Page 27 of Time for You

Daphne was still in her room, tugging the dress into place.

The annual hospital gala was about wining and dining donors for the attendings, but for residents like them, it was really an excuse to dress up and drink while someone else paid the bill.

Henry had been delighted at the idea, since those sorts of events were apparently the main form of entertainment for wealthier people back in his day.

Henry and Ellie had had a long, in-depth conversation about exactly how “rich merchant in Edinburgh” stacked up against Ellie’s vast knowledge of the English Regency, courtesy of her extensive romance novel collection.

It would seem there were a lot of similarities (he did go to balls, and he knew how to dance, as was expected of a man of his age) but also some differences (mainly that he didn’t spend a lot of time in London, and also he lived about seventy years after most of those books were set and considered a lot of Ellie’s understandings to be “rather dated”).

“Are y’all ready?” Brittany called, opening their front door. “Because the RideShare is on its way, so you better be.”

“Stop stalling and get out here,” Ellie yelled through Daphne’s door.

There wasn’t really a reason for her to feel so nervous, but still butterflies ricocheted through her chest and made her hands tremble like they did the first time she’d had to intubate a patient.

But if the car was on its way, there really wasn’t much else she could do.

Daphne squared her shoulders and walked out to an explosion of noise. “Jesus Christ, that is not fair,” Ellie yelled. “Why the fuck are you so pretty?”

“Holy shit,” Brittany exclaimed at the same time. “What god did you sacrifice to, and can I do that, too?”

But Daphne’s gaze went straight toward Henry, who was looking at her with such softness she had to turn away. “Thanks, guys,” she muttered. “Where’s Vibol and Michelle?”

“They’re meeting us downstairs. You ready?” Brittany said.

“You look lovely,” Henry murmured and tucked Daphne’s hand into the crook of his arm. He was in a borrowed suit from Vibol that stretched nicely across his shoulders, and a blush crawled up Daphne’s chest from the deep neckline of her dark-blue dress.

“Gross,” Ellie said, grinning. “Like, happy for you guys and all, but also: gross.”

“Gross indeed,” Brittany sighed.

Vibol and Michelle were in fact waiting in the lobby, and his tie was a light purple that matched her dress. “Aren’t you going to make fun of them, too?” Daphne grumbled to Ellie.

“Already did,” Ellie said, with an inexplicable high five to Vibol.

A thing that none of them had considered, despite being five of the most overeducated people around and a time traveler, was that some people from the hospital might recognize Henry. Meghan was the first to clock him, even though she hadn’t spent much time with him.

“Isn’t he the ‘I’m from the past’ guy?” she asked them as they stood around with glasses of wine. Henry was off at the bar, having said he wanted to “brave the crowds” and “explore what this century had to offer for refreshment.”

“He’s my cousin,” Michelle blurted, and then immediately shot the rest of them an oops face when Meghan looked understandably confused, given Michelle’s being Black and Henry’s being very much not. “Uh, second cousin,” she amended. “He was here visiting me when the, um, accident happened?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Meghan replied.

“Uh, telling,” Michelle said, and sent another frantic look at them when Meghan turned to place her wine on the empty table behind them.

“She didn’t know him before this trip,” Vibol explained. “Distant family, visiting some cousins—she had no idea who he was until the next weekend, once the whole, um, past thing had been sorted out.”

Henry approached and Daphne watched in horror as Ellie tried to signal him with the neck-slicing “don’t say anything” motion.

He clearly didn’t understand, and Daphne couldn’t blame him.

He wouldn’t recognize Meghan, given how disorienting that first day had been and how briefly they’d interacted, and anyway, he would have no way of knowing what they were talking about.

So of course, he opened with the worst possible sentence: “This century has marvelous—”

“Hahaha, such a joker, this one,” Vibol said loudly. “We were just explaining to Meghan here about how you’re Michelle’s cousin, but your accident had made your identification kind of difficult to track down, right?”

“Oh yes, ah, exceedingly so,” Henry said, with a quick furrowed-brow look at Daphne. “Michelle and I are—cousins?”

“Second cousins,” Michelle repeated.

“Oh hey, there’s that, uh, person we wanted to talk to,” Brittany said, pointing wildly. “Let’s go over there. Now.”

Daphne tugged a bewildered Henry behind them and out into the hall. “That was a close one,” Ellie sighed dramatically.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not sure she bought that,” Vibol said with a glance back into the ballroom.

Henry looked carefully at Michelle. “Will she believe we’re cousins? I don’t mean to be indelicate, but won’t she notice that we’re, well—”

“That I’m Black and you’re white? Yeah, she’ll notice. But, you know, families can be big and weird, so hopefully she’ll just assume I’ve got some white relatives or something.”

“I’ll be honest, I think the bigger problem is that we were all just incredibly weird back there,” Ellie observed. “Like, turbo weird.”

“Possibly the weirdest we’ve ever been,” Brittany agreed.

