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The head and the heart are always at war with one another. 

At least, that’s what those raunchy romance novels that the matronly nurses leave lying around the hospital would say. Gilbert Blythe– second-year internal medicine resident and eternal realist, would have to disagree. 

The head and the heart should be perfectly aligned with one another in a symbiotic dance, one that keeps you alive with every fired neuron and subsequent beat, the pumping of blood that feeds the very thoughts that make you, you. Even the tiniest skirmish between the two could sever that lifeline. 

Romanticism is already there, deep in the architecture of our bodies, and it’s unlike anything the poets could conjure up. The diagrams that filled the pages of his secondhand medical textbooks were much more beautiful to him than anything Botticelli could dream of. 

He rationalizes his quickened heartbeat at the view of the unfamiliar redhead sitting at the ER registration desk, as his brain sending signals to shoot adrenaline to quickstart the natural fight-or-flight reaction to a new person. He tells himself there’s nothing irrational in the sudden clamminess in his hands as he watches her take the eraser of a pencil into her mouth in concentration and scrunch up her freckled nose– it’s simply his body’s way of cooling himself down after overworking himself to the point of exhaustion. The dryness in his mouth is from dehydration, even though he’s on his fourth water refill of the shift, and not this mystery woman’s stormy eyes under furrowed brow as she takes in the pages of one of those aforementioned romance novels. 

Gilbert sees a multitude of new faces in the hospital daily, but none quite like hers and certainly not sitting behind the registration desk, where the beady, scary eyes of the previous clerk (who was certainly there before antibiotics were first formulated), usually glared back at him. 

He’s the one glaring now, unable to remove his gaze from her, even as she’s broken from her concentration to assist with a patient. Gilbert watches on as she struggles with the computer, turning flush and apologizing profusely to the old, scruffy man in front of her. 

It’s his only allotted free time for the next five hours and he’s running on fumes at this point– a copious amount of badly brewed coffee, enough caffeine to set him down the path of early heart disease, and a single apple from the Cafeteria. Yet, his feet are planted and his sight is set on the flustered, increasingly stressed girl as she fiddles with the computer and tries to call out to anyone who looks remotely professional that passes by. 

He’s not one to insert himself into the inner workings of hospital administration, but before he can even think it through, he’s setting his “lunch” (because let’s not kid ourselves, it’s 3 am) down on the desk and shuffling over to her, “here, let me help you.” 

“Oh,” mystery-girl breathes, not yet looking up at him, “thank you, thank you, thank you– it’s my first day, and well - I’ve never used this program before, jeez, I don’t even know why they hired me… I mean I do, I’m really actually quite great- ugh, well now I sound like I’m full of myse-” 

The old man in front of them groans loudly, tapping his fingers on the desk in an impatient rhythm.“Excuse me Little Miss Carrots, but I haven’t been regular in quite a few days so if you’d step aside and let the smart Doctor do his job so I can get my damn enema that would be peachy.” 

Gilbert looks down at his new co-worker, expecting her to be mortified in disgust but instead, sees a quiver in her lips like she’s about to laugh. 

She holds it in expertly though, and bows out of her chair so Gilbert can haphazardly put the man’s information in and trying to ignore the way she finally examines him from head to toe. 

He’s horrible at this, of course, likely leaving a million mistakes that Billing will have to fix later, but she’s breathing down his neck watching every little move he makes and he can smell her floral perfume that permeates every inch of him, so he rushes. When he’s finished and the identification wristband starts sputtering out of the printer, she grabs it quickly, softly smoothing it over the old man’s wrinkled arm. 

“Here you are, sir” she smiles, with an air of a customer service pro and the tiniest bit of venom. “If you sit in those seats over there, someone will be with you shortly.” 

“Yeah, yeah, they better ” 

“Get well soon!” She calls out with a wave, and her excitement proves she really is new here, with no signs of her spirit being crushed by the weight of a thousand angry patients’ demands. She is so unmarred by the way this place chews you up and spits you out then coughs on you for good measure. 

The newbie stares back up at Gilbert, extending her arm to his with verve. “I’m Anne.” 

Anne. 

There’s nothing medically rational to explain why her name causes a light palpitation and for his brain to forget his own. It’s just biological, nothing more. 

Anne.

He wonders if she spells it with an ‘E’ and concludes she must yet he has no reasoning for believing it, it just feels right

Anne.

She tilts her head and squints her eyes, opening her mouth once more to say something, until a patient yacks across the room, rebooting himself to remember where he is, who he is, and is painfully reminded he’s on hour twelve of his shift. 

“Gilbert,” he says fast, turning her focus back to him and away from the triage nurse assisting the sick patient, shaking her still outstretched hand. “Blythe. Gilbert Blythe” 

Their hands linger a little too long, and hers is soft beside the bandaids donning her fingers, no doubt from a nervous habit. She pulls away and he hopes she doesn’t notice the clamminess of his hand. 

“Well, shouldn’t you help her?” Anne points her head towards the patient gagging into a blue bag, “I mean you are the smart Doctor”

Her laugh is short and sweet but he hears it ring long after she’s done, and there’s this flirtatious tone that he’s sure is there. 

“Ah, right,” he nods, stepping backward without breaking their eye contact despite the fact that Phillipa, the triage nurse, is perfectly capable and would likely hate for him to be in her way. “Maybe I’ll see you later, Little Miss Carrots.” 

Gilbert grins back at her, relishing in his own callback to the not-so-kind gentleman’s words in the hopes that he can hear that laugh more. He doesn’t often do this, flirt with strangers, but it’s been so long since that familiar drum of genuine interest beat through him. Medical school does not necessarily make for good, healthy connections, and his internship was even worse. Every little casual fling he’s had since undergrad usually lasted a brief month, maybe two if he was lucky, before he’d get a text saying ‘I’m sorry… your schedule is just a little too crazy for me.’ 

Instead of laughter though, he hears nothing, only seeing her lips tighten into a thin line, her expression falling, then contorting into pure anger with her cheeks turning crimson and her knuckles white against her side. 

He’d almost find it cute if he wasn’t horrified by the sudden change in her and his idiot, bumbling words that caused that change. His stomach starts to turn, creating a pit so deep he just wants to bury himself in it. 

She strolls away from her chair, eerily calm, backing into the edge of the desk he had been gawking at her from earlier. She peers down at the bagged lunch he brought and nods. 

“Is this yours?” She asks conspicuously, and he already gets a sense of where this is going as her eyes flit toward the trashcan. 

Gilbert hesitates, “...yes.” 

And the next thing he knows, the lunch that he made, albeit poorly, sat amongst snotty tissues, discharge papers, and vending machine wrappers. When he looks back up, she has this self-satisfied look on her face, but he cannot ignore the way she quivers just so. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize–” he begins, but she cuts him off with a sharpness that pierces the air. 

“–You didn’t realize that it’s one thing for a crotchety old man to call me names with an obvious misogynistic undertone... and quite another for a so-called ‘professional’ to do it?” The air quotes she uses pack a particular punch then. “Why don’t you go leave us non-medical Gods to our lowly posts and go.” 

There’s nothing to interpret, no subtly, no subtext. Anne doesn’t want him there because he’s a self-induced cretin. She turns her attention away from him and back to the computer and he knows that’s her way of saying ‘don’t apologize more, I don’t even care for it.’

Suddenly he feels like he failed a test that he never knew was coming in a class he never signed up for, but somehow, still should have studied. 

He nods to no one in particular, shaking his dejected head and backing out towards the waiting room where Phillipa was starting an IV in the patient's wrist. 

“Can I help with anything?” He asks, voice raw. 

“And have you butcher my IV? Absolutely not, honey, I know how you Doctors are– just order some Zofran for her, please” 

“That I can do,” he sighs, turning back around to start the order while avoiding the storm brewing toward registration until Phil stops him. 

“I saw you met our new addition” She questions, ever the interrogator, pointing towards Anne, “We went to undergrad together actually, I got her this job after that old bag retired.” 

“God, please tell me you didn’t see all that.”

She stares back at him completely deadpanned, expert fingers pinching the patient without the woman even flinching, “I saw you helping her– Dr. Blythe, you residents are always so paranoid it’s obnoxious.”

The sign of relief he breathes is audible and he’s thankful she ignores it, for once she gets on a train of thought, she is not to be distracted. 

“You two looked cozy up there though, I had half a mind to think you two were perfect for each other, perfectly brainy, perfectly stubborn…” he drowns her out then, this is Phil at her very shameless best. “Oh! And you’re both good ol’ Canadians, how about that!” 

This is the thing about living in New York that he hates. He likes many things about this place, Central Park on a cool Saturday, how there’s always something new to do and you could never be bored (despite him not having time to do these new things), the way he never has to sleep in silence. What he hates, besides that utterly lost feeling he has every time he leaves his apartment, the lack of connection, how no one truly knows you, is that every time he does get somewhat close to people, they have to tell you every time they know someone else from Canada as if you know every single one. 

“Yeah?” He questions, trying not to betray the curiosity he still has for her. “Whereabouts?” 

Phil stands back up, dusting her knees from her place below the patient. “Uh, way to put a girl on the spot, the name is slipping from me, but I know it’s an Island?” 

“Prince Edward Island?” He mutters, suddenly being reminded of deep red clay under his boots, his father teaching him how to skate on the pond by their home before he got sick, the way that little Island felt as large as the whole wide world to him at 11 years old, and how small it felt when he left. 

“Yes! That’s the one” Phil exclaims, completely unaware she just unlocked a whole vault full of memories he’s locked away for a very long time. “You’re from Alberta though, right? Or something like that?” 

“Yeah, something like that…” Gilbert drifts, unwilling to get into that whole spiel. 

 “Well, you two wouldn’t be quite right anyway.” 

He doesn’t want to know more, because he’s already screwed it up beyond belief, but he asks anyway with the fakest air of amusement he can muster. “And why is that?” 

“She’s engaged.” 

Diary, he’s infuriating, he’s horrible, he’s self-possessed and smug. I could tell by the way he smirked– I swear, it was a smirk!- after calling me that awful nickname that he was not a friend, not even a work friend that you could chat with from time to time on the job but easily never speak to in the real world. 

I will never speak to him, not ever, ever, EVER again. Roy says that’s melodramatic and that I need to learn how to deal with people who can’t be kindred spirits, but what does he know? He’s always the peacemaker, the one who tells me to ‘let it go.’ But it’s not that simple. I can't just 'deal with it.' It’s not like his world, where everything’s calm and balanced. I can’t just smile and let people walk all over me, not again. I’ll still do my job, of course, I could never embarrass Phil like that after she stuck her beautiful neck out for me, but when I have to deal with him, I’ll just keep my mouth shut and my eyes ahead. 

That nickname, and any cruel nickname for the matter, will always make me feel thirteen again. The new girl, the weird girl, that strange orphan again. I will always have that girl inside of me, I hate her and I love her all at once, but I hate being made to feel like her. There are days when I become her, slip into her like a pair of well-loved shoes, but I choose her. When someone brings her out of me unwillingly, I cannot stand for it. 

Anyway, Diary, let’s not dwell on him, let me tell you about something Phil told me…

Anne doesn’t speak to Gilbert again after that ill-fated first night. 

She still gives him charts, patient registration info, and boring insurance forms he has to sign. But she hands them to him without words, shoving them in his face and staring off into the distance as if she’d turn into salt if she turned back. 

Despite her embargo, he still picks up little things about her in passing—tiny slices of information that he reluctantly files away in a mental folder of things he tries not to think about, but does anyway, endlessly. From Phil, he learns that she’s not interested in medicine at all, and that working at the front desk is just a way to help pay for grad school, something in literature. It baffles him why she’s here, getting accosted by patients, sitting there through the long hours of the night shift without a complaint, doing the most thankless, unglamorous work. He pictures her in a library instead, maybe teaching ungrateful undergrads about Shakespeare, or writing—she always seems to be scribbling something in between patients. It only deepens his curiosity about her, pulls him in, despite the iron curtain she’s erected between them.

The incessant nagging of this curiosity and compulsive need to tear down this curtain of hers is a much-needed distraction from rounds, studying, and his horribly arrogant attending, but it is a distraction nonetheless. 

“Blythe, are you listening to me?” 

“Yes, Dr. Parker,” Gilbert straightens up and clears his throat, “the patient is showing signs of hydronephrosis, with a slight hit in her GFR, I’d do an ultrasound to confirm...” 

Gilbert continues with his diagnosis and prognosis, but his mind wanders. He remembers why he’s here. He loves medicine—the puzzle, the race to unravel the body’s inner workings. He’ll take the relief the patient feels later, their gratitude, knowing he did his part in making someone’s life better. But he can’t dwell on that. The fear of remembering being in their shoes with his father still grips him. For now, it’s the competition he loves—the most difficult competition of all. Gilbert doesn’t want to remember being on the losing side of this fight—the pain, the defeat, the look in his father’s eyes as the doctor said, ‘we lost. I’m so sorry, but we lost. He hates to admit it, but that’s what drives him most of the time. His classmates in med school, his cohorts in residency, they’re all so idealistic—always describing their hallelujah moment in medicine as ‘I just want to help people, to make the world a better place’ —and he does, he’s desperate for it. But he cannot deny that selfish, dreadful part of him that wants to win against the forces that took his father and his mother long before.

When rounds are over he finds himself glaring at that ring of hers once more, signing papers against Anne’s desk as she snubs her nose away from him, arms crossed. He wants to poke her buttons, see which ones to press that might make her smile, but it’s not one of those days. 

Instead, he’s silent besides the sound of his name by way of pen against paper. 

Those stormy eyes float back and forth between him and the wall, and he can see her slump into her chair out of his peripheral. 

