What I Saw in the Mirror During My First Shift

My name is Camila, and this story took place during my first week as an intern at a provincial hospital nobody wanted to go to. I was twenty-seven, had just finished my medical residency, and after months of waiting, I was assigned a position in a huge, nearly empty building on the outskirts of a city I would rather not name.

I'm short, barely five-foot-three, with very fair skin and hips wider than my torso would suggest. I have shoulder-length mahogany hair and small breasts, with pink nipples that stiffen at the slightest breeze. My pussy is almost completely shaved, with barely a thin strip of mahogany hair over my pubis. Those details—which seem silly at first—ended up being important that night.

I arrived at the hospital after eleven. The facade gave me a chill: peeling brick, windows with rusty bars, and a single streetlamp lit on the entire block. Dr. Bermúdez, my supervisor for the next two years, came out to greet me with a kind smile that didn't quite fit the place. He was a tall, thin man in his fifties, with enormous hands and a gentle voice. He introduced me to the nursing staff and my two fellow interns, one a short-haired blonde and the other one who barely looked up from her phone.

After a quick dinner in the cafeteria, Bermúdez showed me around the building. I particularly remember a long corridor in the old wing, with antique mirrors along one wall. Full-length mirrors, with black frames, spaced about six feet apart. It was the mandatory route between the on-call room and the operating theater.

—It's a little sinister, I know—he said, without stopping—. But you get used to it.

I wasn't going to get used to it.

My first shift was a logistical nightmare: paperwork, charts, transfers, an emergency that wasn't an emergency, and two calls my supervisor asked me to answer using a memorized script. Fifteen hours straight. By one in the morning, my scrub top was stuck to my back. The interns' uniforms are tight, made of a lightweight fabric that turns transparent if you're careless, and by then I was far beyond modesty.

I went down to the basement, walked through the mirror corridor—I looked at the floor, I confess—and entered the room that was to be my refuge for the next few months. It was small, with no air-conditioning, bunk beds pressed against one wall and a tiny bathroom on the other. The bathroom had a huge vanity mirror, with a gold frame, that in the afternoon had been beside the door. Now, when I returned, I found it leaning against the wall opposite the bunks, tilted at an angle that reflected both beds in full.

My roommate, Valeria, was sleeping in the bottom bunk. I'd seen her for only a few seconds in the cafeteria: tall, very thin, with black hair gathered in a braid. She hadn't spoken more than three sentences to me. I heard her breathing heavily beneath the sheet and assumed she was deeply asleep.

I took the nightshirt the hospital provided us from my bag—a sort of long blouse, made of the same material as the uniform, that reached to the knees—and a clean pair of panties. I tiptoed into the bathroom.

When I took off my pants, I felt a current of cold air across my lower back. It made no sense: the window was closed, and it was hot outside. I stood there for a second, staring at the half-open door, waiting to see something, but there was nothing. Only the hum of the exhaust fan.

***

I showered quickly, using cold water to wash away the exhaustion. When I was rinsing my hair, my eyes closed, I felt the air at the base of my back again. This time I could have sworn it was a breath, soft, right where the spine curves before the buttocks. I jumped, opened my eyes, and there was no one there. The curtain was still. The exhaust fan kept doing its job.

I thought I was imagining things because of the corridor. I dried myself, put on the white panties and the nightshirt, and slowly climbed into the top bunk so I wouldn't make the wood creak.

I lay on my back, arms stretched out at my sides, staring at the ceiling. And, without meaning to, my gaze fell on the mirror.

From where I was, both beds were perfectly visible. Mine, empty except for my silhouette lying in shadow. The bottom one, with Valeria on her side, covered to the waist. The light from the single streetlamp came through the little window and barely outlined her shoulder.

Twenty long minutes passed before I saw her move.

