Her.
Part #1
I was kneeling by a medical bed. The white sheets stretched out and tied along freshly cut wood. The whole tent smelled of vegetation, moist earth, and sickness. My knees ached on white sheets as I fixed the mangled tubes connecting my patient to an oxygen tank. I had just arrived two weeks ago, and my inexperience still made my fingers shake. I didn't want them to – I'd look at them, and everything in my mind was screaming for them to stop, to quiet down. The more inexperienced you look here, the more stress you notice, culminating in the already humid air. There is a feeling I remember getting a lot as a child and something I was aware of at that moment. It's the feeling of having the entire world staring at you struggling to do something simple. It's not judgment but the jumping in to replace you that's pending – It's the space between accomplishing it and having someone take over – a waiting period that splits your reality and something that could induce enough anxiety in me to blur my vision. My fingers were fumbling around with the tubes, and everything became less clear – it was happening. I don't know what possessed me at that moment, but I looked up. Maybe it was that primal instinct of prey being watched by predators. The way a deer will look up at a cougar in its final moments. Or perhaps I could feel your gaze reaching towards me in comfort as if telepathically, you could clear the clutter in my mind and stop the shaking. Your eyes were dark, I wasn't sure if I could melt into them or fall into their endlessness, but either was soothing. Your gaze wasn't judgemental, but it was knowing. It looked at me kneeling on the ground, tubes all around me by the makeshift bed with a woman's rapid rhythmic breaths counting down the seconds I had to connect everything. It saw me in the mess of it all. In the turmoil of my black curls as they snuck out of my bun and framed my sweaty face, that gaze recognized me. Maybe that's all I needed; to be seen. My hands were steady as I connected the tubes to the tank and helped my patient slip on the mask. The woman's thin ribcage steadily slowed into deeper breaths while I eased my breathing along with hers.
