Kuromi

“You’re shitting me,” Trinity says, her voice deadpan as she looks at the stick in her hand, the two pink lines present on the small digital screen. “You have to be shitting me. You’re pregnant?!” She looks up at you in disbelief, her eyes wide and gleaming with shock and yet a sort of pleasant glee. 

            “Is it that surprising?” you ask, your tone just slightly tense, just slightly offbeat, your mood high and happy and yet dark. You feel like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, for some bad news to arise. You feel like it’s going too well. 

            “No, not really,” she says, rolling her eyes even though the gesture is half-assed, still tinged with that shock running through those clear mahogany eyes. Those eyes that can never lie, have never been able to lie. Not to you. “You and Jack fuck like wild rabbits so one of those times you were bound to wind up a statistic of failed contraceptives.”

            “So, kind of you,” you reply, crossing your arms as you lean back against the bathroom sink, the granite top digging into your hip while she sits on the toilet seat lid, ankles crossed over ankles. 

            “Have you told Mr. Fiancé yet?” she asks and you sigh, gaze flicking up to the ceiling, the white popcorn texture shadowed by the light. 

            “I’m waiting until after his bachelor party. Don’t really want to spoil it and suffer through Robby’s whining all the way through to the wedding so…” you trail off, looking back down at her, at the way her lips are pursed as if she’s holding back a laugh, mirth glimmering in those eyes that you know almost as well as your own. 

            “You just don’t want to mess with Huckleberry’s first Vegas trip.” You can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of you, the way that Trinity knows you so well, has always known you so well. She knows you in a way that few people do—she knows every dark secret and thought that you’ve had and have, knows every fear and every dream. She knows because she’s been there since first year of medical school—eyebrow arched as always. 

            “Have you seen that boy? He could use some…exposure,” you reply and are delighted by the way her face twists into laughter, her body folding on itself as she snorts, head bopping in only the way she has, ponytail bouncing with the force. 

            “Well,” she says, regaining her composure, swallowing hard, her laughter and yours still echoing in the en suite bathroom. “You have to tell your mother at least. I am not putting up with Lena when she finds out you didn’t tell her right away. Because she’s vicious.” You sigh and glance down at your feet, at the socks designed to look like ice cream cones, a gift from Vicky for Galentine’s. 

            “How pissed would she be if I didn’t tell her until after the baby was born?” you ask and the only response you get is the choked snort of your best friend as it cracks into a belly laugh, the sound rich and deep as it echoes off the walls and the bathroom tiles, the echo making it octaves louder than it truly is. 

            “If you try that, you’re dead meat,” she tells you in between laughs, the stick still in her hand. 

            “Yeah,” you sigh again, one hand coming up and running through the strands of your hair with a violence that Robby would be proud of. “I was afraid of that.”

            You watch as your mom walks into the café, her bag over her shoulder, dark red hair pulled back in that ponytail she always has. You can see that her eyes are tired, bags under them from the lack of sleep, from the shifting of her hours for everyone else in the world but herself. But they still have that gleam in them—the one you remember from your childhood, the one that promised fun and love and acceptance. 

            You love her, your mom, Lena Handzo—the mother who chose you. You were a child abandoned by people who didn’t want you, put into the care of people who only took you in because they got paid to. You were a child who believed that they would never have anyone who chose them, who wanted them. You were a child that felt like a burden and then in walked a woman with red hair and a smile that spoke when she couldn’t. 

            “I’ve been waiting for my daughter,” she had said, crouching down before you, hands kept to herself as if she knew the fear and hope that had been warring within you. “And I think you found me.”

            And you thought she was right. You were her daughter—she chose you and you chose her. She wanted you; she loves you and she is here for you. 

            “Hey, sweetie,” she says now as she sinks down into the booth, her large bag moving to sit beside her, what appears like a change of clothes sticking out of the top of the old tote she’s had since you were a kid. “What’s up?”

            “If I tell you what’s up,” you begin, pausing, measuring your words carefully, thinking as best you can, a part of you ready to just blurt it out and another knowing this needs to be done properly. “Then you can’t freak out.”

            “Never a good lead up, kiddo,” she says, her eyes narrowing at you behind her black frame glasses, the size of which continues to get smaller the older she gets—she claims it’s an old lady thing. “But fine. Spit it out.”

            “I’m pregnant,” you tell her, laying your phone flat on the table, the screen unlocking with your face, the picture of the five tests that Trin made you take already up and there and visible for her. You can feel that tightness in your throat, that bit of anticipation as your heart rises into your throat, the muscles pulsing with every beat as you swallow, watching the way she takes in the photo. 

            In the fact that is displayed on a small little screen. 

            You can see when the knowledge settles on her shoulder, you can see the way she seems to melt, her shoulders sinking down and her lips quivering as they tilt upwards in a watery smile, her eyes glimmering with joy and tears behind her glasses as she looks up at you, drawing in a hard breath nasal breath, her nostrils contracting, pulled together as she flicks her gaze up and away for a moment, lips still quivering.

            “Mom?” you say, your voice cautious and tender and slightly fearful as her one lifts, shaking just slightly as she draws in another shaky breath, her hand going to rest over her mouth as a small cry escapes, echoing in the still air. “Say something, please.”

            “I’m so happy!” she cries, turning back to you completely, small tears falling from the corners of her eyes, trailing over her cheeks as she lowers her hand, taking both of yours in hers, the phone still sitting on the table. “I’m so happy for you, sweetie! How’s Jack? He happy?”

            “He doesn’t know yet,” you tell her, sighing, removing one hand from the warmth of her grip to run it through the strands of your hair, looking down at the stained and aged Formica tabletop. “I’m waiting until after his bachelor party. But I know he’ll be happy…right?” You look up at her, at your mother, finding peace in her smile as she nods, just once, the Mom kind of nod. 

            “Yes, sweetie. He’ll be happy, I’m sure. He loves you,” she says, her confident smile softening into a different kind of smile—the one a mother has when she is proud for her child, happy for her child. At peace because her child has the life she deserves. The love she deserves. 

            “Yeah, he does,” you say, a smile growing on your face at the thought of him, of Jack, your fiancé. At the image of him just this morning getting in, wearing his scrubs and a frown which brightened to a smile as he saw you, taking you in his arms and just holding tight to you, murmuring how much he loved you over and over and over. How lucky he was. 

            “Have you thought of names?” There is no waiting with your mother, she always cuts straight to the point, no dilly-dallying or hesitation. 

            “Mom!” you cry, sighing and rolling your eyes, wincing just a bit at the cluck of her tongue. 

            “I am your mother, do not roll your eyes at me, young lady!” And you can’t help the laugh that comes out, bubbling up your throat before entering the air, echoing through the coffee shop. Even more so when she joins in the laughter, her hand squeezing yours as the laughter turns to tears and she walks around the table to sit beside you, pulling you against her, tight and secure just as she’s done since you were a child. 

            Since she helped you beat the nightmares and the demons back with every time she said I love you, daughter-mine. 

            “This kid is gonna know—love,” you choke out around the lump of tears and mucus sitting in your throat, the one that makes it hard to breathe. “Right, Mommy?” You can feel her arms tighten around you as you cry soft tears with her, yours falling on her shirt and hers dripping into your hair, her chin on your head, your head on her shoulder. 

            “Yes. Yes, sweetie. Your kid is gonna know so much love that they’ll be…just sick of it. I know it, sweetie. You got so much love to give,” she says and you give one more choked sob, a thought rising and escaping from your mouth, voiced aloud and made real. Acknowledged. 

            “My kid will never have the feeling I did before you adopted me…they will always—always know they’re…wanted.”

            “See you in two days, Bluefire,” Jack says, pressing a kiss against your cheek, his hand resting on the dip of your waist, warm and sure and strong. “I’m gonna miss you.”

            “Oh, shut up,” you tease him, your hand finding his free one—the one not currently on you—and giving it a short, sharp squeeze. “You’ll be back before you know it and then we’ll be Mr. and Mrs. Handzo, right?” You can feel that sharp smile growing, the one that occurs when you’re teasing, when you’re analyzing, pranking or you know something no one else does. 

            “If that’s what you want,” he says, stepping closer, lifting your joined hands to his heart, “then that’s what we’ll have.”

            “Stop being so perfect!” you tell him, your voice only slightly irritated, mostly full of joy and happiness. A kind of happiness you used to think you’d never have, the kind that the fear of never being wanted said would be impossible. 

            Yet here you are—you have a mother and three best friends and a fiancé. Everything you thought you’d never have when you were five years old sitting on yet another bunk bed in the tenth foster home, your things in a trash bag tucked underneath the rickety metal frame, the sounds of other kids echoing, but not in a happy way. 

            Here you are, building a family. One step at a time. 

            And who knows. Maybe after your baby is born, you can do what you always wanted to do: adopt. Save kids just like you in the same way Lena saved you. 

            “Can’t help it, Bluefire,” Jack says again, leaning in and pressing a chaste kiss against your lips, yet still one that has the ability to steal the breath from your lungs at the same time that a horn sounds, long and loud and annoying. 

            “I think Robby has arrived,” you tell him as he pulls away, squeezing your hand one last time as he steps back and opens the door, stepping out onto the porch, a slight hitch in his step from his new prosthetic—after his old one cracked during a SWAT mission. “Have fun!” you call out after him, waving as he turns back to smile at you, taking a photo of you standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. 

            “I will!” he replies, turning back around to Robby who has leaned across the passenger seat to pop open the door for Jack. 

            “Just not too much!” you yell out as your final note, crossing your arms, cold creeping into your body and down your spine the longer you stand on the porch. 

            “Love you too!” he yells and then the door is closed and Robby backs out of the driveway, turning onto the road and towards the airport. 

            “Thank god, they’re finally gone!” calls out an exasperated voice from somewhere behind you, the voice of one Victoria Javadi—your best friend since childhood. 

            “Wow,” you deadpan, turning back around to face her, one eyebrow arching as you look at her and her irritated expression. “I’m so glad my fiancé annoys the fuck out of you, Vicky. Makes me feel so great.”

            “Oh, shut it, kid,” your mom says, peeking her head out from the dining room, eyes narrowed at you in the way that only a mother has. “She wants to get on with your day.”

            “My day is like, nothing because I’m pregnant,” you counter, making sure to enunciate each word, clearly and cleanly for the both of them. 

            “That’s why she made me bring all of this shit,” Trin says, stepping out, her body half-behind Vicky and half-out, her hand holding a bag full of baby planning books. “Her goal is to pick your name options. Personally,” Trin says as you sigh, walking over to them, taking the first book that she hands you, “I think you should name this baby Trinity, but I’m just biased. Always wanted a kid named after me.”

            “Then have your own kid,” Vicky counters, the sentence making it impossible to stay straight-faced and the three of you burst out laughing as your mother clucks like a worried hen.

            “And here I was thinking you three had grown up,” Lena mutters and you can’t help but smile at her, the soft smile that you have—the one of daughter-mine as she calls you. 

            “We have, mother-mine,” you tell her, watching as her irritated face softens. “We just don’t always want to act the way we’re supposed to. There’s nothing wrong with staying young while you can. I’m not a mother yet.”

            The sound of the door opening was what woke you, the metallic clink of a key in a lock, a deadbolt sliding out of place, echoing through your living room, causing you to jolt to that state of conscious alertness, startled arousal. 

            You had fallen asleep while watching 10 Things I Hate About You, one of your comfort movies. The last thing you remembered was watching Kat dance drunk on the table, yet now the TV displays Mona Lisa Smile and your front door is opening, shuffled footsteps echoing in a way that makes your blood run cold. 

            You’ve dealt with too many patients, crying and shaking and aching in a way that will never really go away because of people who break into their homes, hurt them in not just physical ways, but the ones of the mind. The scars that never really fade, never really heal in any way that is true or tangible. 

            You don’t want that and it’s why you sit up, reaching underneath the couch for the baseball bat you keep there, something that can buy you time while you get to Jack’s safe, get his gun. You’re not going to be defenseless—if someone’s going to hurt you, they’re gonna have scars of their own. But as you tiptoe from the living room, through to the hall, baseball bat held aloft, ready to swing, to smash someone’s head in if you have to, you hear it. 

            The slurred words of a very drunk and very engaged man. 

            “Baby.” Your shoulders dip, the tension in your body unwinding, uncoiling, set back to normal as you let the tip of the bat fall, resting against your foot as you step out into the hallway, the sight of Jack further relaxing you in only the way that he has. 

            “Hey, Jackie,” you call out, leaning the bat against the hall wall, walking to him, ready to take his bag from him and help him struggle up the stairs, take his leg off and put on the cream, positioning the bucket by the bed so he doesn’t have to struggle with mobility when he’s sick. “Thought you were you were gonna take it easy.”

            “M’sorry, Diane,” he says, voice slurred, yet eyes open wide, focused on you, seeing but not seeing because that is not your name. That is the name of a dead woman. A woman who has had his love, who has been his love. A woman who is not you. 

            She was first and you are the one who comes after, but hearing her name leave his lips…hear her name from him as if it were yours makes you wonder if you’re coming after her at all. 

            Or if you’re just a living placeholder, a Barbie doll of wives. Dress you up and make you anyone. Dress you up and make you into the wife that was so that she can be again. 

            “Jack,” you whisper, your throat closing around his name, around your words as if it doesn’t want to let them out, doesn’t want to put truth to the fears. Doesn’t want to make them a reality. “I’m not Diane.”

            “’es, you are,” he says, stumbling forwards, falling just slightly but you’re there, right there, to catch him, arms under his armpits, looped up and around to his shoulders, palms flat on his back and even through the pain and hurt and anger running through you, his body is still warm, still solid and comforting. “You’re ma wife.”

            “Yeah, you’re right,” you sigh as his head rests on your shoulder, lolling just slightly as he laughs at nothing, walking with you as you lead him up and into your bedroom, setting him upon the bed, kneeling down before him and rolling up his pantleg. “I’m your wife.” You can’t say her name, can’t even put in your mouth, can’t feel the syllables. Not now. 

            Because it would feel too much like erasing yourself. So, instead you focus on removing his prosthetic, taking the ointment from the bedside table and applying it the end of his leg, right where the saddle for his leg rests, the adjustment period still ongoing, the skin rubbed red, making you wonder just how long he’s been on his feet, been drinking and dancing. 

            And for a minute, you wonder if there was anyone else he was calling Diane. Anyone else he mistook for her, the first woman he loved. 

            And the thing is, is you’re okay to be second place to her. You understand that he loved her first, that he loves her always. You like that, you like that he loves with all that he is, but that he has room for more. You just don’t want to be erased. 

            You don’t want to be a Barbie doll in your own marriage. You want to be yourself. Wholly and completely. 

            “Love you so much, Diane,” he murmurs, his hand coming to tangle in the strands of your hair, twining them round his fingers, watching the way they shift in the light. “O’ly one I’ll ever love.”

            And you bite your lip at his words, the sting of tears echoing through your body as your chest constricts with the held breath, lungs burning at the sob you hold back. Because Jack is tender, yes, but never like this. Never quite like this with you and even though you understand that Diane was his first love, his always love, you thought he loved you too. 

            Loved you in a way that matters. But maybe you were wrong…

            Or maybe it’s just hormones. You are pregnant after all and everyone knows that pregnancy does wild things to people. Especially in the first trimester. 

            At least, that’s what you tell yourself as you help him into bed, not bothering to help him change his clothes because you know that when he’s drunk, he’ll just fight you on it and think you want sex even though he can’t consent. So, all you do is roll his pantleg up, pinning it so that it doesn’t tangle, pull or hurt him. 

            And then you step back, lower lip wobbling, vision just a little blurry, a sob still sitting in the base of your throat, pressure on your lungs, on your windpipe, screaming to be let out. To be let out into the air, given weight in your reality. 

            But if you hold it in, then you can pretend this isn’t really happening. You can pretend that he’s seeing you when he looks at you with those perfect, warm hazel eyes and not her. The one who came before. 

            “Where you going, Diane?” Jack calls out just as you turn around, turn away, the tears slipping down your cheeks, rolling and stinging and drying you all the same. 

            “Gotta…uh get…cleaned up,” you say, the words thick and filled with quiet sobs as you swallow hard around the lump in your throat, swallow hard around the sob still waiting to be released. Still waiting for the fear to be acknowledged. 

            “Good plan,” you hear him murmur, the words not only slurred from alcohol but from sleep now, a fact confirmed when you glance over your shoulder, noting the way he’s dozing, half on his side, half on his back. “Love you, Di.”

            And that’s when you leave, shutting the bathroom door behind you as quietly as you can, the same bathroom where just three days ago you found out you were pregnant. The same bathroom where you, Vicky and Trin ended up the day Jack left, putting on face masks and coming up with names like Sammy if it’s a boy and Margot if it’s a girl. The same bathroom where you’ve been throwing up every evening, your morning sickness actually night sickness. 

            You stand at the sink, gripping the cold marble between your fingers, letting the tears fall and the sobs out, choked sounds echoing in the room. Choked sounds of not being seen. The sounds of someone still harbouring those fears of the child who thought they could never be wanted. 

            Who thought they didn’t deserve a family because they weren’t wanted in the one they should have had in the first place. 

            The sobs you let out rip from your throat, leaving it red and raw but my no means empty, the feeling of thickness and tears, mucus and despair still there as your eyes continue to water, tears sliding down your cheeks, salt tracks in their wake, your nose following suit as you sob. 

            Because you thought you’d found someone who saw you, but you can’t help but wonder if he ever really saw you at all.

            Or if maybe he saw Diane all along. 

            In the light of the morning sun, your fears don’t seem as heavy, don’t seem as possible. They seem like a hormonal pregnant woman overreacting, taking her childhood fears to adult ones with the snap of a finger because of one drunken moment. 

            You tell yourself it’s nothing as you set about brewing a pot of coffee, popping protein Eggos into the toaster after the two pieces of toast you’ve made for Jack, accompanied by the gallon jug of water and the mug of coffee. It’s waiting at his spot for him while you take in a deep breath, plating the waffles when the toaster dings, pouring your coffee into your cup, adjusting it the way you like it and waiting for Jack to emerge. 

            Which he does with stumbling steps, his eyes heavy and tired as he steps forth, squinting at the bright lights of the kitchen. 

            “Morning, Abbot,” you say, your voice purposefully loud, a sadistic part of you delighting in the way he flinches at the sound, his hands going to his temples, blocking out the light and noise. “How was Vegas?”

            “What happens in Vegas,” he says, his voice hoarse and husky, no doubt from the vomiting at 3 AM and the off-key singing he did at midnight, “stays in Vegas.”

