Fic: Heartbeats - 3/4
Heartbeats - 3/4
Characters - Ray/Neela
Word Count - 3373 (this part)
Summary - She wishes they could just get this bollocks out of the way, get back on equal terms, like it used to be, without this absurd side-stepping around each other’s emotional baggage.
Author’s Note - So, I know I’m a little late jumping on this bandwagon, but I haven’t written fanfiction in AGES and it’s taken me a while to work up the courage to post! Years ago, I was compelled by X-Files, Doctor Who and Harry Potter, but, having sat working my way through ER DVD boxsets, I’ve felt compelled again. I got my lovely friend Lissa to check my American ‘voice’ so hopefully my Ray is okay and you can’t tell too much that I’m British!
The title is inspired by the song Heartbeats, and specifically the version by Jose Gonzalez.
Rating - M, for language and… other stuff. ;)
Part Three - The start, a simple touch…
At 6:15, his alarm goes off and Billie Joe Armstrong yells that he doesn’t want to be an American idiot into her ear. During the course of the night they’ve finally ended up in his bedroom, but how exactly they got there, Neela can’t really remember.
She’s wide awake by the end of the chorus, but Ray takes a little longer to stir. He’s flat on his back beside her, one arm flung above his head and his eyes shut tight in defiance to the music. She remembers how he used to hate mornings when they shared an apartment, always setting his alarm earlier than needed so he had time to come around before he had to get up. Now, he moans as he rolls towards her and throws his arm over her waist. “Sleep well?” he asks. His voice is low and sleep-soaked.
She thinks back. “Yeah, I did. Forgot I was here, actually.”
Chuckling softly at that, he strokes the back of his finger along her cheekbone. It feels strange to find herself in his bed, lying beside him. Surreal. Not that she hasn’t imagined the scene a few thousand times, tested it out in her mind's eye, tried to visualise what it would feel like, what she would see.
She feels giddy with the dislocation; he probably looks more gorgeous this morning than he did last night in the moonlight.
“You?” she returns the question.
“Stayed awake for a while,” he says with a smile, “convincing myself that I wasn’t hallucinating, but when I actually closed my eyes I went to sleep.” He pauses, looks at her carefully, as if he’s trying to judge what she’s thinking. “So, this is weird, right?”
“Very weird. But nice weird. Good weird.”
“I guess I should be thankful then.”
“Why? Did you think I would be freaking out or something?”
He swallows, frowns momentarily. “I don’t know what I thought… Maybe…”
Neela wishes she could make him more trusting of her, but then thinks that she probably deserves his hesitancy. She decides to change the subject. “Ray?”
“Yeah,” he replies.
“Can I come to the hospital with you?” She pauses, considers the expression on his face and hopes she hasn’t come across too clinging. For some reason, daylight makes her feel like she has to tread carefully - they might have changed a lot in the last twenty-four hours but the shadow of the past stretches a long way. She adds, “I thought maybe if you’ve got a minute you could show me up to Surgery and introduce me to few people? I’ve not even met the guy who interviewed me… Paul Gunn?”
Ray shakes his head at the name. “Well, the first one I can do,” he says. “But as for the introducing thing, I think you should probably get someone else to do that for you. I don’t know anybody from Surgery, really. I mean, you kids are all cut and run, aren’t you? Leave the rest up to us down in Rehab.”
Her mouth is open and she gasps in offence. She swings her leg over him, puts him on his back and then pins him to the bed at the wrists. “Cut and run?” she repeats. “You’re going to pay for that!” She pushes back slightly and rubs against his morning hardness.
Now it’s Ray’s turn to gasp. She laughs wickedly.
“Pay?” He grins up at her; his eyes flash. She doesn’t let go. “Oh, don’t make me…”
And then, with upper body strength that shocks the hell out of her, he pushes his shoulders off the bed, rolls and flips her onto her back.
Neela can’t help the shocked little sound that escapes her mouth when she finds herself staring up at him. Ray silences it mercilessly. “Okay,” she admits, between breath-snatching kisses. “Maybe you’re stronger than you look.”
***
“We’re going to be late,” he fusses as she pulls on a clean sweater. He’s midway through a blueberry pop tart and standing in the bedroom door, already dressed in the same dark jeans from the day before and a black t-shirt.
