"Where are you and Daddy going this time?" Nate asked as Piper drove him over to Hotch's house one evening. "Uncle Aaron isn't going?"

"Daddy's sick," Piper told him. "You know how he gets headaches a lot? We're going to a doctor who's going to help him fix it. You get to sleep over with Jack for a few days because… because it's going to take a little while. And it'll be easier if you stay with Uncle Aaron, because I'm going to be pretty busy. He's going to be okay, though."

As Nate ran off to put his stuff in Jack's room, Hotch stood at the door, talking to Piper. "Good luck tomorrow. You've got the best doctor in the area. I… I wish there was more I could do."

"This is great," she assured him. "It's going to be so much easier with him out of the house. It'll be a hard few days."

"Well let me know if there's anything more I can do."

"Thanks." She gave him a hug, heading home to find Reid pacing the apartment. "Hey."

"Hey."

"You should probably get some rest, babe. They're going to keep you awake tomorrow, you know," she reminded him, coming over to give her husband a hug. "You're going to be okay."

"I know exactly what they're going to do," Reid replied, wrapping his arms around her. "They're going to keep me awake while they cut me open so they know right away if they've cut the wrong thing and irreparably damaged my brain. They're going to ask me a bunch of basic questions that will get annoying after a few minutes and keep giving me drugs and… you have to make sure they don't give me Dilaudid or anything like it. You have to make sure I don't… Piper, I'm not ready for this."

"I know. No one's ever ready for this. But I'll be there, and I'll make sure they're careful and don't give you anything they shouldn't. We've got to get to the hospital in a few hours. They want to get a bunch of prep done before the surgeons get there. You've got about," she paused, checking her watch, "four or five hours before we've got to go. Try to get some sleep, okay? I'm going to pack some stuff up."

Five hours flew by quickly, Reid too awake to even doze off in the car as Piper drove. She kept talking to him, telling him stories like she would when he couldn't sleep. He didn't say much as they sped through the darkness, instead thinking about what was going to happen as the sun rose. They arrived at the hospital, Piper getting him checked in. "How long can you stay?"

"As long as they'll let me," she promised, shaking hands with Dr. Wilson, who had come in early to make sure his operating room had been prepped to his standards. As Reid was led away for more prep work, she turned to the doctor, asking, "You know how they usually have someone in there asking questions and making sure they don't cut the wrong thing? Can I do it?"

"Ma'am -"

"I have my degree. I'm a psychologist. I've been trained to give all sorts of tests. Technically I can do this," she told him. "I still have all of my accreditations, and it would be a lot better for him if I was there. You're married, aren't you, Dr.? Your wife's name is Amber, right? What if it was her in that OR?"

"My director won't be happy," Dr. Wilson sighed, "but i think I can make some arrangements. You're going to need to scrub up, though. You can stash all of your things in one of the lockers-"

"I'm already on it."

Piper was allowed to say goodbye to him before he was drugged and taken into the OR, Reid clinging to her until the very last minute he could. "I'll be right there with you," she promised, holding him tightly as a nurse checked her watch, making sure they were still on-schedule.

"I know, but there's a chance that they'll mess up and… I don't want to think about it, but I could end up losing so much," he whispered, Piper shaking her head and promising that that wouldn't happen.

"Dr. Wilson's got one of the lowest rates of complications in the country. You're going to be okay, Spence."

"I'm still scared," he admitted in a whisper.

"I know. So am I. But I'll be right there, no matter what." A few minutes later, she was alongside Dr. Wilson and the others who would be in the OR, scrubbing up and getting ready. "We're still set to begin on time, right?"

"Yep," he nodded, drying his hands and checking that they had a plentiful stock of gloves for the operating crew.

"Good."

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Dr. Wilson asked as he pulled on a pair of gloves.

"Yes." Piper passed him without another word, taking a seat in the operating room near her husband. He had already been drugged enough to where he wouldn't feel anything, but had to be kept awake. The anesthesiologist nodded to her, Piper saying hello as she double-checked that she had fully prepped. As Dr. Wilson and his team came in, she took Reid's hand. "Hey."

"Hey. Nice outfit."

"They gave me some pretty decent scrubs, huh?" She laughed, the rest of the OR agreeing. She'd been given whatever they could find, so she was wearing a very violent shade of green, something between a highlighter and an awful green apple shade.

"Yeah."

"How are you feeling?"

"It's weird. I can feel you holding my hand, but I feel like you could punch me in the face and I wouldn't feel anything."

"Perfect balance," the anesthesiologist noted. "We want to keep you like that."

Piper looked around the room, watching Dr. Wilson put up the MRI result that Reid had been checking every day. He turned the lightbox on behind them, checking half a dozen other machines and monitors before pulling over a tray of instruments. "Digital mapping system?"

"100%," one of the team members answered, turning a computer monitor to face him. "Ready to go."

"Okay, Spence, they have to sedate you for a little while while they open everything up," Piper explained, meeting his eye. "Then they're going to slowly bring you back so you can talk to me for a while, and then they'll bring you back down again."

