"Sarah."

She wakes up to a lovely pair of eyes that are light gray in the bland morning light spilling in through the curtains. Connor is standing over her in his spare bedroom, holding a coffee mug in his right hand and nudging at her shoulder with his left one. Her eyes move up the length of his arm and land on the loop of white bandages she placed there last night, proof that she's not dreaming this up. She mumbles something in complaint, rubbing at her bleary eyes.

"Sorry to wake you up this early but if you want a ride to work, I have rounds," he says lightly, taking a sip of his coffee.

It's hard not to put on a smile, seeing the old joyful Connor he's back to being. She sobers up in an instant and jumps out of bed, his t-shirt draping on her like a hospital gown. It's just past five am. Despite the early bird inside her, she thought a little extra sleep might actually do her more good than going a second time over the notes that kept her up till midnight last night.

"I thought you were taking the day off," she says grabbing for her bag of toiletries she has for overnights at Med.

"That was yesterday," he blinks at her. "I have work to do."

"But the ART you're on has side effects, right?"

He sighs, shrugging, "so far so good."

She can't help but grin at his optimism, finding it hard to concentrate on what she has to say, "look, Connor, you don't have to do this. I can always take the bus…"

"I've got this weird feeling that we've had this conversation, though it seems like it was the other way around last time," he pretends to be confused and it's ten times more charming that there's no way for her to resist. "Come on, it's the least I can do to pay you back."

"Okay," she takes a breath. "I'll be out in ten minutes."

The sun is just coming up by the time they pull into the parking lot. Sarah gets off first from the passenger seat, and sights, about three cars away, Will Halstead looking at her, and winking at her, all of which seems to go unnoticed to Connor, who slams the car door behind her, fixes his bag up on his shoulder, and throws a "see you later" at her over the car roof before hurrying off to his rounds.

She sighs, trying to brush it off of her mind. Out of the corner of her eye she spots Will coming toward her, and figures she can avoid that sort of attention for now and grab a decent breakfast before starting her shift, having declined Connor's offer of a meal from his fridge.

Turns out, she was wrong. The breakfast is as decent as it could be before April comes sitting down at her table seeing as there're no empty ones left, smiling one of her brightest and snakiest sneers at Sarah, "Dr. Rhodes, huh? Getting pretty good in there."

"What? No!" she exclaims, half out of astonishment and half out of defense.

"Don't bother," April shakes her head, pretendedly bored. "Dr. Halstead saw you two coming in together. Or is there anything more than that?"

"There is nothing going on, I swear," knowing that the nurse is only being friendly, Sarah can't help feeling a little offended.

"Maybe, but you sure gonna have a lot of rivals around here. Count me in," April glares at her, lips still smiling as she takes a large bite of her sandwich.

"There's nothing to rival for," Sarah feels stung at April's you-can-say-that look, and to be honest at the not-so-innocent tone in her own voice, freezing on the spot for a beat, blinking, before she clumsily picks up her tray and speeds her leave.

Keith Yates, the name rings one big hell of a bell. Connor frowns at the chart as he makes his way to the last room to round this morning.

Pseudoaneurysm from a displaced bypass graft, a result of blunt trauma from the crash. They did an emergent repair when he first came in but it's not ideal, and apparently the guy went and got himself a DNR in place and has turned down all treatment.

"Morning Mr. Yates. How are you feeling?"

"Like it's taking too long for me to die," the man grouches in a coarse voice.

"Yeah, sorry that I stopped you from doing that," Connor retorts in a sarcastic tone.

"Hey doc," the man says after a while, making Connor look at him for what he has to say, and now he looks sincerely remorseful. "I'm sorry."

Connor gives a nod too subtle for the man to register, and looks away. What's he supposed to say, that he'd do it again, which he would, that he accepts the apology? The whole thing has gone just too far for that.

"It's probably not my place to ask but…Why did you try to kill yourself?"

"Because I'm a dead man walking," he replies, self-pitiful and scary calm.

That leaves Connor stunned for a solid half minute before he can muster the courage and medical knowledge to make an argument, "That's not true. With the correct course of treatment most HIV patients can live long and healthy lives –"

"Man, look at me. This ain't ever the life I wanted. Taking them meds all the time and more meds for all the side effects? After I had that heart attack, I started asking myself, what's in it for me? This life ain't worth nothing. Better just end it without too much suffering."

"What about your family?"

