Page 36 of Time for You
Daphne hitched the grocery bag higher on her shoulder, the first few leaves of autumn crunching under her feet.
In the year since Henry had left, she and Ellie had regressed to their diets of frozen pizzas and takeout, but Daphne did make an attempt to cook a real meal on one of her days off.
Ellie always liked coming back from an exhausting shift in the ER to find something that didn’t just have plastic ripped off, and Daphne was going to do her best to keep that going.
If she couldn’t have Henry, she could at least keep his memory close.
That was what she’d been telling herself for the last six months, once she finally made herself admit he wasn’t coming back.
It wasn’t that she thought there would be an easy way for him to get back, but rather that a part of her had insisted on hoping that, against all evidence, he might figure something out.
For the first three months he was gone, everyone coddled her.
Even when she gave them her news and they were varying levels of sad (Brittany, Michelle), smug because he knew it (Vibol), and betrayed (Ellie), they let her nurse her broken heart without comment.
After it had been six months, Ellie started gently nudging her to stop moping all the time, and three months after that , Vibol and Michelle staged an intervention with Brittany’s help.
They cared, she knew that, and she knew that if the tables had been turned and it was one of them who could barely think about the future, she would have done the same.
So she pulled herself out of the funk as best she could, and started putting one foot in front of the other.
Daphne had even agreed to go on a date, although she didn’t think her friends expected much to come of it.
He was a friend of Michelle’s cousin—her real cousin—doing a postdoc in epidemiology and public health at the University of Minnesota.
He was handsome and sweet, and they managed to find enough to talk about to make it through drinks and dinner, but in the end, she just couldn’t bring herself to do anything but give him a hug and tell him she’d had a nice time.
He didn’t call her after either, so at least she didn’t feel guilty or anything.
He would be fine, and so would she. Eventually.
The moon peeked out from behind a white, fluffy cloud, and Daphne felt the familiar-but-now-slightly-muted stab of loss when she saw it.
The moon had been out in the daytime when she first met Henry too, and while that wasn’t uncommon, it still hurt to see sometimes.
Like a flash of a memory when she least expected it.
She turned the corner, the familiar cream-colored brick of their building up ahead. Her new clinic was farther away than the hospital, but close enough that she hadn’t felt like she needed to move. Which was good, because without Henry, she definitely needed her friends close by.
Daphne shuffled her feet through an eddy of fallen leaves like a kid, reminding herself that finding joy in small things was important, even if she was starting to realize her life would always feel like it had one big gaping hole in it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man leaning back against the building as if waiting for someone, his frame achingly familiar.
She kept her gaze down, because she was used to this, unfortunately.
For months after Henry left, she saw him everywhere : at the clinic, in line to catch the bus, waiting outside a movie theater.
It happened less often now, but maybe that was just because she had a system—she saw a tall, dark-haired white man with broad shoulders and her eyes would immediately go unfocused, darting away before her heart had a chance to leap.
The man straightened as she approached, and she tensed her stomach, anticipating the unpleasant lurch that would happen when he spoke to her to ask for directions somewhere and she had to force herself to look at him and her brain would do the it’s him, oh, no wait, it isn’t dance.
Daphne started rummaging through her purse for her keys, hoping he would get the don’t talk to me hint.
“Daphne?” a voice with a deep Scottish lilt asked, and Daphne froze on the spot, eyes still glued to the inside of her purse because—no.
It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be, because she had worked so hard to remind herself it would never be him, and she couldn’t afford to hope that she might have been wrong. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
She dropped the grocery bag and food went everywhere.
Half a dozen oranges bounce-jiggled on the pavement, and a bag of granola split open upon impact, spilling out a small mountain of oats.
A can of tomato soup rolled steadily across the sidewalk, coming to a stop next to a foot in an old-fashioned leather boot.
Slowly, Daphne dragged her eyes up, unable to breathe. Wool pants gave way to a white shirt, which gave way to a face she’d dreamed of so often she still half wondered if she was hallucinating. “No,” she whispered.
