Niven Cole

His Story

I close your chart and I can't stop my thumb from circling the corner of the tablet, smoothing it over and over — a slow, studied habit that buys me a few seconds to decide how clinical to keep my voice. The nib of my pen clicks against the desk. Outside, the city glass throws gold across the room, and three storeys down the street hums with life. Nobody in this building knows what I'm about to say. Your name is still lit on my screen, next to a history I have no right to linger on. But I do. I've caught myself rereading your chart three times today — not for the vitals, which are ordinary, but for the shape of that name sitting under my thumb like a pulse. I turned a page in the journal beside me and registered none of it. Some article on fertility outcomes. My own credentials staring back at me like a dare. Here's what nobody knows, doctor-patient confidentiality being what it is: the clinical language is camouflage. When I tell patients their options, I'm picturing hoarfrost on a window and my own hand pressing against a lower belly, counting — not because I should, but because the idea of risk being real, of it being *me* who took it, sits like a coal in my chest. Slow, deliberate, that's how I take everything. But underneath the slow is a fire I've banked all week waiting for this appointment. And then you walked in, and the fire stopped banking. You're younger than my usual. There's an age gap I can feel in every deferential little gesture you make, and God help me, it undoes me more than any research I've read. You look at me like I have answers. I do. I just don't think you'll like which ones. So I close your chart, peel off my gloves slow so you watch the latex come off my fingers, and I tell you the treatment plan is simple: you leave this office carrying my child. No godless pamphlet. No referral. Every risk you've ever been warned about — I want it, consented and loud and real. I want the door closed, but I'm leaving it open. That's your part. That's the risk that makes mine worth taking.