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It’s actually quite rude when you think about it, the situation Isabel Conklin is currently finding herself in. All she’d wanted when she left their hotel room this morning was to spend her one (one!) day off in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania walking through this cool park she’d found on some website that looked woodsy and perfect for hiking.
Was that really too much to ask? The universe seemed to think so.
Instead of lungs full of fresh air and legs riddled with mosquito bites, Isabel Conklin’s currently riding in the back of an ambulance with a head injury and a possible fracture in her left wrist from where she tried to brace herself as she went tumbling towards the ground earlier after having stumbled over some roots, of all things. God, it’s so stupid.
She’d had to text Steven while she’d been waiting for the paramedics to get to her to distract herself from the pain and make him promise not to tell their mom. It’s not like it’s a serious injury, Belly sees broken wrists all the time with her job.
Still, it’s a little bit humiliating, especially since she’s here with Conrad. God, they were going to go out to dinner tonight, he’d told her to dress up nice and everything.
“How far away are we?” Belly asks the paramedic closest to her, the one who’d cradled Belly’s jaw in her hand when they’d first arrived.
“Only a few minutes out, miss,” the paramedic says. “We should be there very shortly. You don’t have to worry. The doctors at the trauma center will take excellent care of you.”
Yeah, she’s sure they will but it’s not really her she’s worried about.
“Yeah yeah,” she says out loud and swallows down a groan. “I’m a doctor myself, I know the drill.”
You’re not a doctor, Conrad would argue, always grinning as he teases her. You’re a sports psychologist. If you don’t sit through grueling O chem lectures you can’t call yourself a doctor, those are the rules.
Belly knows this because they’ve had this argument before, almost word for word. The memory of it alone is enough to distract her for the rest of the ambulance ride.
God, Conrad’s going to be so annoying about this. Don’t tell him but she kind of loves that about her boyfriend.
“So, the official diagnosis for the head injury is a concussion as we expected. Rest for the next couple of days, avoid overstimulation like bright lights or loud noises and my colleague here will also get you a prescription of pain medication right away. Do you want me to examine your wrist or would you prefer Dr. King here to do it instead?”
Belly looks at the other doctor in the room, the one who doesn’t look like they’re running on nothing but energy drinks and adrenaline. She wonders briefly if this is what Conrad used to be like at work, back when they were doing long distance and Belly wasn’t around for him to cook for.
“Well,” Belly tries for a joke. “Which one of you is the better doctor?”
She has to stifle a laugh when both doctors say the other’s name at the same time. There’s definitely a vibe here. Only one of them is wearing a ring though, Belly notices.
Huh.
“Dr. King then,” she decides. “No offense Dr. Langdon.”
“None taken, I’d choose Dr. King too.”
Jesus.
“Do you want me to go call your emergency contact?” He continues. “With the concussion you should get someone over here to help take you home.”
Home is a couple of states away in a brownstone in Boston that her and Conrad had been slowly decorating over the past year trying to fit both of their furniture into one place. Belly doubts she’s going to get there any time soon but she also doubts her doctor will care for that story.
Besides, Belly’s real home has always been wherever Conrad is. How fortunate that they came here together.
“I’m here for a medical conference, my boyfriend’s part of a panel until 4 PM, what time’s it now?”
Dr. King checks her watch. “Just a little past three. We can wait until after we’ve gotten your wrist checked out if you want.”
Belly smiles. Conrad’s been so excited, she wouldn’t want to take that away from him just because she took a tumble in the woods. “If you can, yes please.”
“I’ll leave you in Dr. King’s very capable hands then,” Dr. Langdon says before lowering his voice, quiet enough Belly’s pretty sure she’s not meant to hear. “Let me know if you need anything.”
Huh. Something’s definitely going on there, she thinks.
She doesn’t think that would be appropriate to ask though, even though the curiosity practically bites at her.
“Well then!” Dr. King says cheerfully when he leaves. “Let’s have a look at your wrist.”