He hears something soft, a few small words he can’t make out. 

“Sorry, what?” 

“You forgot one,” She says, still low but a little louder and rough around the edges. 

He ruffles through the stack of papers in front of him, seeing his name scratched into each one. 

“No,” she groans, getting up off the chair and sliding next to him, removing the pages from his hands. His fingers burn when her own brush against them as she removes a page stuck to the ink on the one above it. “This one” 

“Thank you,” he replies, just barely above a whisper, holding her eyes for a moment. 

She doesn’t look at the wall, or stare off into space away from him, rather she stands firm, looking at him with eyes not stormy, but tepid, more blue than gray. The curtain falls, and it’s just the two of them. 

Gilbert smiles at her, an olive branch he hopes she accepts. But she takes it and snaps it when she fades away from him once more and the curtain falls back down. 

“Well, I’m only helping you for the hospital’s sake.” 

There are many things he is competitive about, but when it comes down to her disdain, he is not, so he wordlessly sets the pen down and walks away, seeing how truly futile this is. 

What he doesn’t see, however, is the way her expression drops and remains that way for the rest of her shift. 

Dearest of all Dear Diaries, 

I still hate what he said and how he looked when he said it. But WHY do I have to be such a spiteful, wretched person?? Why do I ALWAYS have to stick my big foot in my mouth? 

He looked so down earlier, so lost in thought. I figured maybe his rounds went badly, but there was something more to the expression, and I just can’t explain. Like a perfect glimpse into someone with substance, a little oomph that I don’t see very often. I felt like anyone with that look on their face could be a friend, and I wanted to be kind to him against my better judgment, and so I did. But then he smiled and I just couldn’t any longer. I don’t know what it is about his face, but I just want to wipe that smile off of it and to be out of his gaze. 

Roy’s is an easy gaze to be in. You don’t itch when you’re in it, and you could sit in it for hours and not even sweat. That’s normal, right? Marilla says that’s a practical love, and then I think, ‘When has ‘practical’ and ‘Anne Shirley-Cuthbert’ ever been in the same sentence?’

Speaking of Roy, he wrote something new for me the other day. There’s a whole verse on the way my eyebrows fall “just so,” and to tell you the truth it’s a little lost on me. Is that horrible for a lifelong student of literature to say? I told Phil that maybe it’s a good thing he works in finance with his father, and she called me an elitist critic. I laughed at that but suspect she’s right. After all, Byron did write ‘And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,’ but even I’m not so in love with him that I could compare his works to that of Byron. A girl has limits!! 

“And make sure you change this dressing at least once a day, but the most important thing is to make sure she finishes the course of antibiotics, and that you make an appointment with her Primary to get the stitches removed next Friday.” 

It’s been a long day covering in the ER: mostly easy cases— your classic food poisoning, asthma attacks, chest pain, and minor injuries. Now, a young girl shakes like a leaf in front of Gilbert, her shirt still stained with bright blood, her sleeve torn in half where she tripped on her skateboard and hit rough concrete.

Her mother nods intently to each instruction Gilbert provides, absent-mindedly rubbing her daughter's hair and he feels a twinge of jealousy for this motherly love the girl has. 

“And if she spikes a fever at all, bring her back immediately. Don’t wait–” 

He’s cut off by a low, but curddling scream and rough clanging. The mother begins shaking just as hard as her daughter, grabbing her face in her arms in a swift, protective motion. Gilbert excuses himself from them, running out of the room to the source of the commotion. 

Anne stands still at her desk, feet planted on the floor, face as pale as snow, and eyes wide as she stares at the scene in front of her, Gilbert follows her eyes and sees the blood splattered across the plexiglass guard on the desk, the floor, and the sign-in forms strewn about. There’s a woman hunched over, no older than 25, with a man standing above her and begging for help, tears following across his red, raw cheeks. It’s second nature then, the way Gilbert’s feet carry him across the room, throwing himself to the ground to match the woman’s eyes and hands roaming to her face to examine the source of the blood. 

“It’s—It’s her throat, she just got her tonsils out yesterday and she—she only coughed, and then all this came out,” the man explains, his voice breaking as he clutches her arm, whispering her name over and over.

Gilbert shines his light down the woman’s throat, spotting the blood pooling out from the tonsil bed. She must have dislodged the clot when she coughed. Phil and a few other nurses rush to his side, awaiting his orders.

He’d never get used to the weight of everyone staring at him, waiting for him to make the call.

“Is she on blood thinners, any clotting disorders I should know about?” Gilbert asks the man, seemingly pulling him from his trance. 

The man takes one look at the blood seeping into Gilbert’s white coat and begins to sob harder. 

“Hey, hey, hey, I know this is scary but I need you to help me out so that I can help her, yeah? Can we do that?” 

The man nods, wiping his tears and slapping his face lightly, trying to snap himself out of it. “No, she’s perfectly healthy, not on any meds.”

Gilbert waves down an orderly, who rushes over to get a gurney.

“Let’s get an IV in so we can start TXA and get a CBC, type cross, and I’ll need her vitals, if her systolic is below 90 I want O neg ready while we wait for that match.” His voice is sharper than usual, his tone firm, almost surprising him. But the nurses don’t flinch—they move with practiced efficiency. Seconds stretch into what feels like hours as they lift her onto the gurney and rush her into a trauma room.

“Get the ENT on call,” he adds, before turning to follow them.

As the team works furiously around the patient, Gilbert catches a fleeting glance of Anne. She’s still standing there, frozen. Her breath hitches, and he sees her eyes gloss over with tears threatening to spill.

“Hey,” he calls out at her. 

She blinks, causing a single tear to fall delicately down her cheek. 

“It’s okay, you’re okay.” 

It’s simple, it’s short. But she sits back down finally, slumping against her chair and bringing her hands to her face. He wants to console her then, take her face into his arms like that mother had done to her daughter before, so protective, so strong. Blocking her out of the world and its grief. He can’t though, he has a patient to take care of, and she has a fiancé to take care of her. So, he leaves her there, painfully ignoring the quiet sobs that he still hears long after he leaves. 

It’s hours before Gilbert’s able to take a break, electing to take in the fresh, chilled September evening air on the rooftop. He comes out here most shifts, taking in the sights of the Hudson River, watching the lights of the city twinkle against the water. It’s his little haven, an oasis in the desert. Even though there’s litter dispersed across the ground and the smell of cigarettes– Newports, at that– always permeates the air. 

Tonight, however, he’s not the only one. 

There is another here, leaning against the railing, long red hair flowing with the breeze. He finds himself walking towards her slowly, lest he scare her, or chase her away, but she’s a deer in his headlights when she finally notices him. She doesn’t run, instead, she looks down in near-horror. 

“Is she–” Anne starts, breath catching against her words. “Is she gone?” 

Gilbert stops in his tracks, blinking at her in surprise. He hadn’t expected to find her here. The way she looks—flush, swollen-eyed, and so tired—throws him off for a moment, and he suddenly realizes that none of this is normal for her. “No. Oh God, no. I know it didn’t look like it, Anne, but it’s a completely normal complication.”

Anne exhales a long sigh of relief, her breath steaming in the cool night air. “It is?”

“Yes,”he exhales, leaning against the railing closer to her. “This might sound odd, but picture a tree that’s been pruned, some sap will leak and harden–” 

“To heal the tree?” She cuts in, mind already whirring. 

“Exactly. The sap seals the tree’s wounds. But if the tree is disturbed by wind or something else, the hardened sap might break off, and the tree will leak more.” He gives her a sideways glance, hoping she’s following. “That’s what happened to the patient—when she coughed too hard, the scab broke away, and there’s an artery close by hence… the blood.”

Anne sits in silence and he fears he just said something entirely ridiculous and has finally pushed her away for good, but she looks at him with a small smile. 

“Well, maybe if all of medicine could be compacted into tree metaphors, I could have been a doctor too!” 

Gilbert laughs—deep, genuine—one that bubbles up from his stomach and fills the air around them. For the first time in a long while, the sounds of the city—the sirens, the honking, the wind between the buildings—disappear, and the only thing that matters is the sound of their laughter echoing for what feels like miles.

“Well, if you’re a true Islander, like Phil says you are, then it’s practically a requirement to love trees.”

Anne tilts her head and gasps, her eyes glimmer. “You know P.E.I.?”

“Know it?” He grins, ignoring the ache in his soul at the mention of it. “I was born there, in Avonlea.” 

Her hand slaps him in the shoulder, hard and she practically squeals. “You’re lying, you’re lying.” 

He nods, slightly confused by her level of excitement, not used to her looking at him, and speaking with him in this way.

“That’s where I grew up!” She exclaims, slightly hopping up and down on the balls of her feet. 

“Really? In a town of no more than a thousand people, I’m sure I would have known you, well - I did leave in ‘07, when my dad-” he cuts himself off, not ready to share this bit of himself. “When we moved– to Alberta.” 

Anne’s face falls slightly, and she speaks hesitantly. “I didn’t move there until I was thirteen... in ‘11.”

Gilbert smiles softly, understanding the hesitation, but he doesn’t want to push. Instead, he teases her, “What are two bumpkin Avonlea kids doing here?”

She does smile, and they sit there on that rooftop, freezing in the air of the river below them, laughing like two idiots and completely ignoring the tears that still stick to her face and the blood that’s soaked into his scrubs. It’s normal and completely abnormal, and he decides he likes that, he likes teetering there in that feeling that lies between the known and the unknown, the good and the bad. They begin to talk of old swimming holes, carved names into bridges, of shared and separate histories in the same place at different times. When the conversation drifts off, he’s almost afraid she’ll end it completely and walk off, and they’ll never speak like this again, so he dares to venture into dangerous territory. 

“I’m sorry, Anne, like, truly sorry.” He offers with his hand on his chest, before he even decides he should. 

“For what?” She asks innocently like she hasn’t spent the last month hating him, turning away from him. 

“For what I said… when we met. It was, well, I thought I was being funny, but I hurt your feelings and that was never my intention.” 

She remains silent, staring off into the lights of the city and chewing at her bottom lip. He hates to admit that he stares quite intently, the ring on her finger twinkling as if to say don’t look at her like that. She lowers her head, and he wants to travel inside her brain, spend the day there, and learn where she goes when she stares off into space like that. 

“You see, I’m a terrible grudge holder, Dr. Blythe.” She starts, gripping the railing. “That nickname, well, it’s always gotten a rise out of me, and… it brought back the worst memories.” 

He knows that feeling all too well. Memories are a danger, the way they pull you back in and lock you there. So, he nods intently as she starts back up again. 

“But how could you have known? I know now that… you never meant it with the same derision that others did.” 

“No, not at all,” he asserts, “and you’ll find that I’m a fast learner, I never make the same mistakes twice.” 

Anne smiles, one that shows a slight dimple on her left cheek, thrusting her hand in the space between them. “Can we do this again? And be friends this time?” 

He takes her hand, reveling in that softness that he felt last month once more. “On one condition.”

She looks worried for a moment but snorts at his quirked eyebrow that betrays his unserious request. 

“Call me Gilbert, not Dr. Blythe.” 

“That I can do,” she says, lifting his hand in a firm shake. “Gilbert.” 

Diary, I have news. 

Gilbert— I can say his name now— and I are friends. I know, I know. You’re thinking ‘Anne! You promised to never speak of or to him again! What happened?’ 

And that Diary, is a bloody story, one where I stood cowardly by, watching him be a hero, and what a hero he was. I’ve never seen anything like it. And you know me. I have never shied away from blood and danger, but I was… stuck. 

The cry this poor woman’s husband made… that’s what got me, not the blood, not how she doubled down on the floor, none of that. It was the scream that stopped me in my tracks, Diary. It was nothing I ever felt or heard before. It reverberated across the hospital, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire City stopped at that moment. The only person in the room who didn’t seem to stop was Gilbert. He ran, coming out of nowhere- it was like something out of a movie or Grey’s Anatomy. The husband was crying, and crying, and I could feel my heart crying, and crying, but Gilbert shook him, and eventually I, out of it. He commanded the room, even Phil who refuses to be commanded most days, was hanging onto his every word. 

It was… magical. There’s no other way to describe it. How one moment this woman could be so lifeless, pale, on the brink of death (even though Gilbert assured me everything was fine), and suddenly there he was… Like I said, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m at a loss for more words and you know quite well, what with being absolutely full of them, how rare that is. 

I learned that he’s an Island boy. Can you believe it! Maybe he really is kindred, and the way he spoke of the trees and other such beloved features of Avonlea… Well, I’ve decided that he is kindred. 

I messaged the group chat with Diana and Ruby and I asked if they knew him. They were shocked, sending dozens of messages back and forth recalling stories from elementary school. How Ruby had a hopeless crush on him. How he was smart, yet always pulling jokes to the dismay of their teachers. He seemed so far away from the somewhat shy adult he is now. You can see small little peeks of that little Island boy though, something that reminds you of the greens and blues all over the Island. 

I had a good cry for home when I got back to the apartment and Roy was just about to go out with his college friends. He asked if I wanted him to stay and I told him no, that I was just in one of my Anne-ish moods. I couldn’t explain to him what I felt for the Island and the limp, lost feeling I had. I didn’t think he’d understand. He’s a Manhattan-blooded man through and through. 

Well, more wedding planning went on today. Roy asked what flowers I’d like as our centerpieces. Violets or orchids were best, he said. But Diary, as beautiful and lovely violets and orchids are, all I could think about were sappy trees. 

“Are you always this gross?” 

