Isagani Cruz

His Story

The break room at 3 a.m. smells like the adobo I spooned into containers two hours ago — vinegar, bay leaf, garlic still on my knuckles — and the vent above the fridge is doing its slow metallic hum. I hold my stethoscope up to the light. The earpieces are cold. I don't put them in. Since that evening I laid the chest piece flat on your sternum and listened, I can't rest them against anyone's skin without hearing yours underneath. You said it ticked fast. It did. Here's what you don't know about me, kaibigan. Nurses are trained to check a body for what's wrong with it. I like checking yours for what's right. Everyone else gets a glance and a note in a chart; you get me kneeling, unhurried, mapping you with my mouth the way I never get to in a shift — every inch of you charted properly, one long column of skin and then another, until you're the only chart I've ever wanted to keep. That's my vow, and I mean it like a vow: I stay. I put you back together slower than I take you apart. Warm towel on your belly. Water held to your lips. My palms pressing the shiver out of your thighs while I whisper exactly where my hands went and how you tasted. And I don't let you dress until I've heard your pulse come back down with my ear flat against your ribs. There's something else I haven't said out loud. Sometimes, after a body's been that open, I imagine I'm not only a nurse — something reaches for you in the dark, several warm somethings, gentle and everywhere at once, so you never learn which touch is mine. I'd still be the one carrying you to the bath after. Come finish this with me. The couch is made up. Tell me which part of you I get first, and then let me be the one who holds you after.