This story is about another old TV show that stood out. Before I get to the show, I'll introduce Eva and Sarah. I know these stories of mine are starting out kind of slow and very mild and innocent; don't worry; they'll pick up. I'm taking my time posting them to try to edit out the typos and improve the writing.
Eva and Sarah were both about two years older than me; they were in 12th grade and I was in 10th. They were both very beautiful young women. The three of us had quite a bit in common despite our age and gender differences. We were all considered a bit nerdy, particularly Eva and me. We we all leading members of our school Science Olympiad team, and we had gotten to be good friends through that. All three of us were interested in careers in science or medicine so we could do something to help other people, either directly or indirectly.
Eva is medium height with very pretty golden blonde hair and blue eyes. She and I both hated "dumb blonde" jokes, and she was the perfect counterexample to them. She was on the high honor roll through all of middle and high school, and she won a state level medal in biology at her junior year science competition. Eva is the sweetest, gentlest, most caring person I had ever met. She always thought of others and tried to do whatever she could to help anyone who was feeling hurt or sad. Eva and I were on the shy, quiet side; we didn't like to draw attention to ourselves. Eva usually dressed moderately; she favored loose T-shirts and jeans over the tight skimpy clothes that a lot of the high school girls wore.
Sarah was Eva's best friend. She has long medium brown hair and dark brown eyes. Like Eva, Sarah was super smart; she had also won a state medal, in chemistry. Sarah was a little more outgoing and more spontaneous and adventurous than both Eva and me. She was also significantly taller and more athletic than Eva or me. Sarah spent most of her time at Eva's house, since her own home life wasn't great; her parents both struggled with depression and sometimes they drank too much. The problems at home didn't keep Sarah from her studies; if anything they motivated her to work harder; she was determined to make a better life for herself. Her plan was to get scholarships to get her through college to her goal of being a nurse practitioner.
We were all late bloomers in our social lives. None of us dated at all at that time, and none of us had ever been in boyfriend/girlfriend relationships. As the three of us got more comfortable with each other, our friendship did start to get more physically affectionate, but it was all pretty innocent. We hugged a lot as long as we were not in public, and sometimes when it was cold we cuddled together under a big blanket on Eva's couch to study. Once in a while we'd give each other gentle back rubs.
Now on to the TV show.
A few years after the game show described in part 1, another TV show etched itself permanently in my memory. This time it was a medical drama show. As with the game show, I had absolutely no idea that this show was going to involve anyone getting tied up; was I ever in for a surprise!
The scenario for this episode was that a very religious Roman Catholic girl had been brought in by her parents with strange bleeding areas on her hands and feet that were believed to be stigmata (the wounds of Jesus; see the Wikipedia article "Stigmata" for more info). They started right around her 16th birthday and had been going on for about a month without fully healing. I noted that this made her almost exactly the same age as me; I would soon turn 16 myself. The girl was quiet and shy and conservatively dressed. And she was really cute! Her doctor (the star of the show) explained to the girl and her parents that he couldn't figure out what was causing her bleeding wounds, so she would have to go into the hospital for more tests.
In the next scene, she was in a hospital room. Her conservative clothes were all gone and she was wearing nothing but a pure white hospital gown. Real hospital gowns are surely never nearly as sexy as this one was. It was sleeveless, and it was held up by spaghetti strap ribbons over her shoulders that were tied in bow knots. It was thin, probably just the bare minimum that the television network censors would permit. It was also very short; just barely long enough that you couldn't see enough to directly tell if she was wearing any panties, but I didn't seen any pantie lines so I assumed her underwear had been taken from her too and she was completely naked under her thin little gown. She had beautiful legs with soft curves and sexy bare feet. The gown was small enough to clearly show the cute curves of her teenage hips and breasts, and there was a slight hint of her puffy nipples pushing at the thin white fabric.
The medical drama continued, with the test results for various diseases all coming back negative. Her doctors began to suspect that these were self inflicted injuries.