“Do you think it’s broken?” Belly asks because sure, this is more Conrad’s area of expertise but she has eyes. It’s pretty swollen.
“Lift it up for me,” Dr. King says and Belly does as she says before hissing in pain when Dr. King’s careful hands poke at the skin over where her hand meets her wrist.
“I’m sorry,” she says but Belly shakes her head. When Dr. King keeps going Belly bites down on her tongue to hide her winces but she’s not sure she succeeds given the sympathetic looks Dr. King keeps sending her.
“It’s looking like a distal radius fracture,” she says a few minutes later. “I want to send you up for some X-rays to see exactly what we’re looking at but you’re going to have to leave here with a cast today.”
“Great,” Belly groans. “Just great. Conrad’s definitely not going to let us go out for dinner later now.”
“Is that the boyfriend you don’t want us to call?”
“Yeah,” Belly sighs. “He’s very protective, he’ll probably want me to stay in bed for an entire week after we get back home. Honestly, he’s a bit ridiculous.”
But she loves him for it. Can’t believe she gets to have it again, after everything. After the engagement, after the beach, after Paris.
“I see,” Dr. King scrunches her nose. “He must love you a lot.”
Belly smiles, mind drifting just a little bit back to the first time she saw him after she got back from Europe, airport scent probably lingering on her skin still. She’d shown up at his apartment unannounced with the help of Agnes and it had taken her all of five seconds of self-control before she’d given up and stepped into his arms.
“I love him a lot too. It’s been a rocky road but we’ve found stable ground finally which means he’s going to make this, ” she gestures towards her head with her uninjured hand, “a much bigger deal than it is.”
“Rocky?”
Well, she’s injured. Surely Belly can overshare, just a little. “I almost got married to someone else.”
Her relationship with Jeremiah Fisher is pretty shaky these days. She’d kept in touch with him sporadically while she’d been in France but that had been mostly due to some sense of obligation to try and maintain their childhood friendship. It had worked, at least to a degree, but she’d been able to tell something within them had fundamentally changed.
Then she’d gotten Conrad’s third letter and known that she’d never be able to regret it. Not when he promised to be hers when she came back.
“Oh,” Dr. King says in the here and now. “That’s complicated.”
“Was,” Belly corrects her. “ Was complicated. Now being with him is the easiest, most obvious thing in the world. It’s the kind of love you’d never be able to let go of even if you wanted to. I can’t ever imagine marrying someone who isn’t him.”
Her doctor hums and goes quiet for a few moments, glancing at somewhere behind Belly, out the patient window. “I’m happy it worked out for you. Now, let’s get you up to radiology for the X-ray and then Dr. Langdon and I will set the bone back in place.”
“Alright, how long’s the wait?”
Dr. King gets up and helps Belly off the examination table before answering. “Thirty minutes, an hour tops. I’ll have a nurse walk you up and they’ll help you back down here afterwards so we can realign it.”
Sounds fantastic, she can’t wait.
Ten minutes later she’s back in a squeaky plastic chair with her wrist in a paper sling as she waits for her turn to get a dose of radiation and all she can think about is she should have just gone to the riverside.
“Welcome back, trackstar,” Dr. Langdon tells her when she gets back down to her patient room in the ER an hour later, fracture confirmed in two places and an increasing desire for some pain meds now that the adrenaline’s starting to wear off. “You ready for me and Dr. King to reset the bone?”
“Yes please. I’m ready to get out of here, no offense.”
“Alright,” he says and flashes him a grin before beckoning Dr. King over again. As soon as she enters the room Dr. Langdon grazes his palm over Dr. King’s lower back in a move that almost seems out of habit.
Again, huh.
Before she can think much of it Dr. King slides towards Belly on the stool she’s sitting on with some pills and a glass of water. Sedatives, Belly realises, great. This is going to hurt.
“You said you were a doctor, right? So you know how a closed reduction works?”
Belly winces. “Well I’m a sports psychologist really but I see wrist fractures every week, I’m familiar with them in theory.”
Here it comes, she thinks.
