I will have the tacos please

Yn is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, one hand braced against the wall, the other pressed to her side. Her work clothes are torn. Her blouse is ripped at the shoulder, dark with something that isn't water. Her face is pale—too pale, the kind of pale that makes his stomach drop—and there's a cut above her eyebrow, blood dripping down her cheek in a slow, lazy line.

She's not wearing shoes.

"Harry," she says, and her voice is wrong. Slurred. Too quiet. "I think I—I think something happened."

She takes one step forward. Two.

And then her knees buckle.

Harry moves before he thinks.

He crosses the kitchen in three strides, catching her under the arms before she hits the ground, lowering her carefully onto the tile. His hands are already running over her—a reflex, years of training, a lifetime of muscle memory—and his brain is screaming at him in a language he knows too well.

ABC. Airway, breathing, circulation. Airway first.

"Yn. Look at me." He cups her face, tilts her chin up, checks her pupils. Her left pupil is sluggish. Slower than the right. His heart seizes. "Baby, I need you to stay awake. Can you do that for me?"

"'M awake," she mumbles. Her eyes are glassy. She blinks too slowly. "Just tired. 'M so tired, Harry."

"I know. I know you are." He runs his hands down her neck, her collarbones, checking for deformity, for step-offs. "Did you drive? Were you in the car?"

"Tree." Her brow furrows, like she's trying to remember. "There was a—a dog. Or something. In the road. I swerved."

"Where's the car?"

"Don't... don't remember. Close. I walked."

She walked. Jesus Christ. She walked home after crashing at seventy miles per hour. The adrenaline must have been astronomical—and now it's wearing off, and her body is starting to realize what happened, and Harry is kneeling on his kitchen floor with his fiancée bleeding in his arms and he doesn't know how bad it is yet.

But he's about to find out.

"Yn, I need to check you over. It's going to hurt." He presses his palm to her cheek, and she leans into it, her eyes fluttering. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, baby. But I need you to stay still and stay awake. Can you do that?"

"Don't wanna go to the hospital," she whispers.

"We'll talk about that later. Right now, I need you to breathe for me. Deep as you can."

He unbuttons her blouse with shaking hands—steady, Styles, you've done this a thousand times—and pushes the fabric aside. His breath catches.

Her left side is already bruising. A deep, angry purple spreading from her ribs down to her hip. He presses gently along the curve of her ribs, and she screams.

Not a gasp. Not a whimper. A full, throat-tearing scream that makes him want to throw up.

"I know," he says, and his voice cracks. "I know, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I have to check."

Her ribs are unstable. Floating. He can feel the crepitus under his fingers—the horrible grinding of bone against bone—and he knows what that means. Broken ribs. Multiple. Probably flail segment, which means—

"Take another breath for me, Yn. As deep as you can."

She tries. He watches her chest rise, and on the left side, it doesn't move right. It caves in. Paradoxical movement. Flail chest.

And her breathing is fast. Too fast. Shallow.

Tension pneumothorax. The thought hits him like a freight train. Air leaking from her lung into her chest cavity, pushing her trachea, collapsing everything. If he doesn't decompress it, she'll—

No. He's not going there.

"Harry." Her voice is small. Scared. "Hurts to breathe."

"I know. I know it does, angel." He presses two fingers to her neck, counting her pulse. Tachycardic. Thready. She's losing blood somewhere. "I need to call an ambulance."

"No."

"Yn—"

"No hospital." She grabs his wrist, and her grip is weaker than it should be. "Just—just give me something. Painkillers. I'll rest. I'll be fine."

"You have broken ribs, Yn. You might have a collapsed lung. You might be bleeding internally." He keeps his voice level, even, the way he does with scared families in the trauma bay. But this is different. This is her. "You are not fine. And you are not staying here."

"Harry, please—"

"No." His voice sharpens. "This is non-negotiable. You are going to the hospital, even if I have to carry you there myself."

He's already pulling out his phone, dialing 911, giving their address in a voice that doesn't sound like his own. The operator asks questions—is she conscious, is she breathing, is there severe bleeding—and he answers on autopilot while his other hand holds hers, his thumb tracing circles on her knuckles.

"Harry," she whispers again, and there are tears in her eyes now. "I'm scared."

He hangs up. Drops the phone. Leans down so his forehead touches hers.

"I know you are. But I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere." He kisses her temple, gentle, avoiding the cut. "The ambulance is five minutes out. You're going to stay awake for me until they get here, and then you're going to let them take care of you, and I'm going to be with you the whole time. Okay?"

