Preclude:

Two years from now

Dante and Lulu really tried to make their relationship work, but due to some secrets that were kept (baby, Shadybrook in Lulu's history, and Dante being too respectful of Lulu that he kept things away from her that she should have known) trust became an issue. They dated for a year, and have been "friends" for the last year.

Chapter 1:

Lulu Spencer walked off the elevator and straight to the nurse's desk. "Hey, Epiphany, have you seen Matt?"

"Don't you know that this is a place of work, not a bar to pick up men?" Epiphany said in her normally commanding voice.

"You're right, Epiph..." Lulu started to say as Matt came walking around the corner. "Excuse me, while I go and pick up my man at another bar." Lulu tried to joke with Epiphany, but she wasn't having it.

Lulu tried her best to saunter over to Matt, to get his attention as he was engrossed in a chart for a patient. He looked up, saw her, smiled and went back to the chart. We have only been dating for six months; you would think he would still want to be paying attention to me.

Lulu had been having this same discussion with herself for the last two weeks. She just wasn't sure that Matt really wanted to date her, for that matter she wasn't sure that she wanted to date Matt either.

Lulu finally made it to Matt and leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek as he tried unsuccessfully to give her a kiss on the mouth. They were just not connecting; it ended up looking like a duck fight with heads moving in different directions trying to peck at each other. Epiphany noticed and started chuckling, "Nice moves," she yelled out in the middle of the corridor. Both blushed.

"Sorry about that, I am a little backed up with patients. Did we have lunch planned for today?" he asked as tried to look at his watch.

"Nope, I just wanted to come and check out my hot Doctor," Lulu tried to joke and flirt with Matt; he just wasn't reciprocating the effort. His head went back to the chart, and Lulu's temper started to rise.

"So what did you want?" Matt asked. "Want," Lulu thought to herself, "what I want is for your attention to be focused on me and not that chart. I have got to be more interesting than that chart. This never happened with Dante. No, no, don't go there. You can't compare relationships.

Lulu's voice became soft and sweet, in a way that she really hated, "Well, Matt, considering what tomorrow is, I thought that maybe we could make some plans?"

"Oh what is tomorrow?" Matt said still looking in the chart and writing down some of his thoughts.

Lulu was very tempted to rip the chart out of his hands and raise his head to look at her, but this wasn't the time or the place for that.

"Tomorrow is six months after you asked me out and I said yes. Kind of a big deal, I think. I thought maybe you would like to come over and I could make you some dinner or something. We could watch …" Lulu was smiling at Matt as he slowly raised his head from the chart to look at Lulu, except his eyes were filled with fear rather than with enjoyment over the idea.

"Um, Lulu, I … I don't know if I can do that. I really am behind on my patients and I have to do rounds to check on a patient that is going in for major surgery today that I am going to be doing. Actually that is what I was looking at. This patient that I have has a tear in his …" For the first time since she had arrived at the hospital he looked genuinely excited about something and that something wasn't her.

"Matt that is great that you have a challenging patient, but we only have a six month anniversary once. Look, do you want to date me?" Blunt, now is the time to be blunt? You normally are, but with Matt you have been holding it back a little bit. Time for some of the real Lulu to come out.

He looked scared. Afraid to give the wrong answer to a test in front of the whole class – afraid. I am going to take that as a "NO."

"Look Matt, I think you and I both know that…" Lulu tried to finish that thought but three elevator doors opened up and out came Robin, Patrick and Noah Drake all working on three different patients. Each was speaking some kind of medical talk that Lulu didn't understand, except for the fact that each sounded scared and worried over their respective patients and they were yelling out for help.

Matt, being the dedicated doctor that he is, left Lulu and ran to help his family work on the medical emergency. Lulu decided that he just made his choice, "This isn't working. Let's be friends. Bye, Matt." Lulu said sort of to herself, but also to anyone that was listening.

Lulu started to walk toward the elevators, but a voice called her back. "Now that is a phrase I have heard from Lulu Spencer. What did the boy do?"