Henry grinned, as cocky as ever. “Oh, yes. I’m back, my lady.”
Daphne dropped her purse on top of the groceries and threw her arms around his neck, dragging his scent into her lungs, feeling the warmth of his chest against hers.
He was so solid, so warm, so real that tears started pricking at the corners of her eyes.
“How?” she finally asked in a strangled voice.
Henry pulled back just far enough to look into her eyes. “I’ll tell ye that later,” he said, and it wasn’t until he kissed her that she knew, really knew, that this was real, because even in her dreams, he never quite kissed her like that.
Henry was, however improbably, back.
ER Doc (And the Traitor Daphne Griffin) Group Chat
Daphne
Everyone down to my place
911
Nobody’s hurt
Still
911
Brittany
Girl Stop double texting, it’s so annoying
And be right there
Vibol
Stop double texting says the double texter
Michelle
Are you okay Daph?
Daphne
Yes it’s a good 911
Ellie
There’s no such thing as a good 911 sweetie
Vibol
Ellie’s got a point
Daphne
Will you all shut up and come down to my place ?
Ellie
*Our
You mean our place
Vibol
I take her silence to mean she’s annoyed with us
Michelle
Says the man who has never been silent In his life
Brittany
Am I the only one even in the building other than Daph? Why am I the only one in the elevator
Ellie
I’m up in Vibol and Michelle’s apartment and they’re taking F o r e v e r to get their shoes on
Michelle
Note: Vibol is taking forever, I’m ready
Vibol
The fact that none of y’all untie your damn shoes is barbaric
Daphne grinned down at her phone and clicked it off.
“They’ll be here any minute now,” she said.
She couldn’t stand still and kept pacing back and forth, looking at his back while he dug out the clothing he had left behind from the bottom of her closet.
Everyone had kept telling her to donate his stuff as a way of symbolically moving on, but Daphne hadn’t been able to bring herself to part with them yet.
As it turned out, she was glad she’d held on to them.
“Thank you,” he murmured, dropping the bundle of clothes onto her bed.
“For what?” Daphne asked, turning her head slightly to give him a quick kiss.
“For not falling in love with someone else while I was gone,” Henry said wryly.
“I could say the same to you,” Daphne replied.
Henry paused, considering. “I was actually only gone three months.”
“It was a year and three months,” Daphne replied.
“For you, yes. But for me, I was only back from the solstice to the equinox.”
“Was that enough time with your family?”
“It wasn’t, but it also was,” Henry said wistfully. “They understood why I left, at least. And it was my best chance to get back to you.”
Daphne threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, what he’d given up washing over her. “Thank you.”
Daphne left her bedroom at the sound of the doorknob. Brittany strode in, looking around. “You said you weren’t hurt, but I assume you like, need help moving something large?”
“If that were what she needed, she’d just have called me,” Vibol said from behind her.
“No, she would have called me, dummy. I’m her roommate.” Ellie toed her shoes off and cocked her head as she looked around, puzzled.
“Hey, don’t call him dummy . Only I get to do that,” Michelle chided. “Is it another IKEA bookcase?”
“That would be an egregious misuse of a 911 text,” Brittany pointed out.
Vibol was already rummaging through their cupboard of snacks. “Did you get the popcorn from Costco, El?”
“Bottom shelf, on the left,” she replied. “But seriously, Daph, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong—”
“You better not be switching specialties again,” Vibol said, opening the popcorn and handing it over to Ellie.
“Yeah, you’re really happy where you are. It’s a good fit,” Ellie added.
“I don’t mean like that—I mean I can’t take her changing programs again.”
“It literally has nothing to do with you,” Michelle argued.
“Does anyone want to hear what my news is, or are you just going to roast me for a while?”
“They’re going to roast you for a bit, yeah,” Brittany said. She boosted herself up to sit on the edge of the counter and reached over to grab a handful of popcorn from Ellie.