"'Kay."

"Say it back."

"I'll stay awake."

"Good girl."

The ambulance ride is a blur of sirens and fluorescent lights and hands that aren't Harry's. He rides in the back with her, holding her hand, telling her names of stars and the capital of every country he can think of just to keep her talking.

"Tell me about the wedding," he says, when her eyes start to droop. "You picked out flowers last week. What color?"

"White," she murmurs. "And... and eucalyptus."

"What kind of white? There's a million kinds of white. You told me that. You were very passionate about it."

A ghost of a smile. "Peony. Garden rose. Something called... 'Quicksand.'"

"Quicksand? That's a flower?"

"It's a... it's a rose. It's blush. But mostly white." Her grip on his hand tightens. "Harry, it hurts."

"I know, sweetheart. I know." He looks at the paramedic, who's already hanging a bag of fluids. "Can you give her something for the pain?"

"Already on board," the paramedic says. "Morphine, four milligrams. Should be kicking in soon."

Harry watches her face. Watches the way her brow slowly unclenches, the way her breathing stays too fast but her eyes get a little softer.

"There you go," he murmurs. "That's better, isn't it?"

"Mmm." She blinks up at him. "You're pretty."

He laughs, and it comes out wet. "You're on drugs."

"Still true."

The ambulance hits a pothole, and she gasps, and he stops laughing.

The trauma bay is chaos.

Harry steps back when they wheel her in—he has to, he's not on shift, he's not a doctor here, he's just a man in jeans and a sweater with his fiancée's blood on his hands—but he doesn't leave. He stands in the corner, arms crossed, watching as the team swarms around her.

"Female, thirty-two, high-speed MVC, walked home post-accident, found down by fiancé," the paramedic rattles off. "GCS 14, unequal pupils, obvious chest wall trauma with respiratory distress, suspected tension pneumothorax, multiple lacerations, hypotensive in the field—"

Harry tunes out the rest. He's watching her face. She's looking for him in the crowd of scrubs and stethoscopes, and when she finds him, her eyes fill with tears.

"Harry," she says, and her voice breaks.

He moves.

He doesn't think about protocols or visitor policies or the fact that he's technically not supposed to be in the trauma bay. He walks to her side, takes her hand, and presses a kiss to her knuckles.

"I'm here. I'm right here."

"Don't leave."

"Never."

The trauma surgeon—a woman with kind eyes and steady hands—introduces herself as Dr. Chen. She looks at Harry, recognizes him from a conference last year, and doesn't tell him to leave. She just nods once and gets to work.

"Let's get a chest X-ray," she says. "And page surgery. I want a FAST scan and a head CT."

Harry watches them cut off her clothes. Watches them expose the bruising on her ribs, the swelling on her abdomen, the laceration on her scalp that's still oozing blood. He watches Dr. Chen listen to her lungs, her expression going tight.

"Diminished breath sounds on the left," Dr. Chen says. "Harry, you're a trauma surgeon. You want to do the honors or should I?"

He's not supposed to. He's not on her case. But Harry looks at YN—at the way she's gripping his hand like he's the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth—and he makes a decision.

"I'll do it."

He scrubs his hands in the sink, puts on gloves, and picks up the scalpel. The room goes quiet. Dr. Chen holds the ultrasound probe over YN's chest, confirming what he already knows—a massive pneumothorax, lung completely collapsed, everything shifting to the right.

"Yn, I need to put a tube in your chest," he says, keeping his voice soft. "It's going to hurt, but it's going to help you breathe. Do you understand?"

"Will you hold my hand?"

"I'll hold your hand with one hand and put the tube in with the other. I'm very talented."

She laughs weakly, and it hurts her, but she doesn't let go of him.

He positions himself at her side. Dr. Chen hands him the scalpel. And Harry—Harry who has done this procedure hundreds of times on strangers, on people whose names he never learns, on bodies that feel nothing—makes a small incision between her ribs and feels his own heart crack.

"Deep breath for me, sweetheart."

She breathes. He pushes the tube through the chest wall, into the pleural space, and there it is—the rush of air, the hiss of the lung re-expanding, the beautiful sound of her chest rising and falling the way it's supposed to.

"Good," he breathes. "That's so good, baby. You did so good."

The chest tube is secured. The drainage system bubbles quietly. And Yn is still looking at him, still holding his hand, still alive.