She shoots him a glare, deciding not to comment on how it had been his… distractions… that had made them late in the first place, and the reason it is he who is all ready to go is simply because of the crew-cut and an ability to eat on the move without dropping it down his front.
She scrapes her still-damp hair back up and turns to find a mirror. But there’s no mirror, not even a TV she can use to see her reflection. “Do I look all right?” she asks him.
He takes a step towards her, answering, “You look beautiful,” and kisses her. She can taste blueberries on his tongue. “Really beautiful.”
“Ray, stop it,” she warns, pressing her lips closed, and this time most of her is serious. “Besides, you’ve just been telling me that we’re going to be late.”
The last piece of his breakfast is popped into his mouth as reply. He watches as she slicks Chapstick on her lips, and then grabs her bag from the end of the bed.
***
He takes her up to Surgery straight away, figuring she can do a bit of nosing around while he checks the books and starts his first clinic. It’s Stroke Team today, so he’s got a bunch of right-sided paralysis patients to deal with, men, women, middle-aged and older, struggling with walking and the type of mundane, everyday tasks the rest of the world takes for granted.
It’s exactly the sort of thing he changed his residency for.
But today, as he works through his appointments, and despite his best efforts, his mind keeps wandering to her. It starts off pretty tame, the sort of stuff he used to think about all the time when saw her rounded little butt in those surgical scrubs, but by the time he’s half way through, he’s thinking of café latte skin and those little sounds she makes in her throat when he…
“Ray? You all right, man?”
He snaps out of it and turns to see Russ, his attending, standing right behind him. Shit. He gives an excuse about a late night film and gets back on task.
But forty minutes later and he’s in big trouble again, Russ casting glances in his direction; he feels like a naughty kid being caught staring out of the window. Maybe a coffee’s the right prescription, he thinks, and heads for the lounge.
He’s not in there more than a few minutes when the door swings open and Russ walks in. His boss is casual, like always, but Ray can tell from the moment their eyes meet that there’s going to be ‘a talk’. Still, Ray thinks, he can’t be too resentful - without Russ’s understanding and confidence in him over the last eighteen months, Ray might have been stuck at home without a job. He sighs, pours a coffee and lowers himself onto the couch. He waits while Russ pours a drink for himself. “How’s it going?” Russ enquires.
“Fine, thanks,” Ray replies. “I feel good today. You?”
“Yeah, good. But then I haven’t had Mrs. Crabtree yet.” Russ chuffs out a sardonic laugh. “Is it totally unforgiveable if I find myself wishing it’d been her who’d had the stroke and couldn’t say a word, rather than her poor mother?”
“Well, all I can say is that I’m pretty pleased I didn’t pull short on that particular one,” replies Ray. He takes a sip of his coffee, waits a beat. “So, go on, Russ, spit it out. ‘Cause I know you didn’t come in here to talk to me about Mrs. Crabtree, or her mother.”
“No.” Russ clears his throat, scrubs his hand through his thinning dark hair. He leans against the sink. “Ray, why don’t you just go home? Take a couple of days off? It’s okay, we can cope without you.”
“Why would I wanna do that?”
There’s a pause. “Lou told me about the girl yesterday,” Russ explains. “It was Neela, wasn’t it?”
Oh well, Ray thinks, so much for having a few days grace to get his head around it all. “Yeah…”
“Then it’s fine, seriously.”
For a moment, he considers accepting the offer - it would get Russ off his back - then it hits him that he needs to keep everything as normal as possible. After all, he’s not really had a chance to test the water completely. He knows she’s not going to just get up and leave - not with a contract signed upstairs - but that doesn’t mean that it’s all going to slot into place like some kind of perfect jigsaw. Stuff with Neela never does.
And it’s not as if they’ve really had time to talk all that much. They’ve been too busy with… other things.
“Look, thanks for the offer, but it’s fine - I don’t need time off to sort out my life.”
Russ nods his head like he thinks Ray is pissing in the wind. “Okay, whatever you want.” He tips the half-drunk contents of his coffee mug down the sink. “Just do me a favour? When you’re seeing patients, can you at least try to look as if you’re not thinking about the last time you got laid?”
***
Lunch arrives and while he thinks about just working through the break to catch up on some paperwork so he can head home early, he decides instead to go up to Surgery and see how she’s getting on.