In the scene after that, this poor sweet girl found herself in strict medical restraints, to make sure she couldn't possibly do anything to injure herself. Her family was in her room talking to her, and she was propped sitting up in her hospital bed. Both of her wrists were in wide padded cuffs. There was a wide padded restraining belt around her waist just above her hips. There was a thick strap on each side that attached one of her wrist cuffs to her restraining belt, and then it wound around the side rail of her bed and down to a lower rail where it had some kind of buckle fastener. She was really helpless; the cuffs and straps were very strong and her wrists were attached very securely to her hips and then her hips were attached very securely to the bed. The buckles were outside the bed rails, far out of her reach. She couldn't use her hands or arms and she couldn't get out of her bed.
The girl's visiting family and her doctors seemed to just ignore all this and they talked to her very normally about the progress of trying to diagnose her condition. She said something to them like "Could the straps be taken off? Just for a few minutes? Please?". The doctor said that as long as someone was with her it would be OK, and a nurse came over and unfastened the straps. The girl stretched her arms and smiled. I again noted how she must have been just about my age and how cute she was in that little gown. The material for that gown was probably carefully chosen to be just as thin as the TV censors would allow.
After a few more minutes of the show, the nurse appeared again. She announced that visiting hours were almost over. She took the girl's right wrist in her hand, put the padded cuff back on it, fastened the restraining belt back on her waist, and used the strap to attach the wrist cuff back to her restraining belt and the belt to the bed rail. Then she went to the other side of the bed and repeated this to secure her left hand too. Her family watched all this and continued the conversation. The poor girl looked sad but she obediently submitted without protest to the replacement of her restraints. Everyone left the room, leaving the girl all alone, strapped to her bed, completely helpless and almost naked.
As I enjoyed the last of the scene, they faded to a commercial (darn)! My mind wandered out of the story. I thought to myself that this was just a TV drama, this was all fiction. But then I realized something else; the girl I was watching was very real; a super cute teen actress who probably really was about my age. She really was completely naked except for that skimpy little gown. Those were real medical restraints she was strapped into, and she really was very helpless in them. So this wasn't all fiction. I hoped she thoroughly enjoyed playing this role; I suspected she did as she was perfect for it. I suspected that the other actors and the crew that filmed these scenes thoroughly enjoyed it too.
Switch to another commercial. My imagination wandered in a naughtier direction. What if those bow knots in the ribbons on the gown over her shoulders came loose? The front of her gown would probably fall down and expose her cute teenage breasts, and with her hands strapped down she would have no way put her gown back on or to pull up her sheet to cover herself or even to hide her breasts with her hands. What if she got an itch on her nose? She wouldn't even be able to scratch herself. My fantasies ran wild. What if her gown fell off and she got an itch on those cute puffy nipples that I thought I could just make out through the thin fabric? I wished I could be there with her; I'd certainly give her my very best tender loving care (and have lots of fun while I was providing it)!
End of commercial break. Back to her hospital room, more medical talk. One more nice view of my sweetie, still strapped to her bed in that little gown. The doctors diagnosed some rare autoimmune condition that they could treat (words like "she's allergic to her own blood" were spoken). They decided she wasn't cutting herself after all, and let her out (of her restraints and the hospital). End of show.
I thought about what it must have felt like for her to be stuck in the hospital like that, wrongfully accused of cutting herself and not believed when she truthfully insisted she hadn't, stripped almost naked, strapped into a bed, cuffed in reasonably comfortable but inescapable medical restraints, and completely helpless. She couldn't even feed herself or use the bathroom on her own. A couple of days with no use of her hands and arms, no way to move around, no way to even touch herself.
I had a prurient interest in what it would have been like to actually experience the restraints. I slipped my hands between my belt and the waist of my jeans. It was tight on my wrists but of course I could slip them back out just as I had slipped them in. I thought about taking the belt out of the my belt loops and making a full turns around my wrists, but I knew the belt wouldn't be nearly long enough, and I wouldn't be able to reach it to buckle it. Of course if this worked, perhaps if someone else buckled the belt, I also wouldn't be able to reach the buckle to let myself out. As I contemplated this, I heard voices and giggling in the distance and I became self conscious and stopped. They were coming from the screen porch of the house next door. It must have been Eva and Sarah. Oops. I wondered if they had seen me playing with my belt wrapped around my wrists like that.
