Denise poured a cup of coffee. It was the first day of the Alexandria Health Fair, and she was going to need all the extra energy she could get. While waiting for her cup to cool, Denise labeled another manila folder, realizing too late she'd added too many letters to Bruce's last name.
"Oh well, there's only one Bruce," she said, but corrected the error anyway. Who knew when another Bruce with a similar last name would show up? Alexandria was getting bigger by the day.
Michonne had pitched Denise the idea a week ago, saying that they would need to start planning ahead for "imminent wellness crises." By giving each community member a thorough exam, a list could be made of necessary prescriptions and durable medical equipment for the coming months. They could make plans to procure them on runs.
The door of the clinic creaked open. The first patient was here. In a fleeting moment of panic, Denise downed her java in one swig, burning her tongue. She hurried to the next room over to greet—
"Rick?" Denise cringed at the slurring of her voice, her tongue still tingling.
The leader of Alexandria flashed her a courteous smile. "Morning, Denise."
It took a moment for it to sink into Denise what had just happened. "You're my first patient?"
Shrugging, Rick closed the door behind him. "Michonne said it would mean we were serious if one of us got checked out first. Guess I drew the short straw."
Denise's stomach slithered into a knot—and it wasn't because of the coffee she'd chugged. The first man she would examine, determining the fate of this program, was Rick Grimes. It wasn't that that she didn't like Rick, she liked him just fine, but he intimidated her. What if she tripped one of his killer reflexes while poking his elbow? There were lots of sharp instruments in the clinic, and Denise felt the sudden compulsion to hide them all from Rick's eyesight.
Why couldn't her first patient have been someone harmless? Like Eugene Porter?
"So, what does all this entail?" Rick asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Just a health check," Denise said, wringing her hands. "Covering all the basics, you know?"
"The basics."
"Yeah, like a physical." Denise directed him to sit on the bed against the wall in the adjoining room. "Uhm… have a seat. And, uh, please remove your top."
She expected to be shot with a glare, but Rick complied with swiftness. He plopped down on the white bedspread and shucked off his white t-shirt.
While Rick looked over the shiny (and sharp) instruments arranged on a platter to the side of the bed (doing nothing to ease the nervous knot in her stomach), Denise slipped on nitrile gloves. "I'm just going to conduct a skin check."
"Skin check?" Rick looked at her with an inquisitive furrow of his eyebrows.
"For any abnormal lesions. Anything that might be melanoma."
After Rick nodded, Denise started the examination, running her fingers over different spots on his body. Heat rolled off of his skin in waves. Not in a feverish way, just in the way anyone would expect a well-oiled machine running on fumes. She shied away from poking at his scars in case doing so would trip that killer reflex.
"My aunt got melanoma," Denise said while continuing to scan Rick's back. "She thought it was just a scab, so she didn't think anything of it." She roved around, checking Rick's chest. "She had cataracts and always knocked her shins on the coffee table. Always had splotchy bruises, so it wasn't a surprise she hadn't noticed anything super unusual—"
She stopped yammering when she noticed Rick was actually looking at her, maybe in some psychic attempt to will her to shut up.
"Sorry." Denise sighed. "I don't know how much doctors are supposed to talk to their patients and when I get nervous I just—"
"It's fine, Denise," Rick said with surprising softness. "Can we just—hurry this along? I got stuff to do."
"Right. Sorry." Denise made a note in her pad. "Skin looks good, by the way. I could look below the waist too if you want—"
"I'm fine," Rick said, beginning to sound a little agitated.
With haste, Denise wrapped Rick's bicep in the blood pressure cuff. She popped in the eartips of her stethoscope and began to check his vitals.
"Blood pressure's uh… good. A little high, but that's to be expected with, you know, your job." She wrote down the numbers in Rick's file. "Try to eat less fatty food."
"I'll do my best. But it's just so hard to say no to all that ice cream."
It was sarcasm, and Denise elected to ignore it. She put the diaphragm of the stethoscope on Rick's chest. As she listened to the steady lubdub of Rick's heart, Denise couldn't help but think the tiny organ had to be one of the most determined and powerful forces on the planet after all it had been through.
"Good." Denise slid the diaphragm to his ribs. "Inhale and hold it..."
After noting the healthy whistling sound of air in his lungs, Denise made a few more notes. "Sounds good." She clicked on the light atop her pen and flashed them in Rick's eyes. At first he flinched, but then kept still, permitting the light to blind him.
"Have you been having problems with your eyes?" Denise asked.
