Episode 9
"I just..." Emily sighed to Tyra as they began rounds, "I feel like I'm in a rut."
"That happens when your life is boring," Tyra agreed.
"What? My..." Emily defended in a hissing whisper, "my life is not boring!"
"See, you say that," Tyra said, "but then there's reality."
Emily rolled her eyes, "I'm not boring."
"Oh no?" Tyra challenged: "Your primary source of entertainment is obsessing about Will who, by the way, is in a happy and stable relationship. The obsessing was cute for a little while, but nothing has happened and it's gotten boring. You need a new guy in your life. And you need to get laid."
Emily was quiet for awhile. So maybe she spent a lot of time an energy thinking about the whole...Will situation, but most of the time she spent being a doctor, which was not boring at all. No, she needed a little change to spice things up - and not thinking about Will was NOT on the table. She shook her head, "Maybe I should get a short haircut."
"You don't need a short haircut," Tyra reiterated, "you need to get laid."
"No, this is about me," Emily insisted, "not about a guy."
"I agree," Tyra said. "Have you ever had a one-night stand?"
"Yes, of course," Emily answered defensively. "It turned into an 18-month-long disaster, but it started out that way."
"I don't want to know about that," Tyra said.
"No, you probably don't," Emily agreed. She had done far too much ranting about the guy who, though perfectly fine, had never succeeded in distracting her from Will. The guy who she had, in a moment of intimacy, called by the wrong name?
"Has it been awhile?"
"Since I talked about Kevin?" Emily asked, still lost in thought.
"Since you got laid?" Tyra clarified.
"Um…no..." Emily lied.
"Liar," Tyra correctly assessed. "That'll get you out of that rut. Hit the reset switch."
"Yeah," Emily scoffed at the absurdity of this, "I'll just walk into a bar and seduce someone."
"Who?" asked Cassandra as the two approached.
"No one specific," Tyra answered.
"Oh come on, Owens," Cassandra smiled, eyebrow cruelly arched, "we all know you need to get laid. It's no secret. Might as well be tattooed on your forehead."
Emily felt she might die of embarrassment. Of course the interns would talk about everyone's sex lives. She didn't know why she had considered herself immune. They were almost as bad about gossip as the nurses. Emily fought back her blush and entered the patient's room.
...
Dr. Bandari rushed from the patient's room in a huff. "In my life - MY LIFE - I have never met a more obnoxious woman." In rare form, Bandari addressed the interns in a non-medical capacity. "I'm not overreacting, she was insufferable, right?"
"Totally, yes," several interns muttered back.
Cassandra had some sympathy with the patient, a clearly high-level professional woman at the top of her industry. It was what she strove to be. It was what she admired most about Gina Bandari.
Nurse Sunny interrupted to give Gina some test results and, exactly like the "insufferable" patient, she held up a finger to silence the interns.
The comparison was lost on no one, and yet it was Emily who reacted. Cassandra watched in annoyance as Pits tried to stifle her laughter behind a clip board as Will hid his amusement with her.
"You were this close to laughing!" Will finally allowed himself to tease. Cassandra was really starting to hate that tone he got in his voice when he was joking with Emily. It was too warm, too attentive.
"Dead puppies," Emily joked back with a radiant smile. "Literally, dead puppies!"
Obviously Will had turned down her advances, but he clearly didn't realize that, by being so friendly, he was stringing her along? That would be its own thing, she supposed, if it wasn't happening in front of her face every day. Will had to pay less attention to Emily...or perhaps Emily had to pay less attention to Will. She needed a new thing to obsess about. Cassandra had a few ideas.
"Will, walk with me," Cassandra grabbed him out of the buddy moment and led him down the hall. She turned back momentarily, "Oh, and that thing? I'll take care of it."
...
"What thing?" Will asked as he and Cassandra rounded the corner.
"Oh, nothing you need to worry about," she answered.
Will frowned, but let it go. Those two would always be plotting something, it seemed. No point meddling.
"Remember that teacher that toured the lab last week with his class," Cassandra asked, "Scott something?"
"Yeah," Will recalled vaguely. "Nice guy."
"Right?" Cassandra said sweetly. "He Facebooked me."
Will felt a moment of jealous panic. Why was she telling him about her contact with another guy? "Wait, this isn't a whole 'I'm cheating on you' talk is it?"
"No," she said simply.
"Okay," he said, feeling better.
