#anywaaays

Suddenly she sees someone standing right in-front of her, but not saying anything, so she makes herself look up, make eye contact even though she doesn’t want to, except, once she looks at him, at those eyes. she finds herself not wanting to look away. except, years of social cues conditioning kick in and she speaks,

“can i help you with something?” she hasn’t looked away from his face. she knows she’s staring but, this guys is objectively very good looking, that’s just a fact, she’s just observing a fact.

and then he asks to sit with her, she says yes, and they begin studying together. it’s nice, she thinks, he is a little fidgety but she’s used to it, really. becca and her both fidget sometimes so it’s not like it bothers her, and she tells him this when she notices him trying to stop himself. the look he gives her at that is one that she can’t quite understand, but does make her feel warm inside (later she will learn, that that look was awe, and that it will become a look frank sports very often when he’s around her)

he asks for her phone number, he wants to do this again. and she agrees, because she wants to make friends, and he’s been here a couple of years, and he wants to be a doctor too, so they should be friends. she’s excited about this.

very shortly, faster than she realized, and truly faster than she’s ever really thought, they become mel and frank. a package deal. he has his friends, and she also has her friends now, but they always seem to be around each other, including each other on their plans, and planning to be around each other.

mel isn’t dumb. mel knows what the feelings she’s been developing mean. and she also knows, because of the way she observes social cues. that the way frank is with her, he really isn’t with anyone else. he seeks her, he looks at her, and he always, always considers her. mel doesn’t know if he knows this, but he everytime he’s there, she feels…calm. comfortable. safe. which she does realize is crazy to say about someone you’ve known for two months, but it’s the truth.

they’re at frank’s place watching a movie one day when she decides that the best way to go about this, is simply to ask frank if her feelings are mutual. this is frank, so even if they aren’t, he won’t be weird about it. and it wont ruin their friendship.

and instead, before she can say anything, he asks her on a date. she’s been on two first dates before, neither of them were great, but also, neither of them were with frank.

being with him, is like, baking bread, she thinks almost deliriously. but baking bread has always calmed her down, she likes the process of mixing, kneading, rising, shaping, rising again, and then baking. it’s a process she uses to calm herself down, because she knows that no mater the variables, the will always like the result, and she thinks that no matter the variables in her relationship with frank, she will always like the result.

he is a gentleman through the whole thing, and really, this isn’t news to her, he’s always a gentleman. and every time she pointed this out to him, he just sort of shrugged and said something along the lines of “just for you”

he kisses her at the end of the night, he asks first, which she is really appreciative of, and when their lips meet she feels simultaneously like the floor slips out of her feet and like she is floating in the air. she decides that this is the best kiss she’s had in her life, and she also decides that she wants to do this, again, and again.

and they do, they go on more dates, they kiss, they study, they learn each other’s bodies, and they enjoy each other’s gasps. she had sex before she knew him, but she doesn’t think she ever made love until she was in bed with frank and they were looking into each other’s eyes and smiling.

they date for two years, which mel is very tempted to say were probably the best two years of her life.

and then reality comes crashing down, he’s going to med school in a different state, and that’s okay, they both have plans, and they might be similar, but they’re not the same, not yet anyway.

Their last might together was full of tears, and passion, and promises that they both knew were meant to be broken. After hours of memorizing each other’s bodies for one last time, they laid together and mel knew this was probably going to be the last time, ever, that he held her like this, so she was trying to keep herself awake. she wanted to memorize every point in their body that was touching, the curve of his ribs every time he inhaled, the tickle of his chest hair against her fingers. She knew she seemed asleep, and really, she almost was, her breathing regulated and her ability to keep still helped her unintentionally trick frank into thinking she was asleep, and really, she thought he was asleep too, until she felt him move his hand to her head.

she didn’t move, used to his touch and more into the sleeping world than here, she felt him take a really deep breath,

“you’re it for me, melissa king” a pause, and another deep breath. “i don’t know how, i don’t know when, but i will find you, and we will be together again, i’m never going to love anyone the way i love you” she could hear in his voice how the last sentence was said with tears in his eyes.

she didn’t react. she felt tears fill her eyes, but she didn’t react because she didn’t want to call him a liar. objectively, she knew he wasn’t lying, but she also knew that the possibilities of that happening were very low, so she took this moment, and put it in a delicate little box inside her heart. choosing to hold on to it, giving her hope in her darkest days, that maybe somehow, someday, they would meet again.

The next day, she forces herself to ask him to wait to be friends. She doesn’t want to. But it’s the best way for both of them to focus on what they want to do with their lives, she thinks, isn’t that the point of why this is happening?

She applies to med schools close to home, she thinks about him. She finishes undergrad, she thinks about him. She goes to med school in her home state to be near her family, she thinks about him.

And then her parents die. A car crash, both of her parents were DOA, and so was the drunk driver that hit them. And then she needs to deal with legal procedures, and become becca’s guardian, and the lawyers ask her if she’s sure because she’s on her first year of med school and this is going to be a lot, and she says yes, because this is her sister. And so she ends up not thinking about frank for a couple of years. too busy trying to survive with the weight of the world on her shoulders. but it’s a weight she bears gladly every time she gets to see her sister smile.

when she decided to move to pittsburgh, she knew, logically, that there was a high chance frank was still living there, he moved there to be with his mom, so there’s no reason for him to have moved away still. but pittsburgh is big, and it’s a city, and yeah he wanted to be a doctor, but there’s dozens of hospitals in pittsburgh, and it’s not like she doesn’t want to see him.

she knows, ever since the idea of moving to pittsburgh, and finding this facility for becca, a part of her, (the part that was under lock and key in that delicate box inside her heart), hoped that she might see frank again, she didn’t have any expectations, not really, because people change and life moves fast and she just thinks that maybe it would be nice to see him, even if in passing, even if only through the distance.

And now it’s her first day at PTMC, and she’s excited, she knows that this is where she will spend many years because that’s the plan, and because neither becca nor she like change, and the move was enough change for at least 6 years. She meets dr. robby, who is nice, if a little hard to interpret because mel can tell that his words have a lot of meaning behind them, she just will need to learn what it is.

she needs some help with a patient, and she’s walking towards dr. robby but then she sees him. him. frank. her frank. out of all the hospitals that are in this city. what were the odds for them to be in the same one. she stops walking. allows herself a moment for the feelings to flow, she’s learned is better to do that, just, gives herself a second. she can see years of longing and memories playing in her minds eye, and then she just. puts a pin on it. counts to 10, recites the three most common causes of infection and then approaches them.

she never really got quite used to how blue his eyes were, and being in the middle of an er with all this bright lights isn’t doing her any favours. she hasn’t been able to look away from his face, well she has, obviously, she’s working! but every time she has to look at him, all she can look at is his face. they’re working on the case, so they haven’t really acknowledged…anything, is there anything to acknowledge?

and just as she’s about to make a comment about the percentage of odds to be working in the same hospital, she sees it. and she didn’t mean to, really, wasn’t looking for it. but when he handed her the ipad back with his left hand for the first time in the day she saw it. a wedding band. a gold wedding band god they had talked about using golden wedding bands

she can tell that he noticed her eyes lingering on it, he always noticed things like that. she avoids eye contact and luckily is called away by dr. robby.