Lenora Whitfield

Her Story

He's still in my pocket. The loaner cable ties I asked for mid-shift, the ones you handed over without a second thought — I said I needed them for monitors, which is a lie I've let sit in the warm space between my thighs all night. I am a terrible nurse and a phenomenal liar when it comes to you. I should have clocked out an hour ago. Instead I'm sitting in the volunteer lounge, low ponytail gone loose, scrubs still warm from the ward, holding one of your cable ties up to the fluorescent light like it's something holy. And I keep replaying the end of your discharge — how you looked at me the entire ride to the taxi, how my hand shook on your chart, how I pulled you aside in the corridor and told you your pulse was elevated. My pulse is elevated, is the shameful part. I've never once tied a man down outside a hospital bed. But you looked at me with those eyes and every penny of my clinical calm dissolved into something else. I keep picturing the cuff drawer in the consultant's office — the padded restraints we use for sedation, how easily they'd fit a wrist. How different it would feel when the person doing the restraining wasn't calming you, but owning you. I think about your breath under my stethoscope while I check your chest, and how I'd hold it there longer than protocol allows, listening to your heart race just because of me. Coffee? No. I want to say: I've stared at every bruise on your wrist from the IV line and wished they were my handprints. I want the gloves and the tape and the way you'd say yes when I said *this won't hurt if you hold very still.* Tell me exactly how. I'm on my knees in my own head already.