“Maybe this will give you guys something else to argue about,” Henry said, emerging from Daphne’s room in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that fit so perfectly that Daphne abruptly wanted her friends to all leave immediately.
Everyone else’s reactions were just as drastic, if slightly less horny.
Ellie dropped the popcorn on the ground while Vibol yelled and started choking, which made Michelle rush to his side to pat his back while also saying “No way no way no Fucking way” over and over again.
Only Brittany managed to swing herself down and run to hug him, squealing loudly the whole way.
“How the fuck did this happen?” Vibol finally said, chugging a glass of water.
“I time-traveled,” Henry said with a grin.
“Obviously. But we thought there wasn’t a way to manage that for another seven years?”
“That’s because we were looking at direct ones from here to Edinburgh, not from somewhere else in Britain to anywhere on the North American continent,” Henry replied. “My mother and sister managed to find one from Manchester to Miami, thanks to Ellie’s equation.”
“How’d you get from Miami to here, though?” Michelle asked.
“I found a lovely woman who was willing to spot me the bus fare, so long as I agreed to pay her back eventually.”
“It helps to have a face like that,” Ellie said.
“Don’t I know it,” Vibol added. “How long are you here for?”
Henry reached for Daphne and threaded his fingers through hers. “For good. If she’ll have me.”
“Oh, she’ll have you, all right,” Ellie muttered.
“She’s been pining after you. We were getting worried,” Brittany added.
Vibol set his glass down. “Not like, worried-worried. But concerned worried.”
Henry tugged Daphne close and let her hand drop so he could wrap his arm around her shoulders, and she snuggled in tighter. It felt so unbelievably good to hold him again; she wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to stop touching him.
Henry nuzzled the top of her head. “Vibol said you switched specialties. When did that happen?”
“Right after you left,” Daphne said. “You asked me to, and I didn’t think I’d see you ever again, so it felt like ... the right thing to do.”
“We made sure she wasn’t doing it just for you, though,” Ellie interjected.
“Yeah, we had like, fifteen interventions before she went through with it,” Vibol added.
“Correction: We had one intervention, and then Ellie had fourteen more,” Brittany said.
Ellie sniffed. “I just wanted to make sure she was doing it for the right reasons.”
“What are the ‘right reasons’?” Henry asked.
“To make myself happy, and not you,” Daphne explained.
“And you all are satisfied she did it for the right reasons?”
“She’s been happier than I’ve ever seen her, except for when she’s moping about you,” Ellie said.
Daphne beamed. “I’m at a family practice clinic now. I get to have actual conversations with patients, not just ask them what happened and quick-order some tests.”
“Hey, some of us like getting to do that,” Vibol protested.
“That’s because you have absolutely no bedside manner,” Michelle said, patting his hand.
“Exactly,” Vibol said. “But what do you think you’ll do, Henry?”
“Pretty sure he’s going to become a kept man,” Brittany said.
“A . . . kept . . . man?” he asked.
“Means I pay for everything,” Daphne explained with a grin. “Which is fine, but you will need to cook dinner.”
“That’s what I was thinking, actually. Not the kept-man thing, but—cooking. Professionally. It’ll take some time to get to the level I need to be at, but I think I’d enjoy it.”
“Yes, chef,” Brittany said with a salute, and at his blank look, she sighed and shook her head, muttering about needing to keep up his television education under her breath.
“I think that’s brilliant,” Daphne said, leaning over to kiss him while their friends groaned theatrically.
“Oooh, hey, now that you’re back, can you cook for us again? As practice for your future career?” Michelle asked excitedly.
“I’d love to,” Henry said. “Mac and cheese?”
“The stuff from the box?” Ellie asked, her eyebrows raising.
“It’s what I missed most,” Henry confessed sheepishly.
“I think we’ve got a box somewhere,” Ellie said.
“I’ve got two up in my apartment,” Brittany added.
Henry smiled so broadly Daphne’s own cheeks ached. “Then I’ll get the water boiling,” he announced.