Spiraled ⚪⭐⚪⭐ (A Brollins Novel)✔

EPISODE THIRTY-ONE

Pamela's House. Los Angeles, California.

"Good morning. Did you sleep well?"

Instinctively, Mercedes's forehead creases. Not at the—in her opinion—raucous song Pamela is playing this early morning at the kitchen which was annoyingly the cause of her jolting out of the little bit of sleep she was managing to collect at dawn, but at the notion that her friend is still at the house, and cooking no less. Pamela has always been a food lover and an enthusiastic participant in kitchen activities but it has been quite a while since she cooked breakfast, that too with the kind of relaxed, exuberant mood she's apparently in now.

Mercedes looks up at the clock hanging forlornly on the wall above the fireplace at the living area as she leisurely descends the staircase, her frown deepening. She steels herself against a yawn and rubs an itch at the back of her neck, asking dumbly. "What are you still doing here? Aren't you supposed to be at the hospital by now? It's nine in the morning."

"I'm not planning on taking another day off if that's what you're wondering. I just thought it will be nice to prepare breakfast today. I haven't done that in a while."

Mercedes yawns. "Why do that? It isn't necessary. Time is money or in your case, life. The time you'll spend at the kitchen cooking could be essential in saving a life." Truth is, Pamela is the last person she wants around the house. She'd pretended to be asleep last night when Pamela got home. She was well awake when her friend came to her room at the late hours of the night, stood at her door for a good long minute before sighing in apparent regret and kissing her feebly on the cheek. She'd hoped she'll wake up to find her long gone but that doesn't seem to be the case. Sometimes she wish she'd never agreed to moving in with Pamela in the first place. Knowing her friend's talkative and often times pesky nature, her morning isn't going to go as smooth and quiet as she'd hoped it will.

"My patients can wait," Pamela says calmly, turning up the volume of the song, as though earlier hadn't been high enough. Mercedes cringes. "Friends come first. The hospital can very well handle itself without me for a few hours. Besides, I saw to almost all of my patients yesterday. I delivered twins two days ago, you know. They were so lovely. So angelic. It sucks they had to be born through a cesarean section but they came out alright nevertheless. That's the only thing that matters. The mother was. . . ." She trails off to smile apologetically up at Mercedes, "You don't need this right now, do you?"

"Honestly speaking, I don't." She crosses the threshold to the kitchen, her arms around herself in protection against literally nothing. She can't quite gauge if it's the weather or just the temperature in the room but the atmosphere is unusually warm and cozy. "I can't help you anyway so what's the point?"

Pamela beams and swats a hand through invisible air, revealing glossy, golden colour on each of the turned over surfaces of the toasts she's frying in the pan. "Don't say such things. Listening is a great way of helping. It isn't compulsory for one to do anything. Guess what I'm making for breakfast?"

Mercedes shrugs a shoulder nonchalantly, drumming fingers on the marble island. "It's obvious enough you're making French toasts, Pam."

Pamela motions her head to her right, to the dinning area and Mercedes's gaze trails her friend's to find the breakfast dishes meticulously assembled on the table. "Cinnamon Rolls, Stuffed Omelette and viola! French toasts and fruit smoothie. I was considering a simple breakfast but I've so many cravings this morning, it stuns me. Luckily enough, there's more than enough time for us to have breakfast together."

"And what's the occasion?" Mercedes asks wryly, eyeing her friend's movements around the small kitchen.

Pamela looks to be in too great a mood to discern her friend's irritation and let it affect her. Humming along to the jazzy melody of whatever Spanish music she's playing on her phone, she plucks out the crisp, golden toasts from the pan onto a plate laid with an absorbent sheet to soak much of the fat. Turning off the stove and the music, she balances the plates of French toasts and her phone in both hands and saunters over to the dinning area, Mercedes straggling after her. "Come on. Have a seat and let's eat."