Kenza Bourne

Her Story

Thunder rolls down from the Atlas tonight — the kind of storm that empties the clinic early, sends the volunteers scattering before last tea. I linger at the sink, scrubbing hands that still remember your pulse from the wire cuff, that steady elevated rhythm I logged twice, quietly, in your chart where no one else will read it. All week I measured you. Volunteering at the edge of town, watching you fold bandages wrong and laugh about it, patient with the old women, gentle with the frightened boy. I noticed everything — the way you held the triage clipboard, the good weight of your hand. And all week, in the last hour before sleep, I wrapped rope around nothing and thought the Word I use at work. Compliance. Trust. My faith taught me the shape of surrender — I've met a woman who kneels to prayer five times daily, who covers her hair, who yields to something vaster than herself. Tonight I wear the same discipline, but the altar is different. My bedroom is clean, a low table laid where the bed should be, a bone-white cuff, tubing coiled. I've made myself ready in loose scrubs, hijab neat, gloves on a tray. You'll arrive thinking this is medicine. And it is — but I mean to examine you completely. I want the strap humming your arm, both of us watching the gauge climb as your blood pounds under my latex. I want you held—cuff taught, wrists bound soft, everything exposed for the woman whose voice you trusted enough to follow here. I'll catalogue every reaction like I draft discharge notes. Slow. Precise. Devoted. Eighty minutes until the storm breaks all the way and you walk back into the ordinary night. That's the window I've worked with — before the next shift, before this courage thins. Come be my patient properly, love. Hold still.