billy;)

To Whom It May Concern: The guardians of MOHAN ABBOT, SAMIRA MARISOL and

MOHAN ABBOT, VENNILA SAMIRA are formally requested for an in-person meeting at 11:00A.M. in the administrative office of the K-5 campus.

Jack reread the note pinned to the fridge once, twice, three times, all the while Samira stood feet behind him in silence.

“A meeting,” Jack finally said, and turned to her while scrubbing a hand across his weary face. “They say what for?”

“No,” She lifted her mug to her lips and took a long sip of coffee, “They said they’ve never done anything wrong.”

“Great. I really hope we aren’t raising two mini-Jacks. I was a little shit.”

Perfectly on cue, two voices sounded in quick repetition: “Shit!” “Shit!” “Little shit!” “Daddy was a little shit!”

“Girls, don’t say that word!”

“Daddy said it.”

“And he’s in trouble. Do you wanna be in trouble?”

“No,” One of the girls said. Even with their matching pajamas, Mira (the oldest of the twins, named for Samira, went by Mira, which had once inspired Vennila to try going by Mira so their names combined to be simply ‘Samira’, though their parents quickly shut that down) distinguished herself immediately with her instinct to take the lead. She got it from Jack, no doubt: at 4 years old, she already had a handle on one-liners and smug charm. Unlike Samira, Mira was also incredibly, unbelievably, straightforward: “What I want is scissors.”

“No scissors. There’s two days left on the sharps chart,” Jack said, pointing at the calendar hung next to the fridge that dictated how long they were prohibited from sharp objects. Without fail, every time access was restored the girls would manage to sneak off with craft scissors, despite constant supervision, and “perform surgery” on stuffed animals, pillows, and hair.

“It’s important,” Nila whined, leaning further into her sister’s side from where they had walked into the room, wrapped in the same blanket.

“What’s important is this meeting we have to go to with your principal. What did you two do?”

The twins went silent as they watched Samira tap the slip of paper, then stare back at them while standing next to Jack. Several seconds passed. Nobody moved, and the twins kept their gaze trained on their parents, each one taking a different parent; Sam, Jack; Nila, Samira.

If they were allowed a knife, the twins could have cut the palpable tension in the air. Instead, they broke their eye contact at the exact same time, turned on the same heel, rejoined hands, and scampered to their bedroom without a word. Left in their wake, their parents turned to each other with no more than a raised brow on both of their faces.

“They’re so weird,” Jack said in a whisper. When Samira began to stifle her laughter, he grinned, reached out, and pulled her into a kiss.

The following day the girls squeezed into one chair between their parents, hugging each other and remaining silent as the meeting was underway.

“I’m sure you’re busy and wondering why we’re here,” The principal finally said, watching Jack and Samira nervously glance at each other over their children’s heads, “So now I’ll get right to it. Your daughters are incredibly, incredibly intelligent.”

Samira relaxed. Great; no, more than great. This was a meeting to declare the girls child geniuses. College would be a breeze; not that money had been an issue but now, with all the scholarship money they’d get from their perfect SAT scores, they could invest that money into stocks for the girls-

“They also,” Her blood ran cold as the principal went on. Wasn’t that it? There couldn’t be more. They really didn’t want there to be more. “Have a proclivity for sharing their intelligence with their peers, who are often not at the level of understanding they are. We understand that you may teach your daughters about your professions, which I assure you they have told us about, but we would like to ask that you have a conversation with the girls about the content they’re sharing with their classmates. Both in conversation, and physical media.”

To Samira and Jack’s horror, the principal reached to her side and produced a surgical textbook with sticky notes peeking out from between the pages; the same sticky notes that were currently sitting at home, on the twins desk. The principal flipped through three sticky-noted pages to give them the gist: Gory. Graphic. Photos of mangled bodies being cut into, ribs being separated, blood seeping from a head wound.

