He was thanking his lucky stars that Sarah was rostered for a late start the next morning. Quite aside from the fact that she had not slept properly for more than a week, he knew their colleagues already have their teeth sunk into today's cases by the time she arrived. Which meant she stood a chance of being left to her own devices. He, on the other hand, was performing a life-saving heart surgery on an infant this morning to repair a ventricular septal defect - literally repairing a hole on a heart about the size of a strawberry.

He had to hold his tongue when Downey had pointed that bit out. The word strawberry tended to have a different meaning in his mind these days.

When Sarah did start her shift, he knew exactly where he would find her.

"Dr Reese," he said as casually as he could, leaning over her shoulder to grab her attention. It had worked, judging by her reaction.

They were standing in the middle of the ED right now - if they weren't, their conversation would have gone a lot differently.

"Not quite yet, Dr Rhodes," she replied very quietly.

He handed her a small red box, saying, "Congratulations on getting your match. You've worked hard, and you deserve it."

To anyone who wasn't in the loop, it was a friendly gesture from a colleague that she had worked quite closely with. It was common knowledge in the ED these days that the two were friends, so it wasn't entirely unexpected. To those who knew, however, it was another cleverly disguised cute moment.

She looked from the box to him and back again a couple of times before she opened it. "Oh, it's beautiful."

She squinted at the glass slide inside the box for a moment, hardly able to believe what she was seeing.

"Bubonic plague bacillus," he said quietly.

"This is amazing," she breathed.

He leaned down again, dropping his voice so only she could hear. "I wanted to give you this last night - you know, once we'd had our conversation with the door."

"Well, we'll just have to do that tonight, won't we?" she replied just as quietly, a twinkle in her eye.

April stole her away at that very moment, grabbing her to assist Dr Halstead with an exam on a patient. Connor took his leave quickly, heading back out toward the elevator for another surgery.

She'd been in the room for less than a minute. The patient needed a physical exam, nothing too exciting at all. She was testing his reflexes when she started to not feel all that well. Out of nowhere, she was dizzy and her vision went fuzzy. The next thing Will and the patient knew, she had fallen across the patient and face first into the bed.

"Reese!" Will yelled, he and the patient both grabbing hold of her to make sure she didn't fall any further.

It wasn't all that loud, but it was clear enough for Connor to have heard it. He'd been discussing a case with another specialist who had happened to be in the ED as he was trying to leave it. He didn't bother to excuse himself, he just ran.

"What happened?" he asked Will, helping the other doctor to retrieve her from the bed and get her into her own treatment room.

"No idea," Will shrugged. "She was fine, and then she was down."

"Damnit," Connor muttered.

"Dude, breathe," Will told him calmly. "Look, she's already coming around."

Thank God, she was stirring.

Her eyes fluttered open, revealing to her two very worried faces. "I'm fine," she told them grumpily. Before either of them could get a word in, she had sat up and started to get out of the bed.

"Sarah -"

"- I said I'm fine, Connor."

Will looked from one to the other. "Everything okay here?"

"Fine. Just like I am."

Will had already picked up what he needed to give her a quick once-over. "You don't have a choice in this one, I'm afraid I've gotta check you out. Rules are rules." He paused, and added, "Though some are apparently made to be broken."

Connor's pager was going off, and she couldn't help but notice he was trying to ignore it. "Go," she told him earnestly. "I promise, I'm fine."

"Yeah," Will said. "I'll page you if something's up."

He turned back to Sarah, mentally running through his list of what he needed to look for.

"Okay, let's get the awkward question out of the way first - any chance you could be pregnant?"

Connor was halfway out the door, but that one stopped him. He locked eyes with her as Will looked on awkwardly.

"Look, I don't want or need to know the ins and outs of it," he said. "I just need to know if it's possible."

Connor had thought they were going to answer him simultaneously, but he was the only one speaking. "No."

Will looked from one to the other. "Sarah?"