Gilbert takes Anne to her inaugural 3 am lunch at the diner across the street, an experience that every hospital employee must have at least once. He popped his diner-cherry when he was an intern, after lancing a patient’s dermoid cyst and everyone in his class thought he was crazy for having the appetite for a whopping burger and a hefty pumpkin pie slice. 

He stares at her intently as she dips french fries in her strawberry milkshake, scrunching up her nose at his comment, tossing a fry directly in her mouth. “If by gross you mean culinarily brilliant, then yes, yes I am always this gross.” 

He shakes his head, takes a fry, and makes a show of chewing it all the way, swallowing slowly, then taking a sip of his own chocolate shake. 

“Now that’s how it’s done, step-by-step– there are rules, Anne.” 

“Hm.” She hums simply with a quirk of her brow, grabbing her shake and pouring a heap of it onto her fries, and he’s grateful then that they decided against sharing. She laughs and kicks her feet up under the table, lightly brushing against his, settling back on the red-cushioned booth. 

“That’s what I think about your rules.” 

Gilbert rolls his eyes back and pretends to gag, turning his head to face the window that’s fogged up from the chilled rain. He hates this in-between weather, where it’s not quite cold enough to snow, but cold enough to make the rain feel like icy bullets down your back. His hair is still dripping from when they ran out of the ER with no umbrella, but hers fairs better, since he gave her his white coat to cover her head. There are only a few droplets that fall from the strands of red that nestle against her neck. 

He doesn’t want to think about her neck, so he changes the subject to something less dangerous. 

“So, your thesis… tell me about it.” 

Anne looks back at him with a tilt of her head, like she didn’t expect him to ask. “You really wanna hear about that? You watched open-heart surgery today, and I study words from two centuries ago.” 

“And? “ He pushes, with a little white lie. “Hearts are lame– what, you pump blood? So, what? They insist upon themselves.” 

She didn’t need to know that that surgery was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen in his life, and as he stood above in the gallery, he couldn’t think of anything else besides that monstrous, gorgeous organ in front of him. As she begins talking about the intricacies of her thesis, how long it’s taken her to fall on this topic, every little detail of her education culminating in this piece of, well, art, he thinks that she is like that heart. All full of life, strong but delicate, as necessary as breathing. 

“...So, yeah, it’s sort of this question of the pastoral versus the industrial– the tension between innovation and progress of industry against the peace and freedom of rural life. I argue that all literature references this struggle in some way.” 

“Wow, that’s…” He starts, unsure how to finish his thought, suddenly feeling so small against her intellect. 

“It’s silly, in comparison to what you’re doing here, I know–” 

“No!” Gilbert asserts, hands up and eyes wide. “It’s creative, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard of, yet… so pertinent.” 

Yet again he finds himself amazed with this woman, how she’s defined his life so raw, and true. This inner fight he has between his life here, in the City, pushing himself towards realizing his goal of mastery of the natural human state, while missing lazy summer days strewn about Avonlea with his father. 

“It reminds me of home,” he says, and that’s all he can muster.

Her mouth opens a few times, just to close back up in a disbelieving smile, finally uttering sweetly, “Exactly.” 

“Is your fiancé in literature too, or any other academic field?” Gilbert asks before he even knows he’s going to. He doesn’t really want to know more about him, just what sort of man you have to be to deserve someone like this. 

“Roy?” She asks, almost to herself, as if she has more than one fiancé under her belt. “Uh, no, I mean he does write, he’s actually quite the poet. But no, he works at his dad’s finance firm.” 

“Ah, that explains the Tiffany’s the size of a small planet there,” he chuckles, nodding towards her ring finger and taking a sip of his coffee. He’s afraid she won’t take the joke as it is, but she does, throwing her head back and bringing her fingers over her lips before throwing a strawberry milkshake-covered fry at him. 

“Gilbert Blythe, I’ll have you know this is a Harry Winston,” she says, looking down at it, and his heart pounds at the look in her eyes, there’s something there. Not the doting, sighing bride you see in the movies, something forlorn, something missing. “Admittedly, I thought it was a little ostentatious at first, I mean, I’m a farm girl from Avonlea, but… Roy says that nothing could be large enough to show his love for me, and this is the next best thing and so I suppose that’s what I like about it.” 

It hits Gilbert then that maybe he’s never really been in love like that, and he feels small in comparison to the point of nausea. He’s told girls he loved them before, and it was never a lie, but maybe it was a lie of omission to himself. Maybe he never loved them to that size or that scope, where you can throw caution to the wind and tell someone that out of the billions of people in the world you want them, only them, forever. He can understand Roy being able to do that, as Anne seems like the kind of girl you can’t help but fall in love with, the kind that you know you’ll marry after the first date. 

“I, um, don’t have many guy friends,” she admits, pulling him from his thoughts. “Most guys back away when they find out I’m engaged, and it sucks, like I’m not worth being a friend, only someone to sleep with.” Anne shakes her head and stares out the clouded window like she instantly regrets what she said. Maybe he does feel a bit small still, but he recognizes it in her now, and he hates what he sees, so he speaks up. 

“You’ll never have to worry about that with me,” he asserts, and it’s true. Despite the ache in the pit of his stomach, he could never see her as someone just to sleep with, she has multitudes in her that he yearns to explore, and he hates that anyone has ever made her feel otherwise. 

She snaps her head back and it looks like she’s lost a thousand pounds weighing on her shoulders. 

“So, friends, for real?” 

“Friends for real.”

Gilbert feels like the sort of friend you know everything about instantly but still surprises you at every turn. 

When he told me he listened to classical music while studying, it felt obvious, like duh, the Good Doctor listens to classical, that’s a logical conclusion. But when I asked what his favorite piece was he laughed. Laughed at me. I could have hit him on the head at that, but he said: 

“I don’t really like it or know specific pieces, there’s just tons of studies that say classical helps retain information while studying.” I should have guessed that. He’s very one-track-minded about medicine, but then he told me his favorite song was a Springsteen track called Secret Garden. 

He even went so far as to call him ‘The Boss”! It was my turn to laugh then, and I thought how much he and Matthew would have gotten along, what with their dad-like taste in music and all, but I’m listening to the song now as I’m writing and I just feel like I have more questions than answers. 

Has there been someone who hides secret gardens from him? Has he brought a so-called hammer and vise to her heart? 

He seems so sure of himself, so confident, so annoyingly aware of his effect on everyone… Honestly, I’ve seen the way the nurses look at him, and the other doctors too – female and male. He’s a catch, even I’m not blind or impervious to the fact that he looks like the dashing protagonist of an Austen novel. But I can’t help but wonder if he’s searching for secret gardens and “tenderness in the air,” and why he hasn’t been able to find it.

I hope he finds it. 

Another thing that I thought I could guess but was thoroughly surprised about was his name. 

Gilbert. Gilbert.

He was born in 1996. There were 26 Gilberts born in Canada that year, out of every baby born. Are you curious about what percent of the baby population that was? I was too, which is why I looked all of this up, and it is a whopping 0.015%! 

I figured it was probably his great-grandfather’s name or some sort of other family name. I couldn't have been more far from the truth. 

I learned that his mother named him Gilbert after the Anne Brontë character Gilbert Markham from ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.’ Isn’t that beautiful? I loved that book from the moment I read that first line “You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827” Like we must…. I love it when an author demands we listen.

I couldn't believe his mother read that book and loved it as much as I did, so much so that she named her son after it. Maybe she and I would have been dear friends. 

Unfortunately, I also learned from Gilbert that she died during childbirth.

Can you imagine it? I know pregnancy and birth are complicated and serious, but to die during it? Devastating and cruel. I wondered if that’s what inspired him to go into medicine, but I found myself unable to ask. Isn’t that strange? The orphan was unable to speak to another orphan… I shouldn’t say that, I still know nothing of his dad, but something tells me there’s more to Gilbert’s story, like mine. 

I can see in his eyes that he misses someone who’s not there, just as I miss my parents, despite never knowing them, how I miss Matthew… Yes, I miss my friends from Avonlea–Diana most of all– and Marilla, but to live for someone who’s gone… I see that in Gilbert like my reflection in the mirror. That look in your eye when you have one foot out and one foot in, it’s plastered on his face. 

What an unlikely friendship we’ve created here. He went with me the other day to pick up thesis material at the library. I wanted to show him Columbia, he’s never been on campus even though he’s technically employed by them at the ER. We walked for hours in between the shelves, and I asked him what college was like for him. He said, over everything else, lonely. My heart ached for him then, I wanted to go back in time and find him, pull him into a house party, and let him dance and wash it all away. 

I touched his shoulder, Diary… I shouldn’t have done it. But I felt so sad for him, and he looked like he hadn’t had someone comfort him in so long. Humans need connection to survive, and with the dark circles under his eyes, the way he slinks about… Diary, there’s never been someone needing connection more than he did at that moment. 

I told Roy about it all and he didn’t seem to care, I was worried… I thought he’d be upset or even possessive but he just smiled and said he was glad that I had more people behind my back at work. He’s still not entirely convinced that I should be working right now– especially not at a hospital he deems “dangerous”. He says he’s happy to pay our rent and pay for school, but I have too much Marilla in me. I can’t let him do that while this relationship should be a team, he wants to shoulder all of the burden but I want us to shoulder all of our burden. Sometimes he just seems to do things because they’re the expected thing to do. 

Anyway, I’m meeting Gilbert before our shift so we can walk together and I need to stop writing or I’ll be late (as always!) 

Gilbert meets Roy Gardner in passing one night, coming up the 168th Street station hand-in-hand with Anne. 

He’s the sort of man you can honestly say is beautiful, with inky-black hair, a perfectly tailored suit, and a soft, 90s heartthrob way about him. Gilbert pales in comparison, in his green scrubs, tattered shoes, and messy curls. It’s Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities in action. Anne seems to be in deep conversation, rambling on about something that has her in raptures when she catches sight of Gilbert and he feels breathless by the way that her eyes light up, dropping Roy’s hand, and running to greet him, not without bumping into passersby. 

“Gilbert,” she says, shaking off some dirt on her coat, but never breaking eye contact. 

“Anne, hello,” he replies, unable to tear his eyes away from her cold-red cheeks and slightly chapped lips. It’s shameless, he knows, to look at her this way when her fiancé is right there, but he’s still catching up to Anne, and Gilbert allows himself to forget about it for one moment, instead taking in the way her hair falls against her green sweater, and her eyes are a limpid, calm gray. 

Suddenly, Roy appears back next to her, and Gilbert is unable to forget his place anymore, backing up slightly. 

“Roy,” he introduces curtly, sticking out that perfectly tailored suit sleeve towards Gilbert. It’s subtle, how he wraps his other arm around Anne’s middle, pulling her close to him. But Gilbert catches it, the same way he catches Roy sizing him up, glaring at those tattered shoes and how his scrubs don’t fit right. He’s never been one to feel insecure, always fairly sure of himself and his place in this world, but suddenly he wants to falter, wane, disappear back into the crowd. However, something in him decides to plant his feet in the ground and not betray how he wants to sink away and never meet the man again. 

Gilbert extends his arm and introduces himself with a firm shake, “Gilbert.” 

There’s an awkward silence that goes for an eternity, and Gilbert wants to leave and go straight to the hospital, but Anne looks up at the two of them excitedly so he suffers through it for her. 

“So, Anne tells me you’re a great doctor, the best she’s ever seen.” 

Anne rolls her eyes, “Darling, please, I said he was a good doctor,” but the glint in her eye says otherwise. 

Gilbert laughs, trying to ignore the sting of the pet name so casually used, “Oh right, this one would never want to inflate my ego too much.” 

“How can I inflate what’s already at the point of bursting?” She practically shouts, biting her lip when she realizes her voice has startled Roy, who raises his eyebrows and tugs lightly at Anne’s sleeve. The air is heavy around the three of them, it’s almost stifling, and Gilbert shuffles his feet and clears his throat, hoping that someone shoulders the burden and says something. 

It’s Roy who speaks, shoving his hands deeper into the pockets of his Italian coat. “I hope Anne isn’t causing too much trouble at the hospital, she can be quite the troublemaker.” 

His voice is smooth, but a little too smug for comfort. 

Anne’s eyebrow crinkles, a tell-tale sign that she’s unamused. She scoffs lowly, and Roy looks back down at her with a chuckle, seemingly oblivious to her reaction. 

Gilbert’s mouth goes dry as he watches them blankly, still trying to gauge how much he’s allowed to say in front of Roy, not wanting to seem curt, but uneasy to seem overly familiar. 

Finally, he lets out a soft, hesitant laugh, pushing through the discomfort. “No, she’s great, except when patients rip their IV out and leave against medical advice,” he says, trying to keep it light. It’s an inside joke from a ridiculous, sleep-deprived night he and Anne had shared a couple of days ago, during a particularly chaotic shift. They had laughed like idiots over coffee, their exhaustion making everything seem a little more absurd than it actually was. 

A small smile tugs at her lips, and he can almost hear the echo of their laughter from that night.

“Right,” she says, a hint of mischief creeping into her tone. “At least it’s not you and bedpans!”

Roy’s head jerks up, confused for a second. He’s not in on the joke and flashes a quick, awkward smile. “Doesn’t it seem a bit reckless? Being around people like that? I mean, they’re not exactly… stable, are they?”

Gilbert’s smile fades, and his chest tightens. His eyes flicker toward Anne for a brief moment, noticing the deep red spanning across her face, and then he focuses back on Roy. It’s not lost on him that Roy’s words have a different weight, not so much full of concern for his and Anne’s safety, but condescension toward the people they serve. 

There’s a subtle tightening around her mouth—the way she doesn’t quite smile, the way she holds herself a little straighter. She looks like she’s heard it before. Maybe not the exact words, but the way they’re said—like a veil of concern that hides the judgment underneath.

