Mindy Lahiri

So it's been a crazy long time since Mindy's been on a date. A proper date. She's hooked up with a couple guys since Danny disappeared but the last time she went out on a dinner date was with Danny, almost a year ago.

The fact it's at Slothburger and super casual doesn't make her any less anxious about the whole deal. She's getting better at thinking of Tony as Tony and not Tony Stark/Iron Man/billionaire-in-another-universe, but it still catches her off guard sometimes. Her fantasies with the fictional character were pretty different to what she's preparing for right now.

She has no idea, for example, what to wear. If they were going out somewhere fancier she'd wear a little black dress but this is a food chain largely aimed at children, so she goes with a cute skirt and a blouse and hopes she doesn't look like an idiot as she kisses Leo on the forehead and tells the babysitter she'll be back in a few hours. 

Maybe it should be vaguely awkward to be a friend's gynecologist, but it really doesn't bother Mindy in the slightest. She had a giant ego and is convinced she's the best in the business (especially now that Danny's no longer in the city), so there's no way she's letting Molly see anyone else.

She's a little curious, though, about what Molly wants to talk about. It's hard to be super professional in that sense because she's also super invested in her friend's wellbeing, but it's not like she's never done this before. She'd helped out plenty with Gwen and Alex and Maggie back in New York, after all.

It's mid-morning and Mindy's already seen a handful of patients by the time she comes to get Molly from the waiting room. "Hello," she says, feigning formality.  "Miss Stearns. Come on back."

The fact is, being a single mom with a high profile job is super fucking difficult. 

Mindy has, at least, been blessed with the fact that Leo arrived well beyond the newborn stage, so he's pretty good at sleeping through the night and Mindy doesn't find herself as sleep deprived as she otherwise might. She's just the regular sleep deprived that comes from being an OB/GYN with patients who like to go into labour in the early hours of the morning.

She can deal with sleeplessness, though. She went to med school. What really sucks (beside the utter loneliness of not having her baby's father around) is feeling like she's letting Leo down. She doesn't like the idea of him being in daycare all day, but she also can't imagine not doing her job. And not just because she feels responsible.

Because she loves it.

So she has to find time for Leo, even if it means going to some playgroup that she saw an advertisement for in the doctor's lounge. It's probably the least cool thing she's ever done, but Mindy's a mom now and that pretty much throws all assumptions of cool out the window. So she gets Leo dressed up in his afternoon best and heads on in, cringing inwardly as she hears the first of what is sure to be a constant cycle of high-pitched children's songs.

Mindy just really wants to go the fuck to sleep.

It's barely 7pm but she's been working since the early hours of the morning and just picked up Leo (the ladies at the daycare are really starting to hate her) before she remembers he's almost out of diapers. She's too far from the hospital to steal some from there and so it's with a sigh that she finds a parking spot by the drugstore, lifting Leo out of his carseat and into her arms where he fiddles with his giraffe toy.

Things are so different now.

She's contemplating this when the toy hits the sidewalk and Mindy has to remind herself she can't exactly yell at an almost six-month-old. Instead, she starts to reach for it when a stranger does so in her stead, and she starts to smile brightly. 

Except not, because he's actually reaching for her bag and then off running. She's so startled she just stares for a second before thinking to shout after him, and then Leo's screaming his head off.

Of course.

With Kurt and Sawyer's disappearance, and Chase's way back when, Mindy figures she should have prepared better. It just didn't seem a possibility. Even when they fought, even when they hated each other, threatened to murder one another, Danny was around.

For years, day to day, an inextricable part of her life.

And now he's gone. Just like that.

It's not a grief Mindy knows how to deal with. A breakup, sure, she can manage just fine. She's had her heart broken that way a million different times. Engagements ended, boyfriends who have left her for Serbian bagel vendors – whatever. She thinks she could even have handled Danny ending their relationship here in the city as long as he was still around.

But he's really gone.

His phone line is dead, his apartment empty. Danny isn't the kind to mess with her via some elaborate prank, that's her style, so she knows this is legit. And she doesn't know what to do with that.

It's kind of fucking unbearable.

How she finds her way to work, she doesn't know. She just knows that she has to. His office is there, the one last place he might be, but it's all for nothing. His things are there, files neatly sorted where hers are strewn about her desk, and she starts to laugh but then she's sobbing, grief racking her body.

She doesn't know how to deal with this. Not without him. Through every terrible thing that's happened over the past year, and back in New York, she's had Danny. 

She should call someone. A friend, or someone to cover his patients at the very least (and maybe hers, how is she supposed to work like this?) Instead, Mindy sits at Danny's desk and slides her hands over the surface, head resting against it.

There's so much she should do, but for the time being, she forgets to how to move. Or why she should even have to.

Her eyes start to drift close, the solid desk suddenly the most comfortable place in the world, but Mindy's quickly pulled away by the sound of an infant's cry. She works in an OB/GYN office, it's nothing unusual, but there's something unique and disturbingly familiar about the sound, so she finds her feet and follows it.

