Ch2: Mindy + Danny: Where is the instruction manual to this part of the relationship?

6 am. Mindy's thoughts drifted as she was getting ready for work. She stepped into the morning shower, turning the water as hot as it would go. Steam everywhere, to help clear her mind. She closed her eyes. Mindy was having a quarter-life crisis. How could she have not seen it? She almost married the wrong guy! What other decisions could she have messed up in her life? Did she want to be a doctor? Yes. Did she want to be living in New York? Yes. Did she have feelings for Danny? Yes. Did she know what to do about it? Hells, no! No one gave you instructions on this part of the relationship. The romantic comedy movies always ended here when the protagonists got together. Why? Because no one knew what happened between here and….there. Was it because nothing interesting happened after that? Mindy wished there was a road map or instruction manual that let her know how to navigate this tricky relationship situation. Another week had passed and Mindy felt like she and Danny weren't like they used to be. Things had cooled considerably between them. They were still in a bit of relationship purgatory mode, suspended between heaven and hell. Mindy and Danny needed some time to process this new dimension in their relationship and not make the same mistakes from old relationships. They didn't know where to go or how to proceed, there was no map, and dammit, Danny was never the type to stop and ask for directions, anyways. When it came to stepping up, you could always count on Mindy. She was a straight shooter, she was honest, and she took no prisoners. They were friends wanting to be more but also worked together. Messy. "Arrgggh." she put her hands to her face and wiped the water from her eyes. She got dressed and went to work.

Sitting in her office, Mindy stared out of her office window, deep in thought. With Danny, it was more complicated because there were so many more emotional facets to their "whatever it was"-attraction, competition, angst, tenderness, jealousy, loyalty, longing, friendship. Their relationship was like a Rubik's cube that she couldn't quite solve yet, though she tried to in her mind. I don't understand you, Danny. You probably get that a lot. Danny's motives for what he did were not always clear to her at first, but often made sense in retrospect. She had hook ups with other colleagues before, but they were different. Other hook ups were much simpler. Take Jeremy Reed, for example. Hot shot with the British accent, work was work and sex was sex. Separate, each in its own nice, neat box. When Mindy would forget how to compartmentalize after their hook ups (back in the day), Jeremy always set her straight.

"Min-dy, sex is like a box of chocolates," he said and put a hand on her shoulder in the doctor's lounge one night after she had texted to him, "What's our deal again? Can we talk in the doctor's lounge?"

"What the…what….is this going to be some lame speech from Forrest Gump?" Mindy grumbled, rolled her eyes, and shrugged off his hand from her shoulder.

"No, I'm trying to explain it. Don't shoot the messenger." he said with hands in the air.

"Min-dy" he said in his impossibly sexy British accent, "Sex is physical, it's fun, it's a release. It's like food. Men need it, want it, gotta have it, constantly think about it. No….matter…what. There doesn't have to be anything attached to sex, not love, not romance, nada. Women communicate with romance and feelings…and apparently lots of talking. Men communicate with sex." Mindy didn't know why, but the message delivered in that British accent somehow made it easier to hear.

"I get it, okay!" Mindy said in an exasperated tone, but she didn't really. She was not a guy.

Danny was a guy. He prided himself on being a guy's guy. He took sports seriously. Check. He was great at work. Check. He was great at sex. You'd better believe it. Unless he wasn't into it. Danny thought back to those ridiculous sex therapy sessions with his ex. WTF? He most definitely did not need instructions or help in that area. He just was not into Christina anymore. It took every bit of self-control for him not to make a move on Mindy. Every…ounce…of….self-control not to have sex with her. Not that he didn't think about it. A lot. When he would see the contours of her breast under her silk blouse, his mind wandered. Different ways they would do it, what she would do to him, what he would do to her. He had a case of some serious aches down there recently, but he took care of it at home. As far as he knew, Mindy needed some space to take care of the situation with Casey. She seemed sad at work, but he knew she was leaning on Gwen, or Alex, or Maggie. He knew she would come back when she was ready. Work was work, and Mindy and Danny could keep their "whatever it was" in a box and open it later. He got it, he was a man. He could compartmentalize. So, he focused on keeping distracted, and it made sense to him. Danny joined an intramural basketball league at the YMCA. "The Getting Over it Gang" (aka GOIG) played basketball during lunch. There was an upcoming intramural game coming up against the "SoHo hos" a women's team. He heard they were good, like they played on their high school or college teams. Danny was not planning on losing a game to a bunch of girls, though, and he didn't care what they were called. He just hoped it wasn't karma coming to bite him in the ass again because he almost called Mindy a sl-, well, you know.

Then, one day, out of the blue, Mindy went by Danny's office, stood in his doorway and looked at him. He was sitting at his desk, working on his patient charts. He could feel her there, looking at him, and he looked up. She was wearing her trademark Clark Kent glasses with her shoulder length hair framing her face, a print blouse with the top buttons unbuttoned, a form-fitting pencil skirt and kitten heels. He looked at her full, heart-shaped lips, the perfect shade of dark pink. God help him, she looked like she needed to be taken, right there, on his desk. It was one of many scenarios he had played out in his head.

"Uh, hey, what's up?" he said instead. Thank God he was sitting down behind his desk so she couldn't see his body betraying him with a salute to her.

"Let's have lunch today, there's something I want to talk about." Mindy said to him.

