Disclaimer: I claim the doctor, but nobody else.

Spoilers: MI3.

Note: I'm not much for action films, but I enjoyed MI1 and I finally sat through a chopped-up version of MI3 a few nights ago when I got home from a gig. Well, it was on TV and I was conscious. In the course of watching it, I discovered three very important things:

1. Say what you want about Tom Cruise – the man's a good actor and he's really fun to watch.

2. Nothing cuts the strings of one's suspended disbelief during an action movie quite like commercials. They give you too much time to consider the silliness/improbability/medical inaccuracy of what just happened.

3. There's a big ol' hole at the end of this film. Ethan and Julia Hunt leave the scene of the last battle in Shanghai and then suddenly they're back at IMF headquarters, being congratulated by everybody and leaving for their married life. Never mind the fact that Ethan might be la-dee-dah-ing his way off to Cancun or something with a (deactivated) explosive in his head. No no no, said my brain. Something must have happened between the first scene and the latter.

Here is that something.

Nose Bomb

Dr. Maria Carlyle pulled back with her stethoscope with a nod of satisfaction. Ethan Hunt had made it back from Shanghai in one piece – barely – but Hunt was looking pretty good for someone who not sixteen hours ago had been put through hell. The crew of an IMF-commanded retrieval plane had cleaned him up and given him excellent primary care on the way back, and he was functioning at about 85 percent, which was (as usual) much more than anyone had expected. But his face was dotted with band-aids and his eyes were dull and the examination had been a little difficult due to the wrapping on his torso, which was acting as a brace and partially keeping him upright.

Carlyle motioned that he was free to put his top back on. Ethan, who'd managed to sit through the whole exam and not lie down once, made the exam table paper crinkle underneath him as he struggled into a soft gray t-shirt. Carlyle glanced at his worn posture and wondered fleetingly how long he'd gone without sleep, but she knew he'd be resting more comfortably pretty soon. His wife Julia was sitting next to him, silently helping him with his clothes. She'd buttonholed Carlyle on their arrival, explained that she was a nurse, and added that as soon as they were done here, she'd be driving him home and tucking him into bed. Carlyle smiled politely but all she could think was, yeah, good luck with that, because she'd yet to see anyone convince Ethan to take it easy, not even after a mission like this.

"Okay, Mr. Hunt," she said as she made some notations on his chart. "The stitches seem to be holding, and there's no evidence of infection so far, but I'm sure that if something does arise, your wife will spot it quickly. It says here that you walked away from your mission on your own two feet, and nothing seems to be broken. Anything else bothering you?"

Ethan crinkled the paper again as he shifted and glanced sideways at Julia. Julia looked back at him. He'd told her everything and they had no secrets now, but he'd had found time on the flight back to get a little embarrassed about his predicament. He left it to his wife to open the conversation.

"There is one small problem," Julia offered.

Carlyle looked at the couple over her reading glasses. "And that would be?"

"Nose bomb," Ethan said tersely.

Carlyle set down the chart and crossed her arms. She'd been with IMF for fifteen years, so she wasn't really surprised, per se, but she was confused. "I'm sorry?"

"Nose bomb," Ethan repeated in that same flat, factual voice. He then felt the need to clarify. "Somebody shoved a bomb up my nose."

"Yeah, I get it, Hunt."

"It – It was deactivated, so no worries," Julia cut in, with a concerned look at her husband. "I had to stop his heart for a second to short out the device, and it worked, and I brought him back. It was close, though, they were monitoring him with an EKG while we were on the plane just to be safe. But the thing is still … in there."

"Like I said," Ethan finished. "Nose bomb."

Carlyle maintained her calm façade, but just barely resisted a rude sigh. And it took her a moment to squelch the highly unkind urge to rip out a tissue from the box on her desk and suggest that he blow. But then Ethan Hunt said exactly the right thing in exactly the right way.

"Can you get it out?" He asked her this quietly, with great sincerity and just a pinch of hope.

Carlyle smirked at him. She was a stout, sharp-eyed, unflappable woman, and an experienced, excellent doctor. But the turning point, the river card for her incredible hand, the reason IMF had hired her, was her work with explosives, starting back to her days with CIA. Something about things that went boom had always stirred her up, and she never backed down from a challenge.

"Maybe," she said coyly. "Lie back."

Ethan did so with some assistance from his wife, and finally stretched out flat on the noisy paper. Carlyle grabbed an endoscope off the wall, turned on the light, snapped on a new plastic tip and without ceremony jammed it up Ethan's left nostril.

"Ow!"

"Sorry," she said absently, winking and squinting. She moved the scope this way and that, which caused Ethan to make some pretty interesting faces that only Julia saw because the doctor was otherwise occupied. Presently, she spied something and looked around a bit to confirm it. "Ah ha. I see." She pulled out and regarded him. "Well, Mr. Hunt, as I'm sure you know, that little device in your head is a modified KL-880 nano-charge. The legs are clamp-locked and it's smashed in there pretty good, but I can remove it."

Ethan just blinked and Julia blurted out, "What's a KL-880?"