Finally, Anne speaks, her voice cool but pointed, a touch of dryness to it. “People like what, exactly?” she asks, her gaze sharp as it meets Roy’s. 

Roy shifts his weight, looking uncomfortable under Anne’s steady gaze. “You know, people who... who aren’t exactly—” He gestures vaguely, as if trying to find the right words, but nothing quite lands the way he intends.

Gilbert suddenly feels like a fly on a wall he shouldn’t be on, but he can’t deny the pride that fills him deeply when she continues. 

“It’s not dangerous, Roy. People just need someone to care for them, everyone deserves that.” 

The silence that follows feels heavy, and Gilbert fidgets a little. It’s strange, how a conversation can make the air feel thick, like everything around him is pressing in, even though no voices have been raised. He wants to say something—anything—but the moment just sits there, uncomfortable.

Roy shifts again, his lips pressing together as if he’s not sure how to explain himself further.  He opens his mouth to say something else but then seems to think better of it. The silence stretches out, more awkward by the second. Gilbert wonders then if this is a regular occurrence between them.

“Right, you’re right, well, uh, I better get going, I have a late-night call with the Tokyo branch.” 

Anne leans in as Roy gives her a short kiss on the forehead, telling her to be safe and that he’ll see her when she gets back. She seems so shrunken against him, her body almost limp, turning behind her to watch him leave, waving down a cab. Gilbert thinks she must preemptively miss him then, probably wishing she could go back home with him and work it out instead of slum it out all night here. Once Roy is tucked into the back of the cab and the car pulls away with a low hum, Anne turns back to Gilbert, and for a split second, the light from the streetlamps catches her face, softening her features. There’s something fragile about her now like she’s been left in the wake of something that’s not easily fixed. She offers a soft, dejected smile, but her eyes don’t quite meet his—like she’s afraid her eyes will betray how she really feels.

He can tell she feels ashamed.

“I’m sorry you had to hear all that. Roy is… a good guy, he’s just a bit sheltered but that doesn’t excuse–” 

“–Anne,” Gilbert interrupts. “It's nothing you have to apologize for.” 

His voice is softer than he expects it to be like he’s offering her a lifeline, even if he’s not sure if she’ll take it. He doesn’t want her to feel like she’s at fault here, even though a part of him wonders if that’s exactly how she feels—like she’s caught between two worlds, neither of which she can quite reconcile. One foot in her life with Roy, and one in her work with people like him.

“You don’t have to explain Roy to me,” Gilbert continues, trying to keep things light, though he feels the weight of her discomfort sitting between them like a stone. “It’s clear you care about him. And that’s all that matters.”

“I do, but I care about the people here and the work you and Phil do, and the work I do, even if it’s small in comparison…” 

“It’s not small,” he sighs, feeling small himself. He knows she must care for Roy, but he can’t help but wonder what she sees in him, and he feels disgusted with himself over the thought. 

“Thanks, Gilbert,” she says, bumping his shoulder a bit. Her voice is still soft, but there’s something new there, something almost like relief. “You’re a good friend.”

Gilbert swallows, the words a little too sharp in his throat. Good friend. The words sit there for a moment, and though they feel kind, they make something inside him tighten, just slightly.

“Yeah, anytime, Anne.” His voice is steady, even though he feels anything but.

She grins, then starts walking, turning back to him when he doesn’t immediately follow. “You coming, I wanna hear about that patient you admitted yesterday that you were texting me about.” 

"Oh, thank you,"  Anne gleams, taking the warm tea that Gilbert had made for her, taking a sip before jerking back at the heat of it.  "And thanks for sneaking me into the 'doctors-only' breakroom, it's so much more glamorous and exclusive than our measly closet." 

"You're welcome," Gilbert laughs, setting his coffee down at the table and settling down next to her. "Is it the peeling wallpaper or the pasta sauce all over the microwave that screams glamour for you?" 

Anne hums, turning back in her seat and taking in every little bit of the dilapidated room, tapping her fingers on the plastic table in front of her. 

"Probably the smell of isopropyl alcohol, it's kind of stinging my nose a bit," she giggles, plugging her nose and wiping the air in front of her. Gilbert can't help but scoot the chair in and lean closer to her.

Anne looks at the space that's still between them, and instead of backing up, she sets her elbows on the table, pushing herself a few inches closer. "I think it's because you have a TV, we don’t have one." 

Gilbert gasps, clutching invisible pearls. "No TV? Blasphemous." 

The TV is still blaring some soap opera that he knows the ortho attending loves. It's bad, cheesy, something he'd never watch at home, but Anne watches it with intent, so he allows himself to glance at it in between sips. He watches her most of all, sneaking peeks as she pulls her hair up into some sort of updo and he's in awe by the way it still falls in waves that seem unconstrained by the scrunchie she always wears on her wrist. 

When she looks back at him, It's friendly, It's conspiratorial, and she's practically devious when she whispers. "Should we play a little game?" 

Gilbert blinks. There are ten more minutes left in his break but there's nowhere he'd rather spend those ten minutes than here. "Sure, what kind of game?" 

"It's a drinking game."

"We don't have alcohol." 

"Why, Gilbert you're a real Sherlock Holmes." She laughs, leaning back on the chair and putting her feet on the seat next to her. "Just pretend, okay? I know you can do it, you have a drink." 

He mirrors her movements, leaning back into his chair, and taking a sip of his coffee, raising his eyebrows. His voice echoes in the mug when he speaks, "so, what are we drinking to?" 

"I'm going to guess something about you and if I'm right, you have to drink, and if I'm wrong... I have to drink." 

Gilbert sets the mug down, tilting his head with a smirk. "And what about me? Do I get any guesses?" 

"Maybe," Anne practically sings, beaming ear to ear. "I'll decide based on... oh, I don't know, if I feel like it." 

He scoffs, fixing his eyes back on the TV to see the sister of the main character kissing the friend of the brother's chiropractor's dentist's dog's vet, or whatever other convoluted storyline is playing out in front of him. When he looks back at her, she's looking at him with a curiosity he usually reserves for her, he wants to calm that curiosity. 

"Well, go for it." 

Her fingers settled on her chin, an overdramatic flair that made him nervous, but a lightbulb seems to go off over her head. 

"You don't like desserts, they're too sweet for you." 

He's surprised, taking a slow sip of the coffee. The loss tastes burnt on his tongue, but her squeal and slap on the table make it all worth it. "I like some dark chocolate..." 

"No, no, you sipped, and that's all on you." 

"Alright, fine, I concede that one," Gilbert says. "Can I go?" 

"No, I'm not done yet," Anne declares, queenishly. She commands the room, even if it's just him there. There's this defiant way about her that beats to it's own drum and its not difficult or hard or horrible to be around, it's lovely, energetic, lightening that can't be bottled lest it spark on the glass, shattering it and everything around it. 

"You’ve never cried at a movie."

It's good to be triumphant, even though he's not sure if her statement is a compliment or an insult. 

"Ah ha!" Gilbert shouts, a little too loudly, trying not to shrink against the volume of it. "Drink it up." 

She’s also surprised by the change in him, because she blinks up at him, smile agape and disbelieving, taking her mug gently to her lips. 

"Now, I get one." 

"I guess I have to allow it." Anne cackles, a lambent light against the darkness of the window behind her. 

Gilbert wants to think long and hard about it but he already has one lined up. 

"You're not shy at all, are you?" 

Her laugh is knowing, and there's a twinge of something secret only she knows, but he wants to be privy to. "You have so much to learn, Blythe." 

"I'm ready to learn, Shirley-Cuthbert." 

Before she can bombard him with more assumptions, the door creaks open, revealing the cocksure and arrogant Dr. Evans, a surgical resident that’s turfed so many of Gilbert’s patients, swooping in at the rescue when he’s already done 90% of the work. They’re oil and water, internists and surgeons. Suddenly, Gilbert feels the need to explain himself and Anne’s being there, even though he couldn’t care less what Evans thinks.

"Oh, Anne was just-"

"Leaving! Sorry, I had to ask Dr. Blythe a couple of questions about... paperwork." Anne asserts, ignoring the lack of paperwork in the room at all. Evans doesn't seem to care though, he just grunts with a nod, heading straight to the coffee machine. 

Anne grimaces comically, holding the open door and shuffling out. He can still see her through the door window, making funny faces and gestures at him, blowing up her cheeks and waving her hands on the side of her face. 

He doesn't remember the last time he had this much fun in this room, in this hospital, in this city. He never wants it to stop. 

Gilbert loses a patient on a cold November night. 

She was an older woman—feisty, clever, and strong—but she had been on dialysis for over ten years and had run out of port sites. They’d tried everything to keep her going, but nothing would take. She needed a transplant, but it never came. Month after month of waiting, hoping for a new kidney—nothing. He had sat with her that morning, gently asking if there was anyone she wanted to call. But she didn’t—she never did.

“I suppose it’s karmic retribution, on account of my being a cold-hearted bitch after all, no one wants to see me.” She had told him.

He thought of Anne, and her good-natured soul, how she would have sat with her as long as it took, even if it was days, weeks, or months. Anne says she loves people who are a little rough around the edges, people whose “souls are lived in” as she so poetically calls it. Her otherworldly goodness was lost on him, as he hadn’t been in the room when it happened, rather, he’d been catching up on charts, hunched over a desk, distracted. When Phil had run upstairs, face pale, telling him she’d coded unceremoniously, he hadn’t even had time to process it. She went quietly. No fight, no final words. Just... drifted off, as peaceful as she’d ever been.

When Gilbert went to her room and saw her lifeless body, he didn’t see just her. He saw his father—weak, fading, and small.

His body screamed for the end of his shift, and when it came, he drifted aimlessly along Manhattan, soullessly boarding the subway, missing his station and instead transferring trains and traveling down to the East Village, outside of a certain brownstone, where he could see a tiny lamp still glowing in the 4 am darkness. 

It was wrong to be here. So wrong. But his hands disobeyed him. They pulled out his phone from his pocket before his brain could stop them, typing a message that had no business being sent.

Are you awake? He hesitated for just a moment before pressing send, feeling the weight of his own ridiculousness. He shouldn’t be doing this.

Anne’s reply came quickly, like she was waiting for it.

Yes, just barely! Finishing up a paragraph, what's up with you - How was your shift? 

He didn’t know how to explain. He didn’t have the heart to, or the civility to let her be. He couldn’t let this moment sit with him alone.

Can you come outside? 

Her figure rushes to the window then, peering out to see him wave awkwardly back at her. She’s wearing glasses with thick black frames, and he must look wild and crazy. Anne runs away from the window, the lamp turns off, and he starts to regret every single decision that led him here. She must be hiding from him beyond the window, boarding the house up like he’s a madman. He feels like a madman as he paces below her stoop, running through mental equations to decide if he should run away, quit his job, move to Montana. Become someone else. He runs through this plan until the front door opens and she comes running out in slippers and a large overcoat over her pajamas. 

“Gilbert?” She questions as if she doesn’t recognize him. He doesn’t quite recognize himself in his reflection on the puddle below him. “What are you doing here, are you okay? 

His throat tightens, and the words spill out before he can stop them.“No, I’m not, I- I lost.” 

Anne exhales something that isn’t quite a laugh or a breath, it’s the embodiment of confusion. 

“Lost what?” 

“A patient,” he says, his voice faltering as he looks down at the cracked pavement. He can’t look at her right now. He doesn’t want to see the pity, the sympathy. It would crush him. “I lost a patient. And I lost against it.”

Her feet shuffle towards him, arms wrapped up against her middle to protect herself from the cold, and he feels selfish for keeping her out here. “What is it, Gilbert?” Anne asks, shaking her head lightly, voice soft and breath steaming in front of her confused face. 

“I’m sorry... I—I shouldn’t be here.” His voice is a mess, a string of broken apologies. He turns to leave, but before he can take a step, her hand grabs his—determined, insistent.

“I’m just trying to understand, Gilbert,” and there are unspoken words there, I’m just trying to understand you. “Help me understand.” 

He sighs, turns back to her, and sits on her stoop, the wetness from the rain seeping into his scrubs. 

“It. Death. The Universe. God. The Great Destroyer, as my father called it,” he mutters, his words bitter and raw. He doesn’t look up at her. He can’t. “Whatever you believe. I—” He stumbles, trying to get the words out. “I lost him, too.”

Anne doesn’t speak. She just watches him from the bottom of the stoop, and he can feel the weight of her gaze as if it’s peeling him open, seeing everything he’s been trying to bury for years. Finally, she starts to climb the steps slowly, and carefully, as if afraid she might break something.

“I was eleven when my father died,” he continues, voice rough. “He got sick. We moved away to Alberta for treatment, but it didn’t work. I didn’t come back to Avonlea until we buried him, and I never went back after that.”

Anne is quiet, taking in all this new information, but he can’t bring himself to look at her, instead, he stares off at the flies in the streetlight above them. She puts her hand on his again, it’s cold, and the metal of her ring is even cooler. If he were a better man, that would snap him out of it, remove her from him, leave, and never dare cross the line again, but he’s not. He’s not a better man. Rather, he grips her hand tight, unable to let go. She doesn’t seem to mind, as her thumb absent-mindedly rubs soft circles against him. 

“So, this is what you’re at war with,” She speaks, squeezing his hand. He finally looks down at her, crystal tears hanging on her lower lash. 

“What do you mean?” He asks, almost knowingly. 

“Everyone is fighting a war with something... someone… and this is yours, with your Great Destroyer.” It’s spoken like prose, beautiful, soul-crushing prose. “Gilbert, you are a wonderful doctor, surely you must know that, you care more than anyone I’ve ever met. Even the best doctors lose patients. Don’t think of it as losing. Caring is always winning.” 