Jesus, holy crap. She didn't change her mind about them, did she? He felt himself starting to perspire, right above his lip. Damn, he wish he didn't have such an easy tell when he got nervous.

"Is it something I should be worried about?" he asked casually.

Mindy saw Danny's lip upper lip glisten with sweat. She saw a glint of sadness in those melancholy brown eyes. She went over and kissed his upper lift softly, then licked the sweat off his lip, and pulled back with a smile like a Cheshire cat that just ate the canary.

"Don't worry, Danny. God, you are such a drama queen. I just wanna talk, okay?" Mindy shook her head and smiled with those bedroom eyes behind those bookish glasses. She loved teasing him and she was good at it.

"Okay, I get it, you…just wanna talk…." Danny said with a relieved half-smile. But he didn't get it, 'cause he wasn't a girl.

She left and he went back to work on his computer until lunch.

Noon. Mindy and Danny had to go make rounds a the hospital after lunch, so they decided that they would grab a bite at their favorite deli on the way to the hospital. She got a meatball sub and he got a turkey club. They both got waters and Mindy got a bag of chips for them to share. Rather than go to the doctor's lounge and each lunch like they normally would, they walked half a block and sat down for a quick bite at a park on a bench. It was a nice fall day, and nice to get some fresh air.

"So, Danny, I've been thinking," Mindy started out saying.

"Where do we go from here?" Danny finished Mindy's thought as he took a bite of his turkey sandwich. Looks like they were going to open the "whatever it was" box right here, right now. He hoped it wasn't going to be opening a Pandora's box, a seemingly small action with rather far reaching consequences. He held his breath.

"Right." she said. "I was thinking to myself, what would Beyonce and Jay-Z do in this situation…"

"What? Come again?" he was not expecting that. "Uh, we are not Beyonce and Jay-Z…"

"I know that, but listen….they work together in the same business, like us," Mindy explained. She was going to say that Beyonce and Jay-Z had to figure out what to do in between "Crazy in Love" and "Put a Ring on It" but she didn't want to scare him. If there was one thing Mindy learned from celebrity gossip magazines was that, once a star had an open relationship in the media and it went south, that said star learned his or her lesson and kept their mouths zipped for the next one. Beyonce was smart, though, she never spilled the beans, not even to Oprah. Somewhere between 'crazy in love' and 'put a ring on it' they somehow figured it out, privately. Oh boy, this analogy was going to be lost on Danny. She switched gears to another, more familiar reference.

"Okay, remember in the Godfather, when Michael Corleone tells Kay not to ask him about his business?"

"Great scene. I have that movie memorized, you know," he said matter-of-factly with a grin.

"I figured as much. So, I think we should keep this," she gestured between herself and Danny, "on the down-low so that we can figure this out for ourselves, without other people at work interfering."

"No problem. I'm all for privacy," he agreed.

"Danny, I hate to tell you this, but you are a terrible liar. You cannot keep anything a secret!" she said gesturing to him up and down.

"What are you talking about?" Danny said, with surprise, "Of course I can!"

"Danny, you do this thing with your arms and talk unusually loudly as you back out of the room, and everyone can see right through your flimsy made-up errands," she replied, and got up and showed him what he did.

Danny was amused, okay, he was not a very good liar. "I can handle things. I'm smart, not like everybody says. Not dumb, I'm smart and I want respect!" Danny said in his Fredo voice.

"Okay, we…will…work with that, Fredo," she said with a snicker. "Also, I was thinking, we need to add to our pager codes."

"What? Why?" he asked. He and Mindy had set up a series of pager codes. It was like morse code, but in numbers. Sometimes in the hospital there was a dead zone, so they couldn't text on their phones and needed to communicate with their pagers. Or, one of them would not be at the hospital to be able to use the hospital computer to text page the other, so they would have to send a number code.

So far they had:

"1234"-gotta clinical question for you. Call me.

"007" -here at the hospital with take-out food, meet me in the lounge when you are done with the delivery.

"911"-get your ass in the operating room and help me. One of them would be operating, and tell the scrub nurse to page the other.

"44"-also known as a Dunkie's run for coffee. Response code, "1" want black coffee "2" coffee with cream and sugar "3" need turbo shot "4" you just asked me 2 seconds ago, do you want my bladder to explode in the operating room? Danny explained that one to Mindy after a particularly long C-section.

"I don't know yet, but I think something is gonna come up sometime, so I need some way to ask you stuff like: do you want me to wait for you and take the subway home together…do you want to go out and grab a bite for dinner….I'm going home now, call me later."

"How about a code for 'I'm not wearing any clothes, get over to my place?" Danny asked hopefully. She shot him a look. "Okay, Lahiri, let's think of these codes over dinner and a show tonight. I'll pick out the restaurant. Do you want to get tickets to a show? My only requests are that it does not involve cats or singing animals. I gotta meet the guys for basketball and then I have a scheduled C-section. I'll pick you up at your place."

"I still think you should reconsider the basketball thing. I mean, those guys are just wallowing in self-pity. Plus, you are going to play against a women's team called the SoHo hos? I can't see that ending well, Danny."

"I'll be fine, Min, don't get all riled up."

She gave him a sweet smile and they walked to the hospital to round on their patients. "Okay, it's a date," Mindy said, "Don't be late."