Jack and Samira turned to each other with matching faces of horror, though not out of disbelief. They had no idea the girls had gotten hold of the book, but the entire ordeal was about as surprising as walking into a storm without an umbrella and getting wet. Noticing that, for some reason, nobody was speaking, Nila decided to fill the silence:

“That’s a cranial reconstruction.”

“The next page shows it after a post-craniotomy empyema,” Mira spoke slowly, her brain working much quicker than her 4 year old conversational skills, “with osteoporosis.”

“Osteitis,” Jack and Samira corrected at the same time. He stared blankly at the principal, while Samira pinched the bridge of her nose. The principal sucked in a breath, nodded slowly, and handed the book to Jack.

“Right. Well, a few kids have gone home crying to their parents over what your daughters showed them-”

“We didn’t show them! We were reading, ‘n they looked,”

“Or they asked to see,”

“Yeah, we didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Girls,” Samira’s voice remained calm despite its sudden sternness. “No more of this at school. Principal Mason, we are so sorry. We will talk with them after school.”

“I knew you would. Pleasure meeting with you both; sorry to interrupt the work day. The girls can go back to class. Nice seeing you Nila, Mira.”

“That’s Mira,” One corrected, pointing at the other.

“And that’s Nila.”

“They’re lying. Ignore them,” Jack grunted, walking them out of the office. They sent the girls off with a kiss on the cheek and a promise of a dinner table talking-to.

Once sat in the car, Jack dumped the book in the back, between the carseats, then turned to Samira. She met his eye with the exact look of confusion, horror, and hilarity that he expected.

“They’re. So. Weird,” She told him breathlessly, then combusted into worried laughter with him shortly after.

-

“Principal Rodriguez.”

“Mrs. Mohan, welcome in. You know the drill,” The man gestured to the seats in front of his desk. The middle two were occupied by the twins, clutching each other’s hands and staring into their laps.

“As per usual, they’re not… in trouble, per say.”

“But?”

“But, Mira has been telling her classmates what embalming is.”

Samira sighed, shaking her head to herself. Great. “And Nila?”

“Insisted that if Mira was being called to the office, she was going with her.”

“Naturally. I’ll take care of the embalming… thing. We told her to keep the mortuary science to herself, but… you know kids,” She smiled, reaching over and squeezing Mira’s hand. Principal Rodriguez blinked, forcing back any instinct to change his expression.

“Right. Well, have a good day. Be sure to have that talk. Oh, and don’t forget about fifth grade registration sheets, they’re by the door on your way out.”

Samira smirked as they walked into the main lobby. “You’re lucky you two are really, really smart,” She told the girls on the way to the car, weaving through the last of the pickup crowd and students getting on the last bus. “Or I don’t think they’d want us back.”

“I don’t wanna come back. They won’t even let me start a taxidermy club.”

“Mira, quiet. Nila,” She caught the eye of the younger twin, “Stop letting your sister tell kids what embalming is.”

Mira groaned melodramatically as Samira lifted her into the car and buckled her into her car seat, lamenting: “I’m unappreciated for my time.”

-

Nila was the only fourth grader at her school who knew how to play the recorder, which was especially impressive considering that she and Mira spent the exact same amount of time in private piano lessons. While the other children were crying onstage and miming clearly incorrect positions, she played a hell of a Mary Had a Little Lamb. Next to her, Mira held the recorder at her side and watched her sister with a smile, even clapping with the audience at the end as if she weren’t meant to be part of the performance.

“Do you think she has stage fright?” Jack leaned over and asked as Hot Cross Buns started up (to the misfortune of everybody’s ears) and Mira once again just watched her sister.

“No way. She’s just bored- you’ve heard her play it a million times.”

“When’s their ballet thing?”

