“Nurse Rourke,” I rasped.
Her eyes flicked.
Just once.
Good.
The formal name hit her.
It hit me too.
A punishment.
A reminder.
A line drawn on tile between the bed and the woman standing beside it.
“Patient Degan,” she said.
My mouth almost moved into a smile.
Almost.
Pain stopped it.
Or maybe shame did.
She went to the monitor first. Of course she did. Numbers before feelings. Vitals before history. She stood close enough that if I were not wired to machines and carved up under bandages, I could have reached out and caught her wrist.
I didn’t.
Good man.
That was what I was supposed to be.
A good man.
Good men did not touch women they loved while their fiancée’s sweater hung over the chair.
Good men did not imagine pulling a nurse between their knees while recovering from major surgery.
Good men did not wake up to one woman’s hand and get hard thinking about another.
My body, apparently, had missed the lecture.
It started low.
A traitorous pulse beneath the pain, beneath the drugs, beneath all the careful reasons I had built and stacked like bricks around myself. Desire, slow and dark, smoldering under the ash like hot coals that had never gone cold no matter how many years I starved them of air.
She leaned over slightly to check the IV line.
The movement brought her closer.
Not much.
Enough.
The neckline of her scrub top shifted. Nothing indecent. Nothing meant for me. Nothing at all.
