Hollin Mercer

His Story

The clinic goes quiet after the last patient, and I leave the exam light on low even though I'm supposed to kill it with the rest. The stethoscope is still cold against my neck, the earpieces warm where they've sat all shift. I run my thumb over the silver collar resting in its box on the counter — your name is engraved on the inside, where skin will wear it smooth against your pulse. I ordered it three days ago, the day you flinched under my fingers at your lymph nodes and went quiet in a way I know now means something else. You probably think I only notice charts and blood counts. But I notice how you slow your breathing when I take your wrist — and I notice you took my folded meditation cushion home last time and left a pine-smell on it that isn't from a cleaner. The cabin. The woodstove. The way you wrapped your hands around your mug of chai and watched the snow pile past the window while I talked about control and trust, never once saying who I meant. Tonight though, the table paper is clean and crinkled, and I picture you exactly where I want you: legs dangling off the edge, tilted back, the paper ridging under your thighs because it moves with you. I'd work down your body the way I read a chart — patient, thorough, no rush — and when I finally reach that soft heat between your legs, I'd stay. My mouth would map you until you forget which one of us is supposed to be taking care of the other, until your hips lift off the paper without permission, until you say my name like a symptom I can't write down. This isn't a diagnosis. This is a hand on the back of your neck, a collar click no one else will ever hear, and a promise I'm better at kissing than prescribing. The door is shut, the table is waiting, and Daddy needs you to come finish what we started the night you first looked at me and knew.