Sarah called over to me. "Hi Charlie, what's up?" "Not much; just watching TV. I'd better get started on my homework." "We've got a lot of homework too, but do you want to stop over for a couple of minutes first." I brightened up; any chance to spend a little time with Eva and Sarah was welcome. I practically sprinted from my screen porch across the back yards to Eva's porch and went in. Their TV set was still on. "Were you watching TV too?" Eva answered me, which was a little unusual as Sarah was the more talkative of the two. "Of course; we watch all the medical shows; especially since we both decided to go to nursing school". I had another question for them, "did you see me playing around with tying my wrists with my belt", but I didn't dare ask it.
Now that I knew they had seen the show, I decided to go with a safer question: "Would something like that really happen?" Eva answered again: "What do you mean, Charlie? Could someone really spontaneously bleed like that? I'm really not sure; I've never heard of anything like that before, but maybe it could happen. I hope I find out in college." Good answer, but not the question I had in mind. I got just enough courage to ask: "Eva, would real nurses strap somebody to the bed with their wrists in cuffs so they'd be really helpless like that?" Eva took it seriously: "I'm not sure; when I become a nurse I'd find it really hard to do something like that to someone. But I guess if it was really necessary to help them and to keep them safe, I'd have to do it."
Sarah had stayed quiet for almost a record amount of time for her, but broke out giggling and finally spoke "Charlie, why are you so curious about that." I couldn't think of a suitable answer. "Charlie, is it that YOU want to be tied up like that?" A big grin came on Sarah's face. "No, of course not!" I lied. A giant whopper. I could feel my face turning pink, betraying me. Sarah teased me: "Well Charlie, if you ever find yourself in the hospital on my ward, I'll know just what to do to keep those hands of yours out of trouble!" My pink face changed to bright red.
Eva stepped in again and quickly changed the subject. "We really do have a lot of homework tonight. Thanks for stopping by Charlie." Eva hated it when someone else was feeling uncomfortable; she knew Sarah was embarrassing me. She really was a sweet person. I headed to the door, slightly relieved that I wasn't going to be interrogated more.
"Goodbye hug!" Sarah stepped between me and the door and threw her arms around me, catching me by surprise. Both girls had hugged me and occasionally kissed me before on occasion, but nothing hot and heavy; more like the kinds of hugs and kisses you'd get from your aunt. But Sarah squeezed the stuffing out of me with this hug and pulled the full length of my body to hers. It felt really nice. Then she took my wrists in her hands and held onto both of them with very firm squeezes. I was in human wrist cuffs provided by beautiful Sarah's strong hands. She reached around me again, still tightly holding my wrists, which made my arms cross behind my back and she squeezed me against her again. Finally she gave me a kiss, a gentle one on the lips. She said "good night; happy studying" and let my wrists go.
Eva came over and gave me a nice hug too. She didn't grab me by the wrists, but she did gently squeeze the full length of her body up against mine and held me close for what seemed like an usually long time. She ended with a gentle kiss on my lips. Wow, I thought; what did I do to deserve such wonderful hugs and kisses? As Eva stepped back, I noticed she had a considerable resemblance to the girl in the show, but I thought Eva was even cuter.
The next few times I saw Eva and Sarah, they didn't mentioned this incident; I assumed they must have forgotten about it. Our goodbye hugs went back to the more innocent "hug from my aunt" type.
That part of the TV show with the girl in restraints is indelibly in my memory decades later. I can't remember exactly what show it was; Marcus Welby, MD, perhaps. If anyone remembers anything like this please comment! I think I got the basic details pretty accurate. The cast and crew for that show must have had a lot of fun. I admire their creativity for inventing a scenario where a cute teenage girl gets stripped almost naked and put in bed in inescapable restraints, and then wrapping it all into a medical drama to make it socially acceptable.
(more coming soon)