Fic: A Guy, A Girl, and a Proposal (Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, Berg/Irene, PG13)
Title: A Guy, A Girl, and a Proposal
Author: alyse
Fandom: Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place
Pairing: Berg/Irene
Rating: PG13
Warnings/Spoilers: No warnings. Set post series
Genres: Established relationship
Word Count: 3,400
Status: Complete, one shot
Disclaimer: Two Guys and a Girl belongs to Fox Television, so of course they had to cancel it. I haven't forgiven them for Space: Above and Beyond yet. This is a not for profit fanfiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: Thanks to
aithine for beta reading duties. Any mistakes remaining are my own. Written for my kissbingo card square 'emotion: love', and also for
catwalksalone, who enables me unashamedly when it comes to all things Berg and Irene.
I saved posting it until today for beren_writes' ♥ Wedding Wednesday ♥.
Summary: Dr Bergen had to come and droop all over Dolores's desk with his sad sighs and puppy dog eyes, didn't he?
-o-
In Dolores's opinion, residents only existed to get under her damned feet. They varied, of course, from the incompetent to the annoying, and sometimes even to the incompetent and annoying, but while they may have been a necessary inconvenience - like death and taxes - they were still a damned inconvenience. Sure, one day a couple of them might grow up into something resembling decent doctors, but while they were residents, they were pretty much like unruly chicks, all clucking nonsense and flapping, ruffled feathers, leaving her with the urge to fetch the stuffing and make some gravy.
Dr Bergen was no better than most of the others - taller maybe, and she reckoned that his mother would have been better off not feeding him so damned much before he reached his current gigantic proportions - but he still thought that his drama was the most important thing ever.
It wasn't, and he'd worked enough nights in ER by now to have figured that one out. What the hell was one more night in the grand scheme of things? It wasn't like Dolores didn't have her own life to lead. She was no fonder of the idea of having to work extra shifts than he was; she had her grandbabies to be spoiling now that their no-good mother had finally decided to move back into town and fleece Dolores's son some more. But Dolores, at least, wasn't bitching to Dr Heitmann about it, which was pointless anyway - it wasn't like Dr Heitmann had any more patience with the residents than Dolores herself.
Heitmann had been around the block a time or two, and pulled more than one double or maybe even triple in her time, Dolores would be bound. She'd walked the walk as well as talked the talk, and no matter what Bergen thought about it, his life was no more important than anyone else's.
Of course, once Heitmann had finished chewing him out - Bergen seeming smaller and smaller the longer that Heitmann ranted, until it looked like Bergen had finally accepted that life wasn't fair - he had to come and droop all over Dolores's desk with his sad sighs and puppy dog eyes, didn't he?
She had no damned patience with any of them, Bergen least of all, but he was leaning all over her paperwork.
"Something I can help you with, Dr Bergen?" Her tone definitely did not invite him to open up to her. It was all 'hurry your fool self up and get out of my hair', but - not for the first time when it came to dealing with the nurses - Bergen missed the tone in her voice and actually thought she was interested in what he had to say.
"I have to work tonight," he said, pouting like he was still twelve, which was pretty much the age that most of the residents were by Dolores's reckoning, emotionally speaking at least.
"You and me both," she answered briskly, and, no, that wasn't an invitation for him to open up either. "That's what happens when half the shift is out with norovirus, Dr Bergen. You should know that as well as anyone."
He was still drooping, looking like someone had kicked his puppy, or - and vague memories of half-ignored chatter slowly surfaced - drowned one of his cats. She tugged the paperwork out from under his elbow with a scowl and waited for him to go the hell away.
But that was her in a nutshell. Dolores Jackson - always praying to the patron saint of lost causes and forlorn hopes, even though she never got a damned answer that she liked.
"Yes, but tonight's important," he said plaintively, not budging an inch. Wasn't that just like a resident? Everything they did was so damned important, like it wasn't the nurses that kept the hospital - and the ER - running.
