"Oh and we've gotta finish that talk we started, don't think I've forgotten about it..." Claire says. How is it possible? She had so much to drink you'd think she'd at least forget the last ten hours, but apparently she remembers. Everything. Then I hear the sound of water running and a couple knocks on the door.
I go open and Neil is right outside.
"What are you doing here?" I ask him.
"I take that as a 'no, I haven't seen your messages'," I take my phone and look at the notifications that I missed, three text messages from Neil.
"Yeah, I still had it silenced, Claire was still sleeping."
"Claire?" and then as if summoned, she gets out of the bathroom a scrunchy in her right hand, head bent down, trying to tame her hair into a bun.
"Why did you say it would be difficult for you and Mel-," my eyes are wide, hers too, her mouth shaped in O of stupor, "Dr. Melendez! What a surprise, I wasn't expecting you here."
"Hi Claire, had a good night?"
"Ah, yes. Yes, we had!" she exclaims, "I... Actually was just asking Jay about... A new friend. We made last night. Uhm, Mel...ian, right Jay?"
"You sure had too much to drink, I think Melian was a Mel...anie. Anyway, Neil you were saying?" I try to make the quickest subject change possible.
"I was just passing by to see if you could switch our physiotherapy session from this evening to... Well, now. We'll have a big surgery later this afternoon," he inclines his head a little toward Claire, "Have you heard about the football player coming in for surgery today?"
"No, I haven't. Can we still watch the surgery even if we're not actually on duty today? I think I'm okay, despite everything I poured into my system last night," Claire says with a confident face, "the headache will go away in a matter of minutes."
"Yeah, sure. I'll tell Dr. Andrews. What about the physio?" Neil asks turning back to me.
"Yeah, yeah we can do that now. No problem. But first... Breakfast. I made waffles."
"I think I'll be on my way..."
"Oh no, you're not going anywhere. You need to eat something and I made a ton of these. Neil, you too," I tell them. I had already laid the table, and adding one more seat doesn't take me too long. Neil pulls back the chair and sits down a little far away from the table, Claire, on the other hand, sits down and rests her head upon her hands.
"Thank you for the aspirin. Next time take the glasses away from me though, will you?"
"You needed to shut off the negative thoughts, you pulled that off," I tell her, while taking the waffles and fresh fruit to the table.
"Ah this looks good and I'm starving, you're the best. I love you, can I move here?"
I start laughing so loud and deep that I my belly aches and I need to put my hands over it, "you'd regret that in a matter of months, I'm afraid!"
"Oh right, I hadn't thought about it. Well, can I move here when the baby stops crying at night?"
"We shall see about that," I say still chuckling in between the words.
Then I sit down and we start eating. It's not the most comfortable breakfast ever, I'll admit that, but making Claire leave like that wasn't an option, and at the same time turning down Neil's suggestion wasn't an option either.
I'm about to bite into my second waffle when Neil asks, "did you sleep well?"
"Hope that's ironic," I say, Claire starts looking at us like she were looking at a tennis match.
"Absolutely not."
"Well, considering I went peeing nine times total I'd say I still got a decent amount of... relax-time."
"Glad to hear that."
"And what about you? Did you sleep well?"
"Considering I analysed twenty eight different scenarios of what happened yesterday when I could have done twenty more... I'd say I got more sleep than you did."
"You did what?" Claire asks.
"I did what I told you not to do. When you'll be mentoring residents you'll see what that means," Neil says with a tired note in his voice. He's still hurting and not being able to find an explaination is probably driving him crazy.
"Okay okay, let's just eat now, shall we?" I say in order to cut short what I was sure could become an argument of sorts. What I don't realize is that I've just left clear space for Claire to ask questions, "So Dr. Melendez how is your patient doing? How's her arm?"
"I'm not her doctor anymore, Browne. I thought you knew," Neil says looking at her. Claire glances innocently at me. She did know.
"Ah! No, I don't think you told me that, and may I ask... why is that? You were the one performing all of the surgeries, no one knows her situation better than you do."
"Well, it's... complicated. You should know enough about transference though."
"Ah, I see," she says raising her brows, "trying to build real fee-"
"Dr. Browne now that I think about it, you should assist Dr. Andrews today," Neil interjects before she can finish her sentence, "I'm expecting you to show up at the hospital in three hours."
Claire has a witty-tight smile on her face, she takes a last bite of food, gets up from the chair, takes her coat and makes her way toward the door. I follow after her, and open the front door for her, then she takes my sleeve and pulls me outside to talk.
"I'm sorry about the Melian-Melanie thing, but I'm definitely not sorry about that," and she points her index finger towards where Neil is sitting on the other end of the door, "he got flustered, Jayjay! It's so obvious he likes you that it hurts me to see that none of you is doing anything about it," she whispers vehemently, "do you like him?"
"These are most definitely not questions to answer this early in the morning."
"Oh c'mon, just be honest with yourself for a second."
I look at her for a brief second, my mum's and Kelsey's words ringing in my ears. Be happy.
"Yeah, I do like him, Claire, I mean... how could I not honestly?" I can feel my cheeks turning red, little by little, but I'm already into it, so I just pour everything out, "He's been caring for me, he's always there if I need something, he's charismatic, sarcastic, he's big-hearted and yes, he's gorgeous," I add, seeing her witty smile back, "but as I was trying to tell you last night...it's complicated. He's got stuff on his mind, his work is everything to him, I've got issues myself, my last relationship has been rather problematic and it didn't end exactly well, I got better at trusting him being around my house, but the first time he spent some time here... I panicked, Claire." I admit, my throat getting tighter at the first sign of emotions welling up, "and don't forget... that I'm about to have a baby."
Claire looks at me apologetically, her lips twisted, "I'm sorry I shouldn't have pried into this. You'll both figure something out tho, I'm sure of that. It'll take longer then I'd like to... but yeah. I have a good feeling about it."
Then she steps away, towards the stairs heading down, "oh and if there's one thing I'm pretty sure I know though is that he...wouldn't mind about the baby."
"And how are you so sure about that?"
"He was engaged once, but she didn't want kids... it didn't last long when he found out, although rumor has it she was the one to break it off."
That's new, I think. Claire says goodbye and leaves.
I open the door to my apartment, get in and close it behind me. For a second I lean into it and I think about everything I just said to Claire: I like Neil. I like how he treats me, I like the idea of having him around, even though it took me some time to get adjusted to. But this kind of feeling has to be requieted in order to mean something. Neil got flustered and interrupted Claire right when she started implying something: did he do that to save his face? Or to spare me the embarrassment of the moment?
"So was it Melian or Melanie?"
"What?"
"Your new friend Claire was talking about," Neil is leaning on the wall, at the corner between the entrance little corridor and the living room, he's looking attentively at me, with burning eyes.
I feel exposed. Naked. Vulnerable.
"Melanie," I say while my heart goes about a hundred thousand miles per hour, "definitely Melanie."