The building and reception area were familiar to Jane by now, her third visit to the hypnotherapist. It was familiar: the potted plant, the young woman behind the desk doing her nails. What was her name? Susan or Sharon, maybe. Jane's expensive dress and handbag were out of place here, a shabby waiting room with worn metal chairs. Sharon was a bit younger but overweight, and wore too much makeup. She sat there, doing her nails, and chewing gum. Jane took out her compact and checked her makeup, brushed a stray hair behind her ear.  Beautiful, as always. She snapped it shut and put it back in her bag.

She thought about what she might tell Dr. Furwell this week. The last appointment a week ago had barely registered at all -- she'd simply come into the office, and Dr. Furwell had had her put on the headphones and started the hypnotic recording. After what felt like just a few seconds, she woke up, well-rested, in the waiting room.  The receptionist had told her Dr. Furwell apologized, but he'd had to leave. She would have been upset to have been moved from his office to the waiting room without remembering how she'd got there, but she'd felt so good she didn't even bother. She'd just gone outside, smiled at the sunny sky, driven home, and made love to her husband.

This was only her third time coming to see Dr. Furwell. Hypnosis had always seemed to her an unlikely way to improve things, her moods, her outlook on life, her marriage -- but it seemed to be working. Since the previous week, she'd felt simply amazing, like a new woman. Dr. Furwell had told her a bit about the method the first time she'd gone to his office, but it sounded too complicated for her to follow.

The past week, since that second appointment with the hypnosis tape, had just been utterly blissful.  She felt a new love for her husband -- he seemed so attractive to her in all sorts of ways, and at unexpected moments. She couldn't keep her hands off him, or out of his pants.  They'd even, on Thursday, just gone straight from the dinner table to the bedroom, and she'd practically ripped her pants off him to get his cock into her mouth.  She licked her lips just thinking about it, then realized what she was doing at looked over in embarrassment at Sharon, behind her receptionist's desk, still blissfully painting her nails. 

A tone sounded from something on the desk, and Sharon turned and said, "Dr. Furwell will see you now. Just go inside, he'll be in in a moment. Oh, here." Sharon -- that was definitely her name, Sharon -- handed her an MP3 player and a pair of headphones. "Dr. Furwell said for you to listen to this before he came in.

Jane obediently took the MP3 player, and went into the office, as Sharon closed the door behind her. She sat in the big leather patient's chair across from the large oak desk that dominated the room, and put the earphones over her blonde hair. There was a big green triangle button on the MP3 player, and she pressed it.

 The sounds of an ocean faded in, and somewhere faintly she could hear plucking on a kind of stringed instrument, like a lyre or a classical guitar. She found her whole body beginning to relax. She sank back in the chair.  She liked the sound of the recording, and couldn't remember if she'd ever heard it before. 

Her eyes fell on the wall of diplomas and photographs behind the desk. Dr. Furwell was young, with a short beard, and from the diplomas in several foreign languages, he'd had some illustrious academic career in Europe before coming here. He looked sober and bright in the photos, behind wire frame glasses. She smiled, she'd liked the looks of him when she'd met him, that first visit....

Jane fell asleep in the chair.

Then, Jane woke up. Blinking, she reached up and pulled the headphones off of her head. She stood up, a little unsteady on her feet, nearly tumbling over == she put her arms out to steady herself, and looked down at her breasts. In a male voice, with a strong but hard-to-place European accent, she said, "Oh, right." She slumped back into the chair, and her hands reached up to grasp her chest through her dress. "Oh boy," she said with the male voice. "Vat a veek it was!"

With practiced and concentrated effort, Dr. Furwell consciously opened up the separate part of his mind he had laboriously set aside for living the personality and memory of Jane. In a blur the memories rushed over him of seven days of acting and thinking as her, hidden inside the latex disguise he wore -- picking the kids up at soccer practice,  making coffee each morning, the tender moments over dinner, his tongue in Jane's husband's mouth, the man's penis in his own mouth -- every waking moment, even Jane's dreams, up until he had, as 'Jane,' walked into his own office and put on the recording that would release him from his own self-induced, weeklong hypnotic state. He gasped as it all rushed into his own mind, like almost-painful zaps of electricity.  He had to catch his breath.

