Chapter 4

A Dawn of Whispers

Selina flounced down the hallway of the hospital’s main entrance. Literally, flounced. She ought to have felt guilty doing so, as some families were coming out of the patients’ rooms weeping and mourning, but no one could really ruin the state of bliss for her.

She was getting married! The thought bounced around her mind, eased into her the depths of her frostbitten fingertips, warming her up excessively. Though it was spring now, the winter wind had stayed.

It was early in the morning, as the sun had not risen quite yet, and despite her usual hesitancy to get up in the perks of dawn, she felt more refreshened than ever. Even the gray smog of New York City’s early morning air heightened her senses.

But whilst spinning in bliss down the hall to the laboratory testing room, where Hebe worked her night shifts, she had regrettably crashed into the bulky chest of her fellow co-worker.

“Ooof! S-Sorry Chun,” Selina rubbed her cheeks to lessen the crushing pain that Chun’s iron-like muscles caused her.

“This is an odd place to say good morning,” Chun remarked, smirking, “Why the happy mood today, Selina? You’re usually brooding about not getting enough sleep in the morning.”

“Oh,” Selina blushed, hardly able to keep the bubbling joy from bursting out, “I wanted Hebe to be the first to know--that’s why I was heading towards the testing lab--but I guess it’s alright if l just...”

Selina drew in a deep breath and cried, “I’m getting married, Chun!”

“Oh, that’s great to hear Selina! Congratulations!” Chun took a few seconds to get over the initial shock and pulled Selina in for a congratulatory hug. They had known each other since high school and had been close friends ever since. They had all gone through so much, from dealing with school schedules to applying to colleges to graduating to finding jobs, and now, to getting married. Selina would be the first out of all of them to do so, something that Chun and the rest of the group had guessed correctly from the very beginning.

“Thanks Chun, for always being so supportive. I should break the news to Hebe now,” Selina pressed her lips together in a strain to keep from shouting in joy as she searched for Hebe’s office down the hall.

“Hebe’s in room 102, but don’t go in there so fast. You might be walking in on a huge argument between her and Arron,” Chun warned, laughing as he did so.

“Arron?” Selina tried to remember the aforementioned name, but could not. Now that she paused think about it, she had never really given Hebe the chance to talk about her first week of medical residency. Selina had constantly fed Hebe about Ella’s arrival and her daughter, her dates with Calvin, Rainie’s cutesy voice and other such things. A tinge of guilt began prodding at her heartstrings.

“Yeah, he’s works in her division and they always argue,” Chun commented, “At first, it was just a rumor I heard from the nurses, but I saw a series of their arguments with my own eyes just a couple hours ago when I was dropping off papers. And it’s bad.”

And in both coincidence and non-coincidence, an orchestra of bickering sounds was growing louder and louder from around the corner of the hall.

“--And what’s wrong with that?” A frustrated male voice inquired.

“Because if you file them alphabetically, the task will be managed a lot easier, you dumbbell,” Hebe retorted as she appeared in the hallway where Selina and Chun stood, folding her arms angrily as she did.

“You just came here last week and you women already think you’re so good,” Arron snuck Hebe a long glare.

Selina, who was watching wide-eyed from the corner, turned to glance at Chun, who gave her an ‘I-told-you-so’ look. Hebe was about begin another row with him but was distracted when she saw her best friend “Get lost you ist pi--Oh, hi Selina!”

Hebe’s voice immediately went down two octaves and had a considerably cheerier tone. On cue, Arron wheedled away into another room, lest he meet more people with personalities like that of Hebe. While hiding away into his office, he muttered something that sounded like ‘not being near the wrong kind of people’.

 Selina giggled, giving her friend a knowing smile, “Well, it looks like you two have hit it on!”

“Arron?” Hebe crinkled her nose in genuine disgust, waving the thought away from her imagination, “Ewww, not in a lifetime! Plus, he’s gay. He must be, I think.”

“Hey, Arron’s cool,” Chun stepped in to defend his fellow classmate from undergrad school.

