feeling was so surprisingly intense that it almost made Irina draw back a little.

What was going on with her? Here she was, the first day on her new job, and already she was fussing about with the homeowner, throwing out his processed food, hugging him to stave off his panic attacks, driving him to the doctor’s office as she hummed and cooed comforting words at him…Irina knew that she was caring and matronly by nature, but this? It all seemed to be moving a bit too quickly, even for her.

‘It’s because he’s soooo small,’ she thought to herself, merging onto the highway. ‘He’s an adult, but his body feels like a child’s…and his skin is soft like a baby’s.’

Surely that was it — Irina knew that Warren had lived a sheltered life, and she reasoned that of course his isolation had “softened” him, and prevented him from properly growing up, both physically and mentally.

‘But he’s got a head on his shoulders,’ Irina reminded herself, speeding up to merge past a tractor trailer so she could catch the next exit. ‘He may have bad anxiety, but he’s not a pushover. You saw how he reacted when I tossed his lunch in the garbage…I shouldn’t have done that. I really need to take a step back and show him some respect…and anyway, apologizing will take his mind off his fever.’

“Warren?” Irina ventured out loud.

“Yeah?” he asked, turning towards her.

“I want to apologize for being so bossy. I’m…I’m not your mother, Warren — I’m your housekeeper, haha! And it really isn’t my place to, um…to tell you what you can and can’t eat. And in any case, I shouldn’t have thrown your lunch out like that. I just…haha, i couldn’t help myself! But I promise to do better.”

“O-oh…oh, Irina, that’s…that’s ok,” Warren answered, blinking as he looked over at her. His mind had been somewhere completely different, stressing about the real possibility that he had contracted this new virus. But now Irina was…apologizing to him!? But after a couple seconds went by, Warren remembered how, yes…she had kind of overstepped the line a little there.

“I mean…I appreciate you looking out for my diet,” he added, smiling at her as she drove.

“But I shouldn’t just take it upon myself to govern your life like that,” replied Irina, shaking her head as she exited off the highway.

“Um…haha, no, I guess not,” admitted Warren, chuckling a little. “Still, though — I could see where you were coming from. I’m not…mad or anything, haha.”

“Well that’s nice to hear,” declared Irina, turning to smile at him full-on, since they had stopped at a red light. “I want this to be a mutual relationship we have here, Warren. I want it to be…um…what’s that English word…haha, I can never remember it…it means when two animals help each other out?”

“Symbiotic,” grinned Warren, his face flushing slightly as the two of them clicked together mentally.

“Yes! That’s it!” laughed Irina, nodding her head as she hung a left turn towards the long white rectangle of the doctor’s office up ahead. A minute later, they were both stepping out of the parked car. Irina had made sure that Warren had on his surgical mask properly, since it was not protocol for any man who was suspected of having the virus to mask himself in public, in order to prevent the spread — at this point, scientists weren’t really sure how the virus circulated in communities, but they suspected airborne transmission…hence the masks.

Warren had enjoyed coming to a point of understanding with Irina in the car, but as they walked into the doctor’s office waiting room, his mind quickly shifted back to the anxiety of his current situation. The waiting room was packed with people, and evidently, most of them were there for the same reason as he was. All around, he saw masked men, some of them looking noticeably short and frail, waiting anxiously to be seen by the next available nurse. Most of them had their wives or girlfriends there with them, and Warren was not able to avoid noticing already that there was an evident size difference between many of the couples. Lots of them weren’t that noticeable at all (like me and Irina, he thought, reminding himself that they were basically the same height when she wasn’t wearing her heels), and in a number of couples, the masked men were bigger and taller than their partners, as expected.

But in a disturbing number of couples, Warren saw the clear effects of the virus’s symptoms. The men in these couples looked noticeably shrunken, small, and frail, and some of them had wasted away to the point that their feet weren’t even touching the floor as they sat in the waiting room chairs. And it wasn’t only that — just as they looked diminished, their female partners looked…well, augmented. Accentuated. Burgeoned. There was too much consistency in the pattern for it to be an accident, surely. Their breasts looked much bigger and fuller than the breasts of any normal woman, and their skin seemed to shine with a healthy radiance that made Warren do a double-take every time he looked at one of them. The women of the shrunken men looked positively voluptuous — they filled their chairs with the thick, curvy bulk of their enlarged hips and butts, and even their arms and shoulders looked stronger and bigger as they sat back in their seats, looking effortlessly feminine and powerful.