Ray’s never been the sort of guy who ‘missed’ girls - other than for sex, of course - and it’s kind of alarming that he’s missing her already. Inwardly, he rolls his eyes at himself, tells himself to get a grip, but no sooner has he done it than he’s calculating how many hours it’s been since he last saw her and whether that’s an acceptable amount of time to have passed before seeking her out again.
He figures it’s probably on the borderline, but, shit, that’ll do. He’s long past playing hard to get.
Her office is on the third floor, one above the Physical Therapy suite where he spends the most of his time, and he heads up in the elevator.
The doors open out on the Surgical floor and he is struck by the change in atmosphere. Here everyone wears scrubs, gowns and those little caps that Neela somehow manages to make look so sexy; there are no jeans or t-shirts or nurses dressed in track pants. It’s all science and ruthless efficiency - it suits Neela perfectly.
He feels a little out of place.
There’s the main desk just visible down the hall, so he heads for it, passing a couple of surgical techs wheeling an empty gurney.
“Hi, can I help you?”
A young nurse with ironed flat blonde hair and a bit too much make up on emerges from behind the desk and smiles disarmingly. He leans on the surface and smiles back. He can’t help it - Ray would have to be either dead or out of his head on drugs not to notice that she’s pretty. In a sort of wannabe Californian way, it’s true, but pretty nonetheless. He meets her eye, flirting ever so slightly. “Hi, I’m Ray Barnett, from Rehab, I’m looking for Doctor Rasgotra.”
She shakes her head, still smiling. “I don’t think we have anyone called that here. Are you sure you’re in the right department?”
Ray tries not to laugh. “I’m pretty sure I’m not imagining this one. Neela Rasgotra. She’s your new staff member… Assistant Chief of Surgery.” He looks at the nurse’s name badge magnetically clipped to her scrub shirt - Rainbow Langdale, RN, it says. Rainbow? He wants to ask her if that’s her real name and if it is, what the hell were her parents thinking? “She was supposed to be meeting with Paul Gunn this morning.”
“Oh, right,” Rainbow replies, looking down at a daily planner lying open on the desk. “Doctor Gunn’s in a meeting with someone now actually. How about I take you down to the family room and you can wait there until he’s done. I don’t think he’ll be much longer - he usually goes for his lunch about this time.”
“It’s fine,” says Ray easily. “I’ll wait here if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure.” She meets his gaze again, puts her elbows on the desk and leans towards him. “I’m Rainbow, by the way,” she says.
Another smile tugs involuntarily at his lips. “Interesting name,” he says.
“Oh, don’t… my parents were aging hippies when I was born.” She laughs softly. Ray notices that she’s got a tiny beauty spot on her upper lip. “My brother’s called Cloud.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
At that moment, Ray hears Neela’s voice and looks up to see her coming out of a door a dozen paces or so down the hall with a tall, pale man in his forties he assumes must be Paul Gunn. They are in the middle of a conversation, but still she catches his glance and smiles widely as they move closer. She looks happy, relaxed, and Ray returns the smile, pleased and just a little bit relieved that she seems to have had a good morning.
“So, erm, Doctor Barnett,” says Rainbow, and Ray’s attention flashes back to her. “I was wondering if you were busy tonight? Maybe we could go for a drink?”
Ray hears the words pouring out of the nurse’s mouth and before she’s even half way through the sentence he feels his entire body start to curl at the edges and a scream like really bad feedback screech through his head. Neela stops dead. Her companion has moved away. There’s no way she won’t have heard.
No way.
There’s a pause and it’s so loud as to be painful.
He turns to Rainbow, gesticulates vainly. “I’m sorry, I can’t, I, er…” He glances at Neela. “I’m with someone… I have a girlfriend.”
The words sound furtive as he says them.
Rainbow nods and shrugs her shoulders, apparently unconcerned at the knock-back. “Oh okay, well, maybe some other time then. Nice to meet you.”
And then she turns and walks away, leaving him and Neela alone. He wants to explain, to tell her that he hadn’t done anything to encourage it, but he knows that whatever he might say would be pointless. It would still sound incriminating.
“Ray, I’ll er…” She looks down at her shoes. “Sorry, I’ve got some things to do, I’ll see you later.”
She heads off down the hall, walking quickly, her shoes squeaking painfully on the floor. “Neela!” he calls and takes after her. For fuck’s sake, he thinks, why can’t they have one time where things go easy? Straight-forward, for a change. His legs don’t move as fast as hers and he struggles to catch up with her before she disappears behind a door he presumes is her new office. It slams closed a second before he reaches it.
