A/N: Hi everyone! So, I have decided to re-write this story more or less from the beginning. I've decided the Rheese I'm writing here needs to be more of a slow-burn, than the half-established maybe-it's-something I was aiming for ... Let's try again and see how close I get! Hope you enjoy the ride :)

One

Friday. The end of the week - one that had been the longest, hardest and most tiring that Dr Sarah Reese had ever experienced. Today was so busy, in fact, that Dr Charles had assigned her to help out down in the ED, where they'd been run off their feet and screaming for an extra set of hands all morning. Three hours after arriving in the middle of the bedlam, Sarah found herself truly grateful when Maggie forcibly removed her tablet from her hand and told her in no uncertain terms that she was going to take a short lunch break.

As she entered the doctor's lounge, she found herself walking into the middle fo a conversation between Doctors Choi and Rhodes.

"So hot date tonight, huh?" Ethan was asking Connor, who laughed.

He glanced quickly over to Sarah, then chuckled as he normally would. Rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, he said, "Uh, yeah. Making my famous spaghetti bolognese."

Ethan picked up his stethoscope and headed back out to see patients. "Trying to impress?"

Connor raised his coffee cup as though toasting to something. "Here's hoping."

"And you, Sarah? Big plans for Friday night?" Ethan looked to her expectantly.

She shrugged. "Just a quiet night in - probably watch a movie. Nothing too exciting."

Sarah watched Ethan leave as she poured herself a cup of coffee. She wasn't game to look over at Connor for fear of giving away her disappointment. Instead, she concentrated on adding creamer into her coffee as she asked, "You've got a date?"

Damnit. The disappointment was so obvious in her voice.

He answered her very quietly, being very careful himself not to change his facial expression or his tone: "Well, it is our anniversary. I wanted to make it special."

She took a long sip of her coffee as she leaned back on the counter, her back to the glass panels. "You know, most people celebrate anniversaries when they're actually together."

He slowly moved across the room, now standing opposite her just slightly too close fo a colleague. "But it's our first wedding anniversary."

She smiled, butterflies in her stomach fluttering around as he very surreptitiously linked several of his fingers through hers. "I suppose that's something to celebrate."

He had opened his mouth to respond, but was spared continuing the conversation when the door opened, and Will Halstead walked into the room. Connor stepped back very quickly, his professional persona once again back in place.

"Hey, Connor - can I grab you for a consult? I have an otherwise healthy twenty-four year old guy who's just had a heart attack."

Connor smiled, nodded to Will and headed out the door. As he left, he said to Sarah, "Rain check on lunch? I owe you a garden salad."

Instead of actually responding, she just raised her coffee cup.

"You better hold him to that!" Will said over his shoulder as he followed Connor back into the trenches.

Of course, Will had no idea why Connor owed Sarah lunch. It wasn't uncommon for the two to grab a quick lunch on the fly, usually from the food truck outside the front of the hospital. As far as any of their colleagues knew, the two were just two people whose professional relationship had slowly developed into an unlikely friendship.

The whole marriage thing was not romantic at all. Just over a year ago now, they had both been involved in the care of a woman about Sarah's age whose condition had deteriorated very quickly. She had made her wishes known, but when the time came for the hard decision to be made, she wasn't in any condition to speak up for herself. Her family made every decision in exactly the opposite way their daughter had wanted, knowingly. As much as Connor and Sarah had both argued and pleaded, the Board and the ethics committee all agreed that their hands were tied. They had no choice but to treat the patient according to the family's instructions. And now, she would spend the rest of her life in a vegetative state.

To be perfectly honest, they both suspected the family had done it out of spite. In the short time their patient was conscious, it was very clear there was no love lost between her and her family. The fact that, when push came to shove, the family could make every wrong decision - that terrified both of them to their very cores.

So a deal was struck - they went down to City Hall the very next morning after the overnight shift, signed some paperwork, and they were legally married. Which meant that, if they ever found themselves in a similar situation, someone they implicitly trust would be tasked with making the hard decisions in exactly the way they wanted them made - with the added benefit of knowing the risks.

Neither of them were close to their families, that much was obvious. Sarah particularly wanted to make sure there was no way her father - a diagnosed psychopath who genuinely did not care for or about her in any way at all - could ever be in control of whether she lived or died. And to be perfectly honest, she wasn't sure whether her mom would even notice, let alone care.

As for Connor, everyone that knew him was well aware he wanted absolutely nothing to do with his father. He wanted to be his own man, to forge his own path, and to not rely solely on the family name. He resented his father for his upbringing and his lack of parenting skills. His sister, on the other hand, he trusted. The problem was, of course, that the decisions would legally lie entirely in his father's hands.

But not anymore.