She gave him a disapproving look; it was wasted on him, of course. Boy had a thick skin on him, sometimes, almost like he couldn't get his fool head around the idea that someone was immune to his charm. But Dolores was not one of her young nurses; she had no use for baby doctors and she wasn't about to get her head turned by any of them, even one as allegedly cute as Dr Michael Bergen. Not that he'd been bothering any of her nurses recently. Got himself a girlfriend, or some such, from what he said in the past on one of those rare occasions when not even Dolores could tune him out.
(She didn't listen to much of what the residents said, but the boy had brought in some tasty muffins a time or two. He'd said his girlfriend was 'a good little cook'. That had been one time Dolores's disapproving look got through to him, because he'd backed up a little, like he was a little (and justifiably, even if Dolores said so herself) afraid of her. It had been almost funny, the way he'd ended up explaining that he'd just meant that his girlfriend was both a good cook and also - holding his hand at about chest height on him, which was around the height of Dolores's neck - really little.)
He was still not budging, wilting and sighing like the world was ending around his ears. She huffed out an impatient breath, but she'd raised two boys into good, solid men, and not just by being the momma who still scared the britches off them. Discipline was all well and good, but sometimes you just had to give them their five minutes of bitching so that you could tell them what idiots they were being and then just move on past it.
She slammed her paperwork down on the counter with a heartfelt sigh of her own.
"Now, what about tonight is so important, Dr Bergen, that you got to keep me from my work?"
"I was going to ask Irene to marry me."
Oh. That put a slightly different spin on things she supposed, but only slightly.
"I had it all planned out," he continued mournfully. "I told her to put on her best dress, the gold one I bought, not the pink one with all the -" His hands made these little fluttering motions. "- frills, and, God, are there frills on that thing. I even cooked." He hesitated, and then added, apparently more honestly, "Well, I got Sharon to cook, but it was all ready for me to heat up."
Whatever brief moment of sympathy she had for him was fading rapidly.
"Okay, let's pretend that I actually give a damn for a moment and I'll ask you a question. You said you planned this, so you didn't wake up this morning and just figure this was a good idea, right? You obviously wanted to marry her yesterday - you think you'll still want to marry her tomorrow?"
He nodded rapidly in succession, one for each quick-fire question she shot in his direction all the while looking at her like maybe she knew all of the answers and was just going to hand them on over.
"Then, what the hell is the problem, boy? Ask her tomorrow."
Normally she didn't take that tone with the doctors, not even with the most annoying of the residents, but Bergen was a special case, not least because he was starting to get on her last nerve.
"It's our anniversary," he said dolefully
Of course it was. It couldn't have been simple or something he could have done any other day of the damned week; it had to be all drama, drama, drama. She pinched the bridge of her nose and hoped that the incipient headache she could feel building was his fault, and that it would go away when he did.
"You been going out a year?" she asked, summoning up unheard of levels of patience, but very little sympathy. "Because if she's put up with your ass for that long, I'm sure she'll understand."
"I asked her to marry me a year ago," he said, and it was clear that she was going to get the whole story, whether she wanted it or not. "Okay, so we thought she might be pregnant at the time..." The whole damned story, with more detail than she'd ever want or need. "Because of those faulty glow-in-the-dark condoms..." Considerably more detail. "Still, I asked her to marry me, only she said that we'd only just got back together, even though I'd been... okay, begging her to take me back for weeks. I'm not too proud to admit it. And, yeah, sure she'd just broken up with Roger, although why the hell she was dating Roger... I mean -" He made a pffting sound. "Seriously? Anyone with half a brain could see that he was just the rebound guy she was using to make me jealous, no matter what Irene had to say about it, or the fact that he thought she actually -"
"Is there a point to this story, Dr Bergen? And, if so, will you be getting to it any time soon? Just in case you're wondering..." She stabbed her finger in his direction, stopping him so firmly in his tracks that he was left staring at her, open-mouthed. "The answer to both of those questions had damned well better be 'yes'."
"I asked her to marry me anyway but she said it was too soon and she needed to learn to trust me after the whole Katie thing and I should ask her again in a year." It came out in a rush, like it was all one long-ass word, and she could practically hear the hyphens in his voice. "That's today," he added, as though Dolores was too damned stupid to work it out herself.