“Sports psychology, that’s so cool! I considered doing that briefly in college when my friend got into an accident playing volleyball,” Dr. King says suddenly and oh. Belly loves that reaction.
Dr. Langdon, it seems, is equally surprised. “You played volleyball in college?”
Belly ignores him. “I used to play volleyball too! Conrad and I still play together during our summer vacations, it’s so freeing.”
“Conrad?” Dr. Langdon asks.
“My boyfriend, the one I’m here in Pittsburgh with. He’s a pediatric oncologist, he has a panel today. The one who’s going to panic when he finds out about this.”
Dr. Langdon sounds impressed when he takes a seat right in front of her and gestures for her to lift her wrist and place it on the makeshift table he’s rolled over. “On a panel, he must be good at his job then.”
Well, alright. Isabel Conklin’s not ashamed to brag about Conrad, not when she has this much of a clear opportunity.
“Yeah, he’s really good. He was part of this study when he did his degree at Stanford and two of his professors have kept him on joint research projects ever since. They couldn’t make it so they sent Conrad instead and I tagged along because of a lecture yesterday on psychological effects of traumatic sports injuries in preadolescents. I’m surprised you didn’t know about it already.”
“Oh I know some of our colleagues have been sent there,” Dr. King says. “It just wasn’t of particular relevance for us in Emergency Medicine.”
“Particular relevance,” Dr. Langdon emphasises and alright, do they usually flirt this much in front of patients or is Belly an exception? Hard to tell, results inconclusive. “Just say you didn’t want to go.”
“Stop talking,” Dr. King says but she’s starting to turn red as she waves at him dismissively. Hm, maybe this is a common occurrence then. “Ms. Conklin, please, wrist on the table.”
“Just Isabel’s fine,” she says but does as she’s told. The metal feels cold against her skin with only a thin sheet between her and the surface. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to hate both of you briefly soon, you can at least call me by my name.”
“Well, I’m Mel then, and that is Langdon,” Dr. King- no, scratch that, Mel says.
“What, your name is Langdon Langdon?”
He snorts. “Funny, no,” he says but doesn’t elaborate, instead changing the subject back to her hurting wrist. Must be a pretty bad first name then. “I’m going to spread some gel over your wrist to numb the area and then Dr. King is going to perform the closed reduction after it’s set in, that sound okay?”
God, maybe she should’ve let them call Conrad. She’d really like to have him here to hold her hand right now, he always makes everything better. All he would have to do is look at her and she’d be distracted enough. Instead, as nice as her doctors seem to be, she feels all alone in a sterile hospital room that smells like antiseptic and latex.
She’ll be fine, of course. She still wishes he was here.
Too late for that though.
“Go ahead,” she tries for a smile. “Let’s get it over with.”
It’s not until an hour later when her bone’s somewhat back in place and she’s waiting for the ache to subside just a little that she sees him stumbling past her treatment room through the glass window, out of breath and eyes wild as they dart around to find her as he jogs up to the nurses’ desk to, presumably, figure out what room she’s in.
Then she hears him.
“Excuse me,” he’s saying distantly, always so damn polite. “My girlfriend’s in here somewhere, Dr. Isabel Conklin? Do you know where she is?”
God, she loves him.
Because here’s the heart of the matter: her boy will tease her and make jokes but at the end of the day she knows there’s no one in this world more proud of her than him. He can make jokes about O chem and the painful routine of his intern year all he wants but she knows that when it comes down to it, he doesn’t actually care. When it comes down to it, he’s never going to discredit anything she does or belittle her hard work.
That's what sets him apart from anyone else in her life. That’s why she loves him.
Well, that and the fact that she’s seen him through almost every phase of his life and no matter how hard she’s tried to deny it in the past she loves every single one of them. Even the awkward ones, even the hurtful one , she can’t find it in herself anymore to hate them because at the end of the day he was hers through all of them, even if she didn’t believe it at the time.
The whole damn time, she had him. The whole damn time he refused to take himself back in the belief that he wouldn’t need to.