            “So, I’ve been told,” you tell him, nodding at his spot at the table where he sinks, groaning at the comfort of the chair, but wincing at the sight before him—the food and hydrants. “Now, you’ll eat the toast and drink the water for sure. Coffee’s optional.”

            “You’re one cruel woman,” he mutters and if it had been any other morning, you would have laughed it off, but you can’t. Not today. Not after last night when the fears only feel a little bit too much, not entirely wrong. 

            Not entirely false. 

            “I have a question for you,” you tell him and he looks up as he takes a bite of the slightly burned toast, exactly the way he likes it, something you learned in the two years of being with him. 

            “Shoot.”

            “Do you want kids?” You know he’s hungover which is exactly why you’re asking now because he’s honest when he’s drunk and he’s honest when he’s hungover. He’s not always honest sober. 

            “What?” he asks, the word just slightly slurred from the toast in his mouth, the bread he’s chewing and swallowing, the path easily tracked down his throat. 

            “You heard me. Do you want kids?”

            “No,” he says and the response is fast in the way that truth is, not the way that conditioned responses are. “Diane and I missed our window so why would I have any now?” You know right then that last night was him being honest in the way he is when he’s drunk. 

            You’re his fucking Barbie doll wife. 

            Just dress her up and play pretend. You’ll almost never know she wasn’t your real love. 

            “What about adoption?” It’s the final card. The one you know will tell you what will happen next. The ball is in his court even if he doesn’t know it yet. 

            “What?! No…just…leave me be! I’m hungover. Jesus Christ.” And you nod, standing from the table, leaving your breakfast and coffee behind, trying to act as normal as possible as you press a kiss to the top of his head as you pass and he touches your hand gently and then you’re gone, locked in the main bathroom, your phone in your hand. 

            And you send one text into the group chat Vicky insisted on setting up three days ago—the one with her, Trin and your mom. 

            You send just one:

I need out.

            And this is why you love them. Why they are your family even when the idea of the family you were building is crashing down around you with the idea of being Jack’s fucking Barbie. 

            You love them because of many things, but mainly because they answer. Each of them. The same sentence. Just one. 

Then we get you out.

            To them it’s that simple: you need out. They’ll get you fucking out. Because they love you too and it’s a love that doesn’t let you down. It’s one that doesn’t pretend. Doesn’t play dress-up and lie and make you feel like you’re special when you’re just mannequin chosen to superimpose her image over you. 

            It’s not a love that is designed to erase you. 

            It’s one designed to shout your name from the rooftop. Do stupid shit for you. Make you known. 

            It was almost scarily easy how they got you out. Vicky made calls and your mom made calls, an immediate transfer passed, moving you to a New York City trauma centre ED, day shift. Trin showed up as soon as Jack left for a suit fitting, helping you pack you stuff up in boxes and get it out of the house, Dennis helping. 

            They packed you into a U-Haul and each took three days off to help you move, to help you shift your life into a different city, different state. Different everything. 

            But they left you alone enough to write your goodbye letter. The one where you told Jack everything about how you felt. 

            Just leaving out the baby growing within you. If he didn’t want children, he wouldn’t have one. He didn’t need to know. 

            It’s not like he would want to be a part of their life anyways. And then you took your engagement ring off and placed it on top of the letter, leaving it in clear view on the dining room table. Precisely where he’d find it when he came home. 

            And then you got the hell out of there. 

Dear Jack,

I’m sorry that it’s ending like this. I want to say I’m sorry it’s ending at all, but that would be a lie. It would be a lie because I’m fucking hurt. Because you don’t see me. 

I don’t know what you see when you look at me sober, but I know that when you’re drunk you don’t see me at all. You see Diane. I thought, at first, that that was the first time you saw her in me, but Dennis was quick to disabuse of that notion. He said it happened more than anyone would like to admit. 

When we first met, you called me Wildfire, remember? Called me that because I was feisty and strong and smart and ready to set people right when they were wrong. And I countered you and said that I wasn’t a wildfire because I was more controlled than that. I said that I was more like the hotter parts of fire, the one you can still see. The blue flame. 

And then you called me Bluefire. 

And when you did, I thought that meant you saw me, but I see now, I was wrong. You saw someone strong enough to not break when you made them your Barbie. Your Build-a-Bitch. Great song by the way, recommend it. But…you saw someone similar enough to her to become her in a way. 

And I’m not her. 

I’ve lived my life with this fear that I’m not enough. That I won’t get a family, that I don’t deserve it. That I don’t deserve to be seen. It comes from my past, from being that five-year-old whose grown up in a system designed to destroy. It comes from being abandoned by people who never wanted you in the first place but carried it through because it was the right thing to do. It comes from being someone who was never chosen…Until Mom, of course. But I live with that fear, even being chosen, even having that life, I still have that fear. It doesn’t go away. 

It can’t. It’s who I am, it’s a piece of me. I thought when I found you, that you understood. That you saw me, your Bluefire. Dr. Handzo. Me. But you didn’t. You saw her. 

I don’t begrudge you that, Jack. I just wish I’d known how much it would hurt to find out the way I did. I’m sorry for what it’s worth that it’s ending like this. But I deserve someone who sees me. 

And you deserve to see someone. It wasn’t me but they’re out there. For both of us. I know it. That’s another thing—you have hope when you’ve been on that bed with your stuff in a trash bag. You hope because it’s all you fucking have.

So, I hope they’re out there for us. I hope we find them. We deserve that. And don’t worry about the wedding costs. The venue paid us back, deposits there are returned until the actual day and your suit is returnable…unless you want to keep it for some reason. The ring is yours. Not mine. I took all my stuff; there’s nothing for you to do. I took care of it. 

Good luck, Jack. I love you. I think I always will…maybe…maybe you’re my Diane. Who knows. 

But goodbye. 

Good luck. Don’t hate me, please. 

Love,

Your Bluefire. 

            Jack came home to an empty house, the kind of empty that rings with the echo of a previous presence, a presence that’s now gone. Gone completely and totally. Irreversibly. He came home to a coat room that had none of your shoes, none of your coats. A living room that was devoid of your trophies and trinkets. A kitchen that had only his plain glassware and cutlery, all your novelty or special ones were gone. 

            Except the ones you’d given him. Like the mug which said Power tools? I think you mean arms, a picture of his bicep on it, one you made and one which made you laugh when you’d given it to him. Just laughed in a way that he loved, that he wanted to see always, that had rung through him. 

            He came home to a house that was empty of you. Everything of yours was gone, from the bedroom and the bathrooms and the closets. Every single thing that was yours was gone. 

            And that was when he found the letter. The ring. And he read it, every word, took note of every tear stain, of every place you’d written so hard that there was a hole. He took note of every emotion that must have been running through you as you wrote it. He took note of it all. 

            And then he lost it. 

            He lost it because you were wrong. So horribly wrong. He did see you, he always had. He just didn’t always know how to express that. He thought marrying you would show you, that being yours in name and body and soul showed you that. He thought that waking you every morning saying I love you did that. He thought everything he was doing was showing that to you. 

            Only for him to find out that it didn’t. 

            And to find out in a fucking letter. He thought he deserved a face-to-face conversation, a sit-down talk, one where you could reason through those things destroying you and him and the two of you, the us that you had. A talk where you could salvage what was, could see the truth. 

            The truth that he loved you. That he saw you. That he’d do anything to have you understand that, to understand just how much he saw you. Just how much he loved you. 

            Because he does, love you that is. With all that he is, with all that can be. He felt that life had been rote, just a set of actions that had to be done, death a grand temptation—until you. 

            You had walked into the ED on a stormy day, looking like the sun for all the world, like a blazing fire, warmth and light and life with a darker centre. A sharpness, a wildness. You had walked in and suddenly life didn’t so rote anymore. 

            It seemed worthwhile for the first time in seven years, for the first time since he held Diane’s hand as she drew her last breath, cancer having whittled her away to nothing. It seemed worthwhile because you made everything around you bright and warm and he had been cold for too long. 

            And now you were gone and the room was cold. The house was cold, the whole fucking world was cold and dark and he felt alone for the first time since that day three years ago when you walked in with that smile, the smile that made everything less. Everything lighter. 

            He reads the letter again, the tears pouring down his face, streaming, falling onto the paper, landing on the marks that were once yours, the last joining he’ll really have with you. And as he reads, he notices everything. It’s like he can see those instances before him as if they’re playing out before him. 

            He can see those drunken moments when past and present seemed to verge into one, becoming what was there. He can see those mornings when he was hungover and snappy and irritated. He can see those moments when it seemed like he looked through you and not at you. He can see the toll his mistakes took, the way you seemed to dim. 

            The way loving him took just a bit of your life away, a bit of your warmth. The way his love began to choke you, block the oxygen from your flame, slowly starving you away. 

            And he loses it, but not in anger. Instead, he holds your letter in one hand, the paper crumpling in his fist, the mug of his arm in the other, your laughter still ringing through the halls as he cries, tears fast and slow, hard and soft. He cries and lets the tears fall, his muscles spasming, pain shooting through the leg that was but never will be again. He cries and can feel the way his throat becomes hoarse, lungs start to burn and heart beat fast. He cries and it’s in those moments of weakness that the mug slips from his fingers and falls onto the porcelain, shattering. 

            The pieces of porcelain shatter into a million pieces, some large, some small, some so tiny that he can’t even see them. It’s then he understands. 

            The relationship didn’t break loudly like the glass, it broke in little ways, a million microscopic pieces breaking off amid every small little trouble and when it broke in a big way, like the way that made you leave, there is no putting it back together. 

            Because you’re missing all those little pieces that you didn’t even realize were gone. 

            Until you try to put it back together and nothing fits quite right. 

            “Lena! Lena, listen to me,” Jack yells, his voice echoing and cracking in his house, the house still ringing with your absence. “I need to talk to her! Lena!” He can feel that rage building in him, the helpless kind. The kind that chokes and kills and injures the one who feels it because it just seems to shut you down. 

            “Listen to me, Jack Abbot,” Lena says, her voice calm and low, quiet in an eerie, dangerous way. “I will be nothing but civil to you at work, but if you ask me about my daughter again, I will be going Mama Bear on you and you do not want to see my claws.”

            And then the line goes dead and he pulls the phone from his ear, looking at his lockscreen, at the photo of you that you didn’t know he had taken. A photo of you standing at the nurse’s station, caught midlaugh, looking for all the world like the sun. 

            His sun. 

            The light he took for granted never thinking it would be gone. 

            “Hi, Diane,” Jack whispers as he maneuvers himself to the ground, crossing his one leg, stretching out his prosthetic, taking it as he sits before the gravestone Diane had picked out during her hospice days. A simple arch, her name inscribed with her favourite quote—All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his act being seven ages.

            He had wanted something better, something that seemed more her, but she had fought him on it, asking him what was more of an English teacher than a Shakespeare quote. And he had said nothing because it was her grave, her death. Her remembrance.  

            You had said once that you wanted twin graves with whoever you loved. You said you wanted them like J.R.R and Edith Tolkien, the character inscriptions they had. You said you wanted people to know that in your life, you had love. The kind that lasts. The kind that heals. The kind that defies all odds. And then you had laughed, said that was impossible, just the ramblings of a hopeless romantic. 

            He had told you he loved you then. And then he had kissed you, the first kiss you two had shared, one sweet and unsure and unsteady, yet all the more perfect. One that tasted like the raspberry on your tongue. 

            A kiss he could still taste now. 

            “I know I’ve been gone a bit. I’ve been busy…planning my wedding that is now off. Remember when we were planning ours? How we decided it was too much hassle and just had a courthouse wedding? You wore a pantsuit and we didn’t even have our parents there…they were so pissed but we…we were happy. I remember that most of all. How you had laughed…how you smiled. I thought I was the luckiest guy in the world to have you smile at me like that. And I still do. I was lucky that I got to love you…but I don’t love you like I did then.

            “I fucked up, Di. I fucked up the relationship I had, the love I had because I feel guilty. I feel like I shouldn’t feel as much love for her as I do because of you…because…I had a love, you know?...I don’t want to…to make this, us, nothing, you know? But because of that guilt, I’ve fucked up a relationship that means everything to me. 

            “I feel guilty even saying that, but Di…I love her in a way I never loved you. I loved you like my equal, like my partner and I love her like she’s everything. And yet…yet I fucked it up because I felt so wrong for it, because I held onto you. I mean…fuck, I still have your ring around my neck on a chain. And she…she didn’t even care. She used to say she understood that you had been first, so of course I’d always love you. 

            “She’s fucking everything and I broke her heart because I couldn’t just talk to her. I lost her because I couldn’t communicate. I couldn’t tell her that I felt like I was betraying you or making our relationship…less. I broke her heart and yet she did everything she could to make her leaving even easier on me. How perfect is she, honestly? She seems impossible, like a dream but I know she’s real. I know she’s real because somehow she feels realer than anything in my life before.

            “And I fucked it up. And god…Diane…I don’t know what to do! That’s…that’s what I wish you were here for…so you could tell me what to do. How to fix it…because I think…maybe, I can’t. I wish you were here…not to love youthis time…but just so you could tell me what the hell to do! To do to get her back! Because Diane…I love her. So much. Impossibly much. And all I want is her back and I know one thing you would tell me to do so…I think it’s time, Diane. 

            “I think it’s time you have your ring back,” he finishes, the tears still pouring down his face, hot and heavy and drying as he removes the chain from around his neck, the one where he’s had Diane’s wedding ring resting since she’s been gone, that last bit he’s been unable to give up. 

            He digs into the ground before her gravestone, just deep enough that he can bury it again, laying the woven sterling silver band down and covering it with the dirt, a single red rose laid over to cover it. 

            And then he pulls your engagement ring from his pocket, slipping it onto the chain and clasping it around his neck. 

            “Bye Diane,” he says and then he rises, brushing the dirt from his knees, tucking the chain beneath his shirt and walking off, holding tight to the last piece of you.

            He just wishes he didn’t have to lose you to realize how much he loves you. 

            New York is a lot. 

            It’s big and busy and crowded and yet empty at the same time. It’s quiet and it’s noisy and it never sleeps yet is in bed by nine o’clock. It’s restless and reckless and yet overly cautious. And you love it. 

            You feel alive in a way you didn’t back in Pittsburgh. You feel alive because you’re home. 

            “I still can’t believe Lena never sold this place,” Vicky says, her hands trailing over the wall, her fingers marking every notch your mom made your first two years as her daughter when the two of you lived here, in this house. The notches of your height, your childhood playroom still filled with your toys and the photo albums of your childhood where every awkward phase is perfectly captured. 

            “Mom says it’s too special. It was her parent’s and now hers and…she wants it to be mine one day,” you reply, turning, two glasses of iced water held tight in your hand, perspiration slicking against your skin. “And I’m glad. I love this place.”

            “It’s home, right?” Victoria asks, her voice softer than normal. Delicate and fragile in a way she hasn’t been in a year. Not since Pitt Fest. 

            “Yeah,” you whisper, looking around the room, taking in every inch of the kitchen. The kitchen where your first full day as a Handzo had taken place, your mom asking you if you wanted to help her bake some cookies. 

            You had never been asked that before. You’d never had homemade cookies, period. 

            “Why?” Vicky asks you, her voice still fragile but with an undercurrent of anger in it. As if she’s angry that you don’t consider the place you really grew up, grew up with her, home.

            “Because this was the first place I had a family,” you tell her and you can see the way she softens, that small, delicate smile blooming as she takes one glass from you, her fingers brushing yours in a tender, familial way. “Pittsburgh was just the place where it got bigger.”

            “And New York is where you’re expanding it again,” she says and you can’t help the soft smile that blooms on your face as you look down at your stomach, the one just barely showing now at the three-month mark, your hand coming to rest on it, rubbing a small circle on the bump where your child grows. 

            “Yeah, it is. In the same place it started.” And you feel that lump in your throat, the one that’s never far away these days because you miss Jack. You miss the way he held you, his grip firm and soft at the same time, comforting and steady. Guiding when you felt like you were lost. 

            But guiding you to what?

            “How’s the ED here?” Vicky says, her voice enough to draw you from the slight image forming of Jack, his smile and the way his eyes though always tired seemed to gleam. 

            “Pretty good,” you tell her. “We get way more traumas through. Like…a lot. Maybe not like more, but a decent amount. And the other residents are awesome. Not like my Pittlings but…they’re pretty damn nice.”

            “Just don’t go replacing us, alright? Trin will kill you if she loses her godmother status to one of the New Yorkers,” Vicky says and you sigh, lifting the sweating glass to your lips and taking a swallow, the feeling of the ice water easily tracked as it slides down your throat, cooling your insides, causing a shiver to run through you. 

            “You guys are my family,” you tell her. “They’re just my friends.” And there’s nothing else you need to say because Vicky gets it. She always has, since the day you met her in the PTMC daycare—a crying two-year-old that exasperated the daycare attendants. The crying two-year-old that stopped when you cared for her. 

            The now twenty-one-year-old who still needs your shoulder when she cries. The sister you chose, the sister who chose you—whose shoulder is there for you. 

            Trinity gets it too. She gets it because she was the twenty-two-year-old M2 you ran into when you were late your first day who told you chill, I’ll get you where you need to go, kiddo. The older sister who just knew that you needed someone to look out for you, the way you look out for everyone else. 

            And Dennis, sweet little Dennis, understands too. Because he is your brother, the one you call your twin. The boy who asked you for your number after your first class together first day of med school and then blushed so furiously when he realized it seemed he was asking you out and he clarified that he needed a friend. 

            And you took him under your wing. How could you not?

            They understand because they know that family is not the blood, but rather the ties that bind and the four of you are so tightly woven that there is no untangling. 

            You’re bound for life. A family. 

            “Take a break, Jesus,” Antony cries out, his face twisted in exhaustion as he bends at the waist, hands on his knees, sucking in a deep breath. “How do you just keep moving?! You’re pregnant!”

            “As if I don’t fucking know, Ant,” you reply, one hand on your lower back, the other on your stomach, the weight of your bump growing heavier and heavier as the weeks go by. It’s one thing to objectively know that babies grow fast and grow heavy, but it’s another thing to experience it. 

            “Just saying!” he retorts, his eyes twinkling as he rises, his lips curving into a mischievous smile, one that you recognize as trouble. You’ve found that four months is enough to learn the language of someone’s smile. Especially someone as easy to read as Antony. 

            “What’s your aim here?” you ask him, taking the iPad that Charge Nurse Ava hands you, her head jerking in the direction of Central 2. 

            “I need someone to come with me to the gay bar on third! Just so I know if the guy I’m meeting with is going to kill me or not, pretty please,” he says and you glance at the iPad, taking note of the case—bowel issue—and back at him. 