"Knew I had it coming," he seems to be ignoring the question. "Wasn't even thirty, got into drugs. My wife took the kid, never came back. I swore to get clean, did it, then found out I had AIDS…My boy, Max, he reached out to me a while back, says I'm all he has after his mom passed, and I thought he better off not knowing what kind of a dirtbag I am."

Connor just looks at him, a face deeply creased with shame and guilt. He feels for that man, and not all of it is empathy.

"Listen, Keith," he glances at the chart again, and takes a breath. "You have a second chance to make things right. Now your aneurysm is still operable. We wait a few more hours and it may be too late."

The man does not respond. Connor can read uncertainty in his face and his eyes between the deep frown of his brows. Just then a knock on the door makes him turn and spot Sarah standing there with a young man.

She clears her throat and takes an impassive tone, "Mr. Yates, you have a visitor."

Connor backs out of the room, brushing past the young man whom he assumes is Max, and makes for the nurse station to fill in some charts. Sarah joins him a moment later, leaving the father and son to their problems.

"So he's your patient now?" she questions.

"Uh-huh," he keeps looking at the chart. "Dr. Berman was just covering for me, plus I'm on CT today."

"Did he say why he tried to commit suicide?"

"Family issues," he tells her briefly, deciding to leave out the suffering part for now. "Didn't want to get his son involved in the kind of messed-up life he has."

"Turns out to be a good Samaritan," she means to be sarcastic but somehow that doesn't come out right.

"Well, I was hoping to get him to change his mind," Connor looks up at Sarah, hopeful, completely missing her point, "and accept the surgery."

"No –" she blinks in disbelief. "Why are you even trying to save him?"

"Because…he's my patient," he stresses the last word, frowning at her.

"Aren't you angry at what he did to you?" she snaps, desperation taking hold of her voice.

"Are you?" he retorts the question back at her, narrowing his eyes.

She freezes at his doubt, caught off guard the second time in a day.

"No," she lies, and instantly regrets doing it to him. "I mean yes. Yesterday when we lost a patient, I wished I could take the life of those who didn't want it and…"

She trails off, breaking their gaze, and they share a moment of weighted silence.

"You can't jump in and save everyone Reese. It's just not possible," he says to her and she doesn't look at him. "But that day we saved this man's life, and I'd do it again. I am doing it again."

We. Their eyes meet and her heart skips a beat. To him, as she comes to realize, she's never a med student to be ordered around, but someone he's been fighting side by side with, and it's been like that since day one.

And so without a second thought she follows him rushing into the room when the code sounds again.

"What happened?"

"He was just talking," Max panics. "Help him, help my dad, please!"

"BP's dropping," Sarah looks alarmingly at the monitor.

"Pseudo aneurysm ruptured," Connor makes the diagnosis, and then looks down at the barely conscious man. "Keith, look at me, hey. You have to let us operate now okay? This is it, your second chance. You deserve it."

"Pops, you gotta let them docs help you, please," Max is on the other side holding his father's hand. "cuz I ain't mad at you, I promise."

"Do what you have to," the man barely croaks out, but he does, just before slipping out of consciousness.

"Alright," Connor announces as he slams off the breaks on the gurney. "Let's get him to the OR."

"Hey what's wrong?" Sarah finds her boyfriend to sit with at lunch but Joey barely takes notice of her.

"Is it true?" slowly he turns to her with scrutinizing eyes. "That you're sleeping with Dr. Rhodes?"

"No!" she snaps in defense, more frustrated than annoyed. "Why, does everyone think I'm stupid enough to sleep with someone who's not in the clear of HIV."

"You went home with him two nights in a row and think I wouldn't know?"

"I was just trying to help, as a friend," she manages to scare herself when that doesn't come out as innocent as she believed it was. "It's not like anything happened."

"Sure," Joey scoffs, clearly not buying any of her words. "When was the last time you seen a doctor befriend a med student."

The third time being caught off guard this day, she finally sways under the inexorable power of rumors among the ED staff, and can't help thinking that at least some of what they're crazing about is true, that there is something going on between her and Connor.

"That's what I thought," Joey fleers at her silence, before gathering his tray and walking away.

The thought keeps Sarah from focusing on her work the rest of the day. Every where she looks, she feels like people are staring and talking even if they're not. She hasn't got a chance to see Connor again, now that he's working two floors above her. She breezes through the charts as fast as she can, hoping to catch him in the lounge before getting off work. She needs to talk to him. She sighs as she picks up her bag and straightens her coat, just when she assures herself that she has missed him and would not have to worry about it till tomorrow.

