A Weekend with Dr. Ramsey

Goodbye

Ethan Ramsey held Charlie's hand in the back of the car.

They didn't speak – there was too much to say, and none of it was happy. They quietly evaded conversation with an unshakable yet familiar intimacy that verged on discomfort. Her hand fit so well in his hand that it seemed unnatural. How could two people feel so irrevocably tied after such a short amount of time and in such unfortunate circumstances? Charlie was sure that, if she moved too far away, an invisible string would pull her back to him.

Yet she would have to.

The thought was so intrusive that it caused Charlie to physically shift in her seat. It was denial, surely. She knew she would have to leave him in the morning, but the mere thought made her squirm. It wasn't that she felt sad – she'd blocked that out in the silence of the car – but that she just didn't believe it. It was too gruesome, too impossible to feel real. Even as it loomed on the horizon, her mind rejected it as a possibility.

You didn't find something like this and then leave it, did you?

Ethan was haunted by the words he hadn't said in the alleyway. He should have told her. He should have admitted his cowardice, not returned to it. But, when he watched her eyes shimmer with tears under the neon lights, he couldn't do it. And he heard her silent pleas to not tell him. He didn't know what was worse – that he had betrayed her by returning to Edenbrook or that she knew and still came home with him. He knew that he was supposed to deliver the speech he painstakingly prepared, but he also knew that, in any universe, he couldn't have said them when he saw the look she gave him.

He eyed her in the seat beside her. She was so beautiful...

He didn't know if he would ever understand how he found her or if he could ever rationalize the attraction that made their forbidden relationship seemingly inevitable.

Once, he'd been warned that, if he failed to check his ego, the universe would do so for him. A well-meaning instructor sat Ethan Ramsey down to share a cautionary tale of diagnosticians who fancied themselves as gods and thought nothing existed that they could not diagnose. At the end of the tale, the proud doctor was humbled by an unsolvable mystery that plagued them to their own deathbeds. Then, Ethan learned no valuable life lesson. If such a fate was associated with becoming an accomplished physician, he was willing to risk it. Later, as an adult, Ethan thought he had found his mystery in Naveen's illness. But now, he wondered if it was really Charlie.

Nothing could rationalize the weekend they shared, nor the feeling in his chest when he thought of leaving her.

The drive to Ethan's apartment was too short, and before either was ready, the car pulled to a stop outside of Ethan's building and politely waited for them to exit the car. Charlie's door was closer to the sidewalk, so despite her initial hesitation, she was the one to first step out of the car and face the bittersweet familiarity of walking into Ethan's apartment.

Ethan followed close behind, only stepping in front of her to unlock his front door.

Jenner greeted them with the same exuberance he had every time he saw Charlie. Despite the overwhelming tide of sadness that threatened to pull her under, she returned his greeting with smiling affection and scratched behind his ears. Ethan instinctively moved towards the bar cart in the corner of his living room.

From here, it was easy to watch her. She fit too well into his apartment. She seemed to be part of it now, so engrained that he wouldn't recognize the space once she was gone. Even her pantsuit, which had grown wrinkled as it carried her through the trial and following celebration, matched the pillows on the couch. And her smile, so golden and pure, shimmered brighter than the lamp at his side.