            “Take this case for me and we’re good,” you tell him, giving him a sweet smile, one that’s saccharine with how sweet yet he doesn’t notice, simply takes it from you, mouthing thank you until he takes note of the chart. 

            “Shit,” he hisses, looking back up at you and shaking his head. “I’m never falling for that again.”

            “Too late.”

            Jack doesn’t even take notice of the sunset as he steps into the hospital, backpack over his shoulder. He doesn’t say hi to Robby or Dana or any of the Pittlings. He doesn’t do his old Nightcrawler chant. He doesn’t do anything he used to do. 

            Because the world is dark and cold and you are gone. Four months. Four months without your warmth, but he will go a lifetime without it so long as he can hold onto that little bit of hope inside of him. 

            The hope that you come back and he can win you over again. 

            “Jesus, Trin,” you hiss as you open the door, exposing her standing there on your porch, laden down with a bright blue bag so full that baby things are peeking around the zipper. “What the hell is all this?”

            “You’re having a boy,” she says, pushing past you, mindful of your five-month bump. “Which means we need to begin planning how to make him a good guy now. And I have to be the best aunt which means if I have to physically fight Crash, I will.”

            “You sure are dedicated,” you tell her as you shut the door, locking it and sliding the deadbolt into place along with the safety chain and the special snib lock. “But you know I’m alright, right?”

            She looks back at you, one eyebrow arched and lips pursed in that expression she has that calls bullshit, but you can see the slight wobble in her lip and the sadness in her eyes. This isn’t about your son; this isn’t about being the best aunt. 

            This about you being gone. 

            “Come here, Trin,” you whisper, opening your arms wide and she doesn’t hesitate, just runs and wraps her arms around you, the only person she can be tender with, the person who knows all her scars and loves her not despite them, but because of them—because they’re a piece of her. 

            “I just fucking miss you,” she cries, her body hiccupping with sobs as she holds tight to you, her tears soaking into your graphic tee. 

            “I miss you too. So much.”

            “Mother,” you say, tone stern as Lena falls quiet. “I am fine. Please do not transfer up to New York. I am handling pregnancy quite well on my own.”

            “I’m taking two months sabbatical for your birth though. Non-negotiable. I will be there for you to break every bone in my hand. I will be there so you’re not alone, okay? You need someone and I’m not missing this, sweetie,” she says and you feel like crying because how did you get so lucky to get a mother like this. 

            “Deal,” you whisper around the lump in your throat. “I don’t want to be alone for it.”

            “And you won’t be.”

            What can Jack say about his life?

            It’s empty and it’s lonely and it’s cold. It’s dark and it’s cramped and it’s horrible because you’re not in it. 

            He’s realized these past seven months that he hadn’t seen you. Not really. Because he missed all the little things. All the small things you did that seemed to brighten a room. That seemed to warm it from the inside out. That seemed to fix it. 

            He realized that he’s only seen the outside part of you. The curated sunshine for everyone’s benefit. But as he overhears Santos and Javadi and Whittaker talking about you, about what they’ve done with you in New York, he realizes that he missed seeing a whole version of you. 

            He didn’t see you when he had you. 

            He’s only seen you now that you’re gone.

            “MOM!” you cry, your gaze locked on the puddle underneath you, the one glimmering in the lights, the one that’s sticky on your legs, caused by that contraction. “MOM!”

            “What’s wrong, sweetie?” she cries, bursting into your room, her hair coming loose from her ponytail as she takes in the puddle, in you and she just nods. “Okay.”

            And then she guides you to the car, grabs your go-bag and drives you to the hospital, guiding you into the wheelchair, wheeling you up to the maternity floor herself. 

            She’s there when they get you in a bed. She’s there as the contractions grow closer and closer. She’s there as they rip through you, her hand in yours, voice calm as she tells you that you’re wonderful and perfect and she loves you and she’s there. 

            She’s there as the doctor guides you through the birth. She’s there as you push your baby into the world. She’s there as you hear his first strangled cry. She’s there as they cut the umbilical cord. She’s there as you hold your son for the first time. She’s there for it all. 

            Because you’re her daughter. 

            Where else would she be but with you?

            Even when the only person you want beside you is the person who broke your heart in the first place, the person with those steady hazel eyes and the smile of a thousand stories. 

            You want Jack.

            “Sammy,” you whisper, lifting the bundled baby from his crib, his cries ripping through the still air of your house, where just you and him live. “Sammy, bud, Mommy’s here. Mommy’s not going anywhere.”

            It’s while you cradle him to your chest, his cries softening as you rock him and hold him and sing to him that you wish Jack were here, not for the first time, just behind you, his hand on your shoulder and the other on Sammy’s head as he whispers calm down, bub. We’re not going anywhere. 

            “He’s a little terror,” you tell Dennis as you lean back against the couch, your feet on Trinity’s lap, Vicky in the kitchen while Dennis plays with Sammy on the floor, race cars zooming around your chubby little son. 

            “He’s an angel,” Dennis counters—precisely as Sammy runs the car over his little toy with shocking force. Enough that Dennis cries out. “Maybe…a fallen angel.”

            “Not for me,” Trin says. “But that’s cause I’m a cool aunt.”

            “You’re not a normal aunt; you’re a cool aunt!” Vicky calls out as she steps into the room, Jones’ sodas held in her hands as she passes out the flavours, the four of you cracking them open and reading the fortunes in the lid while Sammy giggles at his race cars. 

            “’You will grow to love yourself’,” Trin says, snorting as she takes a swig of the cream soda. “I already did.”

            “’Take joy in the small moments’,” Dennis reads and he screws the lid back on, setting the bottle aside as he lifts Sammy up and onto his lap, looking over you and Trin and Vicky. “I think I am.”

            “’Understand that you are you’,” Vicky says and she sighs, leaning back in the recliner, smiling at the three of you. “I understand.”

            And you look at your fortune, heart stuttering just a bit at the words. “’Remember that perceptions in love matter. Not everyone sees it all the same’.”

            And you can’t help but think of Jack.

            Jack loves you. 

            That’s all he really knows these days. These years that you have been gone. He loves you, every bit of you, every scrap of an update that he over hears. Every piece that he remembers. 

            Every piece that was. 

            He just loves you. 

            And he’ll do anything to get you back. 

            The email sits before you, the job offer to be an attending back in Pittsburgh. Back in the PTMC at the ED. The place you’ve wanted to work since you arrived there with your mother all those years ago, your things in cardboard boxes in a professional moving truck, objects that belonged to you and not just clothes that you needed. 

            “What do you say, bud?” you ask your little boy, now turned two. “Should we move…home?” And when he claps twice and giggles you take it as a sign. 

            You accept it. 

            “Don’t worry about hand-offs this morning, kid,” Robby says, his voice familiar to you, the only ex of your mother’s that ever actually cared for you. “I know you don’t wanna see him.”

            “Robs,” you sigh, looking away out your window, the house you share with your mother since she insisted you needed help watching Sammy even as you’ve managed on your own in New York. “I’ll have to see him eventually.”

            “But you don’t have to on your first day back,” he counters and you can’t argue with him, simply shrug and look down at your interlaced hands, the baby monitor not far away as Sammy snoozes. 

            “Okay,” you say and then Robby is there, pulling you into a hug, one that’s strong and steady and reminds you of when you were ten and your mom had already been divorced twice and she was dating Robby and he understood. 

            He understood that you and Lena were a unit, that no one came before you for her because you were her child. And he put you first. 

            And now, as you return the hug with the first man whose been like a father to you, you wonder if he still is. 

            “Jesus,” you hiss, rolling your shoulders, the muscles aching from the day you’ve had. The day of rolling people and doing chest compressions and working within the small budget. “New York had way more tools.”

            “Only because you were at that fancy one,” Dennis reminds you and you can’t help but stick your tongue out at him as you lean against the counter, the two of you the attendings for the day, Trin off and Javadi still in residency. 

            She chose the ED when she had a pregnancy case. She told you she couldn’t stop wondering what if that had been you? Someone needs to be there for them. And she can be that. 

            “The fancy one was wonderful and god, I miss it,” you reply as you lean against the nurse’s station, observing the chaos of the Pitt, the day shift. “I’d be home by now with Sammy there.”

            “Can you shut up about New York?” he asks you and you look over at him, one eyebrow arched as you take in his appearance, the pinched expression and the sad gleam in his eyes. You know that New York didn’t just save you from seeing Jack, it also hurt the people that you love because you were always there and then suddenly you weren’t. 

            “No,” you tell him, sliding along the station to be right beside him, your arm up against his as you look at him, your brother for all intents and purposes, the one you can call at 3AM because you’re freaking out about a baby temperature. “Because it happened. I lived there, I worked there and I’m only just back, but Den…this place is home.”

            “Glad to hear that kiddo,” you hear Dana say and you glance over your shoulder, taking in your aunt—Dana Evans ne Handzo, one of three daughters. 

            “I literally told you that yesterday, Auntie,” you reply and all she does is let out that laugh of hers, the husky smoker one as she steps around to stand in front of you and Dennis, her lips curved up in that smile she has, the one that says I love you, you annoying bastards. 

            “It’s nice to hear it though,” Dennis whispers and then you can feel his arm around your shoulder and you lean into him, your head resting on his chest as you sigh just slightly, looking up at the display board, the time 7:00 PM and the names of patients in their bays.

            “Just tell me when you need to hear it,” you whisper and the squeeze on your upper arm from his hand tells you that he understands. “Now, where the hell is the night shift?”

            “Behind you, bitch.” You can feel a smile grow on your face, the one that you try to suppress but can’t, the full expression their as you take in the sight of Parker, their face twisted into faux-outrage, but really just happiness. 

            “Nice to see you too, Ellis,” you reply, crossing your arms over your chest and raising your brows as they drop their bag and step to you, arms open wide. In a gesture you return, the embrace calm and steady and everything you’d missed. 

            “Missed you,” they say into your hair and all you do is squeeze them in reply. Because you don’t think you can reply, you don’t think you can speak around that lump in your throat, the one that’s hard and salty like the tears that burn your eyes. 

            “Save some of that for me!” calls the voice of one John Shen. You pull back from Ellis and shake your head at him, before lifting one arm and gesturing him over, wrapping him in a hug, one that he returns with vigor, lifting you up and spinning you around. An overly flamboyant gesture for someone normally so reserved and chill. 

            “Jeez,” you say, your voice tight, just slightly choked around the lump in your throat, “you guys are gonna make me feel all special if you keep it up.” And when you pull back from John, you can see his face has shuttered into that serious expression he has. 

            “You are,” he says and those words themselves are almost enough to bring you to your knees, but you simply smile a watery kind of smile, waving your hand, washing away his statement. Ignoring it even as it rings through your bones and your heart. 

            “Deliver for Attending Physician Handzo,” calls out the familiar voice of your mother and you turn, taking in the sight of her holding the hand of a very small and chubby toddler with auburn curls and hazel eyes. 

            “Thanks, Mom,” you tell her, drawing in a sharp, nasally breath, blinking past the tears that have gathered in your eyes, instead waking to her and scooping Sammy up into your arms. “Hey, buddy. You ready to go home with Mommy?”

            “Yeah,” he says, his voice high-pitched in that frail toddler way, the kind of way that is soon to be gone, grown out of, just like everything else. Because someday he will grow up to be a boy. A boy who needs guidance to become a man. A boy will know the rights and wrongs, the struggles of the people that are not him. A boy you have to guide to become a good man. 

            “Then I shall leave the handoffs in Uncle Denny’s hands, right?” you ask him, wincing just slightly as his small, chubby hands find your hair, tugging on the strands with a force that’s all new of his terrible twos. 

            “Yeah!” he cries, one hand tugging on a strand with particular force as the other waves in the air, excited and fast. 

            It was then you heard the strangled sound, the kind that was deep and yet high at the same time. The sound of a man who has seen the most shocking thing, the most beautiful, the most miraculous and you knew. You knew it was Jack because you felt it in your bones, in your heart, in your mind. 

            It was like you had some sensor for him. Like you were attune to him. 

            You don’t know why you turn, only that you do and the sight is enough to knock the breath from your lungs because he looks awful. He looks like a man devoid of purpose, a man who is living life like a machine, doing this and doing that and not getting anything from it. Just doing it because it’s what’s supposed to be done. 

            A glint of light on his chest draws your eye down, your gaze snagged by the ring around the chain where Diane’s wedding ring always sat—where the engagement ring you left behind now sits, his hand drifting up to clutch at it as he looks at you and the baby on your hip. 

            The baby who looks a lot like him. 

            “Bluefire?” he whispers and even if the entire ED hadn’t fallen quiet, you would have heard him. Would have heard him ten thousand miles away because you still love him. You weren’t lying when you wrote that he was your Diane. He is the first man you ever loved—first person—and the first who broke your heart in totality. 

            But he is still the man who helped you fix the pieces of yourself that you thought were broken when you first met.

            And he is still the father of your child.

            “Hi, Jack,” you whisper, your voice barely audible, but from the way his face brightens, the way a gleam comes into his eyes, you know he’s the same as you. 

            He would hear you from ten thousand miles away. 

            He’ll always hear you. 

            Life has been rote, nothing and empty, just a house that echoes with your ghost, your image everywhere doing a million different things. He could see you in the living room, your legs thrown over the top of the couch, your head on the floor as you watch TV upside down. He could see you smiling at him from the chair in the den you turned into a library, knees up and textbook resting between them. He could see you in the kitchen making cookies, the recipe one of Lena’s, the first ones you’d ever made. 

            The first ones you’d ever had. 

            He could see you doing face masks in the bathroom, gesturing him over, trying to put one on him. He could see you with your gym bag, leaving the house and coming back, sweaty and tired but smiling. He could see you lying in bed, trying to meditate but really only sleeping. 

            And in all of those, there was always a hint of your smile, of your joy. Of your happiness. The smile that has been missing from his life for three years. 

            Three painful years. 

            Three years of watching your ghosts spin around his house. Three years of holding onto your hygiene products just to lift them up to smell them, hoping to capture your scent, but always missing that essential part—you. Three years of holding onto your engagement ring every time he missed you, wanted you, felt pain or anything at all. Three years of writing you a thousand letters that he had no way of ever getting to you. Three years of mourning you as if you’d died because in many ways, you had. 

            He was dead to you and so, in a way, you made yourself a living ghost in his life. 

            One that haunts him every day, so much that when he stepped into the ED and saw you lift a toddler up and place him on your hip, he thought he was hallucinating. 

            Seeing what he wanted. The future he had dreamed of, but thought was impossible. Something he didn’t get to have, something he didn’t deserve. 

            The guilt over moving on didn’t just apply to you but to that family he never got to build with Diane and seeing you now, with a baby, one with his auburn curls and his hazel eyes and his nose sends that shockwave through him. 

            The one that says that what he is seeing is a miracle. The one that says that what he is seeing is real in a way that nothing ever really has been. The one that says you need to grab hold of them, hold fast and protect them. 

            Don’t fuck this up again. 

            “Bye Jack,” you say and then he’s seeing you turn and begin to walk away, the baby babbling away, tugging on strands of your beautiful, perfect hair. 

            And he’s frozen, every muscle rigid.

            And he just lets you walk away. Because what else can he do?

            Seeing Jack hurt you. It felt like being stabbed in the gut over and over again destroyed over and over, your heart stomped on again and again and again. 

            It hurt you like nothing has before—not because the hurt of not being seen is still as strong, but because it felt like he did see you. 

            But only once you were gone. 

            “Mom watches Sammy while I’m work, you know this, Trin,” you tell her, the two of you walking in tandem towards the incoming trauma, the two of you running the Pitt as efficiently as possible, waiting for traumas as they were called. 

            “Yeah, but,” she says as the two of you pull on over-scrubs and gloves, glasses firmly in place. “You, Huckleberry and I never all work on the same days…This means that at least one of us is always available to watch Sammy. It would give your mom time to rest and me more time to…educate your son.”

            “He’s two,” you say, your tone deadpan and flat. “He doesn’t need his feminism education yet.”

            “It’s never too early to start,” she counters and you sigh, turning to her and fixing her with a glare, one that causes her to wince. 

            “When he can understand the words needed for a basic feminism education, fine. But he’s two. He cannot yet understand it; it’s enough that his bedtime story is Gender Trouble, okay?”

            “Who the fuck picked that?” she asks you as the EMTs arrive, wheeling the gurney holding the SWAT officer, blood dripping from him to the floor. 

            “You did,” you tell her as the two of you rush to assist the EMTs, the team awaiting in the trauma prepared, transferring him to the table and starting work on his two GSWs. 

            But what catches your attention is not the body before you but the man behind you, the one you caught a glimpse of in the glass, arms crossed, biceps bulging against his SWAT uniform, worry etched in every line of his face. 

            “Get him up to surgery!” you say, the resident whose name you haven’t yet learned and the new med student nod, assisting the surgical transport team as you peel the gloves from your hands and the over-scrub, dumping them and stepping out, your safety glasses coming off, tucked back into the breast pocket of your scrubs. 

            “We need to talk.”

            The words you’ve been dreading since you came back, since you first saw Jack. Since you started avoiding him, successfully for two weeks. The words that tell you that maybe you did fuck up by just leaving. 

            By not telling him that you were pregnant and giving him the opportunity to tell you the truth. By not giving him the truth. 

            The words still ring through you as you follow Jack to the on-call room, mind just slightly hazy as he closes the door, locking it, preventing any nosy Pittling (Trinity) from getting in and disturbing this. 

            Because this is the moment you need to tell him. It doesn’t matter how he looks at you, what he says or does or how he reacts. It doesn’t fucking matter because he deserves to know. And he deserves the chance to say he wants to be part of his son’s life. 

            And he deserves to know that he just can’t be a part of yours. 

            Because no matter how much you love him, you can’t go back to being someone who isn’t seen. 

            “Jack…” you whisper, but you don’t even get a full sentence out before you begin to cry, breath hiccupping as the tears fall fast and furious down your cheeks. And then he’s there, his arms around you in that grip that is steady and safe and warm. His arms locked tight around you as he holds you upright as you cry, your tears soaking his scrubs, knees buckling as every sob becomes harder and larger and more painful. 

            “Shh,” he whispers, one hand moving up and down your back in that rhythm he’s always had that calms you, rights you and tells you all will be well. The rhythm you’ve missed in your time apart. “It’s okay. I understand.”

            “But Jack,” you cry, pulling away from him, away from his touch, your arms going around yourself, holding tight to your abdomen as if it’s the only thing holding you together. As if you remove your arms, you’ll fall apart, all those loose pieces spilling and breaking even more. “You…you have a—son.”

            “I figured,” he says, his voice steady and soft in that way he has to comfort, never judge. “He looks like me.”