He had concluded a very long time ago that Sarah was what their fabulous charge nurse, Maggie Lockwood, would describe as "good people." He trusted her with patients at work, and in his life has a friend - and, it turns out, as someone who could potentially (if the worst were every to happen) hold his life in her hands. He was, however, surprised to find that he trusted her with his secrets. All of them, not just the ones that came out by circumstance. Somehow, without ever entirely meaning to, they had become friends and confidants. And spouses.

About ten minutes after walking in on her break, Sarah had decided to cut her break short. Heading back out into the big bad emergency department, she grabbed a tablet and got back to work. When she looked at a clock hours later, she realised she'd continued going from patient to patient, treatment to treatment, without realising how much time had passed.

"Reese!"

She'd glanced at the clock as she was leaving her most recent patient, whose complaint had been fairly mild compared to the types of things they often saw down here. She'd just signed the discharge paperwork and put the file into the appropriate tray when Maggie called her name.

The charge nurse approach with a smile, handed her another tablet and said, "Treatment two."

Being busy meant a lot of things to a lot of people. For Sarah, it meant when she walked into a treatment bay and introduced herself, she was working on autopilot. Her focus still mostly on the tablet, she said, "Hi there, I'm Dr Reese. Can you tell me a bit about what's bought you in to see us ... today."

Although intended as a question, it came out as a very fractured statement, the last of which she had whispered. As she cast her eyes up, she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

A voice, presumably belonging to whoever was on the other end of the gun, said very roughly, "Close the curtain, dump the tech and help my brother."

"I ... I ..."

"HELP MY BROTHER!"

She was shaking with fear, but she was somehow still managing to function on autopilot. Her brain was working a million miles an hour, determining very quickly that her patient was in real trouble, and so was she. From what she could obviously make out, they were both high - and based on what she was feeling in the patient's stomach, she knew this was not going to end well.

"Okay," she turned slowly to face the brother, whose gun was now pointing squarely at her forehead. "Your brother is very sick. If one of those bags in his stomach bursts, he will die."

"Well you're not going to let that happen. If he dies, you die too."

The words sent an awful, tingling sensation of doom down her spine. She forced herself to take deep, even breaths, and to keep staring this guy dead in the eye. She needed to be as forceful as she possibly could, or she would stand no chance of saving her patient. "He needs surgery."

"No."

"He needs surgery right now. If we don't operate, your brother will die."

"I SAID NO!"

She knew the yelling was going to attract attention. She knew the ED staff would step in. She also knew that someone would wind up getting hurt.

She heard it before she saw it: The curtain was opening, and Will Halstead was speaking to her before he stepped through the doorway. "Sarah, is everything -"

It all happened so quickly it was barely comprehensible. She had turned to try and stop Will, to keep him out of danger, but in doing so she turned her back to the man with the gun. In less than a second, she was in his grasp - one hand impossibly tight around her neck, the other holding the gun to her temple. When Will took that single step through the doorway, he came face to face with her and froze. In that moment, she was suddenly aware of how small she looked. And the concept of her own mortality hit her like a tonne of bricks.

"Sarah?" His voice, usually so strong and sure, came out of his mouth barely loud enough to be heard.

She took as deep a breath as she could, given the pressure on her throat. She recognised the fear in his eyes, and knew without a doubt it would be mirrored in her own. As confidently as she could, she managed to say, "I'm fine, Will."

"She's not gonna be fine for much longer if she don't save my brother. Says he needs surgery. Wants to send him somewhere for it. He's not leaving this room."

Will and Sarah shared a momentary look. She recognised the glint in his eye, and hoped beyond hope that the look on her face would be enough to stop him. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she recognised that his mind was already made up - there would be no dissuading him now.

She knew what he was going to say before the words reached his ears. "Good thing I'm a surgeon. Will you let me come in and help?"

The man was an idiot. A righteous, sentimental idiot. And yet she knew he'd do it before it was done. That was the sort of friend the man was. On the other hand, he'd just put his own life on the line in a misguided attempt to save hers. At least, that was what she wanted to tell him. But now was not the time. If they both made it out of this alive, he was going to get an earful later. From her, and probably his own brother, the detective, too.

Somehow, they managed to fake their way through it. Given the brothers had refused any sort surgical intervention, there wasn't a lot they were actually able to do to help him. They patched an obvious wound on his shoulder and pumped him full of every painkiller they could think of so he wasn't feeling the pain. It was stupidly dangerous, and he definitely wouldn't still be conscious after he walked out of their doors, but it was enough to placate the brother with the gun.