“Then you can go gay with him,” Hebe suggested, her voice sharp and still rang with strong disapproval, “But anyways Selina, I’ve noticed you’re here early.”

Hebe nodded at Selina’s presence suspiciously. The un-morning bird that she was, Selina was always late for her morning shifts; little did she come an hour before her shift began.   

“Calvin proposed to me last night,” Selina was blushing again, joy riddled across her face, “at dinner in Boston.”

“Oh my goodness, I’m so happy for you Selina! But Ew, that’s so romantic,” Hebe stuck her tongue out at the latter thought, despite sharing Selina’s every bit of happiness.

“What’s wrong with romance?” Chun asked, confused, “I thought women loved that kind of stuff.”

“Everything’s wrong with it,” Hebe snapped, “Plus, not all women like that sappy, flowery, icky stuff. Quite honestly, it gives me the creeps, but Selina likes it, I’m sure. Look at that airy expression she’s giving me. Yuck.”

“Hey!”

“What? I thought you were just complaining to Ella yesterday about being too broke to attend weddings.”

“Calvin and his credit card is a one way ticket out of misfortune,” Selina laughed, waving off any worries she may have harbored in previous days.

But out of nowhere came a series of running footsteps and voices in the distant, “Mommy! I don’t want to get a shot! I don’t want to!”

“Come along now, Cammie. Auntie Selina’s going to give you the shot--remember Auntie Selina? She’s a nice auntie, right? She won’t hurt you,”

“But I don’t like this place. I want to go home. To the Larkspur Room in Russia, Mommy!”

“Cammie, what have I told you? We’re in America now. New York is our new home, okay?” Ella sighed as she turned the corner, trying to get a hold of her elusive daughter.

“But I don’t like Pork!”

“No, not ‘pork’, New York! Say New York, Cammie! Cammie, tell mommy ‘New York is my new home’!”

“No!”

“Ella? Cammie?” Selina rounded the corner, “You guys are here early today.”

“Hi Selina,” Ella smiled wearily at her, “Yeah well, after I told Cammie we’d be visiting the hospital the next morning, she just couldn’t get to sleep. I figured we’d stop by earlier today.”

“Oh dear. That, I can totally relate to. Looks like Cammie and I have a lot in common, right Cammie?” Hebe bent down next to Cammie and pulled her into a hug, “Ella, I have to hurt you later for not introducing your daughter to me earlier! She’s so adorable!”

 “Now, let’s set good examples for the little ones and not get violent, shall we Hebe? We’ve got enough patients in the emergency room as it is,” Chun chuckled and gave Cammie a light pat on the head, “How are you feeling today, Cammie?”

“I don’t want a shot,” Cammie pouted, giving Chun a glare that looked more like puppy eyes than anything else.

“It’s not a shot,” Chun ruffled her hair somemore, “it’s just a pinch on the fingers, like this!”

He poked one of her stubby little fingers and tickled her until she burst into a fit of giggles.

“Is that okay, Cammie?” Chun smiled at her and the little girl nodded eagerly, “Okay now Auntie Selina’s going to take you in a few minutes. Meanwhile, since you’re here so early, Ella, I can fit in an office hour checkup before the 7am surgery. You want to do that instead?”

Ella paused for a moment, and nodded, “And then we’re free to go for the day?”

“Yup,” Chun smiled, “Just meet me in my office, Room 5, and I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.`.

Ella really did not want to be sitting there in the doctor’s office. It was her and Cammie’s 5^th visit to the University Hospital and each time, there was more paperwork to fill out and tests to take.  Cammie’s weekly check-ups actually gave her and Chun a reason to see each other and that was all kinds of bad.

He was Chun-- a doctor, impeccable with his manners, and that was just plain annoying.

 “So…are you going to the engagement party this weekend?” Ella asked to keep the atmosphere from growing too quiet, but immediately regretted doing so.