            “He…h-he really fucking does, doesn’t he?” you cry, your breaths still hiccupping and frail and fragile. You feel breakable in this moment, more than you did three years ago when you left him. When you chose yourself. 

            “Yeah. Minute I saw the hair, I had a guess,” he says and you can feel your knees buckle, give way and you sink down onto the couch, your head falling into your hands, elbows digging into your thighs. 

            “Jesus Christ,” you mutter, your mind running so fast that there’s a ringing in your ears and the world is blurry as your vision tilts and skews. “I didn’t think you’d be this cool about it.”

            “Sweetheart,” he whispers and you can feel the couch bend under his weight, dipping on his side as his hand comes to rest on your back as the hiccupping and burning starts again, the tears never far from the surface. “I understand why you didn’t tell me. I…I k-know I didn’t…see you so…I know what I did. I know what I said and I wish, god, I wish I’d never done those things, but I did. I can’t change them…but I can try to…to move forwards.” You lift your head to look at him, at the way his face is open, twisted in pain and sadness, tears marking his cheeks just like yours. 

            “You really hurt me,” you whisper and you watch as those words land, his face twisting in on itself even more. “But…but a part of me didn’t tell you because…because I didn’t want the first time you really saw me to be…to be with anger because you don’t fucking want a kid!”

            And in his eyes you can see confusion and then the dawn of understanding and he pulls you against him, tight and strong and fast, his arms steady and strong as you continue to cry and he does too, his tears falling on your head, on your neck, feeling for all the world like raindrops. 

            “I thought I was too old,” he whispers, his hand still rubbing your back in that soothing motion. “I thought I was too old…too fucked up…I didn’t think I deserved a kid. Deserved to have a family. I had this…fucking guilt that I had moved on and when you asked that day…about a kid. I felt so guilty that I said no, but baby, I wanted—want—everything with you. I want whatever you’re willing to give me.”

            You look up at him to see that quiet sincerity in his perfect hazel eyes, those eyes that tell you a thousand different things in a language you learned to read long ago. A language you can still read now. 

            “I need you to prove that you see me,” you whisper and watch as he pulls from his bag three large stacks of envelopes, the top ones addressed with your name in his tight, neat script. 

            “I wrote you a letter,” he whispers, setting the stacks between the two of you, a barrier of a different sort. “One for every day that you’ve been gone. 1095 letters, sweetheart.” His hand comes to rest on your cheek, palm cupping just gently as his thumb smooths across your cheekbone. 

            “Then let me take it one day at a time, Jack,” you reply and he nods, leaning forwards to press a soft and gentle kiss to your forehead. 

            “Take all the time you need, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”

Day 1 without you

Dear Bluefire,

God, what am I even doing? You’re never gonna read this, never even see me again if I know you. And I do know you. I know how stubborn you are and how brave and how perfect and beautiful. 

I know you. Just you. But you may have been right, sweetheart. I think I was too choked with guilt for loving you more to really see you the way I should have. 

But it’s too late now, isn’t it?

Maybe one day I’ll send these, these letters to you. Maybe one day you’ll read them and know one thing: I love you. 

God, do I love you.

Love,

Your Jack.

Day 37 without you

Dear Bluefire,

I really fucking miss you. I miss the way you sleep, the way you pull me tight against you like a blanket. I miss the way you needed to cuddle after a hard shift. I miss the way you’d show up during my shift just to bring me something even when you should have been sleeping. I miss the way you used to say my name. 

I miss the way you sit and the way you read, your mouth silently speaking the dialogue, as if you’re acting it out like an actor on a stage. I miss the way you watch movies, the way you get so into it, exclaiming in outrage or delight or sadness. 

I just miss you. 

God, this is pathetic. But it’s true. Perhaps the truest thing I’ve ever written. 

Day 365 without you

Dear Bluefire,

One year. One whole fucking year you’ve been gone and all I can think about is you. It’s like the world is dark and you were the light and now you’re gone. And I can’t see anything before me without you. 

In case you can’t tell, it means I miss you. 

And all I’ve been thinking about is what you asked me that day when I was hungover. If I wanted kids. And I said no. But that’s not true and I worry that that’s what’s fucked our relationship up. 

The truth is…is that yes, I want kids. I want kids with you, it doesn’t really have anything to do with Diane except that I feel guilty that I’m happy and she’s gone. I want kids but I fear that I’m too fucked up for them, that I’d ruin them by just being me. And I don’t want that. 

But all I can see in the house, is you. As a mother. You coming home after a long shift and scooping up the kid that I’ve spent my day with while I change out and go. You coming home on a night I have off and we settle down in the living room with our kids (yes, I know. Plural) and watch whatever kids movie they want for the umpteenth time while we share looks over their heads about how much we hate it. 

God, I sound pathetic. But I love you, Bluefire. I love you so much. 

Day 730 without you

Dear Bluefire,

I don’t really know what to say. Only that I miss you and that life is harder without you. The only that’s keeping me going is that hope you spoke about. The hope that you’ll come back and rescue me. 

Can you be my knight in shining armor? I’ll play the damsel in distress so long as it makes you come back to me. 

Please, Bluefire. Rescue me.

I love you.

Day 1095 without you

Dear Bluefire,

I will write one of these every day that you’re not in my life. Because it’s manifestation, right? Isn’t that what Javadi talks about? Manifesting destiny?

While this is me doing just that. Manifesting us and our happy ending. Our marriage. One where I see you. Every inch of you. 

I will never not see you so long as you come back. See? Manifesting. I really fucking hope it works, sweetheart. Cause I need you. 

I love you more than life. 

Your Jack.

            The letters made you cry, made you sob and heave and buckle, the noise of your cries disturbing Sammy who would only calm down once you did and once you sang to him. Once you sang to him “Looking Through a Window.”

            The letters made you fall apart because in them, you heard him, Jack. You heard him realize how he fucked everything up, how he didn’t see you but he did now and how much he needed you. 

            And you took it a day at a time, reading his thoughts over three years. It took you a day. It took you one whole day in between caring for Sammy and occasionally calming your friends down over something stupid. 

            It took you a day, but it took you through three years. Three years of emptiness and loneliness and understanding.

            It took you through a life of a man who realized he had lost everything he ever cared for. 

            And you didn’t want him to stay lost. 

            “Sammy,” you say, lifting him from his car seat, settling him on your hip, turning and noticing Jack, standing stiff and straight in front of the Toys-R-Us. It’s his soldier posture, hands clasped behind his back, chest thrown out. “Let’s go meet your daddy.”

            “Hi,” he says when you get close to him and you can see the vulnerability on his face, the fear. Something you never thought you would see on his face. 

            “Hey, meet Sammy Rhys Handzo-Abbot,” you say and you watch with that beating in your throat, that pulse of your heart in the muscles of your voice, bated breath. You watch as Jack looks up at you hope, surprise and fear all warring in those perfect, forest eyes. 

            “He has…he has my name?”

            “Yeah,” you whisper, looking down at the cracked concrete beneath your feet. “I told Mom I thought it was a good idea for him to know who his dad is. To carry a piece of him with him so…we filled it out that way.”

            “Hey, bud,” he says, eyes still on you as his hand comes up to cup Sammy’s chubby cheek. And then his attention falls to the little boy in your arms who lets out a small giggle, crying, “Dada! Dada!”

            You watch as silent tears fall from Jack’s eyes, the kinds of tears that show more emotion than any angry or desperate cry does. Because these are the tears you try to prevent from falling in the first place. 

            “Do you want to hold him?” 

            “Can I?” He looks so surprised that you smile at him, a soft and sad smile as you nod. 

            “I read your letters, Jack. I read every word and…I want you…in our lives.”

*

            “Hey,” you call out as Jack steps into the house, your mom out at work, her second job taking her to spend the day helping with caskets. “How was the zoo? Was Sammy too much work?”

            “Do you know he insists on being fucking carried? He didn’t want to walk or use the stroller. He just wanted me to carry him. Do I look like his personal carriage?”

            “No,” you tell him, a laugh bubbling up and over your lips as Sammy toddles in, his hands holding tight to a panda plushie. “You just look like his dad.”

*

            “Come on,” he whispers, his hands holding tight to yours. “I don’t want to be away from you and Sammy and even if it’s the fucking guest room that you live in…sweetheart, just please. Move in with me.”

            “What do you see when you look at me?” you ask him as he lets go of your hands, instead his hands come to rest on your waist, yours looping around his neck, Sammy out for the day with Lena and Dana looking for Mother’s Day gifts. 

            “I see the love of my life, the mother of my child and my future. I see a woman who is strong and bright and brilliant and perfect. I see a woman who holds my heart in her hands,” he whispers, pressing his forehead against yours, his breath becoming your air. 

            “I don’t think I’ll need the guest room.”

*

            “Sammy!” you hear Jack yell, the life you’re building slow but steady. It started with dates, days with Sammy and now…a year later, living together. It was a fight with Lena but a necessary one. You told her that you needed to build your family. 

            And Jack was part of it. 

            “What’s he doing now?!” you yell, stepping out of the library, a book tucked under your arm as you see Jack run past, the giggles your son echoing from a room not that far away. 

            “He has a snake!” You step back into the library and move to shut the door. 

            “I’ll let you deal with that one, babe!”

*

            “Happy birthday, Sammy!” you whisper as you step into his room, watching as his still solid, chubby frame jumps up and runs over to you, his arms looping around your legs as footsteps sound behind you. 

            You can feel Jack place his hand in between your shoulder blades, your body automatically adjusting, leaning back as his other hand comes to rest on Sammy’s head. 

            “Happy birthday, bud. Mommy and Daddy are very excited for today.” He says it just like you always thought he would. 

*

            “God!” Jack cries as you press your lips against his pulse point, your tongue flicking out against it as he thrusts into you for the first time in four years. This is not sex the way it used to be, rather in every thrust in, in every kiss you share, every caress and touch and every time he brings you to your peak, it is an exclamation of I see you, I love you, I will always see you. 

            Every touch Jack gives you, every kiss, caress, lick and thrust is him telling you how much he loves you, just how much he regrets ever losing you in the first place. 

            And in every touch you give him, you tell him just how much you forgive him. 

*

            The dining room is empty, rather laughing echoes from outside as you step into it, a baseball cap on your head, sunscreen on your screen and in your pocket. It’s the day of the farmer’s market and you look forward to it every year, the ones in New York just not the same. 

            “We’re leaving in ten minutes!” you yell, knowing they’ll hear through the open kitchen window and you grab your two canvas bags from where you left them on the counter, a glint catching your attention. 

            It’s a glint on the table. The glint of metal catching light and you walk to it, taking notice of a gold ring set with three stones and a space for a fourth. You see your birthstone, Jack’s and Sammy’s and a space where it looks like a stone was left off or lost. 

            And that’s when you notice the papers.

            You’ve always wanted to adopt, wanted to save a child from the system, give a child the same chance that Lena gave you. You just didn’t think you’d do it, having Sammy and your career and doing it alone seemed like too much, but here before you are the papers to adopt. The ones you fill out to end up on adoption agency records and they’re already partly filled out. 

            The age marked as a child from anywhere from one to twelve. The names…Jack Handzo-Abbot and yours, the same…Handzo-Abbot.

            “Do you know what I’m asking?” Jack asks and you look from the papers to the ring and you do. You really do. 

            He’s asking you to marry him with a ring that’s prepared for your next kid. The one you adopt, just like you always wanted. 

            “You haven’t asked,” you tell him, throat thick as you lift the ring up just as Sammy jumps and hugs your legs, making you stumble just a bit, laughing as you right yourself. 

            “You always wanted to adopt and you don’t have to go any of this alone anymore so…will you marry me and not only make your husband and Sammy’s father but someone you trust to adopt a child with too?”

            “Yes! Yes, I will!” And then he’s there slipping the ring onto your finger and pressing a deep kiss against you, one that tastes of love and family but above all: second chances. 

            Because Jack’s right. You don’t have to go it alone anymore. You never did. 

            Just this time you get to do it all with someone who sees every piece of you and loves you because of them. 

𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐬 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘜𝘗🤩

𝐯𝐣𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐝𝐢 𝘮𝘳𝘴. 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘳𝘳𝘬 𝘳 𝘶 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯😩

𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐲_𝐰 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴🍿👀

𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝘰𝘮𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘯𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦?? 𝘪 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘰𝘷𝘦

𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐨𝐨𝐨.𝐝 𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘷 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬

𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐤.𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐧 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘵𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘳🦈

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-> 𝐛.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝘔𝘠 𝘩𝘰𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘧𝘦 @𝘺_𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘢

𝐢𝐭𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘶𝘴, 𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘱𝘦𝘢🫶🏼

𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤_𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐬 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴🤤 𝘪 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘮

-> 𝐮𝐫.𝐟𝐚𝐯.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝘪’𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘹𝘦𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘧𝘵 😚@𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬_𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘴

-> 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤_𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐬 𝘔𝘠 𝘎𝘐𝘙𝘓❤️ @𝘶𝘳.𝘧𝘢𝘷.𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬

𝐞𝐦.𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐡 𝘱𝘭𝘴 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘦 𝘶 𝘬𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘵

-> 𝐮𝐫.𝐟𝐚𝐯.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝘦𝘮 𝘪 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘥 😭 @𝘦𝘮.𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘩

-> 𝐛.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝘸𝘦’𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘵 𝘳𝘯 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘺 @𝘶𝘳.𝘧𝘢𝘷.𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬

-> 𝐞𝐦.𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐡 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘠𝘌𝘛😼 @𝘶𝘳.𝘧𝘢𝘷.𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦

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𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝐲_𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐚, 𝐣𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐧, 𝐮𝐫.𝐟𝐚𝐯.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤, 𝐣𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞.𝐯.𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐧, 𝐣.𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐨𝐭, 𝐢𝐭𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐬 & 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴

𝐛.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦

. . . .

𝐣.𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐨𝐭 𝘴𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘸𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘬?

-> 𝐛.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝘪’𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵 @𝘫.𝘢𝘣𝘣𝘰𝘵

-> 𝐣.𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐨𝐭 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘦…𝘪’𝘭𝘭 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘥 @𝘣.𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬

-> 𝐛.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝘋𝘖 𝘕𝘖𝘛 @𝘫.𝘢𝘣𝘣𝘰𝘵

𝐲_𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐚 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘺 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵

-> 𝐮𝐫.𝐟𝐚𝐯.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴🤤🍝 @𝘺_𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘢 𝘪 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘦

𝐮𝐫.𝐟𝐚𝐯.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 😚💗

-> 𝐛.𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 ❤️ @𝘶𝘳.𝘧𝘢𝘷.𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬

It shouldn't have been a shock to you, not really. You'd just never thought that Robby would do this to you. He knew that kicking you out when you had nowhere to go was cruel but he did it anyway. As a resident, you were making crumbs while under a crushing amount of medical school debt. That’s why you were sniffling in the stairwell; overwhelmed, upset, and scared. Maybe you could pull a Whitaker and live in the hospital…. what the fuck had your life come to?

Overcome with more emotion, a new wave of tears rolled down your cheeks. You tried, unsuccessfully, to sob silently but to no avail. You wished more than anything you could cry at home but you didn't even have one of those anymore. Suddenly, a door above you opened and heavy footsteps were headed your way. You quickly wiped away your tears and prayed to every deity possible to make it look like you hadn’t just been crying. All too soon, you were peering up at Dr. Brendon Park, who had stopped moving the moment he saw you. Great. The least sympathetic person in the entire hospital walks in on this pitiful scene. He'd probably lose any respect he might have had for you just given the state you were in.

He stared down at you and slowly continued to approach. “What happened?”

You really didn't want to share the sordid details of your breakup with the Shark. Naturally, a fib fell from your lips. “Nothing.... I just, um, I have really intense allergies.”

He stared at you, silent, not even entertaining your obvious lie. Anyone could tell you’d been crying your eyes out because your eyes were watery, red, and your whole face was puffy.

Much to your surprise, he lowered himself on the stairs to take a seat next to you. This time when he spoke, he used a softer voice and asked, “are you ok?” You really weren’t expecting that. Which is how you found yourself sobbing again, but this time, into Park’s chest, wetting his scrubs with tears and snot. Park absentmindedly rubbed your back while you were calming down. It was grounding and soothing -- it felt nice.

You both sat in silence for a little longer before you finally spoke up. You figured he deserved a little explanation since his scrubs were ruined for maybe the rest of his shift. Plus, he didn't have to comfort you. He could have just as easily ignored you and went on his merry way. You wouldn't have even held it against him.

You cleared your throat and with shaky breath, you explained, “Robby, uh, robby just broke up with me and told me to get my stuff out of his place by tomorrow night. It would be fine if I had a place to crash but I’ll figure it out. I’m just… really fucking sad and mad at myself for letting this happen. I knew it was going to end soon, I just didn't think.... I'd hoped he wouldn't do something like this.”

You didn’t see it, still buried in the warmth of Brendon’s chest but his jaw clenched at your admission. What stupid asshole breaks up with their girlfriend at work and kicks her out?

“If you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at Robinavitch. That’s beyond fucked up.”

You weren’t sure why but that made you laugh. Maybe it was mania setting in or the ridiculousness of the situation but it was suddenly very funny to you. Your laughter bubbled up out of you, uncontrollable and bright. You still couldn't see his face, but he was smiling a bit to himself at the sound, grateful you had a momentary reprieve in sadness to laugh.

Brendon started to stroke your hair as you laughed and asked, “what’s so funny?”

Turning your head to look up at him, you said, “I just never thought the Shark would be the one to comfort me.”

He gave the slightest smile and said, “hey, I’m full of surprises.” Finally extricating yourself from him, you replied, "yeah, I guess so. Thanks by the way." Before you could start to get up, his warm hand gently wrapped around your wrist, stopping you in your tracks.

"You can crash at mine if you'd like. I have a guest room."

You were sure your eyes were as wide as saucers. The Shark was offering his home to you? Were you dreaming?

"Yeah, that would be--," unable to help yourself, you asked him the obvious question, "why? Why would you offer your place, you don't know me very well and you're comforting me as I'm a wreck and I ruined your shirt--"

Brendon swiftly cut you off as he heard emotion rising in your voice again, threatening to bubble over. He looked you square in the eyes and said, "because that's what you need."

You were speechless. Who knew Park the Shark could be so kind? You rushed forward and slammed into his chest, wrapping your arms around him in a tight hug.

"Thank you so much!" Before he could respond or even hug you back, your pager went off and you ran out of the stairwell and back to work.

After your shift from hell, Trinity, Javadi, and Whitaker all provided moral and physical support by helping you gather your things from Robby's. Luckily (or depressingly), all you had were clothes, toiletries, books, your laptop, a few trinkets, and a couple random kitchen items, which all fit in the back of Javadi's car with room to spare. At least Robby hadn't come home while you emptied his place of the evidence you ever existed in it. Needless to say, you were choking back tears all over again.