"...good to know you think we're exclusive, though," Cassandra said. "I thought I should set him up with Emily. She told me she's looking."
Those were two very loaded sentences. Will tackled the first, "Let's go back up to this whole exclusive thing..."
"You brought up cheating," Cassandra shrugged. "Can't cheat if you're not exclusive."
Will felt himself being pulled into the kind of talk that made him sweaty and nervous. He didn't have any qualms with being monogamous, but this was not a talk he wanted to have in a crowded hospital. On second thought, perhaps loaded topic number two would be safer. "She'd never go on a blind date."
"Why not?" Cassandra asked.
"Trust me," Will said, thinking of how his friend avoided anything remotely date-related.
"Oh right, I forgot," Cassandra said, annoyed. "You're the Emily expert."
"No. It's just, you know," Will stammered, sorry to find himself on the losing end of this topic also. "I've known her for a long time."
A beeper went off, graciously interrupting Will's discomfort.
"All right," Will sighed. He didn't want to leave Cassandra angry, though: "We'll talk about this while exclusive thing later."
"Um, you sleep in my house every night, Dr. Collins," Cassandra said, taking the matter into her own hands. "We're exclusive. Get over it."
She smiled wickedly at him and he felt himself calm.
-Well, that was easy-he thought excitedly-this girl is amazing.
...
"Apparently," Emily said to Kelly and Micah, "if I use mascara my life will change."
Micah swallowed his response, feeling particularly uncomfortable. He heard in Emily's tone her plea for his attention, but he felt also Kelly's eyes boring into him.
"Listen," Micah said instead, "they're shorthanded in the E.R., why don't you help out?"
Emily seemed surprised, but nodded her understanding. "Okay, see you guys later."
He hoped not.
"What happened," Kelly asked, trying to be cool. "You and you protege have a fight or something?"
"Just realized I'd be a more effective teacher with some distance," Micah said, repeating the lie that sounded the best. He worried that the holes in this argument would be seen if pressed, so he changed the subject. "So listen, I got the time off. We're going skiing."
"Our first weekend away," Kelly smiled. "I told you I'm a really good skier, right?"
Micah fought rolling his eyes, "Once or twice."
"Really good," she said, getting into the elevator. "Not a joke. And I don't like to do a whole bunch of 'let's stop in the middle and discuss the scenery' stuff. Just want to go down, fast, hard, meet you at the bottom of the run. You're too slow, I'll meet you at lunch."
"Yeah, funny," Micah said, not amused. It was slightly annoying that her view of him was so emasculating - even when she was joking. Except that she wasn't joking. "Are you serious? I'm a good skier. You're not going to have to meet me at lunch."
The elevator doors closed on her smug, questioning face. He smiled graciously. Of course everything was a competition. That was what he had to just get used to.
...
"It's just like Dr. Bandari," Emily said thoughtfully as she and Tyra walked through the rain to grab a coffee.
"Who?" Cassandra asked, joining them. "That CEO lady?"
"Yeah, exactly," said Emily judgmentally, "and she obvious has no life, just like Dr. Bandari. I mean, how depressing is that, that as a woman to stay on top you have no life?"
"That's why I'm shooting for the middle," Tyra shrugged. "I'll get the coffees."
"I want the top," Cassandra challenged when Tyra had moved away.
"Well, what about kids?"
"No kids," Cassandra shivered. She saw Emily's look of horror. "Such an annoying, cliched response, Pits! Big deal, I don't want kids. It doesn't make me a monster, it makes me a responsible adult who's aware of where her priorities will lie." Emily's look of pity didn't fade.
-Of course Pits would be obsessed with kids-Cassandra thought-just like Will. Ugh, stop those thoughts right now!-
Cassandra rolled her eyes, "You have names picked out already, don't you?"
"No!" Emily lied. She amended: "I'm still between a few."
-Good-Cassandra thought-let's get you started on that and away from my guy-
"Well, you're going to need a boyfriend first," Cassandra said, "and I have just the guy!"
"What?" asked Emily, looking surprised.
"He's a science teacher," Cassandra described. "Cute enough that you'll think you're lucky, not so cute that he's out of your league. We'll all meet at a bar after work, super cazj."
"What's the catch?" Emily asked.
"No catch!" Cassandra said, excited that she hadn't turned the offer down immediately. Maybe Will wasn't the Emily expert he claimed to be.
"One eyed?" Emily probed. "Knob-kneed?"
"A regular guy," Cassandra shook her head.
