A/N: Another bit…I have 2 more parts in my head ready to pour out. After that it gets a bit dicey on where this goes. FYI, Tina Dico is a singer who sings "My Mirror" - a great song they played for another of my ships (Ann and Danny on Related) and I thought had an interesting fit for Scrubs. All lyrics quoted are still from Daniel Bedingfield's song that inspired the title to this story.

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If You're Not the One – 3
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I never know what the future brings
But I know you are here with me now
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Patrick approached the Nurses' Station reluctantly. He had been there for hours, coming in early after an intense work out and he thought he was mentally prepared to see Robin when the time came, but seeing her standing there reviewing a file he had an annoying feeling of unease.

Unease, though, he could live with, it even made sense. It was better than say, nervousness or anger, both of which would have meant he was overreacting since he knew that for once Robin was right, their goals didn't mesh. He was out for a good time and she was an overly serious person looking for more than he was willing to give. The only thing that gave him some momentary pause was the acknowledgement that he knew this all along and still pursued her, but he was easily able to ascribe this to her being a challenge and a novelty as he rarely met attractive women he considered close to being his professional and intellectual equal. It made sense he'd spend some time in a new place exploring that. Kind of like a kid with a new toy.

And if he wondered for even a moment at the significant decrease in his sexual activity since he moved to Port Charles, he ruthlessly shoved the thought away with vague explanations of dealing with his not-sober-sober-dying father and re-establishing his career at a new hospital. It had nothing to do with his unusual preoccupation with Robin Scorpio.

It was all very logical to him which was why he had no problem, other than an understandable unease at her reaction would be, to walk up and greet her in a professional, yet friendly manner. Just like he had practiced in his head.

"Good morning, Dr. Scorpio." He took the messages the nurse handed him and leaned against the counter across from her. If he felt the momentary urge to flirt, that was just habit.

"Hi," she said absently, not looking up from her file.

After how hard he worked to be friendly to her, now she was going to ignore him? His head jerked up in righteous indignation. She slags him off before basically dumping him, even though they weren't even together, and then walked off with the Prince of Darkness and now she was ignoring him!

"I thought we were going to be friends." Damn! He hadn't meant to make the last word sound like a curse. He had meant to be causal and just let her know the he knew that she was the one behaving badly. He straightened up and pretended to be absorbed in his messages and hoped she was too intent on what he assumed was her ignoring him to have noticed.

Patrick was partially lucky. Robin had very clearly heard the venom in his voice, but unlike him she wasn't surprised by it and didn't wonder about its cause. She had expected it would take some time before Patrick's ego was suitably soothed enough to act professional and friendly, well as friendly as they ever got, with her again. She was determined, though, to forge on through it and keep her cool. One of them had to be the adult. It was an obvious choice from her perspective.

"I just noticed something in the Dico file. Look at this." She slid the file across the counter and pointed to an entry, her notes next to his.

Surprised, Patrick's eyes flickered to her face and then down to the file. As he read what she was pointing out, his mind processed that she looked completely calm and unflustered. Not like she was angry and ignoring him at all. He should be relieved, he knew, but he wasn't.

"I want to take another look at the MRI's. Do you want to come?" she asked.

"Yeah." He shoved the messages into his pocket and picked up the file and followed behind her, unaware that his face looked to be in as much turmoil as it had looked the moment that his father had mentioned the danger of the virus to the hospital staff at the beginning of the epidemic.

They walked into the small room and he handed her the MRI's and she put them up on the light board while he turned out the light.

The light shone like moonlight on her face. The unusually poetic thought threw Patrick for a moment and ticked him off further. Why should he have to deal with this in order to do his job?

"It's definitely smaller, but just on the one side." Robin pointed to the tumor they had been treating. Well, she had been treating with some new drug she had invented and recently gotten FDA approval to try. He was stuck waiting and lobbying for surgery, although he didn't mind handling crisis situations. He excelled at them.

"It still needs surgery." He shrugged and fidgeted impatiently.

"Her tumor is shrinking, which is exactly what I hoped for with this treatment."

"On one side, it's still too dangerously close to her motor skills area," he pointed out, his fingers itching to get this surgery underway. This was what he did and he did it brilliantly and he was getting extremely tired of her getting in the way with her drugs and coddling of the patient. She coddled everyone but him, he thought resentfully.

"And given the rate of growth that's not going to change dramatically in the next two weeks, unless it's for the better. I'm going to see what I can do about changing the dosing, see if that helps."

"So she will lie in the hospital bed for another two weeks waiting for surgery while you play witch doctor with your potions. She needs brain surgery so just get the hell out of my way already."