Warren noticed, though, that their accentuated physiques clashed blatantly with the expressions on their faces. None of these women looked like they were happy, or ready to accept this new reality. Instead, they all looked intensely concerned, with many of them bending down to whisper to the shrunken, masked companions next to them. Many of them were holding hands with their infected men, and the inevitable hand comparison between the women’s strong, fleshy hands and their men’s thin, bony hands…well, it was striking to say the least.

Warren felt like he was going to be sick for a moment, but he made it a point to focus on his breathing as he checked himself in, feeling Irina’s presence behind him. A moment later they sat down, and began the long wait before they would be seen. Irina glanced around, taking in the whole surreal scene herself as she tried to make sense of the flurrying volley of feelings she was experiencing right now. She felt so bad for all of the couples in the room — many of them looked positively miserable, and she even noticed a couple in the corner who seemed to be quietly arguing. What looked to be a skinny 4-and-a-half-foot-tall man was attempting to take his mask off, but his wife or girlfriend wasn’t letting him. She had her hands on either side of his head, whispering earnestly to him as she shook her head. The man was trying to pry her hands off the sides of his head, but in addition to the fact that he looked weak and feeble, his partner was a good foot-and-a-half taller than him; it also looked like she outweighed him by at least 100 pounds. There wasn’t any way he was going to physically overcome her. After an extended episode of whispering arguments and struggling, he seemed to give up, folding his arms huffily across his shrunken chest as he sat there, legs dangling slightly in the chair, as his partner gently laced her fingers soothingly through his hair.

Irina watched all of this with a sense of confused and perplexed fascination. She was having to reconcile two distinct and disparate plains of thought and feeling in her mind. On one hand, she had no trouble acknowledging the pain and difficulty that all of these couples were going through. She could just smell it in the air — the virus had destroyed the traditional power mediator between men and women, and now, the power dynamics were firing off in all directions, confused, aimless, chaotic, like tendrils of electricity in a plasma globe. No one knew how to approach the current situation.

And yet, at the same time, she couldn’t avoid realizing that she felt…excited. Just seeing all of these burgeoning, larger women fussing over their smaller husbands made her feel a strange sense of elation, like she was witnessing a sheen being pulled back, exposing the reality that had been there all along. Irina was trying to make sense of this buoyant barrage of exhilaration she was feeling — it wasn’t enough to say that she was drawn to this situation because she was good at caring for people. None of that explained the excitement she was feeling in the midst of all this confused suffering. There was something else going on, something deeper down inside herself…something darker that she didn’t yet feel comfortable engaging.

She sighed out and turned to look at Warren. She had only just met him that day, but already, she felt proud of him. She would not have expected the man who was a hair’s breadth away from a panic attack to be sitting here next to her, in a room-full of virus patients, looking relaxed.

“Heheh, you seem to be doing better,” she said aloud to him.

“Well, it’s just that…haha, I was just thinking,” said Warren through his mask, looking slightly up at her (in addition to having better posture, her ass was bigger than his, so she rose up higher than him when they sat). “This is the most people I’ve been in a room with in…years.”

“Years?!” exclaimed Irina, her eyes going a bit wide. “Oh, Warren! Really?”

“Haha, yes,” he chuckled, his voice sounding relaxed even as his eyes darted nervously about. “I think…I think you help make it easier for me, Irina.”

“Oh I do?” she asked, feeling warmth course through her at his words.

“Yeah,” he replied, nodding his head. “It’s nice just…you know, being here with someone else. I’m not sure I’d be able to, um…to be so calm in here otherwise.”

“Well that’s…very nice, Warren,” said Irina, crinkling her eyes kindly at him. He was so cute, sitting there with that little mask over his face. He had been so scared before. But it suddenly occurred to Irina to remember her professional position, and to not allow the strange well of these amplified matronly instincts to compromise her role. She was his housekeeper, nothing more, helping to look after him during this trying, confused time.

A little while later, Warren’s name was called, and he stood up to go into the back, Irina rising with him. As soon as he stood up, though, Warren became a bit lightheaded, and he couldn’t help backing a bit into Irina, who reached out to steady him with her arms. The twin bulges of her breasts were pressed gently into his back, and Warren fought a strange and unwelcome urge to back into them harder.

“Easy, easy,” Irina was saying. “You ok?”

“I’m…yeah…I’m fine,” he said, a little shaken, but regaining his balance nonetheless.

“You’ve got it,” piped up a voice from the corner. Warren turned to look in the direction of the voice. It was the 4’6 man, the same man whose wife had prevented him from taking off his mask before.

“What?” asked Warren, feeling his heart rate increase. Irina’s hand was on his shoulder, guiding him toward the open door, but for some reason, he had to hear what this other man was saying.

