After my heart transplant succeeded, I'd been waiting for my childhood sweetheart to propose.
Another birthday rolled around, and a mutual friend let it slip that Irvin Stephens had booked a high-end restaurant and bought a thousand roses.
I figured this was it. I was finally getting what I'd waited for.
So I put on the red dress I'd chosen so carefully, the princess heels, dressed to the nines, and walked in only to find his female colleague clutching an armful of roses, crying.
"Irvin, thank you. I only mentioned it offhand, that I love roses, and you sent me a thousand. Last year you took me diving for my birthday, the year before that, skydiving. These three years knowing you, I've been so happy."
Irvin smiled, doting, and reached out to wipe Selena Sherwood's tears, his voice soft and coaxing. "I went to the trouble just to make you happy. Give me a smile. Don't cry."
He didn't notice me at all, frozen in the doorway, the color drained from my face.
It was my friend who reacted first, turning to me. "Happy birthday." She handed me a gift.
Only then did Irvin drift over, the familiar shopping bag in hand. "Your birthday present. Do you like it?"
A white dress. The same as last year's. The same as the year before. The same as the one from ten years ago.
The heart that had beaten steady for three years cramped with pain again.
But Irvin, I'm twenty-eight now. I outgrew your so-called clean, pure little schoolgirl dress a long time ago.
Your throwaway gift, I don't want it anymore.
——
"Wow, what a gorgeous dress."
Selena's gasp, her praise, sounded more like mockery.
She slid in between me and Irvin, her face full of envy. "Nobody's ever given me a white dress."
Irvin agreed on the spot. "I'll order one right now and have them send it over to you."
Selena shook her head, the picture of consideration. "That's too much trouble."
"It's no trouble. It's your birthday. The most important thing is that you're happy."
His doting had no floor to it. He pulled out his phone and started tapping.
A few seconds, that simple, and it was done. He didn't even ask Selena's size.
Or rather, he already knew everything.
"Just wait for your gift. Is there anything else you want? Say it all at once."
Selena's eyes went to me first. I knew that look. She wanted Irvin.
But in the end she didn't say it. Instead she turned to him. "It's already too much. Thank you. I don't want anything else."
Then she said to me, "Happy birthday." Slipping into familiarity, she added, "The two of us really are fated. We were born the same year, the same month, the same day. I'm sure we'll become great friends."
The truth was, I didn't find out until today that Selena and I shared a birthday.
Before, my birthday celebrations had been whole, planned by Irvin, mine alone. She had never once appeared in front of me.
These past two years, Irvin had left early using the excuse that the hospital was busy, never that he was off diving or skydiving.
I'd actually been foolish enough to be fooled for three years.
A knot lodged in my chest, and a cold sweat broke out over me.
I refused Selena outright, without sparing her feelings. "No need. I have plenty of friends. I won't be missing anything without you."
Chloe Hayes backed me up. "Right. She has me. She doesn't need you."
Then she pulled me over to the seat of honor.
Irvin said something quietly to Selena, who stood there in her awkwardness. "It's okay."
He led her toward me, his face displeased as he questioned me.
"It's a happy occasion. Why would you say something so spiteful? Selena's an incredible doctor. Back then, your heart surgery, she and I performed it together. She's basically the one who saved your life. She wants to be your friend. You should be grateful."
I looked at Irvin, the bleakness too deep to push down. Saving lives was a doctor's duty in the first place. It didn't put anyone on a pedestal.