"I know, they explained everything earlier."

"There's my Reid," she smiled, rubbing his hand. "I'm not going anywhere, okay? We're going to wake you up in 15 minutes. And I promise I won't give you easy questions."

"Okay. I love you."

"I love you too." He closed his eyes, Piper looking to the anesthesiologist, who had already turned up the flow of the IV lines.

"You might want to step out for this part," Dr Wilson warned. "The craniotomy can be kind of difficult if you're not used to it."

"I'll be fine. I'm an FBI agent, remember?" She tried not to watch as the surgery team moved in and helped with the craniotomy, but she still had to listen to the controlled sawing and crunch of bone. Slowly, the anesthesiologist dialed down the IV lines, bringing them back to a baseline level that she had established earlier as Reid drowsily opened his eyes. "Hi there."

"Hey. What did I miss?'

"Not a lot," she admitted. "Dr. Wilson's got to be one of the cleanest neurosurgeons out there. He's hardly got any blood on him."

"That's good. Do you have to start asking me questions now?"

"Yeah. Today on Brain Surgery Trivia, we've got quite the array of questions," she smiled. "First, solve the Konigsberg Bridge problem."

"We usually stick to basic questions," Dr. Wilson reminded her.

Piper looked over to him, saying, "Usually. But Spence here has an eidetic memory and an IQ of 187. It'll make him feel better remembering very specific things or solving complex problems, because he'll know that it's all still working." The doctor nodded, allowing her to continue.

"You can't," Reid answered. "Konigsberg needs six bridges and not seven to cross them all only once. Thanks for that, though. I don't think I could sit here answering grade school questions for an hour before they put me back under."

"What are the forces String Theory wants to unify?"

"Gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetic force," he replied, one of the nurses shaking his head at the impossibility of the situation. "They operate independently, but theorists think they developed independence and used to be unified."

"What does Washington DC have in common with the periodic table?"

This one made Reid smile. "They don't have the letter J."

"What?" the anesthesiologist asked, looking to the two of them.

"DC doesn't have a J Street, because when you hand-write it, it looks similar to the letter 'I', so they skipped over it. And there's no element that starts with the letter J," Reid told her, looking back to Piper. "What's next?"

"What serial killer was on a pretty famous TV show?"

"Alcala. Easy."

She thought for a second. "Okay, I'll have to give you something that actually requires memory. Uh, let's see… Where'd we go on our first date?"

"We broke into this park on the Potomac with a view of Mount Vernon. Then Gideon called us in and we ended up on a bombing case in Alabama," he recounted.

"When's our anniversary?"

"Better not get that one wrong," Dr. Wilson laughed as he worked, constantly checking the brain-mapping system that he was working with.

"The Ides of March. The same day Julius Caesar died, Czar Nicholas II abdicated, and Gorbachev was elected."

"We're all set," Dr. Wilson said, looking to Piper.

"Okay. You're doing pretty well, Spence, They've got to knock you out for a bit, but then they're bringing you back for Round 2 of our trivia game. Then they get to knock you out again and sew you up."

The rest of the procedure went without incident, Reid answering a bunch of questions that impressed the surgery team. When they had finished the last round of questions, Dr. Wilson sent Piper to go wash up, so she could be ready when Reid was done, since he would be knocked out for the rest of the surgery. She ended up dozing off in a recovery room, waking up when a pair of nurses brought him in. He woke up soon after, smiling at the sight of his wife in scrubs, curled up in a chair that she had stolen from the nurses' station. "Piper?"

"Hey handsome," she smiled, stretching and moving over to sit next to the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"Did they get it all?"

"Yeah. Dr. Wilson came in a little while ago and told me they got everything and he thinks you're going to be okay, as long as you don't go back out in the field for a while. But for now, we've got to concentrate on getting you better. Here, they wanted me to give you a bit of water when you woke up. Careful. They're supposed to be bringing me ice to feed you, but they said a little water won't hurt."

"Thanks."

"They also gave me a lot of things to read and tell you, but I'm gonna boil them down. Basically you're going to be in bed for a few days, then we'll go home and keep you in bed for a few more. But you're going to be asleep a whole lot and we're going to have to keep you on painkillers."

"No."

She took his hand gently, saying, "Spence, you have to. I've already talked to them, and they're going to monitor it super closely. But you're going to be in so much pain if you don't take them. Regrowing bone isn't easy. I promise you I'll hold on to everything when we get home. I'll keep all of the bottles with me or something. I swear I won't let you get addicted again."

"No, Piper, I can't…"

"Honey, you have to. I can get ahold of your sponsor, if you want. We'll be careful, and we'll make sure nothing bad happens. Just like we got through surgery together, we'll get through the recovery process together," she promised.

"Okay. I… I'm sorry, I can't focus too much."

"It's fine. You're going to be pretty loopy for a while. Close your eyes if you want. Dr. Wilson will be in soon." She squeezed his hand, giving him a half-smile.

Reid closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. "Piper?"

"Hmm?"

"Thank you."