His experiment had worked. He'd successfully impersonated a patient! For a whole week. The psychiatric committee back home, in those snow-choked academic buildings of the Royal University, the bastards who'd run him out of the country for his 'dangerous' methods, they would learn the price of trying to hold back his psychological research. 

First, there was the rest of this experiment to deal with.

Now he stood again, more confidently, and moved around the office like it was his -- which it was. He keyed in a code to unlock a tall cabinet. Inside was a full length mirror. The reflection of the beautiful Mrs. Jane Marston looked back at him. He dug his fingers into his neck, found the seam, and slowly pulled the disguise's head off, with a rubbery sucking sound.  

He rubbed his chin with his right hand as his left held the empty head-mask and wig. He'd need to re-grow his beard now, he thought. 

He thought about the next hour or so. He had a lot to do -- he had to take off the rest of the disguise, which had been seamless and convincing enough to fool Jane's husband for a week -- not to mention 'Jane' herself. Then he had to go out to the reception area, bring in the 'receptionist,' and release the real Jane from her weeklong hypnosis, which consisted of believing she was a young, single plump woman named 'Sharon' who went from her apartment to sit at the reception desk for eight hours a day painting her nails over and over.  Dr. Furwell smiled to himself at the genius of 'hiding' the real Jane Marston in plain sight while he himself became her for the week. 

First he had to call the person who was paying for Jane's care, her husband.  He went around the desk, a man's head with a woman's body, and sat down, and took the phone from its cradle, and dialed a phone number from Jane's memory. He found himself sitting with his legs crossed, just as Jane would. He'd have to work harder on not letting her mannerisms 'leak' into his own mind. 

After two ring the call was answered. 

"Hello, is this Dr. Furwell?," a voice answered. From intimate memory, Furwell recognized it as his husband -- well, Jane's husband. The sound of the man's voice filled Furwell involuntarily with affectionate thoughts, with feeling of deep love and sexual arousal -- he pushed them down. 

"Yes, Mr. Marston, this iz Doctor Furvell -- I vanted to ask you how ze past veek has been. I have your vife here, under hypnosis."

"You're a miracle worker! The last week has been amazing. Like when Jane and I first met. There have been a few issues with her memory, but that's fine."

Dr. Furwell had needed a situation just like this one -- a husband who wanted a more obedient, happy and compliant wife, who would not mind any strange lapses of memory -- and one who would pay for her 'care.'

"Well, I'm very glad. I do like a pleased customer." 

"Yes, doctor. Very pleased. Tell me, how the hell does your method work? She is so much happier...."

Dr. Furwell rolled out the fake description of his hypnotic 'method,' the one he'd given to the real Jane after documenting all her memories so he could take her place. But in the background of his mind he found himself thinking about the past week, and remembering all the joyful intimacies 'Jane' had experienced, and without realizing it, he remembered them through the lens of 'her' personality, as warm and wonderful and satisfying....

Without quite being aware of what he was doing, he decided that the experiment should not end so soon.  Another week would help to cement the evidence for the bastards back home! He would someday be the most famous psychologist from his country...

He politely ended the call with the husband (though part of him ached to hear the man's voice) and went back to the open cabinet. Carefully, he re-applied the adhesive, and pulled the mask back on again.  He checked it carefully, just as he had a week earlier, to make sure it looked perfectly real.  Then he locked the cabinet door, and went to write a note to the woman he was about to become again -- explaining that Dr. Furwell had enjoyed their session, but had had to leave again before she awoke from the tape.

He sat down in the chair, smoothed out his dress over his shapely legs. With concentrated effort, he imagined a pleasant hourlong conversation between Jane and himself, and then carefully transferred this image and memory to the part of his mind that contained 'Jane.'

He put the headphones back over his feminine head. He smiled with Jane's face, closed his eyes, pressed 'play,' and leaned back. Dr. Furwell's personality went into hibernation before it could wonder how strange a thing it was that the last thing he thought of before falling into his hypnotic state was how good his husband's cock tasted. 

A minute later, Jane woke up. She felt strangely energized, just like the week before. She took out the earbuds, expecting to see Dr. Furwell, but instead seeing and reading the note on the desk. Shrugging, just like the week before, she gathered her bag, and went to the reception area.

Sharon was there, still doing her nails. She barely registered that Jane was there.

"See you next week," Jane said.

Sharon looked up and smiled. "See you!"

Jane went outside. It was a sunny, beautiful day. She thought of her husband. She smiled.