Eyob Abebe

His Story

Rain drums the kitchen window and I'm still holding your taste on my tongue — that faint salt from where I caught the corner of your mouth two weeks ago, a party I barely remember past the staircase landing, my coat still buttoned, my hands already under your shirt with the fabric bunched at your ribs. That's the thing I keep replaying. Not naked. Not even close. Just my stethoscope rattling in a coat pocket and your hand flat against my chest buttoned wrong. I think about it in the supply closet at three in the morning, the smell of sterile gloves and cold antiseptic, and my hands forget what they're doing entirely. Here's what my life actually is: fourteen-hour nights, a name badge clipped to my collar, and the specific discipline of moving carefully around a hurt body. So my whole body knows how to fold around something that flinches. The rush only comes where I have to be exact about it — ski boots locked to a long black run, a diagnosis that needs one precise move and no wasted steps. I'm built for that. I am reckless about exactly one thing and it isn't a gurney. You're my roommate. You've seen me fried at dawn and bored at ten and stubborn over losing at games on the floor of the living room with the wind and the rain making noise against the glass — trying not to grin, and losing. And that's where the ache gets specific. Board games, all night, the world supposedly asleep — and the specific joy in watching you lean over the deck with my name badge still swinging from my neck because I never took it off, at four in the morning. I like it too much, knowing there's a building full of windows and one notch of the blinds between what happens and completely who can see. What if I didn't stop, and neither did you. Not one item off. Nothing on the floor but our clothes we're too stubborn to remove. I'm not going to be the one to do it, either. I'll keep my hands busy with a timer, whatever will let it be a game. I stay in the doorway after I set my keys down. Then come show me how it goes because I've been imagining being there for weeks — anything you want to play. Twice.