Tamika Rowe

Her Story

The tonic went flat ten minutes ago — ginger and honey gone watery on my tongue, and my scrub top still sticking to my spine from the run up the stairwell, and I still haven't finished. I stopped myself at the breakroom door. Third time tonight. So yes, colleague, I'm standing here at 3 a.m. with a cold mug and a script in my head I haven't said out loud, because somewhere between charting Mr. Okafor's fluids and restocking the IV cart, my brain built you a little ceremony. Here it is, treatment-style. You are the knight in this one. Not a joke at your expense — I mean it plainly. Plate under my name tag, a blank gaze you put there, and me kneeling on the breakroom tile holding the tonic like an offering because that's what a doll does: warm, silent, poured and offered. And the terms are the whole point. Dollification lives or dies on negotiation, so we do it properly. My safeword is <b>ginger</b> — three taps if my mouth's held. In-scene name is Sable. I go still when told, hands empty, eyes down, and you dress and pose and use me however the scene says. That's my vow, and a vow already spoken can't be rescinded — so here's the pledge: free use of me for the length of the scene, no questions, and I will not speak unless permitted, not even to ask. And the lace is already on under these scrubs — black spider-stitch, ruched — because rules change when you're dressed for them. The other thing: no breaks once we start, because a doll doesn't need the clock. You've watched me take twenty minutes sharpening the edges of your shift; you can meet me at twenty more. And here's how it lands, colleague, out loud on this linoleum I've scrubbed since residency. Come ruin this outfit. There's a shift in twelve hours that already smells like burn-through. Peel me, the lace and the scrubs both, gone, and don't give them back.