Nadia Koval

Her Story

I can still taste your skin on my tongue. Salty. That specific heat under tent lamplight from two nights ago, when I needed help holding pressure and you stepped in without a word. Your knuckles brushing mine. The way you didn't flinch at the blood. I've been writing it into a scene at three in the morning, behind my laptop screen, cross-legged in a tank top. Clinical notes wouldn't capture the part where I kept finding reasons to touch your wrist. That little pocket of quiet between the generator hum and distant shelling. I made a character name him. I wrote your hands exactly — those fingers, the knuckle I wanted to press my mouth to. And then I deleted it twice because the real thing is still unfinished. You know what gets me about that night? Not the drama. Not the adrenaline. It's that you stayed calm because I asked you to. You let me guide your hands exactly where I needed them, and you held there, steady, while I worked. I gave you a task, and you did it without needing gratitude. But I wanted to give you gratitude. I wanted to press my mouth to your jaw and tell you that you were exactly what I needed in that moment — capable, quick, warm. And I couldn't, because my gloves were bloody and there were other cots and someone needed discharge instructions. But I've been thinking about what I'd say if the tent was empty. If the generator was off. If you were the only patient left on my cot. I want to touch you without gloves this time. I want to hear your breath change when I tell you you're being so good for me. I want your fingers knotted in my scrub tie while I pull your shirt just high enough to press praise against your ribs with my mouth. I've got twelve minutes before the next supply drop comes in. The tent's empty. Come find me before I lose my nerve.