It's Only Temporary

Chapter 29: Someone You Love

Penny covered her mouth with her hand to suppress her laugh. She flicked his fingers away from her face, and David's hand hovered in mid-air for half a second, hesitating.

Then he dropped his arm and stuffed both of his hands into the pockets of his robe.

"That's not funny," she said, after she'd regained her composure.

"It's a little bit funny." His expression had gone serious for a moment, but now one corner of his mouth curled upward yet again.

Penny didn't look up at him, unwilling to see the smirk she knew he had plastered on his face. That smirk of his that made the lines deepen on one side of his mouth. She'd never touched them - those little lines by his mouth. She'd never run her fingertips across them and to smooth them away. She felt herself start to flush all over again at the thought.

He was standing so close.

This was not how this conversation was supposed to go.

She took a half-step backward.

"It's not about the sweatshirt," she said, but then she stopped herself. She looked up at his face in surprise as a different thought struck her. "Wait. You know I went to Princeton?"

"Sure," he shrugged.

"I never told you that."

"Didn't you?"

"No. Definitely not." He didn't even know she'd gone to college, as far as she was aware. She was just the lowly office temp.

He looked at her uncertainly. "So... you didn't go to Princeton?"

"No. I did. I just didn't think you knew that."

"I know things." He shrugged again. "Princeton. Biology. Why biology, by the way?"

"Pre-med."

"Oh," he nodded, looking at her thoughtfully for a moment. "Dr. Penny... I could see that." He nodded again, more decisively this time. "That's actually kind of perfect for you, isn't it?"

She snorted.

"So what happened to pre-med?"

She rolled her eyes. "You know everything about me, huh?"

"Well, not everything." His voice gave way to exasperation. "How should I know? What? You couldn't get in?"

"You don't know anything about me, David."

He groaned and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, struggling not to lose his patience. At least he'd finally stopped smirking, Penny saw with satisfaction.

"OK, Penny. I'm sorry." He spoke slowly now, carefully enunciating each word. She knew that tone of voice all too well. The calm before the storm. The way he always spoke when he was inches away from losing his temper. "I apologize. I don't know why you dropped pre-med. Why don't you tell me-"

"Oh, I'll tell you," she interrupted, jabbing a finger toward him as her voice rose above his. "You want to know why?"

"I'm all ears."

"You," she said.

"Me, what?"

She pointed at him again, making contact this time with his breastbone. "You are the reason. You. I was supposed to start two years ago. I was all set. Admitted to Yale. I was only supposed to temp for you for that first summer. And then you, Mr. Powers-" She poked him again, hard enough to make him take a step backward. "You went and got yourself shot."

His mouth dropped opened, rendered momentarily speechless. She took his silence as an opening to continue, her voice rising even higher as she spoke. "So I gave up medical school. I gave up a spot at Yale with a scholarship-"

"I never asked you to do that," he said quietly.

"-I did it for you, David! To take care of you!"

"I never asked you to do that!" he said again, raising his voice now to match her tone.

"What was I supposed to do?" she shouted back. "Was I just supposed to leave you there? Should I have just, like, tiptoed over and slipped my resignation letter in your pocket while you were lying face down in a pool of blood?"

He flinched at her words. Unconsciously, he lifted his hand to cover the spot where the bullet had passed through him on the right side of his chest. He stumbled backward and sat down heavily in the chair behind him.

She'd gone too far. She'd spoken in anger, but she regretted it instantly when she saw the way his face had just gone slack before her eyes. "Are you OK?"

He was looking down at the ground now, resting his forehead against one hand.

"David, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"

"Is that really true?" he said softly to the ground. "Really? You didn't go to med school because of-because of what happened to me?"

"I deferred. I-"

"What the hell is the matter with you?" He lifted his head and met her eyes with a look of total disbelief. "Seriously, Penny-"

"You needed someone!" she argued.

"That wasn't your problem."

"You didn't have anyone else."

"That wasn't your problem either."

Penny blinked. She didn't know how to respond. She moved to the other side of the coffee table and sat back down on the couch across from him.

It wasn't the reply she'd been expecting. She'd expected him to feel guilty. At least a little bit guilty. She'd expected him to apologize. Not just look at her like that - like she must have gone temporarily insane to make the choice she'd made.

Was it really that impossible for him to comprehend? Was it crazy, what she'd done? Her friends had been telling her so all along - especially Lauren. How many times had she had this exact conversation with Lauren?

"You know I had to defer."

And Lauren would only roll her eyes and make air quotes with her hands. "Oh right, Penny. You 'had' to."

Penny had always dismissed it. Lauren didn't understand. Not really. No one could understand - no one could really understand that she'd had no choice. The idea of leaving him then had never even crossed her mind. Incomprehensible, when she thought back to the way he'd looked in the hospital, all hooked up to tubes and monitors. So fragile. So frightened. But the only one who could possibly have understood that was him - David himself. He knew how it was. He knew how much he'd needed her.

At least, she thought he did.

But if even he didn't get it, then that meant-had she been wrong? Should she have gone to Yale? Was Lauren right the whole time? Penny felt sick to her stomach at the thought.

"Really?" she said, looking at him across the coffee table. "You would have left? If you'd been in my place, you would've just gone to medical school? Even if it was someone you care about? Even if it was someone you-"

She could feel the words bubbling up inside her, trying to escape. The words that came next. The words she'd said to herself a million times before, but she'd never dared to say out loud. She could almost taste them now as they sat there on the tip of her tongue, echoing inside head, waiting to be spoken:

Even if it was someone you love?

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