She held up a finger, signalling for him to wait a moment. "Doing math."

'Math?' Will mouthed over at Connor, who was suddenly doing the same.

Brown eyes met blue, both with the same expression on their faces. Will said nothing.

"But we're always safe," Sarah said directly to Connor, who was now still as a statue.

"It's not one hundred per cent effective," he replied in a very even, measured tone.

And that was when Will worked out what they were talking about. "So, we're saying maybe?"

"It's a small possibility, but it's not impossible," Sarah replied begrudgingly, then added, "About a week."

Will nodded. "And that saves me my next awkward question."

To Connor, he said, "I'll have the lab run a test. We're not gonna know anything for a few hours."

"Go," Sarah said one last time. This time, he listened.

It was the one thing Downey had said about their relationship - don't get her pregnant before she graduates. But he didn't have time to think about that now. He had work to do, and patients to see.

Back in the treatment room, Sarah was avoiding looking Will in the eye.

"That was more than you ever needed to know about us," she said to the ceiling.

"Yeah, the fluorescent light really didn't need to hear about your sex life," he joked, lightening the mood. "Right now I'm your doctor, Sarah. And as your friend, I promise you it's going in one ear and out the other."

She grimaced, now brave enough to meet his eyes. "And then down to pathology for a pregnancy test."

"True, but we always do a full panel just to be sure. Better safe than sorry, and all that."

He had nearly finished checking her over when she spoke again.

"I'm so embarrassed," she lamented, taking the blood pressure cuff off.

"Don't be," he said. "You fainted."

"Yeah, right on top of that poor gymnastics teacher. Did he say anything?"

"Only that he was very impressed with your dismount."

She gave him a look. Now, he was just trying to make her feel better.

"Your EKG and your BP are normal," he said, "so I think what we're looking at -"

"- A vasovagal syncope, right?"

Will nodded. "Probably. Just gotta figure out what the trigger is."

"Okay," she sat up straighter now.

"Maybe blood sugar," he offered helpfully. "Let's get you some orange juice."

He led her across the ED to the doctor's lounge, where he knew they would find the juice they needed.

"I'm no Dr Charles," he said, passing her the drink, "but is everything okay with you?"

"Everything's great," she said. "The guy who played tuba above our bed every night finally moved out. I just got my pathology match, and Connor just gave me the sweetest gift. Bubonic plague."

"Wow," Will said. "He must really like you."

"I sure hope so," she replied. "Apparently there's a chance we could have accidentally made a human, so there's that."

He gave her a comforting smile. "Don't panic about it, Sarah. You've been safe, the chances are slim."

She grimaced. "You were supposed to forget you heard that."

"I know nothing," Will said.

The minute he was done with his second surgery of the day, he wanted to head back down to the ED. They'd been in the OR for hours, her blood test should be well and truly back by now. He hadn't been paged, his phone wasn't showing any messages - either they were waiting for him to finish up here, or they were about to have a very serious conversation.

Just as he thought he'd got away, Downey was pulling him back to talk to the family. He could tell his mentor knew something was up, but he didn't say anything. He wanted to know himself before he started speculating.

When he finally did get back to the ED, he found her standing at one of the workstations.

"Hey," he said kindly.

"Hi." Her reply was short and sharp, but right now he couldn't blame her. He had a thousand conflicting emotions running through his head right now - Lord only knows what she was feeling.

He logged into the computer beside her, checking files on his patients upstairs. He didn't ask. She would have already told him had she known.

"What if -" She stopped herself, looking around them nervously. Dropping her voice, she finished her thought. "What if it's positive. What then?"

He, too, dropped his voice so no one else could hear. "Then we would need to make some decisions."

"You mean, whether we carry or terminate?"

He closed his eyes and nodded. "That, and others - like whether or not we come clean to the administration."

"Oh my God, I hadn't even thought of that."

"This is not a conversation we need to have right now. We might not need to have it at all."