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him over the station's counter. "If it's so damned important to you that you do it today, call the girl and propose over your damned cell. Now get out of my hair and let me do my paperwork!"
-o-
One of the downsides of pulling a double shift - and it had nothing to do with Dolores's age, thank you very much - was the fact that by the end of the first shift, your damned feet were aching, and it didn't get any better as you moved into the second. So, soon as it got quiet enough, she took a well-earned break behind the nurses' station and rested her weary feet. Of course, as was the way of the world, she'd only just sat her ass down when this tiny little girl in a very swishy dress rushed in, all giddy nervousness and bright eyes, clutching a basket like she was Little Red Riding Hood or something.
Dolores's first thought was that the girl was on some kind of drug, and the torrent of words that just rushed out as soon as the girl opened her mouth - most of it going straight over Dolores's head with a whoosh - didn't do anything to disabuse her of the notion.
Except, somewhere in that word-soup she made out one word that chilled her, somewhere down deep in the dark, shrivelled core of her soul.
"Honey, slow down," she said, because whether she'd heard that word or not, she still had to be damned professional about it. "Did you just say 'Berg'? As in... Dr Michael Bergen?"
"Yes!" The slip of a thing waved her hands excitedly again, her face glowing and her voice stuttering out, fast as she was talking. "I need to talk to him. It's kind of, you know..." She waved her hands again, fingers jittering around like she was trying to conduct a damned concerto or something. "Important. Could you tell me where he is, please?"
Dolores rose to her feet, taking in the red hair, the gold dress, the wicker picnic basket and, most telling of all, the fact that this child only came up to her neck. "Let me guess," she said, slowly and ponderously. "You're Irene?"
"Yes!" Irene's face lit up until the girl was practically glowing with it. "Berg's mentioned me, then? He sometimes doesn't." She leaned in conspiratorially and, in spite of her better instincts, Dolores leaned to meet her half-way. "I think sometimes I embarrass him. Just a little." And then she gave this little nervous laugh, one that didn't so much sound like the tinkling of bells as the tinkling of broken glass. "He tells me not to be silly, of course, and all of our friends know we're sleeping together now, although we kept it quiet at first because it was just meaningless sex, not like we were actually a couple. Of course, we're a couple now, and he's even introduced me to his mother, and told Pete. And my cats like him, which is the most important thing, and he sort of likes them, even when they try sleeping on his head."
Damn. Strange as it might seem, Dolores was beginning to feel something approaching sympathy for Bergen, although there was that mean little voice in her head that also thought Bergen and this Irene might actually be a match made in heaven, because at least that a way no one else would run the risk of being stuck with either of them.
"I'll tell him you're here," she said slowly, still taking in the way that Irene was practically vibrating with something or other - and if it wasn't drugs, Dolores didn't know what. "Why don't you just wait right there for a moment?"
Of course, fate had to mess around with her, because no sooner had she hauled her ass up onto her aching feet than Dr Bergen was coming around the corner, eyes fixed on the chart in his hand. The double take he did when he finally looked up and caught sight of Irene was the funniest thing she'd seen in a long while.
"Irene! What... what are you doing here?"
Irene, itty bitty thing that she was, pretty much hurled herself at Bergen, wrapping both arms around his waist; it was kind of gratifying, how Bergen sent Dolores a look that was half-guilt and half-terror over the top of the girl's head. Dolores settled back down in her seat to watch the show. She'd be damned if she'd move from the spot before she had to, not with her feet like they were, and this was turning out to be better entertainment than any of her soaps, especially when Irene - either completely oblivious to Dolores's presence or not caring at all - turned her face up for a kiss.
Bergen obliged, leaning down to cup the girl's face with both hands, like it was the only thing that would keep the girl still. If he kept that kind of thing up, he'd end up with a back worse than Dolores's by the time he was forty, given how much he had to stoop to reach.
