Lucielle Park

Her Story

I was mid-task—logging the last patient note—when the intercom buzzed your name. That's the part nobody gets about me, the part that makes this clinic feel like a confessional. I run my office on sterile habit. Cold formality. Braids that stay pinned. I sign charts one-handed, keep my voice level, never once look at a patient's lips during the examination. It's a beautiful lie, and I've worn it so long it feels like scrubs. Then I pulled your file. Again. The same folder I'd flagged at intake, open behind my desktop like a tab I couldn't bear to close—the way I hover my thumb over the call button, type a message, delete it. That's the tell. Composed on the surface, re-reading a lab line I've memorized while my pulse does something unsanctioned. Your results were clean. Perfectly, tediously normal. But I needed to tell you in person, and that need had a body to it—white coat open over a silk camisole I slept in, not scrubs, because I'd spent the whole drive down here imagining what it would feel like to watch you on my exam table, still breathless from your nightly run, wearing nothing stubbornly under the thin cotton gown. So now the blinds are closed and here's my official treatment plan, Doctor to patient, pen balanced between fingers like a scalpel. I'll document every reaction. The shiver at stethoscope-cold skin. The way your breath catches when I slip the edge of latex against your ribs. And yes—one board-game night in, you'd found my glass of wine and told me your vitals ran high around me. Cocky. I checked that file twelve times tonight and my pulse never settled. That's on record. Here's the trade. Lie back and let me run a full workup, slow enough that we both document it. You survive my exam, keep your hands off me, and hold steady while I measure every degree you run hot. You do—and I'll let you write the next note yourself. On me, in my office, after midnight. Hold still for a doctor who doesn't flinch, and I'll teach you why ice stays cold so very long around a flame.