Once the car was packed, you stared at the outside of his house for maybe the last time. Reality sunk in again and your mind swirled with aching thoughts. It was an end of an era, of a relationship, of a life with someone you loved. How could it be taken away so quickly and without remorse or concern for you? Your friends must have noticed you were on the verge of tears because you were quickly wrapped in a bear hug from all three of them. It wasn't like you guys to not bicker and tease -- you must have been in a really bad spot to garner harmony and support from the group. Once more, you allowed yourself to let go, lose yourself in your sadness, and cried into the hug, shaking and exhausted.

With a teary smile, you pulled away and said, "let's go see the Shark's lair."

Javadi laughed and said, "yeah, I still can't believe he offered to let you stay with him."

"Me either. But beggars can't be choosers."

Trinity sent a smirk your way. "Oh please, I think if you had another option you'd still chose to stay with Park, what with the fuck-me-eyes you give him during consults."

Your mouth dropped open. "I do NOT give him fuck-me-eyes!" Trinity simply kept her smirk plastered to her face and muttered under her breath, "whatever you say."

Truthfully, you did find the surgeon attractive. Come on, you clearly had a thing for older men. But he was.... something else with his imposing stature, mean stare, and big fucking muscles. But until now, you hadn't really thought about it all too much. He was eye-candy, off-limits while you were in a relationship. But now, you found yourself very much not single.

Huffing, you pushed the absurd idea out of your mind. The man was offering a place to stay -- it was against so many morals to be sexualizing the poor guy. You'd respect him and his home and absolutely wouldn't think about him that way.

Yeah fucking right.

The first hours at Brendon's was... awkward to say the least. Neither of you were sure how to interact with the other or move in the now shared space. Currently, you were sitting on the guest bed, attempting to scrounge up some courage to go back downstairs. You couldn't stay in your bedroom forever, no matter how tempting hiding away was.

Before you could stop yourself, you got to your feet and made your way downstairs. The closer you got to the kitchen, the stronger a wonderful aroma of garlic and olive oil became. Brendon was preparing something, you weren't sure what, but it smelled fucking delicious. Your stomach grumbled, effectively announcing your presence to him.

Brendon turned, and much to your mortification, said, "I'd ask if you were hungry but I think I know the answer to that." You dropped his gaze in shyness, unable to figure out how to respond. You should be grateful, and of course you were, that he was allowing you to stay and offering you dinner after what was arguably one of the worst shifts of your life. You couldn't help but feel burdensome and once that was added to your already full plate of emotions, you weren't sure what to do with yourself.

Noticing your internal distress, Brendon's brows knitted together in concern. Setting the spatula down, he completely turned to face you. "Hey, I didn't mean anything by that --"

Before he could get further into an absolutely unnecessary apology, you interrupted him, saying, "no, no, please don't apologize. I just, I feel like such a burden right now and I don't know when I'll be able to get out of your hair and I just feel bad that you're letting me stay and now you're making dinner. I feel useless and burdensome I guess." Wow. You weren't expecting this radical honesty to pour out of you, but clearly, you couldn't help it. It had been a long day and it was simply too tiring to try to jump through the hoops of deciding what to share and what not to share.

"You're not a burden. I offered to let you stay and I'm offering food because I want to -- I don't do things I don't want to do. I'm a surgeon, I'm not hurting for cash." Blunt, but true. He owned a gorgeous brownstone that would have Architecture Digest salivating at the opportunity to film. Natural light poured into the kitchen and because the sun was setting, it bathed everything in a beautiful orange hue.

Feeling a bit more comfortable, you truly took in his place. It was impeccably clean (of course) and thoughtfully decorated. Brendon watched you take in your surroundings, oblivious to his assessing gaze and clear desire to know what you thought of it etched on his face.

You smiled as you spotted some family pictures on his wall. It was sort of odd to see him smiling in the picture since it was so different to his intense no-bullshit vibe at work. "Woah, you have a huge family." You turned to look at him and he had his back to you once more, back to stirring whatever was in the saucepan.

"Yeah. I'm grateful for them, especially my sisters."

You hummed in response, continuing to browse but very much filing that piece of information away. A man with sisters tended to be such a green flag. God, you were like a dog with a damn bone. Your relationship with Robby hadn't even been truly over for more than 10 hours and here you were, noticing Brendon. But if you were honest, your relationship with Robby had been dead for a long time. He'd stopped giving affection long ago and foolishly, you stayed, clinging to the tattered remnants of what used to make you happy. There was a part of you that couldn't help it: you were a lover girl through and through, even at times to your detriment. You knew that the relationship was on life support, you'd basically been his emotional punching bag, but still. you hoped for better. Like a fucking fool.

As you mentally chastised yourself and got lost in your relationship rumination, Park's voice cut through the air again. "The two of them actually designed my place."

"No kidding. Gosh, they're talented. You'll have to tell them my compliments to the chef."

He chuckled and said, "they know it too. They actually co-own an interior design business. I'm lucky they put this place together for me." Fondness and affection seeped through his voice, obvious and unhidden. In one fell swoop, Park had completely undone the idea you had of him in your head. You'd unfairly characterized him as an unfeeling ortho bro, which he clearly was not. Maybe it was better or easier for him to be intense at work. After all, a great deal of responsibility and expectations fell to him.

Wanting to broach the subject of your stay again, you said, "so about my staying here...." Park turned around and gave you his attention, which felt heavy and set your nerves on fire.

"Yes?" Oh. He really wasn't going to make this easy. Upon seeing you floundering, he expanded on his short response, "I need you to use words and ask what you want."

His command, the sureness of his tone, made your thighs clench together. Jesus fucking CHRIST get a hold of yourself. You hoped with every cell in your body he didn't clock that reaction.

"I just mean, I'm not sure how long it will take for me to find a place I can afford that is safe and close enough to the hospital. Of course if you need me out of here by a certain time, I'll go. I just wanted to know if you had a timeline."

"No. It takes how long it takes. And you don't need to rush. You should be in a nice, safe, convenient, and affordable apartment. Don't worry about how long it takes." You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding in. You felt relieved and reassured, which is honestly better than you felt even this morning, pre-breakup.

"Ok, soup's on. I made my grandma's minestrone." Brandon handed you a bowl full of steaming food and you knew it was going to hit so different just based on the smell and the family recipe of it all.

"I -- thank you." You were filled with emotion again and god, you wanted to stop crying in front of him and stop crying period, but he was just being so nice and caring. You knew you wanted to repay him somehow, eventually, but you didn't know what that would look like. No one had ever been so selfless and kind to you, especially someone who barely knew you.

You both tucked into your dinner and as expected, the minestrone was amazing. It was truly a comfort dish for you in this moment. Wanting to lighten the mood, mainly your mood, you said, "a surgeon, a cook, and a shoulder to cry on? What can't you do?"

He gave you a smile and replied, "like I said, I'm full of surprises." Now you knew that you would keep stumbling on these surprises, uncovering who he really was, transforming the way you saw Brendon Park.

After three weeks, you'd entered into a sort of routine with him, where you'd trade off chores. At first, Brendon vehemently protested, saying you were his guest and shouldn’t have to help, which you met with your own claims against being a freeloader. Reluctantly, he started to let you help prepare meals and clean. But grocery shopping... well that was a dual task. It was sickeningly domestic and even more disgustingly, you'd come to enjoy it. It was a sacred time with Brendon, where he was relaxed and sometimes teasing, which you ate up and relished. You enjoyed it so much you didn't even think about how you'd never done this with Robby until you were in the cereal aisle and Brendon put in your honey-nut Cheerios without needing to confirm you wanted them. It dawned on you how strange it felt to be... noticed. That really sucked to realize because of all the people who should pay attention and remember things about you, you'd expect it to have been your boyfriend.

After that, you couldn't help but continue to compare living with Brendon vs Robby. With Robby, everyday tasks were never shared. You'd actually preferred it that way because it felt natural with him and it seemed efficient at the very least. But with Brendon, even if it wasn't your night to cook, you were in the kitchen, keeping him company. Sometimes you two didn't talk; you simply fell into a comfortable silence and rhythm. Of course, you weren't in a relationship with Brendon but it felt so much simpler and lighter than mundane tasks with Robby. You didn't feel like you were constantly trying to please him or gauge how he was reacting to something. No. Brendon was blunt, honest, and didn’t like to play guessing games. It was incredibly refreshing.

At times, you felt guilty for how much you enjoyed staying with Brendon and seeing this unguarded, intimate version of him. The constant comparison between him and Robby didn't help either because no matter what it was, Brendon was always coming out on top. Fuck. This couldn't be healthy. You shouldn't want him, hell, you shouldn't even be thinking of him this way. Shame curled in your chest, sharp and demanding. You needed to get out of his house and fast.

As soon as you could, you opened your laptop to look at apartment listings while Brendon put away the groceries. You were spread out on the couch, pinching the bridge of your nose as you scrolled Zillow. So far, anything remotely in your price range was either in a questionable part of the city or too far from the hospital to be considered a reasonable commute. Park walked into the living room and sat next to your head, peering over you to look at the listings.

"Can't live there, that's where half the GSW victims come from."

Huffing, you complained, "I know, its hopeless to try to find a place on resident salary. I need to look into housing assistance or something."

Brendon hummed in response and you continued your efforts, in vain, to try to find an apartment. Absentmindedly, he started to play with your hair and it felt.... really fucking nice. You weren't sure when the two of you crossed the threshold to such comfortability but his casual touches and attention were more than welcome.

"I can ask my sisters if they know anything about that, they have a lot of connections with relators and landlords because of their business. And not slumlords, local landlords who are the most ideal form of landlord you can get."

You leaned your head back to look at him and said, "that would be really great, thank you so much."

Halfheartedly, you resumed your scrolling and he continued to play with your hair, which was making your heart beat out of your chest. Clearing his throat, he said, "you don't need to keep thanking me for everything."

Sitting up, you turned to face him on the couch. "I'll stop thanking you when you stop giving me reasons to be grateful."

Smirking he shot back, "is that a challenge for me to be an asshole?"

"Well, don't challenge my manners."

The air was charged with tension and now your heart was truly thumping in your chest so hard, you were convinced he could hear it. His beautiful blue eyes were sharp and alert but also two shades darker than normal. He licked his lips and your eyes hungrily tracked the movement. When you locked eyes again, you knew, god, you knew that he caught you.

"Wouldn't dream of it sweetheart."

When did you two get so close? You could practically feel his body heat radiating off of him. Your knees were touching and even that burned. You felt like a teenage girl again, like she was with her crush, alone for the first time. What's worse is that he seemed annoyingly, unfairly calm. He was relaxed into the couch, breathing completely normally. The only indication that he was affected were his eyes, which were now low and lidded.

You brought your hand to cup his jaw, feeling the stubble and savoring its friction against your skin. Your eyes traced his face, taking him in. To your delight, he had the faintest blush on his cheeks and you felt like the cat that got the cream. You felt like you were in a trance, a fog of desire that dictated what you did.

"I never thought I'd see the Shark blush."

Something dangerous flashed in his eyes at your teasing. You felt pretty pleased with yourself, rendering him into a blushing mess. Little did you know, you'd only have the upper hand for about two more seconds. Brendon nuzzled his face into your hand and kissed your wrist, pulling a gasp from you. Then he leaned ever so close to your face, lips brushing along your jaw, so, so, so close yet so achingly far from where you wanted them.

"Yeah? Well lucky you." He had the self-assured tone you'd heard from him so many times but now, it was making your thighs push together. Impatiently, you moved your head to finally capture his lips in a kiss. It started off gentle and exploratory, but soon enough, he had weaved a hand into the nape of your neck, pulling your head back to deepen the kiss with better access. You couldn't help it, you fucking moaned. He devoured the sound; devoured you. He was kissing the life out of you and you fucking loved it.

When you pulled away for some air, he chased your lips. Before he could reach you, you decided to climb into his lap. He groaned as your hips met his and placed his hands on your waist, squeezing you there oh so nicely. Your hands were everywhere, on his shoulders, then his chest, messing up his hair, and then gripping his biceps.

Neither of you knew how much time passed. You were lost in the moment, lost in him -- how he felt, smelled, and touched. You were no stranger to kissing, clearly, but... it was safe to say no one had kissed you like this before. You weren't sure if you could remember your name. The only thing you were sure of was that Brendon Park was taking you apart at the seams and you were only too happy to let him do so.

"Please, please, please..." You could hardly recognize your whiny voice and you weren't even sure what you were begging for.

"What, baby, what?" God, he was so sweet.

"I need you."

"You have me."

"No I need more of you."

At that, he cupped your jaw holding you away from him to look you in the eyes. "Are you sure?"

And because he always gifted you his honesty and bluntness, you knew you needed to return the favor. "I've never been more sure of anything. Yes."

“So what are we going to do when she goes on maternity leave?” Mauricio asked, during the employee meeting, “Because, I can run this place by myself but it is going to be difficult as fuck.”

“Well, I’ll be on leave too.” Brendon said simply, “Chris can handle it.”

“I can handle it, but he’s right. That is only two people in the office and we’ll need another one when you come back.” Chris said simply, “Whale Shark over here is kind of ‘Everything hasn’t gone to hell yet’ person.”

You and Park looked at each other. The two of you had not even considered how long you were going on maternity leave nor when you would be going on maternity leave. You were okay with working until your water broke, but you knew Park was not going to be on board.

“Um, I had not considered that yet.” You admitted, “But you guys are right. We need another CMA up here.”

You felt him tense next to you. You were one of favorite CMA’s, not to toot your own horn. But you knew his next step before the words even left his mouth, it was like you could read his mind . Maybe that’s why he didn’t fight you when you wanted him to come inside you, because he was content spending the rest of his life with his Whale Shark.

“I am sorry, but there will not be one as good as her.” Park argued.

“Park don’t start this.” You warned, reaching for another cookie. Park, without looking, reached for it and handed it to you.

“I am starting this!” He snapped, “I hadn’t even thought about the whole maternity leave thing.”

Suddenly his pager went off and he looked down, “Fuck ER needs me. I’ll be back.” He snapped, kissing your forehead aggressively before stalking out of the conference room.

“We’ll get another CMA trained.” You said, hand on your stomach, “Don’t worry about it.”

Chris and Mauricio nodded, “Thank you.” Chris said with a sigh, “I don’t know how the ER is gonna manage without him.”

“The same way they managed when Dr. Robby left and the same way they managed when Dr. Abbot and his wife got married.” You said simply, taking another bite of your cookie.

“Didn’t they almost burn down the ER during Abbot’s wedding?” Chris asked and you nodded.

“Yea Abbot was mid plowing his wife when his phone rang saying he had to go in because someone caught the microwave on fire.” You said with a laugh, “I worked that night and Jesus it was a shit show.”

“How much you wanna bet there is gonna be blood shed in the ER?” Mauricio said.

“Oh it’s gonna be a massacre.” You said with a laugh, moving to stand up, “Jesus I feel like a whale.”

“Is that why they call you Whale Shark?” Chris joked and you threw a tissue box at him.

“Not funny Chris.” You warned, walking out of the room.

Suddenly, you felt a little bad for the ER staff who had to deal with the wrath of Park the Shark.

———————————————————————————

“I left a meeting for this.” Park snapped as he came into the trauma room, “Talk to me Robinavitch.”

“Patient fractured their tibia via a sports injury.” Robby explained, “It is compound.”

“I have eyes Robby.” Park warned as he looked closer.

“Jesus, okay then.” Robby said with a chuckle, “I’ll step back.”

“Blood in the water.” Ogilvie mumbled.

“Olive Tree don’t even fucking start.” Park snapped, examining it.

“We have cleared chest, abdomen, and pelvis.” Garcia explained and Park nodded.

“Perfect I’ll have one of my CMA’s book an OR.” Park stated with a nod, stepping out into the hallway. He pressed in the button and dialed straight to your phone.

“Go for Whale Shark.” You said, answering the phone.

“Book an OR for me it’s a compound fracture to the tibia right leg please and thank you.” Park said, quietly into the phone.

“I got you.” You said and quickly hung up, booking the OR immediately.

You sighed, thinking about the fact that this was going to probably be a long shift for Park. Thank goodness you had driven yourself to work today since he had to stay here overnight to be on call.

“Did he got called for surgery?” Mauricio asked and you nodded.

“Yea, think I’m gonna stick around till he’s out. I got stuff I can do around here.” You said, “Shouldn’t be that long.”

“You say that like it’s a breeze.” Chris said, “I gotta give it to you, you are handling this pregnancy like a champ.”

“My husband kisses the ground I walk on.” You said with a laugh, “Believe me, I can handle his baby just fine.”

“We are planning a baby shower by the way, I won’t give away the theme.” Mauricio said, “Do you mind if we recruit some helpers from ER?”

“Uhh who? Because the two of you and Garcia are the only ones who know I’m preggo and married.” You explained.

“Whale Shark, why the fuck haven’t you told anyone?” Chris said, “Jesus!”

“Because! How do I say, ‘Oh the doctor I transferred to work under got me pregnant only a couple weeks into working under him then married me a month later’ that is not easy to tell people!” You hissed.

“That is exactly how you told us!’ Mauricio said, “Word for word.”

“But you two were happy! They will not be happy!” You said, putting a hand on your stomach.

“Go tell them while you wait on Park to be out of the OR.” Chris said with a shrug.

“No, not without Park.” You said, “Not to get sappy, but he’s my rock. It is his baby too.”

“Fair point.” Chris said simply.

Soon the work day ended and while you waved goodbye to Chris and Mauricio, you stayed behind deciding to get on and make your baby registry. You logged on using his credentials and scrolled through what you two could possibly be missing.

The reason you said possibly is because Park was so excited when he found out you were pregnant that he made the entire theme of the nursery shark themed.

“Babe, we don’t even know the gender.” You had argued, only two months along as Park started to put together the crib.

“Boys and girls can love sharks!” He swore, “Plus they have to love sharks. I bought them a shark canopy already.”

You had laughed and stepped into the nursery, “They are gonna love whatever you choose.” You whispered, running a hand through his hair.

Park gently pressed his lips against your stomach, “We are so excited to meet you little shark.” He whispered against your stomach.

In that moment, you knew Park was going to be an amazing father.

———————————————————————————

You weren’t sure what time you had fallen asleep, but you had managed to fall asleep on the couch in the office that Park bought not long after you two started dating. He had to buy the couch because after he broke his office chair trying to have sex with you on it, he figured a couch would do better.

“Hey baby girl, wake up.” He whispered, trying to gently wake you, “I thought you’d be home by now.”

“I wanted to wait for you.” You said softly, “We missed you.”

