INTERIM LOVER, ryan howard.

040 ⋮ drop the guillotine

ㅤㅤㅤThe crowd in the emergency department was thinning out as the clock struck two. A doctor—what was her name, Lisa? Lena? Lily? Well, she had waddled in and out with a hand on her belly but no diagnosis and no direction of what would happen next. Rachel was squeezing William's hand, so tightly that if he weren't to die from his slip, he would've died in her grip. "If I die, I want my last meal to be mint chip ice cream," William sighed stiffly, lifting a cabled arm to the light above him. "Rachel, would you be a dear and find me some?"

"How are you thinking of ice cream in a time like this?" she muttered, eyes flicking to the corner of the room. Their blonde companion was sprawled haphazardly in the chair, soft snores arising from her parted lips.

"Please, Rachel," William pouted, attempting puppy dog eyes. Her free hand snaked into her purse. She swiftly drew out her phone and snapped a picture, blinding him with the flash. "Oh my god, why did you do that?!" he groaned, blinking rapidly in a haze.

Rachel chuckled. "Because you look dumb. Anywho, what ice cream did you want again? Chocolate?"

"Mint chip. I'll kill you if you get anything else."

Slinging her purse over her shoulder, Rachel strode out of the room, her heels clip-clopping towards a vending machine she'd seen down the hall. There wasn't likely ice cream there, hardly a chocolate bar even, but her goal wasn't actually to fetch ice cream for her friend. Rachel needed to clear her mind, to console herself. The moment William had slipped on the icy pavement, she was paralysed in pain. The pain of knowing that she'd have to delve into a world she'd been avoiding for so long. This world, this hospital—Richard's world.

The flitting of machinery was dying away, the song of her doubts trilling to a crescendo. Rachel pretended she didn't understand these feelings, but she'd known long before Abbey and Pam had begrudgingly broken it to her, long before Ryan even knew about the whole ordeal. It seemed that she had known the very moment she'd taken his arm and hopped into that elevator, she knew that Richard Rhode was not the one for her. She knew that someday, he'd take a scalpel to her heart with no intention of healing her.

In a way, she thought this was how it meant to happen. To achieve unconditional love, she'd have to continually push aside the perturbations. She saw so many red flags because she donned rose-tinted glasses, no need to cause alarm. A relationship began with trust, and though she felt naive to keep excusing him, Rachel wasn't quite sure how else to go about it.

Two figures strode down the orthogonal corridor. Rachel tried to hide behind a curtain of hair, crossing her hands over her chest. They stopped at the junction of the hallways and she could tell they were having a hushed argument. "You can't keep leaving like this. It's not fair," spoke a first voice, toned with impassion.

"Not now, Lida," grunted the second.

Lida, thought Rachel. The face of William's doctor came to the forefront of her mind. On her lapel, her tag read Lida. Her name was Lida.

"Then when?"

"Later."

There was some shuffling, it seemed that the couple was getting closer to her. Rachel pressed herself against the wall, pretending to be occupied by her phone. She should've walked away as soon as they arrived, but somehow couldn't, magnetised by the quarrelling. "We are having a kid in three months. I need you. He needs you. You get that, right? So, get on the phone, call up your supervisor and tell them that you can't work down there anymore. Or do I need to call up and do it for you?"

There was a grunt. "Weekends. I can reduce shifts to weekends."

"Goddammit, Rich. I forbid you to go back to Scranton!"