It wasn't the words that surprised her; they'd had this debate countless times since being thrown together for consults. It was the tone of his voice that felt like a smack in the face. She had thought he had some modicum respect for her work by now. Yet another reason why anything more than a professional relationship wouldn't work as far as she was concerned.

"Surgery isn't always the answer. Most people don't like having their body cut open as much as you like doing it. Their convalescence doesn't end at the OR doors, Dr. Drake." She stiffened her back and ordered herself to remain calm. He can only push your buttons if you let him.

"If I have to hear another lecture about my bedside manner my head is going to explode. Why don't you go back to the lab and invent things for lesser doctors to use. I don't need them."

"Well," Robin snapped as she began taking down the MRI's with jerky, angry motions. "It's a good thing that it's the patient that gets to decide what kind of care they want and not you. Unless you're planning to make another bet about whether you can convince this patient to…." Robin broke off and stamped in fury, this time at herself. She swore she wasn't going to let his expected temper tantrums get to her. She had, she admitted, seriously miscalculated; she just wasn't sure what was missing from her equation. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for." Her voice was contrite and weary.

Rather than being upset, though, Patrick suddenly felt a lot better. Like he often did when he managed to get under her skin, even though he wasn't supposed to want to be there anymore. "Let's call it even and go talk to our patient." He took the MRI's from her unresisting fingers and put them back into their folder and smiled at her.

Robin looked at him, blinked and tried to figure out what the hell was going through his mind.

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Hours later Robin and Patrick were standing once again at the Nurse's station.

Nurse Epiphany was behind them working and enjoying the floor show these two always provided. Each was pretending to be engrossed in the files that they were writing in, but whenever the other wasn't looking they would glance at the other. Another few days of this and Epiphany was going to lock them in a supply closet for a few hours and see what happened. Courtesy of the video camera she was going to plant. She ginned evilly as she contemplated the fortune she could make selling downloads on the Internet.

"What's your position on friends spending time together, Dr. Scorpio?"

Wary, Robin looked up from her file to find Patrick looking at her very intently. "In general it's what friends do." She bit her tongue before she could ask "why." The spat they'd had that morning had been the last of the day and Patrick had been very respectful of the drug option when they met with Tina Dico. Whenever they crossed paths for the rest of the day it had been unnervingly peaceful.

"I need a change of pace and there's a party tonight. Come with me. As friends." He hadn't intended to ask her, but it seemed like a good idea now that they were getting along and he hadn't time to ask anyone else.

"I think that your instinct that friends might do something like that is a good one because I already happen to be going to the party tonight with a friend. But thank you." She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, curious about his reaction.

"Oh really, which friend?" Patrick pretended idle curiosity, when he in fact felt stung by the rejection.

"Nikolas Cassadine."

"Then I'll see you there." Patrick closed his file with a snap and put it down on the counter a bit harder than he had intended. His gaze snapped to the nurse whose name he couldn't remember standing nearby because he could swear he had heard her snigger. He expected her to pretend she wasn't listening in, but she was just looking at him, unblinking. He found it as irritating as he did unsettling. He looked back at Robin who was also watching him, an undecipherable expression on her face, which also irritated and unsettled him. He searched his mind for something amusing to say and came up blank.

Just then Dr. Kelly Lee walked in between them and he grabbed on to her presence like a lifeline. "Dr. Lee, would you like to go to a party with me tonight?" He gave her his most charming smile, turning his head to make sure she could see his dimple on his favored profile.

"What's the occasion?" she looked at him with avid interest.

"It's a gala for the reopening of Luke Spencer's casino, The Haunted Star."

"A casino? Count me in -- I love to gamble." She gave him an unmistakably seductive smile, which settled Patrick's nerves considerably as he slipped into a comfort zone.

"Great, so do I. It's black tie, but I'm sure a cocktail dress will do. "He smiled, winked and then walked away, his steps once again light.

Dr. Lee looked at Robin who was not trying to hide the fact that she was listening in. She knew that there was something going on with the two doctors and she figured that she had just been asked right in front of Dr. Scorpio as some sort of power play, but she didn't particularly care. Patrick Drake was hot and she intended to have a good time tonight.

Robin shook her head, bemused as Dr. Lee walked away and then looked at Nurse Epiphany who had been just was obviously attentive.

"Honey, don't look at me," Epiphany snorted and turned back to the computer.

A few more days everything will be normal again, Robin told herself. Whatever normal was.

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I don't want to run away but I can't take it, I don't understand
If I'm not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am
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