“You called him?” Belly asks her doctors. “When did you do that?”
“While we were waiting for the local anesthesia to set in. Figured you’d like the company and also that he’d probably prefer to be here with you over a panel no matter how good he is.” Dr. Langdon shrugs, smirking a little.
Realistically that had been a bit of an asshole move but Belly can’t find it in her to care when just the sight of her boyfriend is sending a rush of relief through her entire body. It gets even better when their eyes lock and Belly can see the exact same feeling reflected in his before he goes rushing towards her room.
“Baby,” Conrad says when he reaches her, one hand going up to cradle her jaw and turning her head from one side to the other. “God, what happened?”
“I’m okay, Con. It’s just a broken wrist.”
“Just? I thought you were going to the river?”
She smiles. “Yeah but then I found out about this cute forest trail and changed my mind.”
“Jesus,” Conrad drags a hand over his face. “You should’ve had them call me as soon as you got admitted, I would’ve been here so much earlier.”
She shakes her head. “You’ve looked forward to this panel for over a month, Con. It’s not like I’m dying, it’s just a little fracture. Small, really.”
“It’s not small,” he counters and Belly doesn’t know how he’d know that considering he just got here. “You’ll need to be in a cast for three months.”
“You’re exaggerating,” she sighs. “Dr. Langdon, tell my boyfriend he’s exaggerating.”
“Well,” Dr. Langdon starts and Belly wants to groan. How did Conrad just know? “He’s not wrong.”
Fuck.
“You haven’t even looked at my wrist, how could you possibly know that?”
“I saw it on the board and I did an Emergency Med rotation as a med student, Bells, back in California, remember?”
Well, now that he mentions it.
“I’m really fine Con, I promise.” It’s her turn to reach her good hand up to run it through his hair and his eyes close instinctively at the touch. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Mel and Dr. Langdon leave quietly, Dr. Langdon whispering something and Mel shoving him lightly out the door.
She can’t focus on that right now though. “I swear I’m fine, I just stumbled over a root and Steven insisted on an ambulance because it was pretty far out and I couldn’t really walk properly at first when I got up. I just really didn’t want you to worry.”
“I’m going to kill Steven,” he mumbles. “He should’ve told me.”
“I made him promise he wouldn’t,” she says and pulls at his hair just a little, just as a distraction. “Sister loyalty takes priority.”
“He used to tell me every detail about you he could think of that he thought would make me laugh, you know. He’s all grown up now.”
Oh, she’s well aware. Imagine having a crush on your older family friend and your brother won't stop trying to tell him embarrassing stories about that time you fell into a puddle on picture day or about how much you cried the day you got your braces put in. She’d dreaded their summers together growing up as much as she’d looked forward to them.
Needless to say she for one is glad Steven’s matured.
“You could’ve told him to stop, you know.”
That gives her a tentative smile from him finally. “Now why would I have done that? I wanted to know everything about you.”
Jesus. She forgets sometimes that he’d liked her too, back then when all they had to worry about was sand in her hair and being dropped in the pool once every other week.
“Come here,” she says and pulls him closer by the back of his neck. Like always, he goes easily. “I promise I’m okay, Con. I know how important today was to you, I just didn’t want to take away from that.”
He bumps their foreheads together. “You have to know by now that there’s nothing more important to me than you. I’m a doctor, Belly. If you're hurt I want to be there. I need to be there.”
“Alright,” she kisses the corner of his mouth quickly. “I promise I’ll ask them to call you right away if anything like this happens ever again.”
“Thank you baby,” he whispers on an exhale. “Now keep your right arm still, I’m going to kiss you and you can’t move it until the cast is on.”
He doesn’t give her time to respond before he leans all the way in and steals her breath straight out of her mouth.
For a second it’s like she can feel it again, the wind in her hair as the waves crash on the shore next to them. They’d been so much younger and naive with so many mistakes left to make but somehow Conrad Fisher holds her in the exact same way today as he did years ago.