“Neela?” he questions. The door is locked from the inside. He presses his ear to the wood, hears nothing. “Neela, let me in, please?”
“Leave me alone, Ray, I’m busy,” she says from inside. Her voice is forced calm.
“Can we talk about this?”
He feels like an idiot for begging when he hasn’t even really done anything wrong, but he just isn’t sure he can bear this crap again. He rubs his hand over his head, then sags against the door jamb.
After a minute or two, he tries again, “Neela?”
The door opens slowly. Just a crack, then wider, and then she’s standing in front of him, looking straight at him. She looks tiny. Her eyes are ringed with moisture. “Neela, I,” he begins, but she cuts him off,
“-can explain, I know...” She stands back, opening the door fully. “I’m sorry, I’m trying, I am… but there’s been a lot to take in and it’s just, I’m just being stupid. Of course it was nothing.” A defeated sigh huffs out of her lungs. “Come in.”
He tries not to show the relief that floods over him. It takes all the resistance he’s got not to show it in a grin.
***
He takes her for lunch to make up for it and as they stroll through the grounds, searching for a quiet spot to sit and eat their sandwiches, the whole stupid fiasco seems to drift away into insignificance.
With one exception.
Neela can’t stop thinking about what he said to that nurse.
It gnaws away at her until she has to say something. “Ray, did you mean what you said back then?”
He stops and turns to her, confusion registering on his face. They are beneath a spreading live oak, dappled by the sunlight that percolates through its branches. “Back then?” he asks.
Neela wonders if he’s thinking of the ‘back then’ she’s banned from her brain these last few days. She shakes her head vaguely - she’s got enough to think about without opening that particular nest of hornets. “When you were…” she stops herself from describing the incident as ‘coming onto’ or any other phrase that sounds just a little bit crass and insecure, “talking to that girl.”
He’s still staring at her like she’s speaking a foreign language, so she bites her lip and forces herself to say it. “You called me your girlfriend.”
It sounds so childish, but the thing is that right now, it’s suddenly very important to her to know.
The misunderstanding on his face is replaced with a small, dry smile. He looks down at the ground, then back up at her, nodding to himself.
“Was wondering if you were gonna let me forget that,” he says.
He looks uncertain, like he’s really not sure if she’s going to bite his head off or kiss him senseless. If he didn’t always wear his heart on his sleeve, Neela thinks, it would be so much easier. Instead, she always just feels an overwhelming urge to reach out and fold him into her arms.
“So what do you think?” he asks.
“About what?” She’s lost.
His smile spreads and he tilts his head on the side, looking into her eyes. “About what I said.” Neela frowns. She wonders if he’s playing with her, like they used to do back when there wasn’t anything to get in the way, just the two of them, peas in a pod, flirting in the only way they knew how.
But, it’s been so long and she’s so out of practice that her brain feels slow, like she’s struggling to keep up with him.
“How about it?” he adds. His eyes are laughing, and Neela can tell that he’s loving every minute. “You wanna go out with me?”
“Are you being serious?”
“Mm-hm…”
She fixes him with her firmest stare, thinks, well, okay, Ray, if you want to play that old game, let’s do it. She puts one hand on her hip and purses her lips. “Did you think I was going to be an easy lay and you’d just send me packing when you’d had enough of me?”
He arches his eyebrows. “Do you want to?”
“What?”
“Leave.”
“Do you?”
“No.” A smile tugs again at his lips, sparkles behind his eyes. He takes a step towards her. “You?”
“Not particularly.”
“Glad we sorted that one out, then,” he says. She nods.
For a second they stare, grinning stupidly, high on the thrill and the tease, and then they crunch together, mouths hot and urgent. It matters not a bit that they can be seen from every window in the hospital.
When they’ve eaten their lunch, talked and laughed and kissed some more, Ray gets to his feet and holds out his hand for her. “How long till you’re done?” she asks him as he pulls her to standing. He glances at his watch.
“Another four hours.” He makes a face. “Go, if you want, you don’t have to wait here for me.”
“And what if I want to?” she asks and thinks how beautiful his smile really is.
He interlaces their fingers, looking down at their joined hands. “Then I guess you can stay… girlfriend.”
They head back to the hospital hand in hand. The rest of the afternoon passes quickly.