Dr. Chen orders a head CT and a pan-scan. Harry follows the gurney to radiology, still holding her hand, still whispering.

"You're doing so well. I'm so proud of you. Just a few more minutes, and then we'll get you fixed up, and you can rest."

"M'not doing anything," she slurs. "You're doing everything."

"That's my job."

"Your job is... saving people."

"Today, my job is saving you."

The CT results come back forty-five minutes later.

Harry is in the waiting room—they made him leave for the actual scan, something about radiation exposure, and he spent twenty-three minutes pacing a hole in the linoleum floor—when Dr. Chen finds him.

"We have a skull fracture," she says, holding the films up to the light. "Linear, non-depressed, temporal region. No active bleed, but she has a moderate concussion. We'll monitor her neuro status overnight."

Harry nods. He was expecting that. "What else?"

"Abdomen. She has free fluid in her peritoneal cavity. We're calling it a positive FAST—she's bleeding internally, and she needs a laparotomy. We're taking her to the OR in ten minutes."

Harry closes his eyes. A laparotomy means opening her abdomen, finding the bleed, stopping it. It means hours under anesthesia, hours of him waiting in a plastic chair with bad coffee and worse thoughts.

"Who's operating?" he asks.

"Chang. He's good. You know him."

Harry does know him. Michael Chang is one of the best trauma surgeons in the state. He's also a friend. And right now, Harry needs to trust him.

"Can I see her before they take her up?"

Dr. Chen hesitates. Then she nods. "Five minutes. She's in bay three."

Yn is awake when he gets there. Barely. Her eyes are half-closed, and there's an oxygen mask over her face, and someone has put a cervical collar around her neck even though her spine is fine. She looks small. She looks breakable. She looks like the person he's supposed to spend the rest of his life with, and she almost died tonight.

"Hey," he says, sitting on the edge of her bed. "They're going to take you to the OR in a few minutes. You have some bleeding in your belly, and they need to fix it."

Her eyes widen. "Surgery?"

"Just one surgery. A small one. And then you'll be done, I promise." He brushes her hair back from her forehead, careful of the laceration. "Dr. Chang is going to take care of you. He's very good. He once took out a gallstone the size of a golf ball."

"That's... gross."

"It was impressive." He presses his lips to her forehead. "I'm going to be right here when you wake up. I'm not leaving the hospital. Do you hear me?"

"'M scared."

"I know." He pulls back so she can see his face. "But I'm not scared. Because I know you're going to be fine. You're too stubborn to die on an operating table."

"Harry."

"I'm serious. You once argued with me for forty-five minutes about whether a hot dog is a sandwich. You're not going anywhere."

She laughs, and it hurts her, and he hates himself a little for making her laugh. But she's smiling. She's still smiling.

"I love you," she whispers.

"I love you too." He kisses her forehead again, her nose, the corner of her mouth. "Now go be the most dramatic patient Michael's ever had. I'll see you on the other side."

They wheel her away. Harry watches until the doors close. Then he puts his head in his hands and doesn't move for a very long time.

The surgery takes three hours.

Harry spends them in the waiting room, alternating between pacing, staring at his phone, and drinking vending machine coffee that tastes like burnt regret. He texts her mom—she's in surgery, she's going to be fine, I'll call you when she's out—and then turns his phone off because he can't handle any more questions.

He thinks about the last thing they argued about. It was stupid—something about where to hang a picture in the hallway, her wanting it higher, him wanting it lower. He thinks about how he'd let her hang every picture in the house at whatever height she wanted if it meant she'd come out of this okay.

He thinks about the ring on her finger. The one he spent six months saving for, the one he hid in his sock drawer, the one he put on her hand last month in their living room while she was crying happy tears and saying "yes, yes, yes" over and over again.

He thinks about a world where she doesn't come out of this, and he has to stop thinking about it because he can't breathe.

At 11:47 PM, Dr. Chang comes out.

Harry is on his feet before the door finishes swinging.

"She's stable," Michael says, pulling off his scrub cap. "Lacerated spleen. We were able to repair it without removing it. She lost about a liter and a half of blood, but we transfused two units, and her vitals are solid. Chest tube is in place, lung is fully expanded. Skull fracture is non-operative—we'll just watch it."

Harry sags against the wall. "Thank you. Michael, thank you."

"She's a fighter." Michael claps him on the shoulder. "She's in the SICU. You can see her in about twenty minutes, once we get her settled."

