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You didn't understand what had happened.
One moment you were running alongside Max, your partner, chasing a couple of meth cooks through a park while the rest of your SWAT unit was tasked with securing the lab, when something exploded beneath your feet. For a fraction of a second, there was only blinding agony and searing heat.
Then, an absolute, crushing silence fell before your ears began to ring sharply. You felt your head spin violently, a wave of suffocating nausea rising up your throat while the world refused to stop turning on its axis. Then, Max's voice cut through the haze.
"—Rocker, fuck!"
The scream reached your ears like a distant, ghostly echo, distorted by the relentless, deafening buzzing. You felt his desperate, trembling hands cradling your cheeks gently as he turned you onto your back... Was I on my side? you thought, utterly confused, struggling to piece together how you had ended up in that position.
"Open your eyes, Rocker, come on," Max insisted. His voice sounded fractured, weighted with a volatile mixture of terror and adrenaline that you had never, in all your years serving alongside him in SWAT, heard before. It was precisely that note of raw panic that made you understand the situation was much worse than your numbed senses could feel, while the chemical rush took complete control of your system, mercifully anesthetizing the disaster.
You made the monumental effort for him, for your team... and for Brendon. God, your Brendon. Your eyelids were heavy as lead, but with a desperate fight, you finally managed to open them. Max's image was split in two; his face, covered in ash, blood, and sweat, wavered frantically in front of you. You felt as though you were trapped on a ship, tossing to the rhythm of a dizzying, violent sway.
"That's right... Stay with me, baby, it's going to be alright," he whispered, though his gaze drifted frantically down to your legs. That single gesture struck a chilling chord of terror deeper than you could admit; what the hell was wrong with your legs?
"—Officer down! I need an ambulance here now! It's Rocker!" he roared into his radio. The fleeing cooks no longer mattered; his entire universe had shrunk down solely to you.
"Max..." you managed to articulate between your gritted teeth, although the name escaped more like a broken sigh than a word. You fixed your eyes on those ice-blue eyes that reminded you so painfully of Brendon's.
You could only think of one thing: not being taken to his hospital. He shouldn't see you like this. He would lose his mind with worry, he would completely unravel... And you loathed the thought of scaring him. You had both been through too much before: too many physical scars earned in the line of duty, and the silent, haunting grief of three miscarriages that still weighed heavily on the souls of both of you. You couldn't bear to see that look of sheer terror on his face again. Not today.
"Rocker, baby, I need you to listen to me carefully, okay? I have to put a tourniquet on your left leg and it's going to hurt like hell, but if I don't do it, you're going to bleed out."
The mention of the tourniquet hit you like a physical blow, slicing clean through the thick fog of shock. You knew what that meant. If Max, who always maintained an iron composure, was resorting to that, it was because your femoral artery was an open faucet right now. Or worse...
"—Max... It's very bad, isn't it?" Your voice was just a fragile thread, a broken whisper seeking a truth that your body already intuitively understood.
"Don't worry about that right now. Just breathe and stay awake for me," Max muttered between his teeth, a tear slipping through the grime on his face. "Now, bite into this."
He wedged a piece of rolled gauze between your teeth, but you didn't even have time to protest. He tightened the tourniquet with brutal, uncompromising force.
The pain was a blinding white explosion that instantly erased the park, the screams, and your partner's face. Your fingernails tore into Max's arm through the fabric of his uniform, and a dull, strangled moan was caught in the gauze as your back arched violently off the ground. Every single beat your heart was straining to produce seemed to belong to a cruel countdown, and the coldness that was beginning to numb your fingers wasn't just from the rapid blood loss—it was the sheer, terrifying fear of leaving Brendon all alone in this world.
"If something happens to me... can you tell my husband that I love him? Please?" Your voice sounded small and utterly terrified, stripped of all the fierce authority you used to carry as an officer.
