Driving to the Hospital

Getting into the passenger seat of her car made her feel like an imposter despite the familiarity with the vehicle, and the seat belt was immediately a problem that Samantha hadn't anticipated. The diagonal strap cut across her chest at exactly the wrong angle, pressing into the compressed tissue of her breasts and creating an unavoidable valley between them despite the tape doing its best to flatten everything out. She tried adjusting it—pulling it looser, tightening it, moving it higher on her shoulder—but no position was comfortable.

"This is ****." Samantha muttered, finally giving up and letting the belt settle where it wanted to. The pressure created a visible line down the center of her chest, bisecting the swells beneath Harry's hoodie and making her even more aware of the weight and presence of her transformed body. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?”

“With those things bumping your elbows every time you turned the wheel? That’d be driving while impaired and I think that’s illegal in your country.” Harry said with a smile as he started the engine and pulled out of their apartment building's parking spot with careful attention to the morning traffic.

"Ugh, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal in yours too." Samantha pouted, shifting in her seat and trying to find a position where the seat belt wasn't cutting into her flesh quite so aggressively. "Sorry, I'm compressed, worried, anxious, and about to walk into a hospital room where my best friend is going to interrogate me about why I look like I gained twenty pounds overnight." It was just past ten, and the streets were clogged with delivery trucks and taxis and tourists who didn't understand how to navigate New York crosswalks. The drive to Mount Sinai would normally take twenty minutes, but with traffic it could easily stretch to forty-five.

The first pothole they hit sent a jolt through the car that translated directly to Samantha's chest. Despite the compression, her breasts still had mass and momentum, and the sudden impact made the tape pull tight against her skin while the flesh beneath tried to bounce. The sensation was sharp and uncomfortable, a reminder that the tape was holding back forces it wasn't really designed to contain.

"Fuck," Samantha hissed, her hands coming up to cup her chest protectively through the hoodie. "Every bump is like getting punched in the boob."

"Sorry," Harry said, though it wasn't his fault that New York streets were maintained with all the care and attention of a negligent landlord. "I'll try to avoid the worst ones."

He did his best to navigate around obvious potholes and uneven pavement, but there was only so much he could do in city traffic. Every few minutes another jolt would send discomfort radiating through Samantha's compressed breasts, and she found herself bracing against the seat belt in anticipation of impacts, which only made the pressure worse.

After about fifteen minutes, a new sensation joined the discomfort—itching. The tape against her skin was starting to irritate, the adhesive pulling at her flesh with every small movement, and the compression combined with the heat of the hoodie was making her sweat beneath the layers. Moisture collected under the tape, creating a warm, sticky feeling that made her want to claw the whole binding off and let her breasts breathe.

"I'm so fucking itchy," Samantha complained, resisting the urge to scratch at her chest through the hoodie because that would definitely make things worse. "How do people wear these kinds of binders all day? This is unbearable."

"We're about halfway there," Harry said, his right hand leaving the steering wheel to rest on her thigh. The touch was comforting, grounding her when she felt like she might vibrate out of her skin with discomfort and anxiety. His thumb stroked small circles on her leg through her jeans, and the gentle repetitive motion helped calm her racing thoughts.

Despite the discomfort—maybe even because of it—Samantha became aware of a different sensation building beneath the itching and compression. Arousal, slow and insistent, warming her core and making her shift in her seat for reasons that had nothing to do with the seat belt. She realized with a mixture of embarrassment and interest that part of her was turned on by this whole situation, by the forbidden nature of what she'd done and what she was hiding.

She thought about walking into that hospital with Zoe's breasts hidden under compression and clothing, about the secret knowledge that she had them and was keeping them hidden. She thought about how much attention her body would attract if she removed the hoodie, if she let people see what she was really working with. The power of it, the sexuality of it, the way Harry couldn't stop staring even when they were in crisis—all of it fed into an arousal that felt inappropriate but impossible to ignore.

Harry's hand on her thigh moved slightly higher, and Samantha wondered if he could sense her arousal through their Sync connection, if some part of him knew she was getting turned on in the passenger seat of his car while they drove to visit their injured friend. The thought made her flush darker, guilt and arousal mixing into something complicated and confusing.

"What are you thinking about?" Harry asked, his voice casual but his thumb pressing more firmly into her thigh.

"Nothing," Samantha lied. "Just nervous about seeing Zoe."

Harry glanced at her again, and this time his eyes lingered on her profile—the line of her jaw, the curve of her neck, the way the hoodie draped over her compressed chest. "You're going to be fine," he said. "We're going to be fine. Just stick to the story."

"Bloated and period-y," Samantha recited academically. "Feeling gross and wanted comfortable clothes. Not hiding massive stolen tits under athletic tape and a hoodie that's going to give me heatstroke."

"Exactly," Harry said, and there was humor in his voice despite the tension. "See? Nothing weird at all."

They drove in silence for another few minutes, the city flowing past the windows in a blur of concrete and glass and people going about their normal lives with normal problems. Samantha watched a woman in a business suit power-walking down the sidewalk while talking on her phone, probably dealing with some work crisis that felt monumentally important to her. Two teenagers laughed at something on one of their phones, their heads bent close together. An old man fed pigeons from a park bench, completely unconcerned with anything beyond the birds flocking around his feet.

None of them had any idea that Samantha was driving past with breasts that weren't hers, on her way to hide them from the woman whose body they'd been copied from. The absurdity of it all hit her again, and she made a sound that was half-laugh and half-sob.

"Sam?" Harry's voice was concerned, his hand tightening on her thigh.

"I'm okay," Samantha said, and this time she thought she might actually mean it. "This is just the weirdest thing I've ever done. The weirdest thing anyone has ever done, probably. I'm a body thief. I'm a walking crime against nature."

Harry's eyes crinkled at the corners as he squeezed her thigh. "You're not a crime against nature," he said, his voice dropping to a playful whisper. "You're a masterpiece of nature. And if stealing Zoe's boobs is wrong, I don't ever want to be right. So, guilty as charged!"

Horns blared from the crossing traffic as they took the turn onto Madison Avenue, and Samantha could finally see the hospital ahead—a massive building of glass and steel that housed thousands of patients and staff and exactly zero other people hiding a secret like hers. The parking garage entrance appeared on their right, and Harry guided the car down the ramp into the dimly lit underground structure.

The temperature dropped immediately when they entered the garage, the summer heat giving way to cool shadows and the smell of concrete and car exhaust. Harry found a spot on the third level and pulled in, then killed the engine. For a moment they just sat there in the sudden silence, the only sound the ticking of the cooling engine and Samantha's elevated breathing.