France...Flavigny...what was it again?

She checked her watch.

Oh to be in France now...

She narrowed one eye and pursed her lips, staring down at the pearl face of her wrist watch. She couldn't quite remember how many hours behind England was. Five? Six? Something like that. Either way, for her mystery online man it was somewhere between 3 and 4 AM. Too early to send a message and get a reply.

But the thought didn't stop her from wishing that she could.

Max, what about Max? She could call him...He'd said that she could call him anytime?

She physically shook her head, shaking the thought from her mind. She still felt the hot shudder of embarrassment at how she had left him standing there, watching her leave through the gates at the airport with nothing left but his broken heart.

Max...

She whispered his name out loud and she felt the sting of tears and the familiar lump that tightened and formed in the back of her throat.

I miss you...

But the words had barely passed her lips when the door to her office was pushed open and she was faced with what was fast becoming her new reality.

"Are you planning on gracing us with your presence on the ward today, Dr Hanna?"

It seemed there was a 'Connie Beauchamp' wherever she went. Her new head of department was a sour faced woman in her fifties with perfectly white hair pulled tight into a bun at the back of her head. She lacked Connie's beauty and excellence but she was every bit as terrifying when she wanted to be.

"Sorry Dr Molinksy, I've been a bit snowed under..."

She gestured to the paperwork, reams of it strewn in seemingly endless piles.

"Yes, well. If we could see you outside of your office at some point today-"

There was a squeak of rubber soled shoes on the floor outside and a shadow came to a halt just out of sight. Dr Molinsky crossed her arms tightly across her chest and turned just slightly so that her face was in profile.

"Yes?"

"I just wanted a word with Dr Hanna. We had a meeting scheduled I think?"

It was a voice she recognised with a breath of relief. Nurse Malek glanced around the door, meeting her gaze and winking quickly. She smiled, feeling a rush of gratefulness for the interruption.

"Make it quick."

Mrs Molinsky said moving backwards and ushering him in with a sharp nod of her head.

"Thank you!"

She mouthed, as Mrs Molinsky left and Nurse Malek entered, pulling the door closed behind him.

"Thought you needed rescuing."

He said, his voice, as usual, low and carefully even, as though he were constantly monitoring how he sounded so as not to give anything away. He glanced about himself, taking in the coffee cups peaking above the rim of the bin in the corner, and the dark circles beneath her eyes.

"I don't think she likes me?"

She sighed.

"She doesn't like anybody."

He turned back to her and made his way slowly over to her desk. She smiled and leant back in her chair.

"So."

He intertwined his fingers in front of himself and looked at her with that half-amused glimmer behind his pale grey eyes.

"Can I help?"

He asked, casting an eye down to a patients file with a particularly prominent coffee ring stain near one corner.

"I shouldn't be relying on you all the time..."

"It's fine."

He cut in.

"Besides, it's a lot to get used to, new job, new people, new country..."

"Don't remind me."

She murmured.

He unlinked his hands and began flicking through the papers on her desk.

He was nurse manager in the ED, a tall muscular man. He had a way of standing which presented him as immovable, solid...reliable.

He smiled slightly and raised his eyes to look at her. His head was shaved and when he smiled like that his cheekbones cast shadowy hollows above his jaw.

He was beautiful.

He had been the first face she had met when she came into work on the very first day. He had rescued her from Mrs Molinsky's wrath then, and he had looked out for her ever since, going out of his way to make sure that she was alright, and doing everything he could to keep Mrs Molinsky off her back.

They had fallen into a habit of taking one another out for a drink every few nights, and yet still she felt as though she didn't quite know him. He was mixed race, she knew that, though there was little except the speed at which he tanned to give this away. His mother...or perhaps it was his grandmother was Egyptian, and somewhere along the line there was a native American chief, the specifics she had lost somewhere at the bottom of a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

"Feel like a drink tonight?"

"I feel like a drink now."

He laughed unexpectedly, an almost silent laugh and he shuffled her papers into a neat pile and placed them back down onto the desk.

"I'll take you out after the shift. Dinner? Film? Drinks...? There's this cinema on fifth that shows old films. I don't mean black and white pretentious stuff, I mean those 90's films. They always had Tom Hanks or your Hugh Grant in."

"My Hugh Grant?"

"He's English. I thought you English people all knew each other?"

He said with that ever present glitter behind his eye.

"Like the gays and the blacks?"

"Exactly."

He grinned so that lines formed around his mouth.

"You have tea with the Queen too, right?"

He said as he made his way over to the door, pausing to look back at her as he took hold of the handle.

"Oh...frequently."

She smiled, watching as he pulled the door open.

"See you later."

He grinned again and spoke quietly, glancing briefly again to the papers before her.

-.-

I'll update again soon – it will get more exciting!

Thank you for the reviews asking me to continue.

Just to clarify, Captain America IS Max. Max created an alter ego on the dating site so that he could speak to her. Zoe has no idea that it is him. xxx