Carlyle smiled. "A very tiny yet very powerful explosive. Sort of a point and shoot operation. The discharge is fired using air and sticks to an object using little clamps that settle and hold it in place, until it's charged up and detonates. This one is a scale model, half off spec, and in this case, it's perching right at the top of your frontal sinus." She gently tapped right between Ethan's eyes, and he crossed them for a second, trying to find her gloved finger. "Good news is, there's an eject switch on the device that makes the legs unclamp, and then the device can be lifted away with a magnet. Simple enough."

Ethan nodded at her. "Do it."

So she did. Julia stood behind him and held his face to keep him still, and after administering a mild sedative, the doctor fed a small wire camera up his nose. She watched the action on a screen on the wall while she maneuvered some long metal tweezers and a magnet on a wire into the frame of the camera. The deactivated device was out in less than two minutes and the tiny, useless bomb dropped from her tongs and clattered into the metal bowl. Julia looked at it with passing interest – a tiny, yellow, vitamin-shaped object stuffed with circuitry and covered in snot – and turned her gaze back to Ethan's upside-down face.

"It's out," she whispered. Ethan favored her with a vague, glassy-eyed smile.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Carlyle asked, with a glance at the device.

"How something so small nearly killed him?" Julia asked in a hard tone. "Yeah. Fascinating."

Carlyle didn't take it personally; the stress had to come out somehow. She pulled out her various instruments and the camera, leaving Ethan breathing heavily (but not bleeding from anywhere, thankfully) and smiled at them both.

"There we are," she said cheerfully. "All done."

Julia leaned down and kissed her husband's forehead. Her hair fell like a curtain.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Two days letter, Ethan was moving steadily towards okay. Getting out of bed unsupervised still wasn't on the agenda, but Julia had kept him plied with food, medication and entertainment during his waking hours – which were increasing exponentially – so he didn't really feel like he was missing anything yet. He was reading a magazine, sitting up against a pile of pillows with the puffy white comforter up to his waist, when Julia came in. He marked his spot with a finger and smiled up at her.

"Yes?"

"How are you?" she asked as she toed off her tennis shoes and climbed over him so she could snuggle at his side.

"Better now," he said, snaking an arm around her.

"Good. So I've been thinking. I know we're married and everything…"

Ethan had often been playfully accused of having a sixth sense about danger. He was getting that sense now.

"Uh oh, what's going on?"

She snorted. "Nothing's going on. God. It's just, you know we've been planning this wedding, and then we had that chaplain marry us at the hospital, and I've just realized that now it's kind of … moot."

He dog-eared the page and put the book down with a sigh. "Julia, it's not moot. You bought the dress. I own a suit. We already put the deposit on the hall and hired the caterer. I have no objections. In fact, I think I should really put a gold band on your finger. We should definitely still have the wedding." Her smile was like a sunburst as she threw her arms around him. He cuddled her back firmly. "Besides, if we don't, people will get suspicious."

"That's right," she said, her face pressed against his neck, "Can't have my cousins asking questions about the most boring DOT worker in the world."

He started laughing. "Yeah, I know I laid it on a little thick at the engagement party."

"I thudy traffic patternth!" she mimicked in the dorkiest voice she could manage, and he tickled her in retaliation. "Ah! Ah! Stop, stop. Okay. That was … actually pretty clever, now that I think about it. So hey, I was thinking too. Your, um, your 'office buddies.' The people who met us in the hangar when the retrieval team brought us back."

"You mean my crack team of superspies," he said blandly.

She eyed him warily. Her husband's job still had a bit of sinking in to do. "I don't know. All I remember is there was this nice big black guy, and a pretty Asian girl, and a skinny Irish dude who wouldn't let go of her hand, and this funny English guy with a beard. They were all –"

"Luther, Zhen, Declan, and Benji," he cut in.

"Right. They were all very nice, and I think we should invite them to the wedding. What do you think?"

He smiled at her generosity. "I think that's very sweet of you and I'll be sure to get invitations to them, but don't be surprised if they say no. People in my line of work have a pretty healthy fear of being compromised. They'll appreciate the gesture though, I'm sure."

"Okay. I'll write some up and you can take them to work."

They were quiet for a moment, each soaking in the other's warmth, before she shifted around and started digging in her jeans pocket. "I just remembered. I have something for you. Souvenir."

He frowned a little at her. "What?"

"Here." And she handed him a small vial, with an even smaller object rattling around in it.

He accepted the vial and held it up to the mote-filled light leaking in from the small window above the bed. Had to get it an inch from his eye to see what was inside, and he only realized what it was when he saw the teeny, tiny curled up little legs. Then he saw there was a small label on the other side, so he turned the vial around to read it. It was in Julia's handwriting.

Ethan's First (And LAST) Nose Bomb. 2006.

He laughed. Here was a woman who not only took his situation in stride, but respected what had happened to him enough to memorialize it. Or maybe she just had a sick sense of humor. Either way, he was set for life. So he aimed his lips at a spot below Julia's sparkling eyes and kissed her, secure in the knowledge that he had absolutely married the right person.

End.