Me After Meeting You

Amber didn’t yet know that Nancy’s thoughts were steering this way towards her patient; after she sent Nancy away, she went back to look at Elly again.

Thanks to her recording device, Elly was now very familiar with Amber’s voice, and even if Amber were to stand in front of her, she would no longer have an extreme violent reaction. But they still couldn’t communicate.

Amber had tried to play games with her, simple finger games where she would twist her fingers together and stretch them in front of Elly in different ways, saying things like, “Look, this is a piece of ginger.” “This is the moon.” “This is the wind in a willow tree.”

Elly only ever looked at her expressionlessly, as if she were staring at a foolish mortal.

What the mortal Amber was diligently trying to accomplish was probably about the limits of what Elly could tolerate. Seeing no response from her erstwhile patient, Amber could only leave in defeat.

***

It was already time to get off work, and the nurses were getting ready to change shifts at their station. Amber made one last stop at Ian’s ward to check up on him.

Ian hadn’t woken up yet, but his entire family was all here, neat and orderly as they waited outside. And then Amber finally saw Ian’s little brother, Daren Axton.

The two looked at each other, and Amber was the one to react first. “It’s you?”

Daren was actually the student auditing her class, the one who loved to sleep and who always blushed upon making eye contact!

Daren’s face immediately flushed red, all the way to the tip of his ears, and he scrambled behind his grandfather. Daren’s grandmother asked curiously, “Dr. Camille, you know our little Daren?”

“I’ve seen him around school a couple of times.”

“Wow, really? You must share a connection.” Although his grandparents found it somewhat curious that their grandson, an applied math major, would know Amber, who was a psychiatrist, they were both very pleased.

It clearly showed on their faces, and Amber felt that interacting with these two old folks would only increase her stress, so she instead went to look for Ian’s head doctor. She found out that, despite the fact that they had yet to identify the bacteria responsible for Ian’s health issues, his response to the medicine was very good.

Amber could finally relax. Ian’s grandmother was grabbing her hand and trying to chat with her some more when Amber’s phone rang. It was a call from the nurses’ station. “Dr. Camille, haven’t you left yet? Your boyfriend’s here for you!”

Amber was somewhat surprised and also a little excited, because, judging by Calvin’s personality, it was quite unusual for him to pick her up the afternoon after they had had a fight in the morning.

She didn’t tarry any longer, and quickly returned to her own department. Once she entered the room, the nurse pointed in the direction of her office. Amber smiled and thanked her before pushing the door open and entering.

Calvin was facing the window, his back to the door. He was dressed in a suit, which only further accentuated his smart and handsome looks, truly an elegant man.

Amber crept over, trying to tease him, but Calvin turned around before she could stretch her hand out.

“Eh~” Amber stuck her tongue out cutely, retracting her claws. “You caught me.”

But Calvin looked at her seriously.

“What’s the matter?”

“Amber, let’s get married.”

Calvin was very serious, his tone and expression earnest.

Amber was suddenly reminded of a time when they were still in school. One day, he had abruptly said, “Let’s skip school.”

Without any premonition, a usually industrious and model student had suddenly proposed to skip school, and he had even dragged another good student along with him. As two of the top students in the best class, Amber didn’t even need to think to know what the consequences would be.

At that time, however, she was calm and cool-headed, and had first asked him, “To where? For how long?” Afraid that he would start seriously planning, she even added, “If we’re gone for too long, I have to get some more money.”

Calvin hadn’t thought about any of that; he just wanted to skip school, to run far, far away.NôvelDrama.Org © 2024.

“Then let’s think about it first.”

And so they thought about where they would go, how much money they would have to bring, what might happen on the way, what they would do if an emergency happened but after making all their plans, though they had skipped school in their minds, nothing ever came of it.

Why? Because it was too troublesome.

And to extend that to now, getting married wasn’t like skipping school. It was a far more troublesome event with even larger aftershocks-presently, they were only aftershocks because, having not met each other’s parents yet, they hadn’t really settled their relationship. Thus, they were still, in many ways, unprepared for marriage.

All of these thoughts raced through Amber’s head, but her expression remained unchanged. She even smiled and naturally asked, “Why are you suddenly talking about this now?”

Calvin stubbornly asked, “Are you unwilling?”

Of course, because the conditions weren’t ripe yet!

Amber smiled, pulled him into a seat, and then poured him a glass of water as she said, “It’s not that I’m unwilling, but rather it’s that there are too many things that we haven’t yet considered, like are we going to have a banquet afterwards? Oh, we probably have to-my mother only has me and my brother, so she’s been thinking about our marriages for a long time.

But where would we host it, and how many people would we invite? Who would help us? We’re both new to all of this, so we definitely have to get someone else to help, but before that, we still have to meet each other’s parents, don’t we?

And then we’ll have to think about where to stay after we get married, how to set up our bridal chamber, who’s going to take care of the baby if we have one soon my mother and your mother are both too busy to help, you know-so we’ll have to hire a nanny.

But since we’re both busy with our work, our baby would then be with a stranger for the entire day, so we definitely have to choose a good nanny well in advance, or it’ll be easy for all sorts of incidents to crop up ….”

In one breath, she listed out a whole pile of incidents that could happen and lead to all sorts of developmental and educational issues with their child. Then, she continued talking about the problems that came about from all sorts of parents getting married, expected or otherwise.