"Not that I can tell. My aim is good as it's ever been." Rick's face tensed. "Why?"
"No reason. Now, open your mouth."
Rick's jaw dropped open; Denise depressed his tongue with a popsicle stick and beamed the light inside. His teeth were in surprisingly good shape, considering the lack of toothbrushes approved by the American Dental Association. His breath was even minty. Hopefully it stayed that way, because Denise didn't want to pull double duty as the town dentist. She angled the light to check the back of his throat. Once she was done, she palpitated the sides of his neck and back of his head, noting the small, pea-shape of his lymph nodes. No sign of infection then.
"You can put your shirt back on," Denise said, and Rick wasted no time slipping it back over his head. "Now I am just going to need a couple drops of blood."
Rick's eyebrows shot up. "You have equipment to analyze blood?"
"Just the basics. Hemoglobin, blood sugar, pregnancy..." Denise favored him with a side-eye. "You're not pregnant, are you?"
Rick snorted and held out his hand. As she leaned down to prick the tip of his finger, she noted Rick narrowed his eyes at her. "Is something wrong?"
"No." Rick blinked a few times. "Why?"
"You're just uh… squinting? At me?" Denise shook her head. "If you want me to stop—"
"No." Rick tried to soften his features—and failed. "Sorry. I just… I've been having a lot of headaches recently."
Denise nodded. "I see." Squinting. Headaches. The two words paired together tripped a switch in her brain. She stabbed Rick's finger with the needle.
"Ow!" Rick whined, tensing up.
All he had been through and a pin prick made him whimper? Denise wiped away the first couple blood drops with a gauze square, then collected a couple on the tips of testing strips. She fed them into machines to register his hemoglobin and glucose levels."
Denise held up two boxes of Band-Aids. "I have Disney Princess for the girls and Star Wars for the boys."
"I was never a Star Wars fan," Rick admitted.
So Rick wound up with Snow White around his middle finger.
"Are we done?" Judging by the tone of his voice, Rick's patience was growing thin.
"One last thing," Denise held up a finger. "I'll need to go in the back."
Rick mumbled something under his breath about all the 'stuff' he had to get done—and Denise hurried to the storage room of the clinic. On one of his last runs, Heath had acquired a large crate of reading glasses. Denise found it sandwiched between a wheelchair and an oxygen tank. She pawed through the contents. Something told her Rick wouldn't like rhinestones, leopard print, or hot pink, so she picked out a standard black pair and slid them into the front pocket of her lab coat.
When she got back, Rick was drumming his fingers along the bed's edge.
"Okay," Denise said, writing a note on her pad. She held it up in front of Rick, a few inches from his nose.
Rick flinched away, scrunching his face. "What are you—"
"What's this say?"
Rick squinted in a way that looked painful. "That says something?"
Denise nodded, pulling the note away before Rick could lean back far enough to read it.
"It says, 'If you can read this, you don't need glasses.'" Denise shrugged. "Needless to say, you need glasses."
Rick narrowed his eyes further, and Denise had a feeling it had little to do with hyperopia. "Glasses?" he hissed.
"People get farsighted as they get old—older," Denise corrected. "You're not old." Fearing she'd insulted Rick enough in the past half hour, she added, "You've probably always had great eyesight, right? 20/15?"
"I think so?" Rick said.
"Makes sense. People with good vision actually get hit with farsightedness earlier in life."
Rick didn't say anything. Looking at him reminded Denise of a wilting flower.
"Here." Denise handed him the glasses she'd fetched from the storeroom.
Rick turned the black frames over in his hands a few times, and then slid them onto his face. Denise marveled how Rick went from feral to bookish with his eyes in those boxes. How he suddenly looked like he should be dissecting a Shakespeare folio—not walkers.
Denise snorted, cupping her palm over her mouth to stifle a laugh. "I'm sorry."
Rick's demeanor soured. He plucked the glasses off his face, melting the illusion. He strained a smile. "No thanks."
"Rick—" Denise stuttered. "It's not- I was just surprised. You, you look smart."
What little humor left in Rick's face disappeared.
"Not that you look stupid. I mean—"
Rick rolled his eyes. "Gonna prescribe me a pocket protector too?"
"Please, just—put them back on."
Rick sighed for a long enough time to be a point of exaggeration, but he complied.
"Here." Denise held the note she'd written earlier in front of him. His eyes skimmed over it without an agonized expression. "It's clear now, right?"
Rick glanced at her from the paper. He raised his eyebrows with astonishment. "Well, I can read it."