“You’ve got the virus,” said the man flatly through his mask as he nodded his head. “First fever and then dizziness…yep, better buckle up, partner.”

His wife’s large hand quickly muzzled him, covering the entire expanse of his masked mouth and chin, as she whispered down to him harshly.

“Jim! That’s enough!” She looked up apologetically at Warren and Irina. “I’m so sorry,” she said to them, “Just ignore him, please.”

Irina kept guiding Warren toward the door, away from the man, and Warren didn’t have time to respond before they were out of the waiting room and walking down the hallway.

“It’s ok Warren,” Irina was saying. “Don’t worry about that guy.”

“I’m…not…it’s ok,” Warren was saying. But he was worrying about it. Only deliberate breathing exercises prevented his heart rate from climbing uncomfortably high. It felt like his stomach was slowly tying itself up in knots. A few moments later, they were in an exam room, with Warren hopping up on the white-papered table and Irina sitting down in a chair by the door.

“It’ll just be a few more minutes,” the nurse was saying. “Nurse” — and here she glanced at her clipboard — “Sarah will be in to see you shortly.”

“Ok, thanks,” nodded Warren, and he and Irina were alone again. A few seconds of awkward silence passed between them. Neither of them really knew what to say. Irina didn’t want to say anything that stressed Warren out about his potential condition, but she also didn’t want to just start making small talk, which would have been a poorly-disguised attempt at deflecting his attention, and would only make things worse. For Warren’s part, he didn’t want to air out his anxieties so blatantly, since he was resolving to do his best to manage his own emotions without help, but he also didn’t want to just keep sitting there in silence. He felt like he owed Irina’s presence something — he felt like he needed to make her laugh or…to provide her something in return for her accompanying him.

“So…um, what do you like to do in your, um…in your spare time?” he asked her, hating how artificial his question sounded, but still preferring it to the silence that had hung in the air before.

“Well!” answered Irina brightly, appreciating Warren’s interest, “I like to sew a lot. Before I became a housekeeper I actually ran a sewing business.”

“Oh you did?” asked Warren. “What did you sew?”

“Clothes, mostly,” said Irina, smiling at him. “It started with me making clothes for my friends, you know, Christmas gifts and things like that, but they all liked them so much that they encouraged me to start my own business.”

“That’s so cool!” exclaimed Warren. He wished that he had skills like that.

“What about you, Warren?” asked Irina, leaning forward a little in her chair. “What do you do for fun?”

“I, uh…nothing as neat as that,” he chuckled. “I…watch a lot of TV and…stuff like that. But I like to play, uhhh…online chess.”

“Chess!?” replied Irina, her eyebrows going up. “I love chess! Was never really good at it myself, but I always thought Judit Polgar was succchh an inspiration! Chess was such a “man’s” world for so long, but she really broke into it, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, she was…she is…really a great player,” laughed Warren. Things were starting to actually seem normal. A short, soft knock came suddenly at the door, and Nurse Sarah walked in. Warren had sat up a little straighter when he heard the knock, but as soon as he got a look at this nurse, he felt frozen in position. Irina likewise found herself uncharacteristically stunned.

‘My goodness!’ she thought in awe, and she too unconsciously sat up a little straighter.

This nurse was huge. The top of her golden-blond head was only a small number of inches lower than the door frame itself…she had to be at least 6’4. But it wasn’t just her height that had made Warren’s mouth open and his eyes go wide — it was the sheer size of this woman. She seemed to fill up the entire doorway as she walked in, her thick, vigorous hips gyrating sin curved elegance right and left as she moved the huge pillars of her thighs, which strained the confines of her blue scrubs outfit. Warren had never seen anyone fill out a scrubs uniform like that before — they were generally a very baggy outfit, but not on this woman. Her amazonian body filled it out completely, top to bottom. Warren was no expert on cup-size for bras, but it looked like this nurse had at least E cups. Her bare arms looked strong and firm, with an elegant feminine bulk that sent the silver bracelets on her left arm singing and tinkling out into the exam room. Warren had to blink rapidly a few times before his eyes were able to hone in on the nurse’s face. Her body had quickened his breath, but her bright, smiling face quickened his heart. She was absolutely gorgeous, her high cheekbones complimenting the healthy fullness of her cheeks; her plush lips were accentuated by a striking blood-red lipstick, which Warren subconsciously connected to the red nail polish she was wearing on her pointed, manicured fingernails. Her sea green eyes locked on his, seeming to hold his stare in an ocean of her own.

“Hello there, Mr. DuPont,” came Sarah’s full, feminine voice. She turned and looked down at Irina. “And…you’re not Mrs. DuPont, are you?”