It’s hard to stop herself from looping both arms over his shoulders and pulling him in impossibly closer but she just as about manages, even when Conrad brushes his index finger over her pulse in a way that he knows drives her crazy.
Dr. Langdon clearing his throat in the doorway is the one thing that eventually forces them apart.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he says but he doesn’t sound apologetic at all. “Ms. Conklin, Ms. Conklin’s boyfriend. Did we want to get a cast on you today or do you want to keep kissing in our overcrowded ER for a bit longer?”
The look on Conrad’s face is kind of comical as he pulls himself away to spin around towards Dr. Langdon. Belly only catches his wide eyes and his flush, if it’s from kissing her or embarrassment she can’t tell, before all she sees is the back of his head.
“I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier,” Conrad says and reaches out a hand. Adorable. “I’m Dr. Conrad Fisher.”
“We’ve heard all about you from Ms. Conklin here already, the pediatric oncologist was it? Very noble.”
“Uhm,” Conrad stumbles a little and Belly could bet good money on him blushing, just a little bit. Whether that’s due to the fact that Belly’s told her doctor about him or from the praise, however, Belly can’t decide on. “It’s the rotation that really stuck with me I guess.”
Dr. Langdon shrugs. “We all have our calling, I’m too much of an adrenaline junkie to work solely with kids but I’m impressed by those of you who do. Now, Dr. King got called away for a trauma but I’m here to send you up to Ortho to get a cast, do the two of you think you can take a break from your great big emotional romantic reunion or do you want me to give you another ten?”
God, he’s such an asshole. Belly wonders what Dr. King sees in him.
Then again, Conrad had been a bit of an asshole back in the day and as much as she’d tried to hide it she’d loved it, just a bit. Maybe it’s just that Belly finds it unattractive on anyone not named Conrad Fisher.
Shock.
Belly saved Conrad from having to find a response by pulling him back to her by the arm. “I’ll have you know this isn’t even top three in our list of Great Romantic Reunions. He travelled to Paris for me once.”
“Jesus,” Dr. Langdon laughs. “What are you, a romantic lead from an old-school romcom?”
“I just love her,” Conrad says, looking back at her and squeezing her hand. “First loves and all that.”
“Right,” Dr. Langdon smirks and drums his fingers against the doorframe impatiently. “Well, Ms. Conklin. I’ll have a nurse come and show you up, lover boy here can join you if you want.”
She laughs as Conrad shoots her a look. “Thank you, Langdon Langdon.”
He doesn’t bother with a reply as he pushes himself off the wall.
“Charming guy,” Conrad says when he’s out of earshot.
Belly laughs again. “He’s the one who called you so be nice. Now let's get this cast on so we can go back to our hotel room and I can knock myself out on painkillers.”
He presses a kiss into her forehead. “Sounds perfect, we’ll pick up some takeout on the way back before though, I bet you haven’t eaten all day.”
“My other doctor gave me an energy bar from the staff vending machine earlier but other than that, no.”
Conrad shakes his head then, dimples out on full display. “Just tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.”
Before she’s able to respond the same nurse as before sticks his head into her room. “I heard we’re ready for a cast here, follow me.”
Belly doesn’t let go of his hand for the whole walk there. It’s comforting to know that she doesn’t have to tell him that she’s a little bit scared, that he just knows anyway.
It’s not until the cast is on and Conrad has helped buckle her into the passenger seat that Belly brings it up.
“I think my doctors are having an affair.”
Conrad hums before placing a hand on her headrest to check the back window before putting his car in reverse to back out of the parking space. “I was a bit busy focusing on you to notice. What makes you think that?”
She shrugs. “Just a feeling, she kept looking at him in the same way my mom says I look at you and he kept brushing his hand against the small of her back every chance he could.”
“Well infidelity is actually pretty common in the medical field, I think it’s somewhere around 20%. I imagine emergency doctors might have even higher numbers though, what with the adrenaline and high-stakes environment.”
That takes Belly aback a little. “What, they teach you that in med school?”
“No,” he chuckles and turns on the turn signal. “I learnt that during my first couple of rotations.”
