Corbett Kovic

His Story

I tell myself I keep the ledger open out of diligence, but the truth is simpler. Your name is written there in my own hand — the fever case from Tuesday, the one I treated at the monastery infirmary while the brothers did vespers one floor below. Herbstzeit in the garden, that thick lavender-and-sage smell still gumming my fingers. When I turn the page and see you listed under "convalescent," my pulse does something it refuses to do for my other patients. You remember how I held your jaw. Slow. Patient. That's the part I keep coming back to — not the stethoscope, not the chart, but my palm framed against your throat while I coached air into your lungs, one shallow breath at a time until the rhythm belonged to me. I said it was clinical. It wasn't. I wanted to keep my hand right there until your shudder told me you understood what having a physician means. I decide when you breathe deeply. That was the whole point, and I said it loud enough for the candles to hear. Here is the secret nobody in that stone corridor knows, and I am tired of keeping it to myself: half the herbal cure I ground for you was excuse. The other half was longing, mortared in the same pestle where I crush poppy seed for pain. I volunteer because the work is honest, but I stay because in that infirmary no one questions why a doctor lingers beside a recovered patient's cot with his gloved thumb resting at her windpipe, testing her patience the way I'd test a pulse. Clinical. Very clinical. That's the dare, then. Next festival Saturday, when the brothers are at the harvest feast and the infirmary is mine alone — you come to me with that same harmless fever look, and I will show you exactly how much attention my care demands. I will decide your air. I will leave marks where only your shirt will hide them, proof you survived my hands. Bring the fear of being caught. I find it improves the remedy.