***
End Part Three.
Characters - Ray/Neela
Word Count - 3373 (this part)
Summary - She wishes they could just get this bollocks out of the way, get back on equal terms, like it used to be, without this absurd side-stepping around each other’s emotional baggage.
Author’s Note - So, I know I’m a little late jumping on this bandwagon, but I haven’t written fanfiction in AGES and it’s taken me a while to work up the courage to post! Years ago, I was compelled by X-Files, Doctor Who and Harry Potter, but, having sat working my way through ER DVD boxsets, I’ve felt compelled again. I got my lovely friend Lissa to check my American ‘voice’ so hopefully my Ray is okay and you can’t tell too much that I’m British!
The title is inspired by the song Heartbeats, and specifically the version by Jose Gonzalez.
Rating - M, for language and… other stuff. ;)
Part Three - The start, a simple touch…
At 6:15, his alarm goes off and Billie Joe Armstrong yells that he doesn’t want to be an American idiot into her ear. During the course of the night they’ve finally ended up in his bedroom, but how exactly they got there, Neela can’t really remember.
She’s wide awake by the end of the chorus, but Ray takes a little longer to stir. He’s flat on his back beside her, one arm flung above his head and his eyes shut tight in defiance to the music. She remembers how he used to hate mornings when they shared an apartment, always setting his alarm earlier than needed so he had time to come around before he had to get up. Now, he moans as he rolls towards her and throws his arm over her waist. “Sleep well?” he asks. His voice is low and sleep-soaked.
She thinks back. “Yeah, I did. Forgot I was here, actually.”
Chuckling softly at that, he strokes the back of his finger along her cheekbone. It feels strange to find herself in his bed, lying beside him. Surreal. Not that she hasn’t imagined the scene a few thousand times, tested it out in her mind's eye, tried to visualise what it would feel like, what she would see.
She feels giddy with the dislocation; he probably looks more gorgeous this morning than he did last night in the moonlight.
“You?” she returns the question.
“Stayed awake for a while,” he says with a smile, “convincing myself that I wasn’t hallucinating, but when I actually closed my eyes I went to sleep.” He pauses, looks at her carefully, as if he’s trying to judge what she’s thinking. “So, this is weird, right?”
“Very weird. But nice weird. Good weird.”
“I guess I should be thankful then.”
“Why? Did you think I would be freaking out or something?”
He swallows, frowns momentarily. “I don’t know what I thought… Maybe…”
Neela wishes she could make him more trusting of her, but then thinks that she probably deserves his hesitancy. She decides to change the subject. “Ray?”
“Yeah,” he replies.
“Can I come to the hospital with you?” She pauses, considers the expression on his face and hopes she hasn’t come across too clinging. For some reason, daylight makes her feel like she has to tread carefully - they might have changed a lot in the last twenty-four hours but the shadow of the past stretches a long way. She adds, “I thought maybe if you’ve got a minute you could show me up to Surgery and introduce me to few people? I’ve not even met the guy who interviewed me… Paul Gunn?”
Ray shakes his head at the name. “Well, the first one I can do,” he says. “But as for the introducing thing, I think you should probably get someone else to do that for you. I don’t know anybody from Surgery, really. I mean, you kids are all cut and run, aren’t you? Leave the rest up to us down in Rehab.”
Her mouth is open and she gasps in offence. She swings her leg over him, puts him on his back and then pins him to the bed at the wrists. “Cut and run?” she repeats. “You’re going to pay for that!” She pushes back slightly and rubs against his morning hardness.
Now it’s Ray’s turn to gasp. She laughs wickedly.
“Pay?” He grins up at her; his eyes flash. She doesn’t let go. “Oh, don’t make me…”
And then, with upper body strength that shocks the hell out of her, he pushes his shoulders off the bed, rolls and flips her onto her back.
Neela can’t help the shocked little sound that escapes her mouth when she finds herself staring up at him. Ray silences it mercilessly. “Okay,” she admits, between breath-snatching kisses. “Maybe you’re stronger than you look.”
***
“We’re going to be late,” he fusses as she pulls on a clean sweater. He’s midway through a blueberry pop tart and standing in the bedroom door, already dressed in the same dark jeans from the day before and a black t-shirt.
She shoots him a glare, deciding not to comment on how it had been his… distractions… that had made them late in the first place, and the reason it is he who is all ready to go is simply because of the crew-cut and an ability to eat on the move without dropping it down his front.