"Well," said Irene when he finally pulled back and wrapped his arms loosely around her, and the girl was bouncing on the soles of her feet - literally bouncing - so that Bergen shook in time with her, the expression on his face saying that he was used to this and had just given up fighting it. Or maybe like he didn't even want to fight it, and not just because he was used to it. "I got your message."
"Oh, okay.... I'm sorry, Irene. I really did want to make it tonight ..." The boy really did sound sorry, not whiny like he usually was when he didn't want to do something - him and most of the other residents, to be fair to the man. There was genuine regret and something a hell of a lot like affection when he looked down at Irene. Actually, he looked at Irene like she was pretty much the only thing in the ER worth worrying about at that point, which might be all very well and good if this really was a soap, but not so good when he was one of the residents on duty. Plus, though she hated to admit it, given that it was Bergen, Dolores was starting to feel - just a little bit - like she oughtn't be there listening to them.
"Yes, I know," said Irene as Dolores pulled some paperwork in front of her and pretended to be busy with it. "I put on the dress. I just wanted you to see me in it."
"You look..." Dolores looked up just in time to see Bergen take a step back, his hands sliding down Irene's arms until he could catch hold of Irene's hands, spreading her arms out like a damned doll so he could look at her. "Beautiful."
"Why, thank you, sir." And Irene actually curtsied, still clinging tightly to Bergen's hands and smiling so broadly that her cheeks were dimpled. "You don't look so bad yourself in those medical scrubs." She waggled her eyebrows a little suggestively, and Dolores thought seriously about maybe clearing her throat, just to remind them that they weren't actually alone, just in case Irene really liked Bergen in those medical scrubs. She wouldn't put it past the pair of them to do something that... unorthodox.
Bergen was beginning to droop a little again. "I really wanted tonight to be special." And, yup, there was the whiny tone.
"I know," Irene repeated, and her expression grew soft and full of affection for the overgrown Sasquatch still holding onto her hands. "And, yes."
Bergen looked confused, much like he normally did. "'Yes' you know?"
"'Yes' I know, and... Yes. Just yes."
Bergen still looked confused for a moment, but then his expression started to clear, turn hopeful even, and his lips parted, almost like he was ready to say something but couldn't quite bring himself to.
"Yes meaning...?"
"Yes meaning yes, Berg. I know what day it is, and I know why you wanted me to wear the dress."
"Would that be because you think that I think that you look hot in it?"
Irene laughed a little, and this time it didn't sound like the tinkling of broken glass. Didn't exactly sound like choir of angels, either, but Dolores reckoned that Bergen couldn't afford to be that choosy. Besides, the girl was looking pretty damned angelic, the way she was gazing up at Bergen like he was her salvation.
"That, too," she said, and then she tilted her face towards him, looking almost shy when so far she'd been anything but. "I baked you an 'I accept your proposal' muffin, if you'd like it?"
"Oh... Wow." Bergen just kept staring down at Irene, like he was... Well, frankly, like he was about as much use as any of the other half-feral residents that got under her damn feet all day and every day. And trust Bergen to choose now, of all times, to finally be rendered silent. It couldn't have happened on any of those occasions when she'd been praying for God to strike him dumb, just for a moment (because wishing for anything longer than a moment would be un-Christian).
Dolores sat back in her chair, no longer caring if they knew she'd overheard. "Just kiss the damn girl, already," she snapped, scowling at Bergen. "And then go and see to Mrs Janssen's infected toe in cubicle three. Woman's been waiting long enough as it is."
Bergen gaped at her, but Irene didn't seem to mind Dolores's commentary. Instead, she gave gurgling little laugh and leapt up into her new fiancé's arms, and, damn, if the girl didn't climb him like a tree.
Bergen must have been used to that, too, because he didn't even twitch, let alone stagger like any other man would have done had someone even Irene's size thrown themselves at him like that. Instead, he wrapped his arms tightly around Irene and planted a kiss on her mouth that went on for far too long to be entirely decent by Dolores's standards.
So maybe she watched them, just for a little bit. And then - when they showed no sign of stopping any time soon, not with Bergen's face glowing like that and Irene's hands buried in his hair - she went and saw to Mrs Janssen's infected toe herself, sore feet be damned. 'Bout time someone did something useful around here.