The breath he takes is shallow and stings his lungs, he sees in her eyes that she understands him better than anyone. “What’s your war, Anne?”  

“I lost my parents too, though I never knew either of them— growing up as an orphan, fighting for my place in the world fighting to belong, wanting to be wanted… that’s my war.” He feels like she’s just shot him in the chest, and his ears are roaring, as her tears fall onto her face. 

“You are wanted, Anne,” He confesses, lifting his hand to brush the tear that skates down to her chin. He’s searching her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her face for something but he’s not quite sure what. She doesn’t flinch, instead, she leans closer to him, filling the gap she had left earlier. Her warmth permeates through him, and suddenly it feels like it's July. All he would have to do is press his lips to hers, and maybe then he’d find what he was searching for, and he almost does until her hand cups his once more over her face, and he's confronted with that ring again. This time it sobers him up, and he clears his throat. “You have Roy and Phil… and so many people who love you, I’m sure.” 

Anne’s lips part, and her eyes blink rapidly like she’s just woken up from a dream. She hugs him awkwardly, patting him on the back like a child, but lingers long enough that he smells that floral perfume in the crook of her neck. 

When she pulls back, her face betrays her guilt, and her cheeks are stained with tears. She stands up fast, backing up towards the door. “I should go, I have class in the morning.” 

He looks up at her, and he knows he must look wrecked by the way she can’t meet his gaze.

“Yeah, good,” he breathes, words thick and heavy on his tongue and standing up slowly. “Being educated is… good.” Gilbert cringes at himself then, scuffing his sneakers on the steps in front of him and letting himself feel the sting of his foot on hard concrete. 

This was a mistake. Coming here. He should have left well enough alone.

Anne turns back to the door, opening it without a sound to not wake Roy, shutting the door slowly so her head peaks out. “I’ll see you at work.” 

Gilbert knows what she really means. Let’s not hang out right now. He knows exactly what she means. He doesn’t argue, doesn’t try to change her mind. He doesn’t want to, she’s right. He’s not sure what to say anymore. 

“Goodnight, Anne.” He says simply, turning away from her and setting down on his path on the empty street before he can hear her reply. 

“Goodnight, Gilbert”

Sweet Diary,

Friends are allowed to comfort each other during times of strife and pain, right? How can it be wrong to hold someone who needs to be held? How can you feel so guilty about lending an ear to someone who needs to be heard?

Why do I feel so guilty? Don’t scold me, I know why.

It's because of the way his hand felt in mine, I think. The way his fingers tightened ever so slightly like he was afraid I might slip away. And I didn’t pull back. I should have. Shouldn’t I have?

I didn’t. Instead, I let it happen. I let him lean into me, let the quiet between us stir. I didn’t pull away when he reached for me, even though I knew it was wrong, to be on the stoop of the home I share with Roy, while he sleeps soundly. 

Is it wrong to want to be the one who comforts him? To be the one who offers some kind of solace when he needs it most? I didn’t think so at the time. I thought I was doing what any friend would do. Wasn’t I?

I love Roy. I know I do. I have to, right? I have to. We’ve been together long enough. We’ve been through enough. He’s... he’s my person. I’m sure of it. Or, at least, I should be.

But tonight—tonight, I felt something shift in me. A little tug, like a thread being pulled taut. Not for Roy, but for Gilbert. I don't know what it was. I don't even know if I should be writing this down, because then I’d be giving it air. Giving it life.

I need to snuff it out.

Maybe it’s because he was so... vulnerable? I mean, of course, I felt for him—he was grieving, and I was there. I was just doing what anyone would do, right? He would have gone to anyone else if he could have, I’m sure. You don’t leave someone alone when they’re in pain, especially someone like Gilbert, who always seems so... put together. But then, when I held his hand, when I felt his fingers grip mine, something else shifted.

Maybe it was because he looked at me like I was the only thing that could keep him from falling apart. Roy’s never looked at me like that before.

I told him that my war was feeling wanted, and I know Roy wants me, but Gilbert looked like he needed me then. Is that what I’ve been hoping for? To be needed? 

I should have pulled away. I should’ve stepped back, told him that we were just friends. But I didn’t. I stayed. I stayed. What was that?

I love Roy, I do. I have to. He’s the one who’s been there, he’s the one I’ve built my life with. But this guilt weighs on me, pulls me down like birds on a wire. I’ve betrayed something– something beyond Roy. Somehow, it feels like I’ve crossed my own lines that I didn’t even know I’d drawn.

I keep thinking about that moment—how I didn’t pull away, how I didn’t stop it when I should have. And I wonder if maybe that’s the problem. That feeling, that connection, however fleeting it was, shouldn’t have happened. It doesn’t belong. It’s not... it’s not right, is it?

I just wish I could silence this unease, this gnawing discomfort. But it’s still there, lingering.

I’ll wake up with Roy tomorrow. I’ll smile like I always do. I’ll hold his hand, kiss his cold fingers, and tell him I love him. I’ll tell myself it’s true. Because it has to be true. It has to be.

It has to be. 

December rolls in unceremoniously, besides the occasional holiday-related injury or illness– think broken bones from falling off of Christmas decorations, slipping on ice, and the classic Thanksgiving deep-fried Turkey-related burns. 

Even more so unceremonious was the week without Anne. 

No texting. No random calls about bizarre footnotes in her lit books. No late-night diner runs. No shifts while she celebrated Thanksgiving with the Gardner clan. It was for the best, however, as Gilbert needed space, he needed to fall out of her orbit and he needed to acquaint himself with a life without her. He’d gone this far, and he could go further. It was like finding out you’re allergic to something you never tried before, you can go back. You can go back.

All of his progress and carefully crafted affirmations are thrown out the window when he sees her waving at him from the front desk. 

How someone could look beautiful under the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital was beyond him, but there she was, in a large white wool fisherman’s sweater that should’ve drowned her but instead highlighted the copper-red of her hair and the brightness of her smile. He turned around instinctively, sure she must be waving at someone else but saw no one. 

She’s laughing at him then, waving her arms to motion him over. He goes over hesitantly, his sneakers practically gliding on the linoleum floors. 

“Gilbert, come on, I’m not getting any younger,” Anne grins, scooting on her wheely chair around excitedly. 

Her smile was infectious. He felt his own mouth tug upward in a disbelieving grin. “What’s going on?” 

She turns the wheels around, facing the wall behind her, only her fingers tapping the armrests are visible. She keeps that position for a few more suspenseful seconds, before whirling herself back around so quickly that she bumps into her desk. 

“My thesis advisor wants me to perform a piece of poetry of my choosing at the Lit Department’s annual end-of-year recitation,” she exclaims with a wave of her hands, mouth in a tight smile as if to keep herself from shouting any further. She’s practically bouncing in her seat as she continues. “I did it once in undergrad, but this is—it’s an incredible opportunity! So many alumni come, and who knows, maybe they’ll wanna read my writing this time.” 

“Anne, that’s–” 

“–I know, I know it’s small–” 

“No, no.” He cuts her off, voice earnest. “I think it’s amazing, truly, don’t sell yourself short.” 

The unsaid you’re amazing felt painfully obvious, but he couldn’t help it. He saw it reflected in the faint flush creeping up her cheeks and the way she looked down, lashes shielding her expression. Gilbert cleared his throat, trying to regain some semblance of composure.

”You’re right, it’s… pretty fucking cool for me.” She concedes, almost brushing off her self-consciousness like an old, sweltering coat. Gilbert can still see the insecurity flash in her eyes that keep steady on her fingers and he understands it but doesn’t. Its unnerving, realizing the person in front of you probably understands your feelings of inadequacy better than anyone else, and he’s relieved and devastated that she gets it.

“So, when is it?” He asks, feigning nonchalance. 

Anne peeked back up at him, her smile softening with relief. “It’s in a couple of weeks, on the 19th… do you think you can make it?” 

The shock of her invite must be plastered on his face, but he maintains the course. “Of course, that’s actually one of my only days off these next few weeks, I’ll be there.” 

He wants to say he wouldn’t miss it for the world, because he wouldn’t, but he knows that he shouldn’t, especially when the contours of her face start to shift into something more serious.

“Look, about the other day…” Anne starts, droning off like she doesn’t know what to say, fiddling with her fingers. 

“Anne, really, you don’t have t–” 

“There you are, Gilbert!” 

Phil’s voice rang out, cutting through the thick tension between Anne and him. Gilbert turned to see her striding down the corridor, her expression one of triumph.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you—well, I should’ve known you’d be here,” Phil teased with a grin that immediately set him on edge.

“Hey Phil,” Gilbert sighs, wishing he could will her away and get Anne back on her train of thought. But Phil must not be deterred, with a mischievous expression that betrayed her intentions and he knows what she’s going to ask before she even opens her mouth. 

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you all day, tell me everything about your date with Christine last week, spare no details.” 

He can’t help but look at Anne, with her expression frozen, and the tugging at her fingers getting more incessant. 

“It was fine, nothing to report, really.” He says flatly, hoping to shut it down.

Phil, predictably, bulldozed on. “Oh, come on, I heard you two really hit it off– you know, I was really surprised when you asked me for her number, I mean I’ve been badgering you about it for months.” 

It had been a particularly low night after he’d overstepped at Anne’s apartment, crossing so many invisible boundaries, that he’d spent hours replaying the scene in his head, wincing at every misstep. Gilbert knew he had to do something—nip whatever feelings he had in the bud before they spiraled further out of his control. So, when Phil floated her persistent offer to introduce him to her friend Christine, he accepted without hesitation, desperate for a distraction. Christine was beautiful, kind, funny, and unapologetically flirtatious, with a confidence that demanded attention and made him feel momentarily lighter. She was easy to be with, no battles, no frustration. And for a while—while they got to know each other over drinks that became dinner, that became something more—Gilbert let himself forget.

But forgetting wasn’t so simple. Even in Christine’s company, with her playful teasing and disarming smiles, he couldn’t stop Anne from ghosting through the corners of his mind. Her laugh echoed in Christine’s, though it didn’t quite match. Her face flickered, unbidden, when Christine rested her head on his chest later that night, his thoughts stubbornly held on to Anne, no matter how determined he was to move on. 

Gilbert was sure that over time, he would forget. He would forget the electric feeling he had when Anne grabbed his hand when he stroked the tears from her cheeks. 

“It was fine, Phil.” He repeated shortly. 

Phil blinked at him confusedly, giving him a sharp glance before turning her attention towards Anne. “You’ve met Christine a few times, Anne, what do you think– wouldn’t she and Gilbert make a cute pair?” 

Gilbert cringed, totally unaware that Christine and Anne knew each other, even if only in passing. Anne’s face was unreadable for a moment, her expression carefully neutral. Then she forced a polite smile.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said lightly, though her fingers kept twisting that thread. “But Christine seems lovely, of course.”

“Exactly!” Phil crowed, triumphant, slamming her hands on the desk. “Gilbert, you really should call her again. Maybe you can bring her to Anne and Roy’s wed—”

Gilbert's face felt hot, and his stomach tightened into knots. “I’ve got patients to see,” he cut in abruptly, his voice harsher than he meant it to be.

He took off without another word, striding down the corridor with a quick, deliberate pace, his pulse pounding in time with each step. He didn’t dare look back, not at Phil’s amused smirk, and especially not at Anne’s expression—whatever it might have been. All he knew was that he had to keep moving as if he could outrun the weight of Phil’s tirade.

Christine. Christine! Really? Honestly? 

I can’t be mad, she’s gorgeous with her sleek black hair and piercing dark eyes that are practically violet. Talented too, with her beautiful cello and witty banter. But she can be so… frankly, Diary— she’s rude. 

The first time she and I met, Phil and I were sophomores. I still felt so new to the city, and she was the first true New Yorker I ever met, besides Phil. I was mesmerized by her, the air that she just held, that confidence that I wish I had. I wanted to bug her with every little detail, ask her every little question I could think of, and she just nodded carefully until Phil left the room for a brief moment. 

Once it was just the two of us, she stopped me and asked “Do you always talk this much?” 

I’ve never told Phil that. I don’t know if I ever could. I don’t know why. Maybe a sense of camaraderie I can’t help but feel with any and all women, even if the feeling isn’t mutual. She was the one who was rude to me, yet I wanted to protect her friendship with Phil, protect her reputation as someone sickeningly cordial. 

I genuinely think she’d chew Gilbert up for breakfast and spit him out, all without a burp, since she’s so classy. 

But I could never, ever tell him these things either. I want him to find love. I want to support him in that journey. 

Even if it is with Christine. 

Phil invites Gilbert to an impromptu holiday party after he had just worked a double, and usually, he wouldn’t go, but Anne begs him to join her ‘since Phil will be so busy with hosting duties and I hardly know anyone else.’ 

So, of course– for her– he goes. 

His body aches as he hikes up the five flights of stairs to Phil’s, feeling betrayed by the broken elevators that left him in this state. He has half a mind to walk back down and head home, but then he sees Anne at the top of the steps, in a ridiculous elf costume. She still looks adorable though, with the green and red covering her, cone hat and all. He knows he’s still far gone then, snorting at the jingle bells on her shows, yet still utterly, impossibly endeared by her. 

“Shit, I didn’t know this was a costume party,” Gilbert groans in jest leaning against the door next to Anne. She looks flush with embarrassment, shoving her nose away from him as if that hid her whole get-up. 

Anne slaps him on the shoulder, still avoiding eye contact. “I thought everyone would be in the holiday spirit, but no, I stick out like a sore thumb.” 

