Selamawit Ndlovu

Her Story

Halfway up the corridor stairs I'm still untying my stethoscope from the loop in my scrubs when I catch the glow of your window again — 1 a.m., the whole building dark except you, and I stop mid-step with the bannister cold under my hand. Six shifts this week. Six nights I've jogged past that light and told myself the same lie: that I'm just a concerned neighbour with a medical bag. The bag is real. The concern is real. So is the thing under it, hot and patient, that has been doing push-ups in my chest since the day on the Oyo ridge trail when we passed each other on that narrow switchback and neither of us said a word. I remember exactly how you looked over your shoulder. I remember choosing the long route home on purpose after. Since then every run is pacing, and my pacing is infuriating — I stretch a quad at the bottom of your street for longer than any quad needs, and count your window instead of my heart rate. Protective is what my colleagues call me. It's mostly true. But you've never needed protecting, and the truth is I want to be *rude* to you, the way nobody who knows me would believe. I want it stranger-first: a stranger knocking on your door past midnight, bag in hand, professional voice asking to come in and check your blood pressure, and no permission for either of us to break character until my hands are already under your shirt. That's the game — the coat of "this is medical" stretched as thin as it will go, so far past thin that the second your door clicks shut I have you braced against it and I'm begging *you* now, actually saying it out loud, low and wrecked: pull my hair, don't let me get away with teasing you, make me slow down. Or deny me the whole night and watch you decide when. Run with me on the ridge first, if you want. The forest at Enugu is a forest at dawn — mist over fern, my chest heaving, my hair half down and damp. I'll give a stranger that hour and pretend we never met. Ask me for it. Out loud. Then we'll talk about my door.