“Two songs from now, shush!” She smacked Jack’s arm, then lowered her hand to take his again and focus on the absolutely miserable song they were meant to be listening to. The diddy ended and the twins calmly exited amidst the lines of crying children and kids waving to their families. After a less-than-inspiring Frosty the Snowman performance from the kindergartners the stage cleared, only for two identical little girls to toddle on in glittering white tutus. Nila made for the piano, climbing onto the bench beside the wrinkled old accompanist. Mira marched right up to the principal introducing them, twice her height, and said nothing.

The audience laughed. Samira and Jack did not, because they knew Mira was meant to stand in the middle, wait for her dance, do the dance with Nila, then walk off.

With a nervous laugh to join the audience ‘aww’ing at the girls they clearly had not heard of, the principal handed the mic over with a nonchalant shrug, a show of what a good sport she was. Mira turned to the audience without hesitation and spoke.

“My sister and I are supposed to dance for you. But we wrote our own Christmas song and we want to sing it first. Hit it, Nila,” She demanded with gusto, garnering even more laughter from the audience and even more horror from her parents and (already regretful) principal. Beautiful chords sounded from the piano, a simple progression. After several seconds, Mira discordantly half-sang, half-spoke over them with no rhythm or rhyme scheme to be heard of.

“My sister and I wrote a Christmas song,

but my family doesn’t celebrate Christmas,

and you all have Jesus’ birthday wrong.

This is Jesus’ fake birthday song.

Jesus would think you all sucked,

and he wasn’t born on Christmas,

and you killed him anyways- wait, stop! Stop, I’m not done!”

The principal was already wrestling the microphone back from the incredibly strong child by the time the crowd was in an uproar over the song’s controversial lyrics. Several parents scoured the crowd for Jack and Samira to ask them what was wrong with their kids: hiding behind their programs and sinking as far down as possible into their seats, trying to disappear into the pandemonium, they were quite sure that, actually, nothing was too wrong with them at all.

From the stage, Jack caught the principal’s eye.

“Let me guess. She wants to see us after?” Samira asked. Hiding back behind the program, Jack glanced over to her and sucked in a breath.

“Can you believe it?”

-

Samira and Jack had been planning to spend their day off figuring out just how much Jack’s age was starting to limit him in bed. Instead, they ended up in a familiar place: their daughter’s school. It was bad before they even parked, because they saw a crowd of students sitting outside the school.

“Are our kids leading a protest?”

“It looks like it. I’m not mad about that,” Jack groaned as he stepped out of the car and joined her on the other side, heading towards the teachers and administration watching with their hands on their hips. The middle school principal and eighth grade science teacher marched right up to Samira and Jack.

“Your daughters have gone too far this time!” The teacher spoke before the principal, livid. “This is completely unsafe! All over, over-”

“Mira, Nila,” Jack stepped past the teacher and towards the identical girls sitting furthest from the school, both facing their loyal classmates. Between them, their hands were clasped in one another’s. They turned to look at him with their heads at the exact same angle, curls done nearly the same, and same blank expression. “Why are you out here?”

“Mr. Jansen wants us to dissect frogs,” The glittery pink bow in her hair ruffled in the wind as she calmly stated her reasoning.

Jack’s jaw dropped. He picked it back up enough to utter, “Mira, you’re the creepiest kid I know, you love dissections!”

“When the subject is respected,” Nila added sharply.

Samira took a step past the teacher as well, halfway between the administration and Jack, also watching her daughters. “What?”

“A lot of these kids didn’t want to do the dissection. I said they should. Mr. Jansen decided to ‘join my side’,” Mira added air quotes. God, if pre-teen sass could kill, everyone in Mira’s vicinity would have died years ago. “And said they shouldn’t worry about it, because they’re ‘just frogs’, so their life didn’t matter the same. But disrespecting the dead is not a part of dissection- mom, dad, I would hope you of all people know that- and I will not take part in unethical dissection. We created a simple list of demands,” She gestured out towards the students, who were silent and all staring at the twins with an odd amount of trust, “All we wanted was an apology from Mr. Jansen, and a paragraph explaining where he went wrong. He refused and said this is ridiculous to do for ‘some frogs’.”