Emily's eyes narrowed, "Why the sudden interest in my personal life?"
-Because it is interfering with mine-
"I don't know," Cassandra said. "Things are going grew with me and Will and I'm feeling generous. Come on, don't you want someone to hold hands with?"
"That's not what she needs," Tyra said flatly, returning with the coffee. "She needs to get laid."
"Tyra, come on," Emily pleaded, embarrassed.
"Hey, no judgement," Cassandra shrugged. "That works too."
"Sorry, guys," Emily shook her head. "I'm not the blind date type, but I thank you both for your concern."
Cassandra frowned as they walked away. It annoyed her to no end that she was working so hard to make Pits happy. No amount of hard work would give that girl a social life.
...
"Oh, by the way, heads up," Will spoke up as he and Emily waited in the scanning room, "Cassandra for some reason is bound and determined to set you up."
"Yeah," Emily replied, trying to sound exasperated, "I'm well aware."
"Well that was quick," Will said. "Sorry. I told her in a million years you'd beaver go for it."
Emily smiled. "You know me well."
-The only thing you don't know about me is how perfect we would be together...-Emily sighed.
"You are predictable."
-Doctor say what?-
"What?" Emily asked aloud.
"Like, in a good way," Will stuttered, aware that he had said something wrong. "You know, like, relia…" He gave her a pleading look, "You know what I mean, right?"
She knew. It meant that he thought she was boring. No one wanted to be in a relationship with someone who was boring. That was why he rejected her. He thought she was boring.
There were two things she could do about this - either accept herself for who she was and learn to live with Will's pursuit of "exciting" and awful women...or change herself to meet his ideal. Any adult would, of course, choose to be true to herself, right?
"Tell Cassandra I will go on that date," Emily said defiantly. "I'm not that predictable."
...
Having Emily at his side lent a small amount of comfort to telling a woman that her mother had died unexpectedly. They walked down the hall together, sharing their strength silently.
He turned his head to look at her, wanting so badly to talk about his terrible day. He knew he wasn't supposed to.
He saw her look over at him, clearly holding back also. His resolve almost broke.
"I'll get started on the paperwork," Emily offered.
Micah was relieved by this, but his anger at the unnatural barrier that kept him from talking to Emily remained.
The source of the barrier drew nearer.
"You okay?" asked Kelly.
"I've lost patients before," Micah answered shortly.
"I know," she said carefully, "It's just...with your mom sick..."
Micah didn't need this. He didn't need a pep talk from the skiing goddess who would leave him in her wake and meet him after the experience was done. How could her words help at all? He needed someone who would stay with him. Someone who understood him.
"I'm okay," he said with a finality that cut off Kelly's next words. He walked away.
...
"We are going to get you laid tonight," Tyra said confidently, draping garment bags full of her sexiest outfits on the chair.
"It's not about getting laid,' Emily insisted. "It's about...it's about whether a change on the outside can provoke change on the inside."
"Right…" Tyra pretended to agree. Whatever it takes, right? "So, on a scale of hoochie to debutante, what are we thinking?"
"Um, maybe somewhere slightly closer to hoochie," Emily smiled awkwardly.
"Good," Tyra grinned, "that's all I brought anyway."
"You did not!" Emily shrieked, grabbing at the clothes inside as Tyra unzipped the bags.
"Of course I did," Tyra said. "You have the closet of a seventy-six-year-old woman with no style."
"I..." Emily stammered. "Come on, it's not that bad."
Tyra raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Silence was sometimes the best tool to use against Emily, who was great with words, but who over-thought every little thing. She started pulling out dresses, trying to find just the right one.
"Is it that bad?" Emily continued.
Tyra nodded. She pulled out a leather dress and her eyes lit up. "This is it. Stop looking."
...
"Scott, hi!" Cassandra greeted Emily's blind date. "You remember Will."
Will shook his hand. He couldn't explain why, but this guy upset him. Maybe it was that they didn't know him - he could be anyone! He could be a serial rapist! Or maybe it was because the presumption was that, within the span of a few hours, he was expected to bring Emily to bed... He didn't know why the thought of that bothered him either, but he supposed it should be clear to everyone that his friend deserved so much better.
"She might not show," Will said as they sat there uncomfortably. The more he thought about it, the more he hoped she wouldn't show.
"There she is," Cassandra told them.
Indeed, there she was. And all dolled up in a short dress and red lipstick. Will realized he had never seen her bare legs before...or at least that much of them...they were nice...