“I’m…not actually,” answered Irina, blinking a few times rapidly, trying to take in the sight before her. She recovered fairly quickly, though, and laughed. “How did you know?”

“Just a guess,” Sarah chuckled. “Couples usually sit next to each other in those chairs while they’re waiting. But anyway…Mr. DuPont, you have a fever of 101.4, is that correct?”

Warren could only manage a nod.

“Mmm, ok,” said Sarah kindly, moving toward him. Both Irina and Warren were amazed by the voluptuousness of the nurse’s movements — with each step, her thick, curvy body seemed to quiver and undulate of its own accord. Irina was watching with unabashed fascination, while Warren was doing his best to keep it together, to prevent himself from trembling.

“Aww, now I know it must be a scary time for you,” purred Sarah, coming over and snaking a large, manicured hand onto Warren’s shoulder, covering it completely. She turned back to Irina. “For both of you. But you did the right thing, coming in here. Let’s just check that temperature again, why don’t we?”

With her huge hand still wrapped comfortingly around Warren’s shoulder, Sarah hooked a long finger under Warren’s mask and lifted it. Warren inhaled sharply at the easy power of her movement — she hadn’t asked him to do it. She had done it herself. Taking a thermometer, she inserted it under his tongue and held it there for several seconds until it beeped.

“Hmmm, 102.2,” murmured Sarah, licking the front of her teeth behind her closed lips. “A bit higher than it was before, I see.”

“Oh god,” moaned Warren quietly, starting to panic again. But the huge, powerful hand on his shoulder was suddenly massaging it insistently, as that full, deep, feminine voice cooed in his ear.

“It’s ok, Mr. DuPont, it’s okaaaay,” she was saying softly. “Deep breathing, in and out, in and out….eeeasssssyyyy.”

Warren shut his eyes and did as he was told. A couple seconds later he opened them again, looking toward Irina. It had suddenly occurred to him that this nurse was saying exactly what Irina had told him before. Meeting his eyes, his housekeeper smiled genially. It seemed that the same thought had occurred to her.

“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” chuckled Irina, trying to lighten the mood, even as she was dealing with strange, conflicting feelings inside herself. She wanted to be the one rubbing Warren’s shoulder like that. She wanted to be the one who…who looked like this nurse…who could overwhelm someone just by being in the same room. A prickle of possessive envy stung her subconscious.

“Warren deals with some anxiety issues and…I’ve been teaching him some breathing exercises,” Irina continued, trying to normalize the situation in her head by continuing the conversational exchange.

“How very lucky,” intoned Sarah to Irina, not even turning her head away from Warren as she used an otoscope to check the inside his ears, “That he has someone like you. Say “aaaaa,” Mr. DuPont.”

“Aaaaaaaa,” said Warren, feeling an odd excitement at being empirically examined by this gorgeous amazon of a nurse. She smelled good too…a scent he couldn’t place, but that Irina had immediately recognized as sandalwood.

“Well ok Mr. DuPont,” said Sarah, tilting her head slightly to him as her eyes steadily held him, “I have to be honest — with your high fever, the tiny cutaneous lesions in your middle ear, and apparent pharyngitis in the back of your throat, this looks like a classic case of the Whipple Virus.”

“Is that…?” asked Warren, feeling a sense of impending dread.

“Mmhmm, yes, that’s what we’re calling it so far,” nodded Sarah, “Since its symptoms resemble Whipple's Disease. But we’ll come up with a better name soon. The name just caught on in the media. But anyway, we’ll have to wait for the results of a blood test to officially confirm.”

“Oh nooooo,” moaned Warren again, and he put his face in his hands, now truly trembling. Irina was up from her chair in an instant, and a moment later had her arms wrapped around his shaking body.

“Shhhh…Warren it’s ok…it’s like she said, remember? It’s gonna be ok.” Irina wished that her physical presence and voice had the easy power and timbre of Sarah’s, but she wasn’t about to let this amazonian nurse commandeer Warren this time.

Sarah watched Irina steadily, a few moments longer than Irina would have expected for a normal nurse. What was this nurse doing?! She seemed to be studying them both, and as she did so, she licked her teeth subtly with a long red tongue.

“So you’re not a couple,” ventured Sarah to Irina, “But you can stay with him? Keep him safe?”

Irina nodded silently.

“Good,” said Sarah, preparing the blood test, “Because if he was all alone, there’s no telling who would snatch him up as he gets smaller. It’s important that Whipple’s patients have a female caretaker, or else…well…it’s a good thing he has you is all I’ll say.”