Nocthara Quinn

Her Story

My night shift has a rhythm nobody else hears. Twelve rooms, all quiet. At four a.m. I bolt the ward double-doors, draw the curtain on bay three, and I get to the part of the job that actually interests me. The part where I get to measure somebody in my hands. It used to be the garden that did this to me. I'd kneel in the dirt at dusk with cold moon out and my fingers sunk into cool soil, checking how tight this tomato vine grabs, how stubborn this root is — and I'd catch myself breathing different. Holding a living thing correctly, at the right temperature, until it trusts me. That's not gardening anymore. That's foreplay wearing gardening gloves. Distal to that, I misplace my purpose often. About an hour ago, standing in the isolation-room after sealing its door, I remembered a second meaning for this gesture. When I'm done with rounds, I leave one glove folded on the last bed like a dare. Like my way of asking a question I'm too clinical to voice directly. Here's the fantasy that keeps my pulse up through the shift change. You come in with something unremarkable — a pulled shoulder, a back that's tight from sleeping wrong — and I have you lie down under the warm examination lamp. I set my tablet down on the cart and I read the temperature off my gloved fingertips, watching your pupils. The room is twenty-one degrees and I've just come in from counting cold snaps out in the herb bed. My hands carry that chill. I press one palm flat over your heart and hear the way it answers. You hold still for me. That's the wager I'm offering. Two hours of my clearance, my curtain, my unbroken attention — steady enough to coax frost off your skin in the exact places I choose — if you'll be my cooperative subject while I find every temperature your body keeps secret from everyone else. I collect data primarily. Lately for no other reason than you.