“So,” Nila finished, “We organized.”

Samira had caught up to Jack by now. Behind them Mr. Jansen called out, “See? Get your daughters inside, this is absolutely ridiculous-”

“Hey!” Jack bellowed, “Don’t tell me what to do with my daughters, especially not when they’re right.”

“Excuse me?!”

Samira wheeled around to face the administration and spoke before Jack could. “You’re telling me all he has to do is apologize and say he shouldn’t have disrespected a previously living creature, being dissected for the sake of your students education, and he won’t? They’re having a peaceful protest. There’s nothing wrong with any of this.”

The principal, gobsmacked, stammered out, “I- It’s unsafe!”

“Girls,” Jack barked, “Can you move it inside?”

Nila and Mira locked eyes. Spoke without speaking. Then, they both stood up.

“All in favor of moving into the main hallway, raise your hands,” Gradually, well over half of the hands went up.

“So it has been democratically chosen: Our protest moves inside.”

The crowd stood up, some grabbing signs- “MR. JANSEN IS MORE SPINELESS THAN A FROG” being a personal favorite of Jack’s- before shuffling inside. The administration stood, wordless still, watching the kids and then shifting their focus back to Samira and Jack as they snapped photos.

“You’re really not- you don’t care?!”

“Are you kidding? Of course we care,” Jack huffed.

“Yeah,” Samira smiled, bringing her phone up to snap a photo of the protest as it filtered inside, flanked by the twins leading a frog chant, “We couldn’t be prouder.”

-

“Dad, we need three hundred dollars.”

“No.”

“Oh, because we’re Indian?”

“Stop saying that to your dad,” Samira called out from the laundry room.

“There is no reason either of you need that amount of money. I just took you shopping last week,” He pointed at Mira, dressed head to toe in frilly, glittery clothing and heeled shoes far too fancy for a freshman, “And you just got those fancy emo shoes-”

Mira rolled her eyes hard enough to go blind. “She’s goth, dad, not emo, get a clue! God, this house sucks!”

“Right, well, goth, emo, purple, amphibian, you aren’t getting three hundred dollars.”

Mira collapsed to the ground in front of him, crying, “It’s for a good cause!”

Nila, ever the calm to her sister’s storm, went on. “The little girl playing Jojo in Suessical can’t afford jazz shoes, and it’s her birthday soon. We want to get her what we need for the show, and some birthday presents, and leave it in her locker.”

“Do you hate that little girl?! Do you hate kids?!”

“Well you didn’t say all that!” Jack spoke over Mira, using his foot to nudge her in the side from where she’d come to lay down on the floor. She yelped, jumping about ten feet in the air and sprinting towards Samira as she emerged from the laundry room, evading any more tickling.

“Mom! We need-”

“Your dad has 200 in his wallet, take it. If you spend any of it on yourselves, and not that little girl, I’ll know.”

“See? This is why I like you, mom,” Mira calmed down in an instant, smiling at Samira and fixing the bow in her hair. “You agree with us, and spend dad’s money.”

“My money is too busy going towards your cheerleading, and dance, and piano, and theatre-”

“Don’t ruin it, mom. Hey,” She held up a fifty, turning and displaying it for all to see. “Dinner’s on me!”

“No, it’s-” “It’s not.”

On the second day of tech week, Jack and Samira went to pick up the girls together. As the twins skipped out- Mira in bright stage makeup, Nila carrying her piano accompaniment score- a little girl wandered out behind them, escorted by her mother. In the mother’s arms were subtle bags; on the girl’s feet, brand new light-up sneakers; in the girl’s hand, a box of brand new jazz shoes to match her complexion.

The girls found their parents' car and broke into a dead sprint, laughing to each other, braids and curls whipping behind them. Looking between their kids, and the little girl getting into a rusty old car and showing her mom a brand new pair of jazz shoes, Samira and Jack joined hands.

