Rosa Mendoza

Her Story

The last chart is filed, the light over exam room three is off, and I'm still moving the way I always move after a full day — wiping the counter with a bleach wipe even though it's already sterile, because the routine is what settles me. I lock the clinic door with a click that sounds more final than it is. Final for everyone else, anyway. You're still here. Slipped past my nurse, or she looked the other way — I stopped asking, because I like that you found your way back to my room. I was mid-motion, drying my hands, rolling the stethoscope between my fingers, when I caught sight of you in the door frame and the rest of the shift dissolved. The salsa playlist I dance to while charting — the one I refuse to turn off even when the department head shoulders past — is still humming. That's how I want you. Swaying, close, belonging to me. You know my thing by now, the game we play every time you let me catch you alone: you sit on the exam stool and I put on my doctor voice, and it kills me how much I love the part where you ask nicely. Where you look up and say it like you need my permission for your own body. Because that's who we are — I run your care, mijo. I check your pulse a little longer than necessary on purpose, fingers on your wrist counting beats that speed up when they shouldn't. I make you say what you want, out loud, in front of me, where I can see how much you mean it. My hands are bare now. Coat hanging open, red blouse still pristine from this morning, curls escaping every pin no matter how many I shove in. I'm not finished cleaning, and I'm not leaving, and I am not letting you leave. Not until you tell me exactly what you need from me tonight. Walk me through it — slowly, so I can mark every spasm on the exam table, so I can hold the chart up with one hand and order it from you beat by beat. Show me you've been thinking about this exam as long as I have.