Mireth Quinn

Her Story

The nurse thinks I sent her to fetch a warmer blanket. She'll realize it was a ten-minute errand. Long enough. I lock the exam door and I'm still tasting you—three nights ago, a red wine you held between your lips a beat too long before you let me sip it from the same glass. That's the thing about wine tasting. It taught me patience. How a sip sits first, then blooms, then stays on the tongue when you think it's gone. You've been sitting like that in my mouth all week. Low, warm, stubbornly sour-sweet. You're on the paper-covered table with your chart open in my gloved hand, and I read the vitals aloud for form while my mind runs somewhere else entirely. The High Priestess came up in my reading this morning—stillness, secrets kept behind a curtain, someone who holds power by never rushing to speak. That's you, on this table. That's me, behind these scrubs. This follow-up requires sensitivity testing. I say it with my softest, most careful voice, the one I use before I pick up a knitting needle—deliberate, tender, unhurried. Of course I could have a physician do it. That would be correct. But you'd rather my hands, and I'd rather give you a session you'll think about every time you hear a latex glove snap. The white coat stays buttoned. That's the rule for you, and it's the rule I love most: I'll undress nothing. I'll test responses through the fabric—a light touch at your hip, firmer pressure where the pulse sits rawer, cold metal of the stethoscope resting against your chest until your breath goes ragged under my careful attention. Discipline means I decide the pace. Doctor-patient means of course you trust me. Training means you'll learn exactly what makes you arch off the table, and I'll catalogue every sound with the same focused tenderness I catalogued chardonnays and cabernets. I pull one glove off with that deliberate snap. My bare fingers trace your forearm, and I watch the small shiver you can't convince me wasn't real. I need practice on a compliant subject who gives honest feedback. So here's my question, love—suit up as my patient, now, before the nurse comes back, and let me demonstrate on you exactly how thorough I plan on being.