“Err, Yes,” Chun started, “I’m going to be one of the groomsmen, you see…”

It had been two weeks since Calvin’s proposal to Selina and a flurry of plans for dresses and engagement parties and dinner platters were already being made. When Selina broke the news two weeks ago, also in the very same hospital, as everything exciting seemed to occur here, Ella was in utter disbelief. But it had happened, and now, there was an engagement party to attend in a matter of days.

“Oh, so you know Calvin, then,”

“Yeah, he’s the business division’s CEO at my other job, a Biotech Company, which I work for on the weekends,” Chun frowned a bit, thoughtful, “He’s also kind of my cousin.”

“Kind of your cousin?”

“Half cousin, really. Maybe it was a quarter of a cousin…either way, it has something to do with different grandmothers on my dad’s side. It’s complicated.”

There was silence for a bit, but Chun, who began to pull nervously on his collar at the uncomfortable atmosphere, broke the silence again and prompted, “And I suppose you’ll be maid of honor, then? For Selina?”

“Probably just bridesmaid, actually,” Ella noted as an afterthought, “I mean, Selina is having trouble choosing between me and Hebe, but I honestly think Hebe should just be maid of honor. She deserves it more, considering that I walked out on them for four years and came back just now.”

“Well, I’m sure out of the nine or so weddings that Hebe and Selina have gone to, they’ve had their fair share of being at the bride’s service,” Chun continued reasonably, “ You, on the other hand, haven’t seen a traditional American wedding in awhile.”

“It’s just four years. I survived well without witnessing any weddings like that of my sister’s, thanks,” Ella muttered, staring obsessively at the waste bin on the floor in order to avoid any awkward glances.

 She really wished she hadn’t mentioned weddings now. She’d been at her sister Ariel’s wedding shortly before leaving for the conservatory and the experience was wonderful and horrible all at the same time. Chun would know. She had been maid of honor and he had been best man.

“You never really wore dresses back then…until that wedding, huh? And now you wear them all the time.”

“Astute observation, Chun,” Ella remarked sardonically, “I never noticed. At all.”

But it was true. She’d changed considerably in her style of dress through the years. People had once jeered and mocked her for being a ‘cross dresser’ or ‘she male’ or ‘lesbian’--she had been tagged with those conventional stereotypes but she had managed to continue with life, undaunted. It was only because she had to attend so many rehearsals and concerts at the conservatory of music that she’d just found formalwear a lot more convenient than switching in and out of skirts and sweaters.

Sure, during Ariel’s wedding, she had still been the old Ella with the personality that she had carried with her since high school. And though she wasn’t the same as she was before anymore, she liked herself in both ways. She was still Ella. A lot had not changed.

“Remember the flower bouquet?” Chun chuckled at the mention of it.

“What? O-Oh yeah! You lost it an hour before the wedding!” Ella laughed, remembering now.

“I lost it? I think it was you who lost it and I had to run around the church looking for it!”

“Hey, you were responsible for it!”

“But I gave it to you to give to your sister. I was only responsible for the floral orders, not the actual bouquet.”

“Please, the wedding list said specifically that you were responsible for the flowers. All of them.”

“I had to give it to you guys eventually, so I gave it to you because--ahem-- I am male and could not step into the dressing roo--”

“You know what Chun?” Ella sighed, laughing still, “we still argue like we did before and as always, the bickering will lead to nowhere. So it’s best if we just forget about that bouquet from 4 years ago.”

But for a long time, Ella heard no response. Only chuckling that, quite frankly, creeped her out a bit.

“Chun? What are you--”

“We really were in love back then, weren’t we?” Chun smiled, his left hand reaching over to pat Ella’s shoulder, spinning her around to face him.

“W-What are you talking about? Ha ha..ha..ha…” Ella chuckled nervously, slowly peeling his left hand off her shoulder and dropping it like a hot potato.

 “Don’t lie to me Ella, you know it was there. You know that we--”

But what Chun was about to say, Ella never got to hear as distraction was named Rainie, a hospital nurse that many so loathed. But for now, she decided that she loved Rainie for the intrusion. It had caused Chun to, instinctively, jump back into his chair.

