"The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired."

-Gordon B. Hinckley, Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes

Chapter 10: Stairwell

Once Yumi was finished with her rounds, she returned to Surgery's office. The sun was already setting, an orange light filtering into the room, and she could still hear Miss Solovieff's sobbing voice ringing in her ears.

Work was admittedly getting difficult. First there was Mr. Chardin, then Mrs. Solovieff—and she still couldn't crack her handsome brunet colleague no matter what she did. Suddenly feeling disheveled, she sat at her desk and simply glared off into space. That was when she realized someone was waving a hand in front of her face. A purple outfit and a cone-shaped haircut.

Odd?

"Well, don't you look tired?" remarked the eccentric doctor. His features were soft, comforting, upturned to a smile.

Yumi propped both her elbows up against the desk and buried her tired face in her hands. "Ha-ha," she laughed sarcastically. She laughed so hard that she almost cried. "You got me."

"It's bad to push yourself this hard. Bad for the body, bad for the soul."

"Yeah, yeah.."

"D'you know where Ulrich is, by the way?"

"No, sorry."

"He was supposed to meet me in Internal Medicine, and I've been waiting." Odd scanned his eyes across the room, pivoting his head in every direction possible. "So I thought I'd come here."

"You do come here a lot," Yumi commented.

"I guess." Odd shrugged apathetically with a self-deprecating smile. "I like to give advice to the surgeons about life... about love. All of you are too uptight."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Wow, don't just ignore me like that." Odd's expression fell, then he scratched his head. "Anyway, what am I gonna do..?"

"I'll let him know that you stopped by," Yumi deadpanned.

"Yeah? That'd help a lot!" Odd was suddenly grinning again. "So now, if you don't mind, I think I'll have a coffee."

Yumi glanced over at him, noticing that he wasn't heading back to his floor at Internal Medicine. Instead, he glided towards Surgery's break room and reappeared holding a cup of coffee in each hand. "Here you are..."

"Thanks." Yumi accepted a cup, lacking the energy to question him.

"The coffee is better here," Odd laxly commented, taking a sip. "Is it the beans? Or, no, is it the person who makes the coffee?" He held the cup at eye level, examining it.

"It's automatic, I don't think it makes a difference who presses the button."

"Our beans are cheap. They treat us Internists rough." Odd sighed. With a sad smile, he continued drinking his coffee. Yumi quietly observed him. He seemed so relaxed, and she envied him. It was like he had nothing but time on his hands.

"You were just thinking that I have lots of time."

"You're a mind reader."

Odd frowned at her response. "Yumi, you're supposed to be saying, 'not at all!' You could hurt my feelings..."

Yumi rolled her eyes. He was so childlike, but she supposed she could appreciate that about him. "How's it going between you and Super Doctor?" Odd suddenly asked.

"Err..." Yumi didn't want to talk about it, and Odd nodded in understanding. She needn't say any more.

"You know what Ulrich's like. It's hard to find someone that gets along with him. But he's a good doctor."

Yumi nodded in agreement. Ulrich's technique was without fault, and he spared no effort for his patients. But, he was always so distant and aloof, almost like he didn't feel anything at all. "He's so cold," she acknowledged flatly.

"Yeah, he definitely tells it like it is!" Odd chuckled. "But if he didn't have high hopes for you, he wouldn't even be talking to you. He's showing he expects good things from you, in his own way."

Yumi realized that Odd was comforting her. He must have spotted her crying in the halls. She felt grateful, but he clearly got it all wrong. Regardless, she decided to go along with it.

"Well, I'll just be going now," said Odd.

"I'll let Dr. Stern know you stopped by."

Yumi saw Odd leave. He was a good person and he seemed to understand Ulrich well. She wondered what their relationship with each other was was like. Next time, she would have to ask him more about Ulrich.

"How are you feeling?" Before Yumi left for the day, she visited Mr. Chardin one last time. The elderly man was resting lethargically in bed, looking pensively out the window. It was starting to get dark.

"Well," he replied with a small smile, "thanks to you."

"Tomorrow's the big day," she reminded him. Things were ending badly, but she wanted to do all she could for him before then. "Is there anything troubling you?"

"Nothing." Mr. Chardin put on a bigger smile.

"If anything ends up concerning you and your family, feel free to call the hospital anytime," Yumi offered.

"Thank you, but I don't think I'll be bothering my family any longer..."

"Hm?"

"My kids say that they won't have anything to do with me after I'm released."

Yumi gazed at Mr. Chardin in pure astonishment. Did that mean that the hospital's decision pulled his family apart? She creased her eyebrows in concern, but Mr. Chardin seemed to be taking it all in stride.

"Doctor, don't make that face. I'll be alright." His smile never left his face, not even for a second. Obeying his wishes, Yumi returned it with a small grin.

When she arrived at work the next morning, the nurses were standing at the entrance with flower bouquets in their hands. Ulrich emerged from the automatic sliding doors, guiding Mr. Chardin in his wheelchair.

Standing beside Mr. Chardin was a smiling woman about his age. Was that his wife, Yumi wondered? So his family decided to visit, after all. Mr. Chardin turned to his right, spotting Yumi with her feet planted to the ground.

"Doctor Ishiyama, thank you for everything," he said to her.

"You're already leaving.." Yumi walked up to him, smiling sadly.

"Better soon than later, right?" He turned his head to smile up at the woman beside him. They looked so happy. It led Yumi to wonder if it was really true that he was released in order to vacate the single-occupancy room.

