The first time Ray realizes how well and truly fucked he is, he's been up for twenty-seven hours.
He worked until eleven last night—two GSWs, a teen mom with preeclampsia, and a guy whose wife pushed him through a sliding glass door—and then he and Pratt went out for beers at some dive a couple blocks from the hospital. He ended up going home with an admin from Radiology named Casey who lives in Humboldt Park, but he didn't stay the whole night because some girls get ideas if you do that, and also because Casey has a giant and terrible cat that freaked Ray the hell out.
He walks home, which is mistake. It's freezing out. He's at the door of the apartment before he realizes his house keys are sitting neatly on the shelf in his locker at work.
Shit.
It's almost six-thirty. Neela isn't home, and he can't remember if she's working a double or not. She doesn't pick up her phone—he calls her four times—so he has to take the El all the way back to County. By the time he gets home again it's snowing, and he leaves a trail of wet bootprints up the stairs. Neela is lying on the couch in a pair of sweatpants, watching the Morning Show. "Could have called me back," he snarls.
"I did. You didn't pick up."
"You did not," he says, fishing his phone out of his pocket—sure enough, the screen reads Missed: Neela (2). He must have hit the button for silent by mistake. "Damn."
"Why didn't you just call the switchboard instead of hiking all the way over there?" she asks. "Anybody could have told you I was on my way home."
"Because I'm an ass monkey, obviously."
"Well, that's true," she tells him. "You look bloody awful."
"Thank you." He bellyflops onto the couch, right on top of her. "I'm exhausted."
"I'll bet you are. Get off me."
"Don't wanna."
"Ray!" She pulls her bare feet out from between the cushions and tries to use her legs to leverage him off the couch. "Go to your bed."
"I'm comfortable here."
"I can't breathe."
"Yes you can." He rolls off, settling in sort of behind her. She smells nice. It occurs to him that he probably smells….less so. Oh well. "See? Enough room for everybody."
She sighs like she's deeply put out, but she quits kicking at him and makes a little space, which he takes as permission to stay. On TV they're halfway through a segment about extreme plastic surgery—that woman who had her face stretched like a cat, a guy with a giant chin implant. Ray watches in fascination for a moment, then nudges her with his knee. "Maybe I'll do that thing where you get a forked tongue, like a lizard."
"If you're going to be here, you're not allowed to talk."
Sometimes Neela's Britishness makes her sound like Mary Poppins. Ray smiles a little. "Why not?"
"Because it's time for sleeping!"
"Sorry."
She exhales noisily. "It's all right. Just be quiet."
"Neela." He tries to sound annoyed. "Shh."
She kicks him one more time, then shoves a throw pillow under her face and closes her eyes, powering down like a machine. Ray used to think of her that way, too, back before he got to know her, all cold efficiency and sharp edges. Like a robot. Hard to imagine that now: she sleeps with enthusiasm, one hand fisted under her chin and her face gone smooth like a little kid's. Her sweatpants say Yale on the butt. Dork.
Ray can't sleep—he's wired, or something. The remote is all the way on the other side of the coffee table and he doesn't want to move, so he just watches what's on, through Ellen and The View. It's snowing like a motherfucker outside. He pulls the throw down off the back of the couch, tossing the far end of it over Neela's legs so she doesn't wake up whining about how cold it is.
It's kind of peaceful; the TV flickers and drones. At some point her feet migrate into his lap. He doesn't mind, although he sort of wonders if he should: they're head to toe on the couch so it's not, you know, shady, but. It occurs to Ray, not for the first time, that if he was Gallant he wouldn't want Neela living with some random dude.
Then occurs to him that he wouldn't want Neela living with some random dude as it is.
As a matter of fact, he wouldn't particularly like it if Neela was living with Gallant.
Whoa there.
He has to admit though, it kind of fosters weirdness, this setup they have going on. When she moved in he fully expected never to see her around, and never to really want to, and now suddenly they're like, each other's people. He feels better when he knows where she is. They do laundry together. She bought one of those little whiteboards for the kitchen, and he actually leaves her notes on it. Usually they say things like "sry finished the oj," but still.
Whatever. Ray tries not to think about it too much, because inevitably it makes him feel strange.
Neela wakes up around lunchtime. "What are you watching?" she asks, rolling over onto her back. She's wearing one of those stupid County t-shirts they gave out for staff appreciation a couple of months ago, and it's riding up a little.
"General Hospital," he says, carefully averting his eyes. "Check it out, there's no actual medical equipment in their ER. I think that EKG machine is actually a tricked-out toaster oven."
She scrubs a hand over her face. "Have you been awake this whole time?"