“Not many kids would’ve actually spent all 200 on her.”

“Maybe not. Thank God we don’t have most kids.”

“I like our kids,” Samira lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a kiss to his knuckle. In front of them the girls joined hands in front of the car, standing perfectly still. Over the sound of them repeating ‘come play with us’, Jack honked once, then twice, then pretended to shift the car into drive and watched them giggle and part ways to get into the car from either side.

“You two are weird,” Jack told them as they buckled up. Despite being a pair, they had immediately filled the car with the sound of 4 or 5 kids, talking and making noise just for the sake of making noise with each other.

“Weird,” Nila parroted. Mira joined in, repeating the word with an increasingly mocking tone. Samira joined, facing Jack with a wide smile on her face and joining the girls in getting louder, and louder. All the way home, the three women repeated the same word over, and over, and over. All the way home, he pretended not to love it. All the way home, they could tell he did, anyways.

That night, as the girls collected their parents' ice cream bowls and set them to dry, Mira stopped in the living room.

“Oh! I forgot to tell you,” She began. Samira was about to cut her off, tell her they had seen the little girl exit with the gifts, that they already knew and how proud they were of the girls, and thankful they were for their honesty; instead, she let Mira go on.

“Mrs. Wilson wants to see one of you in the office tomorrow before or after school. Something about Nila and I breaking into a locker and damaging it. We definitely did it, but it’s probably best if you convince them we didn’t. Night, love you!” She chirped, scampering through the hall that Nila had already disappeared down. Samira and Jack stared at the now empty space she’d been standing in, not even turning to face each other.

“Your turn.”

“No way!”

“Rock paper scissors?”

“I gave birth to them.”

“Fine,” Jack conceded. He tightened his arm around Samira, and pulled her in to place a kiss on her temple. “You’re still my favorite, you know.”

“Course I am,” She snuggled into his side, right as a loud thud sounded from Nila’s room that was followed by loud, repeated, siren-like whooping from both girls. “We should check on that.”

“Later,” Jack insisted, his voice little more than a grumble into the curls atop her head. He pulled her ever closer and listened to her breathing, and the muffled sound of their daughters laughing several rooms away, and the cars outside and the movie the girls had picked out. It was so peaceful, so blissful, he was falling asleep with his wife in his arms on the couch, their couch, of their house that they’d made such a beautiful life in- and then, of course:

“Oh my God! Mom and dad are totally doing it on the couch! My eyes!”

“Oh my God!”

“I’m scarred! Call the- call someone! Call a therapist! Call uncle Robby’s therapist!”

Samira and Jack didn’t even open their eyes. In fact, Jack called out: “Yeah, we’re totally doing it!”

“Oh my God! Ew!”

“What the Hell is wrong with you two?!”

“How do you think you were made?” Samira asked, voice crackling with the sleep they’d been enjoying.

“My ears! My sweet baby ears!” Nila wailed, as Mira screeched in horror from where she’d sunken to the floor and was rolling around.

“I’m pregnant!” Samira added.

“You’re gonna have so many siblings,” Jack said.

“The horrors! God, I’ll start believing in you if you make them stop!” Jack chucked a pillow at his daughter, which was, of course, followed by more screaming.

“Ever wonder why we had locks on our door when you were little, but you didn’t?”

“Oh my God, you guys are so weird! Stay away from us. Creeps!” Nila ordered, ushering her wailing sister back down the hall. Jack and Samira didn’t move from the couch for a full minute, until Samira asked, quietly, knowingly:

“Want to go annoy them?”

Per his request, Samira watched from her living room window as Andrew worked on her oil change. It wasn’t as cold as the days before it, some of the snow even melting into an ugly gray slush at the temporary thaw, but he still demanded she stay indoors to watch him instead of subjecting herself to any amount of cold weather. The tools, oil pan, and car jacks he used all looked rather new, as if he’d gone out and purchased them that day, but as soon as she popped the hood he’d gotten into the job and under the car without any hesitation.