-Too nice!-he thought-might-encourage-bad-behavior-in-this-jerk nice! And the make-up: it's like she's some sultry temptress on the prowl-
Just as his thoughts were becoming too serious, however, Emily stumbled in her high heals. That all-too-familiar look of embarrassment crossed her face. Will smiled.
"Scott," Cassandra introduced, "this is Emily." She immediately turned to Will and said, "Don't they look cute together?"
Will scoffed, "If you say so."
Cassandra pursed her lips, "Come on, this is a good thing we're doing. Everybody needs somebody."
"Yeah, but I don't think she's into it," Will said. "This just isn't her thing. I doubt she'll enjoy herself."
"She will if she's drunk," Cassandra offered. She rose to go to the bar.
"No, come on," Will tried to stall her. "We should call this off. This isn't right for her."
"Don't be silly," Cassandra smiled. "They look great together. I'll go get shots. No, come on, it'll help."
Will frowned as she walked away to join Scott, who was buying beers. He joined Emily at the table.
"You look nice," he said. "Cassandra went to go get a shot. She wants everyone to do shots."
"I don't do shots," Emily said.
"I…" Will smiled, feeling relieved, "that's what I told her."
Emily grimaced. "Mmm, right. Predictable!"
Will felt his heart fall. "So is that why you agreed to come here?" He asked, feeling guilty. "Is that why you're doing this? Because I said that?"
"No," she lied.
"Okay, because it wasn't an insult," he tried to take it back.
"No, it's a hot, sexy trait," Emily fought back. "I hear guys all the time: 'I got dibs on that one, she looks predictable.'"
Will laughed. "We don't call dibs."
"You know what I mean," Emily said.
He looked at her with a meaningful stare, hoping she would see how much it hurt him to see her deny who she was. "I know you're not a blind date person."
Before more could be said, the drinks arrived.
...
To Cassandra's chagrin, alcohol was not causing Will's over-attention to Emily to subside. It was like he was guarding her pseudo-virginity like a wolf. She tried not to think about it, but his single-minded focus was really starting to push her buttons.
"I'm just not sure he's the right guy for her," Will said for the fiftieth time while watching Emily and Scott laughing together on the dance floor.
"Who care's?" Cassandra said soothingly. "They're having fun."
"Yeah, she's drunk," Will countered. "She's got her drunk smile on. She'd dance with a coat-rack right now."
Cassandra's mask of pleasantness fell. A night with the Emily Expert was not what she had planned for. In fact, it was starting to be a real drag.
"You're acting like you're jealous," she pointed out joylessly.
This caught Will's attention. "I'm not jealous," he said in his defense. "Just protective. 'Cause she's my friend and I'm not sure he's the right guy for her."
-What did that have to do with anything?-Cassandra's mind screamed. He was acting as though people don't have one night stands. Or change. Or have fun. Either that or he was saving Emily for himself-
"She doesn't want to marry him," Cassandra said bitingly. "She just wants to get laid, so…relax."
"I'm relaxed," Will said. "I'm totally relaxed. I just...it's not right to..."
"To what," Cassandra snapped, "to deny your friend a sex life?"
"I'm not...denying," Will refused. "Come one, I just don't think she should throw herself on the first guy that comes along."
"Why not?" Cassandra asked. "He's nice and he's cute, and he'll give her what she needs."
"What she needs?" Will hissed. "They have nothing in common. How can they-"
"I meant getting laid," Cassandra said, choking back her anger. "It's pretty hard to not have that in common."
"I think for some people sex is about more that 'getting laid'," Will tried to explain.
Cassandra felt herself losing it, "Oh, so you're suggesting that saintly Emily deserves this vast and epic love-making, but I'm a slut so I can just go have sex."
Will's head snapped in her direction, "That, no, how are you even thinking that?"
Before Cassandra could say anything, Emily's voice yelled out, "Does anybody have an epi pen?!"
There was a mad scramble to get Scott to the hospital. Cassandra used the uproar to slip out to her car.
...
Micah turned the corner to see a blonde woman with a long pair of bare legs in a leather dress standing in the hallway of his hospital. He stopped to appreciate the sight when a nurse talked to the woman first.
"Wow," she said. "Emily you look really nice."
"Okay I get it!" the blonde said, turning to reveal a face he knew so well. "Normally I don't!"
