Dan and Ricky's engagement and reunion plan

Dan and Ricky’s engagement and reunion plan transforms a farewell under pressure into a promise with a date, a place, and a choice left open to Ricky. Before Dan enters a thirty-year Long Sleep, he gives her his Hired Girl, Inc. stock under her birth name and maps out how she might join him in the future. Ricky asks whether he will marry her if she comes; Dan answers yes, gives her his class ring, and leaves her with the assurance that he and Pete will wait for her whether or not she chooses to sleep.

A farewell made conditional

Dan’s plan takes shape in the middle of an urgent departure. He tells Ricky that he is sorry, admits that she was right and he was wrong, and insists that his break with Belle is permanent. He then holds up the certificate for everything he owns in Hired Girl, Inc. and explains that he wants Ricky to have it because he will be gone for so long. The gift is not simply a declaration of affection: Dan needs to make its transfer secure before leaving, while aware that Belle could interfere with a separate assignment sheet.

The practical difficulty forces the promise into concrete form. Dan tears up the assignment he had prepared separately, studies the printed assignment section on the back of the stock certificate, and asks Ricky for her full name. Although she has long been known as Ricky Gentry, she explains that Heinicke is her real family name, shared with her grandmother and biological father. Dan writes “Frederica Virginia Heinicke” on the transfer and specifies that the stock is to be reassigned to her on her twenty-first birthday. The provision makes the gift a future resource she can claim in her own name, rather than a paper promise that could easily be destroyed.

A future measured in dates and places

Dan’s departure is not presented as optional: when Ricky reminds him that he said he would take the Long Sleep for thirty years, he confirms that he has to go. His response is to offer Ricky a choice about what happens after she becomes an adult. She can live with her grandmother, attend school, and let the money accumulate; at twenty-one, if she still wants to see him, she can use it to take the Long Sleep herself. Dan promises that he and Pete will be waiting when she wakes.

To turn that possibility into an actionable plan, Dan gives Ricky instructions he prepared before leaving Denver. She is to arrange her sleep through the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company and use the Riverside Sanctuary in Riverside, with an order to wake her on May 1, 2001. Dan knows that sanctuary’s rules are strict: if she wants him beside her when she opens her eyes, she must leave explicit permission for him to enter beyond the waiting room. He emphasizes that she need not memorize the arrangements; the written instructions are placed on top of the stock certificate for her to keep until she can decide.

That distinction matters. Dan does not demand that Ricky follow the plan, and she does not immediately take either document. He promises to be there if she comes, but also says he and Pete will wait whether she appears or not. The reunion is therefore both meticulously scheduled and contingent on Ricky’s future consent. Its fixed date gives their separation a destination without pretending that her choice has already been made.

The proposal and its tokens

After studying the papers, Ricky addresses Dan quietly and asks, “If I do . . . will you marry me?” The question changes the meaning of the arrangements: the reunion is no longer only a plan for two people to meet after a long interval, but a future in which Ricky is asking to be Dan’s wife. Dan answers that he wants to marry her and that this is why he is making the plan. His reply makes the commitment explicit at the moment they are about to part.

Dan’s final gift is his Tech class ring, which he says is all he has. He gives it to Ricky as a sign that they are engaged, noting that it is too large for her and promising to have another ring for her when she wakes. Ricky closes her fist around it and says that she will not want another one. The oversized ring is at once a practical keepsake and the object that carries their promise across the years: instead of replacing it, she wants to retain the one Dan gave her at their farewell.

The protection left behind

The stock transfer and reunion instructions are not the only safeguards Dan places in Ricky’s hands. He also leaves an envelope marked “To Be Opened in the Event of the Death of Miles Gentry,” without explaining its contents to her. It contains evidence about Belle’s matrimonial and other dealings, which Dan believes could help defeat a court challenge over Miles’s will. The envelope extends the plan beyond romance: even while arranging a possible future together, Dan is trying to protect Ricky against the uncertainty surrounding Miles’s estate.

The episode ends in haste rather than in a leisurely exchange. Dan has noticed the time and knows he cannot wait longer; after giving Ricky the ring, he tells her to say goodbye to Pete. The hurried departure sharpens the contrast between the immediate separation and the exactness of what he leaves behind. A stock certificate, a prepared envelope, written instructions, a specified wake-up day, and a class ring carry different parts of the same commitment: a means of support, a safeguard, a route to reunion, and an engagement. The plan cannot remove the years apart, but it gives Ricky both the means and the freedom to decide what those years will lead to.