The end
Author: alyse
Fandom: Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place
Pairing: Berg/Irene
Rating: PG13
Warnings/Spoilers: No warnings. Set post series
Genres: Established relationship
Word Count: 3,400
Status: Complete, one shot
Disclaimer: Two Guys and a Girl belongs to Fox Television, so of course they had to cancel it. I haven't forgiven them for Space: Above and Beyond yet. This is a not for profit fanfiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: Thanks to
aithine for beta reading duties. Any mistakes remaining are my own. Written for my kissbingo card square 'emotion: love', and also for
catwalksalone, who enables me unashamedly when it comes to all things Berg and Irene.
I saved posting it until today for beren_writes' ♥ Wedding Wednesday ♥.
Summary: Dr Bergen had to come and droop all over Dolores's desk with his sad sighs and puppy dog eyes, didn't he?
-o-
In Dolores's opinion, residents only existed to get under her damned feet. They varied, of course, from the incompetent to the annoying, and sometimes even to the incompetent and annoying, but while they may have been a necessary inconvenience - like death and taxes - they were still a damned inconvenience. Sure, one day a couple of them might grow up into something resembling decent doctors, but while they were residents, they were pretty much like unruly chicks, all clucking nonsense and flapping, ruffled feathers, leaving her with the urge to fetch the stuffing and make some gravy.
Dr Bergen was no better than most of the others - taller maybe, and she reckoned that his mother would have been better off not feeding him so damned much before he reached his current gigantic proportions - but he still thought that his drama was the most important thing ever.
It wasn't, and he'd worked enough nights in ER by now to have figured that one out. What the hell was one more night in the grand scheme of things? It wasn't like Dolores didn't have her own life to lead. She was no fonder of the idea of having to work extra shifts than he was; she had her grandbabies to be spoiling now that their no-good mother had finally decided to move back into town and fleece Dolores's son some more. But Dolores, at least, wasn't bitching to Dr Heitmann about it, which was pointless anyway - it wasn't like Dr Heitmann had any more patience with the residents than Dolores herself.
Heitmann had been around the block a time or two, and pulled more than one double or maybe even triple in her time, Dolores would be bound. She'd walked the walk as well as talked the talk, and no matter what Bergen thought about it, his life was no more important than anyone else's.
Of course, once Heitmann had finished chewing him out - Bergen seeming smaller and smaller the longer that Heitmann ranted, until it looked like Bergen had finally accepted that life wasn't fair - he had to come and droop all over Dolores's desk with his sad sighs and puppy dog eyes, didn't he?
She had no damned patience with any of them, Bergen least of all, but he was leaning all over her paperwork.
"Something I can help you with, Dr Bergen?" Her tone definitely did not invite him to open up to her. It was all 'hurry your fool self up and get out of my hair', but - not for the first time when it came to dealing with the nurses - Bergen missed the tone in her voice and actually thought she was interested in what he had to say.
"I have to work tonight," he said, pouting like he was still twelve, which was pretty much the age that most of the residents were by Dolores's reckoning, emotionally speaking at least.
"You and me both," she answered briskly, and, no, that wasn't an invitation for him to open up either. "That's what happens when half the shift is out with norovirus, Dr Bergen. You should know that as well as anyone."
He was still drooping, looking like someone had kicked his puppy, or - and vague memories of half-ignored chatter slowly surfaced - drowned one of his cats. She tugged the paperwork out from under his elbow with a scowl and waited for him to go the hell away.
But that was her in a nutshell. Dolores Jackson - always praying to the patron saint of lost causes and forlorn hopes, even though she never got a damned answer that she liked.
"Yes, but tonight's important," he said plaintively, not budging an inch. Wasn't that just like a resident? Everything they did was so damned important, like it wasn't the nurses that kept the hospital - and the ER - running.