First it was her legs. She bent them as if she had a cramp, then stretched them out again. After that she shifted from side to side. The sheet slipped down to her thigh, and I noticed she was wearing very short, tight black leggings that outlined a perfect slit between her legs. Her right hand began sliding over her belly, slowly, until it slipped beneath the elastic. I heard her breathe more deeply. Then I heard something more explicit: that barely audible, wet, splashing sound of two fingers entering and leaving a soaked pussy, with the slow, hungry rhythm of someone who had been touching herself for a while.

I had gone completely still. One eye was closed and the other fixed on the mirror, pretending to be asleep. I've always been a lesbian; it's no secret I've kept inside, and I've liked tits and pussies since before I knew how to say the words. But I'd never suddenly found myself faced with a scene like that: the serious girl from the cafeteria, the one who hadn't looked up from her phone, was fucking herself with her fingers deep inside, five feet below me, without knowing—I thought—that I was watching her.

I felt my nipples harden beneath the blouse, pulling tight against the fabric, and the cotton of my panties began sticking to my vulva as I started to gush. The wetness ran down the insides of my thighs, and I had to squeeze my legs together to hold back the urge.

Valeria stopped abruptly. She looked toward the mirror. I quickly closed my eye. I heard her move, felt the soft squeak of the lower bunk, and when I opened my eye again, she had changed position.

She had taken off her leggings and her T-shirt. She was completely naked, on all fours on the mattress, with both pillows stacked beneath her. Her ass was pointed toward the mirror, her small, firm buttocks gleaming with sweat, and between them I could see everything perfectly clearly: the dark, puckered asshole, and below it her open pussy, the swollen inner lips, shiny and hanging slightly, with a thick string of juices running down to the pillow. She arched her back, lowered her head, and began rubbing her clitoris against the corner of the pillows with a short, rhythmic movement, grinding her entire pussy against the fabric and leaving it dark with wetness.

***

I couldn't believe it.

It wasn't just the scene. It was the fact that she was positioned exactly, exactly, at the only angle from which I could see her whole body from above. The mirror, the bed, the body: everything formed a triangle that was too perfect. In that moment I understood, with a blow to my chest, that she had arranged the mirror when she found out what time I was arriving. The mirror hadn't been left there by accident. It was an invitation.

I slid my right hand beneath the sheet. I ran my fingers over my panties and confirmed what I already knew: I was soaked, dripping, the fabric stuck to my lips like a second skin. I pulled it aside and slid my middle finger between my lips, slowly, gliding through my own juices, until I buried it all the way inside my pussy. I was so wet it slid in without friction, up to the knuckle. I pulled out my shining finger and brought it to my clitoris, rubbing tight circles while I watched her move. The sound I made startled me: the splashing of my fingers against my pussy mingled with hers, and for a second I couldn't tell which was which. I inserted a second finger and began fucking myself at the same rhythm she was grinding against the pillows.

My legs began opening on their own. I bent my knees, and the sheet rose into an obvious dome over me. If Valeria was watching the mirror, she couldn't fail to see it. She could see the bulge of my hand moving between my thighs and guess everything else.

And she did.

She changed the direction of her body. She turned the pillows around and climbed on top of them again, but this time she faced the mirror, straddling them with her knees spread wide. Her small breasts, identical to mine in size, with dark nipples hard as stones, shook with every movement. She lowered one hand to her pussy and opened her lips with two fingers in a V, showing me the pink, glistening, contracting entrance. With her other hand she brought her wet fingers to her mouth and sucked them slowly, sticking out her tongue and staring straight at me in the reflection. Then she lowered her hand again and began pushing them inside herself once more, three at a time, while her thumb pressed against her hard clitoris.

That expression was such a clear invitation that I stopped pretending. I lifted the entire sheet and threw it toward the foot of the bunk, kicked it aside, pulled my panties down to my ankles, and kicked those off too. I stayed just like that, legs bent and spread wide, offering my shaved pussy to the mirror. With my left hand I pulled my blouse up to my neck and left my tits bare, squeezing one nipple between my fingers until it hurt. With my right hand I reached down again, opened my lips with my index and ring fingers, and began tapping my clitoris with my middle finger in quick little strokes, letting her see everything from below—pussy and ass and tits, the intern spread open for the stranger masturbating five feet away.