Harry nods. He waits eighteen minutes—because he's never been good at waiting—and then he's walking into the SICU, past the beeping monitors and the hushed voices, to the bed in the corner.

Yn is asleep.

She looks pale against the white sheets. There's a tube coming out of her chest, connected to a bubbling drainage system. There's an IV in each arm, a pulse ox on her finger, leads on her chest. Her abdomen is bandaged from sternum to pelvis, the dressing clean and white. There's a small gauze pad taped above her eyebrow where they stitched the laceration.

Harry pulls up a chair. He sits. He takes her hand—the one without the IV—and holds it between both of his.

"Hi," he whispers. "I'm here."

She doesn't respond. She's sedated, intubated, her chest rising and falling with the rhythm of the ventilator. But her hand is warm. Her fingers curl around his, just a little, like even unconscious she knows he's there.

Harry lowers his head to the edge of the bed. And for the first time since he saw her standing in the doorway, he cries.

She wakes up twenty-six hours later.

The first thing she sees is Harry. He's in the chair next to her bed, head tipped back, mouth slightly open. He hasn't shaved in two days. There are dark circles under his eyes. His sweater is the same one he was wearing when she walked in the door—except now it has blood on it. Her blood.

She tries to say his name, but her throat is dry, and there's a tube in her mouth, and she can't—

"Easy, easy." Harry is awake instantly, leaning over her, his hand on her forehead. "You're intubated. Don't try to talk. Just squeeze my hand if you can hear me."

She squeezes.

"Good girl." His eyes are wet. "You're in the SICU. You had surgery on your spleen last night. Your lung collapsed, but we put a tube in, and it's healing. You have a concussion and a small fracture in your skull, but your brain is fine. You're going to be fine."

She squeezes his hand again. Harder.

"I know. I know you have questions. But you need to rest right now, okay? They're going to take the tube out in a few hours, and then you can talk my ear off as much as you want."

She doesn't want to talk. She wants to sleep. But she also wants to look at him—at his stupid beautiful face, at the worry etched into every line of it—and she wants to tell him she's sorry for scaring him, for swerving, for walking home instead of calling an ambulance, for all of it.

Instead, she just holds his hand and closes her eyes.

When she opens them again, the sun is up, and the tube is gone, and Harry is still there.

The next week is a blur of pain and sleep and Harry.

He doesn't leave. She's not sure if he's officially on leave or if he just stopped showing up to work, but every time she opens her eyes, he's there. Reading in the chair. Sleeping in the chair. Eating bad hospital food out of plastic containers. Holding her hand.

"You need to go home," she says, on day three. Her voice is still raspy from the tube, and her ribs ache every time she breathes, and she's so tired she can barely keep her eyes open. "You need a shower. And real food."

"I showered in the on-call room."

"That doesn't count."

"I used soap."

"Harry."

"Yn." He raises an eyebrow. "I'm not leaving. Stop asking."

She wants to argue, but she's too tired. So she just watches him rearrange her pillows for the fifth time, tucking the blanket around her legs, checking the chest tube drainage like he can't help himself.

"You're hovering," she says.

"I'm monitoring."

"You're hovering."

He sits on the edge of her bed, careful to avoid the tubes and wires, and cups her face in his hands. "I almost lost you. I'm allowed to hover."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You have a chest tube and a skull fracture and an incision that goes from here to here." He traces a line down her abdomen, light as a feather. "But you will be fine. Because I'm going to make sure of it."

She leans into his touch. "I love you."

"I love you too." He kisses her forehead. "Now go back to sleep. The nurses get grumpy when you're awake during shift change."

"How do you know that?"

"I've been here longer than they have."

Day five, she gets discharged.

Harry handles everything—the paperwork, the prescriptions, the follow-up appointments, the careful instructions about showering and lifting and driving. He carries her bag. He helps her into the car. He drives five miles under the speed limit the whole way home, and she doesn't tease him about it because she's pretty sure he'll cry if she does.

Home is strange.

It smells like garlic and rosemary, still, faintly—the sauce he was making when she walked in the door. She looks at the kitchen floor and sees the spot where she collapsed, scrubbed clean but somehow still there in her memory.

"Don't," Harry says softly, coming up behind her. "Don't think about it."

"How do you know what I'm thinking?"

"Because I'm thinking the same thing." He wraps an arm around her waist—carefully, so carefully—and guides her toward the stairs. "Bed. Now. You've been upright for twenty minutes, that's your limit."

"I'm not an infant."

"You're a trauma patient. Same thing."