He gently moved your leg and got in between your legs, gently resting his head on your stomach, “Did little shark cause any trouble for you?”

“None at all, actually I am hungry.” You said with a laugh and that’s when he paused, “What?” You asked confused.

“Little girl just kicked.” He whispered against your stomach, “I know she did.”

He guided your hand to where he was and sure enough, you felt the faintest kick.

“Is someone mad because mama laughed?” You cooed softly as Park kissed your bump.

“I think so.” He said with a smile, “Why don’t I order you some Italian for dinner and you can pick it up on your way home?”

“Sounds amazing.” You said with a soft smile as Park helped you up, “But first I wanna stop by the ER.”

“Why?” He asked, clearly confused.

“We never told anyone I was pregnant.” You explained, grabbing your coat.

“Abbot knows.” Park said, grabbing his bag.

“How the fuck does Abbot know?” You asked, confused, “Did you tell him?”

Park opened his mouth then shut it.

Around the time he found out you were pregnant, he had ran into Abbot at the pharmacy who was also picking up a pregnancy test.

“Didn’t your wife just pop out a kid?” Park asked, grabbing a test.

“Our child is a year old.” Abbot warned, “Didn’t your baby mama just transfer to your department?”

“Oh whatever.” Park snapped then paused, “What suggestions do you have?”

“Work with her. You have to be able to meet her weirdness.” Abbot said, “And reassure her. All the time. We were married before we had our little girl and she was terrified I was going to leave her.”

“Thanks man.” Park said with a smile.

The two nodded and parted ways.

“Huh.” You said with a laugh, “I had no idea she was pregnant again.”

“Yep, you two are due around the same time.” Park said, leading you out of the ortho office.

Soon the two of you headed to the elevator, ready to let the Pitt know that Park the Shark was officially a domesticated shark.

———————————————————————————

The two of you soon exited the elevator and Robby immediately spotted the two of you.

“Hey wow that was quick I just paged-.” Robby stopped mid sentence, immediately noticing your bump, “Ohmygodyourpregnant.”

“Surprise…” You said with a small laugh.

Robby just looked at the two of you, “Holy fuck, you’re pregnant.”

“Robinavitch don’t stare.” Park warned, stepping in front of you.

“I just.. wow.. congratulations. I just never thought I would see the day you settled down.” Robby admitted, running a hand over his beard.

“Yea yea, nobody did.” Park said and Dana came over.

“Trauma three now you two!” She barked then froze.

“I’ll be fine.” You promised, squeezing Park’s bicep.

He nodded and kissed your head, “I love you.” He whispered before following Robby to the trauma case.

“Oh sweetheart, you are glowing.” Dana whispered, pulling you into a hug, “What are you having?”

“A little girl.” You said with a smile, “I’ve got four more months until she can officially make her appearance.”

“You are gonna be an amazing mother.” Dana promised, “Got a sec to walk with me? I think everyone will be excited to see that Whale Shark got Park the Great White Shark to settle down.”

Lena was the first one to spot the two of you and she dropped her bags.

“Who’s the daddy?” Lena said with a gasp, covering her mouth.

“Dr. Park.” You said with a smile, hugging Lena.

“Wait you got Shark to settle down?” Lena asked.

“I am Mrs. Park as of five months ago.” You said, flashing your wedding ring, “it is an oval teal sapphire.”

“He did wonderful, that is beautiful.” Dana said with a smile.

“Wait who got married?” Santos asked, spinning in her chair as Dennis came up.

“Meet Mrs. Shark and Baby Shark.” Lena said, turning you around.

“You’re carrying his child?” Dennis asked, mouth open.

“What was sex with him like?” Santos asked, “Because Garcia said-.”

“Alright, that is my cue to interrupt because she is not discussing how we fornicate and none of you should know that.” Park said, arm slipping around your waist.

“I thought Whale Sharks and Great Whites can’t procreate.” Santos scoffed.

“I can ruin your night with a dial of a button Santos.” Park warned, “So I would quit while you are ahead.”

Abbot stopped the two of you, “Congratulations, I can’t wait for our babies to have play dates. I have to go because we have another ortho trauma coming in.” Abbot said quickly.

“Shit okay.” Park said and quickly kissed you, “Be safe, I love you, and text me when you two get home safe.”

“Bye I love you Sharky!” You called out, watching your husband sprint back into the ER.

You looked down at your stomach as you felt a small kick, yet again.

“You are going to be so loved little one.” You whispered, walking out into the parking lot.

Because the future Baby Park was proof that Brendon Park has a heart.

Friends with benefits is only good up to a point. It’s only good when there aren’t feelings involved, when feelings are never involved, but the thing is, is that intimacy like that only holds out against feelings for so long. No one is made of steel—everyone has a heart. 

            Although, maybe not Brendan. 

            “You almost decided on what you’re doing after?” he asks you now, his body half-in a tight black shirt and half-out, his back to you, a sliver of that toned back still showing. 

            “Still debating my options,” you tell him, your hands still pressing the covers to your chest, your body naked underneath them from the filthy yet wonderful acts the two of you have just committed, the evidence still leaking from between your thighs onto his sheets. 

            “But surgery for sure, right?” he replies and you sigh, shrugging even though he can’t see you, that same burning and constricting feeling emerging in your chest. 

            “Yeah, I’m thinking of a paediatric surgery fellowship,” you say as he turns around, those perfect ocean eyes locking onto you, one eyebrow arched as he snorts, shaking his head, his finger-mussed hair so different from the way he normally gels it back. 

            “Why would you want to work with kids?” he asks you, his tone harsh and punishing, the meaning cutting you to the quick, the dismissal. 

            “Because I like them,” you counter and he sighs, shrugging and running a hand through his already mussed hair, the hair you mussed pulling on it as he ate you out just moments ago. 

            “Sounds like hell,” he says and the way you press your lips into a thin line is enough to end the conversation. 

            “Did you apply?” are the first words out of your mother’s mouth as you step out onto the floor of the ED, her blond hair coming loose from the chignon she insists is fine for her hair’s health. 

            “Geez, Ma,” you call out, “you couldn’t even ask me how I’m doing first?” Dana simply narrows her eyes at you, jaw flexing as she bites down on her gum, a particularly hard chew, emphasizing her displeasure at your tone.

            “Did you apply, sugar, or not?” her tone leaves no room for argument as you step deeper into the ED, watching as your friends rush past, a Trauma arriving through the ambulance bay, the noise and hum of the place you’ve been raised in sending a form of calm through you. 

            “I did,” you reply, your sardonic enough to match hers, enough to make her smile at you, the one that only you get, the one of the mother not the nurse. “But I’ve also looked into attending positions open here at PTMC.” You can see your mother’s face fall, just slightly, the way it folds in, in the expression you’ve grown up with, the one you see when she disagrees with your choice, your thoughts but she won’t say anything because you’re growing and to grow means to make your own decisions. 

            “Did anyone say anything to you?” She’s too carefully neutral and that’s when you realize what she’s getting at, what she’s saying—what she’s hinting. 

            “Brendan has nothing to with that, Mom,” you tell her as you reach the nurse’s station, leaning on it on your forearms, right hand straying to fiddle with the bracelet your mom got you when you graduated med school, the one with the handmade charm in the shape of a compass, the back inscribed with however far you go, you are the one who will get you where you need to go. 

            Something she’s told you all your life. 

            “I didn’t say anything, sugar,” she says, but the way her lips curve up just slightly on the edges tell you all you need to know. 

            “Uh-huh,” you reply, rolling your eyes as she lifts her hand, fingers closed around the digital pencil, her hand ruffling your hair like she’s done since you were a kid, small enough to tuck up against her side, curled up in one of the chairs at the station, claiming that the daycare was for kids and you were not a kid. 

            Your daycare was the ED; you grew up on Traumas and broken bones and consults. You grew up on adrenaline and flashing lights. You grew up on codes, knowing the order of them before you knew the alphabet. You grew up with your mother and your Uncle Robby and your Uncle Jack, your sisters ensconced at home with your dad while you snuck behind the pillars to make out with med students. 

            It’s not Brendan that you want to stay for as much as you feel for him, for his sardonic nature and easy cruelty that he never even realizes is cruel. You want to stay for this place, this hospital, your home away from home. It’s the place you had your first kiss—a sloppy make-out with an MS3 that Uncle Jack walked in on and dragged the boy from you, swearing that he’d have the kid’s tongue. It’s where you met your first boyfriend—John Shen, now an attending and your closest friend. 

            It’s where your life began, your mother having gone into labour on the job because she refused to take maternity leave when she should have. It’s where everything started for you and you don’t want to leave, don’t want to travel halfway across the country for a pediatric fellowship, yet at the same time you do.

            You want to leave and grow and change in a place that is your own and not the place where you were molded into the person you are now. 

            You want it and you don’t. 

            And maybe Brendan has a bit more to do with it than you care to admit. Maybe you’d miss him a bit too much. 

            Friends with benefits fucking sucks. 

            “Brendan!” you cry out as your back arches, rising at the same time that he thrusts into you, his hand pressing you down onto the mattress, his hands pulling your hips back until he’s completely sheathed inside, his one hand playing with your clit and folds, stroking and twirling, playing at every sensitive part, his fingers working magic, his knowledge of anatomy making it all the smoother. 

            “Shh, baby,” he whispers as he presses down with his thumb on your clit, a pressure building in your body, the kind that hurts while also heals, the kind that has every part of you burning and writhing underneath him. “I got you, sweetheart. I got you.”

            He pulls back, pulls out completely, dragging the head of his cock along your entrance, between your folds to take the place of his thumb, circling it on your clit, the feeling so good that you moan, your hands fisting in the sheets.

            When he called you, telling you he needed release that it was a hard day at work, you expected it to be rough, for him to be angry and needing the harshness and the quick and the rough edges that both of you have—not this. Not him being gentle and sweet and coaxing you through it, praising you. Assuring you that he’s there, that he’s not leaving. 

            The head of his cock is still circling your clit, and he guides it, pressing it just slightly, just enough that the coil snaps and your orgasm rams through you, just as he enters you again, the flutters of your walls, wrapping around his cock as he thrusts in and out, just once before spilling inside of you as your walls clamp down around him and he groans, eyes closing in bliss, his head tipping back.

            “Jesus!” you hiss as he pulls out, guiding you off your stomach, to sit up before him, your body hyper-sensitive, the Greek god of a man before you having coaxed four orgasms out of you, most with his mouth, that tongue of his that bring people to tears from biting words reducing you to whines and mewls, body burning. 

            “That good, huh?” he asks you, with a smirk, guiding you up and to your feet, pulling your body tight against his, his semen and your release dripping down your thighs in a way that tickles and itches at the same time. 

            “Shut up, Park,” you reply, one side of your mouth curving up into a grin as you push him away, one hand connecting with his solid shoulder, already missing his presence against you, the way his body felt when pushed up against yours. 

            “That’s not what you were saying, like, thirty minutes ago,” he counters, his hand twining around your wrist, pulling you back against him, your breasts pressing against his chest. “You were urging me to make noise, if I remember right,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper as he trails his free hand down the side of your face, your skin lighting up under his touch, the shiver running through your body at his tender touch. 

            “A lot can happen in thirty minutes,” you reply, your lips curving in a sardonic smile, one he kisses off, pressing a quick, open-mouthed kiss against you, his teeth drawing your bottom lip between them, nipping playfully. 

            “I know,” he murmurs, pulling back and placing his forehead against yours, pupil-blown eyes gleaming, “wanna find out just how much?”

            And you say yes, but a twinge in your stomach tells you that something isn’t the same. 

            That maybe nothing will be the same again. 

            “Have you ever wanted kids?” you ask Brendan, leaning back against his counter, your body clad in only his t-shirt, hands twirling a spatula between them as he spins from the fridge, a container of milk in his hand as one eyebrow arches, his hair loose, not slickly gelled back like a Gator Tillman wannabe. 

            “No,” he says, the word abrupt and harsh and stinging even though it was just a question, just…a curiosity. “Told you, kids are little demons. Why the hell would I want my own?”

            “You were a kid once, you dick,” you reply and he glances over his shoulder at you while he pours milk into the bowl, the cookie dough not quite resembling dough. Yet. 

            “That’s how I know if I had one, they’d be a terror,” he says and you roll your eyes at him, shaking your head affectionately while he sets the milk back on the counter and waves his hand, gesturing you over, which you follow, tucking up into his side and pressing a kiss to his cheek. A tender gesture you usually avoid. 

            “Good thing you don’t do relationships then,” you tease him, feeling him stiffen against you before he joins in your slight laughter, the sardonic chuckle. 

            “You’re right, sweetheart.”

            The bile burns in the back of your throat as you race for the bathroom, reaching the toilet in just enough time, your eyes watering and noise stinging as you hurl, coughing, into the porcelain basin. Your eyes are streaming, tears falling from your cheeks into the bowl as you cough and burn, the smell of your own stomach acid permeating everything, sinking into your skin and when you’re done, your body empty, you slump back against the bathroom wall, pressing a hand against your stomach, a small fear creeping into your mind as you take into account that this is the fifth morning you’ve been sick. 

            You might just be pregnant. 

            In front of you sit two things, an acceptance letter for the pediatric surgery fellowship and a white a pink stick with two digital pink lines, six more identical tests sitting in your bathroom garbage. 

            It took six to get the meaning to stick, the idea that you were pregnant to resonate as real and not fake, not some cosmic joke. 

            It took calling your mother, crying that you were stupid, that you messed up and ranting to her about how much of a fuck-up you are for that idea that maybe you didn’t fuck up to stick.

            It took hearing your mother’s soft voice, the encouragement, the facts and the options for you to decide that you don’t want to get rid of it. You want to raise a child like you were raised, with endless opportunity and belief and hope and love. 

            And you don’t want to wait and risk losing that chance. 

            In front of you sit two things, both chances given to you to give you the life you’ve always wanted, the only thing holding you back is Brendan, his part in all of this. Because a part of you wants to tell him, but the other part knows that it wouldn’t go well, that you can’t. You can’t because you don’t want to see how his face twists in anger. 

            You can’t handle that. So, your choice is easy—you make the choice that sets you free, that sets Brendan free. 

            Looks like you’re going to California.

            When Brendan found that you had left, his heart had left him completely. It was like the ground beneath him had cracked and everything had fallen away. He thought things were good, he thought that you liked him—for more than just casual sex. 

            He had thought you understood until that one night that you whispered “good thing you don’t do relationships then” and he realized that you still thought it was FWB, not something real like he did. 

            He had thought that you had noticed the way he started making cookies after sex because you’d once mentioned that you always wanted something sweet after. He thought you had noticed the dinner; the coffees he brought to you on your floor for your break. He thought you had noticed the change in the sex, the way he focused more on you, the way he wanted you and you alone and not for stress relief, simply because he wanted to be close to you, as close as he could get. 

            But apparently, he had thought wrong. Because you were gone—completely and totally absent from his life. 

            And you didn’t even say goodbye, just up and left for California, to the pediatric surgery fellowship. 

            Which was great…he just wished you could have said goodbye. 

            And from then on, life was rote and boring and empty for three long years, the most he would hear of you was the proud bragging of Robby and Abbot when he went for ED consults and they couldn’t not rave about you. 

            Dana remained close-lipped no matter how he pried, no matter how he tried to get any updates about you. She wouldn’t talk. 

            “If she hasn’t reached out then she doesn’t want you knowing. Now go back to your job, Dr. Park.”

            He just hoped, with all his heart that you would come back after the fellowship was done. That you would come back when it was over so he could try and tell you how much he fucked up. How sorry he was. How much he loved you. 

            How he would do anything to have you back. 

            Moving back to Pittsburgh wasn’t really a choice—it was just something you had to do. The pediatric surgeon attending position was open, you needed help looking after your two-year old son and your family was there and, if truth be told, you needed to confront your demons. You needed to be in the same place as your family, the same place you ran from to spare yourself the look in Brendan’s eye when he found out that you were pregnant when he never wanted kids at all.

            Moving back to Pittsburgh was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. You missed your family and you missed the seasons and you missed PTMC, your home away from home. You missed Brendan too. More than you cared to admit. 

            “Look at this little one!” Cassie calls out, striding over to the nurse’s desk, her lips curving up in her characteristic grin as she smiles at your son, bending just a little so her eyes are level with his as he stands on the top of the desk, held up by his grandma’s hands. “How old are you, bud?”

            “Just turned two,” you answer, your lips curved up in that perpetual smile that you have now, the smile that you have at everything your son does, everything he manages to do. He’s the light in your life, the star that guides you back because here is this life that needs you. Needs you not just to give him food and shelter, but love and guidance. He needs all of you and you have to stay to give him that. 

            “You’re gonna miss these years when they’re gone,” she says, straightening up and taking an iPad from the holder, smiling again at your little boy, the smile tinging with sadness as she looks up, her eyes meeting yours. “They go by fast.”

            “That they do,” your mother chimes in, turning back to you, her eyebrows knitting together as she looks at you, her eyes gleaming with sadness and love and loss. “It seems like just yesterday that it was you, I was holdin’ on this desk, missy.”

            “Ah, Ma,” you reply, pressing the heels of your hands against your eyes. “You’re gonna make me cry on my first day.”

            “I’m sorry, sugar,” she says, “but I just miss the times before. You’re my little girl and now…you’re not so little anymore. Now…you’re a mother of your own and I…I’m a little emotional about it, that’s all.”

            “Ma,” you whisper, your voice cracking at the same time your name resounds through the ED, through the walls that have been your home for so long, through the walls where your life began and continues. Your voice resounds in a voice that you had hoped you wouldn’t have to hear again. 

            “Bren,” you breathe out, flicking your eyes up, landing on the man who hasn’t changed, who still wears his hair gelled back like a Gator Tillman wannabe, his face still stern and predatory like the shark he’s nicknamed for, his body still built, large and imposing. He’s still the man who took the word scary and made it a public personality. 

            You wonder if he still melts to soft in private. 

            “You’re back,” he says, the whole ED having fallen silent as he walks to you, every step slow and yet too fast, the world frozen and yet speeding by as your heart tightens in your chest, lungs constricting and burning. 

            “Ma,” you whisper, tearing your eyes from Brendan even when you want to know what will happen if you stay. “Ma, I gotta get Reed to the daycare.” Dana lifts your little boy—a solid two-year old with dark brown hair and ocean blue eyes—pressing a kiss to his chubby cheek and passes him to you, settling him on your hip. 

            “It doesn’t hurt to talk, sweetheart,” she whispers in reply, eyebrows arching in the way that only a mother can have before she turns back to her desk, barking out an order at Whitaker who looks like a startled deer at her voice. And you take off to the elevator, bouncing Reed on your hip while he claps his hands, gurgling happily, murmuring some small words like mama and teddy.

