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It wasn’t sound, or light, or vibration that abruptly pulled Leyla Shinwari back over the line between sleep and wakefulness. Her eyes simply opened to the night, and she was awake and alert, without the usual fog and irritation of a disrupted REM cycle.
Inky black blanketed the bedroom, and the only sound reaching her ears was the dulled white noise of the city outside the bedroom window. While her eyes adjusted, Leyla threw out an arm, searching the darkness for the warmth of her girlfriend… and only feeling cool, wrinkled sheets.
For several seconds, she lay still under the comforter, listening. A dog was barking several floors down. Otherwise, nothing.
She quickly sat up, pushing her mess of sleep-tousled hair over her shoulder, and noticed dim yellow light glowing underneath the door, like it was coming from the other side of the apartment. The kitchen.
And indeed, Lauren Bloom was standing in front of the sink when Leyla found her, back ramrod straight, body completely still, and the faucet in front of her turned off. Even without seeing her face, Leyla could tell that her girlfriend was lost somewhere far away, or perhaps long ago, and had been there for quite some time despite the late hour. The oven clock said 3:04 a.m.
“Ahem,” Leyla cleared her throat once she was just a few feet away, wincing when Lauren startled, whipping around to face her with a hand over her heart.
“ Jesus fuck—“
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—“ Leyla’s voice died in her throat as she registered her girlfriend’s face, reddened and puffy, cheeks shining with moisture.
“I’m fine,” Lauren tried to insist, absurdly. “I was just, um, couldn’t sleep and…” She waved a dismissive hand as Leyla inched closer. “Y’know I was just thinking, maybe I should get one of those stupid deco prints for the kitchen… Eat, pray, love, whatever. Because, um, that’s um…”
Her quavering voice broke like a wave on jagged rock, and she lifted a hand to cover her mouth, but it did nothing to smother the devastated sob that followed. During the months that they’d been living together, Leyla hadn’t seen Lauren Bloom cry, not like this. A few tears during high temperature moments, sure. Not the type of crying that caused lacrimal swelling and petechiae.
“Come here.” Leyla batted away the arm held out in a weak attempt to stop her and wrapped Lauren in a tight embrace. She looped her fingers together behind sharp shoulderblades, shaking her head while Lauren’s protests grew more insistent.
She pushed against Leyla’s chest, pulled at her arms, tried to twist away, anger flaring in her voice when she hissed, “Let me go. I’m fine , let go of me.”
“I love you,” Leyla said near the porcelain shell of her ear, keeping her voice calm, but pleading. “Let me help you.”
Eventually, the strength trying to push her away waned, lost to Leyla’s soothing I love yous and the wrenching sobs that seemed violent enough to take her off her feet. When the last of the resistance melted from her body, Lauren slumped forward, burying her tear-soaked face in Leyla’s collarbone.
Over her shoulder, Leyla could see that Lauren had been, of all things, washing dishes, one side of the sink filled with plates and soapy water and the other with clean cups and cutlery. Random to be sure, but thankfully, a harmless attempt to cope.
Carefully, she loosened her hold on the brunette’s trembling frame. Lauren’s sobs were coming faster and shorter now, and so Leyla risked gently guiding her to step back, until she could see her girlfriend’s face. Her watery eyes avoided Leyla’s, flicking between the floor and the empty air over Leyla’s shoulder.
“Baby, please look at me,” she said. “You’re going to hyperventilate. Look at me, Lauren.”
The use of her name, strangely formal between them after all these months of ‘babe’ and ‘Dr. Bloom’, did the trick. Lauren met her gaze and held it as best she could while she choked out, “I-I can’t… I don’t know what…”
Leyla shushed her. “It’s okay. You don’t need to do anything except breathe with me right now, okay?” She grasped one of Lauren’s hands and smashed it against her chest, putting her other palm over her girlfriend’s heaving sternum. “Breathe with me. In through your nose… slower…”
It took a couple minutes. Going into doctor mode was easy; Leyla saw the issue, diagnosed, and treated it. Box breathing required nothing more than a solid four-count. The actual hard part, she knew, was coming. She couldn’t stay in that headspace, detached and protected. That wasn’t what Lauren needed from her in that moment. She needed her partner.
When the brunette’s breaths had smoothed and slowed, Leyla half-carried, half-guided her girlfriend to the dining table so she could sit.
