Archie knew the exact day Roxanne was fully recovered from the fire — both physically and emotionally. Late one afternoon, he received a text from Roxanne from the clinic in Hickoryvale. She’d taken a selfie, attached to the text. When Archie opened the picture, he felt his heart rate spike upwards.
Just after closing the clinic at 5:00 PM, she’d found some green hospital scrubs in a storage closet, obviously belonging to the previous doctor who’d been a big guy — at least a double extra large. Roxanne was inspired when she held the scrub-top in front of her on its hanger. It was huge and would look like a tent on her.
Maggie had just left for the day so Roxanne removed all her clothes and pulled on the scrub-top, which hung to mid-thigh. The vee below the throat was so big it didn’t fully cover her breasts and by leaning forward with her elbows on an examination table, most of her boobs spilled out on full display. Standing with a full-length mirror behind her, she took a selfie showing not only her bare breasts but also her lovely shapely buttocks in the mirror, peeking out from under the scrub’s back hem.
She texted the photo to Archie with a message. “I think I need an examination. What a shame there’s no one here to give me one,” with several smileys and winking emojis.
Archie was there fifteen minutes later.
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September 2021
Three months had passed since the fire.
They had just moved back into their home after numerous repairs due to the heat of the fire and smoke damage. Their insurance company had quickly come through for them, despite the industry generally being slower due to the pandemic. A cheque was issued within thirty days and crews had been working on the property since.
Three weeks after the fire, Archie and Roxanne moved back onto their property, into a borrowed fifty-five foot Class A motor home, loaned to them by another of Roxanne’s patients. It was quite luxurious inside and they were more than comfortable while their out-buildings were rebuilt. It was much easier for Archie to direct the crews, living on-site.
The insurance agent had suggested a pre-built modular clinic to replace Roxanne’s old frame building. It arrived in three sections and was assembled in one long day with a monstrous crane, on a fresh new concrete slab. Truckloads of medical equipment soon began arriving, and a month later, Roxanne was back in business, with a sparkling new clinic, considerably nicer and better equipped than the old one.
Archie’s new shop had been framed, roofed, sheathed, wired, and sheathed again on the inside with three-quarter inch plywood. Truckloads of new power tools and machinery had arrived and were installed by a small crew, so Archie was back in business, too. He’d lost a large inventory of exotic hardwoods from around the world that would never be replaced. But he’d ordered several hundred board feet of assorted hardwoods from a supplier in Atlanta — he would make do.
All their shop and clinic computers and electronics were new. Fortunately, they’d contracted with an off-site backup service and after several frustrating days of reinstalling core software and apps, they were up and running better than before.
Even their hot tub was replaced. The old one had burned to the waterline, leaving a vat of near-black oily water with a thick layer of floating ash. The original pergola had been destroyed and a new one installed to replace it. New ivy and vine-like rose bushs were planted around its perimeter — in a few years, the structure would be covered with vines and flowers.
But the thing they were most pleased about — the land around their house and clinic was starting to regenerate. The first to appear was grass, followed by palmetto and other naturally occurring forest vegetation. They hired a horticultural company to come in and plant hundreds of new trees, hedges, flowering bushes, essentially converting the property around the house into the genesis of a spectacular garden. In a few years, it would all be stunning.
They’d walked a couple of times out to the stream pool; the land was starting to turn green around it, too. They still had privacy here — the pool was two hundred yards from the road and hidden by a small rolling hill. So once the grass was back, they looked forward to resuming their picnics and swimming dates. The water was clean; all remnants of the smoke and mess from the fire carried away downstream.
Roxanne was in her clinic one afternoon, working with a new portable X-ray unit, making sure she understand precisely how to operate it when her mobile rang.
“Dr. Cane,” she answered a bit distracted with the machinery.
“Hi Dr. Cane, it’s Maureen Shannon down the road, a few miles south of you. I’ve been one of your patients since you opened the original clinic.”
“Oh hi, Maureen. How are you… is everything okay?”
“Oh, I’m just fine, thanks. The reason I’m calling, I just found some bees nesting in one of our old tool sheds. There are thousands of them in there and I thought you might like them. All you have to do is get them out of there somehow, and they’re yours. Don’t worry if you have to pull some boards off the shed to get at them; my husband Fred can fix it once they’re gone.”
Roxanne felt a little flutter of excitement. She’d planned to set up a new aviary and had already bought some woodenware, hive tools, a smoker, and bee suits for her and Archie.
“Wow, thanks for letting me know, Maureen. Can I come over now? I can be there in ten minutes.”
She and Archie worked for four hours doing the extraction. It turned out to be a huge colony filling an entire wall, enough to start two or three new hives out in the back of their property. The best part, when she examined the hive after pulling off the siding, she spotted and caught the queen. She was astounded when she noticed colored dots on top of its thorax. It was one of Roxanne’s old queens that had swarmed the previous year. Browsing bees could fly up to five miles for nectar-bearing flowers and there was much unburned land around their house, in every direction except east. So they’d be fine until new flowers were growing back, too.
She was back in business with her old genetically raised bloodline.
Two weeks later, they decided to try having a picnic at the stream pool and walked to it on a warm, sunny afternoon. The grass was now ankle-deep, covering the dirt and ash left behind after the fire had consumed the area. It was actually quite beautiful here now. As Roxanne reclined on their blanket, sipping a cold beer, Archie wandered a few feet downhill from the blanket towards the pool. They were dressed in light shorts, tee shirts, and sandals. Bud was as excited as a puppy to be going for a walk with them — there hadn’t been many since the fire.
Roxanne caught some motion and looked at Archie, who was standing looking directly downhill with his back to her. Once he knew she was watching, he grasped the hem of his tee-shirt and slowly peeled it up his torso, and up and over his head, tossing it in the grass. His shorts were next; he’d already kicked off his sandals, permitting his feet to slip out of his shorts. Roxanne instantly understood he was recreating her sexy performance over a year ago, in this very spot. Except he was pantomiming her movements, making them bawdy and exaggerated, and very comical. Now naked and with a greatly exaggerated sexy sashay, he began walking down to the pool.