            You tap your foot, impatient for the silver doors to open and let you in, let you run from the man who gave the chance to have a child and yet doesn’t know. 

            You hear him call your name again as the doors slide open and you step in around the crowd of people rushing out, pressing the button for the daycare floor and the button to close the doors, the silver halves sliding to one another as your eyes lock with ocean blue ones, glimmering with hope and love. 

            With knowledge. 

            Brendan knew as soon as he saw you, saw your son that you had been pregnant when you left. Because the boy is old enough to be his and those eyes that he saw in that perfect, chubby face are his, exact. Father to son. His grandfather had them and his dad had them, and if the stories are to be believed, every single man in his family—including his son. 

            He knows you, loves you and he knows that you need time. You need to wrap your head around him being here, being present. 

            Being real. 

            You need to figure out how to tell him and he’s patient. He’s patient because he loves you and he wants whatever you are willing to give him. 

            And as the elevator doors slide closed before him, sealing you and his son away, he’s willing to accept that you just might give him nothing after all. 

            “Reed is my son, isn’t he?” you hear Brendan call out, his voice echoing across the parking lot, reverberating through your body, echoing down your spine. 

            “Yes,” you reply, your voice barely above a whisper, yet carrying all the same through the still night air, broken only by the vague sound of sirens, the night sky polluted by streetlights and skyscrapers and emergency lights, the blue and red flashes strobing across and silhouetting Brendan. 

            He stands not far from you, his backpack over his shoulder, normally pulled back shoulders hunched in, rolled close. 

            You’ve been avoiding him for weeks, arriving early and leaving late, taking your lunches in the daycare or the ED, bringing Reed up on those times to join his grandma and hang out in the place you spent your formative years, molded into a person by adrenaline junkies and jaded, near-suicidal doctors. 

            “Do you want me in his life or no? If it’s no, I’ll never bring this up again,” he says, his steps soundless as he steps closer to you, your heart in your throat, pulsing as you feel the sting of tears in your eyes. 

            “You said you didn’t want kids,” you whisper and his hands reach out and cup your cheeks, Reed’s chubby hands slapping up on his forearm and something in you breaks when you see him take in Reed, his expression melting into one of awe and disbelief, one that says I can’t believe this is real. And then, one warm calloused hand leaves your face to cup Reed’s, his touch reverential and gentle, as if Reed is both the strongest and most breakable thing he’s ever seen. 

            “I said that because I didn’t think I deserved them,” you hear him whisper, the words cracking something open inside of you. The idea that this man, this perfect brutal man didn’t think he deserved a family even when he wanted it, destroys you. 

            Especially because you deprived him of a part of that because you didn’t want to risk telling him and seeing him change. 

            “I didn’t…” you pause, swallowing around the lump in your throat as he looks up at you, his eyes reflecting back the question of can I hold him? and you nod, helping Brendan take his son, watching as his face breaks into a smile as he lifts the boy, laughing just slightly, the sound rich and deep and warm as Reed claps his hands on Brendan’s cheek, gurgling happily. 

            “Thank god, he got your nose, sweetheart,” he says and those are the words that undo you, make you fall apart, the tears that were threatening now falling in earnest down your cheeks, searing the skin as your son giggles, one small hand closing around the point of Brendan’s nose. 

            “He…uh, I guess he thinks so too,” you whisper, your throat thick and voice shaking as your one hand goes to stifle the sob that works its way out of your throat, tearing free as you glance away, glance away from Brendan and the way he rests Reed on his hip, his touch gentle and paternal and perfect. 

            “You okay, Evans?” he asks you and you hear the pause and you know he wanted to say your name but he wasn’t sure if he should, or how he should and you give your head one quick shake before back to him, your arms outstretched for your—his—son.

            “I just need to get home,” you say, your voice still cracking, still broken in a way and breaking more. “It’s way past Reed’s bedtime.”

            “Then let’s get him in his seat,” Bren whispers, his eyes soft and worried as he looks at you, waiting while you open the backdoor, Reed’s back-facing car seat right there. It hurts your heart to see the way Bren carefully lifts Reed into the seat, doing the buckles like he’s been doing them forever, his face soft and open and tender. 

            Like scary has never been a part of his persona at all and he’s only ever been this man before you, this soft and sweet man who tweaks your—his—son on the nose, his lips still in that same awed smile. 

            And your heart breaks even more when Reed says, “dada” the sound a question not a statement, his large ocean eyes tired and innocent yet looking at you beseechingly.

            “Yeah, that’s Dada,” you whisper in reply, watching as Reed’s face brightens and he claps his small, frail hands together, letting out a squeak of excitement. “Bren?”

            “What is it, sweetheart?” he asks you, turning, his face shuttering just slightly, worry and fear seeping in and tainting the image of him always being there with reality—a man afraid of what you will say, of what part in the family you are giving him. What role you will relegate him too. 

            “I didn’t not tell you because…” you pause, coughing, trying to dislodge the block in your throat, the crack in your voice, the tears that stopped some time ago that have now started again. “Because I didn’t want you to know, I…I didn’t t-tell you because…I was…I was scared.” You can feel his hands on your arms, his touch soft and gentle and calming. Just there. 

            “It’s okay, sweetheart,” he whispers, pulling you against him, his one hand smoothing down your hair, the other holding you, palm flat in the middle of your back, his chin on your head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You were under no obligation to tell me…and…I know I didn’t make it easy to believe that I wouldn’t react in anger or…something else. I know, Evans. I know.”

            “But I—” you break off, a sob tearing its way out of your chest again, muffled by him, by his body, his embrace. “I took those early days with Reed away!” He pulls back just enough that you can see him, see his expression, the way his eyes shine with love and pain and hope. 

            “You took nothing from me, sweetheart,” he says, his tone leaving no room for argument, the tone he uses when telling a patient something they can’t ignore. “I am here and will take only what you’re comfortable to give me. If that means I see Reed on week-ends only and I’m not—” here he pauses, swallowing hard and glancing away from you for a second, looking like he’s gathering his composure before continuing, “a part of your life, then I will take that. Whatever you want to give me, Evans because you’re the one driving this boat. You’re in charge—always. I’m just the hopeless idiot in love with you.”

            “You’re not an idiot,” you whisper, a small smile creeping across your tear-stained face, skin drying from the salt tracks. 

            “Then I’m just the one in love with you?” He phrases it like a question, but you know him well enough to know that it’s a statement, that he’s telling you he loves you. 

            “Yeah, I guess so,” you whisper and you watch his arm move, can feel his palm as it presses against your cheek, his thumb moving back and forth across your cheekbone, your skin feeling alive in a way it hasn’t in three years, not since the last time you were with him. “And…I want you in our lives…I just don’t know how, yet.”

            “Take your time, sweetheart,” he whispers, leaning forwards and pressing a kiss against your forehead, one that will linger. “I’m not going anywhere because you don’t have to go it alone anymore.”

            “You need to eat,” calls out Brendan, his voice flat. His work voice, he used to call it, the one he has when at the hospital, when he doesn’t want people to question him, to see him as anything other than Park the Shark. 

            “I’m fine,” you call out, not even lifting your head from the computer where you sit, charting, your watch buzzing against your wrist—texts from your mother, telling you to get your ass down to the ED to have lunch. “I’m heading down to the ED in a couple minutes for my lunch break. I’ll have something to eat with Ma and Reed when I pick him up from the daycare for a bit.”

            “You’ll have something like actual food?” he asks, his body now just in your sight frame, leaning on the table of the nurse’s station where you sit. You have an office; you just don’t like to use it because it makes you inaccessible to patients. 

            “I packed a smoothie,” you tell him, leaning back in your seat, crossing your arms, one eyebrow arching. “Why?”

            “Because, I was wondering, if you wanted to pick up Reed and get lunch with me,” he says, his shark expression faltering, turning to the softer one he has—the one for you, the one for your son. 

            “Yeah,” you say, watching as his expression brightens. “Yeah, I’d love that.”

            “You’re fucking kidding me,” you say, your eyebrows up to your hairline as you look over at Brendan who holds Reed on his hip—Reed whose hair is slicked back just like Brendan’s. “You’ve made our son into a mini you.”

            You look over at Brendan, noticing the way his smile has shifted, brightened and softened, his eyes warm and deep and perfect, reflecting love at you. 

            “What?” you ask him, one hand flying to your face, checking your cheek while you run your tongue over your teeth. “Do I have something on my face?”

            “No, sweetheart,” he says, stepping closer to you, closing the small distance in no time, Reed’s small hands stretching, one landing on Bren’s shoulder and the other clasping around your fingers, “you called him our son.”

            “Because he is, Bren,” you say, stepping closer, your free hand coming to rest on his cheek, his eyes locked on yours, the expression in them so vulnerable that it takes you by surprise for a moment. “He’s our son. And…I was thinking…do you want to give him your last name?” You watch as Bren breaks down for the first time, a strangled noise escaping from his throat as tears slip down his cheeks. Tears you wipe away with one hand, gentle ever so gentle. 

            “Please,” he says when he’s calmed down, when the tears have slowed and he can speak again, his throat no longer strangled. 

            “Reed Flynn Park,” you whisper, delighting in the way that Brendan’s face completely changes with awe and love and hope. “I like the sound of that.”

            “Sweetheart,” Bren calls out and you turn, taking in the sight of him in a plaid overshirt, tight grey tank top underneath and dirt-stained jeans on from the work you two have been doing all day, assembling Reed’s play-structure outside. 

            “What’s wrong? Is Reed okay?” you ask, hands stilling from their task of putting Reed’s toys away, instead helping push you to your feet. 

            “Reed’s fine,” he says, stepping into the room, his eyes steady in a way that you love, have always loved. The Shark steadiness, but the Brendan warmth. “I just have a question.”

            “What is it?” you ask him, tongue darting out to lick your lips, the skin dry from the heat of the summer’s day. It’s been a year of this—of Brendan being present, being a dad, proving that he’s here for Reed, for you. It’s been a year of slowly falling in love. Slowly returning to the man you remember, the man you fell for when you shouldn’t have—yet he fell for you all the same. 

            It’s been a year of waking up in an empty bed, wishing he were there beside you. Wishing the house wasn’t just a home for you and Reed, but you and Reed and Brendan. A family unit. 

            It’s been a year of pining. 

            “You know I love you, right?” he asks and you nod, the movement cautious as your brows knit together. “Well, I loved you even before you left and I’ve fallen even more in love with you this year…this year of raising our son so I was…Well…Will you marry me?” As he speaks, he gets down on one knee in the room of Reed’s playroom, a platinum ring inset with three stones—your birthstone, his and Reed’s. 

            “Yes,” you whisper and then he’s up and sliding the ring on your finger, his hands cupping your face and pulling you to him, pressing an open-mouthed kiss against your lips, one that tastes of passion and hope and love and second chances. One that tastes of family and promises and permanency. One that has the lingering sweetness of raspberries and the sour notes of lemon. 

            Summertime in a kiss; promises in an embrace. 

            And Brendan never goes back on a promise. 

            “ICK! Mama and Daddy, no kiss!” comes the shriek of your son and you pull back from Brendan just slightly woozy as you turn to your son, one eyebrow arching. 

            “Oh no?” you ask him and he shakes his head, violently, his whole little body following on the movement. “While, then we just have to kiss you instead!”

            And in a move so synchronized, you would have thought it was planned, the two of you bend and press kisses against his chubby cheeks, his giggles echoing through the room as Brendan’s hand finds yours, his fingers tangling with yours as if he can’t fathom letting you go for an instant. 

            And in that moment you can hear him, a year ago, telling you “you don’t have to go it alone anymore.” And you realize that you never will go alone again. 

            Because you have Brendan. 

            You have your family. 

Your first morning at PTMC, you don your favorite baby pink scrubs like armor and load all the kids into their respective cars. You’ll take Theo and Felix straight to the hospital’s daycare while Brendon takes the older three to their day camp. You haven’t used the hospital’s child care program before, but it seems silly not to now that you’re both there all day and it’s just one floor up from the Pitt.

In the hall just outside of the rainbow daycare check-in suite, you kneel down in front of Theo and lift up your pinky. “Swear you’ll be nice to the other kids today? Mommy and Daddy are gonna be in this same building all day, so if you aren’t we’re gonna hear about it right away.”

Theo sets his jaw the same way his dad does. He tentatively lifts his pinky, too, and then counters with narrowing eyes, “Ice cweam after.”

You shake your head. “You’ll have to ask daddy; he’s picking you up.”

Next to his big brother, Felix’s eyes water. His lip wobbles. “No mommy?”

Your little mama’s boy. You wrap him up in one more big hug and explain to him, “You’ll see mommy at home, just not the drive there.”

Still skeptical, he nods.

You turn your attention back to your insanely strong-willed four-year-old and offer, “How about if you play nice, eat your snack, take your nap, and learn the name of one new friend, you can stay up late and watch a movie with me and daddy before bed?”

His face absolutely glows. As much of a troublemaker as Theo can be, there’s no bigger reward to him than getting to feel like he’s a big kid. You know he’ll fall asleep long before he’s even a third of the way through whatever ‘boring grown-up stuff’ you and Brendon put on, anyway. He links pinkies with you and then you both lean in to kiss your joined fists. Then he announces, “I’ll be good.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” You kiss the top of his head and smooth his hair before standing up. With Felix on your hip and Theo’s hand in yours, you pull in a steadying deep breath and take them to the check-in desk.

“Good morning, everybody!” Dr. Robby claps his hands together to get the attention of anybody not actively dealing with a patient once you’ve settled into the shift. He announces solemnly, “The prophecy has been fulfilled: A supportive and friendly attending has arrived to deliver you from mean-ass Robinavitch and Al Hashimi. Dr. Park joins us from Allegheny General, which means she’s been taught by some of the best. You’re all lucky to learn from her and I know she’ll be a great addition to our team. Dr. Park, anything you want to say?”

You look out on the sea of faces – some familiar from Trinity’s Instagram or Brendon’s complaints – and put on your best, most teacherly smile. “Like Dr. Robby said, I do pride myself on being supportive and friendly. That means I’ll listen to you, I’ll go out of my way for you, and I’ll stand up for you. It also means I have high standards because support and friendliness are earned. Take those traits for granted and we’re going to have a problem. I don’t tolerate arrogant doctors. Ever. From any specialty. I expect you to have a strong, compassionate bedside manner and I expect you to be respectful to your colleagues. If you can do that, we won’t have any problems. If anybody has questions for me, I’m almost always the one in the cutest scrubs. Let’s have a great first day together!”

It’s easier to hop into the flow of things that you’d expected. Dana, who’s an absolute saint, walks you through the department so you have a lay of the land and points out which faces match the names on your med student list. For the first day, you mainly stick near Dr. Al Hashimi, who you’re immediately obsessed with, and get a sense of how the attendings usually operate. By the second, you’ve introduced yourself face-to-face with everyone on the day shift, sure to memorize their roles and connect with them personally as much as you can. You breeze through running codes, triaging traumas, and making your presence known around the hospital.

By the time you tuck your backpack into your locker on Friday morning, the general opinion has been settled. It’s not like ‘Park’ is a particularly uncommon last name. After all, there are around 100,000 people with the last name in the US, which means there are a thousand in Pittsburgh alone. Hell, there are already three Dr. Parks at PTMC when you transfer over from Allegheny General as a junior attending, so your last name doesn’t raise eyebrows. The idea that you might have any connection at all with Park the Shark is ridiculous, especially considering the way you bounce around with that chipper smile, sparkly stickers on your badge reel, and those special-order pastel-patterned scrubs.

You’re also always ready to take out the pictures of your five children to show off to your coworkers and patients. As far as anyone in the Pitt knows, the Shark doesn’t have any kids. Or a wife. Or any sort of personal life outside of going to the gym and, presumably, glaring at puppies before kicking them. Brendon’s easily the most private person in the hospital and his demeanor doesn’t exactly encourage people to push back on getting to know him. Plus, all his ED consults during your first week come from other doctors, so you never exchange more than a quick half-smile as you rush past one another.

The first time the two of you are put together for a consult, it’s in the early afternoon that Friday right after a conversation you don’t have the pleasure of overhearing.

“New doc says she doesn’t tolerate arrogant doctors,” Langdon murmurs with a menacing little smirk on his lips as he watches you practically skipping across the ED from patient to patient. He’s talking with Ogilvie as Samira listens in while charting. “Maybe we put that theory to the test. Throw her to the sharks, y’know?”

Samira rolls her eyes. “You can be such a douche, Frank. Just let her find her footing.”

He balks and counters, “You mean you really don’t wanna see Dr. Sparkly Stethoscope interact with Park the Shark?”

“No, but I'd love to see Park the Shark hurt your feelings,” she corrects easily, “and find out if the new doctor is willing to do the same. Could be fun for me.”

“Whatever,” Frank scoffs. He looks at Ogilvie and orders, “First broken bone you get, page me, alright?”

Ogilvie, mostly desperate to get some acceptance from one of his bosses, nods and gives a flat smile.

That time comes within the hour, of course. With kids on summer break, they’re all dropping things on their care feet, snapping wrists during cartwheels, and vaulting off bikes. Ogilvie pages Langdon, who immediately pages you.

When your pager goes off, you’re just washing your hands after leaving a flu-stricken baby’s room. You check it, scan your mental map for the right room, and head over to where Langdon and Ogilvie are waiting right outside the door. You can see Samira through the small glass panel, a pleasant smile on her features as she talks to a nervous mother. You give the boys a quick nod and say, “Hey, guys. Go ahead and get me up to speed.”

Langdon gives Ogilvie a ‘go on’ look,’ so he hastily tells you, “Liam Ferrell, eight year old male, presents with a tibial fracture after an accident on the playground at recess. Vitals are normal. He reports some anxiety. We took X-Rays to confirm the break.”

You tilt your head to the side, wheels starting to turn suspiciously. But you figure Ogilvie is just one of those students who needs a little extra support, so you push, “With pediatric cases, make sure to include who’s accompanying the patient.”

“Right, yeah. He’s accompanied by his parents, Jim and Lisa, who met the ambulance here after a teacher called 911.”

“Good. Any relevant medical history?”

“No prior bone injuries, no conditions that would affect bone health.”

One eyebrow ticked up just a bit, you ask them both, “Any areas of the case you’re uncomfortable or not familiar with?”

When Ogilvie shrinks, not sure how to avoid admitting that he’s just following Langdon’s orders to test you, Frank cuts in, “Ah, no, but I called an orthopedic surgery consult just to be certain. Better safe than sorry with pedes, right?”

