My head was spinning when I got back home. I had expected my first day at work to be filled with reading boring presentations and reading staff manuals that made me fall asleep.

Instead, my first day had seen me flirt with a billionaire doctor who just happened to be my boss. He had frightened me at first, with his serious expression and powerful physical presence. Yet, I had seen his mask slip and been treated to a view of the real Frank Sanchez while we shared a coffee break.

I found myself giggling on the bus home and covered my mouth with my hand to appear slightly less of a lunatic to the other passengers. It felt good to be alive.

I bounded into my house with some lightness in my step that I hadn’t felt in years. Daisy was waiting on the sofa for me and looked surprised to see me grinning from ear to ear. Her famously sharp sixth sense was presumably working overtime right now.

“Good first day at work, Janie?”

“It was okay.” My broad grin was clearly screaming out to the world that the day had been slightly better than just “okay”, though. I tried hard to control my emotions but I wanted to scream out that I had maybe just met the man of my dreams.

“Did you meet Dr. Sanchez?” Daisy’s ability to cut through straight to the heart of the matter never ceased to amaze me. How the heck did she choose to open the conversation with that name? Maybe she could read my mind after all, just like she often claimed to be able to do.

“Dr…Sanchez? Hmm. Let me think. Yeah…if I’m not mistaken I saw a doctor there. Was it Sanchez it said on his name tag? Hmm…maybe.”

I left Daisy with her mouth open and bounded up the stairs, shouting down something about getting a shower.

I lingered longer than usual in the shower, partly to avoid Daisy’s unerringly accurate guesses and partly because I was imagining Frank’s hands running over my naked body. I lost myself in my fantasies for a good 10 minutes, as I imagined how his strong but gentle surgeon’s hands would precisely locate the exact areas where I urgently needed his touch.

Eventually, I went downstairs and saw Daisy sitting alone at the dining table. She looked so small and helpless at that long table – designed for 4 or more people – that it always broke my heart when I saw there sitting there.

My little sister had been just 10 when our parents had died so suddenly. Being just over 8 years older than her, I had to grow up quickly in order to look after us once we were all alone.

Somehow, I had juggled a series of part-time jobs to make ends meet while studying to be a nurse at the same time. I still have no idea how I managed it all but it was my love for Daisy that made me suffer the sleepless nights with as much good humor as I could muster.

Now, the two of us were still alone in the world but I finally had a good job and Daisy was growing up to be smart and strong. We were going to be alright after all, so maybe I could start to relax soon for the first time in my adult life.

Daisy had prepared my favorite meal – spaghetti with meatballs on top – and my plate with sitting waiting on me. This was our favorite time of day; when we finally had some peaceful time alone to talk about everything that had happened to us earlier in the day.

“So, tell me about the clinic. Did you fix the nose of someone famous yet?”

“No, don’t be silly. It was my first day. Well, actually, tomorrow I’m going to be working on a celebrity but I’ve been sworn to secrecy about who it is.”

“By whom?”

“By Heidi, the receptionist.” I lied while shoveling some spaghetti in my mouth. This was the one meal that we always ate with willful abandon, splattering sauce over our clothes and ending up with red stains over our mouths.

We both had this need inside to feel like children again for an hour or so. Daisy’s home-made spaghetti with meatballs gave us the perfect excuse to do this. We never failed to eat this meal with big smiles, while sometimes eating other stuff was a struggle at the big table with just two of us there.

“Heidi? Who is she? Isn’t Doctor Sanchez the boss?”

“He is. Well, I guess so.”

“So you did meet him.”

Daisy was smiling her most innocent little smile. That was always a bad sign. My experience of her little tricks and her sharp sense of humor told me to be on guard.

“Sure, we talked a bit. Blah blah, nose, scalpels, and all that boring stuff about medicine. He’s a bit dull, to be honest. And ugly. Jeez, that man fell down the ugly tree and hit every single one of those branches on the way down.”

“Hmm. So do you like him?”

“What the heck is this? The Spanish Inquisition. Why are you so obsessed with Frank…? I mean, Doctor Sanchez?”

My little sister’s eyes shone more brightly than ever before and her smug smile spoke a thousand words. She had found out my weak spot and she knew it.

The little rascal washed her plate in silence – we had long ago reached an agreement to each tidy up our own messes – and started walking up the stairs to her room very slowly. Was she going to let me off the hook for the first time ever? It seemed unlikely but I clung on to the tiniest shred of hope.

“Oh, by the way.” She hung over the stair handrails and the image of a cheeky little monkey taunting visitors to the zoo flashed into my mind. “Frank, I mean Dr. Sanchez, called you earlier.”

With that bombshell delivered, my mischievous little sister blew me a kiss and then ran up the stairs while I chased after her, strands of spaghetti still hanging from my mouth. She got to her room and slammed the door shut behind her before I could get my hands on her.

Frank had called my house not long after I had left work. What did he want that couldn’t wait until tomorrow?

Finally, Daisy opened the door of her bedroom and admitted that Frank had called to ask me to go in half an hour early tomorrow, as the operation had been brought forward. Apparently, my cell phone was out of battery so he had called my house instead.

From that brief phone call, Daisy had managed to work out that there was “something between us” and that he “could be the man of your dreams”.

She was right, of course. Or at least I hoped she was. Tomorrow would probably give me all the answers that I needed to know. How I wished that the night would flash by quickly like when I was a child.

That night, I dreamed of the operation going perfectly as I wowed Frank with my skills, confidence, and knowledge. However, by the time I woke up, it was a heavy sense of fear that was hanging over me instead.

I got dressed in a hurry but time seemed to be shooting past like it has refused to do last night. I was soon in danger of being late for the surgery so I rushed out the door without having any breakfast or seeing my little sister.

The bus was pulling out of the stop and I had to race after it to try and get the driver to stop. He didn’t and I trudged back to the stop. The day had started off horribly and I prayed that this wasn’t some sort of sign that it was going to be a day to forget.