She gave him a disapproving look; it was wasted on him, of course. Boy had a thick skin on him, sometimes, almost like he couldn't get his fool head around the idea that someone was immune to his charm. But Dolores was not one of her young nurses; she had no use for baby doctors and she wasn't about to get her head turned by any of them, even one as allegedly cute as Dr Michael Bergen. Not that he'd been bothering any of her nurses recently. Got himself a girlfriend, or some such, from what he said in the past on one of those rare occasions when not even Dolores could tune him out.
(She didn't listen to much of what the residents said, but the boy had brought in some tasty muffins a time or two. He'd said his girlfriend was 'a good little cook'. That had been one time Dolores's disapproving look got through to him, because he'd backed up a little, like he was a little (and justifiably, even if Dolores said so herself) afraid of her. It had been almost funny, the way he'd ended up explaining that he'd just meant that his girlfriend was both a good cook and also - holding his hand at about chest height on him, which was around the height of Dolores's neck - really little.)
He was still not budging, wilting and sighing like the world was ending around his ears. She huffed out an impatient breath, but she'd raised two boys into good, solid men, and not just by being the momma who still scared the britches off them. Discipline was all well and good, but sometimes you just had to give them their five minutes of bitching so that you could tell them what idiots they were being and then just move on past it.
She slammed her paperwork down on the counter with a heartfelt sigh of her own.
"Now, what about tonight is so important, Dr Bergen, that you got to keep me from my work?"
"I was going to ask Irene to marry me."
Oh. That put a slightly different spin on things she supposed, but only slightly.
"I had it all planned out," he continued mournfully. "I told her to put on her best dress, the gold one I bought, not the pink one with all the -" His hands made these little fluttering motions. "- frills, and, God, are there frills on that thing. I even cooked." He hesitated, and then added, apparently more honestly, "Well, I got Sharon to cook, but it was all ready for me to heat up."
Whatever brief moment of sympathy she had for him was fading rapidly.
"Okay, let's pretend that I actually give a damn for a moment and I'll ask you a question. You said you planned this, so you didn't wake up this morning and just figure this was a good idea, right? You obviously wanted to marry her yesterday - you think you'll still want to marry her tomorrow?"
He nodded rapidly in succession, one for each quick-fire question she shot in his direction all the while looking at her like maybe she knew all of the answers and was just going to hand them on over.
"Then, what the hell is the problem, boy? Ask her tomorrow."
Normally she didn't take that tone with the doctors, not even with the most annoying of the residents, but Bergen was a special case, not least because he was starting to get on her last nerve.
"It's our anniversary," he said dolefully
Of course it was. It couldn't have been simple or something he could have done any other day of the damned week; it had to be all drama, drama, drama. She pinched the bridge of her nose and hoped that the incipient headache she could feel building was his fault, and that it would go away when he did.
"You been going out a year?" she asked, summoning up unheard of levels of patience, but very little sympathy. "Because if she's put up with your ass for that long, I'm sure she'll understand."
"I asked her to marry me a year ago," he said, and it was clear that she was going to get the whole story, whether she wanted it or not. "Okay, so we thought she might be pregnant at the time..." The whole damned story, with more detail than she'd ever want or need. "Because of those faulty glow-in-the-dark condoms..." Considerably more detail. "Still, I asked her to marry me, only she said that we'd only just got back together, even though I'd been... okay, begging her to take me back for weeks. I'm not too proud to admit it. And, yeah, sure she'd just broken up with Roger, although why the hell she was dating Roger... I mean -" He made a pffting sound. "Seriously? Anyone with half a brain could see that he was just the rebound guy she was using to make me jealous, no matter what Irene had to say about it, or the fact that he thought she actually -"
"Is there a point to this story, Dr Bergen? And, if so, will you be getting to it any time soon? Just in case you're wondering..." She stabbed her finger in his direction, stopping him so firmly in his tracks that he was left staring at her, open-mouthed. "The answer to both of those questions had damned well better be 'yes'."
"I asked her to marry me anyway but she said it was too soon and she needed to learn to trust me after the whole Katie thing and I should ask her again in a year." It came out in a rush, like it was all one long-ass word, and she could practically hear the hyphens in his voice. "That's today," he added, as though Dolores was too damned stupid to work it out herself.
