The end of the day shift was approaching. You stood at the patient's feet, your knees braced on the couch, slowly removing shrapnel from a wound on the medial side of his shin. The patient was under anesthesia, and you were under Robby’s care. He'd deliberately left you with him to help him speed up the cleaning of a laceration on a man who'd lost control of his sports bike. Because of this, Robby had heard plenty of taunts from you about how his bike was just a rickety old thing, and that's why it was still intact. He puffed and rolled his eyes.

Your eyes, on the other hand, were now fixed on a single point, and your hands slowly and smoothly removed the excess debris, some of which was stained with thick, dark blood. Robby stood opposite you, arms folded across his chest, holding his elbows, watching your every move. You were a third-year resident, a true professional, and Robby knew it. And you were deeply disconcerted by the fact that while your colleagues were quietly packing up to go home and leave the department, you were stuck in a room saturated with the hospital's dead fluorescent light, and on Robby’s orders, no less. He rarely asked you for help personally, knowing you were already running around patient after patient without a break. More accurately, he stopped doing so when you officially got together and started living together. A couple of years of stubborn resistance and failed attempts at flirting, and now you two are the talk of the nurses and the subject of snide jokes from the doctors. But everything settled down once Robby pointed his finger at everyone, saying that if you said one more word about it, everyone would be cleaning toilets instead of washing corpses. He didn't need to be told again.

Ten minutes of meticulous work later, you proudly set your tools aside in the tray next to you and removed your gloves, throwing them in the trash.

"I can't believe you couldn't do this yourself. That's ridiculous”

"Your fine motor skills are better than mine”

You glanced over your shoulder at him with a sarcastic laugh, and he moved away from the couch and leaned against the corner of the wall next to the room door, shoving his hands into his work pants and glaring at you from under his glasses. You tensed.

"What's wrong? Did you do something and deliberately keep me busy? I'll find out anyway”

"Not exactly”

You turned your body fully toward him, quietly asking.

"Then what?"

His eyes softened, and that same smile you saw after grueling evening shifts in the kitchen appeared on his lips. Then, quietly:

"Marry me”