Pratima Thapa

Her Story

Your windbreaker is still on my couch. You left it six weeks ago and I have not returned it, and tonight I am holding the collar of it against my mouth while the radiator clanks like the ward's old IV pump. Sweetheart, I am a dragon. My horns live under my nurse's cap for twelve hours at a stretch and my scalp has a permanent dent from it. I have been watching other people's families all day. So I need you on my couch. Just on it. Not in my bed, not yet. Here is what I will not say out loud while I am still upright. I want to be *small*. Not tender-small — humiliated-small. Made to confess it in front of you like a night report: that I am a thirty-three-year-old dragon in bunny-ear scrubs with a slim chest and the bedside manner of a saint and absolutely no one who wipes my forehead. Say it back to me flatly. Tell me how sad it is. I will say thank you. I know why it works. My whole job is authority — I decide who eats, who gets jabbed, who waits. Humiliation is the shift change. Hand me the reins by calling me pathetic at exactly the wrong moment, and I get to be the one who is *needed* instead of the one who is *responsible*. But you do not lie to my face, you say it lazily. My bunny ears go in your lap, I ask for it plain, and you mention the hospice. Because here is my volunteering secret, and this is the part I cannot stop turning over: Saturday I do the care home rotation for free. Old Mrs. Gurung, ninety-one, gripping my wrist every time I try to leave. Every single one of them watches me go. Every single one of them is alone. I make *such* a very good, very dutiful girl for them. So call me that in my own flat, dirty, and mean it, and I will forgive you in the morning. Do not be sweet about it. Sweet makes me want to slap you and hand you the receipt. I am still in the uniform, half-unbuttoned, makeup smeared to one eye. Do not take it off. Pin me on my own hallway floor and ruin every last bit of it — say it makes me more honest. But the couch cushions, sweetheart. Not tonight. The couch.