She scrapes her still-damp hair back up and turns to find a mirror. But there’s no mirror, not even a TV she can use to see her reflection. “Do I look all right?” she asks him.
He takes a step towards her, answering, “You look beautiful,” and kisses her. She can taste blueberries on his tongue. “Really beautiful.”
“Ray, stop it,” she warns, pressing her lips closed, and this time most of her is serious. “Besides, you’ve just been telling me that we’re going to be late.”
The last piece of his breakfast is popped into his mouth as reply. He watches as she slicks Chapstick on her lips, and then grabs her bag from the end of the bed.
***
He takes her up to Surgery straight away, figuring she can do a bit of nosing around while he checks the books and starts his first clinic. It’s Stroke Team today, so he’s got a bunch of right-sided paralysis patients to deal with, men, women, middle-aged and older, struggling with walking and the type of mundane, everyday tasks the rest of the world takes for granted.
It’s exactly the sort of thing he changed his residency for.
But today, as he works through his appointments, and despite his best efforts, his mind keeps wandering to her. It starts off pretty tame, the sort of stuff he used to think about all the time when saw her rounded little butt in those surgical scrubs, but by the time he’s half way through, he’s thinking of café latte skin and those little sounds she makes in her throat when he…
“Ray? You all right, man?”
He snaps out of it and turns to see Russ, his attending, standing right behind him. Shit. He gives an excuse about a late night film and gets back on task.
But forty minutes later and he’s in big trouble again, Russ casting glances in his direction; he feels like a naughty kid being caught staring out of the window. Maybe a coffee’s the right prescription, he thinks, and heads for the lounge.
He’s not in there more than a few minutes when the door swings open and Russ walks in. His boss is casual, like always, but Ray can tell from the moment their eyes meet that there’s going to be ‘a talk’. Still, Ray thinks, he can’t be too resentful - without Russ’s understanding and confidence in him over the last eighteen months, Ray might have been stuck at home without a job. He sighs, pours a coffee and lowers himself onto the couch. He waits while Russ pours a drink for himself. “How’s it going?” Russ enquires.
“Fine, thanks,” Ray replies. “I feel good today. You?”
“Yeah, good. But then I haven’t had Mrs. Crabtree yet.” Russ chuffs out a sardonic laugh. “Is it totally unforgiveable if I find myself wishing it’d been her who’d had the stroke and couldn’t say a word, rather than her poor mother?”
“Well, all I can say is that I’m pretty pleased I didn’t pull short on that particular one,” replies Ray. He takes a sip of his coffee, waits a beat. “So, go on, Russ, spit it out. ‘Cause I know you didn’t come in here to talk to me about Mrs. Crabtree, or her mother.”
“No.” Russ clears his throat, scrubs his hand through his thinning dark hair. He leans against the sink. “Ray, why don’t you just go home? Take a couple of days off? It’s okay, we can cope without you.”
“Why would I wanna do that?”
There’s a pause. “Lou told me about the girl yesterday,” Russ explains. “It was Neela, wasn’t it?”
Oh well, Ray thinks, so much for having a few days grace to get his head around it all. “Yeah…”
“Then it’s fine, seriously.”
For a moment, he considers accepting the offer - it would get Russ off his back - then it hits him that he needs to keep everything as normal as possible. After all, he’s not really had a chance to test the water completely. He knows she’s not going to just get up and leave - not with a contract signed upstairs - but that doesn’t mean that it’s all going to slot into place like some kind of perfect jigsaw. Stuff with Neela never does.
And it’s not as if they’ve really had time to talk all that much. They’ve been too busy with… other things.
“Look, thanks for the offer, but it’s fine - I don’t need time off to sort out my life.”
Russ nods his head like he thinks Ray is pissing in the wind. “Okay, whatever you want.” He tips the half-drunk contents of his coffee mug down the sink. “Just do me a favour? When you’re seeing patients, can you at least try to look as if you’re not thinking about the last time you got laid?”
***
Lunch arrives and while he thinks about just working through the break to catch up on some paperwork so he can head home early, he decides instead to go up to Surgery and see how she’s getting on.
