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“Where are we going?”
“Shhhh, Mel. I told you, we’re just taking a break.”
She frowns as he tugs her past the lockers and the break room, down the hall to the north stairwell, his hand around her wrist. After she’d discharged her last patient, she’d walked out of the room and found him leaning against the wall, waiting for her. Before she had the chance to even open her mouth to ask what was up, he’d grabbed her and started leading her quickly through the ED.
“Why do I have to shhhh?” she asks him.
“Because I don’t want someone to hear us and pull us onto a case.”
He only lets her go when they start up the stairs, but he glances over his shoulder almost the whole time they climb, as if he’s afraid she’ll stop following him and dart back to the ER. She struggles to keep up with him – he seems very eager, and with his long legs, sometimes takes the steps two at a time – but he stops when they reached the fourth floor, holding the door open for her. She eyes him warily, and he motions with his head for her to keep going. She sighs, but walks through the threshold. She isn’t annoyed per se; she just isn’t the biggest fan of surprises.
She tells him that as he closes the door to the stairwell softly behind her. He pauses for a second, but then shakes his head.
“This isn’t a surprise, really,” he says.
“Then what are we – “
He’s walking past her before she can finish her sentence, which again makes her frown. He is probably the only person in her life, other than Becca, who always waits and listens to what she has to say. He’s being weird, she decides, but she still lets him grab her wrist again and lead her through the quiet corridor and around the corner.
He stops in front of the surgical on-call room, opens the door and ushers her inside, again being sure to close the door quietly. She looks around, having never been in here before.
“This is a lot nicer than our on-call room,” she remarks idly.
He walks over the fridge and opens it, rolling his eyes at her playfully before beginning to rummage around inside.
“Well, they’re surgeons, so they get all the fancy shit.”
She watches him rifle through people’s lunches and leftover snacks, grumbling something to himself about if someone fucking stole it I’m going to kill the whole surgical team, starting with Yoyo, but then he exclaims, “Aha!” and grabs something. He pulls it out quickly, hiding it behind his back before she can gauge what it is.
“Don’t be mad at me,” he tells her cautiously, as he stands upright, starting to approach her slowly, like she’s a skittish animal.
Her brow furrows.
“Why would I be – “
Then, it hits her. Oh.
“Did Becca tell you?!? I swore her to secrecy.”
“No, she didn’t rat you out, Mel,” he assures her, but then tilts his head, considering. “Well, not at first, at least. I brought it up to her.”
He waits until he’s only an arm’s length away from her to show her what he’s hiding. A single cupcake, with purple frosting.
She tries to glare at him, but his grin is so bright that she can’t help the way her face softens, the corners of her mouth beginning to curl up.
“Now, I got yellow cake, because Becca told me it was your favorite, and purple frosting. Because purple is your favorite color.”
He’s right, of course, but she still looks at him curiously.
“I never told you purple was my favorite color.”
“I know,” he says, his smile widening. “But it’s kind of obvious. Purple is color you wear the most often, your water bottle and planner are both purple, you have a purple phone case. You’re a purple girl, Mel.”
She feels the urge to squirm and throw her arms around him at the same time. She’s still not used to being so seen, so plainly. Even after six months, she’s not accustomed to how much attention he pays her.
It’s strange, but not bad.
He takes a few steps away from her, so he can put the cupcake on the small table in the room, and rifles around in his left pocket, pulling out a small box and a lighter a moment later. He opens the box, takes out a long, spiraled, sparkly silver candle and inserts into the cupcake, then lights it. He picks up the plate and walks back over to her, holding his hand in front of the flame so it doesn’t go out.
He stands even closer to her than before, bringing the cupcake up so it’s in front of her face.
“Now, I know you’ve heard my vocal abilities when we’re driving home and I get the courage to sing along to the radio,” he says, and she can’t help the laugh that sneaks its way from her mouth, “so I’m not going to subject you to the singing.”
“Thank God,” she teases, and he glares at her playfully before his face softens and he stares at her like he has a habit of doing, with an expression that is so fond that she usually has to dart her eyes from his so she doesn’t start crying, or something. But she holds his gaze now, the butterflies in her stomach that usually make themselves known whenever she looks at him too long flitting wildly.
He smirks after a moment, motioning to the cupcake.
“Make a wish,” he murmurs. “And hurry up, before melted candle wax gets all over my hands and you have to treat me for a burn.”
She smiles, reluctantly tears her eyes from his, closes her eyes.
In the past, she’s always had trouble deciding what to wish for on her birthday. When she was a kid, she would make a list at least a week beforehand with potential wishes, trying to find some balance between what she really wanted and what was likely to actually come true.