“Is that why you’re out here?” He asks gesturing around the empty stairwell. 

“No, I mean… yes,” Anne admits, sighing with her head in her hands. “I can’t show my face ever again.” 

He softly takes the cone hat from on top of her head, asking a silent question as she finally looks up at him. She nods, and he places the hat on top of his messy mop of hair. 

“Here, now we’re both in the holiday spirit.” 

She takes his outstretched, folded arm, fitting hers in the gap. He plays at a light smirk, reveling in the one her own lips tug into back at him. They brave the swaths of people in front of Phil’s door. Pushing through the crowd and matching eyes with a scantily clad Phil, he realizes then that he’s actually never seen her out of scrubs. 

Phil is pouring shots at the countertop, staring back at the pair of them until the vodka is spilling over the glasses. They sneak past more partygoers, and the smell of spilled liquor, heavy perfume, and sugar cookies permeates the room. 

“Oh, honey,” Phil says, and Anne braces her hands on the countertop, preparing for the worst. “You look… amazing!” 

Anne's sigh of relief turns into a loud laugh as Phil shoves a shot into her hand. “Do you need help with the baking?” 

Phil looks at her wildly confused, tilting her head and downing the shot as quickly as possible, not a wince in sight as she pushes Anne’s shot to her lips. “What baking?” 

Anne takes her shot, cringing at the taste, making an exaggerated blegh before putting a shot glass in Gilbert’s hands. He takes it hesitantly, he rationalizes the sting in his body as the vodka trickling down his throat, while he ignores it coming from the way her fingers brushed against his and lingered there.

”I thought you were baking cookies,” Anne questions loudly over the music. “At least I thought you were.” 

“No,” Phil laughs, drunkenly putting her hands all over Anne’s shoulders. “I just stuck a thing of cookie dough in the oven and let it go, you know, like real estate agents do.” 

Anne snorts, “I don’t think I know that technique.” 

“Maybe that’s why you aren’t selling houses then, don’t you agree, Dr. Blythe?” 

Gilbert nods playfully, grabbing another shot for himself and Anne. “Yeah, I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously, Miss Shirley-Cuthbert.” 

Anne looks back impishly, taking the glass he poured for her to her mouth, about to speak when Phil pulls them both onto her makeshift dance floor,  jumping up and down to the loud beat that will surely be getting her complaints throughout her complex, she doesn’t seem to care, rather, taking the hands of the nearest guy and waving them around wildly. 

The music is pounding, a mix of holiday classics and Phil’s favorite pop tracks that somehow shouldn’t work together but absolutely do. Gilbert feels a little out of place amongst everyone dancing. It’s not his usual scene, but he can’t help but be infected by the sway of Anne’s gravitational pull, and her carefree, infectious laughter coursing through him. Phil, now thoroughly in her element, drops the guy’s hands and grabs Anne’s, spinning her into the chaos. Anne stumbles at first, elf shoes jingling with every movement, but soon she’s moving to the beat with an enthusiasm that makes Gilbert want to be there next to her. 

Phil waves Gilbert over with an exaggerated beckon. “Gilbert! Stop lurking, get over here, and dance!”

He hesitates for half a second, but then Anne catches his eye and tilts her head toward him, her smile an invitation he can’t seem to refuse. He downs his shot of liquid courage, swaying awkwardly towards Anne and Phil. The minute he’s within reach, Anne takes his hand, pulling him closer. Her grip is firm, steady, grounding, and floating all at once. 

Phil sashays gracefully away again, leaving them to tend to another friend's request for more liquor. 

Gilbert has never been one to feel the beat, but he copies Anne’s movements and lets himself go, breathing in her limitless courage and giving himself the freedom to be like her. 

“I never pegged you as a dancer,” Anne shouts over the music, muffled in his ears. 

“What can I say?” he laughs, pulling her in for a twirl that’s completely misplaced from the song that’s playing on the loudspeakers. “I often fall into peer pressure.” 

Their movements are awkward at first, a little stilted, but it doesn’t matter. She laughs when he missteps, and he grins when accepts his twirl, but ends up bumping into him instead. Somehow, amidst the crowd and the beat of the music, the space between them feels smaller. Not a stifling small, but the kind that feels wholly, and completely theirs. Her grin softens, low giggles sputtering out and he can tell she’s thoroughly tipsy. He realizes then that their hands are still loosely locked from the twirl, and she doesn’t pull away, even when he slightly tugs at her fingers. The flashing lights flit across her face just enough that he can still see a dusting of pink across her face. They don’t move besides the light swaying of their hips, and he just knows. 

There’s no sudden epiphany, a lightning strike that shocks him to his very core. He just knows. He knows that loving her comes as naturally as his lungs knowing how to fill with air. 

Later, when he walks her all the way down to her apartment, they float down the streets, she’s drunk on shots and vodka crans, but he’s drunk on something else entirely. 

When she sloppily turns to him, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and staring intentively at him, his heart quickens, leaning back so as to not venture into dangerous territory. 

“Hm, I’m not so sure this cone-head look is a good one for you,” she ponders with one hand on her chin, the other reaching up slowly to tug at one black curl, catching the cone hat on its way down. 

“Careful Anne,” he starts, hand on his heart in fake offense. “That can hurt a guy's fragile ego.” 

Anne bursts out a laugh, unaware of her own drunken volume. “I think you’ll live.” 

They walk the rest of the way in a comfortable silence, besides the occasional outburst into song (he pretends he doesn’t notice it’s the song they danced to), and when they reach her door. She lingers at the stoop, brushing her fingers along the railing. 

Gilbert lets out a shaky exhale, drinking her in one last time before she disappears behind the door. 

“What?” She says, almost sounding sober. 

“You…look happy.” He says, and it’s true. She’s glowing with it. 

Her lips quirk up into a smile, waving him off faux-bashfully. “I’m happy you came.” 

Gilbert’s never been as honest as when he says, “I’m happy too.” 

She nods, throwing him a small salute before vanishing behind the door. 

As he walks home, tripping over his shoes and humming that song under the streetlights, he knows that he’ll have to talk to Christine and tell her that he can’t keep seeing her. He knows that he’ll be honest, even though he could be a massive hypocrite and cite his schedule as the reason, he knows he won’t. He’ll tell her that he’s hopelessly in love with someone who might, likely not, ever love him back. Maybe she won’t care, maybe she’ll call him an asshole and block his number.

But it doesn’t matter. What matters now, under the faint glow of the downtown lights behind him, is that he loves Anne.

Another night without Roy. I think he’s out with friends, or was it work? I don’t even remember. 

I fixed his tie and searched his eyes for love but couldn't find it, all I found was a comfortable understatement. I knew he was happy but I couldn't remember what happened to that passion he gave me under that gazebo in college. Where did it all go? 

Gilbert looked so happy the other night, and he had that look that I was searching everywhere for. Christine must have put it there.

I can’t get this song out of my head, Diary. You know the one. 

The theater was bustling with people, a low hum of voices echoed amongst the large, ornate room with a splattering of red velvet seats. 

Gilbert felt so out-of-place in what he considered his best suit, but as he looked across the crowd of finely dressed people, he suddenly felt shrunken against them, hopelessly self-conscious when any of them caught his wandering eye. As he tugged on his jacket, willing away the crinkles from it being folded away deep in his drawer, he found an empty seat close to the front. The seat was so close to the stage that the spotlights were blinding him. He wondered if Anne felt nervous when she did these things. If the spotlight felt as hot on her as it did for him, if it made her hands clammy and her outfit feel tight. Or would she glow? Would it look like she belonged on that stage? Would she captivate every person in that crowd as she captivated him by just showing up to work and talking, laughing, being Anne? 

He knew it was the latter, as Anne did nothing half-assed. 

The next hour went by slowly, as performer after performer flitted through the stage. Most of it was poetry readings; Shakespearean sonnets, Keats, Frost, and Dickenson. Some read excerpts from novels, some groups performed short plays and songs. It was beautiful, but it was beyond him. He felt lost amongst the crowd once more, sinking into his seat for good measure. He actually loved reading, even poetry when he was younger. His father was particularly fond of Whitman, leaving Gilbert his well-loved, worn-out copy of Leaves of Grass. But it had been so long since he touched it, his excuse was a lack of time and energy, how the medical field doesn’t leave much space for the arts, but in reality, the book always left him with an empty, hollow feeling. 

“That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown  

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.” 

The last undergrad finished, bowing her shy head to the audience and shuffling off stage awkwardly. 

The Emcee returned, checking his list and adjusting the microphone back to his height. “And now to finish us out, we have one of our lovely Master’s candidates, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert, reading ‘Pity me not because the light of day’ written by Edna St. Vincent Millay.”  

Anne was a vision when she walked through, wrapped up in a velvety green dress that clung to her body like it was made for her and her alone. The lights that shone down on her highlighted the matching pink hue of her lips and cheeks, contrasted against her milky skin. Her hair was swept up in an elegant fashion on top of her head, with rebellious curls pouring through.

She was beautiful, she was radiant. Not just physically, but every bit of her was lit from the inside and out, almost beaming light into the darkest corners in the back of the theater. 

Gilbert’s breath caught as he tried to compose himself, but the sight of her disarmed every carefully constructed defense. She was like nothing he had ever seen—not in books, not in dreams, not even in the quiet imaginings he let himself indulge in during his loneliest moments late at night. She was everything. Everything he wanted. Everything he could never have. And yet, she was right there, her laughter soft and bright as she greeted the room, her presence effortlessly commanding his attention like gravity itself.

He couldn’t look away. 

When she caught sight of him, she smiled even wider, the kind that reached her ears and sent shivers down his spine, little electric shockwaves that pinpricked him, and what was probably mere seconds felt like hours as everyone else in the room seemed to disappear from their sight. She forcibly removed her eyes from him, blinking rapidly, peaking around the room standing on her tiptoes, and scanning the crowd. He knew what she was doing. 

She was looking for Roy. 

He matched her gaze, turning around in his seat and searching every seat around him to no avail. Roy wasn’t there. When she came to the same conclusion, her disappointment was palpable, and she seemed to sink in her own thoughts. Her lips quivered quietly, and her hands gripped the fabric of her dress, rubbing up and down against the velvet as if to provide some fleeting comfort. Gilbert catches her eye once more, the tears lining her lashes causing him to ache for her. He nods at her encouragingly, a slight smile playing at the corner of his lips before he mouths: 

You can do this. 

Anne nods back at him, brows furrowed determinedly, facing the audience head-on, and starts. 

“Pity me not because the light of day

At close of day no longer walks the sky;

Pity me not for beauties passed away

From field and thicket as the year goes by” 

Her voice no longer quivers, and her hands move along with the slight rhythm of the poem, her voice sounding like honey among the acoustics of the room. 

“Pity me not the waning of the moon,

Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea…” 

She’s hesitant here, leaning against the words slowly, but not lazily. She looks back at Gilbert, biting her lower lip before beginning again. 

“Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,

And you no longer look with love on me.” 

Her gaze softened and he could feel the words shift as they left her lips, their meaning morphing into something uniquely hers, no longer those of the author. Was she thinking of Roy? That selfishly jealous side of his brain couldn’t help but wonder what sort of idiot you had to be to look at her with anything but love. 

“This have I known always: Love is no more

Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,”

The theater was a vacuum, and everything outside of Anne and her voice was forgotten. The words she spoke seemed to wrap themselves around Gilbert, pulling him closer, each line unraveling the knots he’d tied around his feelings for her. She lingered on each syllable, her voice carrying the weight of something more profound than poetry, something that reached into the quiet spaces between them and filled them with meaning. And though she faced the crowd, her eyes found him again.

“Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,

Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales”

Her voice dipped here, low, slow, and almost breaking. For a moment, Gilbert thought she might falter. But her grip on the mic steadied her, and she exhaled as if letting go of something heavy. The way her hands clenched the velvet of her dress earlier was no different from the way she held onto her words now: tightly, protectively, as though she were baring something precious yet vulnerable.

“Pity me that the heart is slow to learn,” 

She paused, and the silence was a palpable force. The audience was hung on every word she uttered and he was hung entirely on her. He knew, at that moment, that the poem wasn’t just a performance—it was a confession. A quiet, tentative admission of feelings she wasn’t ready to name.

“What the swift mind beholds at every turn.”

Any walls still erected between them crackled there and fell before them, the dust settling when she stepped back from the microphone, her eyes still locked on his for one more brief, agonizing second before she turned to the audience and bowed.

He was the first one out of their seat, erupting in applause and loud cheers, surprising himself with a fervor he doesn’t usually hold. For her though, how could he not? The rest of the audience followed suit, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of him, and for a short moment, he knew that it was her with the slow heart and swift mind, tearing down all of his preconceived notions that the head and the heart were always in sync. 

He understood it now. It wasn’t medically logical, it wasn’t something that could be explained away with science, it was mystical, raw, and fantastically real. 

Anne shuffled into the audience, moving towards him, but she was stopped at the top of the stairs, bombarded by classmates, professors, and other audience members, all offering up their compliments, praise, and wonder. He watched and waited attentively as she thanked each and every one, peeking out behind heads to get a glimpse of Gilbert after each conversation ended.  

Gilbert wanted her to have this moment for herself, she deserved this moment, so he stepped back, catching her attention briefly and pointing towards to door, mouthing at her to meet him outside when she was done. She nodded with a grin, sending him a thumbs up before being pulled into yet another group of admirers. 

Thirty minutes had passed with Gilbert pacing along the outside of the theater, back and forth, and back and forth. It was the only thing keeping him sane in the cold. 

When Anne emerges from the theater, running up to Gilbert despite being in heels, she looks flushed and much more free, seemingly washed over in a sense of relief. 

