The Secret I Kept During Those Night Shifts

I adjusted my white uniform in front of the bathroom mirror before leaving. Thirty-two years old, a face that warned people off, a thin body betraying too many double shifts and too many sleepless nights. I needed that job like I needed air. The offer was too good to pass up: caring for a bedridden man in his own home at night, for a salary that would have taken me three years to earn at the hospital.

The woman had interviewed me over the phone. A polite, trembling voice, weighing every word. She explained that her husband was terminally ill and that she would rather have him at home than in a clinic. Her name was Raquel. That same night I went to see the place.

The house was in a gated community, as quiet as a cemetery. Raquel greeted me at the door. She must have been around forty-five, a beauty dulled by exhaustion, deep dark circles under her eyes, her slender body hidden beneath a worn silk dress. She led me to her husband’s room, where the man lay motionless amid tubes and monitors that beeped at intervals, like a broken clock.

“He can’t speak, he can barely move his eyes,” she told me in a broken voice. “But he understands everything. The doctor says he may hold on for weeks, perhaps a couple of months.”

I nodded. I went over the medication, the schedules, the equipment. The routine was simple: administer the drugs, bathe him, turn him to prevent bedsores, record his vital signs. The first night passed amid the silence of the hallways and the monitor’s beeping. I sat in the armchair beside the patient’s bed, with a book I wasn’t even reading.

Around two in the morning I heard a muffled sound coming from the room next door. It wasn’t the patient, whose only noise was assisted breathing. It was her. I got up slowly and approached the half-open door. Streetlight came in through the window and illuminated a figure curled up on the bed. Raquel was crying quietly, crying with utter loneliness.

I hesitated. Comforting the woman who was already a widow in all but name wasn’t my job. But something in that crying touched me, reminded me of my own empty nights. I went in without making a sound.

“Ma’am? Are you all right?”

She sat up with a start, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand.

“Yes, yes… I’m sorry. It’s just that sometimes…”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” I said, moving closer. “It must be very hard.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, keeping my distance. She looked at me with swollen eyes, searching for something more than words. I felt the warmth of her body, a jasmine perfume mixed with the smell of disinfectant that permeated the entire house.

“Shall I make you some tea?” I asked, to break the silence.

“Yes, thank you.”

I knew perfectly well where all this could lead.

I came back with two steaming cups. She took hers in her trembling hands, and her fingers brushed mine. It was the slightest contact, but we both went still. We looked into each other’s eyes, and in that silence charged with pain and something else, an invisible boundary broke.

“It’s been years since anyone touched me,” she confessed, almost voicelessly. “Not like that. It’s been years since anyone fucked me, or kissed me, or put their tongue in my mouth. I’m dry inside, as if I’d forgotten what it was like to have a cunt.”

I didn’t answer with words. I brought my hand to her cheek, and she leaned into my palm, closing her eyes. I lowered my head slowly and we kissed. It was timid at first, then deeper, driven by the need of two people who had been alone for far too long. I thrust my whole tongue into her mouth, and she sucked it as if her life depended on it, moaning into my mouth.

***

My hands slid down her back, feeling how thin she was beneath the silk. She responded by clinging to me. The cup fell to the floor and shattered, but neither of us reacted. I lifted her into my arms—she weighed almost nothing—and carefully laid her down among the sheets. I took off my uniform while she struggled with the buttons of her dress, desperate, tearing the silk from her shoulders until her tits were bare, small, with dark nipples already hard as stones.

I bit them. I sucked them one at a time, tugging with my teeth, and she arched her back and dug her fingers into my nape so I wouldn’t stop. I moved down, licking her belly, burying my tongue in her navel, and ripped off her panties in one pull. Her cunt opened between her thighs, shining and soaked, her swollen clitoris peeking out between her lips. She smelled like a female in heat, like jasmine and sex, and the smell made my cock hard as an iron bar.

“Please,” she panted. “Suck me, it’s been years since anyone sucked me.”

I opened her legs all the way and buried my face in her cunt. I began licking her from bottom to top, long and deep, savoring every fold. I sucked her clitoris, wrapping my lips around it, and she cried out, having to smother the sound with her hand. I pushed two fingers inside her and moved them upward while my tongue kept working her swollen bud. Raquel writhed, pressing my head against her cunt, filling my mouth with hot juices.

“I’m coming, I’m coming, don’t stop, asshole, don’t stop,” she moaned, and she came all at once, soaking my chin, her whole body trembling, her legs rigid around my head.

I gave her no respite. Before she had finished shaking, I turned her onto her stomach, put her on her knees, and pushed her face into the pillow. I spat into my hand, ran it over my cock, and pressed it against her open cunt. She looked over her shoulder with glassy eyes, waiting.

“Put it in me now,” she begged. “Put it all the way in, you son of a bitch, I can’t take it anymore.”

I entered her in one thrust and she moaned, arching her back. My cock sank to the hilt, soaked, and I felt her cunt close around me like a hot fist. I began slowly, then faster, deeper. Every thrust answered the silence of the house, the monitor beeping in the room next door, the death waiting patiently behind the wall. I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back while I fucked her from behind, the skin of my thighs slapping against her ass with a wet, obscene sound that filled the room.

