I dragged my hand across my notepaper and suddenly it was Gabe’s skin again.

For the fifteenth time since class started, warmth was spreading through my body, an insistent heat that pooled in my belly and made my nipples tighten. I sat up in my seat, crossed and recrossed my legs and tried like hell to pay attention to the last review before the boards tomorrow. 

But the second my hand moved again, it was as if it was holding a washcloth and running against smooth, tanned skin, the texture of sparse golden hairs running like silk against my fingertips. The instructor’s voice faded to mere static in the background. 

I licked my lips and stretched my fingers out. There had been nothing erotic about the bath. Nothing except his naked body, nothing except the way his eyes closed when he sank into the water. There had been nothing sensuous except the soft moan that fell from his lips when I let the cloth brush across his shoulder. He was my patient and I was providing a level of care that justified my high weekly rate. That was all. There was nothing forbidden about the way his eyes fluttered open and he looked at me with that grin playing about his lips and said, “Thanks Nurse.”

There was nothing strange about how he was wearing no clothes at all but I was the one who felt naked. 

A sudden burst of noise around me jolted me out of my reverie. I looked around and to my horror everyone was packing up already. 

Class was over and I had spent my entire review thinking about Gabe King’s naked body. 

I’d missed my final review. 

I stood up and started packing up my unused laptop, trying not to pay attention to the low thrum of panic that was now humming through my ears. But my fingers betrayed me, becoming useless and shaking with the tips nothing but pins and needles.

I held my breath. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, although it had been a while. My sister Abby had called this fun little party trick of mind “floppy hands.” It came on when I was stressed or not getting enough sleep. 

I sat down and rested my traitorous hands on my knees while I waited for them to stop shaking. It would pass. It always passed. I breathed out and tried not to think about what the doc on my clinical had said when I’d nonchalantly asked him about it, pretending it was a question for the boards. “Oh, you mean like an essential tremor? Yeah, you’d definitely want to get that looked at.”

My hands had randomly shaken my whole life, but I only just learned it was a problem this semester. 

As I sat in my desk chair, I watched Professor Dorrington scrolling across her laptop screen with a pursed-lip look of concentration on her face. “Nurse Foster?” she called out to me.

Startled, I tried to press my hands into my thighs, but they still flopped around in my lap like fish out of water. “Yes?” I said, wondering what on earth had led her to notice me on today of all days.

She glanced up, seemingly miffed that I was still in my seat. “I was just checking through my grading. Were you planning on handing in your unit test sometime soon?”

It was like someone had poured a bucket of icewater over my head. I froze to the spot, and then started shaking right along with my hands. An anxiety attack. I was seconds away from a full-blown anxiety attack.

I was a nurse. I knew what to do. But knowing what to do and being able to do it were two separate things. As Professor Dorrington looked over the top of her half-moon glasses to peer critically at me, I desperately tried to get air into my lungs, but it felt like someone was squeezing my chest too tight. “I...” I gulped. “Did?”

“I beg to differ,” she called from way down below me. This was ridiculous, the two of us shouting across the empty lecture hall, but I couldn’t move. I wasn’t sure I could put one foot in front of another without collapsing. And her pride wouldn’t allow her to come to me. She raised her voice a little louder. “Every day that it’s late it gets marked down twenty percent.”

Panic squirted a bright hot metallic taste in my mouth. It’d been a day already and I needed to keep my grade up as high as I could. “I sent it in,” I said as clearly as I could around the thickness of my tongue. In the bright hot glare of the impending panic attack, the harder she looked at me, the more I felt like I was lying. Shaking my head, I tore my eyes away from hers, and pulled out my phone, holding it tight in violently shaking hands. “I’m looking right here, in my sent folder,” I said. “The timestamp is 7:48 PM.”

A heavy silence fell over us as she turned back to her computer. I felt like I couldn’t move, pinned down by the weight of her implied accusation. My hands shook so hard that even sitting on them wasn’t enough. My whole body was slicked down in perspiration and I was gasping like a marathon runner as Professor Dorrington silently and judgmentally scrolled through her inbox. It was right then, in the middle of my silent breakdown, that the door to the lecture hall banged open and the same French-braided girl from before stood there with the heavy yellow cart.

And for some reason, I was able to catch my breath.

Maybe it was the expression on her face, the serene composure, the shy glance. Maybe it was the blessed distraction from my silent stand-off with my professor. Or maybe it was the small play of a smile across her lips when she looked at me. Like the look of recognition you give to someone right before you open your mouth and reveal you don’t actually know their name.

She turned her heavy cart into the hall and then stopped short when she noticed that Professor Dorrington was still at her desk. “Oh!” she said and jerked her cart back in surprise. The force of it sent the mops that were on the front clattering to the floor. 

Without thinking, I jumped to my feet. And to my surprise, my hand closed firmly on the fallen mop and didn’t show any signs of tremor at all. “Here,” I said, handing her the one, and then the other. “I got you,” I said. They were heavier than they looked. 

At that moment, Professor Dorrington slapped her laptop closed and stood up. The custodian girl and I both startled and looked at her.

The expression on her face was one of studied boredom. “You’re all set, Nurse Foster,” she sniffed as she shrugged on her complicated wool coat. 

I inhaled a deep, full breath. “You saw it then? My test?” For some reason I glanced at the custodian girl. She was watching us both with keen interest. 

“Like I said, you’re all set.” Professor Dorrington grabbed her case and turned to stalk out the main entrance. 

I let out that full breath and looked at the custodian again, and for some reason the urge to laugh overtook me. “Oh my god that was the scariest moment in my entire life,” I gasped, falling back to sit down on one of the empty chairs. 

“She’s terrifying,” the custodian whispered with her eyes wide. “Thanks for your help.” 

I glanced at her and she quickly looked down, avoiding my eyes. Her braid was so tight it pulled the sides of her face taut. I found myself wanting to know why she wore it that way. The only people I knew who braided their hair like that were little girls for dance recitals and the creepy cult ladies who moved in packs through town, not talking to anyone except themselves. “I’m Everly,” I said, holding out my hand. “You might have already heard my professor yelling my last name, but in case you missed it, it’s Foster.”

Then I looked at her again. The edges of her eyes were glittering. She dabbed angrily at them with her sleeve and then lifted her chin. “My name is Rachel.” She looked at my outstretched hand with an expression of grim concentration before taking it with hers. I was surprised by her strong, sure grip even more than I was surprised by the callouses on her palm. “Rachel Walker.”