"Yeah."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
They watch in silence for awhile. The doctor can't intubate for shit, it's a fucking mess, the dude totally would have coded by now, but when he points this out to Neela she just mumbles at him, pulling her legs back over to her side of the couch. Ray shrugs. Fine, then, but he's going to write a letter.
"Where were you?" she asks, when it cuts to commercial. She's occupying her hands with the fringe on the blanket, picking the strands apart. "Last night, I mean. That you only realized you were locked out this morning?"
"You know." He shrugs. There's no reason he couldn't tell her except that all of a sudden he doesn't want her to know. "Just hanging out."
Neela rolls her eyes. "Slut," she says mildly, and he doesn't know if she means him or the girl. He guesses either one will do.
When the show is over she gets up and heats a can of soup in the microwave, makes a couple of grilled cheeses. It smells like butter and snow days. "What do you, love me or something?" he asks when she hands him one. It's wrapped in a paper towel—there are plates, but they're all in the sink.
"You'd think so, wouldn't you." She takes the remote and surfs for awhile, finally settling on that Learning Channel show about the family who accidentally had all those kids. Ray thinks it's stupid (show and lack of birth control both) but he doesn't say anything because it's a damn good grilled cheese and he doesn't want to piss her off.
Finally she glances at him. "Close your eyes, will you? You look like the walking dead."
"I tried."
"Try again."
So he does, moving around a little until he gets comfortable. Neela throws the blanket over him. It's still coming down out there—going to make for a bitch of a commute later tonight, but for now the street is quiet. He's almost asleep when she reaches out and scratches his back a little bit, her short nails scraping over the waffle of his t-shirt. It surprises him—she's not really one for casual touching—but it doesn't feel bad.
He actually likes it a lot.
Like, enough that his whole body is starting to prickle.
For fuck's sake.
He knows that she's just doing it to be his buddy—like his mom would, probably—but still. There's something about it—and honestly, she's hardly even touching him, it's really not a big deal—that feels...something. Familiar. He doesn't know. He holds very still, so she doesn't stop.
Then he thinks about his mom some more, just to be on the safe side.
Goddamn. You know, Neela being a fox has never been lost on him. He has eyes. But the thing is that he likes her. Like, as a person. She's weird and brainy and a good doctor, and while Ray knows that's how it's supposed to work with women—he's not a total emotional fuckwit, thanks—it's not how it's supposed to work when the woman is your Roommate Of Convenience. And she thinks you're fun and good to live with, but ultimately an idiot. Like a golden retriever.
Not to fucking mention that she's married. To a fucking soldier with a gun. Who she loves, and who is by all accounts a nice guy.
Getting a crush on that girl just makes you a douchebag.
Ray doesn't have a crush on her. He's just saying.
Last night he quoted Pulp Fiction and Casey didn't even get it.
He should try to stop thinking so much.
So Neela scratches his back for awhile longer, and he thinks he dozes off a little but he's not totally sure. At some point he becomes vaguely aware that she's sleeping, too, wedged between him and the cushions on the back of the couch. He can feel her rib cage expand and contract as she breathes.
He could move her—he could move himself—but he doesn't. He can feel that he's skirting the edge of something sharp and potentially dangerous here, the gleaming blade of a scalpel, but for now everything pretty much seems okay. Plus he's tired, and for some reason having her here means he can sleep.
They lie there a long time. He naps some more. It's dark outside when she wakes up. "What time is it?" she asks suddenly, scrambling off the couch. Her foot catches the blanket and she almost falls.
Ray squints at the clock on the DVD player. He's on tonight, but he's not late yet. "Almost five-thirty?"
"Fuck me."
Normally he'd make a joke but she's clearly really upset, so he doesn't. He reaches for the lamp on the end table. The room looks yellow in the light. "What's wrong?"
"Damn. Damn, damn, damn." She dashes into her room, and he can hear the whirr of her computer starting up. "I was supposed to video chat with Michael!"
Ray swallows. "When?"
"An hour and a half ago!"
Whoops. He sits there for a minute, waking up. The news is on. He picks the crumpled paper towels up off the coffee table and throws them in the trash. When she passes through the living room a few moments later, she looks like she might cry.
"Was he still there?"
Neela shakes her head. "No." She slams the bathroom door and he hears the faucet turn on. He wants to knock, but he doesn't know what he'd say.
She's in there forever, and Ray thinks of this ad he saw on the el a couple of weeks ago about the amount of water wasted in Chicago every year. Also, he has to pee. Finally he digs a pair of clean scrubs out of the pile of unfolded laundry on his bed and throws a bottle of water into his pack. He pauses outside the bathroom. "Neela," he calls, "I gotta go to work. I'll see you there later, okay?"
"Okay!" she calls cheerfully, like she thinks he's a moron. Ray hesitates for a moment, shakes his head a little, and heads out into the snow.