You eye him carefully. It’s not that he’s done anything wrong, necessarily, but it’s definitely weird. Still, you don’t have any reason for the alarm bells to go up, so you push through the patient’s door with your practiced but genuine smile.

“Hey, buddy,” you say, introducing yourself both to Liam and the parents, “looks like you took a pretty nasty fall. Let me guess: Monkey bars?”

He nods and sniffles, gingerly cradling his arm.

“They’re the usual culprit,” you reply with a sweet laugh that puts everyone at ease. “My oldest had a break just like this when he was your age. Then he got a cast in his favorite color that all his friends signed and thought it was the coolest thing ever.”

Liam asks hopefully, “He’s okay now?”

“He’s the best pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pythons’ little league.” You glance up at his parents, too, and offer as warmly as you can since Langdon’s definitely made them nervous with the whole surgical consult thing, “This is a very common, very low-complication type of fracture. We’ll get you a splint and soft cast today, then, when the swelling goes down in a few days, you’ll get to meet our super awesome pediatric orthopedic specialist upstairs for your hard cast, so your homework is to think about what color you want to get. They’ve got everything. I heard she’ll even do patterns if you’re cool. You’ll be back on the monkey bars in no time.”

The mother, who’s still holding a tissue to her nose and blinking back worried tears, asks, “Will you do the splint yourself? Dr. Langdon says you’re an attending and we’d love for him to have the most senior doctor possible.”

“Of course I will,” you assure. To make sure you don’t freak them out, you tell Liam, “We’re going to have one of our big bad bone surgeons come down to take a look just so our medical student can learn some more first. You get to help teach a doctor; isn’t that cool?”

Liam gives you a wobbly smile and nods.

“Alright, good. I’ll go grab a kit and we’ll be right back.” You look up at Frank, Samira, and Ogilvie with eyes they can already tell hold murder in them. “Team, why don’t you join me?”

They all make eye contact and follow you out obediently, both men looking particularly nervous all of a sudden. The moment the door’s closed, you cross your arms over your chest and hiss, “Why the hell are there two senior residents and a fourth-year student calling an attending and an ortho consult for a greenstick fracture?”

Frank elbows Ogilvie in the ribs and he quickly sputters out, “I just wanted to have an attending check my work before the surgeon came down. The ortho guy can be kind of intense. Don’t really want to be on his bad side again.”

“But why would you call him in the first place?” You’re giving him a meaner look than any of them thought you capable of. No nonsense. “There’s absolutely no indication that this type of injury would require a surgical approach and you’re definitely expected to know that at this stage in your career.”

He stammers, “I, ah, I wasn’t sure about the displacement.”

Dumbfounded to the point of near laughter, you ask, “You can’t read a basic X-Ray? You can see that the alignment’s fine. With your functioning set of eyes.” While Ogilvie’s sputtering to come up with a good explanation, you turn to Samira. “And you, Dr. Mohan? I know for a fact you could splint this in your sleep. During a quick afternoon nap, even.”

She shrugs and admits, “I had a lull. Came in so I could watch you yell at Langdon.” Before you can fulfill her dream by putting Langdon’s head through a wall for disrespecting your position, you see Brendon’s familiar hulking form approaching from the elevators, scanning the ED like a predator on the prowl. You sigh, pinch the bridge of your nose, and tell Mohan, “Your reward is prepping my splint kit. Nothing I’d rather do with a decade of medical training than place an eight-year-old’s splint for his crying mom. Thanks.”

She scurries off to the nearest supply closet as your husband joins you and the two men. It’s not the first time you’ve seen him work – he’s done some consulting with you back at Allegheny – but it’s definitely the first time you’ve seen the famous ‘Park the Shark,’ his eyes already narrowed in annoyance with a stance like the military man he’s often mistaken for. He barely spares you a glance since you’ve agreed not to change the way you act at work with each other.

“Ken doll and gunner, my favorite duo,” he groans immediately. Then he looks you up and down as if he’s being a douchebag coworker, letting his eyes devour your hips and waist until he catches you squirming; you’re never sexier to him than in your scrubs. Voice a bit softer, he greets, “And the ED’s new attending.” Then he yanks the chart from Langdon’s hands, briefly scans it, and moves right along, “What’ve you got for me today?”

“Hi, Dr. Park, I apologize for the bother,” you tell him right away, genuinely not wanting to waste his time when you know he has a full slate of afternoon surgeries already. “We don’t need an ortho consult for this patient; Langdon was a little over-eager in calling you down to help teach Ogilvie.”

Catching your drift, Brendon rolls his shoulders, stares Langdon down, and says, “No worries; I can take a look now that I’m here anyway. Show these two why it’s not needed.”

You gesture at the door, deeply amused because you know he’s about to absolutely eviscerate them, and offer, “Go right ahead, doctor. I appreciate your time.” Since he doesn’t introduce himself on entering the room, you do it for him: “Brendon Park, one of the hospital’s best orthopedic surgeons.”

Brendon takes the X-Ray from the cart and nearly snorts out an annoyed laugh. He cuts a baffled look at Langdon and Ogilvie, who now seem to be cowering in the doorway as they realize their mistake. “A greenstick fracture? Seriously? Yeah, this is non-surgical.” You clear your throat and nod toward the worried family and child. He sighs, smiles, and puts on his best teacher voice to tell Ogilvie, “In a partial break, surgery would only be necessary if there were significant displacement or an open fracture, which you won’t usually see in pediatric cases outside of major traumas. In that case, we may use pins for internal fixation. Does that make sense or do you have any other questions I can answer?”

Cheeks flaming red, Ogilvie nods. “I understand. Thank you, Dr. Park.”

“No problem, kid.” Absolutely glaring since the family can’t see from this angle, he claps a hand on Ogilvie’s shoulder and seethes, “Always happy to teach.” Then he turns to Langdon, who you know he doesn’t particularly care for, and asks, “How about you, pal? I know reading X-Rays isn’t your strong suit; come on over here and I’ll give you the run down. If you don’t mind us taking the teaching moment, Mr. and Mrs. Ferrell.”

Mr. Ferrell gives an enthusiastic nod. “No problem at all; Liam’s interested in all this medical stuff.”

With his eyes trained on his sneakers, Langdon mutters, “That’s alright, Dr. Park, I’m sure that, ah, that one of my attendings can walk me through it later.”

“No, no, I insist.” Brendon puts his hand on Langdon’s mid back and nearly shoves him forward. Mohan just about chokes on her suppressed laughter as she lays out the splint kit for you. Brendon points at the displayed X-Ray – maybe the simplest and most direct partial fracture you’ve ever seen – and explains with a chipper tone, the parents nodding along like this is a real med school lecture,  “This here is the tibia and this one’s the fibula; I know it can be a little confusing when we display them mirrored like this, but we do it so that it’s like the patient is standing in front of us.” He gestures to the bending bone and goes on, including the parents too, “Now, a greenstick fracture is what we call it when a child’s flexible bones break on one side but bend on the other, sort of how a young tree branch would move under pressure. Kind of a clever name, right?”

Frank swallows and replies through gritted teeth, “Yes, Dr. Park.”

“And why do you think we wouldn’t see that in an adult?” He turns back to Ogilvie, eyes made of ice, and presses, “Ogilvie, any ideas?”

Ogilvie mutters pathetically, “Because bones continue to harden as we age.”

“Which means?” He turns back to Langdon and asks, “Frank? Any clue?”

Frank chews the inside of his cheek. “The bones break cleanly instead of bending.”

“That’s exactly right. Good job, guys.” Then he kneels down next to Liam, looking much more like your Brendon with his five perfect babies, even with his surgical cap and scrubs. With a genuinely affirming smile, he meets the kid’s eyes and tells him, “Don’t worry; you definitely just need a cast, bud. Probably only gonna have it six weeks, might be able to get it off before summer break’s over. And I highly recommend fire-engine red; that’s what I got when I broke my ankle a couple years ago.” He throws a wink in your direction and adds, “The ladies love it.”

Liam’s mom smiles and perks up then. “Dr. Park and Dr. Park. Are the two of you married?”

Brendon smiles fondly as Langdon’s and Ogilvie’s eyes widen in true horror. “Yes, ma’am. Love of my life.”

Gazing all lovey-dovey between the two of you, she coos, “How sweet that you get to work at the same hospital.”

“It’s what we’ve been hoping for,” he confirms with a nod. Then he offers Liam a high-five and says, “Don’t let one break scare you off the monkey bars after it’s healed, alright?”

Liam smacks his free hand against your husband’s and replies seriously, “Yes, sir.”

Brendon stands up and nods at the parents. “Cute kid.” He shakes both their hands – firm, professional – and says, “Hopefully this is the last time you’ll see me here in the hospital. Enjoy the rest of your week.”

Liam’s dad gives a truly grateful smile. “Thank you, Dr. Park. It’s great to see such an enthusiastic teacher. Gives me hope for the future of medicine.”

You give Brendon a quick squeeze on the shoulder before sitting on the stool next to Liam’s bed and telling him, “Let’s get this splint taken care of so you can get out of here. Langdon, Ogilvie, how about you accompany Dr. Park out so he can answer any more of your questions?”

They nod like kicked puppies and follow him out, leaving Mohan to assist you with the basic procedure.

Back in the hall, Brendon looks between Langdon and Ogilvie in disbelief. “Alright, what the fuck? You seriously expected me to believe an MS4 and a senior resident don’t understand how to prep an incomplete break on their own? Thought you were a gunner, James; you’re gonna let a boy like Langdon boss you around?”

“No, Dr. Park, it’s-” He flounders for anything to say, not sure who he wants to piss off the least. “We, ah, we thought that maybe-”

Langdon tries to step in on his behalf, “We just like to have a second set of eyes before committing to a call down here.”

“She is your second set of eyes. She’s your attending.” Exasperated, he goes on, “Do I really need to explain hospital chain of command here? Ogilvie calls you as his resident, you call your attending, she makes the call on whether a consult is needed.”

“Well, yeah, I meant-”

Brendon cuts him off right there.“I know what you meant.”

“I’m just trying to make sure our students learn-”

“Learn this, pretty boy,” Brendon spits. None of them notice you slipping out of the patient’s room, leaving Samira to do the discharge paperwork. You listen in from the side as he digs into them, “If you ever try to use me in some stupid-ass scheme to teach another doctor a lesson or whatever the fuck this has been, I’ll be personally requesting that you do all of the paperwork for every single orthopedic emergency that comes through this place.”

Langdon nods sharply. “Got it.”

“You’d better.”

Brendon lets out a harsh sigh and turns on his heel to get back to work.

“She’s his wife?” Ogilvie scoffs under his breath to Langdon, “Glad to see how far you can get sleeping with a million-dollar surgeon.”

Brendon flips around fast, before Langdon can tell him that’s too far.  “What was that, son?”

“Ah, nothing.”

“No, say it again.” The Shark comes back out in front of you and it’s a little diabolical how sexy it is. When he stands up completely straight, blue eyes trained mercilessly on his victim, muscles especially taut with his arms crossed, your husband is nothing short of a hunk. “Go ahead. Don’t be shy on my account.”

Ogilvie whimpers, suddenly praying for the ceiling to collapse above him, “I’m sorry, Dr. Park.”

“Hey, you’ve gotta have your first HR writeup sometime, right?” Then, as Ogilvie curses under his breath, Brendon adds to them both, “And don’t tell anyone about us; if you screw me out of a betting pool that’s going to get up to a thousand bucks by the end, it won’t go well for you.”

You have to practically chase Brendon down with the speed he moves toward the stairs when he’s pissed off. You know he’s going there instead of the elevator because taking a brisk jog up eight floors will calm him down. But you’ve got a better method, so you grab him by the elbow and yank him into the closest supply closet.

Before he can even process, your lips are on his. A pleased grunt slips from his throat as he relaxes into your touch, turning you around to push you against the door because he can’t resist any small moments to dominate. You push up onto your toes so you can deepen the kiss and wrap your arms around the back of his neck. Before his dick can start twitching to life, he pulls back, shakes his head, and grins. “What the hell are you doing, baby?”

“You shouldn’t operate angry.” You press a kiss to the tip of his nose and lilt, “Thought you might need a pick-me-up. Plus, your whole ‘knight in shining armor being mean to my subordinates’ thing really gets me going.”

“Yeah?” Brendon drops his lips to your neck, taking a moment to suck gently open-mouthed kisses over your pulse, not quite hard enough to leave marks but definitely enough to make your clit throb just a bit between your legs. Against your ear, he breathes, “I think I like this whole ‘working at the same hospital’ idea.”

You giggle, “Almost as much as Liam’s mom liked it.”

“They’re a sweet family,” he agrees with a chuckle. Then he grips your ass hard for a second and grumps, “We’ve gotta get back to work, sweetheart.”

You nod reluctantly and kiss the side of his jaw. “What’ve you got next?”

“Simple knee replacement. I’ll be done a few hours before you.”

Waggling your eyebrows, you ask, “Does that mean you’re cooking dinner?”

“We’ve still got those pork chops and chicken thighs my mom brought over; I’ll grill those up, throw on some corn and peppers. How about I pick up some potato salad, too, and maybe swing by that bakery you like? Maybe pick up cupcakes or something to celebrate being done with your first week?”

You lightly smack his chest. “Come on, you don’t have to do all that. It’s just a job.”

“No, no, I’ll get decorations, too. A big banner and streamers, maybe give the kids sparklers, the whole nine yards.”

You roll your eyes and stand on your toes to kiss him. “Get back to work.”

He pouts, “Okay, okay. Killjoy.”

Of course, Brendon was being completely serious.

He only brought it up jokingly to throw you off his scent. By the time you clock out at 5:30, Brendon has his gaggle of children in full prep mode. While Benji sets the table, including a vase of your favorite orange and pink lilies, Margot artfully arranges your gift bag, Nora adds sprinkles to the bakery-ordered cupcakes, Theo ‘decorates’ the house by throwing streamers around, and Felix…Well, Felix is busy sitting on his dad’s back in his carrier while Brendon grills since he’s two. But, if you asked him, he’d say he’s being very helpful by pulling Brendon’s hair to control him like the rat in Ratatouille. Really, he’s the brains behind the entire operation.

Just as Brendon’s pulling the proteins off the grill to rest (he’s mentally complimenting himself for the timing already), Margot fulfills her main job as lookout when she hears the garage door opening. She flings open the screen door to the patio and hisses, “Dad, she’s home!”

Brendon quickly brings the platter of meat inside, sets it on the counter, and then gathers the kids up in the living room, where you’ll walk through in a few moments after kicking off your shoes in the mudroom. Your voice comes through the door before you do, calling out like you always do, “I’m home; where are my beautiful babies?”

As the doorknob turns, Brendon stage-whispers, “Okay, everybody, like we practiced.”

Exhausted and hungry and frustrated with your day, you push through into the living room – and the rest of the world melts away. In one chorus, your family, all in matching pink outfits, sings out, “Happy first Friday, mommy!”

Tears sting at your eyes as they swarm you, all wrapping you up in a huge hug that makes time stop turning so fast for a moment.

“Now just how did your dad get you all dressed up so cute when I can’t even brush your hair for picture day?”

Theo rats immediately: “Candy!”

Your eyes drift up to Brendon’s. “Oh?”

“There may have been sugar-based promises involved,” he admits with an unapologetic shrug. Felix is squirming to get over to you, so Brendon frees him from the carrier and hands him over, stopping to give you a hug during the transfer.

Smooshing your toddler’s cheeks with a big kiss, you step onto your toes to kiss Brendon, too, and say, “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re perfect,” he purrs gently, quiet and tender as he kisses you again. Then he gets louder and instructs, “Now, since you’re coincidentally matching us, how about we take a family picture?”

Brendon knows just how much you love having photos of the little moments of being a family, so he goes out of his way to make them happen. It’s one of your favorite, most precious things about him. Thankfully, your kids are 1) used to it, and 2) not yet in those ‘no pictures of me should ever exist’ stages. So they bunch up around you with Brendon’s assistance, Felix on your hip, Nora holding your hand, Margo planting a kiss on your cheek on her tiptoes, Benji with his head on your shoulder. Brendon sets up his phone camera on a timer, hoists Theo onto his shoulders so he’ll cooperate (being the tallest is his favorite), and stands just to the side of you.

Brendon hollers, “Everyone smile and you can have two cupcakes after dinner!” You roll your eyes but can’t suppress your grin as everyone poses nicely for five solid seconds to make sure Brendon captures a burst of decent pictures. Then he scampers forward, double-checks that the pictures are good, and announces, “Alright, break! Everyone go sit at the table.”

Brendon insists that you sit down at one head of the table instead of helping him get everything ready, so you just get to bask in hanging out with your kids for a few minutes. Meanwhile, Brendon curates platters of chicken and pork chops, corn and peppers, potato salad, and mac and cheese. He’s even picked up your favorite fluffy rolls and whipped butter.

When he sits at the table opposite from you, the kids flanking either side, he gives you a quick wink that makes your heart flutter like it’s your first night seeing him again. You help get everyone’s plate sorted and start to cut up Felix’s food into tiny pieces while Brendon does the same for Theo. While everyone digs in, Brendon clears his throat and says, “Who’s ready for their interrogation?”

The ‘interrogation’ is when you and Brendon make sure the kids actually tell you about their day meaningfully, not just ‘it was fine.’ You’ve been doing it their whole lives, though, so it’s less of a chore and more of a time that they bounce off the walls to get their turn. Benji and Nora had water day at their summer camp while Margot’s theater program had its first on-stage rehearsal. Theo and Felix are both buzzing about their respective crafts from daycare, which you promise to look at after dinner.

When all the kids have gone, you and Brendon tell them all about the hospital, which is usually their highlight because, when both your parents are doctors, hearing about X-Rays and surgeries is cool instead of boring or gross. They especially love the drama between the doctors, which is probably your fault for always binge watching Grey’s during your pregnancies.

“I still can’t believe they call you the Shark, Bren” you giggle as you wipe Felix’s chin with a napkin. You cut him a pointed glance and tease, “That’s so stupid, love.”

Margot tilts her head to the side and asks, “Why do they call you that, dad?”

“Yeah,” Theo scoffs around a full mouth of food, “you’re not scawy like a shark.”

“Swallow before you talk,” Brendon reminds him. Then he answers, a little pouty, “It’s because I’m laser-focused on my work, the way a shark hunts.”

“No,” you correct with a laugh, “it’s because they think you’re gonna bite everyone’s head off. Daddy acts like a big scary Shark at work.”

Felix claps his hands together and proclaims, “Daddy’s Baby Shark!”

“That’s right, bud,” you tell him seriously, “daddy’s just like Baby Shark.”As all three of the boys break into a chorus of doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, Brendon jokingly knocks his forehead on the dining table and wails, “Please, god, not this again.”