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him over the station's counter. "If it's so damned important to you that you do it today, call the girl and propose over your damned cell. Now get out of my hair and let me do my paperwork!"
-o-
One of the downsides of pulling a double shift - and it had nothing to do with Dolores's age, thank you very much - was the fact that by the end of the first shift, your damned feet were aching, and it didn't get any better as you moved into the second. So, soon as it got quiet enough, she took a well-earned break behind the nurses' station and rested her weary feet. Of course, as was the way of the world, she'd only just sat her ass down when this tiny little girl in a very swishy dress rushed in, all giddy nervousness and bright eyes, clutching a basket like she was Little Red Riding Hood or something.
Dolores's first thought was that the girl was on some kind of drug, and the torrent of words that just rushed out as soon as the girl opened her mouth - most of it going straight over Dolores's head with a whoosh - didn't do anything to disabuse her of the notion.
Except, somewhere in that word-soup she made out one word that chilled her, somewhere down deep in the dark, shrivelled core of her soul.
"Honey, slow down," she said, because whether she'd heard that word or not, she still had to be damned professional about it. "Did you just say 'Berg'? As in... Dr Michael Bergen?"
"Yes!" The slip of a thing waved her hands excitedly again, her face glowing and her voice stuttering out, fast as she was talking. "I need to talk to him. It's kind of, you know..." She waved her hands again, fingers jittering around like she was trying to conduct a damned concerto or something. "Important. Could you tell me where he is, please?"
Dolores rose to her feet, taking in the red hair, the gold dress, the wicker picnic basket and, most telling of all, the fact that this child only came up to her neck. "Let me guess," she said, slowly and ponderously. "You're Irene?"
"Yes!" Irene's face lit up until the girl was practically glowing with it. "Berg's mentioned me, then? He sometimes doesn't." She leaned in conspiratorially and, in spite of her better instincts, Dolores leaned to meet her half-way. "I think sometimes I embarrass him. Just a little." And then she gave this little nervous laugh, one that didn't so much sound like the tinkling of bells as the tinkling of broken glass. "He tells me not to be silly, of course, and all of our friends know we're sleeping together now, although we kept it quiet at first because it was just meaningless sex, not like we were actually a couple. Of course, we're a couple now, and he's even introduced me to his mother, and told Pete. And my cats like him, which is the most important thing, and he sort of likes them, even when they try sleeping on his head."
Damn. Strange as it might seem, Dolores was beginning to feel something approaching sympathy for Bergen, although there was that mean little voice in her head that also thought Bergen and this Irene might actually be a match made in heaven, because at least that a way no one else would run the risk of being stuck with either of them.
"I'll tell him you're here," she said slowly, still taking in the way that Irene was practically vibrating with something or other - and if it wasn't drugs, Dolores didn't know what. "Why don't you just wait right there for a moment?"
Of course, fate had to mess around with her, because no sooner had she hauled her ass up onto her aching feet than Dr Bergen was coming around the corner, eyes fixed on the chart in his hand. The double take he did when he finally looked up and caught sight of Irene was the funniest thing she'd seen in a long while.
"Irene! What... what are you doing here?"
Irene, itty bitty thing that she was, pretty much hurled herself at Bergen, wrapping both arms around his waist; it was kind of gratifying, how Bergen sent Dolores a look that was half-guilt and half-terror over the top of the girl's head. Dolores settled back down in her seat to watch the show. She'd be damned if she'd move from the spot before she had to, not with her feet like they were, and this was turning out to be better entertainment than any of her soaps, especially when Irene - either completely oblivious to Dolores's presence or not caring at all - turned her face up for a kiss.
Bergen obliged, leaning down to cup the girl's face with both hands, like it was the only thing that would keep the girl still. If he kept that kind of thing up, he'd end up with a back worse than Dolores's by the time he was forty, given how much he had to stoop to reach.
"Well," said Irene when he finally pulled back and wrapped his arms loosely around her, and the girl was bouncing on the soles of her feet - literally bouncing - so that Bergen shook in time with her, the expression on his face saying that he was used to this and had just given up fighting it. Or maybe like he didn't even want to fight it, and not just because he was used to it. "I got your message."
