Anya
It had been a full day since Desmond had made his stupid, careful, devastatingly sincere proposition, and somehow the world had kept spinning as if nothing monumental had happened.
Patients still came in. Nurses still called out vitals.
The monitors still beeped with their relentless, indifferent rhythm.
The hospital did not care that my entire internal landscape had shifted.
I was at the workstation, scrolling through labs and half-listening to a nurse complain about a family in room twelve, when Desmond took the chair next to me. Not too close. Not too far. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of him through my sleeve if I let myself notice it.
We didn’t look at each other right away.
“That potassium was a mess,” he said, like he hadn’t told me he wanted me twenty-four hours ago.
“I’ve corrected it,” I said, equally neutral. “Repeat BMP is already ordered.”
“Good.” A pause. “CT on the abdominal pain?”
“Negative. Just constipation and bad life choices.”
That got a quiet breath of a laugh out of him. We sat in silence for a moment, the kind that would’ve been comfortable before. Now it felt… weighted. Awkward. Charged with everything we weren’t saying. “You look tired,” he said finally, softer.
“So do you.”
“I’m old, I have an excuse.” And I could have sworn he winked at me.
His mouth tilted slightly, like he wanted to smile but didn’t quite let himself.
I focused very hard on my screen. On sodium levels.
On heart rates. On anything that wasn’t the fact that I was acutely aware of the way he had angled his knee towards mine.
Nothing happened.
And somehow, that was the loudest thing in the room.
He left moments after. Stood abruptly, muttered something about checking on a patient, and disappeared down the hallway like nothing in my world had tilted slightly off-axis.
I told myself not to think about it. Not to think about him. I charted. I signed orders. I answered a nurse’s question about pain meds. I stared at my screen and pretended my pulse hadn’t picked up for no clinical reason at all.
Ten minutes later, I heard my name. “Volkov.”
I looked up.
Desmond stood there holding two paper cups from the little coffee counter in the cafeteria. The one that made objectively terrible coffee but somehow kept the entire night shift functioning through sheer stubbornness.
“For you,” he said, setting one down next to my keyboard. “They were out of the decent creamer… so I gambled on the vanilla thing.”
My throat tightened in a way that had nothing to do with caffeine. “You didn’t have to,” I said automatically.
“I know.” And that was it. That was the entire explanation.
I wrapped my hands around the cup, letting the heat seep into my palms. It smelled like burnt beans and sugar and survival. I took a sip and made a face before tossing the lid into the trash can.
“Shit — that’s really bad,” I said.
He watched me with quiet amusement. “And yet you only threw the lid away.”
“I hate lids on my coffee,” I said with a scrunch of my nose. I took another swig of the coffee. Honestly — it was warm, and that was its only redeeming quality. A wave of cloying vanilla washed over me, and my nose scrunched without my permission.
Desmond laughed out loud, eyes crinkling at the corners. “But not the terrible coffee itself?”
“I’m loyal.”
“To what? Terrible coffee?”
“To caffeine," I corrected. “And people who bring me terrible coffee. Besides, lids make the entire drink taste like gently melted plastic.”
Something softened in his expression. “You’re a real piece of work, Volkov.”
We stood there for a moment longer than necessary, neither of us quite ready to leave. It felt almost normal. Or whatever normal might feel like between us now. “Thanks,” I said again, softer.
“Anytime,” he said. Then he hesitated, just barely, as if there was something else he might say. He didn’t. He just nodded once and walked away.
I stared at the coffee for a long second after he left. It was a stupid thing. A small thing. But it felt like a promise.