They don't notice it for the first two years, because it's the kind of thing you'd have to be looking for. But one day, when they're arguing, she feels it.
"Just because your job is dangerous doesn't mean you get to be reckless all the time!" His face is flushed with anger, even though they've had this argument a hundred times before.
"I don't-" She begins to reply, then stops. Something is wrong. She presses a hand to her chest, feels her heartbeat take off. It hurts a little, actually, the way it's racing, hammering against her sternum.
"Kirsten?" The anger on Cameron's face slips into concern, and then he's right there beside her.
She doesn't know what makes her do it, just a feeling, but she reaches out, pressing her palm against his chest. It should surprise her, when she feels his heart perfectly in tune with hers, the pounding synchronised with the thrumming pulse in her thumbs. Like a pair of racehorses, somehow in step, thundering up the track.
She doesn't know how she knows, it just comes to her.
"We need to get you to a hospital." She murmurs. His face has already turned from a vibrant shade of pink to ashen grey, and she loops her fingers between his. "Come on."
He doesn't put up a fight, and she's glad she finally got her license as she weaves his convertible through traffic. Her chest still hurts, like it's being bruised by the overzealous muscle underneath it, and she glances over at Cameron. His eyes are glazed, and she bites her lip. Worry pools like cement in her stomach.
At the hospital, the doctors take one look at the scar on his chest and take him immediately in for examination. They make Kirsten wait outside because she's not his wife, and although she's always argued vehemently against that, she's beginning to think maybe she should tell Cameron to dust off the ring he's been hiding in a DVD case for the past six months. If it would get her in that room with him, she'd have married him on the spot.
But she sits in the hallway outside, rubbing her arm where one of the orderlies had physically dragged her from the room. It's going to bruise, she's fairly certain.
Time isn't meaningful to her the way it is to other people. She knows she sits out there, hand flattened over her heart, for twenty-six minutes. But twenty-six minutes is just how many times the hands on the clock make a move. And then, suddenly, she feels it. The same way her heart sped up almost an hour ago, the fluttering slows to a steady drum. It's barely two ticks of the minute hand before a nurse steps out into the hallway, smiling at her.
"He's asking for you. Insisting, actually." It's the orderly who threw her out. Kirsten gets to her feet, pushing past him into the room. Cameron is arguing with his doctor, an olive skinned woman with short cropped hair, and Kirsten slips around to the other side of the bed.
"Hi." She says, frowning down at him. He shoots her a smile, a tired one. She thinks she knows the feeling, like she's run a couple marathons in the span of the last sixty minutes. Her heart has, and, she suspects, so has his.
"Hey, Stretch." His hand barely moves, but she knows what he wants. She laces her fingers between his, then looks up at the doctor.
"What happened?"
The woman glances at Cameron, as though for confirmation, then down at her charts.
"Mr. Goodkin here had a Tachycardic episode."
It was what Kirsten had expected, but the words still came like a punch to the gut.
"We gave him some Adenisone and it seems to have gotten him back to a regular Sinus rhythm. He should be fine, but we want to keep him overnight for observation."
Kirsten just nods, hand tightening around his. Eventually, the doctor leaves them alone. As soon as she's gone, Cameron turns to her.
"Kirsten." Where his eyes were glazed before, they're now sharp. "How did you know?"
She frowns at him.
"I felt it. My heart sped up, it didn't feel right. And I just…" She lets a hand trail over his forehead.
Getting an idea, she brings up a memory from the week before. Temporal Dysplasia means perfect recall, and as she re-lives it, her pulse kicks up, sending a warm flush up her neck. As her own heartbeat accelerates, the monitors beep, and she watches the rhythm of Cameron's heart speed up to match her own. Before a nurse can come running in, Kirsten lets the memory fade away, and the beeping slowly stops as well.
Cameron is staring at her, eyes flitting between her and his heart monitor.
"What was that?"
"Proof." She muses. "That I was right." She hadn't been sure.
"Right about what?" His glasses are sliding down his nose, and she adjusts them. She'll never get tired of the way even small touches between them seem to have an electric charge.
"We're…connected. I don't know how, it must be related to when I stitched into you."
His eyes widen.
"You know what you're talking about it impossible, right?" He asks, shaking his head. Always the skeptic.
"Wouldn't a lot of people say the same thing about what we do for a living?"
She has him there, and he knows it.
"So just now, when my heart rate went up, that was because yours did?"
She nods. He scrubs a tired hand across his face.
"You scared me." She says softly, looking away. She's gotten better, over the years, at expressing her emotions. But moments like this are still rare. She feels his thumb trail across the back of her hand, and turns to look at him.
"I'm sorry. I would promise not to do it again, but…" He shrugs. They both know he can't make that promise. This is the first time she's ever really understood what that meant. Kirsten is quiet for a moment, thoughtful.
"If this happens…" She pulls up the same memory from earlier, and watches his monitors beep in alarm, "when I think about what we did last week in the shower…" His face cracks into a lopsided smile, one that only sets both their hearts running faster.
"Oh that's what you're doing?" His eyes are playful, if suddenly a little darker. She shushes him.
"Cameron, I threatened to go with you if you pulled something like this again." She mutters, agitated. His smile drops off. "What do you think happens to me if something happens to you?"
Their hearts seem to be in perfect rhythm, and she can't help but wonder what happens if one stops. The colour drains from his face.
"I…" His mouth drops open in horror. "We'll figure it out. We'll undo it."
"How?" She asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
"I don't know." He sounds determined now. "That's not…you won't…it won't happen, Stretch. I won't allow it."
"I don't know if it's up to you." She points out. "You're a neuroscientist, not a cardiologist."
She didn't mean to upset him by bringing it up, but he's obviously upset now. He squeezes her hand more tightly, and she feels her chest flutter. This time she knows why, he's afraid. For her.
"I won't let anything happen to you. I promise."
She pulls her hands away.
"You can't make that promise. If something happens to you, it happens to me too. This is kind of more literal than I originally meant it, but you get the point. We might get a very Romeo and Juliet ending." She jokes, lips twitching. He just looks horrified again.
"First of all, don't joke about that. I have heart problems, which means you apparently also have heart problems, which means neither of us can take that kind of stress." He mutters. She rolls her eyes. "And second, I can't get you to remember the names of any of the characters from Doctor Who but you're totally up on the Bard? I'm wounded."
He's making light of it, but she can still feel the tension in her chest, and knows it belongs to him.
"One day at a time." She decides, crawling into bed beside him.
"Alright."
She reaches into her pocket, pulling something out. He snorts when he sees what it is.
"I can't believe you still have that. You're going soft on me, Zoltar."
She smacks him.
"I am not." She lays the crystal on the blanket beside him. "You know, you gave that to me to protect me heart. It looks like you're the one who's going to have to look after it."
He cranes his head to look at her.
"The crystal? Or your heart?"
She smiles.
"Both."
.
It turns out she's right. When his heart gives out, pumps one last hollow beat, so does hers. She grabs his hand when she feels it, because she just knows, like every time before.
But this time they don't wake up. Their grandson, Carter, finds them in the morning, ushering his own children back out into the hallway. They're peaceful, gnarled hands twined together, tufts of white hair falling in their face. He'd never understood why his great grandmother had always said they would go together, but she'd been right.
He makes the arrangements, because he'd always been her favourite, and when he's later sifting through her things, he comes across a box with his name on it. Inside are a couple papers, things about the heart condition his great grandfather had, that Carter also shares. And a crystal, with a piece of paper tied around it, words scrawled in Kirsten's almost illegibly tiny writing.
To protect your heart.