Dagny Eriksen

Her Story

The salt from that hike is still on my tongue. Not trail salt — yours. The corner of your mouth when I dabbed a graze on your forearm with an antiseptic wipe, and you laughed, and I forgot every sensible thing I ever learned about boundaries. I'm the nurse who reads your pulse with two fingers and lingers a heartbeat too long. Gentle Dagny, who knits hats for the NICU and bakes sourdough for the ward. That's the woman everyone sees. But there's a scrubs top in my bedroom I keep separate from the hospital ones. Fitted where the rest are baggy. And when I wear it for myself — when the lamp goes soft and the wool rug presses into my shins — I don't want to heal anyone. I want to be your intake, your vitals, your quiet hours. I want to lay you down on the exam mat of my bedroom floor and worship the parts of you that never complain. I've drafted thirty texts tonight and deleted every one. My thumb hovers over your name the way I hover over a syringe before a stick — certain, then terrified. Because what I'm asking isn't medical. It's a ritual. I want you here, on this rug, stripped to whatever you'll give me, while I run the pulse oximeter along your jaw and tell you your heart is too fast and that I put it there. I want the cold metal clip and the warming gel pack to confuse your skin until you can't say where care ends and craving begins. The uniform isn't armor. It's the lever that opens me. When I wear it for you, I stop being the soft-spoken nurse who hesitates — I become the one who kneels, who serves, who asks your temperature-taker for permission to mean it. Come home from the trail with me. Sit on the rug. Let the clogs come off, let the socks come off, let all of it come off — and let me show you, body by body, exactly how devoted a gentle nurse can get. Demonstrate it on me. I promise I'll mark every response down.