He got the call from Morgan and before he even answered, he knew something was wrong - Morgan always texted.

"Dr C... Mindy needs you."

Danny was out the door before he even knew why.

She was in a dark call room, curled in a fetal position with her back to the door. "Min?" He said quietly as he entered, to which she responded with a keening cry. It chilled him to his soul to hear her, as he had seen her at some of her lowest points and this was vastly worse. She sounded like a wounded animal.

Sitting beside her, he hesitated for a moment. He wanted to say the right things and help make her stop going through what he knew was one of the hardest things in the world. As doctors, you have to be prepared for the worst, but in their field, it was a highly irregular occurrence. Unlike some fields of medicine where death is inevitable, obstetrics was "easy." They didn't generally deal with high risk patients, referring them to specialists, and modern technology had made advances to where most babies arrived safely even when issues arose.

So losing a patient, even when you did everything right, was simply not something Mindy was prepared to deal with. Aside from a baby with severe issues born when she had been a resident, she had never had a delivery that resulted in mortality. Tonight, that all changed.

The parents were a darling couple and she had been their doctor from the day the test results came back, through check ups and ultrasounds, so she felt like part of the extended family. When they were unable to revive the newborn boy, Mindy had nearly collapsed giving them the news. The cries of grief from the mother were bad enough, but witnessing the stoic father tremble and break down were too much for her to bear. This was not what she signed up for.

Danny laid his hand on her arm gently, but she didn't even acknowledge him. Her breath was coming in big, deep inhalations, almost to the point of hyperventilating, and he felt a little panicky himself. He half laid beside her, pulling at her just slightly, and she gasped loudly and turned towards him, flinging her arms at him desperately. He pulled her to him and enveloped her.

Twenty minutes passed while he held her as she cried, stroking her hair and murmuring to her that it was alright, everything is alright. He knew she didn't believe him but it made him feel less useless. Finally she found the strength to sit up and he gave her some tissue and kept holding her as she tried her best to clean herself up. She patted the tissues at the huge damp spots she had left on his shirt and apologized.

"Thank you for finding me, Danny. How did you even know?"

"Kathy, the L&D supervisor, she and Morgan have a thing I guess? They do, like, a dog fair? She told him and he called me."

Mindy laughed weakly. "God, Morgan, he knows everyone. I have to text him that I'm okay. He's probably worried sick."

"Oh, yeah, he's a wreck. He actually called you Mindy instead of Dr. L." Danny pulled her back into his arms, rubbing her spine with one hand while he used the other on her hip to steady her.

She tossed the tissue and wrapped herself around him, burrowing her face into his neck, her hands clutching at his back. He could feel the moment when she went from passively being comforted to seeking something more. Her body stiffened just slightly, and she moved her face from his chest to his neck, pressing her lips against his pulse point. "Danny..." She said his name in a breath and he shuddered.

There's a well known phenomenon when people are faced with death, where they want to fuck to feel alive. Danny wasn't surprised by her reaction, but he was rattled.

They had never been physical, beyond that one time where he lapsed in judgement and sought her out on the flight back from Los Angeles. That had ended before it began, really, so he had assured himself it didn't count. They were still just friends, albeit friends who had groped each other. There had been an unspoken acknowledgment between them that they had feelings that needed to be dealt with, but they never did. It went from painfully awkward to simply uncomfortable, but they kept a courteous working relationship. He had expected her to get back together with Cliff - counted on it, really - but without explanation she ended all contact with him.

There were moments where the tension that was simmering under the surface threatened to boil over, but until now he had maintained composure.

Mindy's warm lips were moving up his throat now and he was paralyzed. He knew he should detangle himself from her, keep things professional, keep things safe. She was vulnerable and grieving and so very needy, which logically should set off alarms in his head, but all he could think was if he moved just a couple of inches toward her, he could again taste her soft mouth.

Her low, throaty moan snapped him out of the haze. She needed emotional support right now, not physical release. He slid himself away, standing up and taking her hands.

"Come on, go change and and I'll get you home and..." in bed no no no "you can get some rest."

Mindy nodded, her eyes glazed over, and she groggily followed him. Danny led her to the locker room and waited for her to change back into street clothes, her choice of which took him by surprise. She wore a dark navy dress with a splash of rhinestones on the bodice. A first date dress. She met his eyes and answered the unasked question.

"I was headed to blind date when the call came. He probably thinks I stood him up... well, I did, I guess..." She rubbed her face, which was etched with exhaustion.

A sharp jab of pain hit him in the gut. "Don't worry about it. You can call him tomorrow." Or never. She hadn't dated at all recently, that he knew of, but they weren't talking like they did before. She's moving on, that's what you want, isn't it...

Danny shook it off and took the reins, getting a cab and accompanying her to her apartment. He forced himself to ignore her clutching hands on his arm or the way she crumpled against him on the ride. It was really the first time they had touched in weeks, and he found it a lot easier to make the difficult, rational decision to stay just friends when there was no physical reminder of how badly he wanted more.

He should have sent her off in the cab by herself to keep that safe distance, but his concern for her overrode his forced rationality. She clung to him as they went inside and he could feel her energy was focused on him. Once inside, he distanced himself, telling her she would be ok, that they would talk in the morning.

"Danny."

She was almost hyperventilating again.

"Danny, I don't want to be alone right now. Please stay."

She hung on his arm like it was a life raft and looked at him with quiet desperation.

"I don't think that... Mindy, I... we can't..." Danny stammered and looked anywhere but in her eyes.

"Not that, not like that. I just... can you just be with me?" She folded herself against him again. "Just hold me and tell me it's okay, like you did at the hospital. I don't think I can sleep if I'm alone with my thoughts."

He couldn't say no.

Mindy disappeared to change into sleeping clothes, and he made some tea and tried to get a handle on his own thoughts. In the past few weeks he had tried to convince himself he was doing what was best for them both. Office romances were doomed, and besides that, neither he or Mindy had a good track record for relationships. It didn't matter how much it hurt to stay away from her, because he was avoiding the worse pain they would both suffer later, when everything imploded. She would be fine, he told himself, in time she would just flit like a butterfly to the next flower. And so far, he hadn't seen much from her that even indicated she cared for him, besides her reception of his ill timed advance. But she had been so eager, with the enthusiasm that was so typical of Mindy. She was so damned opposite of him, willing to take risks and jumping in before checking how deep the water was... he could barely think to dip in a toe before it was too overwhelming and he had to back away.

So what if he was awake nights thinking of those kisses, or caught off guard and breathless by the scent of her perfume when she left the room? He noticed she would look at him sometimes with a wistfulness that cut him deeply, but it was okay. She didn't really need him, until now, and once she moved past this, she wouldn't need him anymore, so he just needed to stay strong.

Mindy came back in and sat down to sip her tea. They didn't need to speak. When she was done, she stood and looked at him, and he followed her to her bedroom where they both laid down on top of the sheets. He held her in the dark and she fell asleep almost immediately, while he laid there awake, listening to her heart beat in time with his own.