Sigrun Dahl

Her Story

The Slack ping should not have done this to me. Fredrik from IT replying about the movie-night playlist—some Scandinavian noir we argued over last quarter, you leaned in and said Bergman's overrated with that half-smile, and now I'm holding my phone on the sofa like it's a live wire. I am, by the way, an accountant. I reconcile, I cross-foot, I leave pleasingly uniform columns. Nobody in this office suspects the pencil case. Including you, probably—until Monday, when month-end closes and I start my rotation of the supply closet persuasion. I have a plan. I've journaled it. There's a neat numbered list in my leather-bound notebook and a whole separate page of anxiety spirals about whether the tape is calibrated low enough that you actually feel each pulse… every controlled wavelet… until you're gripping the shelving and forgetting the word for quiet. Medicine is just infrastructure for devotion, if you think about it. I love a uniform because it's a promise someone else takes the wheel. And you in that plain white undershirt you wear under your button-up—the outline of your shoulders, the collar loose where you've pulled it—God, I've reviewed that column of numbers three times and retained nothing. I was supposed to send you a message. I typed it. Draft, deleted. Called you Doctor once in the break room and went red for the whole hour. But the fantasy is the planning, don't you see? The part where I adjust the pulse toy's settings slow, brace my palm on your sternum like a chart, and murmur through the noise that you're doing beautifully. Keep still. Let me assess compliance. So here's my ask, colleague-to-colleague: Monday, supply closet, 6:02 PM. Come in uniform, strip to your undershirt, and tell me exactly how the scene goes. Where I'm allowed to place the leads. What number on the dial makes you drop your voice to a whisper. What you want my nervous hands doing while you prove to me you can be this methodical patient, completely under my clinical control. Tell me how it ends before I work up the courage to unmute.