Micah tried to hide a smile - both at her reaction and at his. It had been a long day and he was tired - tired of medicine and lawsuits and egomaniacs and lying to himself about his heart. He couldn't fix some of those things, but there were others that were self-imposed. They had to stop.
"Sorry," she said, turning to see Micah. "It's a tonnage thing."
They shared a chuckle. Micah had forgotten how good it felt.
"Can I just say…" Emily began.
"What?" Micah asked hopefully.
"I know you want to keep things professional, but I've been thinking about you…and your mom...a lot today. And I wanted you to know that just in case it means anything."
Micah felt his heart melt. For the first time in weeks, he felt complete clarity. He had to talk to someone, and that someone had to be Emily.
"It does," he said. "Mean something."
He gestured for them to go somewhere to talk and she followed.
"What brings you in here, all dressed up," Micah asked.
"Ha ha," Emily said, sitting down. "I almost killed my date."
Micah felt a flare of jealousy, "Almost?"
"Peanut allergy," she nodded. "I had just eaten peanuts."
"Then you...Ah..." Micah tried not to imagine Emily kissing another guy. "That's uh, that's pretty deadly, Dr. Owens."
"I know," Emily agreed. "I'm a dangerous lover. I've been trying to say that all day."
"Well, you don't have to tell me," he laughed through mixed emotions.
"You look like you've had a rough day," she observed.
"You have no idea," Micah said.
"Tell me?"
"Okay."
...
Will tried called Cassandra for the twentieth time, but like all the other attempts, it went straight to voicemail. He was becoming worried, but he had promised to stick around until he knew Scott was okay...and hopefully to give him a ride home...without Emily.
"Hey, Cassandra, it's me," he said to the voicemail recorder. "Scott's going to be fine. They're just keeping him until the swelling goes down, which shouldn't be too much longer. I was thinking I'd come over after we get the all clear. So, um, yeah. Let me know you're okay, alright."
[don't come over]
Cassandra's text made him frown. None of the fight they had started in the bar made any sense to him. It was her fault, if anything, for putting Emily in a compromising and possibly dangerous situation.
[Why not? We should talk.]
[don't want to talk to you]
...
"I heard the lawsuit was dropped!" Kelly said in greeting as Micah approached her in the parking lot after work.
"Wow, word gets around fast," he said. His excitement was tempered, naturally, because he knew what lay ahead in the conversation.
"Now we really have something to celebrate this weekend," she smiled.
"I wanted to talk to you about that, actually," Micah said, trying to find the right words.
"Oh, I don't like that look." Kelly asked: "No Vail?"
It took all Micah's strength to continue, "...You're a great girl…"
Kelly caught on immediately. Her face fell. "Oh, this is not about Vail."
"No," Micah said simply. "I don't think we…should continue this. Us."
"Wow," breathed Kelly, hurt and surprise showing through.
Micah knew he had to push through this, but his heart ached. "I'm just, I'm not…where I think I should be."
"Look," Kelly bargained, "I know there's a lot going on with your mom…"
"It's not just my mom," Micah hated himself for having to clarify. "I'm just not there…with you."
It didn't matter to Micah that Kelly was sweet and interested in him. It mattered that, with everything that was happening, she wasn't his partner, she was a wall he kept running up against. He couldn't know for sure, but he felt that, even if he had not been in love with another woman, he would eventually have broken in off with Kelly for this reason anyway.
"I'm sorry," he told her.
"Yeah," said Kelly, putting on a brave smile. "Me too."
...
"Hey," Will said, running down the stairs to meet Emily as she was leaving. "Crazy night, huh?"
"Yeah," Emily smiled. She was already dreaming of her warm bed.
"You gonna see that Scott guy again?" Will asked. Emily was surprised by this question, and the one that followed: "He just, he didn't seem like he's your type."
He said it defensively, like he was trying to trick her into revealing her intentions. Her intentions for Scott? Why would he care? Unless...
-he's acting a little…-
"I don't see you with him," Will told her. Was he trying to talk her out of a relationship or out of getting laid? Are these the stakes?
-JEALOUS-she thought-he's acting jealous-
Emily experimented, "He seemed nice, though."
"Nice?" Will snapped, incredulous. "Come on, guys like that: they'll take advantage."
Emily couldn't be sure, but that sounded an awful lot like jealousy.
-if he's jealous-Emily followed this train of thought-that means…deep down, somewhere he's not even aware of…he likes me!-
She beamed at him.
"What?" Will asked, not knowing where her sudden joy had come from.
"Nothing," she grinned.
