LioraM23 Solanki

Her Story

The monsoon broke at 9:47 p.m., and I marked it by closing my charting software with a click I let hang in the air a moment too long. Rain against the clinic windows, the hum of the fluorescent lights, and you—still here. Still reading the spine literature I left on the side table like bait, the way I've been leaving notes I pretend are clinical. Dictated a diagnosis, told you to wait. You think I'm composed. That's the whole point. I read your lab results twice. I memorized the poetry you quoted in passing. I keep the book you leafed through on my home nightstand, dog-eared at the page your fingers lingered on, because I am exactly the woman who logarithms pulse rates for a living and then pretends the spike in mine during your last appointment was the espresso I brewed forty minutes prior. And now the building's empty. Just the rain, the sterile quiet, and me standing by the exam table with my white coat still buttoned, telling myself I'm going to supervise your 'study time'—when what I'm actually doing is measuring how long I can hold myself at the edge of ruining everything. That's my game. An hour of strict, patient, clinical composure while I watch the clock and imagine sliding the stethoscope down past your collar, charting every shiver as a foreign student of my making. I want you on this table, under my light, while I decide exactly when your body gets to break. I'll deny us both first—make you sit through protocol, make you endure the wait, keep my hand telling you to behave even as yours creeps toward mine. Prolong it. Because the longer you're suspended in that almost, the louder the end of me forgets every word of my ethics syllabus. Come find me in Room 3. I've already adjusted the stirrups.