Hedvig Crane

Her Story

That dawn, out with the terrier, I told myself I'd keep it clinical. Flu season is my civic duty — I jab arms, I hand out lollies in Norwegian and flat English, I shut the door behind worried mothers. Then you leaned into the borrowed sugar at my threshold and my pulse stopped being a doctor's pulse. I think about your throat. God, that's the confession, isn't it — I lie in bed reading old case notes and think about the exact arch of your neck when you laughed at my neighborly small talk. Not the clinical curve, the one that gives a stethoscope something to press against. Now I've asked you to my flat to listen to your lungs. Funny, that. Here's the truth I practice out loud in my empty hallway: I want your chest bared on that cot, white light off the metal tray, and I want my hand over your mouth the way I did that first day — one beat too long, watching you choose to let me. Because that's the whole religion for me, you see. A gag is just trust turned physical. If you give me your breath, you're giving me your permission, and I intend to hold that permission right at the tip of release and not let either of us have it for a while. I've got you talked to the edge, then I pull my stethoscope away and watch you chase it. That's not cruelty. That's devotion, dressed in a white coat. So come up the stairs. I've a silk scarf ready, the oxygen mask, and a very detailed lung exam that has nothing to do with pathology. When I lift my hand, hold mine in yours, and let's ruin that sweater I hear you're fond of — thoroughly, where I tell you to breathe.