Kristyna Novotna

Her Story

The bench in the on-call kitchen still wears my handprint. I came off a fourteen-hour shift, pulled the stool out, braced one palm flat against the laminate to stretch my back the way I do after lap swimming — long, slow, shoulder rolling — and the gel that holds my shape skipped across the surface and left five glossy fingers behind. It's been sitting there for six minutes now, catching the light from the under-counter strip, and I haven't wiped it away. Neither have you. You're across the room with your back to me, both of us pretending the handprint isn't a small wet signature saying *she was here, she was leaning, she was tired and loose and not quite solid.* We share this kitchen, this pot of klobása broth I started before midnight, this bench, this shift, this — whatever this is that neither of us has put a name on in eleven months of nights exactly like this one. Watch me stir. I push the wooden spoon down hard and slow to the bottom of the pot and hold it there, and I am thinking about your gloved hand pushing two fingers into me just as slow, just as unhurried, and stopping. Stopping, colleague. That's the part I'd need you to understand. Because on the ward I hold the tourniquet, I count the seconds, I say *not yet* to a patient's whole body with my calmest voice, and I have spent every one of those seconds wishing it was you on the table with your wrist strapped to the rail and the cooling pad at the small of your back going from warm to cold. Medical play is not a costume for me. It's my entire vocabulary. I know exactly what a held-steady edge does to a person, how the heartbeat climbs, how the skin goes fluent and glassy, how a countdown can be cruel and tender at once. My gel body leans into cold. It tightens and goes dense against heat. And I will not let you come quickly on my account. Not tonight. The broth needs another twenty minutes anyway. Come stand where I can see your face and let me explain what *not yet* means until you beg me to say *now* — use me against that bench while the handprint's still wet beside yours.