“Well, you better not cheat on me or I’ll kill you. I swear it, Conrad Beck Fisher.”
“Oh no, not the full government name,” he grins. “Well, Isabel Susannah Conklin, I spend all of my days around kids and imagining when we have our own, me cheating on you isn’t something you need to worry about.”
It’s not the first time he mentions them, their future kids. They’d even talked baby names once, late one night at the tail end of July with the wind brushing sand through Belly’s hair as they laid on the sand dunes of Cousins’ beach. Conrad had been warm against her side as they laid out their future underneath the moon.
She’s keeping the names they talked about secret from anyone who’d ever ask but once in a while she’ll think of them and smile. She’ll picture them running down the very same beach her and Conrad kissed for the first time on and she’ll hope they’ll have Conrad’s eyes just so she’ll be able to read them just as easily as she does her boyfriend’s.
But they need to get married first, which means Conrad has to propose.
Because here’s what’s actually quite rude: she’d been pretty sure he was planning to propose to her this weekend. They’re planning on going back to the beach house after the conference for a few days on their beach and Belly had found the ring box in his suitcase this morning as she’d been looking for a hoodie, the very same one she’s currently wearing. He hasn’t even noticed yet, even though the red STANFORD print is still holding strong after years of washing machine spin cycles.
Anyway, the ring . It’s so beautiful and now who knows when she’ll get to see it again. Knowing Conrad he’s probably thinking this is a sign.
It does kind of make her want to cry, sue her. Has she not waited long enough?
“Better hurry to propose then,” she baits him just to see what he’ll say. “I’m waiting.”
He doesn’t say anything but his fingers start drumming against the steering wheel and Belly bites down a smile.
“I didn’t realise you were waiting for me to,” he has the nerve to say. He’s not smirking though, not turning it into a joke. That just confirms her suspicions.
“You do it whenever you feel is right,” she says. “But if you’re waiting for everything to be perfect we might have to wait a really long time given you’re a perfectionist these days and I don’t want you to keep me waiting until we’re already old and grey.”
“You deserve it to be all planned out though, I don’t want to rush it.”
“Conrad,” she reaches up to cradle his cheek in her left hand. “I love you but we’ve been in love for like ten years now. I think it might be impossible for you to rush it at this point.”
He leans into her touch then as they stop at a red light. “Alright, point taken. I’m still going to be making it a surprise though.”
She smiles over at him. “Yeah I know, you big romantic.”
Conrad laughs and she feels the vibrations of it spread throughout her whole body. The light turns green and he puts the car back into drive effortlessly, a quality of his that she’s never told him she finds nonsensically attractive.
A few minutes later Belly breaks the silence again. “Besides, I need to lock you down before you get the chance to cheat on me with some doctor colleague of yours. At least then I’ll get some money out of the heartbreak.”
He snorts and looks over at her. “If I ever cheat on you just throw me off a bridge so you can get the insurance payout too.”
She grins. “See, this is why I want to marry you.”
“Mhm,” he hums. “Because I’m willing to die for you?”
“That doesn’t hurt, but no. Because I know in my bones that you’re never going to have to.”
Conrad doesn’t propose to her on Cousins’ beach in the end, he says afterwards that it would’ve been too predictable, too on the nose. Instead he gets Taylor to surprise her with tickets back to Paris to go visit Belly’s exchange year friends and shows up a week into their trip to meet her in Jardin de Plantes and Belly knows where he’s going with it as soon as she spots him by the daisies but pretends she doesn’t just so she can see him squirm a little beforehand.
When he finally does get down on one knee it takes her less than two seconds to drag him back up after saying yes yes yes and kiss him senseless, almost inappropriately for being in public.
It’s not the last time he’s going to surprise her throughout their lifetime but it’s up there, right along with the first time he surprised her in Paris and that time, six months after they got engaged, that he told her she was pregnant before she even knew herself.
Her Conrad Fisher, her infinity. She thanks the universe every day that they found their way back to each other.