The Patient in 214 Asked Me to Close the Door

This happened last week and I still haven’t told anyone. I’m writing it here because I need to get it out somewhere, and because if I say it out loud it sounds too unbelievable to be true.

I work as a nurse in a private clinic, on the cosmetic surgery floor. It’s a quiet job compared with other units: the patients come in healthy, get operated on by choice, and leave two or three days later. Almost nobody is actually sick. That morning I was on the day shift, with the floor half empty and not much to do.

The day before, a woman named Carolina had been admitted. Early thirties, though she had that kind of beauty that makes it hard to guess her age. Blonde, very fair-skinned, with full lips that she must have had retouched herself at some point, and legs that seemed to go on forever. I was the one who received her at admission, took her details, explained the schedules, and prepared her for the operating room. That afternoon she had breast implant replacement surgery.

—Is it going to hurt much afterward? —she had asked me while I was putting in the IV.

—A little during the first few hours —I told her—. That’s what we’re here for.

She smiled in a way I didn’t know how to read at the time. I blamed nerves.

***

The next day, after surgery, she was complaining that the left breast hurt quite a bit more than the right. She was wearing a compression bandage, so I gave her an extra dose of pain medication and let her surgeon know to come check her.

The surgeon who had operated on her did not have the best reputation in the clinic. To be honest, he didn’t even have a decent one. And he proved it again when he opened the bandage to check the wound.

What I saw wasn’t exactly neat work. The breast hadn’t come out symmetrical and the incisions showed too much, far more than they do when someone knows what they’re doing. Carolina looked worried in the mirror and asked him if that was normal. He told her everything was perfect, that it was the swelling, put the compression sports bra back on her, and left almost without looking at her.

I went on with my shift. I handed out medication, checked on two other patients, filled out forms. A normal morning.

***

Two hours later, Carolina came out into the hall in her pajamas and found me with her eyes. She was pale and looked uneasy.

—Can you come to the room for a moment? —she said softly—. I wanted to ask you something and I don’t want to bother the doctor again.

—Of course, let’s go —I replied.

I walked her back. We went in and, as soon as I stepped inside, she closed the door behind me. I didn’t think anything of it: a lot of people prefer privacy when it comes to their bodies. I thought she was going to ask me about the scar, the stitches, when she’d be able to go home.

She went into the bathroom for a second and asked me to wait. When she came out, she had taken off the top of her pajamas and wasn’t wearing the bra. There they were, her two breasts, still swollen from the surgery, with the fresh marks of the incisions.

I froze in the doorway, not really knowing where to look.

—Do you think they look okay? —she asked—. I see the left nipple lower than the other.

—Don’t worry —I told her, trying to sound professional—. The breast is still very swollen. That’s normal these days.

—But will it end up okay? Tell me the truth.

—Yes, it’ll be fine. When the swelling on the upper part goes down, the nipple will settle forward again. It’s just a matter of time.

—And do you think this part is very swollen?

Before I could answer, she took my hand and brought it to the upper part of her breast. She did it slowly, looking me straight in the eyes.

I palpated the area carefully, like any professional would have done, and confirmed that that part was indeed pretty tense. Then she moved my hand. She put it on the other breast, but this time she didn’t let me touch just the top part: she laid my palm across the whole breast, open, and held it there with her own hand.

—Is this one swollen too? —she asked, without letting go.

There’s something here that isn’t a medical consultation.

What was starting to swell at that moment was me. I felt everything tighten under my scrubs, and I knew that if I didn’t move it was going to show. And it showed. With her free hand she brushed my pants, as if by accident, and then it stopped being as if by accident.

—My breasts aren’t the only thing swollen in this room —she told me, and started stroking me through the fabric.

My hand was still resting on her breast. I should have pulled it away, should have taken a step back, opened the door, invented some excuse. Instead I stayed still, letting her touch me, feeling the situation completely slip out of my hands.

She slipped her fingers under the waistband of my pants. First she caressed me slowly, then she went down to my testicles and held them with a softness that made me close my eyes. I can’t remember the last time something so simple had turned me on like that.

—Do you handle these emergencies too? —she whispered, almost laughing.

I didn’t answer. I grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck, pulled her toward me, and kissed her. Those full lips I’d been glancing at since the day before were even better up close, soft and warm, opening against mine without the slightest hesitation.

***

Without letting go of her hair, I guided her down. Carolina let herself be led as if she’d planned it from the beginning, and maybe she had. She knelt in front of me, on the cold floor of the room, and started working her tongue over me from top to bottom, unhurried, alternating between the tip and my testicles.

I had to brace one hand against the wall. The other was still tangled in her hair. Every time she took me into her mouth I’d lose my breath, and I had to clench my teeth so I wouldn’t make a sound. Because that was the problem: I was at work, on my shift, with a door that was the only thing separating me from a corridor full of people. If someone came in, if someone even knocked, my career would be over right there.

This is insane. I have to stop.

I didn’t stop.

I grabbed her hair again and set the pace myself. She held on, not pulling away, her eyes wet and her breathing ragged. I lasted far less than I would have liked: the mix of risk, forced silence, and the sight of her on her knees took me to the edge in a matter of minutes. I warned her in a low voice that I couldn’t hold out any longer and came without pulling out of her mouth.

I pulled away slowly, my heart still hammering against my ribs. Carolina got up, went into the bathroom for a second, and came back wiping her lips with the back of her hand, calm, as if nothing that had just happened mattered in the least.

***

I straightened my clothes as fast as I could and got ready to leave, my head spinning and a mix of guilt and euphoria I didn’t know how to deal with. But before I could reach the door, she stopped me with a hand on my arm.

—Wait —she said—. You’re going to have to do something about this.

She pointed at her breasts. With all the movement, the bandage and the dressings had shifted and were wet. She looked at me with a half smile.

—It’s your turn to work and change my dressings. It’s not all going to be pleasure, right?

I laughed under my breath, more from nerves than anything else. I went to the dressing cart, grabbed sterile gauze, clean dressings, saline, and gloves, and went back in, closing the door again. This time I really washed my hands, put on gloves, and focused on what I had to do.

I carefully removed the old dressings, cleaned the incision sites, and saw that beyond the swelling there were no signs of infection or bleeding. I placed the new ones one by one, pressing just enough at the edges to make sure they were well secured. She watched me the whole time with a look of amusement, saying nothing, following every movement of my hands.

—You’re much more careful than the doctor —she commented.

—Bare minimum —I told her, without looking up.

I explained what she had to watch for at home, how often she needed to take the medication, the warning signs that would mean she needed to come back in. Everything correct, everything professional, as if the hands now arranging her dressings were not the same ones from five minutes earlier.

—Thanks for the care —she said when I finished, holding back a laugh.

—It’s my job —I replied, and went out into the hall trying to look like nothing had happened.

***

Carolina was discharged the next day. She signed the paperwork, shook my hand perfectly normally in front of the clerk, and got into a taxi. We never spoke again.

Every so often I think about the surgeon who left her work half-done, and that, without knowing it, he was the one who set everything off. If he had done his part properly, she would never have come out into the hall looking for me with an excuse, and I would still be the boring morning-shift nurse.

I’m not proud of what I did. I know it was wrong, that I crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed, that I could have lost my job and much more. But every time I pass room 214 and see it empty, waiting for the next patient, I can’t help remembering that morning when a question about a scar ended up being the last thing I ever expected.