"You'll tell him yourself, baby, because I'm not going to let anything happen to you," Max replied. His words tried desperately to be firm, but you felt a warm drop fall onto your cheek. It was a tear. He was weeping silently.
But you knew the grim truth. You were part of SWAT; you knew ballistics, you knew the devastating ruin that shrapnel left behind. And if what had happened was a mine, you knew what that did to a human body. You knew it was quite possible that you would never see your husband again. That Brendon, the man who always had a plan for everything, might have to face the one variable he couldn't control with all his medical knowledge or a scalpel: your death.
The agonizing thought of making him a widower pressed down on your chest more heavily than the physical pain itself, which began to hit in relentless waves. You thought about your bedroom, about the comfortable silences shared after grueling shifts—in the operating room or in the barracks—and about the unbearable emptiness you would leave in his bed. Even worse, you thought about the shattering of your future. There would be no more quiet mornings trying to find hope after each heartbreak; you would no longer be able to try for that rainbow baby you had yearned for so deeply after the three miscarriages that had almost sunk you both.
If you left now, you would take with you the very last chance to give him that family you had so desperately longed to build together.
"No... don't let me die, Max," you begged, and this time you didn't hide the raw terror bleeding into your voice. "He can't... not again. He can't lose anything else. He has already lost too much..."
"It's not going to happen, Rocker. Listen to the sirens, they're here." Max squeezed your hand with crushing force, his eyes fixed on the ambulance coming to a screeching halt just a few feet away. "Here! Massive trauma to the lower extremity post-explosion! Uncontrolled bleeding!"
You felt them hoisting you onto the stretcher, the sudden movement causing blinding stars to burst across your eyes. As you were being loaded into the sterile, metallic cubicle of the ambulance, the final thought you managed to hold onto before the darkness began to devour the edges of your vision was entirely for him.
Forgive me, Brendon. Please forgive me for not coming home tonight.
The next time you opened your eyes to the world was to the metallic clanging sound of the ambulance's back doors bursting open. The cold Pittsburgh afternoon air hit your face, but it did nothing to clear the heavy fog suffocating your mind. The world was spinning wildly around you, a dizzying spiral of flashing lights and blurred faces moving with frantic, terrifying urgency.
"—Traumatic amputation of the left leg below the knee, caused by a mine. Tourniquet-controlled bleeding in the field!" a voice shouted over the frantic, rhythmic beep of the monitors. "Regaining partial consciousness!"
Amputation? The word bounced off the walls of your skull like a stray bullet, shattering your reality. Had you lost your leg? No, it couldn't be. Your career, everything you had fought so hard for, your teammates... You were going to lose everything. You tried to sit up in a panic, but a firm, small, gloved hand pressed you gently but unyieldingly back against the gurney.
As you looked up through the thick fog of pain, you recognized Perlah; you were at the PTMC. Your heart skipped a beat that had absolutely nothing to do with medical shock. Brendon was working just a few floors up, probably in the middle of a difficult surgery, completely unsuspecting that his entire world was violently falling apart in the emergency room below.
"Lie down, honey," Perlah whispered, adjusting the flow of the IV, her eyes filled with profound compassion and dread.
"I need Ortho down here now!" Dr. Robby roared, completely ignoring the exchange. "Her blood pressure is through the floor! Bring two units of O-negative, now!"
"I'm on it, boss," Donnie said, speaking hurriedly into the red emergency phone on the wall. "Dr. Brennan just went into surgery ten minutes ago. Shark is finishing an arthroplasty in operating room 4."
Shark. That damn nickname by which your husband was called at the hospital, and which had always made you laugh, now seemed to weigh three times as much. Don't let him come down, don't let him see this, you thought, hot tears flooding your eyes as you struggled not to succumb to utter panic. You preferred any other doctor, any total stranger, over seeing the horror and devastation in the eyes of the man you loved.
"I don't care if they're operating on the Pope himself! Tell them to get the hell down here right now!" Dr. Robby roared, shooting Donnie a look sharp enough to freeze hell itself.