“Hi,” she breathes with a light chuckle, brushing one of those stray curls behind her ear. 

“Hi,” he starts, wishing he had all of the right words to say. “Anne, you were… that was incredible.” 

“Really? That ol’ thing?” She laughs, letting it bubble up out of her throat and sputter out of her mouth. She’s giddy, practically drunk, and she’s so happy. 

“Really, it wasn’t any old thing, Anne, it was…” Gilbert drifts, finding the words hanging on his tongue. “It was mesmerizing.” 

His lack of other words shrinks him against her, yet in reality, he’s still towering over her, looking down at the spattering of red flush across her face. Is she cold, or is she feeling what he’s feeling? 

He wants to take the plunge, but he knows he can’t. 

He can’t. 

Anne shuffles her feet, gripping her velvet dress like she did earlier, then lifting her eyes to his once more. There’s something there, the feelings that have haunted him dissolved in her tepid eyes were swimming and swirling around her wide pupils and he knows then that he can dive in. He has to now. 

He can.

“Anne,” he starts, wanting to reach for her hand to anchor himself to her, but knowing that he needs to maintain the space in between them, a sacred, holy space, even though his words are tearing it down with each syllable. “I’m not telling you this because I expect anything from you, I just need you to know– I love you, and… I know you’re with Roy, and I don’t want to ruin that for you, but I truly love you, I do.” 

She stays perfectly still, looking down at their shoes on the ground and then back up at him. Her chest rises and falls with deep breaths, and she’s tugging harder at the dress. He wants to regret the blabbering that just occurred, wants to turn around and walk home in the cold. 

“Gilbert I-” Anne says, choking on her words deep in the back of her throat. 

“I know you can’t, this was a mistake, I’m so sorry for doing this,” and he’s back on the balls of his feet, turning around and set on marching down the street towards his apartment, when she grabs his hand, pulling him back. 

They crash into each other like waves at low tide, her hands tangling into the curls at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer with the same desperation he’s held for months. Her lips slot against his perfectly, a low sigh escaping her. His hands turn feverish, skating up and down her arms as though trying to memorize the texture of her skin. One hand dips to her waist, the other settling firmly at the small of her back, linking her to him. His grip tightens, fingers pressing into her as though afraid she might slip out of sight. It doesn’t feel like a first kiss, yet something they’ve done millions of times before. It’s not tentative or careful; it’s a tidal wave crashing over both of them, pulling them under and refusing to let them come up for air. 

There’s nothing but them at that moment, everything else fades into blotted color and drowned-out sound. There’s only her—only the softness of her lips, the way her body curves into his, the quiet sounds she makes that drive him absolutely mad.

When they finally pull apart, breathless and dazed, her hands slip from his hair to cradle his face. He mirrors her then, thumb brushing against her cheek, tender and slow.

"Anne," he murmurs, name spilling out of him like a prayer. 

When he opens his eyes, he sees it. Her tears, her guilt, her anger. 

“I can’t, you know I can’t,” Anne whispers as if Roy can hear them from wherever he his. 

Gilbert slowly takes his hands off of her, the cold stinging his palms, turning away from her and staring into the theater windows. 

“Why did you kiss me then?” Betrayal seeping out of his voice, sharp, hard, and completely unlike him. He doesn’t even recognize himself in the window’s reflection. “Why did we dance, why did you look at me like that in there, everything.” 

Anne scoffs in defense, crossing her arms against her chest, and he wishes he could put his coat around her goose-bumped skin. “What about you telling me that we were just friends, what about that, huh? Was it all a lie?”

Her tears begin to fall, splattering against the pavement like rain. Again, he wants to comfort her, but he’s angry, he didn’t intend to be angry. 

“I never thought I’d feel like this when I said that!” He shouts, causing a few people down the street to turn around and stare at the pair of them. He’s quiet until they turn their attention away from them once more. “I was honest– you are my friend, I just… I started to feel more, and like I said, I never expected anything from you but then you kissed me.” 

“You didn’t have to say anything,” she hisses turning around with her head in her hands before facing him with vitriol. “And what about Christine?” 

“Christine and I-” 

“You have to tell her, and I have to tell Roy.” Anne insists, hair no longer prim and proper as she leans up against the theater window in defeat. 

Gilbert stares back at her as she taps her foot on the concrete, seemingly running through her own internal monologue. 

“You’re still gonna marry him.” He asks, but it comes out more like a statement than anything else. 

She nods, silent in thought. “I am,” she says, but there’s something in her tone—uncertainty, or maybe regret—that twists the knife already lodged in his chest.

Gilbert stares at her, his heart breaking open with every word, every breath. “I hope you’re happy with him,” he says, his voice cracking as he tries to swallow the pain.

Anne flinches, as though his words are a physical blow. “Gilbert, I—” She stops, closing her eyes as if searching for strength. For a moment, she just stands there, staring at him as if she’s trying to memorize every detail, every curve and angle of his face. Then, without another word, she turns and walks away, the click of her heels echoing against the empty street.

Gilbert watches her leave for what feels like hours, chest hollow and aching, but there’s a strange sense of clarity that washes over him. He loves her, more than he’s ever loved anyone, but love isn’t always enough. 

Not like this.

Not when it’s this complicated.

As the night stretches on, he finally turns away, hands buried deep in his coat pockets. The theater lights fade into the background as he walks home, each step feeling heavier than the last.

Gilbert said

Gilbert

For the first time, being in Avonlea brings me no comfort. 

The days have dragged on endlessly, a ticking clock of my ugly despair. It does feel ugly, Diary. The way my heart twists and turns and is so uncertain of itself. My life was always full of uncertainties, but my heart was not one of them. I always knew where it lay, what it loved, what it needed. But now… my heart is a stranger to me, no more a stranger to me than he was on the day we met. 

I want to know her again, my dear heart, just like I got to know him. She’s a mystery to me like he is now. 

Maybe we are strangers again, but in my dreams, he is anything but. 

I’m running through a maze, crashing into tall ivy-covered walls, crying uncontrollably. I don’t know where I am, but I pursue a far-off light that seems to get further with every step I take. I am defeated. I lost. Nothing else matters. 

And then he is there, standing before me, grabbing my hand and lifting me into the air until we’re both falling in the light. He kisses me, like he did that night, all passion and roaming hands, no caution, none of that careful attention he always holds for me. He tells me he loves me, so honest, candid, and I open my mouth to respond, it's bubbling from the pit of my stomach, up to my throat, and then… 

And then I wake up. 

I’ve had the dream every night. Sometimes it varies, sometimes we dance like that night at Phil’s party, sometimes we walk down empty streets, and sometimes there’s just nothing, but I know he’s there. How I wish he was here. 

I want to talk to him. I want him to meet Marilla. I want to tell him what I’ve discovered. 

Diary, I’ve discovered gold mines with no one to share them with. 

I was walking down to the cemetery last night to say hello to Matthew, as he so loved Christmas Eve. The snow was blinding, but it blanketed the ground softly, making everything silent all around. It reminded me of his and I’s first drive together, when I aptly named the Avenue the White Way of Delight on account of its bounty of white blossoms. Matthew was the first one who truly loved my stories, my silly names, my impracticality. He was the first one who ever loved me. 

I told him everything. 

Unburdened myself in the silence for no one but Matthew to hear. 

He responded to me by bringing more and more snow as if to tell me to keep talking and not stop. So I did. I told him of diner fries, elf costumes, and confessions of love. I told him about poems and guilt. Anger and shame. 

Matthew covered me in hugs of snow and brushed my tears with strong wind. It was cold, yet my body was burning with grief. 

It was like Matthew really was speaking to me then, because the wind shifted and rid a few headstones of their snowy coverings. I thought, how awful for these poor souls that they’re alone on Christmas, and I knew Matthew would want me to share his flowers with his neighbors. 

And so I did, dropping a couple of mayflowers in front of each stone. 

It was his mother’s stone that caught my eye first. 

Blythe.

The name was carved so clearly, despite being overgrown with moss and ivy. I leaned down, desperately swiping the snow to be sure, and my heart nearly stopped when I saw it. 

It really was her. 

‘Died on October 23rd, 1996’

I suddenly felt like I was invading something private. Something holy that I shouldn’t have touched, especially when I saw the headstone next to hers, his father, surely. 

He was their only son. I cried for them, their lives that were cut too short, I cried for Gil him too, for my own parents, for two orphans that only ever needed love. Life was unfair, how can we all grow away from its mocking cruelty, dipping away like a plant growing only towards the sun? 

I dropped the flowers and ran back to Green Gables until my lungs burned. Marilla heard my coughing on the porch and practically launched herself on me, pulling me inside. 

As I sat there, directly in front of the fireplace with her brewed tea and a blanket wrapped around me, I felt like a child again. 

Marilla’s line of questioning did not help that feeling. It reminded me of nights when Diana, Ruby, and I would sneak out of the house to a party the boys were throwing down at the ruins. 

It took a lot of pressing, but I finally asked her the question on my mind. 

“Marilla, did you know the Blythes?” 

She seemed shocked then, taking a long sip of her tea. I couldn’t help but notice the wrinkles around her eyes, and how with every year of age, she’s sweetened more– she’s beautiful, that mother of mine. 

She told me she knew the Blythes well, had grown up with John, knew his parents, and to my surprise, had even gone on a few dates with him in high school. 

I gave her this look and she laughed, the kind that is so rare for her. She said, “Is it so hard to believe? I could be quite the heartbreaker.” 

I told her that no, it wasn’t hard to believe, and I asked her why it didn't work out. 

She paused again, taking another long sip and staring off into the fire. 

“John was handsome to be sure, but he was passionate, and I was stubborn as a mule. We fought all of the time and I just couldn’t take it anymore. He needed someone that could calm him down, someone that could weather the storm. That just wasn’t me.” 

I was frozen, wrapped up in some sort of disappointment I couldn’t quite name. I asked her if she felt like that was Roy for me, and she frowned. 

“Anne, I don’t regret ending things with John because if I didn’t, I would have never had you. What I do regret is not being true to myself. I truly did love him.” 

There was a sadness in her eyes I hadn’t seen since Matthew died, and I hugged her so tight I thought I might break her. She then whispered as if we weren’t the only two in the house. 

“If you feel like you aren’t being true to yourself, then be brave. Fight for yourself.” 

Marilla left me with a soft kiss on the forehead, a quick wish of love, and a Merry Christmas. 

Diary, I had that dream again. 

This time when my mouth opened, I told Gilbert I loved him. 

I loved him in my dreams and I loved him when I woke up. I loved him when I walked out to the cold sea this morning, imagining the water reaching my waist. It would freeze me to the bone but I loved him so much I might as well wade in fire. I love him now as I write this. I’ll love him tomorrow, the day after, and every day beyond, this I am certain of. As Millay wrote; pity me that the heart is slow to learn, what the swift mind beholds at every turn. 

I bought the first ticket back to New York. I have to speak to Roy, and then tell Gilbert that I was wrong. 

I love him.

Gilbert throws himself into work after Anne left that night. 

The sting of her loss is ever-present and unrelenting, but Gilbert has learned to dull it. The more shifts he picks up, the less he sleeps, the more he works himself to the point of oblivion, the easier it gets. In the haze of her loss, there’s a strange clarity—a sense of purpose, however mechanical.

Patients, eat, sleep. Patients, eat, sleep. Rinse and repeat. It’s a cycle that keeps him upright, keeps him functioning, and keeps him from feeling too much.

Still, her presence lingers in the quiet moments he can’t fill with this cycle. Passing the registration desk is the worst of it. The other clerk fulfilling her shifts—a middle-aged man with a gruff voice and a perpetual frown—couldn’t be more different from her. Gilbert often catches himself pausing, looking for her out of habit, only to find the man staring back at him. Gilbert forces a nod, an awkward half-smile, and moves on, pushing back the memory of her. 

It’s New Year's Eve, the start of his first full day off in almost two weeks. The streets are crowded with people laughing, kissing under streetlights, and boisterous mischief. The city outside the hospital washes over him like the snow that gently falls, and despite the chill, he feels alight with fire, pinpricks on his sore skin, sweat beading on his forehead, and a stabbing pain in his middle. 

He tells himself it’s nothing. Maybe something he ate. Maybe just stress catching up to him. His vision swims, and the city lights blur into a kaleidoscope, the kind you played with as a kid. He stumbles off the sidewalk, bumping into a parked car, barely registering the curse shouted after him by a passerby. He mumbles an apology and keeps moving, his feet carrying him on instinct alone.

By the time he stumbles up the steps to his apartment, finds his floor number in the elevator despite the lack of good vision, and staggers into his apartment, his strength is gone. Gilbert drops his keys onto the ground, letting the sound of them clanking on the hardwood floor reverberate through his legs. He falls to his knees then, slipping his body onto the floor until he’s lying down, trying to get some semblance of relief from the fever heat taking hold of him. 

He knows what this is. He’s done his differential diagnosis. But he can’t get up. The pain seeps into every corner of his body as his mind drifts in and out of focus, the edges of his thoughts blurring like a sepia-toned photo. He wonders, briefly, if this is what dying feels like—this complete surrender to something he cannot fight. 

Gilbert fades in and out, only opening his eyes when he hears the warm comfort of what he thinks is her voice. 

It starts quiet then, distant and soft, the voice changing tones and pitches like a scene from a movie, before growing louder. Her name rises to his lips unbidden, a broken plea that escapes as a hoarse croak. "Anne…"

In his fevered state, he’s sure it’s a trick of his mind, some cruel hallucination conjured by his longing. But the sound of her voice doesn’t waver. 

