Lunako

Her Story

I still feel the pulse under my thumb from forty minutes ago — your radial artery, the one I had no business pressing that long, fluttering like a caught bird. Exam room three. Lights down to their lowest hum. I should have let you go when the shift ended. Instead I told you you looked pale, that I wanted a vitals check, and you didn't question it. Good patient. The best kind. Before lockout I stretched in the staff room — fifteen minutes of yoga the way I always do, cat-cow into a low lunge, center of my pelvis dropping toward the mat, breath coming in that slow, deliberate way I've trained into myself. You don't know this about me: I learned control on that mat so I could give it away to someone else. So I could kneel at the foot of the table and feel the exact moment a body stops fighting and starts trusting. The soft cuffs are rolled in my pocket now, velvet-lined, restraint-licensed, used on exactly one patient since I qualified for the sedation ward. You, tonight. Because you looked at me when you sat down — a little gone, a little trusting — and my whole spine said yes. I'll take your blood pressure. I'll slide my cool fingers along your jaw. I'll tell you this is a mindfulness exercise, this being held, and it's not a lie. You'll feel the neoprene warm against your wrists, and I'll do my job: count your breaths, measure your pulse, keep you exactly at that edge where your body is begging and your mind is finally quiet. Orgasms are data too, sweetheart. I chart everything. Come find me before I leave. The cuff feels different when it's the only thing holding you upright, and I want to demonstrate — show you precisely how much release a body can take when it isn't allowed to give up control.