“Hi Chun!” Rainie’s bubbly voice chirped, echoing shrilling against Ella’s ear drums. Ella silently thanked the disruption, but it had been an irritable distraction indeed.

“Hello Rainie,” Chun’s voice floated calmly into the conversation as he concentrated on scribbling side notes onto his clipboard.

How dare he pretend to be innocent! He had nearly attacked her with a flurry of dilemmas less than 60 seconds earlier!

“Miss Ella Chen,” squeaked Rainie, “We need to know more about the birth information of your daughter before we proceed with any surgical procedures.”

Ella stared at the girl ridiculously, barely registering her request. Rainie was flipping her hair nonstop, blushing like mad and making some rather suggestive gestures. And Ella knew for a fact that Rainie was not flirting with her. Ella spun around, only to see Chun completely absorbed in his paperwork to notice Rainie’s efforts of attention.

“Uh, Miss Ella?”

“Oh umm err…I thought I already filled out the form last week,”

“Yes, but you left some information blank, such as the age of your daughter, blood type, and the name and ethnicity of her birth father.”

“Oh,” Ella deadpanned, adrenaline pumping through her nerves as she cowered at the thought of giving the hospital too much information, “But I don’t know…what her blood type is.”

“Then please come with me to the laboratory to get you and your daughter’s blood type tested,” Rainie chirped with hint of glee and annoyance in her voice.

 “Go ahead, Ella,” Chun urged from the corner of the room, “We’ll continue our conversation…next time.”

Goodness. Then she really hoped that ‘next time’ would never come. It was time to go hibernate in her room for a long season and not come out, despite the approaching spring weather.  

Click. Click. Click.It was difficult keeping up with Rainie’s stride but even harder to bear with her steady glares toward her direction. What she had done to receive such glares, Ella did not bother finding out.

The tests were a series of blood tests, urine tests, DNA matches, and everything that made Ella a whole level sicker than she was before. It had been Cammie who’d come through the emergency room that day, but it felt as if she was the patient now. The tests were for “genetic inheritance purposes only” but still, she’d felt she’d handed herself in.

“Ella?”

Ella looked up to see the concern expression of her mouse-faced friend, “Hebe! What are you doing here?”

“I work here,” Hebe replied, peeling off her elastic gloves and slipping on new ones, “the pharmaceutical-laboratorial division of the hospital.”

“Oh,” Ella paused for a minute, “so you and Selina have different majors?”

“Well, we’re both med majors but she specializes in emergency medicine and well, I do the chemistry part of  med, dealing with prescribed medicine and test results and such. But anyways let’s take a look at your results…”

Hebe was wearing a white lab coat much too large for her small frame; it looked like she could tip over from its bulkiness.

“You’re blood type is AO, but Cammie’s blood type is BO,” Hebe observed.

“What? Is there something wrong then?” concern immediately rushing through Ella’s voice.

“No, no of course not! It’s just that you can’t donate blood to her when she does her surgical operation. It’s best to have blood donated by her family members, but looks like that won’t work out.”

“So what’s going to happen to her?”

“She’ll have to get blood from the blood bank, though the supply for type B and type O blood has been running rather low lately.”

“So it’s blood from strangers, then?”

Hebe nodded, “Yeah, so it’s not as effective. I’d give her blood…I’m type BO too, but I’m anemic. And Selina has type AO, just like you, so that won’t work either...”

The door slammed open, peace once again disrupted by Rainie.

“Hebe-- we need to talk,” Rainie breathed, but her voice stern.

“Oh,” Hebe got up and walked stiffly towards the door, “Ella, if you would excuse us for a minute.”

Ella motioned for her to go, but she saw with clear recognition that, had workplace not allowed, Hebe and Rainie would not be on speaking terms, at all.