He helps her up the stairs one step at a time, his hand on her back, his body blocking her from falling if her knees give out. She hates needing help. She hates the way her body feels foreign and fragile, held together with stitches and staples and prayers.

But she loves the way he holds her. The way he treats her like something precious.

He gets her settled in bed—their bed, the one with the soft sheets and the pillows she stole from his side—and then he disappears into the bathroom. She hears water running, cabinet doors opening, the sound of him organizing things on the counter.

When he comes back, he's carrying a blood pressure cuff, a pulse oximeter, and a small notebook.

"Harry."

"What?"

"Why do you have a notebook?"

"To track your vitals." He sits on the edge of the bed and reaches for her wrist. "I'm going to check you every four hours. BP, HR, O2 sat, temperature, and I'm going to look at your incisions."

"You're not a nurse."

"I'm a trauma surgeon. I'm overqualified to be a nurse."

"You're obsessed."

"I'm thorough." He wraps the cuff around her arm and starts pumping. "There's a difference."

She lets him do it. Lets him record the numbers in his little notebook, lets him lift her shirt to check the dressing on her abdomen, lets him listen to her chest with a stethoscope he apparently brought home from the hospital.

"Your lung sounds good," he murmurs, pressing the cold metal to her back. "No diminished breath sounds. Chest tube site looks clean."

"You're ridiculous."

"You're alive." He puts the stethoscope down and kisses her forehead. "I'm going to be ridiculous for as long as it takes."

The first three days at home are... intense.

Harry wakes her up every four hours, even at 2 AM, to check her vitals and give her pain medication. He hovers in the doorway when she uses the bathroom. He won't let her walk down the stairs by herself. He won't let her shower without him sitting on the toilet lid, reading aloud from a book to keep her company, ready to catch her if she slips.

"Harry, I can wash my own hair."

"You can't lift your arms above your shoulders. You have a skull fracture."

"It's a hairline fracture."

"It's still a fracture." He squeezes shampoo into his palm and starts working it through her hair, gentle, methodical. "Stop arguing and let me take care of you."

She closes her eyes. His fingers feel good—scratching her scalp, working out the tangles, massaging the tension from her neck. She leans back against the shower wall and lets him do it.

"You're good at this," she mumbles.

"I've had practice."

"On who?"

"On you. You're always getting into trouble." He rinses her hair, cupping his hand over her forehead to keep the water out of her eyes. "Remember when you fell off that ladder trying to change a lightbulb?"

"I was fine."

"You had a sprained wrist for three weeks."

"Fine."

He laughs, and the sound echoes off the tile, and she thinks maybe being taken care of isn't so bad.

Day four is when she almost ruins everything.

Harry is in the shower—his first real shower in days, because he's been too busy monitoring her to take care of himself. She can hear the water running, hear him humming something soft and low, and she looks at the clock and thinks: I have fifteen minutes.

She's hungry.

Not snack-hungry. Starving. The kind of hungry that comes from eating hospital food for a week and then sleeping through three meals because the pain meds knock her out. She wants a sandwich. A real sandwich. With bread and cheese and maybe that pesto from the fridge.

She shouldn't get up. She knows she shouldn't get up. Harry's rules are very clear: Do not get up without me. Do not walk down the stairs. Do not lift anything heavier than a book. Do not be a hero.

But she's so tired of being helpless.

So she swings her legs over the side of the bed. Stands up slowly, holding onto the nightstand. Waits for the dizziness to pass. Takes a step. Then another.

The stairs are harder.

She goes one step at a time, holding the railing with both hands, her abdomen screaming with every movement. The incision pulls. The chest tube site—still healing, still tender—throbs in protest. But she makes it. She makes it to the bottom of the stairs, makes it to the kitchen, makes it to the counter.

The bread is in the cabinet above the microwave.

She has to reach for it.

She stretches her arm up—too high, too fast—and feels something pull in her abdomen. A sharp, tearing pain that makes her gasp, makes her drop the bread, makes her double over with her hand pressed to her side.

"No no no no no," she whispers, looking down.

There's blood on her shirt. Just a little. Just a spot. But it's spreading.

"Yn?"

Harry's voice from the top of the stairs. She doesn't answer. She can't. She's too busy trying not to panic.

And then he's there.

He takes the stairs two at a time, still dripping wet, a towel around his waist, his hair soaking wet. He takes one look at her—bent over, hand pressed to her abdomen, blood on her shirt—and his face goes white.

"What did you do?"