"We're also very thankful for Dr. Stern," Mr. Chardin added.

"That's not necessary," the brunet concisely replied.

"Well anyway, thank you."

Yumi slipped a hand into her coat pocket, making a fist. They were discharging him at the interest of hospital—he shouldn't be thankful at all. Nevertheless, it looked as if he was walking on air.

"They look so happy," said Anais to Yumi, "and all thanks to Dr. Stern. "

"What do you mean?" Yumi asked. She was angrily confused as to how he could possibly have made things good for Mr. Chardin.

"Mr. Chardin's wife passed away twenty years ago." Anais smiled widely, pointing to the woman beside the old man. "She's the woman he fell in love with after her death."

So that's who she was.

"Mr. Chardin's wish was to spend his final days with her," Anais detailed, "but his family wouldn't allow it. They were probably worried about their inheritance if he decided to remarry, so they held him captive at the hospital."

Yumi bit her lip. "Dr. Stern knew all of that?"

Anais nodded. "He respected Mr. Chardin's wishes and released him."

How could Yumi have missed so much? She didn't understand Ulrich or Mr. Chardin, but now she knew everything. Ulrich gracefully took care of the situation in a way that pleased everyone in the end. It left Yumi feeling remorseful.

Yumi was finishing up for the day when she spotted Mrs. Solovieff's daughter in the Nurses Station. She didn't want to talk to the younger girl, but her heart ached at the sight of her swollen eyes.

"Miss Solovieff," Yumi called to her.

The girl sniffed and calmly looked up at her. "Oh, hi, Doctor," she deadpanned. Yumi was relieved to see her calmer than she expected. She wasn't sure what would become of her after losing her mother, but she thought there would be a lot more tears.

"What brings you here?"

"I'm just taking care of some paperwork. My dad is out working."

Yumi shot her a sympathetic look. Taking care of paperwork for her mother's death had to be extremely painful. She knew the feeling herself when her own mother passed.

"Talk to me if you are having any problems," she offered. "You don't have to deal with this alone."

"I'm fine," the redhead asserted, sadly. "Dr. Stern came to me and I asked him why he didn't tell me that my mom was going to die soon. He said that my mother wanted to see me smiling, from heaven." She forced out a smile, her eyes still swollen with tears. "Mom fought to the end, for me."

Yumi thought that Miss Solovieff was gonna be just like her twelve years ago. But she was completely different—Yumi could never be that strong.

Ulrich saved Mr. Chardin and Miss Solovieff emotionally. Not just as a doctor, but he also treated his patients like real people. Maybe he wasn't who she thought he was. She wished she had someone like him when her mother passed.

But no matter what, she couldn't sympathize with the son of her enemy.

"This is getting ridiculous," Emily sighed, her hands on her hips.

"Did something happen?" Yumi asked them.

"It's Sissi Delmas in the single-occupancy room!" Anais couldn't contain her excitement. "The media found out about her staying here, and now the entrance is flooded with press."

"Miss Delmas brought her manager." Agitated, Emily ran a hand through her hair. "Now they're treating all the nurses like criminals."

"That's terrible," responded Yumi. "I was just about to leave."

"Take the back entrance," suggested Emily. "There's no press there."

Following Emily's directions, Yumi walked to the end of the hall and made a turn. She was in an unlit wing of the hospital that was no longer in use. "But this place is completely useable," Yumi thought. A lot of the smaller hospitals could use a place like it. It just goes to show how healthy the cash flow was at Montpellier General.

The door opened up to a dim staircase. Creak. Then the exit, heavy with rust, opened up to the main street. Yumi poked her head out the door. The area was completely quiet—no one was there.

But the sound of a generic ringtone quickly proved her assumption wrong.

Then someone spoke, "Tell them I'll be there later."

That voice—it was Ulrich. Why was he here? Yumi strode to the side of the building his voice came from. She looked up the stairwell and found the acclaimed surgeon sitting alone on one of the steps, smoking and writing down some notes.

His features were pensive. "Dr. Stern!" she called.

The quiet, yet handsome doctor looked up in surprise. In the wake of his sudden jolt, a piece of paper dropped from hands and fluttered towards the ground. Yumi rushed to it and caught it before it could touch the floor.

Ulrich descended the stairs and quietly held his hand out to Yumi. The woman looked down at the paper in honest curiosity. "This is a copy of Mrs. Solovieff's medical records," she said to him, astonished. She scanned her eyes further down, and found notes on his conversation with her daughter. Inside Ulrich's other hand was a bulky brown notebook.

Ulrich snatched the paper away from Yumi. "Do you keep records of all your patients?" she asked him.

He averted his gaze. "Only the ones I lose," he answered. There was that same sad and distant look on his face again.

"You told me not to 'waste time,'" she said to him.

"If all you're doing is crying," Ulrich retorted. He shot her a serious look. "But it's not worth forgetting."

"For treating the next patients?"

"And...to punish myself," Ulrich stated quietly. His expression quickly darkened. Did he plan on carrying the burden of his patients throughout his whole life?

"You'll ruin yourself," she said to him. That was when Yumi remembered the day she found him in the on call room. It looked like he was having nightmares—was he being tortured by their deaths?

Ulrich grimaced. "Perhaps." He turned away, as if rejecting further questions. Then he disappeared towards the dark wing of the hospital, as quickly as Yumi discovered him.

That was the moment Yumi realized that Ulrich might just be the warmest person she ever met.