As soon as he felt better - which, frankly, was him just being even higher now that he'd had the painkillers than he had been when they'd first walked in through the door - the brothers were insisting on leaving the ED. She knew enough to step back and let them go, but Will being Will, he tried to stop them. And promptly got hit in the face with the gun. Judging by the crack and the amount of blood suddenly running down his face, Sarah was fairly confident his nose was broken. At the very least, it had attracted attention - Will yelled when he was hit and backed out into the hallway, ending up sprawled on the floor, holding his hands over his face and half-leaning against the football in the centre of the room.

Vaguely, Sarah was aware someone had yelled out to call security, but nothing was going to stop them. Nevertheless, the whole department was in simultaneous shock and bedlam.

It all happened so fast. No one saw it coming, and no one could have stopped it.

The shots rang out, one after another, silencing the chaos in its tracks.

Everyone was still, the whole world in shock. Nobody quite seemed to believe what they had just witnessed. The only movement in the whole ED was the two brothers, one still waving his gun and the other stumbling beside him.

The utter silence was unbearable. It wasn't until Will sat up and forced himself to focus on Sarah that he realised something was really, really wrong. "Sarah?"

Still standing in the doorway she turned to face him on the floor, hands clutching her stomach, her face white as a sheet. Her eyes, now full of fear, looked straight into his. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but she couldn't make the words come out.

"Oh my God," Natalie breathed from where she was standing inside the football, her eyes having immediately fallen on Sarah the moment Will had spoken.

Maggie sprung into action just as Sarah collapsed. Will sprung forward and launched himself across the floor to ease her landing, but it wasn't enough. She hit the floor hard, clearly unconscious and very badly injured.

"Get me a gurney, get her into Baghdad. Look alive people, Reese is down."

As they lifted her onto the gurney, she was vaguely aware that she could hear everything going on around her, but she couldn't make them hear her.

"Reese, can you hear me?" Ethan's face appeared above her. "You have a belly wound - you took three gunshots. We're going to get you stabilised then up into surgery, okay? Trauma's on the way down now. We'll get you into theatre as soon as they get here."

She blinked her eyes forcefully, willing herself to keep them open. The world was going black around the edges, and she knew she couldn't let that happen.

"C ..." she tried to speak, but she just wouldn't make the sound.

Above her, she could hear Will barking orders. She forced herself to look up, trying desperately to catch his eye and communicate. Now that she saw him, it occurred to her that he'd stuffed some gauze up his own nose and jumped straight into action. Right now, he was putting as much pressure as he possibly could on her abdomen, stemming the blood flow from one of the wounds.

"What's she saying?" she heard him ask. When Ethan said something about not being able to make it out, Will looked back to Sarah herself. "Sarah! Talk to us!"

She took as deep a breath as she could, given everything they were doing to stabilise her right now, and tried again. "C ... co ..."

Maggie appeared in the doorway then, surveying the situation. "How's she doing?"

Knowing Sarah couldn't see him now that a nurse had stepped into her eyeliner, Will shook his head. "She's alert though. How you doing, Sarah?"

"Co ... con ..."

Maggie made her way into the room and around the team to stand right beside Sarah's head. She took hold of her hand and smiled down at her reassuringly. "We're already contacting your family, hon. We've got to get you up to surgery first, okay?"

As Maggie stepped away, Sarah mustered all her strength and grabbed hold of Maggie's arm. She took a very deep breath and forced the word out, her voice barely audible above the chaos but enough for Maggie to hear:

"Connor."

Maggie frowned. "Connor?" she repeated, thoroughly confused.

Sarah was nodding, though she registered someone telling her to keep her head still. It was all she could do to communicate - words were out, yes/no questions were all they had.

"Dr Rhodes?" Maggie asked her, thoroughly confused. Sarah was nodding again, eager to ensure her message got across. As she faded from consciousness, Maggie looked to Ethan and Will, who were both just as confused as she was. "I'll page Dr Rhodes."

She all but ran back out in the football and took control of the situation once again. "Page Dr Charles, he needs to know about this. And Rhodes - she's asking for him."

"Have you called her family?" Nat asked, stepping up beside Maggie. She wanted nothing more than to be inside that treatment room, but there just wasn't enough room for another person in there.

Maggie's reply was instantaneous. "I'm bringing up her employee record now."

That was when Nat gently laid a hand on her closest friend's shoulder. "You know we've got her, right? They're doing everything they possibly can."

"That doesn't help."

"I know it doesn't," Nat answered gently. "But it's all I've got."

When the screen finally loaded, both their eyes widened in surprise. In seconds, Maggie was on the phone. "Sharon, I need you down here right now."

Written on the screen in front of them, plain as day, was undoubtedly the biggest surprise of this whole episode.

Dr Sarah Reese - psychiatry resident
Marital Status: married
Next of Kin: Dr Connor Rhodes, MD
Relationship:husband