"I just wanted a sandwich," she whispers.

He doesn't say anything. He picks her up—not carefully this time, not gentle, just picks her up and carries her to the couch, laying her down like she's made of glass. He pulls up her shirt, and she sees his expression shift from panic to anger to something worse: fear.

"You pulled a stitch."

"I'm sorry."

"You pulled a stitch, Yn. You could have torn the whole repair open. You could be bleeding internally again. You could—" He stops. Presses his palm to his forehead. Takes a breath. "What were you thinking?"

"I was hungry."

"You were hungry?" His voice rises, and she flinches. He sees her flinch, and something in his face cracks. "You almost died. You had a hole in your lung. Your spleen was in pieces, Yn. I watched them put you back together. I held your hand while they cut into your chest. And you—" He looks away, jaw tight. "You couldn't wait fifteen minutes for me to get out of the shower?"

"I didn't want to bother you."

"Bother me?" He laughs, and it's not a happy sound. "You are the love of my life. You are my fiancée. You are the person I have chosen to spend every single day of the rest of my life with. And you think asking me to make you a sandwich is bothering me?"

She doesn't know what to say. The blood on her shirt is still wet. Her abdomen is throbbing. And Harry is looking at her like his heart is breaking.

"I was so scared," he says, quieter now. "When you walked through that door, bleeding, not knowing where you were—I have never been that scared in my entire life. And I have seen people die on my table. I have told families that their loved ones didn't make it. And none of that—none of it—was as hard as seeing you fall in my kitchen."

"Harry—"

"No. Let me finish." He kneels in front of the couch, his hands on her knees, his eyes bright with unshed tears. "I need you to understand that you cannot do things like this. You cannot push yourself. You cannot be brave or stubborn or proud. Because if something happens to you—if you tear something open and I can't fix it in time—I will not survive it. Do you understand me?"

She nods. Her throat is too tight to speak.

"I need words, Yn."

"I understand."

"You can't do that again."

"I won't."

"You have to let me take care of you. Even when it's annoying. Even when you're bored. Even when you just want a stupid sandwich." He presses his forehead to her knee. "Please. I'm begging you."

She reaches down and touches his hair. It's still wet from the shower, curling against her fingers. "I'm sorry."

"I know." He looks up at her. "I'm sorry I yelled."

"You were scared."

"Terrified." He takes her hand and presses it to his chest, over his heart. It's pounding. "I love you so much. You can't do that to me again."

"I won't."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

He closes his eyes. Takes a breath. Opens them again, and he's still scared, but he's also Harry—her Harry, the one who catches her when she falls, the one who puts sun cream on her shoulders in Italy, the one who held her hand while they put a tube in her lung.

"Now," he says, standing up. "Let me look at that stitch."

He rechecks the incision. The bleeding is minor—one small torn suture, nothing deeper. He cleans it, tapes it closed, and puts a fresh dressing over it. Then he goes upstairs, puts on clothes, and comes back down to make her a sandwich.

She watches him from the couch, wrapped in a blanket, feeling stupid and loved in equal measure.

He brings her the sandwich on a plate, cut into triangles, with a pickle on the side and a glass of water with ice.

"You're not allowed to eat it in bed," he says. "But you're allowed to eat it on the couch. Baby steps."

"Thank you."

He sits next to her, close enough that their thighs touch, and watches her take the first bite.

"Good?" he asks.

"Good," she says.

He nods. Leans over and kisses her temple. Stays there for a long moment, his lips pressed to her skin, his hand finding hers under the blanket.

"I love you," he murmurs against her hair. "Even when you're an idiot."

"Especially when I'm an idiot."

"Especially then."

Six weeks later, she's cleared for normal activity.

Harry still checks her vitals every morning. Still hovers when she walks down the stairs. Still sleeps with his hand on her stomach, over the scar, like he's making sure it's still there.

She doesn't mind anymore.

She lets him take care of her. Lets him be overprotective. Lets him check her incisions and track her blood pressure and wake her up at 2 AM just to make sure she's breathing.

Because she knows, now, what it cost him. She knows what it means to be loved by someone who almost lost you.

And when he puts a ring on her finger for the second time—not an engagement ring this time, but a wedding band, simple and gold, on a beach in Maine with just their families and the sound of the waves—she looks at him and thinks:

I would survive it all again, just to end up here.

But she doesn't say that. She just kisses him, soft and slow, and lets him hold her like she's something precious.

Because she is.

To him, she always will be.