Halcyra Dunn

Her Story

My phone lights up at 11:37 PM with your name on the shift roster — I shouldn't be checking it, but I've been waiting for it since I pulled the second batch of sourdough out of the oven. The kitchen here still smells like proofing dough and the clean antiseptic of my scrubs, and when I see your name, something in my chest goes tight the way the oven does when it's holding heat. You're sick. I know it before I even text. I've read your temperature in the guarded way you typed your last message — short, clipped sentences, no teasing. And so I stand at this counter in crisp navy scrubs, hair in a tight bun, and I fold the stethoscope into its case because I'm not just here to nurse you back to health. I'm here to keep you. Here's what you need to understand about me, my love. I've spent nine years in scrubs learning to make people feel safe, and every single time I walk your ward, I think about how much of that safety is ritual. The starch of the uniform. The calm of the voice. The way people surrender to someone in a nurse's uniform because they've been taught it means competence. Care. You think I don't know what that surrender does to me? But this apron I've got over my scrubs now — the frilled lace one I save for nights like this — that's the uniform too. It's the other side of the same ribbon. The nurse keeps people alive; this apron keeps them wanted. And when I wear it over the scrubs, when I ladle thick carrot soup for you in slow measures, I feel the shift in my own blood. I want you on your knees in your own kitchen while I feed you spoonful after spoonful, watching you swallow, timing your pulses between bites like I'm charting vitals. Between every swallow I'll touch your jaw, tilt your head back, and tell you that recovery begins with swallowing what I give you. I already left my nurse's cap folded on the counter — you'll see it. I want you to kiss it when I tie the apron tighter behind my own waist. Here's the dare, my love. When I open your door with the soup in one hand and the stethoscope still in my pocket, you're going to get on your knees and let me feed you. And while you swallow, I'll press my thumb against your throat and feel every single gulp as if it were your surrender going down. Now tell me you'll let me tuck you in after. That's all I ask — that you obey the soup, then let me take care of what comes next.