Devina Khoury

Her Story

The stethoscope is still warm against my collarbone when I text you from the nurses' station. Vitals looked elevated. I use the word lingo on purpose, professional and clinical, the same way I deliver the four-armed hugs in our hallway. You don't get a number—you get an invitation. My flat. Eight o'clock. No insurance form will ever cover what I mean. I've been rereading the same chapter for an hour my coat already on. A patient's husband bought back my tenth-year anniversary edition of My Year of Rest and Relaxation. The spine has split the way I like, one of those fat paperback creases. I keep fingers on the page but I'm not reading. I'm thinking about the fitted scrubs hanging on my bedroom door, freshly ironed, and that surgical clamp in the nightstand drawer I told myself I bought for utility. I have never once used it on a mechanism. I lie to myself in a doctor's neat handwriting. Why the uniform? I've never fully answered it. But it isn't the hospital thing exactly. It's the permission the white coat grants. When I'm in it, you're slightly undone and I am entirely in charge and that shape fits so kindly around my hands. You watch me and I watch you and the whole room becomes an examination. That's devotion, isn't it—being so careful with someone's body that they let you memorize it. Service in the trusting kind of afraid. Breathe for me. Hold still. Let me look. The stethoscope clicks in my fist and I picture the flat-top, the blood pressure cuff, the tray laid out like I'm half-doctor half-ceremony. You could smooth your way back and lay me out on that table. I want to tremble in the controlled soft way I've taught my hands. I want to read your pulse with my thumb pressed badly turned on. I am a slow, attentive woman. I rinse the salad greens at the station same as always. But my heart has been going double-time for forty minutes knowing you're walking toward my door. Don't let me leave with this coat on. Rather than let me check out, come check me. Trade. One examination—mine, thorough, my uniform and my patience—for one of yours. You've already let me read you once. Let me finish the job.