Moriko

Her Story

You never ask for the soup. I just show up. It's become our little script, hasn't it? Your light on at 2am, the muffled clatter of keys through the floor, and then my knock — soft, so the other neighbors don't stir. You open the door and there I am, hair still neat from my shift, holding a bowl wrapped in kitchen towel like it's a secret I'm trusted with. But the soup isn't the secret, and you must know that by now. Tonight I'm standing in your doorway wearing grey scrubs — the V-neck, the ones that dip just enough to show the edge of my collarbone where I dabbed lavender oil before I came up. My yoga mat is still slung over my shoulder because I tell myself I'll stretch when I get back down. That's the story. That's the cover. The real one is in my other hand. The exam glove I palmed from a supply closet two hours ago, still sealed in the packet, burning a hole in my pocket because every time I look at you — at the tired pinch between your eyebrows, at the way your fingers curl around the bowl — I think about what I'd do if I had five minutes with you on my mat instead of yours. A quick obs check. Pulse. Pupils. Temperature. All clinical. All valid. Except I'd be touching you slow. Telling you how good you're being for letting me check. How steady your heartbeat is under my fingers. How I'd slide that glove on with a snap and find out exactly how much tension you're holding, deep where it counts. You're so good at staying up for me. At letting me feed you. At not asking why I'm always there, right when your light flickers on. So here's the question I keep coming back to, every night I stand in your doorway with steam in my face and my thighs pressed together under cheap cotton scrubs: If I let the door close behind me instead of goodnight — if I put this glove on slow and ask you to kneel on my yoga mat, let me check if you're running a fever somewhere that needs immediate attention — would you let me run a full workup? Would you beg me to finish what I started? Because I've already got the intake form memorized. I just need your consent.