Three months later

The suite was on the twelfth floor, city lights glittering through half-closed blinds. Nate had texted her the room number and one line: Door’s on the latch. Come in when you’re ready.

Alex stood in the hallway for a full five minutes, key card trembling in her hand, before she finally pushed the door open.

The room was warm, softly lit by two bedside lamps. A portable exam table (real one, padded, with adjustable legs and proper vinyl covering) sat in the center like it belonged there. A rolling metal tray waited beside it, covered by a crisp blue drape. Her pulse thumped so loudly she was sure he could hear it from across the room.

Nate stood by the window in navy scrubs and plain black sneakers, no white coat, no name badge. When he turned, his smile was small and careful.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, voice low. “Color?”

“Green,” she whispered, surprised at how steady it came out.

He crossed the room slowly, palms open at his sides, and stopped an arm’s length away. “Rules still the same?” She nodded. “Pineapple stops everything. Yellow slows down. I touch anything I want first. You narrate. No surprises.”

“Good girl.”

He let her circle the table twice, trailing her fingers over the cool vinyl, lifting the drape to see what lay beneath: two speculums (small and medium), a slender disposable sigmoidoscope still in its sterile wrapper, a bottle of Surgilube, a box of nitrile gloves in her size, a pulse-ox clip, a disposable sheet pack. Everything exactly as they had negotiated.

She exhaled shakily. “I want the gown,” she said.

He handed her a real one (short, pale blue, ties in the back). She stepped into the bathroom, changed, and came out clutching the opening closed behind her. The paper kind would have felt like the hospital; cloth felt… chosen.

Nate had already snapped on gloves (the sound made her knees dip). “Table whenever you’re ready.”

She climbed up slowly, lay on her back, and let him raise the knee cradles. The position left her completely open, gown parted to her waist, cool air kissing skin that had never been this bare for anyone on purpose. She stared at the ceiling and felt the first hot rush of tears.

He noticed immediately. “Color?” “Green,” she managed, “just… a lot.”

He rested a gloved hand on her bare knee (light, grounding). “We can stay right here as long as you need.”

They stayed like that for minutes, his thumb stroking slow circles on her skin while she breathed through the wave of memory and relief colliding in her chest.

When the tears slowed, she nodded.

He warmed the speculum between his palms first (something no doctor had ever done for her), coated it generously with lube, and narrated in the same calm, clinical voice she remembered from the procedure suite, only now it was gentle, reverent.

“Feet in the cradles, knees fall open for me… good. You’re going to feel the tip now—cold, then pressure.”

The blunt metal kissed her entrance. She whimpered (not from pain, from recognition). He paused. “Color?” “Green,” she breathed.

He slid it in one slow, continuous motion until it seated fully, then opened it just enough for her to feel the stretch she had once dreaded. The click of the ratchet echoed in the quiet room.

She was already soaked.

He noticed (of course he did), but only said, softly, “Look at you. Your body remembers this is safe now.”

He left the speculum in place, reached for the pulse-ox clip, and fastened it to her finger. The little red light blinked in time with her racing heart: 118, 121, 124.

“Tell me what you need, Alex.”

She swallowed. “Touch me. Please.”

He kept one hand resting on the speculum handle to hold it steady and slid the other slowly up the inside of her thigh until his gloved fingers brushed her clit (light, clinical, maddening). She arched off the table with a broken sound.

“Stay with me,” he murmured, circling once, twice. “Feel the stretch and my fingers at the same time. Nothing bad happens here.”

She came in under thirty seconds, a sharp, wrenching orgasm that left her shaking and crying again. He caught her as the speculum slid free, wrapped her in a warm blanket, and pulled her into his lap on the edge of the bed.

She cried into his scrub top for a long time (ugly, snotty sobs that sounded like grief and gratitude mixed). He rocked her, kissed her temple, told her over and over that she was safe, that she was perfect, that she had just taken the single bravest step he’d ever witnessed.

When the storm passed, she looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes and laughed once, wet and incredulous.

“I thought I would be embarrassed,” she whispered. He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “You just came with a speculum inside you because you decided that’s what you wanted. Embarrassed is not the word I’d use.”

She buried her face in his neck and breathed him in (hospital soap, coffee, something warm and male that was only him).

They stayed like that until her pulse-ox read 72 and the city outside the window had gone quiet.

That was the first time.

There would be others (some gentle, some intense, one night months later when she finally asked for the full-length scope and came so hard she blacked out for three seconds), but that first night was the one she kept coming back to.

The night she walked into a hotel room terrified she was broken, and walked out knowing, for the first time in her life, that every single part of her was allowed to feel good.