The baby in the printer box would be unexpected but Mindy's learning to expect nothing in this stupid fucking city, and she just stares for a few moments, dark brown eyes locking with hers. The attachment she feels is somehow immediate, and she pulls the infant into her arms. She's normally not the most comfortable with anything but newborns, but he fits and curls towards her. "You're a little late for Halloween," she tells him, stroking the fabric of his dinosaur hoodie between her finger and thumb. The baby gurgles as if in agreement.

For a printer box, it's pretty well set up. A blanket to cushion him, a baby monitor, and a book. It's nothing she'd find in the latest PopSugar Must Have box, but instead a baby book, like a letter left with an abandoned orphan.

Except, apparently, he's not an orphan. She flicks through the pages of handwritten notes, photos.

"Leo Castellano?"

He's her son.

The five second rule is a joke. How the hell is anyone of average physical fitness supposed to retrieve a beautiful, barely-touched bear claw from a city street in five seconds? 

Without getting hit by a car, that is, and Mindy is not so foolish that she has a death wish. 

Were it her phone, filled with selfies that she hasn't backed up to the iCloud yet, it might be another situation. But it isn't. The bakery is officially closed for the day and the pastry Mindy has been dreaming about for what feels like her entire life is picking up crumbs of asphalt and cigarette ash and who knows what else (who wants to know what else?)

Five seconds have passed and so have numerous cars, but its glaze is glistening in the dimming sun and dammit, she's going to go for it.

It's a year today since Danny turned up in Darrow and subsequently turned Mindy's newfound life in the city upside down.

It's a date that she intends to find some way to celebrate. Or, at least, make a little more positive than a reminder of the moment he left everything he knew behind, maybe forever. 

He'd done the same for her, after all, bringing her New York. Which had been incredibly sweet, of course, until she'd tried to kiss him and then her hair had caught on fire and everything had been absolutely awkward and the worst.

This? This she plans to go a little better. Or hopes. Was hoping until she settled on making him a homecooked meal that is not going well at all. She'd watched at least two tutorials on YouTube for making the perfect pasta, but she's pretty sure she's got the quantities wrong and it's pure mush. 

Mindy can already picture Danny aggressively praying for Jesus or Mary or the Pope's forgiveness the moment he catches sight of her Italian atrocity, if it is even worthy of that title at all. She's had better frozen meals, better hospital cafeteria meals, and she's starting to think that she should have made her famous saag paneer with mac and cheese powder instead.

But Danny's due over any minute and she's got to serve something, she'd zeroed out her fridge last night after an especially exhausting day at work. She's starting to consider faking it with takeout when she remembers that there's garlic bread in the oven – storebought, who can tell the difference? – only as she opens it to a face full of smoke and the blaring of her smoke alarm.

"Oh, hell no."

The trouble with two doctors dating one another is the curse of the beeper. Mindy's been with busy guys before, of course, sports lawyers and pastors and oral surgeons, but OB/GYNs seem to be at the mercy of emergencies more than just about any other speciality (who knew babies didn't care about their romantic life?) and so it's not a rarity for Danny or Mindy to be forced away from a makeout session by Mrs. Whoever's premature labor.

Now, of course, that they're actually having sex, it's even more frustrating when Danny's beeper goes off, Mindy not even bothering to beg it off because what kind of doctor would she be if she deprived a patient of proper healthcare? Still, she sighs, tossing him his clothes so he can get dressed before she leaves him at the door with a kiss, not catching Kate's figure in the hall until she's ugh-ing in her doorway about another night's plans ruined.

"Oh, hey," she says, lifting her hand into a wave and then letting it drop to fix her tousled hair. "What's up?"

It's a small miracle Mindy didn't drink more last night, one that's realised when she's called in early afternoon to deliver a baby for a fellow OB/GYN who has apparently gone on vacation.

"Vacation where?" Mindy's skeptical as hell. It's not like anyone can just flit off to some far reach of the world where there's no cell or pager service. But, whatever, she's got enough of a conscience not to wave it off to someone else and the hangover she'd been nursing had disappeared sometime around noon.

Another successful (albeit premature) delivery later and she's back in the lounge, busying herself by watching an episode of Kiddies and Crowns. It's completely horrifying but also absolutely entertaining, a little brat rocking a Britney Spears costume that should not be approved for anyone under the age of 21. Or older than 25.

The actual snake that is scaring the hell out of the crowd isn't quite enough for Mindy to be wholly distracted from the previous night's events. Or non-events. Her party had been absolutely amazing, of course, filled with some of her favorite people. But, in hindsight, watching When Harry Met Sally had been completely ill-advised, especially when so many of her close friends in attendance were with their other halves.

The bitterness that might have filled her a few years prior has shifted, somehow, into not-quite-envy but a longing. She knows she's not suddenly a million years old the moment she turns thirty-three, but it's still another year further away from the optimum fertility age and another year since she was in a serious relationship. 

If she's evolved, it's not beyond anger or bitterness, but into sadness, which is maybe a little bit worse.

Enough to make her do something about it?

All signs point to: ask again later.

"Are you kidding me? That candy-striper routine killed it. You're going to give it to the toddler who can't even count to ten? This show is the worst."