The chaos in the trauma room amplified from that moment on. For you, everything became a blurred nightmare; the harsh sound of metallic instruments crashing against steel trays mixed with the incessant, high-pitched warning beeps of the monitor. Your body felt impossibly heavy, as if you were sinking deep into fresh, suffocating cement, but your mind remained anchored to that single nickname: Shark.
Park "The Shark" to the hospital staff; but just Bren to you. PTMC's star orthopedic surgeon, the man who worked with broken bones every single day—your husband—was only a few floors away. If Donnie managed to locate him, Brendon would come downstairs believing he was coming to save the life of an anonymous police officer, only to find your face, pale, bloodied, and broken.
You should have stayed in bed with your Doberman puppy, Anubis. That bittersweet thought struck you just as the heavy hiss of the automatic doors announced that destiny had been fulfilled.
Brendon entered the room like a predator looking for his next prey, completely ignoring the utter chaos of Trauma 1. He stopped dead at the foot of the stretcher, his eyes scanning the catastrophic wound with his trademark mechanical efficiency as the entire emergency team awaited his verdict in a deathly, suffocating silence. It was then that Ogilvie, completely unable to read the terrifying tension vibrating from the surgeon's body, decided it was time to speak up.
"The patient is just SWAT cannon fodder anyway," Ogilvie muttered dismissively, turning around just as Brendon finished digesting the fact that the bleeding woman in front of him was the exact same one he had left that morning, asleep and warmly snuggled with Anubis. "It's a shame about her leg, she was a very beautiful woman..."
The air in Trauma 1 froze instantly. Donnie stopped checking the monitor and Perlah let go of the gauze, both of them staring at Ogilvie in sheer, unadulterated horror. He had crossed a line from which there was no return. Meanwhile, a shudder of pure revulsion racked your fragile body.
Brendon turned to him. The Shark's silence was infinitely more terrifying than any scream. He approached Ogilvie with a predatory, agonizing slowness until the medical student was forced back against the wall, practically chest-to-chest. The raw fury burning in Brendon's eyes was entirely unprofessional; it was something primal, wild, and murderous.
"Out of my sight," Brendon whispered. His voice was a lethal hiss, so low and venomous that only you and Ogilvie could catch the tremor of pure, unbridled hatred in his tone. "If you make a single sound again, or if you ever look at this patient again, I will personally make sure that the closest you ever get to a hospital for the rest of your life is because you are a permanent ICU patient."
Brendon didn't even wait for him to leave. He spun around and, for a fleeting microsecond, his eyes locked onto yours. The detached star surgeon was nowhere to be found in that look; there was only the husband who had promised to protect you always, completely crumbling inside. And yet, he allowed his hardened expression to soften just for you; I got you, his deep blue eyes seemed to plead in the middle of the storm.
"—Operating room three. GET MOVING!" he roared, and this time the scream was so visceral, so torn from his soul, that it made even Dr. Robby jump instinctively.
That was the last thing you heard as the world began to bleed out at the edges. The sound of stretcher wheels racing across the floor and the hiss of automatic doors became a distant echo, drowned out by the heavy tide of blood loss and shock. Your body, utterly exhausted by the trauma, finally surrendered to the darkness again.
As the overhead lights faded into a single, blinding white blob above you, your last conscious thought wasn't about the excruciating pain in your leg or the roar of the mine that had rewritten your destiny. It was for him. Your Brendon. You hoped with all your might that you would wake up—not only because you didn't want to die, but because of the desperate, aching need to see those blue eyes again, always overflowing with love for you, to feel his massive hand protecting yours, and to hear your secret nickname from his lips as soon as you woke up, his voice beautifully hoarse from sleep.
You wanted to come home, to the peace of your shared mornings, to the warm weight of Anubis at the foot of the bed, and to the absolute shelter of Brendon's arms.
