We walk off the airplane with our hands intertwined. As we emerge from the jet bridge, swathed in thick, warm, Southern air, an airline attendant smiles and waves.
“You two have a happy Friday.”
“You too.” I smile back, and, to his credit, so does Landon. It’s his polite smile. The one I’ve seen him use so many times on patients when he’s having a bad day. They never know—but I do.
I squeeze his fingers. They squeeze mine back.
“Good?” I whisper.
He nods—and I assess him as we walk toward baggage claim.
He looks gorgeous in his charcoal suit, with an unbuttoned white dress shirt underneath. In the late morning light that’s streaming through the airport windows, his hair shines, more red than brown. The just-more-than-stubble beard he’s sporting ups the hotness factor even further.
“You look good,” I murmur.
He gives me a small, tight smile, and squeezes my hand. “You do.”
I look down at my blouse, leggings, and boots. “It’s kinda weird to be without the white coat.”
“Right?”
I nod. We have the weekend off: a rarity these last few months.
Right after Landon’s accident and surgery, we figured that he’d be out up to six months—or at least, that’s how Eilert and the program budgeted his recovery time. Instead, he surprised everyone by healing not just fast, but super fast.
He was determined not to fall into the class behind ours, not because of me, but because, as he put it, “I didn’t work this hard to spend the whole damn year reading the newspaper.”
When he asked to make a slow return to work just six weeks after surgery, using a walker, working fewer hours, and helping on the floor, with no OR time, Eilert said “yes” without much trouble.
“But no kissing in the donut room,” she warned.
They had to bend the rules for us. Even now, with Landon fully healed and having been at work fulltime again for going on eight weeks, we’re rarely scheduled in the OR at the same time, and Landon doesn’t report to Eilert anymore for his official evaluations. He reports to Kraft.
After we finish the program, we likely wouldn’t both be able to work as neurosurgeons at Alpine University Hospital. But that’s fine, because Landon is firmly interested in pediatrics, and planning to do the extra residency time required for peds.
“The air is so thick here.” I wipe my forehead as we step onto one of those nifty human conveyer belts.
“It’s like the Southern United States or something.”
Landon smirks, and I give him a mock glare. “Smart ass.”
Over time I’ve found that underneath his smooth surgeon’s veneer, he’s still sarcastic like he’s always been, and more so when he’s nervous.
“Did you get the rental car receipt?” he asks as we step off the belt, beside the baggage claim.
“I did.” I drop his hand.
“Sorry,” he breathes. “Wound up.”
“If you weren’t, I’d suspect an alien body-snatching.”
That makes him chuckle. “You’re so weird.”
“That’s what you love about me.”
“So it is.”
We walk to our flight’s carousel, and I start looking for our suitcases: both black, and marked with hot pink teacup luggage tags. Landon spots one and steps around a crowd of teenagers to lift it off the belt.
I shadow him. “Good?” I ask after he lifts it.
He arches his brows.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
Asking about his back is a habit I’m having kind of a tough time breaking. In our bed the other day, I got a spanking for excessive back-related commentary.
“I want to forget about it,” he said then. “Let it be over.”
And it’s true: he has healed flawlessly—owning, in part, I’m sure, to doing everything “right,” from therapeutic Pilates to aggressive PT right down to supplements for bone and muscle health. Yep—I’m married to a doctor.
Did I mention that we’re married?
After Landon got out of the hospital, eleven days post-surgery, I moved into his apartment: partially because he needed my help, but also because I couldn’t stand to be away from him.
I took a whopping three days off of work, and as we watched movies and napped and talked, and I pulled all my butt and thigh muscles bouncing on his lap, we realized more and more that nothing had changed.
Ten years apart, and our dynamic felt the very same as it always had. Domesticity was the most natural thing on earth for both of us, maybe because it’s how we started—living under the same roof.
Emmaline took off from her job as a voice actress in Los Angeles to come reacquaint herself with Landon and keep him company when I returned to work. My parents showed up on the last day of Em’s visit. They arrived while I was at the hospital, and surprised even my sister, asking to see Landon.
Em says they spent hours talking about what happened years ago—apologizing not because they did something so horrible, but because they both truly felt sad about how it worked out. In retrospect, they regretted spiriting Landon away like they did, especially knowing how it all panned out.
The night after Mom and Dad and Em left, Landon and I were in bed, drinking chamomile, with me curled up carefully against him, when he said, “I want to do this forever.”
“Cuddle?”
His voice dropped an octave when he said, “No—be with you.” I widened my eyes at him, and his mouth tightened. “Too soon?”
“No,” I whispered. I kissed his hand, and then his cheek…and then his mouth. “Never too soon. You know that was my first choice, right?” I whispered.
“What was?”
“Getting married.”
He stopped breathing. “What do you mean?”
“They sent me to Massachusetts with Aunt Raina to think about my choice…which was to have the baby. Have my parents get you back, and us to be both at their house—together.”
“Married?” he choked.
“No, not right then. But together. Headed there. That’s what I had always wanted.”
His eyes got red. His jaw tightened. He didn’t say much, but a few weeks later, when he’d started feeling better, we were walking slowly around Smith Lake at Wash Park when I ran my fingers over his lower back, and trailed them down his ass—where I felt a small circle inside his back pocket.
Landon felt me notice it, and tried to step away, but it was too late.
“Is that what I think it might be?” I gaped.
He tugged me up against him, wrapped both arms around me, and, when he pulled away, he got down slowly—very slowly—on one knee, and, with me holding his shoulders, he looked up at me in the sunlight, and asked me to marry him.
In keeping with our nontraditional engagement, we got in the car, I stopped and bought a blue, beaded bracelet, double-checked my bra—an older one, with frayed lace—and realized I was wearing a borrowed shirt: my favorite of his gray T-shirts. With my attire on point, we drove right to the courthouse and got hitched before the sun went down.