Double doors to the laboratory swung open and close with rhythm. And along with it, flowed in bits and parts of daily conversations and amidst the laziness of the murmurs and shouts, Ella began to hear familiar names from afar. Two female nurses, considerably preppy-sounding, were in the middle of some very intense gossip.

“Did you hear what Rainie was saying?”

“About the Bella or Ella girl?”

“Ella, yeah, her. Looks like Dr. Wu Chun from emergency services has got the hots for her.”

“Really? But isn’t she the one with the illegitimate daughter who won’t say who the father is? Why would he be interested in someone like that?”

“No idea, but apparently Rainie was saying that she walked in on a possibly intimate moment or something…”

“Wow, I actually thought Dr. Wu had standards. Who knows where that Ella girl has been sleeping, or who she’s sleeping with…”

“Or what she’s sleeping with,”

“Haha, I know, right? Well, she should learn her lesson…getting pregnant and all…couldn’t have been someone more deserving.”

“Hey, do you reckon---”

“Ahem,” Hebe voice interrupted the conversation with great force, “IF I CATCH YOU GIRLS NOT AT WORK BUT IN’ GOSSIPING ONE MORE TIME, I WILL CURSE YOU INTO TOMORROW AND MAKE SURE YOU’RE KICKED OUT OF THIS HOSPITAL BY FRIDAY!”

The shadows of the girls faded away, muttering under their breaths a jumble of swears words of all sorts.

Ella sat firmly in her stool, within earshot of the conversation she’d overheard. And thus, she sat in silence.

“Ella, please don’t--“Hebe started, trying to comfort her friend, but it was too late.

“Stop. I don’t want to hear this bull anymore,” tears were streaming down Ella’s eyes as she spoke, “I am nothing but useless.”

“How dare you listen to what they have to say! I thought you were stronger than that, Ella!”

“They think I’m a , Hebe! They think I’m a in’ w-…some cheap seductress or s-something! They think I’m low class, b-because my child has no father.”

“Don’t you see that those useless nurses are just jealous?”

“Jealous? Jealous of me? Broke joke! There’s no way…” Ella’s laugh had become uncontrollably hysterical.

“Yes, Ella. JEALOUS. Jealous that Chun, the so-called hospital ‘hunk’, cares about you. Jealous that he pays attention only to you and your daughter. What does he think of you? A friend he’s willing to look after. What does he think of those fan-girly nurses? Useless. Worthless. Brain dead.”

“Yeah,” Ella muttered dangerously, nose flaringly, “only out of sympathy though…he pities me, don’t you see?”
“No, not pity. Ella, it’s called friendship. Hell must have frozen over because me, unemotional nonfeeling ME is explaining to you what feelings and friendships mean. This is definitely going into the books.”

 Ella smiled a bit, but her tears had not left her, so Hebe continued, “And what do Selina and I think of you? A friend who had walked out on us. But nevertheless had the heart to come back and rejoin us. This is the Ella within you. This is the Ella we know. And so, you are as important to us now as you were during our adolescence, during high school and college. And what are you to Cammie? Everything. Everything she can rely on and she wouldn’t want to see her mother so weak and sopping emotional. You’re a mother now. And you’re still a best friend. So shut up and feel important because you are.”

Ella wiped away her last tear, taking Hebe’s outstretched hand, “T-Thanks, Hebe. I don’t even remember how I survived in Russia without you guys.”

“That’s because I’m important and I know it,” Hebe remarked jokingly.

Ella jabbed her on the side and they laughed. They laughed and giggled and smiled because they could. And that was enough.

A/N:
Okay, okay. Not a lot of Chun/Ella but there was definitely more, right? I know that the plot is developing a bit slow for a fanfiction, but I've changed my mind about making this story a novella (~20,000 words). It's going to be a novel now! (50,000+ words)

Yes, this story is romance-based, but I feel compelled to add in the fun and pureness of S.H.E's friendship because it's so rare and beautiful to write about. Now that Hebe's in the picture, I can start focusing on the lil' CE romance we've all been waiting for!

-Amoretti (I am currently catching up on all my requested reviews)