It was the next morning when Melendez spoke carefully to us. "Do any of you know the viability time for a liver?"

"Do you not?" Dr. Murphy immediately shot back, to my great amusement. I was immediately smiling, and biting my lower lip, trying really hard not to laugh. Melendez turned slowly, dramatically, and glared spectacularly at his youngest surgical resident. He looked nonplussed at the display, which made me want to laugh harder. I leaned back in my chair with a bright grin on my face and Murphy winked at me. That was funny. Dr. Murphy's dry humor mixed with his brilliant recall and impeccable timing was hilarious to me, though most other people would be and were offended and/or annoyed by some of his comments.

Melendez turned on me. "Why is this so funny to you, Dr. Airan?"

Because, besides the fact that I was feeling like shit and needed something to laugh about today, Murphy's right. Why would you ask us a question you already know the answer to? I thought about the actual question for a moment, signing quickly, after my brain rifled through all the information I had learned about organ transplants and donations. Less than twelve hours. After twelve hours, the cells begin to die and the organ becomes non-transplantable.

"Precisely. Well done, Airan. We're going to have to have a discussion about your preamble later, though."

My smile was immediately dropped and my face became stony. I don't want to talk about it, Melendez. Leave it alone or you'll find out something about me you never wanted to know. My ass will be gone quicker than Kalu can eat a bowl of ice cream if that ever comes up again. Just let it go. I grinned again, trying to recreate my previous smile, but it had slipped away from me now and Murphy looked confused. I ignored him. Now, we have a liver for Chuck. Where is it?

"San Francisco Municipal Hospital."

How are we going to get it?

"I am going to split you into pairs—Claire and Jared will stay here and assist me in preparing Chuck for the surgery and you and Shaun will take a trip to go get the liver."

I remembered what Dr. Glassman had said to me when I spoke about what I could do to connect with Shaun. I knew that it would be difficult to do, and that he was one of the strangest people I ever met, but I was willing to make the effort. I would have to make my own connection with him, find my own way in, as Glassman had told me. That was exactly what most of my friends had to do to become my friends, and I had two or three extra barriers, mutism being just one. Because of my mutism, my social skills were straight-up shit, and Shaun had so much difficulty bonding with others that I was unlikely to connect at all and would just become another person he knew and lost along the way.

Melendez smiled at me. "The helicopter is going to arrive in thirty minutes."

I closed my eyes. Helicopter. Oh, god. I immediately remembered my last helicopter ride—after Adam beat the absolute living hell out of me, leaving me with fourteen broken ribs, both of my arms and legs broken with a bat, bruising that covered my entire face, bleeding on my brain, broken blood vessels in both my eyes, and bleeding in my eyes—and felt my own heart start racing at the memory. Melendez gently touched my shoulder and my eyes shot open, to see his concerned face, despite the fact that he had been giving us the fuck you all routine since I started at Bonaventure.

"Did you have a bad experience with a helicopter?"

Yeah. Four months ago.

"What happened?"

Before I came here, my ex-husband tried to kill me, and I was brought by helicopter to Texas A&M Medical Center for treatment. I was hospitalized for three months, with nineteen broken bones, serious bruising and slices on my face, blunt force trauma to my head, seizures, swelling, brain bleeds, and eventually fell into a coma. I've still got the 23 stitches in my head and a metal plate to hold my skull together.

"Good God, Airan. I'm...I'm not even sure what to say to that. Jesus Christ, that's horrible. Please tell me that you had his ass arrested."

Yep. He's doing forty to life in a men's prison in Texas. Helicopters scare the Bhagavan out of me, though. Reminds me of that...

"I'd guess so. They'd scare the piss out of me, too, if I had gone through that. By the way, the what?"

Bhagavan is the Hindu word for God.

"Oh, okay. Do you want me to make Claire take the flight?"

I thought about it and then nodded, my head falling as if I was ashamed of nearly dying. It wasn't that. I was ashamed of being deathly afraid of helicopters because of what Adam did to me. It made me feel weak, like I was some scared little girl. In a sense, I was. Underneath all my tough talk and profanity, I was nothing but a scared little girl who had been hurt so much that I developed a fear of being hurt. I didn't realize that I was crying until Melendez's long, warm arms were around me.