You felt heavy, as if your entire body had been forged of lead and submerged in thick honey. Your mouth was dry and pasty, with a rancid, metallic taste clinging to the roof of it, and there was a rhythmic, monotonous beep piercing through your ears. You tried to open your eyes, but your eyelids felt heavily stitched shut. Yet, even through that dense, suffocating haze of drugs and exhaustion, you heard it. It was a voice you knew in all its facets: that of the brilliant surgeon, that of the man who loved you with all his heart and soul, and now, that of a wounded shark defending his territory with vicious desperation.
Brendon was fighting with someone.
"I fully understand that, under any normal circumstances, I shouldn't have operated on her because she's my wife, Gloria." Brendon's voice reverberated with barely contained, trembling fury, and then you noticed his large hand grasping yours—vulnerably delicate despite his anger. "But I wasn't going to let her suffer a single second longer, nor was I going to let her bleed to death waiting for another attending to deign to come down. I wasn't going to risk wasting the precious time needed to save her life!"
You heard an impatient, clinical sigh, and the sharp snap of a leather folder. It was Gloria Underwood, the hospital's medical director.
"Doctor Park, conflict of interest rules are there for a reason. You know this better than anyone. You have put the accreditation of this entire center at risk."
"The rules?" Brendon let out a dry, humorless, utterly disdainful laugh that sounded entirely broken. "A mine has shattered her life. She has lost her leg and has a agonizing path of rehabilitation ahead of her that most people could not even begin to comprehend. And you come here to lecture me about administrative protocols?"
You desperately wanted to say something, but from your parched throat came only a dry hiss, a harsh, empty exhalation that barely brushed your cracked lips. You tried to squeeze his hand with every ounce of strength you had left, but your fingers refused to respond.
"Doctor Park," Gloria insisted in a stern, cold tone.
"Do you want to suspend me? Go ahead. Take away my surgical privileges, report me to the board, punish me however the hell you prefer." Brendon's voice dropped into a dangerous, terrifying whisper—the tone of a apex predator who has absolutely nothing left to lose. "But this is not the time or the place to talk about it. Not when my wife is lying here, unconscious, trying to survive a traumatic amputation and major surgery. So I'm going to ask you, one last time and in the kindest way I am capable of right now, to get the hell out of this room."
There was an icy, suffocating silence. You heard the sharp sound of heels pulling away and the heavy, definitive sigh of the door closing shut.
"Damn it, baby," he whispered, immediately bringing your hand to his lips, and this time his strong voice broke completely into a thousand agonizing pieces. "Don't do this to me again. Don't you dare."
His rough, calloused fingers traveled gently up your arm until they cradled your face with infinite, trembling delicacy. You could feel his hot tears spilling onto your skin, moistening your cheek as he rested his forehead heavily against yours. In the crushing privacy of the ICU, he was no longer the untouchable star surgeon or the most feared man in the PTMC; he was simply a man utterly terrified, completely broken by the horrific idea of a world where you no longer existed.
"I know you hear me, precious," he insisted, his thumb caressing your cheekbone with extreme tenderness. "Open those beautiful eyes for me. Please, I need you to look at me. I need to know that you're still in there."
You made a Herculean, agonizing effort. The heavy haze of morphine seemed to recede at the sheer urgency and despair in his voice. Your eyelids trembled, fighting the weight, and eventually fluttered open. The very first thing you saw was the deep, endless blue of his eyes, bloodshot from exhaustion and heavy crying, staring down at you with a shattering mixture of profound relief and unbearable agony.
You tried to articulate a word, but your gaze fell instinctively toward the end of the bed, where the weight of the heavy blankets felt... completely different. The hollow emptiness on your left side became a physically cruel, devastating reality in that exact instant.
Brendon noticed the sudden panic in your breathing right away. His hands held you tighter, instantly trying to be the heavy anchor that would keep you from drowning in the horrific realization of what you had lost.