"Oh, okay.... I'm sorry, Irene. I really did want to make it tonight ..." The boy really did sound sorry, not whiny like he usually was when he didn't want to do something - him and most of the other residents, to be fair to the man. There was genuine regret and something a hell of a lot like affection when he looked down at Irene. Actually, he looked at Irene like she was pretty much the only thing in the ER worth worrying about at that point, which might be all very well and good if this really was a soap, but not so good when he was one of the residents on duty. Plus, though she hated to admit it, given that it was Bergen, Dolores was starting to feel - just a little bit - like she oughtn't be there listening to them.
"Yes, I know," said Irene as Dolores pulled some paperwork in front of her and pretended to be busy with it. "I put on the dress. I just wanted you to see me in it."
"You look..." Dolores looked up just in time to see Bergen take a step back, his hands sliding down Irene's arms until he could catch hold of Irene's hands, spreading her arms out like a damned doll so he could look at her. "Beautiful."
"Why, thank you, sir." And Irene actually curtsied, still clinging tightly to Bergen's hands and smiling so broadly that her cheeks were dimpled. "You don't look so bad yourself in those medical scrubs." She waggled her eyebrows a little suggestively, and Dolores thought seriously about maybe clearing her throat, just to remind them that they weren't actually alone, just in case Irene really liked Bergen in those medical scrubs. She wouldn't put it past the pair of them to do something that... unorthodox.
Bergen was beginning to droop a little again. "I really wanted tonight to be special." And, yup, there was the whiny tone.
"I know," Irene repeated, and her expression grew soft and full of affection for the overgrown Sasquatch still holding onto her hands. "And, yes."
Bergen looked confused, much like he normally did. "'Yes' you know?"
"'Yes' I know, and... Yes. Just yes."
Bergen still looked confused for a moment, but then his expression started to clear, turn hopeful even, and his lips parted, almost like he was ready to say something but couldn't quite bring himself to.
"Yes meaning...?"
"Yes meaning yes, Berg. I know what day it is, and I know why you wanted me to wear the dress."
"Would that be because you think that I think that you look hot in it?"
Irene laughed a little, and this time it didn't sound like the tinkling of broken glass. Didn't exactly sound like choir of angels, either, but Dolores reckoned that Bergen couldn't afford to be that choosy. Besides, the girl was looking pretty damned angelic, the way she was gazing up at Bergen like he was her salvation.
"That, too," she said, and then she tilted her face towards him, looking almost shy when so far she'd been anything but. "I baked you an 'I accept your proposal' muffin, if you'd like it?"
"Oh... Wow." Bergen just kept staring down at Irene, like he was... Well, frankly, like he was about as much use as any of the other half-feral residents that got under her damn feet all day and every day. And trust Bergen to choose now, of all times, to finally be rendered silent. It couldn't have happened on any of those occasions when she'd been praying for God to strike him dumb, just for a moment (because wishing for anything longer than a moment would be un-Christian).
Dolores sat back in her chair, no longer caring if they knew she'd overheard. "Just kiss the damn girl, already," she snapped, scowling at Bergen. "And then go and see to Mrs Janssen's infected toe in cubicle three. Woman's been waiting long enough as it is."
Bergen gaped at her, but Irene didn't seem to mind Dolores's commentary. Instead, she gave gurgling little laugh and leapt up into her new fiancé's arms, and, damn, if the girl didn't climb him like a tree.
Bergen must have been used to that, too, because he didn't even twitch, let alone stagger like any other man would have done had someone even Irene's size thrown themselves at him like that. Instead, he wrapped his arms tightly around Irene and planted a kiss on her mouth that went on for far too long to be entirely decent by Dolores's standards.
So maybe she watched them, just for a little bit. And then - when they showed no sign of stopping any time soon, not with Bergen's face glowing like that and Irene's hands buried in his hair - she went and saw to Mrs Janssen's infected toe herself, sore feet be damned. 'Bout time someone did something useful around here.
The end