Work Text:
The first time you see her you have a strange feeling. You smile because the first impression you get is of joy despite the fact your machine has decided to leave you in the lurch now.
You watch her get closer to you and it's clear to you straight away that you'll try to win her over with all your strength. You have no idea why, yet.
The first time you hold her hand is for a silly bet and you think you've won the first round at arm wrestling.
You're deluded.
A strange mixture of feelings grows in you. And it's the beginning of your end.
A lot of things happen from that moment on and you cannot even keep up with your heart and with your mind.
Your life gets turned upside-down by this woman who, at first glance, looks like a frightened little blonde chick who's just hatched. Her hair always messy like a puppy, those brown eyes, maybe they have in them some streak of green that remind you of the majesty of an oak tree.
Sometimes you have to look away because the feeling overwhelms you, even if you are still unable to grasp the scope of it all. You do not know what name to call it.
Sometimes you close your eyes and try to connect this to something you've already experienced but what comes to mind is as absurd as it is shocking.
Sometimes it is like a Beethoven symphony that sounds in your home through your scratchy vinyl on a spring day, when the sun warms the earth again and you open your window to hear the first whiff of the smell of flowers in the flower beds.
Sometimes it's like when you find an old book from when you were a child and re-opening it, you breathe in the smell of yellowed pages, and while you re-read the first few lines – and you realize you know it by heart - the nostalgia catches you.
Sometimes it's darker, less happy, when her scent hits your nostrils and it immediately reminds you of what your mother used to wore.
Other times it's a rainy evening under the duvet on the sofa by the fireplace, the smell of homemade cookies, the slow and relentless brushing in your daughter's hair, movements never forgotten, smells, sounds that are forever imprinted in your mind.
You open your eyes and she is still there, sitting at the desk, right in front of you.
Her presence becomes too much for you. You have to get up and pretend you're doing rounds through the wing to allow your heart time to stop the incessant pounding in your chest.
Then she kisses you, you kiss her back with even greater passion and all the puzzle pieces suddenly fit.
It is love and it is useless to deny it, but then she runs far away and every time you now think of her is a storm, a storm at sea, the waves on the rocks, a catching fire.
She hurt you and no matter how much you would want to hate her, you can not help but love her more and more.
Your eyes are full of tears shed for the mistake you should not have made in confessing your love, sometimes you close your eyes and hope that she's there when you reopen them, instead all that remains is her smell clinging to her chair in your office, so you sit on it and you crush your nose against the fabric that used to embrace her.
You breathe her scent in deeply and you burst into tears again as the image of her, her hair uncombed, her goofy smile, her shy babble - God how you loved seeing her flustered in your presence - in those moments you would only want to hold her and kiss her to reassure her that everything would be fine.
Instead you can not.
She's in Kiev.
You're no longer deluded.
Days pass, they turn into weeks and then into eternal months that separate you.
You spend as long as you can with Jason, you immerse yourself in your work and suddenly all those sounds, those colours, that music coming to your mind whenever you saw her, they cease to exist.
The world is back to being black and white as it was before her coming.
You sit in your empty house in the evening and the only company that is allowed you is that of a bottle of Shiraz. Not really the best company compared to the previous one, but then again who cares? Berenice Griselda Wolfe certainly can not afford to come and say what you must or must not do.
At the exact moment she left you, she lost any right to speak even in your fantasies.
You drink wine on an empty stomach until you fall asleep completely dazed by alcohol and at last, for a few hours, you will not feel any emotion.
The sore head in the morning carries on your mouth curses that hold her name. After all it's all her fault you are reduced to this.
You hate Beethoven, flowers and the smell of biscuits.
In that moment all that connects you to her becomes disagreeable and just to bring a tad even more drama to your house atmosphere you put on a Wagner vinyl. But then you suddenly remember those damn Valkyries; tall, blond, fair and beautiful - Bernie could be one of them – and for this reason you stop the record and the house falls back into silence.
After weeks of solitude you look around but no one makes you feel what she was able to make you feel with a single look. Robbie comes back but he is not her. He doesn't have her loud laugh which resembles the sound of a goose, he doesn't have lean and lanky limbs that get clumsy when embarrassed about something, he does not apologize for everything, he does not take you in his arms when you lose a patient, he does not kiss you on the sly on the operating room floor.
Robbie is not Bernie and when you realize it, it's as if your heart had managed for one moment to find pace.
Then she comes back.
Your world is suddenly full of color again when you spot her head of hair, when a whiff of her perfume gets to you, and it is only the presence of Jason and Fletch that stops you from throwing yourself in her arms and kissing her a thousand times, standing in the hallway in front of everyone.
It takes your entire damn self-control not to drag her into your office and do to her all the unspeakable things you've dreamed of a thousand times.
You dream of her skin, her hand in yours, your bodies embraced, your lips pressed together and, when it finally happens, every smell, every feeling comes back in your mind and you remember when you were a child and you were playing in the just cut grass fields, the sixth symphony comes back, the feeling of eating snow comes back, laughing at something silly, staying up late just to enjoy each other 's company.
And while your mouths open to deepen the kiss, you finally understand it, and become clear and it seems impossible that you didn't get it the first moment you saw, spoke, looked at her.
You finally realize that she feels like home.