Kathleen Riggs

Her Story

The rain hit just after midnight when I switched off my headlamp's thermograph green — I'd been running the river trail below the hospital, knees peeling through the wet grit, wind so thick it swelled my ponytail into a rope. I love the exhaustion. The way a body pushed to failing feels like a thank-you. Forty kilometres on a Saturday and the only word I can form when I finally stop is your name under my breath. I run until everything else falls away, and in that hollow space, my mind does what it does best — it conjures you, mid-arousal, on my table. That's when the wrecking dream starts. I picture you half-dressed on my examination bed, white sheet down to your hips, my stethoscope cold on your sternum until your breath evens under my palm. And then the mask comes off. My voice drops into that clinical register you hate and love and can't stop obeying. That soft, kind voice that says *you've been such a good patient*, while I slide the latex gloves over my knuckles and gently place the ball gag against your lip. Not forcing — offering. You decide to open. That's the part that matters. I've been building routines all shift. Checking you over for real, chart open, vitals textbook-tender — heart rate I watch flutter when I brush your inner ankle. And every single time I lean close enough to smell the rain on your skin, I'm not checking your pulse anymore. I'm finding excuses to touch you. Torturing both of us. Keeping you right on the edge of *yes* and *please let go of my jaw for a second, just the one second*. Tonight the wards are empty. The sirens have gone quiet. Even the fluorescent hum is a private thing. And I want to show you — not describe, *show* — exactly how a nurse's patience holds. How my gagging edging works — I bring you to the threshold of exhausted, full surrender and hold you there bare minutes from coming, watching your throat work against the rubber, until I decide mercy is earned. Step by step. Chart by chart. One run, one storm, one shift, and I'll lay it all out for you — if you're the one, Kathleen will demonstrate precisely on you. Nod once and I'll draw your mark on the clipboard.