“Your dad’s kinda weird,” Samira told the kitten, currently rolling around by her foot as she dangled a feather toy over it, “But he’s nice, isn’t he, sweetie? Yeah, he is.”

While she cooed, Samira kneeled down until she was sitting on the living room carpet. She sat just in time for the kitten to leap onto her lap; its tiny claws dug into Samira’s undershirt, stared up at her, and yawned. In response Samira yawned back, then lowered herself until she was laying on the floor. “You know, you need a name. A pretty name for a pretty kitty.”

The kitten yowled as it crawled up her torso. It began to knead at the collar of her shirt, beginning the slow process of laying down, continuing her howling. It looked up, surprised, when Samira’s chest lifted up and down with quiet laughter.

“You meow like a siren. Like an ambulance. Are you mama’s little ambulance?” She laughed, truly laughed, for the first time in what must have been months. Samira yawned again, right as it dawned on her: “Ambulance. Perfect name for a Mohan baby. Doctor Ambulance, Resident Doctor. When you officially learn to use the litterbox, you’ll be an M.D.”

Samira didn’t stay awake long enough to appreciate her own joke. The next time she opened her eyes was at the sound of a single knock at her front door. Assuming it was Andrew, and tired enough not to care if it was someone else coming in to rob her, she called out, “Come in!”

Thankfully it was Andrew. He took one single step inside, just enough to close the door and absolutely no further. Samira scrambled up less than gracefully and cupped the kitten in hand, murmuring, “Sorry, Ambulance.”

Andrew raised a brow.

“Ambulance?”

“Her name. We can call her Lance for short.”

“Right.”

“You sure you don’t want money for the oil change? I can-” Andrew cut her off, speaking louder than she’d heard yet from the mouselike man.

“Stop that. You takin’ her… Ambulance, tonight, or me?”

“You should take her. Don’t wanna freak her out by making her sleep in a new place overnight. Maybe I can visit tomorrow? Your place was much,” Samira glanced around, “Much more organized than mine, anyways. Is that okay?”

Andrew nodded. He shifted his weight to his other boot. He felt like he should say something, like that would be the normal thing to do, but nothing came to mind. Instead he reached out for the cat, mumbled ‘okay’, and left her nice smelling apartment.

For three hours, Andrew sat on the couch with a nature documentary playing silently onscreen. Every five minutes he checked the clock, then went back to staring ahead. Ambulance liked the brand new smell of cologne and climbed all over him, up his broad chest and over his shoulders until she fell into his worried hands and instantly had her fur smoothed back out.

“Amnulance, c’mon, she could be here any minute. Quit messin’ up your hair,” He grunted. In response, Ambulance stared up at him, unmoving, for several seconds. Then she yowled for twenty straight seconds. Drama queen.

Three hours of this passed- with occasional trips to the litterbox, where he helped Ambulance dig her front paws into the litter and cover it back up- before there was finally the sound of a door opening. All at once his heart rate sped up, his hands grew clammy, and, quite fittingly, he felt like he needed a doctor despite that being the cause for his sickness in the first place. He took six steps towards his door and waited, gulping nervously as her footsteps began to ascend the staircase. She barely knocked once before he opened the door.

“Morning, Ambulance. Ambulance and Andrew, both A names. Can I come in?”

She was polite. She was so polite, and normal, and took her shoes off once she got inside even though he was wearing his. There was a moment he debated doing the same but it passed and instead he busied himself with handing ambulance over to Samira.

“I haven’t had a cat in years. I had a rescue named Lil’ Wayne, but he died two years ago and I gave away most of his stuff- of course, now I wish I hadn’t. She’s gonna need a climbing tree, one with a scratch tower on it.”

“She needs a tree?”