"The lenses should ease the tension around your temples, from, you know, all the squinting, which should reduce the headaches."
"Thanks," Rick said, then tilted his head to the door. "Can I go now?"
Denise made a quick scan of his barebones file, seeing nothing that should keep him, she shrugged. "Yeah, sure."
Rick hopped off the bed and stormed away. Even with those glasses, he sparked lethal intent as ever. For a moment, Denise wondered if Rick could kill a man with the broken lenses in a pinch.
Had she just added another weapon to Rick's arsenal?
Rick swung open the door. He looked over his shoulder in Denise's direction. "We're lucky to have you, Denise." To her surprise, his words weren't laced with sarcasm—and she a warm glow of appreciation nearly overwhelmed her.
Then Rick was gone.
Before she could turn around to tidy up and take a breath, Denise heard a knocking on the doorframe.
"This where I sign up to get pricked like a pincushion?" said a familiar Texas drawl. Abraham leaned around the doorframe into view.
Denise groaned.
###
The new chickens were a very welcome addition to Alexandria, but damn if their eggs didn't leave residue that wouldn't come off.
Michonne scrubbed at a skillet with the coarse side of a dish sponge, flaking off one thin layer of film at a time. This wouldn't have happened if Rick had washed them right after making breakfast. But, knowing him, he'd only blame her for this, saying, 'I would've had time to clean 'em off if I hadn't been coerced into going to the doctor at 7am in the morning.'
Michonne's internal monologue stopped when the door swung open.
"Remind me to never agree to one of your plans again," said Rick, knowing just how to make a woman feel appreciated.
Rick carried himself past the threshold of their home, closing the door behind him. He was hunched with a miserable expression he hadn't been carrying that morning when he'd cheerfully baked the egg residue into the pan forever.
Not sure whether this was Rick being a baby about the doctor or anxiety over a poor diagnosis, Michonne set the skillet under the soap suds, turning her full attention to Rick.
"Did everything go okay?" Michonne was prepared to surrender her ire only if something was wrong. She prayed she would remain annoyed.
"I'm the picture of perfect health," Rick said with a forced smile. "All A's down the line."
So Rick was just being fussy. Sighing, Michonne couldn't help but think there was more to the story. With Rick, there usually was.
"What about your headaches?" She gave him the look. It was her way of milking information out of him—and it always worked.
It took only two seconds for Rick's resolve to crack. Sighing, he reached behind his back to pull something out of his rear pocket.
"Are those—" Michonne trailed off, taking in the shape of the dark frames.
"Glasses." Rick looked down at the lenses between his hands, turning them over and over. "Denise said I was farsighted."
"I may not be a doctor, but I don't think glasses will do much good in your pocket. Why aren't you wearing them?"
"Denise laughed at me."
Michonne choked back a laugh herself. Although this wasn't the first time she'd heard Rick express some reservation about his looks, his bashfulness always astounded her. He was the recipient of more than just a few lecherous glances. Including her own. She couldn't imagine an innocent pair of glasses would do much to daunt the status quo.
"Well, I want to see for myself," she said with a nod at the eyewear, daring him to put them on.
Raising his shoulders in a timid sort of shrug, Rick slipped the glasses onto his nose. With the solid black lines framing his eyes, curls tousled and loose, Rick oozed casual sophistication. The man before her was one Michonne could picture at a polished oak desk, grading a stack of research papers.
Michonne's face grew warm with a wave of blood rushing to her cheeks. A sharp tingle pulsed down her middle, sparking an aching desire to touch him, to press body against his. She'd never suffered lust so unbidden before—like hot puppet strings snaking through every inch of her, usurping control.
Was this a kink? For glasses? Michonne took a moment to recollect the faces of other men wearing glasses she'd met in her life—but none sent the same electricity arcing through her.
"Oh, don't tell me you're going to laugh too," Rick said, drawing her back into the moment. Back into her throbbing, hungry body.
He was frowning at her—and perhaps he'd misread her open-mouthed staring as amusement.
She was going to have to correct him.
Michonne walked up to Rick, stopping when their chests were almost touching. Unlike so many times before, Rick didn't squint or pull his head back to look down at her.
"Wow," he said in a breathy whisper. "I can see you so much better now." He reached up, cupping the side of her face. He brushed a thumb across her flushed cheek. "You're so beautiful."
Michonne didn't say anything. She wouldn't have said anything intelligible or polite anyway. She took a fistful of the front of Rick's shirt, yanking him into a deep kiss.
Only after their lips had parted just enough to let them breathe did Michonne whisper, "Leave the glasses on."