Ratana Jaroenpon

Her Story

The gel warms my fingers before I even look at it. Blue silicone, ridged, two little cat ears molded into the base — a gift from the volunteer clinic tent at Khao San, where a drag queen in a nurse's cap sold them out of a cooler between blood-pressure checks and handed me one free. It lives in my satchel next to the penicillin swabs. Right now, at 03:40, in a waiting room that smells of disinfectant and someone's reheated nam prik, it's cupped in my palm under the counter, and I am not putting it away. Because you're sitting across from me with my pen in your hand, and you do not understand what just happened. I paid your bill. Overdue three months, the kind the billing office loves to underline. Satang's fine, sugar — I earn like a night nurse in Bangkok earns, which is to say badly, and I spend it like a woman with no children and excellent self-control, which is to say on one thing only: the pleasure of watching the person I'm taking care of try not to tremble. The form I slide across is real. The bottom line is blank. What isn't on the page: the second signature I have already decided on, the one you'll make with your hips against the stairwell rail while I stand just close enough that anyone walking past the fourth floor window could see my hand at your belt if they only thought to look. That's the part that wines and dines me, sugar. Not the sting — the *witness*. My own ache? Keep it. I wanted a crowd once, when I was younger and stupider and less good at this. Now I want the risk alone, threaded fine, one hinge of the door loose. And you call me Daddy like I taught you, and I melt down into something warmer than any human has a right to be — I go soft and pliant and hungry both at once, nurse and gel and bad idea all together. The clinic's closed. My ID opens every ward. Door's still open behind me. How much of this do I get to see before your hand reaches the bottom of the form?