“It’s not an actual tree. But that brings up a good point, do you have any plants?” Andrew shook his head ‘no’, “Good, because there’s a lot of plants that are toxic to animals. Then-”

“Write a list,” Andrew grunted, finding a pen and setting it on the first piece of scrap paper he could find, then setting it on the table for her. “I ain’t gonna remember all that.”

“I’ll come with you to the store. C’mon-”

“Hold it,” He said, grabbing his keys. “I’ll warm up my car. Wait here with her.”

Normally, Samira wouldn’t even be out of bed at 10am on a weekday. Now she was in a near stranger’s apartment coaxing their shared kitten in its carrier to go out and get cat supplies for it. A stranger who was only ever rude or talkative if he was cutting her off when she suggested she pay him for something, or that he didn’t have to do a task like shoveling, or wiping off her windshield; a stranger who had met her eyes for all of three seconds since they’d met; a stranger who seemed perfectly content to never interact with her, had she not caught him clearing off her windshield yesterday.

There were alarm bells, of course. Samira wasn’t naive. This man could have been stalking her for years and this was the final phase of his master plan, finally getting her to fall in love with him or die trying. Maybe he was going to rob her for all she was worth, in which case he was going to be really disappointed with anything but her costly medical equipment.

Something about Andrew told her that wasn’t the case. In fact, talking to Mel had been incredibly enlightening; she was kind, and well meaning, and really bad at making eye contact. She, too, seemed to have a strict social battery, sometimes excusing herself mid interaction (never work related interactions, of course) to gather herself and recharge. She sometimes moved in ways that gave Samira the impression she was only doing so because it’s what the people around her did as they were talking, or listening, and not because it was actually natural movement to her.

It was strikingly similar to Andrew though, to Mel’s credit, she was much more graceful compared to his rugged demeanor. Upon reaching that epiphany last night, Samira decided to throw some caution to the wind for the first time in her life and take a chance on her intuition, and her intuition told her that he wasn’t going to hurt her, or blindside her, or rob her.

He was gentle, in his own terrified way. Scared to hold the kitten, scared to talk to Samira, scared to be caught doing nice things for other people. He held every door open for her on her way to and from his warmed up car- nothing flashy, but certainly newer and nicer than hers, furthering her theory that he had no incentive to steal from her- and scowled when she started to reach for her purse at the pet store checkout. Andrew didn’t smile, though Samira liked to imagine it was possible, but she caught him taking photos of Ambulance as she learned to bask in the attention of customers passing by and ‘awe’ing at her. He didn’t let her help load anything into the trunk, just opening the door and closing her inside the passenger seat. Chivalrous to a fault; awkward by all definitions; and endearing, in his own way.

Samira decided early on that she not only trusted Andrew, but even enjoyed him. Having visits with him and Ambulance to look forward to, no matter how brief they might be based on her hectic schedule, made the clock move much quicker during her usual snail-like shifts.

At some point Andrew had given her a key to his apartment, denying her offer of returning the gesture because according to him she shouldn’t trust people enough to give them keys, and she knew she could come in to see Ambulance whether it was before or after a shift, or in the middle of the night on off days when she couldn’t sleep. No matter what time she did so, Andrew was there; silently sitting on his couch, or dining table chair (she’d given him one of hers, stating that just having a couch was inhumane and she never had four people in her apartment anyways) watching Ambulance and waiting for her.

On Thanksgiving she got back home and a piping hot meal from a nearby Mexican restaurant was on her snowless stoop. Reviewing her doorbell camera footage would reveal a delivery man set it down less than five minutes before she arrived; no note was attached, but she didn’t have to guess who ordered it. Of course, she went upstairs to share it with him.

Christmas- well, two days before, before ER doctors didn’t get Christmas- there was a knock at her door at 10am. Samira reminded herself to thank him; he’d knocked once at 7:15am, and she had to tell him later that she wasn’t an early bird if she didn’t have to be. When the door opened there was a steadily fattening cat dressed in an outfit and tucked against Andrew’s broad chest, a gift bag in hand.