"Hey."

She freezes at his voice, and for a second daring not look in the direction it came from. She can feel time flow bypassing her as he moves around the room, and winds up in front of his locker right next to hers.

"How was the surgery?" she asks, thanking herself for one successful attempt to make conversation.

"It was good," Connor replies, a light smile emerging on his face. "Keith gets a second chance to make things right with his son."

She looks to him, and see in his eyes a glitter of pride, and envy. She understands then, why he did it, and it was beyond saving a life, something far more personal than that.

"How was your day?"

"It was okay," she squeezes out a smile. "No one died."

He looks at his watch, "how about dinner, to celebrate? You can have something a little different than garden salad this time."

She freezes on the spot at his invite, looking at him with flurried eyes like a deer caught in the headlights. It's hard not to breathe in the joyous air around him, one that brings her back to that night in his kitchen, then to the other one at the riverside bar.

She looks out into the ED. The lounge is about to get busy with the staff coming in and out switching shifts. One more, she tells herself, this is her chance to make things right, once and for all.

"Okay," she puts on a smile, and lets him lead her out the door, and nearly misses April walking in with a surreptitious squint at the two of them.

She gets the tofu kimchi quesadilla as he recommended last time. He seems enlightened that she remembers. What he doesn't know is that she'd do it with every second of him if she could, starting day one, when she failed out on the central line and became the first dumbass med student he had to diaper in this job, that one embarrassing moment in her entire life for which she has no regret. Since then he's been holding her hand all the way, leading her to where she is, who she is now, a confident doctor-to-be taking pride in life saving, but the thing is, the past few days has pushed her to a dangerous, yearning edge where she would not allow herself to fall from.

They sit on a bench at the edge of the building, hidden in between the thick columns that cast their shadows under the streetlights. She chews quietly through her meal, wishing she could make time go backwards and find herself in the light of that midday with a garden salad in hand leaning against the column right behind him, where he didn't see her but she wouldn't mind. In fact she wouldn't change a thing. Strangely it would reassure her to just rewind over and over the past nine weeks, one of the few chapters in her life where she knew where she was going and that it'll be okay.

Only now she comes to find that the silence they share can never be awkward, for they both have a little introvert inside that comes out and seems to enjoy the soundless space. It gets to the point where she finds it useless poking at the leftovers of her dinner, and she draws in a breath, "Did you hear the rumors?"

Connor whips his head at her. They exchange a look in the eye, but no words.

"About us," she reminds him.

"I don't listen to them," he finally says, disinterested.

"Well apparently my boyfriend does."

"Didn't know you had a boyfriend," he brushes it off playfully, looking at his food instead of her.

"I'm being serious. Connor –"

"Why are you so afraid of people talking about something that's not there?" he deadpans, the look in his eyes scarily sensible.

Because it is there.

She opens her mouth but the words don't come out. Lowering her eyes to escape the burn of his gaze, she can feel tears of anger and despair pushing at the back of them. That's what all her feelings for him has all of a sudden turned into, because they were only ever unrequited, because she has fallen in love with someone that she knew she can't ever be with.

"Sarah…" that tenderness in his voice makes her heart skip a beat, her eyes drawn to his, locked in a permanent gaze, an eternity and an eyeblink at the same time, one that's forever engraved in her memory, where she understands that he feels the same for her, and their hearts are one.

Imperceptibly, he reaches for her hand on the bench in between their thighs. Her muscles convulse at the touch and she jerks away from him, the chill of a Chicago winter night cutting through her skin quenching the fire inside of her.

"This is wrong," she chokes through the tears welling in her eyes. "And it needs to stop."

"No it's not," he pleads, his voice as soft and sharp as a feather cutting into her heart, but she refuses to look at him, to see the pained longing in his eyes when he says, "I love you."

"I could lose my job for this," she says staring into her laps, terrified at the calmness in her own voice. "And I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I...end up in a life without you…I guess it's easier to turn an emotion off before it becomes real."

Finally she meets his gaze once again, and holds it. She doesn't know which hurts more, to cut him out of her heart like that or to see the pain in his eyes, the bewilderment, that he's hurting because he doesn't understand why, and she can't help with that right now.

"I'm sorry Connor, but I can't love you back."

She doesn't have to wait to know that there's nothing more to be said. She gets to her feet and lets them carry her and the weight of her secret farther and farther away from where she left her heart in a million pieces.