"I understand." He said as I stiffened immediately, surprised at the movement. I never thought that someone as harsh as him would ever hug anyone else. "Alright, Claire. You're going with Shaun. Emilie, you stay with Jared and prepare Chuck for his surgery."

I nodded, looking at Murphy with a small smile. and a thumbs up, never mind the fact that my mascara was running down my face. He had this. He could do it. His bright blue eyes seemed happy at the news that he'd still be going, so my guess was that he probably liked helicopters. Melendez and Jared went inside to begin prepping Chuck and I knew that I should be with them, but Claire had gone to get her stuff and Murphy was standing there by himself. I used my voice generator this time.

"Good job owning Melendez. You just sat his ass down like a boss. Didn't even miss a beat." The odd, electronic voice spoke for me.

"Thank you, Dr. Airan."

"It's Emilie. I heard you talking to Dr. Glassman a couple days ago, telling him about how you loved me. I'm not the safest person to love. There are safer options for you. Take them." I faced away from him now, unable to watch his face as I effectively told him to let whatever love he had for me go. "You deserve better than me."

I suddenly saw him standing in front of me, and he knelt down to my eye level, taking my face in his hands. I was crying again, and this time Murphy cried with me. His tears broke my heart more than mine did, because I cried all the time, just not in front of people. Murphy was the first person I had cried in front of in years. His eyes looked determined, though, and his hands ran down the sides of my neck, making me shiver a little, and then nestled themselves in my collarbones. "I didn't want love, Emilie. But the second I looked into your eyes, I knew that it was too late."

My face was flushed now, but my skin tone made it difficult to see, and my eyes, despite the tear tracks that were drying on my cheeks, glowed with anticipation. He dropped to his knees in front of me, and let me pull him close. I had my hands on the sides of his head, running my fingers through his hair. He then-in the most shocking Shaun Murphy moment both to date and probably ever-kissed me.

He turned his head, letting it rest almost on my shoulder, as I instinctively followed. His warm tongue pressed against my lips, and I immediately let him in. One of my weaknesses was that I couldn't resist it when my partners did that. Melendez would kill us if he caught us like this, though, I knew that much, but I couldn't resist. I could beat myself up for giving in to him later. Murphy then pinned me back into my chair with his arm, and that drove me even crazier. I was holding my arms out uselessly, begging for him to come closer, but he still had me pinned down, and I took to struggling against him. I wanted to hold him, and he wouldn't let me with my arms pinned underneath his.

It took Murphy a minute to realize that I was struggling, but he let me free the second he understood that I didn't want to be pinned anymore. I immediately grabbed him around the shoulders, forcing him to almost sit in my lap. That seemed to surprise him, but he rested his forehead against mine and smiled a little. "I did not know that bondage arouses you, Emilie…"

"Yes. I absolutely love being bound in a sexually way. It freaks me out if it's just like kidnapping or something like that."

"I would never kidnap you or do something that you don't like."

"I know." I leaned back. What neither of us saw was Dr. Morgan Reznick, her blue eyes peeking out from behind the side of the building. She would spread it around to the whole building before the day was done. I went back inside to assist Kalu and Melendez with prepping Chuck for his surgery. Claire came out with a duffel bag and she and Shaun quickly set off on the helicopter. It took an additional two hours for Chuck to be completely prepped for his surgery. I silently prayed, as I removed my heavily bloodstained gloves, that Shaun and Claire could get the liver back in time because he would die without it.

Having done all I could do, I went to visit Hunter in the pediatric ICU, only to find out that he was discharged and sent with his Aunt and Uncle, who took him because his parents had abandoned him and his foster parents refused to keep him any longer. I sighed; he was a great kid, and even though I wasn't able to take him, I hoped that his aunt and uncle didn't beat down his spirit. Hunter, buddy, I hope you're okay wherever you are. I thought to myself, before going back up to Surgery. By that time, I learned that Chuck wasn't getting his new liver after all. He had apparently not met the required conditions for a liver transplant, and the liver that Shaun and Claire had brought back would go to another patient that needed one.

So we performed the surgery on that patient and replaced his liver, while Chuck was sent home to die, because there was nothing we could do for him. Shaun and I looked at each other through the masks that covered our mouths. It had been a day and a half. And it wasn't over yet.