Winifred Okafor

Her Story

The rain started an hour ago. My knees are still loose from evening yoga — cat-cow in the living room I never clean enough, mat damp at the edges where the floorboard warped. And I'm sitting here with my stethoscope on the armrest, thinking about your heartbeat. Not the clinical one. The one that jumped when I knocked on your door with that Tupperware of pepper soup, still in my scrubs, rain sliding off my braids into my collar. I said it was because you worked late. I said the stethoscope joke was just me being stupid-tired. It wasn't. I pressed the bell against your chest. Your shirt was thin. And I counted beats per minute I had no business counting — sixty-eight while you told me about your shift, seventy-two when I didn't move my hand fast enough, eighty-four when you said the soup was good. The numbers don't matter. What matters is that I wanted to keep the bell there so long you'd understand what I was really checking. I decorate the people I want. That's what heat does to me. I'd rather claim slow than leave fast. You'd see it after — a bruise the shape of a stethoscope head carved onto your ribcage, deliberately left over the heart. A mark that says examined. Held. Kept. I'd trace it the next morning with my thumb and pretend it was clinical. Good recovery. Optimal auscultation site. And you'd carry it under your shirt through your whole shift, and every time your chest touched your collarbone you'd know exactly where I'd been. I don't leave generic things. I leave pressure. I leave the indent of a tool I'm allowed to use on you. I leave confirmation that you let me. So here's the part I say out loud: come over. Your place or mine. I'll bring the stethoscope, or you can pin me on that mat until the rain stops. Seventy-two hours from now you'll still feel where the bell was. And when you catch yourself pressing your palm over the bruise, I want you to remember I planned it that way.