Andrew slipped off his shoes after she invited him in. Still not having said a single word, he extended the bag to her. When she moved to open it he visibly tensed up, to the point she actually paused and met his gaze with a worried expression.

“I can wait to open this, if you want,” She said. Andrew’s shoulders relaxed the slightest bit and with flushed cheeks he nodded, sheepishly, clearly having made no improvement in the area of accepting thanks. “Well, I have something for you, too. You can open it if you want, or wait, it’s your choice. Nothing special.”

Andrew’s throat swelled. Samira was rifling around her awfully disorganized dining table to retrieve a gift that she had purchased for him, and that was supposed to make sense? She had purchased, or made- made, he wasn’t sure he could handle- something specifically for him?

Sure enough she returned with a medium sized box wrapped in newspaper and addressed “To: Andrew, From: Samira + Ambulance”. Taking a seat, Andrew carefully peeled each piece of tape up and slid the box from the newspaper with minimal ripping to the paper itself. Ambulance darted by, jumped up enough to grab the neatly folded paper, and flitted away to tear it up under the dining table, but he paid no mind.

Instead, he focused on the gift. It was a photo of him and Ambulance he didn’t know existed, set inside a frame that read “WORLD’S BEST CAT DAD” in cheesy bubble letters. Samira was saying something he couldn’t make out, and he had to finally tear his eyes away from the treasure to hear that she was apologizing for it being so small, that it wasn’t a great gift, but she thought he might like it. All a load of nonsense for the greatest gift he could have possibly received in his lifetime.

“Thank… thanks for,” He stopped speaking. Andrew didn’t move. He stared at Samira, really stared at her without looking away when she registered it.

“I feel like I always meet you for the first time,” Andrew finally said.

He didn’t understand it. Maybe she would, being better than him in every conceivable way. He stood, turned, got into his shoes, and left Samira sitting alone at her couch with a slightly bewildered smile on her face. Shortly after his door closed upstairs, Ambulance ran out to the front door, then to Samira, as if to ask ‘did I miss him? Did I miss him?’. She bent down and scooped her up.

“Let’s see what your dad got for you, huh? Yeah, lay down, there you go. Someone’s being sweet today,” She murmured, still sporting the smile as she opened the gift.

First, a gift card to her favorite brand of scrubs with a sticky note that said “For your work things. Andrew 2nd floor.”

Second, a gift card to her usual grocery store.

Third, a gas station gift card.

Fourth, a box not dissimilar from what she’d handed him. In fact, when she opened it, there was a frame sitting on top; it was a beautiful photo of Ambulance from the early days, much skinnier and tinier in her Jack O’Lantern sweater, which she’d long grown out of. Beneath it, something was wrapped in tissue paper with a note on top;

Hope this is right. Tried to find right clothes. Please tell me if it is wrong and I will order it right.

Andrew 2nd floor.

Which was intriguing, certainly, and made no sense until she opened it up and gasped.

“Oh my- how did he- I never even- how?” She asked herself, then Ambulance, repeatedly.

Andrew’s watery eyes had just settled down when his phone rang with an incoming text message. From where he laid in bed with the photo on his chest, he unclasped his hands and reached over to open it.

[From: Samira

Thank you. You didn’t have to do all of this. I will admit that this was the last gift I ever expected- it’s perfect. I didn’t even know this was an option. Merry Christmas, Andrew.

ATTACHED: 3 IMAGES]

Andrew scrolled through the photos of Ambulance in a custom-made saree. While the execution was imperfect, the idea was there, and if Samira enjoyed it that was all that mattered. She’d been the one to offhandedly mention Etsy, anyways, followed by a video of a cat being put into a pleated saree from social media that she said reminded her of when Andrew dressed Ambulance up. She’d come up with it, practically; he just had to order it.