Valeria met my gaze in the mirror. For the first time, she smiled. She pulled one breast aside with her free hand, bent down, and licked the nipple with her whole tongue, showing me the pink tip wet with saliva. Then she went back to her fingers, faster, deeper, burying her hand almost to the wrist. She sped up the rhythm of her hips against her hand and the pillows, making them creak, letting the bunk sway almost imperceptibly. I heard her splashing; I heard the wet, obscene sound of her fingers entering and leaving that soaked pussy. I fell into the same rhythm. I pushed two fingers all the way in, twisted my wrist to touch the inner spot, and rubbed my clitoris with the palm of that same hand on every thrust. The whole room smelled of sweat and pussy and that electric thing that appears only when two bodies recognize each other without having touched.

She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue again, pointing it at me in the mirror, as if telling me where she wanted it. She ran her wet fingers over her mouth and slowly gestured to make me understand that she was imagining my taste. I pulled mine out, showed them to her shining in the reflection, and put them in my mouth all the way to my throat, sucking them like a cock, until I saw her squeeze her thighs and arch her back.

I didn't last long. I came with a cramp that rose from my feet, closing my legs around my hand, biting my free hand to keep from moaning. I was trembling and kept squeezing my pussy around my fingers, feeling it contract in waves, feeling myself gush over my wrist and run down my buttocks to the sheet. A second later I saw her come too, in absolute silence, trembling all over atop the pillows, mouth open and soundless, as a dark, glistening puddle spread beneath her knees. I felt my thighs grow wet. When I managed to open my eyes fully, she had already stopped and was looking at me with her eyes wide in the reflection. Her cheeks were red, her chest still heaving, and a drop of juice hung from her chin.

Without saying a word, she lowered the pillows. She stood beside the bunk, completely naked, her thighs glistening and her pussy still dripping, and walked to the bathroom. I heard her shower in silence. She came out naked, lay down like that, covered herself to the neck with the sheet, and went still.

It was hard for me to move. My legs were numb, my pussy throbbing, and my heart was beating like a drum. I went to the bathroom too, washed myself without looking in the mirror, still feeling the warm juices running down the insides of my thighs, and returned to bed. For the first time in my life, I fell asleep naked, with my legs spread beneath the sheet and my fingers still smelling like me.

***

My phone woke me at six-thirty. The bottom bunk was empty and neatly made, as if no one had slept there. I climbed down with difficulty, switched on the bathroom light, and stood in front of the vanity mirror to gather my strength before the new shift.

Then I saw it.

On my right buttock, just above the edge where the curve ended, there was a clear lipstick mark. Red lipstick, intact, perfect. Valeria had crept up silently while I slept and left her signature on my skin, an inch from the crease where my ass began.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub and laughed to myself. A strange laugh, half embarrassment, half pride. Then I went to get dressed with the mark still intact, determined not to touch it all day.

That first morning I expected to run into her in the corridor, but she was nowhere to be found. We worked in different wards: she was in pediatrics, I was in internal medicine. Running into each other depended on the luck of the shift. I spent the entire day with the sensation of still having her lips painted on my skin, beneath my pants, hidden from everyone but me, and my pussy grew wet every time I remembered her tongue against the reflection.

Three days passed before I saw her in the room again. And then something else happened, longer, calmer, more complete, with hands and mouths instead of the mirror. But I'll tell that one another day.

The only thing I understood that first night, looking at myself in the mirror with the mark of her mouth on my body, was that the mirror hadn't moved by itself. And that the cold air I felt on my back in the bathroom had been her, spying on me naked through the crack of the half-open door, watching my wet ass before getting into her bed and beginning what she had been waiting for me to do.