What the shy doctor desired in the dark

After that night, Nadia became elusive and reserved at work. She felt ashamed of having let herself go, of having crossed that door, and above all of having enjoyed it so much. During the following weekend she sought out her boyfriend with a persistence that was unlike her: she hugged him, asked for contact, tried to stir something up. But the sensation was nothing like the other one.

Diego barely dared to touch her. He penetrated her, kissed her neck, and little else. He didn’t explore her body, didn’t play with her breasts, didn’t slide his hand down to her sex to find out what she liked. Everything was predictable, careful, lukewarm. Nothing like what had happened in that dark room, where no one asked permission and no one gave explanations.

That frustration left her tense all week. Nervous, irritable, on the defensive with anyone who came near her. On one of her shifts she followed Rubén around the ward like a distracted shadow, answering in monosyllables, absent, until her colleague lost patience.

—Hey, rookie, wake up —Nadia reacted too late, giving him a dirty look—. Jesus, kid. Go up to the second-floor break room for a while and see if you can shake off that bad mood.

Nadia was left speechless, mouth slightly open. Her heart lurched. Did he know? Had someone told him she’d been there? She began to connect impossible dots, and unable to stop herself she felt her underwear dampen at the idea that Rubén might have been that stranger in the dark. She pretended to be offended, snapped out a curt excuse, and hurried away as soon as she could, looking for a place to hide from him for a while.

During lunch she found Lorena. She needed to know whether anyone was gossiping about her, and at the same time feed that arousal that had already run away inside her. They talked a while about shifts, on-calls, nonsense, until Nadia decided to get to the topic that truly burned her.

—Hey, Lore… —she glanced side to side, in case anyone was listening—. What’s up with the second-floor room?

Lorena let out a little snort and held her gaze. She took a slow sip of her coffee before answering, amused by the resident’s shyness.

—Are you planning an excursion? —she teased, leaving behind a pause heavy with intent—. Look, we’ve all been there at some point. You know how it is: endless on-calls, night shifts, split weekends. Meeting someone or keeping a relationship going is almost impossible. You get home wrecked, you only want to sleep and eat. It’s hard for anyone who isn’t a doctor to put up with this pace.

Nadia nodded in silence. She thought of Diego, of how unpassionate everything was, and told herself she might still be with him more out of habit than love. Lorena took another sip of her coffee, checked the time on her phone, and kept talking in a lower voice.

—There’s a pact there that nobody signed —she said, looking distractedly toward the window—. No questions, no names. You go there for what you go there for. If you’re inside, it’s because you know what you’re walking into, and because you’ve decided to set your own limits. —She paused—. Limits you then don’t know if you’ll be able to keep.

The last part she said with a cheeky smile, while tucking a strand that had fallen over her forehead back with two fingers. They finished their coffee amid casual remarks and went back to work. On the way out, already at the door, Lorena looked at her over her shoulder with a mischievous expression.

—Be careful what doors you open… —she said, walking toward her white Mini—. You might like what you find too much.

***

Nadia arrived at her apartment flushed, her body buzzing inside. She felt an urgent need to touch herself, something she hadn’t done with that intensity since adolescence. As soon as she closed the door, she leaned her back against the hallway wall and slid her hand under her pants, over the already soaked underwear. A shiver ran down her spine when her fingers found her clit.

She closed her eyes and let herself go. She imagined herself again in that room without light, with her robe open and nothing underneath, feeling strange hands moving over her without asking permission. Hands that pinched her nipples, spread her thighs, decided for her. She imagined an unknown body against hers, someone who didn’t speak to her, who only used her. It wasn’t Diego. It was anyone and no one, and precisely because of that it turned her on so much.

With one hand she drove two fingers into herself while with the other she squeezed one breast over her blouse. Let them do whatever they want to me, she thought, don’t ask me anything. She pictured herself lying on that narrow bed, letting herself be handled, making everything easy for whoever took her, docile and silent. She imagined being left there afterward, naked and sweaty in the dimness, without a word, while she smiled through ragged breaths and orgasm shook her legs.

She came right there, standing against the wall, biting her lip so she wouldn’t moan out loud even though there was no one who could hear her. When she caught her breath, shame came back all at once, as strong as the pleasure from an instant before.

She tried to make a video call to Diego, as if seeing his face would erase what had just happened. She needed to silence a guilt she didn’t fully understand. But he answered grudgingly, said he was tired and that they’d better leave it for another day. Nadia hung up with a bitter feeling in her chest.

For a moment she forced herself to look at it head-on: she had been unfaithful. She had been in that room, and she kept being unfaithful every time she closed her eyes. She waited to feel the weight of remorse. Instead, what she found was something else: it didn’t seem so serious to her, and beneath the guilt lived the certainty that she was not with the person she wanted by her side.

She spent almost an hour pacing the living room, thinking about how to end things with him, about what she really wanted from her life, about how long she had been dimming herself without even realizing it. In the end she picked up the phone and dialed. It rang several times. When the call was answered, it wasn’t Diego’s voice that replied, but a woman’s.

Nadia froze for half a second. Then, instead of shouting, demanding explanations, or collapsing, she said just two words.

—We’re done.

And she hung up. She waited for anger, jealousy, the urge to cry. None came. What she felt was an immense relief, like taking off a wet coat she’d been wearing for months without knowing it. She no longer had to pretend, she no longer had to feel trapped in a relationship with no future. She stepped into the shower with a distant smile, let the hot water run down her back for a long while, and then went straight to bed.

***

That night she had dreams she couldn’t remember upon waking, but which left her with a wet groin and a racing pulse. Part of her mind, the prudent part, the rational doctor she had always been, kept repeating that she couldn’t let herself be swept away like this, that this was a dangerous game. The other part pushed her relentlessly toward the deepest part of her own imagination.

In the morning, still between the sheets, the rational doctor won the battle by a hair. She decided she wouldn’t do anything rash, that she would see how everything unfolded. But beneath that sensible decision there still beat the desire to let herself be taken over again. She didn’t want to be the one to seek him out or ask for it. She wanted it to be done to her, to be used, to have things ordered to her in the dark and obey without thinking. She wanted to surrender without anything being planned in advance.

She realized her hand had slipped on its own beneath the waistband of her pajama pants, and she stopped short, almost frightened by herself.

Later, while getting changed to go out, she found herself staring at her underwear hanging over the chair. Comfortable, loose cotton panties, a gray sports bra, all chosen not to attract anyone’s attention. For an instant she felt uncomfortable with that image of herself, so neat, so proper, so invisible.

She decided she wanted a change. Not for the world outside: she would keep being the shy, innocent girl as always, the formal resident who answered in monosyllables and blushed at a joke. What turned her on was something else. She liked the idea of hiding something spicy, forbidden, dark underneath. A secret only she knew, sewn into her skin.

She looked at the calendar pinned next to the fridge. She had an on-call shift in two days. She felt a familiar tingle sliding down her belly. She grabbed her bag, her keys, and her jacket, and went out determined to look for a lingerie shop that very afternoon.

As she rode down in the elevator, she looked at herself in the mirror and almost didn’t recognize the new half-smile on her face. Be careful what doors you open, she remembered. But by then she already knew that in two nights she would push open one of them again, and this time it wouldn’t be by accident.