Now that she knows that wishes aren’t quite real, she’s changed her philosophy, throwing any realism she used to take into consideration out the window and just taking the moment to acknowledge something she really, really wants, even if it will never come true.
In the past ten years, there’s been a lot of wishes for her parents to come back. For her not to feel so lonely all the time. For her to never fail Becca even once.
This year, she knows exactly what she wants to wish for, even though this unexpected celebration left her no chance to consider and plan, and even though it’s something she’s never wished for before. Even though the wish is probably the most selfish one she’s ever made.
So, she wishes, hard, and blows out her candle.
He claps lightly, making her roll her eyes, and then he’s stepping back again, taking the candle out and tossing it in the trash before grabbing a plastic fork from one of the drawers. He sits down on the twin bed in the corner of the room, motions for her to join him. She sits close enough that their arms are touching, trying to ignore the goosebumps that rise on her skin, hoping he doesn’t feel them.
“I got whipped icing,” he informs her, “because I know you don’t like things to be overly sweet.”
She smiles again, trying not to blush. Again, the fact that he knows her, so well, is both terrifying and exhilarating. He unwraps the cupcake and passes her the fork, and she takes a bite. She can feel his eyes on her, and she nods.
“Very good,” she says after she swallows. “Moist and just sweet enough.”
He grins and relaxes, as if his mood for the rest of the day hinged on whether she liked the cupcake or not. She hands the fork to him.
“No,” he tries to protest. “This is your cupcake.”
“And it’s my birthday. I want you to help me eat this.”
He sighs heavily, playfully.
“I suppose if you insist.”
“I insist,” she confirms, and he takes the fork from her.
They sit there quietly for awhile, alternating bites until the cupcake is gone. He gets up, throws away the fork and rinses off the plate in the room’s sink. She goes to get up when he’s done, thinking they’ll make their way back to the ER now, but he sits down on the bed again before she can stand.
“Thank you, Frank,” she says, after a few moments of comfortable silence.
“Of course,” he murmurs. “Anything for the birthday girl.”
She rolls her eyes again, and he chuckles.
“How did you even find out, if Becca didn’t tell you?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and when she looks up at him, she thinks his cheeks are slightly flushed.
“When Becca came into the ED in July, I might’ve made a mental note.”
And that makes her heart skip a beat. Knowing that even then, when they’d known each other for one and a half shifts, he’d already been paying attention.
“Are you going to tell me what you wished for?” he asks.
“Absolutely not.”
He pouts immediately.
“Why not?”
“Because I want it to come true,” she tells him. “Duh.”
And she wants this wish to come true so badly. Even though she doesn’t believe in wishes, she refuses to risk it for this one.
He still looks sad, though, so she compromises.
“If it comes true, I’ll tell you,” she says.
“Promise?” he asks, raising one eyebrow.
“I promise.”
She gets up then, holding out her hand for him.
“Come on. We’ve been here for at least twenty minutes. They’re going to come looking for us.”
He grumbles something she can’t quite make out under his breath, but he takes her hand, lets her pull him up.
“Why did we come in surgery’s on-call room, anyway?” she asks.
“Because we definitely wouldn’t have got twenty minutes down there,” he tells her, very seriously. “Maybe seven, at most.”
She laughs lightly, because he’s right. She goes to open the door, but one of his long arms reaches above her head, keeping the door closed with his fingertips. She turns to ask him what he’s doing, and finds he’s much closer than she expected. Maybe closer than he’s even been to her, his body almost caging hers against the door.
It should make her flinch, or want to escape. But it’s him – it’s Frank – so of course it doesn’t. She just stares up at him, and he slowly bends so that he can wrap his arms around her waist in a gentle hug. She brings her arms up around his back almost automatically, trying to be conscious enough of her body that she doesn’t curl her fingers into his scrub top too tightly, too desperately.
“Happy birthday, Mel,” he whispers in her ear, and she closes her eyes.
And three days later, he will take her – just her, because he’ll already have come over to celebrate both her and Becca the night before – to dinner for her birthday, to some fancy Italian place that she’s never been to before. He won’t call it a date, but they’ll both get dressed up and he’ll bring her vase of lilacs and they’ll spend their time at the restaurant paying more attention to each other than they do to the food. He’ll drive her home, and she’ll invite him in, like she’s done so many times before. But it will feel different this time. And she’ll barely have time to close her door behind her before he cages her against it, just like he did in the on-call room.
And she won’t even be able to blink before he leans down and kisses her. She’ll kiss him back with everything she has while her heart thumps nearly out of her chest.
He won’t pull away until he absolutely has to, until they absolutely need to breathe, but he won’t go far. He’ll rest his forehead against hers, and her fingers will come up to tangle in her hair at the nape of his neck.
“My wish came true,” she’ll tell him.
And he’ll smile, and kiss her again.