She looked him dead in the eye and whispered exactly the words he knew she was thinking. "I'm not ready to be somebody's mother. This was a 'one day' thing, something way out in the future."

He couldn't help it, he smiled.

"Why are you smiling?"

"We went from a not-in-my-plan to a one day. That's a maybe."

She rolled her eyes, returning her attention to her own computer screen. She shrugged, and said, "I know how much you want kids."

"You'd do that for me, even when you're not sure?"

Again, she shrugged. "We're planning a future, right? That's what people in relationships do."

He was smiling like an idiot now, and he knew it. "You know I love you, right?"

"And I love you too." As an afterthought, she added, "Your dad doesn't need to know about this, though. Does he?"

"As much as I would love to never see the man again, I'm pretty sure he's going to want to know his theoretical grandchildren."

"Yeah, I was afraid you were gonna say that."

"You don't wanna meet him?"

Immediately, she was shaking her head. "Not with the stories I've heard. I want nothing to do with the guy."

He didn't have a chance to give her a sarcastic response - he'd just caught a trauma case.

They lost her not long after they got her up to the OR. Her internal bleeding was so severe around her heart that the anaesthesia wasn't working. As awful as it was, it also made a lot of sense. When Connor had said he was going to find the family, Downey was the one who wanted to sit with them and explain what had happened. He had said Connor needed to head back down to the ED.

What the man knew, or how he knew, Connor didn't know. Somehow, he always knew. Or was it just that Connor had become so readable?

Down in the ED, Sarah was sitting on the couch in the doctors' lounge with her head in her hands.

When Will walked in, he knew something was up. "Reese, you okay?"

"Uh-uh."

"What, it happen again?" he was squatting down in front of her straight away.

"Vertigo," she replied.

"Maybe something is goin' on," Will said, genuinely concerned. "We should run some more tests."

Sarah took a deep breath. "No. I know what it is."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was glad she was finally admitting it.

"Pathology."

He wanted to comfort her, but he didn't know what he could say. And there was nothing he could do.

He was saved having to find a response when Connor entered the room. "What's happened?"

"She's fine," Will told him, watching him sit down next to her and immediately wrap and arm around her. "Just a little vertigo."

"What did the tests show?"

She finally looked up, then immediately regretted it. "I'm right here, you know," she said defiantly.

"I'm sorry," Connor whispered, placing a kiss to her temple. "Reflex."

"Not a trauma patient," she muttered, again holding her head in her hands. "I'm the girlfriend."

Both men smiled. It wasn't often either of them said it, or even that it was acknowledged. It was nice to hear the words spoken aloud.

"Well, your tests came back completely normal," Will offered. "And you are not pregnant."

"Thank God," she muttered.

Connor smiled again, leaning his head down against hers. "This is pathology, isn't it?"

"Vasovagal syncope," she recited. "A sudden drop in heart rate and blood pressure leading to fainting, often in reaction to a stressful trigger."

"Did you swallow the textbook?"

She didn't respond to Will, she didn't even look up. She did, however, raise a hand and give him the finger.

He laughed, starting to head for the door. "Oh, and guys - the walls are made of glass."

They looked up now, both thoroughly confused.

"You need to find a better spot."

They separated slightly, enough to pass themselves off to a casual onlooker as colleagues and friends. On the couch between them, where no one could see, she took his hand and interlocked their fingers.

"What if I don't go into pathology?"

The words hung in the air, heavy and dense.

He watched the expression on her face. This was the Sarah he had fallen in love with - the strong, sarcastic, quietly confident one. And she'd finally come into her own.

"You know I'll support you, no matter what you decide to do."

"I want to be in the ED," she said confidently. "I actually like treating patients."

He smiled. "I know."

The answer was simple and solid.

She sighed. "It's not going to be that easy, is it?"

"Nope," he answered her honestly. "Matches are binding. A legal contract."

"That's exactly what I'd hoped you wouldn't say."