Ray’s never been the sort of guy who ‘missed’ girls - other than for sex, of course - and it’s kind of alarming that he’s missing her already. Inwardly, he rolls his eyes at himself, tells himself to get a grip, but no sooner has he done it than he’s calculating how many hours it’s been since he last saw her and whether that’s an acceptable amount of time to have passed before seeking her out again.
He figures it’s probably on the borderline, but, shit, that’ll do. He’s long past playing hard to get.
Her office is on the third floor, one above the Physical Therapy suite where he spends the most of his time, and he heads up in the elevator.
The doors open out on the Surgical floor and he is struck by the change in atmosphere. Here everyone wears scrubs, gowns and those little caps that Neela somehow manages to make look so sexy; there are no jeans or t-shirts or nurses dressed in track pants. It’s all science and ruthless efficiency - it suits Neela perfectly.
He feels a little out of place.
There’s the main desk just visible down the hall, so he heads for it, passing a couple of surgical techs wheeling an empty gurney.
“Hi, can I help you?”
A young nurse with ironed flat blonde hair and a bit too much make up on emerges from behind the desk and smiles disarmingly. He leans on the surface and smiles back. He can’t help it - Ray would have to be either dead or out of his head on drugs not to notice that she’s pretty. In a sort of wannabe Californian way, it’s true, but pretty nonetheless. He meets her eye, flirting ever so slightly. “Hi, I’m Ray Barnett, from Rehab, I’m looking for Doctor Rasgotra.”
She shakes her head, still smiling. “I don’t think we have anyone called that here. Are you sure you’re in the right department?”
Ray tries not to laugh. “I’m pretty sure I’m not imagining this one. Neela Rasgotra. She’s your new staff member… Assistant Chief of Surgery.” He looks at the nurse’s name badge magnetically clipped to her scrub shirt - Rainbow Langdale, RN, it says. Rainbow? He wants to ask her if that’s her real name and if it is, what the hell were her parents thinking? “She was supposed to be meeting with Paul Gunn this morning.”
“Oh, right,” Rainbow replies, looking down at a daily planner lying open on the desk. “Doctor Gunn’s in a meeting with someone now actually. How about I take you down to the family room and you can wait there until he’s done. I don’t think he’ll be much longer - he usually goes for his lunch about this time.”
“It’s fine,” says Ray easily. “I’ll wait here if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure.” She meets his gaze again, puts her elbows on the desk and leans towards him. “I’m Rainbow, by the way,” she says.
Another smile tugs involuntarily at his lips. “Interesting name,” he says.
“Oh, don’t… my parents were aging hippies when I was born.” She laughs softly. Ray notices that she’s got a tiny beauty spot on her upper lip. “My brother’s called Cloud.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
At that moment, Ray hears Neela’s voice and looks up to see her coming out of a door a dozen paces or so down the hall with a tall, pale man in his forties he assumes must be Paul Gunn. They are in the middle of a conversation, but still she catches his glance and smiles widely as they move closer. She looks happy, relaxed, and Ray returns the smile, pleased and just a little bit relieved that she seems to have had a good morning.
“So, erm, Doctor Barnett,” says Rainbow, and Ray’s attention flashes back to her. “I was wondering if you were busy tonight? Maybe we could go for a drink?”
Ray hears the words pouring out of the nurse’s mouth and before she’s even half way through the sentence he feels his entire body start to curl at the edges and a scream like really bad feedback screech through his head. Neela stops dead. Her companion has moved away. There’s no way she won’t have heard.
No way.
There’s a pause and it’s so loud as to be painful.
He turns to Rainbow, gesticulates vainly. “I’m sorry, I can’t, I, er…” He glances at Neela. “I’m with someone… I have a girlfriend.”
The words sound furtive as he says them.
Rainbow nods and shrugs her shoulders, apparently unconcerned at the knock-back. “Oh okay, well, maybe some other time then. Nice to meet you.”
And then she turns and walks away, leaving him and Neela alone. He wants to explain, to tell her that he hadn’t done anything to encourage it, but he knows that whatever he might say would be pointless. It would still sound incriminating.
“Ray, I’ll er…” She looks down at her shoes. “Sorry, I’ve got some things to do, I’ll see you later.”
She heads off down the hall, walking quickly, her shoes squeaking painfully on the floor. “Neela!” he calls and takes after her. For fuck’s sake, he thinks, why can’t they have one time where things go easy? Straight-forward, for a change. His legs don’t move as fast as hers and he struggles to catch up with her before she disappears behind a door he presumes is her new office. It slams closed a second before he reaches it.