“Oh, my love…” Leyla sank to her knees in front of the chair, fighting tears of her own at the exhausted, miserable look on her girlfriend’s face. “What do you need?”
Sniffling, Lauren closed her eyes, but leaned into Leyla’s palm when she reached up to cup a reddened cheek. She had to clear her throat a couple times, but eventually whispered back, “Kleenex?”
To Leyla’s relief, Lauren flashed her a weak smile with the request, and she hurried to fulfill it, grabbing the entire square box from the coffee table. She handed two to her girlfriend, and then knelt again, rubbing soothing circles up and down Lauren’s tense thighs while she waited.
The source of all this grief wasn’t a mystery; they were less than twelve hours past the earthquake of an experience that was Jeanine “Jeannie” Bloom. Lauren had told Leyla of the estrangement months ago, in general terms, but seeing the relationship up close and very, very personal… It’d been far more volatile and acidic than Leyla even imagined.
When they stumbled in the door to their apartment after the shift ended, Lauren had repeatedly, assertively told Leyla that she didn’t want to talk about the day’s events until later, and she would be ‘fine’ as long as she got some sleep. Truthfully, Leyla hadn’t been sure if she was the right person for that conversation, and the avoidance had been a secret relief. Surely, Helen or Iggy, even Max, were much more familiar with the relationship between Blooms and would know how to help. A loud, but private part of her was terrified that she wouldn’t find the right words to say… and would disappoint the woman she loved in an important moment.
Right now though, those fears were her own burdens to bear. She had no choice. Not trying, or hiding from it, meant that she wasn’t ready to be a good partner, to anyone. Lauren deserved better than that.
So she waited, and five tissues later, Lauren finally stilled, her chestnut eyes unfocused and downcast.
“Tell me what you need,” said Leyla quietly. When she received no response, she prompted, “Do you want to go back to bed?”
“Maybe, I…” The brunette sighed. “I’m not sure I can sleep, but-but you should go back to bed, I mean you have to be awake in like two hours.”
“If you want me to leave you alone, I will. Is that what you want?”
A quick shake of the head.
“Okay. Then I’m right here, my love. Tell me what you need.”
The invocation of what had become their relationship’s unofficial call sign prompted fresh streams of tears, but Lauren’s voice was lighter when she opened her eyes and said, “Your knees are going to be so mad at you. Couch?”
“Couch,” agreed Leyla. That one was easy enough.
After turning on two lamps in the living room, Leyla fell onto the sectional next to her girlfriend, intending to turn so they were face to face, but Lauren curled into her, pressing a wet cheek to Leyla’s chest and throwing an arm across her belly. The brunette gave a heavy sigh, but it was a sound of comfort, rather than sadness, so Leyla settled back in the overstuffed cushions, slowly dragging her palm up and down Lauren’s back.
There was a moment when she thought the woman in her arms had fallen asleep, but then Lauren said something muffled against Leyla’s skin.
“What was that?”
Lauren turned her head slightly and said louder, “What did you think? When my mom… said those things?”
Jeannie Bloom had said a lot of things. Even when Lauren was out of the room, Leyla had silently, professionally endured near-constant passive aggressive references to her girlfriend. And once Jeannie found out about that label itself, she had gone straight to aggressive.
“I thought that I had a patient in a highly agitated state, and the awful things she was saying were likely caused by it.” Leyla felt the words weren’t quite right as they fell from her mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to replace them.
“No, not…” Lauren stiffened, and Leyla’s fears were confirmed. “You, as in my girlfriend . What did you think?”
Her mind raced. If she was being honest with herself, Leyla knew that her previous answer was the truth; Dr. Shinwari had processed and put away the comments, but Leyla had not. So, she decided to be honest about that, too: “I… I don’t know.”
Lauren started to pull away, scoffing under her breath. Leyla grabbed her wrist before she could stand. It wasn’t a hard grip, but enough that Lauren stopped, perched on the edge of the couch.
“Babe, I… today was a lot,” said Leyla carefully. “For both of us. It would be for anyone.” When that was met with a small nod, she continued, “Your mother said some horrible, awful things that no mother should say to their child.”
She paused, seeing fresh tears on Lauren’s cheeks. This was delicate. Lauren was delicate, and Leyla worried that her girlfriend’s shredded nervous system would kick into overdrive again, but… she would give anything to chase away the devastation in Lauren’s sharp features. So she would continue to try.