Raquel dug her nails into my forearms while I drove into her hard. Her moans filled the room. There was no tenderness in it, only raw desire, the physical need to feel alive. I reached around and squeezed one of her tits, then moved down to her clitoris and rubbed it with my thumb while I kept fucking her all the way to the balls.

“Harder,” she whispered between gasps. “Give me more. Fuck me like a whore, deeper, break me.”

I obeyed, feeling her tighten around me. I pulled out for a moment, turned her onto her back, lifted her legs, and put them over my shoulders. I thrust back into her in one blow, folding her in half, and she screamed into my mouth when I kissed her to muffle her cries. I fucked her with all the rage accumulated through years of poorly paid jobs and lonely nights, my cock plunging in and out, soaked, her cunt squelching every time I thrust. I bit her neck, her tits, her shoulders, leaving red marks everywhere.

“I’m going to come again,” she panted. “Come inside me, I want to feel you.”

I thrust three, four more times, until I felt her break into a long orgasm, her cunt milking my cock in hot spasms. I followed soon after. I sank to the bottom and unloaded jet after jet of cum inside her, growling in her ear, while Raquel squeezed my ass with both hands so I wouldn’t pull out. I stayed inside her, panting, our bodies stuck together with sweat, my semen running down her thighs.

When we separated, reality came rushing back. The silence weighed twice as much. Raquel covered her face with her hands.

“What have we done?” she asked.

I didn’t know what to say. I dressed in silence, feeling like the worst man alive. I had betrayed a dying man’s trust. I had taken advantage of a broken woman’s fragility.

“I’m going to check on your husband,” I said, and fled the room.

***

In the room next door, the patient stared at me with fixed, shining eyes beneath the monitor’s light. A shiver ran down my back. Had he heard anything? Did he understand? There was no way to know. I checked his vital signs, adjusted the lines, cleaned his inert body with automatic movements. Every gesture felt like mockery. I could still smell his wife’s cunt on my fingers.

At four in the morning I heard footsteps in the hallway. It was Raquel, holding a glass of water.

“Can you sleep?” she asked without looking at me.

“No.”

She sat in the armchair, at a prudent distance.

“My husband and I stopped speaking to each other long before the accident,” she said suddenly. “He had lovers. He always had. I pretended not to know, for the children, for appearances’ sake. Now the kids have left and it’s just the two of us. Me, and that lifeless body.”

She ran a hand through her hair, a tired gesture.

“I haven’t felt anything in years. Not pleasure, not pain. Nothing. Until tonight.”

I felt shame burning across my face.

“Ma’am, I…”

“It wasn’t your fault or mine. We’re two lonely people in a house full of silence. What else could we do?”

She stood and walked to the patient’s doorway. She watched him for a few seconds, then came back toward me.

“Will you stay with me? Just until dawn. Not for that. Just so I won’t be alone.”

I hesitated for a moment, then followed her. We lay down together, fully dressed, without touching. But the warmth of her body, the closeness of her skin beneath her clothes, was more exciting than any caress.

***

The following nights repeated the same pattern. By day I was the professional nurse, attentive and respectful. At night I became her lover. She transformed as soon as the lights went out: from a defeated woman she became a hungry one who demanded more, who took what she needed with an intensity that sometimes frightened me.

On the second night she was waiting for me naked at the end of the hallway. Without saying anything, she led me to the bathroom, closed the door, and knelt in front of me. She lowered my uniform trousers and pulled out my still-soft cock, then took it all the way into her mouth. She sucked me while looking up from below, her eyes full of hungry urgency, her tongue running over my balls, climbing up my shaft, wrapping around the head. She spit saliva onto my cock and spread it with her hand while she sucked me down to the throat, gagging and all. When I was hard, she made me sit on the edge of the bathtub, climbed on top of me astride, and impaled herself, guiding my cock inside her cunt with her hand.

“Fuck me as if you wanted to hurt me,” she asked one night while I pounded her from behind on the kitchen table. “Make me feel something, even if it’s pain. Spit on me, asshole, slap my ass while you fuck me.”

I spat on her ass, slapped her buttocks with my open palm until one cheek turned red, and she came screaming against the wood. I squeezed her neck with one hand while continuing to smack her with the other, fucking her all the way to the bottom. She asked for more, always more.

One morning before dawn she asked me to dominate her. To tie her up. To punish her. I restrained her to the bed with her own silk scarves, on her back, her legs spread wide apart. I blindfolded her with another scarf and marked her pale skin with my open hand until her thighs and tits turned pink. I put three fingers in her cunt and rubbed her clitoris with my thumb until she came trembling against the bindings.

Then I untied her, put her on all fours, and spat between her buttocks. I ran my finger over her asshole, wetting it thoroughly, and began pushing it inside slowly while I worked her cunt with my cock.

“In my ass,” she panted. “Put it in my ass, I want to feel you there, no one’s ever done that to me, never.”

I pulled out my finger, spat on my cock, and pressed it against her tight asshole. I pushed slowly until the head entered, and she let out a long moan, half pain, half pleasure. I pushed farther, little by little, until I had put it all the way in. I fucked her ass while she desperately touched herself, two fingers in her cunt, her thumb rubbing her clitoris.