“Neela?” he questions. The door is locked from the inside. He presses his ear to the wood, hears nothing. “Neela, let me in, please?”
“Leave me alone, Ray, I’m busy,” she says from inside. Her voice is forced calm.
“Can we talk about this?”
He feels like an idiot for begging when he hasn’t even really done anything wrong, but he just isn’t sure he can bear this crap again. He rubs his hand over his head, then sags against the door jamb.
After a minute or two, he tries again, “Neela?”
The door opens slowly. Just a crack, then wider, and then she’s standing in front of him, looking straight at him. She looks tiny. Her eyes are ringed with moisture. “Neela, I,” he begins, but she cuts him off,
“-can explain, I know...” She stands back, opening the door fully. “I’m sorry, I’m trying, I am… but there’s been a lot to take in and it’s just, I’m just being stupid. Of course it was nothing.” A defeated sigh huffs out of her lungs. “Come in.”
He tries not to show the relief that floods over him. It takes all the resistance he’s got not to show it in a grin.
***
He takes her for lunch to make up for it and as they stroll through the grounds, searching for a quiet spot to sit and eat their sandwiches, the whole stupid fiasco seems to drift away into insignificance.
With one exception.
Neela can’t stop thinking about what he said to that nurse.
It gnaws away at her until she has to say something. “Ray, did you mean what you said back then?”
He stops and turns to her, confusion registering on his face. They are beneath a spreading live oak, dappled by the sunlight that percolates through its branches. “Back then?” he asks.
Neela wonders if he’s thinking of the ‘back then’ she’s banned from her brain these last few days. She shakes her head vaguely - she’s got enough to think about without opening that particular nest of hornets. “When you were…” she stops herself from describing the incident as ‘coming onto’ or any other phrase that sounds just a little bit crass and insecure, “talking to that girl.”
He’s still staring at her like she’s speaking a foreign language, so she bites her lip and forces herself to say it. “You called me your girlfriend.”
It sounds so childish, but the thing is that right now, it’s suddenly very important to her to know.
The misunderstanding on his face is replaced with a small, dry smile. He looks down at the ground, then back up at her, nodding to himself.
“Was wondering if you were gonna let me forget that,” he says.
He looks uncertain, like he’s really not sure if she’s going to bite his head off or kiss him senseless. If he didn’t always wear his heart on his sleeve, Neela thinks, it would be so much easier. Instead, she always just feels an overwhelming urge to reach out and fold him into her arms.
“So what do you think?” he asks.
“About what?” She’s lost.
His smile spreads and he tilts his head on the side, looking into her eyes. “About what I said.” Neela frowns. She wonders if he’s playing with her, like they used to do back when there wasn’t anything to get in the way, just the two of them, peas in a pod, flirting in the only way they knew how.
But, it’s been so long and she’s so out of practice that her brain feels slow, like she’s struggling to keep up with him.
“How about it?” he adds. His eyes are laughing, and Neela can tell that he’s loving every minute. “You wanna go out with me?”
“Are you being serious?”
“Mm-hm…”
She fixes him with her firmest stare, thinks, well, okay, Ray, if you want to play that old game, let’s do it. She puts one hand on her hip and purses her lips. “Did you think I was going to be an easy lay and you’d just send me packing when you’d had enough of me?”
He arches his eyebrows. “Do you want to?”
“What?”
“Leave.”
“Do you?”
“No.” A smile tugs again at his lips, sparkles behind his eyes. He takes a step towards her. “You?”
“Not particularly.”
“Glad we sorted that one out, then,” he says. She nods.
For a second they stare, grinning stupidly, high on the thrill and the tease, and then they crunch together, mouths hot and urgent. It matters not a bit that they can be seen from every window in the hospital.
When they’ve eaten their lunch, talked and laughed and kissed some more, Ray gets to his feet and holds out his hand for her. “How long till you’re done?” she asks him as he pulls her to standing. He glances at his watch.
“Another four hours.” He makes a face. “Go, if you want, you don’t have to wait here for me.”
“And what if I want to?” she asks and thinks how beautiful his smile really is.
He interlaces their fingers, looking down at their joined hands. “Then I guess you can stay… girlfriend.”
They head back to the hospital hand in hand. The rest of the afternoon passes quickly.
***
End Part Three.