Our love story began over a Jersey Mike's roast beef sandwich, but before we get to that, let us give you some back story. Brianne was working at City of Hope in the Hematology Outpatient Clinic. Geoff had started his Stem Cell Transplant fellowship at City of Hope the beginning of 2019, but oddly enough, we had not crossed paths yet. (If you work in Hematology at City of Hope, you know who the fellows are relatively quickly). The doctor Brianne works with, Dr. Aldoss, was expecting twins with his wife so the clinic decided to have a baby shower on February 12th for him (see photo in photo section). Later in the afternoon that day, Geoff had a new patient to see in Brianne’s clinic and on his way there he did not know his life was about to change. Geoff was seeing a patient with the chair of his department and felt the pressure of wanting to do a good job. That patient had arrived early, so Geoff headed to the clinic to see if he would be able to see the patient early. Geoff and Brianne’s take on subsequent events differs…slightly. According to Geoff, he walked into clinic and approached the nursing station, immediately noticed Brianne and feigned looking confused to see if she would offer to help him…and she did. And if asked, Geoff will tell you, when she turned around and smiled at him, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He tried hard not to show it and stayed quiet for a moment even when she spoke to him. According to Brianne, when Geoff walked in, he looked lost and so she asked if he needed help, and then just stood there in the hallway not doing anything. Geoff eventually spoke, “Hi, I’m here seeing a new patient with Dr. Forman, I saw they were here early, any way I can see them?” Brianne said, "Sure! Let me get them and room them for you." Geoff went to the physician work room in the front of the clinic and Brianne went to get the patient.

The stories differ again here, and according to Brianne, when she went to tell “Dr. Shouse” that the patient was roomed, he didn't even turn away from his computer to acknowledge her and she thought, "Ew! He's rude." And walked away. From Geoff’s perspective, he was very anxious about seeing a patient with the chair of the department and was reading through the patient chart and about the disease the patient had to try to make a good impression. She didn’t realize it, but he did look up to watch her as she walked away. Later that day, Brianne was cleaning up the food from the baby shower and saw there was one roast beef sandwich left and she thought, "I should offer this to that rude Fellow. He's probably struggling and needs food." So she went to the physician workroom and asked Geoff if he wanted the sandwich and he happily took it. Geoff remembers looking up as Brianne stood in the doorway to the physician workroom asking if he liked Roast Beef. It could have been the euphoria of meeting Brianne, but that was the best sandwich Geoff ever had, even though it was several hours old. After seeing the new patient with the department chair, Geoff went to the back of the clinic, looking for Brianne. She was cleaning up the decorations from the baby shower and Brianne smiled and offered him some cream puffs and then proceeded to tell him that the perfect consistency of cream puff is if you leave them to thaw for 10-15 minutes. After that day, Geoff would make excuses to come to Brianne’s clinic to see her and Brianne always had food on hand to offer him. He asked if she wanted to have lunch together and they went to the Japanese Garden at City of Hope, and then again the next day, and again, and eventually we had our first real date on March 29th at Spaghetti Eddie's (see cute photo of Geoff). The rest is history.

Geoff proposed on May 23rd, 2020. I love sunrises and he had originally wanted to take me to Jackson hole, Wyoming (supposedly rated one of the ten best sunrises in the world). Due to Covid, he instead had a photo of the Jackson hole sunrise blown up onto a poster and hung it up on the window outside on our balcony at the apartment we were living in at that time. He tried waking me up that morning to watch the the sunrise, but I wasn't having it. When I did finally wake up, he had me go to the balcony. He then proceeded telling me how much he loved me and pulled out a garden cushion (we had planted a bunch of herbs and veggies, like a lot of people at that time ha) and got down on one knee using the cushion. I immediately asked..."are you proposing to me?!" He just continued on. I, of course, said, "Yes!"