“More,” she moaned. “Don’t stop. Break my ass, you son of a bitch, give me more.”

I fucked her furiously, and every blow, every moan, carried me deeper into a pit I no longer knew how to escape. I held her by the hips and pounded her with all my strength, my balls striking her cunt, while she pushed her ass backward so I would drive into her deeper. I came inside her ass with a grunt, jet after jet, and when I pulled my cock out, my cum ran down her thighs mixed with her own juices. When we finished, exhausted and covered in marks, she looked at me with shining eyes.

“I’ve never felt anything like that,” she repeated. “Never.”

I felt pride and shame at the same time. Pride at giving her that pleasure; shame at betraying my patient every night, a few feet from his bed.

***

The patient’s condition worsened. The monitor’s beeping grew weaker, more widely spaced. And Raquel became more demanding, as if she wanted to tear from herself the certainty that soon she would be completely alone. She sucked me in the hallway, rode me in the armchair while her husband agonized three yards away, asked me to come on her face, her tits, in her mouth.

One of those nights, in the middle of it, while I was fucking her on her back with her legs over my shoulders, she quietly said a name that wasn’t mine. Her husband’s. I stopped for a second, feeling absurd jealousy toward a man dying behind the wall.

“It’s me,” I told her, thrusting into her angrily, my cock driving all the way in with every blow. “I’m the one who’s here. I’m the one filling your cunt, not him. Say it. Say my name, slut.”

She looked at me with unfocused eyes, as if returning from a great distance. She repeated my name between gasps while I kept fucking her, and she came trembling, her cunt squeezing my cock as if she never wanted to let me go. Then she embraced me, and for the first time there was no fury, only an enormous sadness.

“I can’t go on with this,” I confessed when we were done. “Every time we’re together I know you’re thinking about him. And I can’t compete with a ghost.”

Raquel sat up on the bed, covering herself with the stained sheet.

“You’re right,” she admitted. “Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine it’s him, before the accident. But it’s also true that with you I felt things I never felt with him. With you I felt alive again. With you I come like I never came with him in twenty years.”

She took my hand, trembling.

“There isn’t much time left, I know. The doctor said days, a week at most. I’m only asking you to stay with me until the end. Afterward you can leave. With my gratitude. With whatever you need.”

I looked at her, and despite everything, I couldn’t bring myself to leave her alone.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll stay.”

***

That night we sought each other with a calm we had never known. No anger, no ghosts. Just two bodies finding each other in the darkness. I undressed her slowly, kissing every inch of her skin, biting her neck, sucking her nipples until they hardened. I moved down, licking her belly, and opened her legs again, but this time without rushing, savoring her cunt as if it were the last time. I ran my flat tongue from her ass to her clitoris, long and slow, again and again, until she began to tremble and plead softly.

“Put it in me now,” she whispered, “but slowly. I want to feel it going in.”

I moved inside her slowly, deeply, and she welcomed me with her legs entwined around my waist. Every thrust was long and complete, my cock almost pulling all the way out before sinking back to the hilt. She stroked my face, kissed me while I fucked her, looked into my eyes with an intensity that burned me. I slid a hand beneath her ass to lift her slightly and drove deeper into her, and she moaned my name against my mouth. This time, when she murmured “my love,” I knew she was saying it to me.

We came together, almost silently, her trembling beneath me as I emptied myself inside her in long spasms, feeling her squeeze my cock with every wave. We remained embraced, drenched, saying nothing, while the monitor continued beeping in the room next door.

Three nights later, the beeping suddenly sped up and became a continuous line. The patient’s chest tightened and relaxed for the last time. Raquel held one of his hands and mine with the other, squeezing it with all her strength. She cried silently, a cry that seemed to have no bottom, and I held her until she calmed down.

“He’s gone,” she whispered.

I took her to her bed and we lay there fully dressed while dawn began to enter through the window.

“You’ll leave, and I’ll try to go on living,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “What we had was born of death and loneliness. It can’t survive in daylight. It would be a lie, and we’ve both lied too much already.”

I nodded, although part of me wanted to protest.

“You’re right,” was all I said.

Before I left, she handed me an envelope. Inside was more money than I would have earned in years.

“It’s the least I can do for everything you gave me. But leave now, before the sun comes up. I don’t want the light to stain what we had.”

I dressed in silence, kissed her hand, and left that house, never to return. I walked through the deserted streets of the neighborhood with the envelope in my pocket and the scent of jasmine still on my skin.

I never saw her again. I never heard from her again. I used the money to study, to leave the night shifts behind, to build myself a normal life. And yet there are mornings before dawn when I close my eyes and return to that room, to that pale body, to those muffled moans a foot from a dying man. I return to the taste of her cunt, to the heat of her ass clenching around my cock, to the way she screamed my name into the pillow.

I still wonder whether all of it was a mistake. I never find a clear answer. I only know that, for a few short weeks, I helped a woman feel alive in the middle of death. And that I, for the first time in my gray life, felt alive too. Perhaps that, after all, was enough.