"Look at me, baby," he pleaded desperately. His voice, once broken, suddenly regained that fierce firmness he used to command the operating room, but his eyes were filled with a desperate, crying plea. "Only me. Don't look down. You're alive. You're right here with me. That's the only thing that matters now."
But you couldn't help it. Through the heavy numbness of the morphine, you felt a phantom, mocking tingling where your leg should be—a cruel, haunting echo from a part of you that was gone forever. You couldn't hold back the dam of tears, which began to overflow, tracing hot, painful furrows down your cheeks.
You wept bitterly for your career in SWAT that had just been blown to pieces by that mine, and for the suffocating fear of never being the strong, fierce woman he fell in love with. Everything you'd have to learn to do all over again—walking, balancing, relying on a cold, metal-and-carbon prosthetic—felt like an impossible, agonizing mountain to climb.
"It's gone, Bren," you managed to choke out, a raw, heart-rending sob tearing violently from your throat. "Everything is gone."
At your words, Brendon closed his eyes tightly for a moment, gritting his teeth so hard that his jaw tightened visibly. Seeing the strongest, bravest woman he knew completely crumble in his arms was worse than any thirty-six-hour shift, a profound pain no medical textbook had ever taught him how to handle.
He carefully climbed onto the hospital bed, completely ignoring all clinical hygiene and safety protocols. He moved with an agility you would never expect from a man of his massive size, making absolutely sure not to brush against your fresh wounds or the tangled wires attaching you to the monitors, and he wrapped his arms tightly around you. He buried your face deep into his broad, muscular chest, creating a protective shelter of fabric and human warmth so you wouldn't have to look at the terrifying emptiness beneath the blankets.
"Listen to me," he murmured into your hair, his voice vibrating with a fierce, burning determination that soaked straight into your shattered bones. "I'm not going to tell you that the road will be easy, because that would be lying to you, and you deserve better than that. But I make a living rebuilding what others believe is completely unsalvageable. I've made people walk again when they were told it was a miracle. I'm the best at this, baby, and I am not going to let you sink. I'll get you the absolute best prosthesis money can buy, I'll take you to every single rehab session, and if I have to, I will carry you in my arms until you can run again."
He squeezed you a little tighter against his chest, letting his own heavy tears get lost in the strands of your hair, completely allowing himself to be vulnerable just because you were the only one in the world who could see him like this.
"What makes you you wasn't in that leg, nor is it what makes me love you with everything I have," he continued in a thick, choked voice. "Now all I care about is that you're alive. You're here, with me, and I am never going to let you go."
You sank entirely into his chest, clinging to his surgical scrubs with what little strength your trembling hands had left, inhaling that familiar, grounding trace of antiseptic soap mixed with his expensive cologne and that warm, homey scent that had always brought you back to safety. The silence of the room was only interrupted by the constant beep-beep of the heart monitor—which now beat a little quieter, calmed by his presence—and the rhythmic, steady pounding of Brendon's heart under your ear, reminding you that against all odds, you were still here.
In that ICU room, the outside world ceased to exist. It didn't matter how much of your leg was lost, how much of your career was fading away, or what administrative punishment Gloria would throw at him. Brendon cradled you with an almost religious devotion, resting his chin on your head as he tightly closed his eyes, finally allowing himself to let out the air he seemed to have been holding since he first saw you bloodied in Trauma 1.
"Sleep, baby," he whispered, his deep voice vibrating heavily against your chest as he wrapped you in an embrace that promised to rebuild every single broken piece of your soul. "I'm not going to move. I won't let anything else hurt you."
You let yourself be carried away by the heavy fatigue and the painkillers, feeling how the immense heat of his body fully protected you from the coldness of the world. For the first time since the explosion, the crushing fear felt a little lighter, entirely stifled by the presence of the man who, in the eyes of the world, was a relentless, terrifying shark, but who, for you, was the only refuge capable of keeping you whole through any trial fate decided to throw at you.