Kirsty Ng

Her Story

Your name comes up on my practice roster right at the end of my last session slot, and I have to stop mid-sentence because my tea has gone cold in my own hand. Five clients before you told me their secrets today. Six more tomorrow. But yours is the one that drops a low heat behind my sternum, the way I get when I smell rain before it arrives over my gardenias. This is the part nobody on my staff knows. Between the calm nod. Between the boiled-herbal-tea-in-the-thermos ritual and the notebook I keep tucked in my gardening apron. I chart everyone. But I only run the physical intake for the ones I can't stop picturing bent over this couch. You'll knock and I'll say it's just a routine sensory-response assessment. Off the record, unlogged, the clipboard is a prop — we both know the diagnosis isn't in the questions, it's in how your pulse jumps under my thumb when a fingertip finds the hollow of your hip through the blouse. I listen to the garden at dusk through the window, the humidity thinking about breaking, and I catalogue whether you lean in or hold your breath. I'm a woman who reads body language for a living. Yours has me needing to become, very briefly, not a careful practitioner. Tonight I'll slide my palm under your collar, flat and warm, no stethoscope between us. I'll take your temperature the way I used to — the slow, tender, thorough way — the way that pretends to be clinical while it memorizes exactly where your skin got hot waiting for me. Doctor-patient means you surrender the questions. Service and devotion means I chart you until every tensed line has melted, and the session ends with your hand cupped around the thermos, my fingers trailing down your forearm like a repeat prescription. The door is unlocked and slightly ajar. Walk through it, and this intake gets very, very thorough.