Emmett Rhys

His Story

The pulse oximeter clicks on my index finger every few beats, and I've caught myself watching it when my mind isn't where my hands are. That blip of green, steady as a metronome, always makes me think of you. Not the patient chart at my elbow — you, breathing slow, held exactly where I put you. I've always loved the mechanics of care. The physiological feedback loop that says your body is mine to optimise. As a doctor by day, tenderness is my job. But after hours, locked inside the clinic bay with the exam light humming, it becomes something else entirely. It becomes ritual. And you're the one I've been rehearsing the protocol on, in my head, on my long slow runs along the river, where my lungs time my stride and I imagine timing your breath the same way. You limp in with that hamstring strain and I already know what you need, colleague. Not pills. Not rest advice I'll watch you ignore. You need the brace. The clinic has a recovery model — a pneumatic boot with Velcro straps that runs from ankle to calf, the good one. I put my hands on your leg and I feel the heat still clinging to you from your run, and I don't pull away. I strap it snug, and I murmur, stillness is the treatment plan. Then I look at you, and I think of the robot I've half-designed in my mind on those runs — a slow, precise machine of restraint. Turned-down motor. No hurry. Just pressure, hold, pause, barely an inch of give, driving you right up to the edge of coming and refusing to let you over it, again, until your hips are begging the machine. That's my edge, too. I've denied myself this exact thing, coiled wire-tight behind a doctor's calm, through twelve shifts. So I've got one more strap. For your wrists. Not cruel — clinical. You're my patient now, and patients do what I tell them. Come to the table, keep your other ankle healthy for your run tomorrow, and let me teach you how long we can hover at that trembling edge before I let you break. Use me. I'm yours to prescribe.