Chapter 61: Pick-Up
The road had been rocky, but Rajesh had managed — on his own terms — to wriggle free from another one of his parents' arranged dates.
The cost? Nearly crying on the phone while his father chewed him out for showing up drunk.
The silver lining: his parents would probably leave him alone on the dating front for a good while.
After Raj headed out, only Sheldon, Leonard, and Ethan were left in the living room, the apartment settling into its usual after-the-storm quiet.
Ethan broke the silence first. "Sheldon — so how'd things go with your Indian princess?"
"You two talked for almost two hours," Leonard added, leaning forward. "What actually happened after we left?"
"One hour and forty-seven minutes," Sheldon corrected, with the precision of a man who considers rounding an act of intellectual dishonesty. "We had dinner at a Thai restaurant. The interaction conformed to standard social protocols. She shared several things I was already aware of — the correlation between periodontitis and cardiovascular disease, for instance — and then I came home."
"And?" Leonard's gossip radar was pinging like a submarine sonar. "Are you going to see her again?"
Sheldon looked up with the expression of a man explaining gravity to a golden retriever. "Of course not. Leonard, your observational deficiencies genuinely concern me."
"Why not? Didn't you just say she was like an Indian princess — smart, beautiful, the whole package?"
"Her knowledge overlaps considerably with mine but lacks sufficient depth to provide novel information." Sheldon paused, completely matter-of-fact. "More importantly — I already have a dentist."
He stood up and walked to his room. The door clicked shut.
Leonard and Ethan stared at each other across the coffee table.
Leonard: "Should we call his mom right now and give her a heads-up that grandchildren aren't happening?"
Ethan laughed despite himself — thinking: if only you knew. Someday Sheldon Cooper will have a kid. A whole family. And a Nobel speech that makes grown physicists cry.
After Raj's dating catastrophe, life drifted back to its usual rhythm for a stretch.
Not long after, Walter White brought his son in for another appointment at Raine Clinic.
Mr. White looked noticeably thinner this time — worn down in a way that went beyond tired. His cheekbones were sharper, the lines around his eyes deeper.
His latest lab results, cross-referenced with the S.H.I.E.L.D. files Ethan had quietly pulled, showed a clean bill of health on paper. But when Ethan pressed his stethoscope to the man's chest, something was off — faint crackles at the base of the left lung, subtle enough to dismiss, impossible to ignore if you knew what you were listening for.
Ethan asked about it carefully. Walter waved it off. "Don't worry about it. Probably just work stress."
Probably. The word of a man who'd gotten very good at deciding what other people needed to know.
Walter Jr. was noticeably more relaxed than last time — he even greeted Ethan first, unprompted, which felt like a small victory. Ethan walked him through everything step by step, patient and unhurried, the way you'd explain something to someone who deserved a straight answer.
Walter Sr. listened from the corner chair, arms crossed, his expression slowly unknotting.
When they left, Walter White set another hundred-thousand-dollar check on the front desk without a word.
JFK was doing what JFK always does — a full-sensory assault of gate announcements, rolling suitcases, and roughly four hundred people all trying to be somewhere else faster.
Ethan leaned against the arrivals barrier, scanning the stream of faces coming through the doors, letting his mind drift back to Texas for a moment without meaning to.
Then he spotted her.
He straightened up before he'd consciously decided to.
Missy Cooper came through the doors pulling a carry-on, dark wavy hair loose over her shoulders, wearing a deep-purple wrap dress that managed to look both put-together and completely effortless. Her smile arrived before she'd even fully registered him — bright, quick, a little like a dare.
The second she saw Ethan, her whole face lit up.
She broke into a jog without any preamble — skirt swinging, hair flying, zero self-consciousness about any of it.
"Ethan!" She spread her arms and collided into him with the easy confidence of someone who's never once wondered whether a hug was appropriate. "It has been way too long."
He caught the warmth of her, the faint scent of her shampoo, the slight breathlessness from the sprint across the terminal — and found himself hugging back without overthinking it.
"Welcome to New York, Missy."
She pulled back and gave him a once-over with the frank appraisal of someone who grew up with a twin brother and never learned to sugarcoat. "Look at you — more polished than your Texas days. New York's actually agreeing with you. I was half-expecting you to look like a zombie."
"Still as brutally honest as ever." Ethan took her suitcase and they started toward the exit. "Anyone bother you on the flight?"
"Oh, a few tried." She tilted her chin up, and as the suitcase changed hands her fingers slid naturally to hook his arm. "Too old, too boring, or just not in your league, medically speaking."
"So I'm setting the benchmark now?"
"Roughly." A half-smile. "Don't let it go to your head."
"Appreciate the restraint."
They walked through the sliding doors and New York hit them immediately — exhaust and coffee and someone laying on a horn two blocks over. The city at full volume.
They joined the cab line.
"Okay, real talk," Missy said, squinting slightly into the afternoon glare. "Sheldon. On a scale of one to Sheldon — how bad is living with him?"
"Survivable. With the right coping mechanisms."
"That Nobel Prize you've been calling since we were nine — still on track?"
"I've revised the estimate. Fifteen years, minimum."
Missy snorted. "You've been saying that since middle school. Everybody always knew he was brilliant. You were just the only one who actually bet on it." She shook her head, more fond than frustrated. "Mom still treats him like he hung the moon. Now that we're not all under the same roof, it's 'oh, Sheldon did this' and 'Sheldon used to do that' every other conversation."
"He is genuinely remarkable," Ethan said. "As long as you can absorb approximately a thousand compulsions without losing your mind."
Missy laughed — genuinely, the kind that comes from deep familiarity with exactly the situation being described. "Honestly? If you weren't there I'd have booked a hotel. I still don't fully understand how you survived being his neighbor growing up and then voluntarily moved in with him."
A cab pulled up. They climbed in.
The driver merged into traffic and the airport shrank behind them.
"Heard you started your own practice," Missy said, watching the skyline begin to emerge between the overpasses. "Full autonomy, no hospital politics?"
"Small operation. But yeah — mine."
"Good for you." She said it like she meant it. "Still waitressing?"
"Living the dream." She said it completely without irony. "Take orders, run food, make drinks, clean up disasters, moonlight as an unlicensed therapist for bar regulars."
"Honestly, your tips probably beat my billing rate."
"I'm choosing to take that as a compliment about my people skills."
Missy leaned back against the seat and let out a long breath, like she was physically setting down whatever the flight had cost her. "So. Doctor. Besides keeping people alive — what does your actual life look like these days?"
Ethan considered. "Work. Keeping the apartment functional. Occasionally leveraging Sheldon's brain for things he doesn't realize he's helping with."
"Sounds exhausting and weirdly entertaining."
"That's about right."
She tilted her head toward the window as the cab hit the highway, the city spreading out ahead of them — bridges, water, the whole skyline doing its thing.
"Alright," Missy announced, "first order of business: actual food. Plane food is a crime against humanity and I want no part of the cover-up."
"Then let's fix that first."
The cab rolled on toward Manhattan, the late afternoon light going gold across the river.
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