“We probably created more problems than we solved there, but at least Michelle was quick enough to come up with something on the spot.”

“Should I go do damage control?” Daphne asked.

“Genuinely don’t think that’s possible, especially not with you. No offense,” Ellie said and grinned at her. Daphne smiled back ruefully, taking Ellie’s point. Improv had never been her strong suit.

Vibol shrugged. “Probably best if we just keep on going like nothing happened. The more we try to explain, the harder it gets. He’s Michelle’s cousin—”

“Second cousin,” Michelle interjected.

Vibol nodded. “He’s her second cousin, and when Daphne cruelly rode him down with her bike—”

“Hey, objection,” Daphne protested.

“Overruled,” Vibol said, holding up his hand. “She rode him down, gave him a teeny-tiny brain injury that temporarily made him believe he was from a different century, because he was on his way home from a Bridgerton reenactment and happened to be wearing that costume. End of story.”

“Won’t they notice my clothes are some seventy-odd years more modern than that?” Henry asked.

“Nope,” everyone said in unison.

“What shall we do next?” he asked.

“You guys should go dance,” Ellie said with a gesture at Vibol, Michelle, Daphne, and Henry. “Leave me and Brittany to go on the prowl.”

Daphne smiled as Vibol joined her at their table, Ellie walked onto the dance floor with Henry, and Michelle headed toward the restroom. Brittany was deep in conversation with Dr. Gupta and an older white man in a tuxedo over in the corner.

Vibol leaned back into his chair, jacket tossed on the empty seat next to him. “So what is your deal?” he asked.

Daphne was busy studying Henry and the figure he cut in his suit, and didn’t quite pick up on the undercurrent in Vibol’s tone. “Hmm?”

“Your deal,” he repeated. “Something’s up with you.”

“Just a bad few weeks at work,” she said dismissively.

“Nope, it’s not that,” he replied.

“And how do you know that for sure?”

“I can tell. Come on, Daph, give me some credit. I’m smart and I know you well.”

“Not that well,” she said acidly. Her stomach was suddenly roiling.

“Want to know what I think it is?” he asked, undeterred by her coldness.

“Why do I get the sense you’re telling me no matter what?”

He shot her a cocky grin. “See? We know each other well.” He laced his fingers together and rested his elbows on the table. “I think you don’t like emergency medicine as much as you thought, and you want to switch.”

Abruptly, her stomach stopped roiling. In fact, it stopped doing much of anything, because now it was on the floor. “I don’t see how you’re getting that.”

“For one thing, you didn’t deny it just now.

No, don’t try now—I’m just pointing out a fact.

For another thing, you always want more time with patients, when in EM, you have to be okay without having that.

It’s a core part of it, and that doesn’t make you a bad doctor, but it does make you maybe not suited to this. ”

Daphne swallowed back her rising bile. “That’s not your call to make.”

Vibol’s tone softened, but only slightly.

“I’m not making a call. I’m telling you what I observe.

Emergency medicine is nonstop chaos and patients you don’t get to know before they’re sent somewhere else, and I just don’t think you like that.

” Daphne opened her mouth to retort, but he shook his head.

“Did I ever tell you my brother switched specialties?”

Vibol’s older brother was a wildly successful neurosurgeon out in Seattle and something of a legend among their group. “Wait, really?”

“He was cardiology for two years, then finally admitted he was miserable and found someone who was willing to swap places in his residency program. Meant he had to take a little longer to finish, but he said it was worth it.”

“Good for him, I guess.”

Vibol sent her a dirty look. “You see what I’m getting at, right?”

“I do, but you’re wrong, okay? I just had a few off days.”

“You said weeks.”

“Or weeks, whatever.”

“Just—think about it, Daph. If you’re not happy, you don’t have to stay.”

“I thought you liked to say that being happy is stupid, you just need to make money.”

“Sure, but that’s me. You’re different.”

Henry and Ellie joined them, slightly out of breath but grinning. “What are we talking about?”

Daphne panicked, but for once in his life, Vibol apparently decided to let her off the hook. Michelle must be really rubbing off on him, she thought, as he shrugged. “Just Daphne being unusually funny these days,” he said, and she sent him a silent thank-you.

“Aww, did our girl make a joke?” Ellie said.

“Hey, I think Daphne’s quite funny,” Henry protested, and Ellie, Vibol, and Daphne all broke out in laughter.

“That’s sweet,” Daphne said, patting his hand. “But really, they’re right. I’m not.”

“It’s why we love her,” Ellie said.

“We love who?” Michelle asked, sitting down next to Vibol and scooting her chair closer to him.

“Daphne the Unfunny,” Vibol explained.

“Oh no, did she do a knock-knock joke again?”

“Hey, that was one time,” Daphne said.

“Yeah, one real bad time,” Vibol muttered into his drink.

“We should dance, Henry,” Daphne announced.

“With pleasure, my lady,” he said, and stood up to bow.