“And I’m sorry, because—“
“You have nothing to be sorry for—“
Leyla held up her free hand, surprised to find it shaking, though it still made her point. “Let me say this. Please.”
Lauren nodded.
“I’m sorry because in any context other than work, I would have… I hope I would have stood up for you.” She drew in a deep breath, trying to settle the shake in her voice. “And I would have told her to stop. And that she was wrong.”
“But what if she’s not wrong?”
“I know she is.” It came out more forcefully than she intended. “I would have told her that in spite of her, that is not the woman you are. You’re tough because you have to be, and because you care, deeply, for the work you do and the people you save, every day. No matter how much they annoy you.”
That earned her a tight, watery smile.
“And… We both know it’s gonna take time with your mom, but…” Leyla had to pause to steady her own voice. “You know that her diagnosis doesn’t change who you are, right?”
Lauren made a small, surprised noise, maybe having assumed that they were only talking about Jeannie’s outbursts, and then the guilt spread across her expression.
“Listen. I still want you to call your sponsor tomorrow… today, I guess.” Leyla shrugged. “But I am telling you now, for whatever it’s worth coming from me… Even if your mother was in pain for decades, it doesn’t mean you deserved to be treated like that. That her addiction wasn’t real. Or that the way you reacted to her today means you’re a bad person.”
The protests ran across Lauren’s face as clear as if she said them out loud, and Leyla kept a firm grip of her wrist, brushing a thumb over the back of her hand, using the touch to keep her girlfriend from spiraling out of reach again.
“I feel like… like I failed her,” said Lauren, tightly, but Leyla was relieved at the strength behind her voice. “You always hear all these stories about people who got into medicine because someone they loved was in pain, or died, and then they go all Meredith Grey and specialize in curing it. And me… I used my knowledge to justify ignoring her.”
“There’s a reason we’re not allowed to treat our loved ones.” Leyla kept her tone light. “The diagnosis is perspective. Not absolution.”
That seemed to gain a solid foothold in Lauren’s mind. Her brows furrowed, and then relaxed, and she crawled back up the cushions to stretch her sinewy body across Leyla’s with a grateful, drained sigh.
Leyla’s arms were just long enough to reach the knitted blanket tossed over the back of the cushions, and she dragged it over their legs as Lauren shifted, until she had assumed the “little spoon” position.
And what kind of woman would Leyla be if she were to deny such a wordless request. She curled against Lauren’s back, nosing through red-brown curls to press her lips against the nape of her neck. To the warm skin, she murmured, “For the record… There’s no way I could be over you by Christmas.”
The words were naked truth, and even though she said them as a comfort, they were also… somewhat terrifying.
Aside from a handful of covert, regrettable hookups and one three-month monogamous roller coaster in university, Leyla Shinwari hadn’t spent much energy worrying about love or sex. There simply wasn’t time. From relentless studying for university, then in university, to eighteen-hour field shifts that left her blood-soaked and tired to the bone… Living out of a vehicle in New York City had seemed like her first vacation, by comparison.
Enter Dr. Lauren Bloom: Brash and stubborn. A brilliant physician. Beautiful to the point of distraction.
And at her core, in the soft place that Leya had only glimpsed until tonight… so very sad. Her history was one full of love, or lovers, and yet the Lauren Bloom that she held in her arms seemed plagued by a loneliness that she could never quite snuff out. It clung to her the way perfume from the night before ghosted along the skin, mostly unnoticeable, until you were close enough. Perhaps that had been the invisible magnetism that drew them to each other, even though their life’s losses were quite different.
Leyla wanted, desperately, to banish those ghosts from her girlfriend’s shoulders, but her more familiar, rational side knew that she couldn’t. She would never replace an estranged sister or mother, or a lost father. Not completely. Her role was to do what she could to make it feel less heavy.
Because no matter the roads that brought them here, Leyla couldn’t comprehend a future that didn’t include Lauren Bloom in it, too.
Once more, Leyla thought her girlfriend had fallen asleep, but as her own eyes grew heavy, she heard a whisper: “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she murmured into the warm skin against her lips. And in her own drowsy haze, Leyla added the stray thought, “Who is… Meredith Grey?”
Lauren chuckled, tiny puffs of air through her nostrils, and before sleep retook them both, answered, “Don’t worry about it.”
She didn’t have to be told twice. For the precious minutes they had before their alarms would start a new day, Leyla dreamed only of Lauren.