Alice left the box on the bed, quickly scuffling Howie’s hair once more before handing out the take-away Chinese boxes in her hand. Howie continued to look at her with a giant grin on her face and Dana continued to look at her with a completely flabbergasted look on her face.

“You bought him a game machine thing?” Dana asked Alice, receiving a nod in return.

“What’s the big deal?” Alice asked seriously before being pulled into a tight hug by Howie, who had managed to ring his arms around Alice‘s waist.

“My savior,” Howie said into Alice‘s stomach, making Alice laugh. “Here I was thinking I’d be doomed to watch Doctor Phil”

“Hey! Don’t knock Phil,” Dana stated defensively, coming out of her state of shock momentarily. “He’s a truly great guy”

“It’s true,” Sharon said in-between a mouthful of food. “He’s so entertaining. Thank you Alice for getting this for us. I thought I’d die of hunger.”

“Or malnutrition,” Irwin stated, nodding to the crappy hospital food that had been quickly tossed into the corner.

“No problem,” Alice replied with a smile, before turning her attention to Dana, who was still staring at her, except now with a grin plastered on her face. “Hey, can I talk to you outside for a second?”

Dana nodded and the pair excused themselves, walking quickly out into the almost deserted corridor. Dana turned around to look expectantly at Alice, her hands loosely folded in front of her chest.

“What’s up?”

“Um well I was thinking before when I went home,” Alice began, squirming a little bit in discomfort. “And I figured something out.”

“How to upstage me in front of Howie?” Dana asked, that cute little grin still not leaving her face. “Because you managed pretty well.”

“Oh no, not that I knew from the start you were no competition,” Alice replied, glad to have a little bit of comic relief in such a trying time. She sighed and let silence fill the air before scrunching her eyes closed. “Look I’m just going to say this really quickly ok? So bare with me. What we decided on this morning well I’ve decided ‘fuck it.’ I don’t want to wait around until I feel confident enough to have no doubts in our relationship. That won’t happen because we aren’t perfect. What I want is to just be with you I don’t care if we make mistakes or muck up it happens. I’d prefer it to be happening when I can hold and kiss you than when I have to force myself to do otherwise. I want you to be able to tell me all the things I wouldn’t let you say this morning but I want you to be able to tell me them every morning and every night and for me to be able to say them back to you twice as much. I want well I want you.”

Alice slowly opened her eyes that had started to hurt from being scrunched so hard, waiting expectantly for the response she knew was going to come eventually. She looked expectantly at Dana, allowing her to digest the confession that Alice had just pronounced to the empty hallway and to her.

“I love you,” Dana replied not long after, a genuine smile beaming from her face. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Alice‘s smile became so wide that her nose wrinkled up as she walked a little closer to Dana.

“I had an inkling,” she whispered, as she brought her still smiling face closer to Dana’s

“Dana do you want a dumpling!?” Sharon asked as she quickly appeared in the doorway, only to slink slowly back when she realised what she had just interrupted. “I— oh um, I’ll save you one anyway.”

As the door slammed shut once again, Alice, who had been frozen in her spot millimeters away from Dana’s lips, burst out laughing, letting her head fall onto Dana’s shoulder. A stunned Dana began laughing soon after, and for a few minutes the two simply stood in the hallway, laughing into their embrace.

“Have dinner with me tonight,” Alice said as the laughter died down, pulling back from Dana to look her in the eyes. Dana quickly brought her hand up to Alice‘s cheek, wiping away a solitary tear caused from their laughing before answering.

“It’s a date.”