pretend like it’s the weekend

Sara was buzzed into the infirmary and greeted the guards with her usual smile and, “Hey, how are you?” It was routine for her to be in a good mood, no matter how she really felt. The others fed off her positive attitude and passed it on. It was part of her charm, why she was able to communicate with the inmates like human beings and not prisoners trapped in cages.

She truly thought she was helping these men by giving them the best possible care she could, and by not allowing them to simply fall through the cracks of the prison system. Each inmate that came to her was top priority. Until she was able to fix the man and send him on his way, he was the only person in the world that mattered at that moment.

That all changed the day Michael Scofield entered Fox River. After their very first meeting, Sara felt...different. She couldn’t describe it, and it bothered her, even after she finally made it home later that evening.

She sat on her balcony with a glass of wine and looked out over the city. She was thinking about him again, like she had been all day. He had beautiful eyes, a secretive smile, and Sara felt herself wanting to know everything about him. It was silly, and would definitely be considered inappropriate, but she had a crush on him.

She laughed out loud at the thought. It seemed so juvenile. A crush. Hadn’t she stopped having those when she was twelve?

An easy breeze rustled her hair, and for a moment, she closed her eyes, imagining Michael’s fingers tangled through the strands, caressing her scalp while he whispered his secrets in her ear.

She thought about how things could be different, if they’d met under other circumstances. They’d meet on a Saturday or a Sunday for sure, because she always had at least one of those days off. Maybe they were at a bar, and he’d walk up to her, flash that grin and buy her a drink. Or maybe she’d be out jogging in the park, and he’d be there too, sitting on a bench and drinking a coffee, a newspaper open on his lap. She’d stop and ask if he knew that caffeine wasn’t good for him, and he’d laugh and tell her he needed it in order to have the energy to jog.

Or perhaps they’d meet in a library. He seemed like an intelligent, book reading type, and she loved to read too. They’d have a whispered conversation in a quaint and quiet corner, arguing over who was the better writer, Thoreau or Hawthorne. Then they’d call a truce, and he’d read to her passages from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and she’d listen with rapt attention.

She shook herself free from this daydream and stood up, wineglass in hand. Telling herself it was never going to happen, she went back inside her apartment, sliding the glass door shut. It didn’t mean anything, this pretending that she was doing, because the truth was, Michael Scofield was a criminal, or else why would he be in prison? She had no business liking him as much as she did. But a tiny smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, as she thought about all those possible weekends in her future, after he was released.

~end