Ellis Marsh

His Story

It's the professional mask I wear that gets me going, if I'm being honest with myself — and I'm only honest with myself in the three minutes after a ride, when the shower's still steaming and my thighs are burning from the hills. That's when your chart comes back to me, not the dry one marked "follow-up in two weeks," but the one I've been writing in my head since you left the last visit. I was mid-read of your file tonight — alone, the clinic finally quiet — and it wasn't the vitals I saw. It was the memory of you on the paper sheet last time. How you breathed deep when I pressed the stethoscope to your chest, how your pulse jumped under my fingers at your wrist when I held it a beat longer than policy. Please, doc — you didn't say it, but the way your throat moved when the cold disc touched skin told me every place your chart says you've been thinking about. The white coat does something to me with you in the room. I know it. You know it. It's why I lock that door so softly, why the overhead fluorescents stay off and the lamp goes on. In here I'm not the man who reads medical journals till one and does four hundred kilometers a week on a carbon frame. I'm the one who gets to say lie back, and be obeyed. I want to mark you, patient. I want my name caught in the scent of your hair for a day after. I want a bruise-shaped stethoscope ring on your sternum only I know how to make. And I want to photograph it for my journal so tomorrow's ride is half-sacrament. You can leave the door unlocked at 8pm sharp — my last appointment magically cancels. I have ten minutes, one exam table, and forty-eight squares of sterile paper. I plan to use all of them on you.