He must be on a boat, he thinks, as he’s shaking and shaking, ebbing and flowing. The voice presses on. 

“Gilbert,” it pleads, and he shakes more in tandem. “Stay awake, please don’t fall asleep, I’m calling 911, okay? Stay with me.” 

“You sound like Anne,” he groans still tossing and turning. 

“I am Anne, it’s me, it’s Anne,” the voice cries, and he thinks he smells her perfume. 

The light of the apartment dissipates once more and he’s out. Sinking and sinking and sinking into the deep, until he hears her voice calling again. 

“No,” he grumbles roughly, “you’re not... Anne. Anne hates me” 

Sobs fill the room, echoing through what feels like glass in his ears. 

He’s cradled in warmth then, rocking slowly, unlike the violent shakes from before. It’s a good kind of warmth, unlike the heat that permeates every inch of him. No, this warmth is spring-incarnate, lilac and soap-scented, a soft, tender touch under his chin. He feels so wrapped up in it, he knows he can go to sleep now, that whoever is here will keep him safe. It’s so light, quiet, and reverential, that he can hardly hear it when the voice says. 

I love you. 

Anne usually hates the sounds of ambulance sirens, always electing to cover her ears as they pass, but now, they feel like a desperate lifeline. 

Gilbert lays in front of her on the gurney, writhing with every touch from the EMT assessing him. She wipes away stray tears from his eyes and sweat from his brow, trying not to cry with each mumble and whisper he utters.

He mostly begs for her, pulling at her fingers and asking where she is. Anne tells him it’s her, that she’s right here, but nothing seems to pull him out of it. Sometimes it’s straight-nonsense, talking of lilacs and Alberta, Whitman, and waiting. Other times he’s angry, asking Anne why she walked away, why she kissed him, and if she hated him. The hospital is only a few blocks away but the traffic makes it feel like they’re sitting there for hours, it’s unbearable to see him this way. She just wants to crack a joke, for him to look up at her with those roguish hazel eyes that he has just for her, but rather, his eyes are as cloudy as his judgment. 

Despite it all, she listens, holds his hand tightly, and prays that he doesn’t fall asleep for real this time. 

There’s a nagging voice in her head that tells her she has to call Christine. Anne had forgotten in her realization that they must still be together. That surely, there’s another woman who will want to be by his side. Deserves to be by his side. But regardless of that rational thought, or the goodness in her heart that cries out, the bitter taste on the tongue wins, and she can’t bring herself to make the call. 

“Okay, we’re about to pull in,” the EMT starts, pulling her away from her thoughts. “I just want to warn you, there’s going to be a lot of people waiting for him since we’re probably dealing with a rupture, it makes things more complicated.”

The EMTs had told her that because of his lower abdominal swelling, the fever, and the pain, his appendix had likely burst. She traces the scar of her own appendectomy, a reminder of being fourteen and having Matthew spoil her rotten. 

Anne nods, fortifying herself. He was right, as once the double doors of the ambulance opened, there was a whole team of people waiting for them there, some faces familiar, others not. 

“Phil!” Anne cried, running out of the doors and launching herself into her friend. “Please, you have to help him.” 

Phil wrapped her arms around Anne quickly, before pushing her shoulders back at arm's length, “Anne, I had no idea it was you two, wh- what were you two doing together? I thought you were in Avonlea.”

The look she gave Phil must have betrayed everything she’d been trying to hold back, a raw, unspoken confession that screamed louder than any words ever could. Her teeth pressed into her bottom lip with such force that she tasted blood, but she didn’t stop—it was the only way to keep herself from falling apart entirely. The usually bouncy, vivacious brunette stood there gobsmacked, frozen in a sudden realization that was actualized in time with Anne's shallow, panicked breaths. 

“I’m going to take care of him.”  She says, and then they were all gone, vanishing down the corridor, leaving her in the dust. 

Gilbert wakes to a pounding headache, an IV in the crook of his arm, an ache in his side, and a tuft of red hair pooled on the side of the bed, soft breaths moving the tuft up and down steadily. 

Pieces start to click in his brain, the hospital bed, the fluids hanging above him, the thick, white bandage poking out from under his gown. Bit by bit, he starts to unravel his night, all of the symptoms that led up to him passing out on his floor, pathetically imagining Anne there with him. 

Anne.

The thought of her wakes him up more, poking him out from under his anesthetic-induced stupor. 

It was Anne’s hair that was spread across his blanket, her arms that poked out at the bottom of his feet. Her soft snores that filled the room. He becomes so aware of her then, gently sitting up to not wake her with his fumbling. 

It burns to sit up, and he silently winces. He leans back against the bed, accepting defeat. Just as he accepted defeat with her. She was probably only there by his side because she felt guilty. That, or he was still dreaming, conjuring her up from the depths of his desire. He wants to reach out and touch her, wake her, and tell her that he still feels what he felt, but he remains still. Frozen in his fear of breaking this moment like a curse. If she wakes, he won’t have this anymore. This feeling, this forbidden knowledge that he still loves her even now. Even knowing that once she wakes, she’ll go back to Roy, and this moment will be over. 

When Phil walks in, he brings his index finger to his mouth, wary that Phil’s usual booming voice will wake the sleeping enigma next to him.

The nurse instead tiptoes carefully over, checking Gilbert’s vitals and fluid intake wordlessly. When she’s done, she pulls out the swirly stool under the computer and brings herself to the other side of his bed. She stays silent for another moment, before speaking in the softest whisper he’s ever heard. 

“It was your appendix,” she says plainly, and he wants to laugh at her unusual nonchalant attitude. 

“I know,” he returns, just as plain. 

“Dr. Evans did the surgery,” she tells him, and he’s perplexed by the way she looks around the room, at Anne, and back at him repeatedly. 

“Evans? Seriously?” He questions, laying back on the pillow and staring at the popcorn ceiling above him and trying to find the humor. “I’m shocked I’m still alive, then” 

Phil looks at him with something serious, a look he’s never seen her wear. It’s almost frightening, to see her lips pursed together, her legs shake, and her brow crinkle. 

“Phil, you’re freaking me out, were there complications? Abscess, infection, bleeding? I feel fine- I mean in comparison to how I usually feel, I kind of feel like I just got hit by a bus, but fine all considerin-” 

Her smile, a slight brush of her hand on his, and a reassuring nod disarms him and brings him back to Earth. Gilbert remembers why she’s such a good nurse then, with a bedside manner that he constantly strives for. “There were no serious complications, besides an infection, but nothing a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics won't fix…” 

“What is it then?” Gilbert asks impatiently, and he's chasing every stress line along her face for a glimpse of clarity. 

Phil’s expression is dripping with nerves, pointing her head towards Anne and leaning towards Gilbert even more. 

“She’s been here the whole time,” she admits, almost unwillingly. “She brought you in and-” 

Her hesitance hangs around the room like a thick fog. 

Gilbert prepares for the worst, running through all the horrible scenarios in his head, every single calculation and formula that brings him crashing down. Scenarios where Anne tells him once more that she’s marrying Roy, instances where they got impatient and eloped over Christmas. As memories of his near-pathetic begging and pleading for her flood his mind, he thinks of a scenario where she did come to tell him she loved him, that she wanted to be with him, but after hearing his deluded ramblings, changed her mind emphatically. No, she wouldn’t do that. The Anne he knows is empathetic beyond her years, kind, and thoughtful. That wouldn’t happen. Would it? 

He thinks all the worst and all of the best of her at once, mind racing through every possibility. 

What he doesn’t consider, is what Phil says next, with a stern hand on Gilbert’s shoulder. “I really shouldn’t be saying this it’s…it’s not my business, but I feel like if I don’t hit you upside the head and give you what you need, you’ll never do anything about it.” 

“What do I need?” He asks, peeking over at Anne to make sure she’s still sound asleep. 

Phil makes well on her promise and knocks him lightly over the head, shaking her own head at him with a small smile. “Anne broke things off with Roy last night before she found you and.. I told her that you ended things with Christine.” 

His whole body hitches, enthralled and frozen in the depth of what Phil was telling him. When he looks back down at Anne, he can see clearly now that the ring on her finger is gone, replaced by a slight tan line and red indent on her finger. The monitor quickens and his breath becomes shallow, quiet wheezes escaping him. The pain is noticeable now, but it’s a good sort of pain. A reminder that he is alive. He is alive and Anne is here, and he has hope, and he doesn’t want to lose her ever again. 

Phil ejects herself from the stool, unlocking the drawer next to her and pulling out a vile, lifting his arm gently and slowly pushing some painkillers and flushing with saline. He knows he doesn’t have much time before he falls asleep, so he grabs her arm in determination, looking her dead on and asking what he’s so terrified yet so exhilarated to ask. 

“Is there a chance?” His voice croaks with desperation. 

Phil gives him this look, it’s something he can’t entirely read but sends a shiver down his spine. The beating on the monitor is slowing, slowing, slowing, as she leans down to Gilbert’s ear and whispers so softly he almost doesn’t hear it. 

“I think you should try again.” 

It is simple, but it is everything. 

When he blinks, Phil is out of the room, the light from the morning sky peeks through the window and shimmers over Anne, and for the first time in months, he knows that they are here, at the same place at the same time. 

Gilbert drifts asleep to the beat of his steady heart on the monitor singing. 

Try again, try again, try again.

Gilbert isn’t scared when he wakes up once more and doesn’t find her in the room. Rather, he gets up slowly, legs wobbly when they hit the ground, slowly unraveling his gown and pulling up the scrubs on the table that Phil had likely grabbed for him. He’s all fumbling, like a fowl learning to walk again, and he’s suddenly glad she’s not there to see it. 

He travels down the halls determinedly, set on a pre-destined path, knowing exactly where she is. 

The walk is difficult, yet the easiest thing he’s ever done, because he knows that she’ll be there at the end of it, just past the wide elevator doors and short steps. 

Just as he expected, he finds Anne on the roof, twin braids floating in the cool wind as she stares off at what feels like the edge of the earth. The skyline glows with ambers, purples, and pinks as the sun begins to set under the skyscrapers. 

He waddles over, one hand on his middle and the other dragging his IV pole. His incision screams and aches, but it’s worth it.  Anne seems to hear the squeaky wheels of the pole dragging against the concrete, as she whizzes around to see what’s behind her. Her eyes are wide and her mouth drops when she sees him, he wants to run up and hug her then, smooth her worry lines and pull her in close. 

“Gilbert!’ Anne exclaims, rushing over to him, letting her hands roam to try to assist him, but each touch burns more than the last. “You shouldn’t be up, you’ll tear your stitches, let’s get you back downstairs and–” 

“I’m fine, Anne,” he insists, planting his feet and letting out a low chuckle. “Doctor’s orders, I need to walk around and get some fresh air.”

She blinks at him, her lips parted as if to argue, but then her gaze softens. She sighs and gives him a crooked smile. “Frigid air doesn’t count.”

He leans against the railing, watching a helicopter’s lights blink as it whirs past them in the distance. “Fresh is fresh.”

Anne begins to shrug her heavy flannel off of her shoulders, but he stops her with his hand, bringing her shoulders back under the soft, heavy fabric. He wants to tell her everything that he knows, everything he’s been thinking about, everything he knows about her. But he can’t yet, instead he drenches himself in the moment he doesn’t want to pass. 

“How are you feeling?” She asks, voice low against the moaning wind between buildings. 

“Better,” and it’s the truth, he feels like a weight has been lifted off of him, despite the low ache in his side. 

“Good.” 

There’s a beat of silence that thrums through them. It tugs at him, but he doesn’t feel uncomfortable, rather, it washes over him like warm wind at the beach, and he thinks of the red clay of Avonlea, the cliffs that beckon you to the water below. He might not remember his hometown as vividly as he once did, but the memories still vibrate through him, pulsating as he looks at her. That place is alive within her, and for the first time in seventeen years, he wants to go back. 

Anne is the first to break the silence, soft and almost playful. “You know, they say the worse your New Year’s is, the better your year will be.”

Gilbert huffs a laugh, leaning closer to her. “Then I guess I’m about to have the best year of my life, though, I think it’s already started.”

Anne tears her focus away from the City, staring at him with this sort of wonder and bewilderment that he wants to kiss off of her. She stays quiet, her hands curling into the flannel at her sides. He can see the blush rising on her cheeks, though she tries to play it off cooly, looking back toward the sunset. 

“What about you?” he asks, his voice dipping slowly into her waters. “Any resolutions for the new year?”

Her gaze shifts to him, hesitant but unwavering. She’s so strong, so tough, he knows how much this is taking her. “To be more honest,” she says, and the way she looks at him solidifies it. 

It’s just him and her together, on that roof, in that city, and they’re sat on the precipice of knowing. 

Gilbert leans in slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, but she doesn’t, she looks up at him, answering a silent question with everything he’s ever wanted to hear. When their lips meet, it’s soft and tentative, but filled with the kind of promise that only grows, so much more steady and grounded than the messy, unrelenting one they had shared before Christmas. 

When they finish, their lips linger for a long time, her breath hot against the chill on his face. He’s overwhelmed, he doesn’t know where to begin and where to stop, as he peppers soft, trailing kisses down her cheek, along her jaw. 

Anne laughs against him, pulling his face away to face her. She’s scanning his face for something, looking up and down from the tip of his forehead, tracing his nose, and spotting the tiny freckles that adorn it. Her thumb swipes over his kiss-swollen lips, and she gives him a shaky smile. 

“I love you, so much,” she cries, dragging her fingers from his mouth to dig deep into his hair, pulling him into a hug.

And as they stand there, cold wind forgotten in their warm embrace, Gilbert feels something he hasn’t in a long time—peace between his head and his heart.