"There's something we can do right here," Kayla said, leading Steve to the bedroom.

"All we're doing in this room right now is getting some shuteye, Sweetness."

"Steve-"

"No, I'm changing into my jammies, baby."

"You'll have to go out and buy some first," Kayla smirked, crossing the room and opening the closet before pointing to something on the top shelf.

"Before you do, can you grab that for me?"

"I'll clean out the closet tomorrow, Sweetness. Let's just-"

"I don't need you to clean it. I just need you to get that."

Frowning but doing as asked, Steve reached for the large plastic storage bin on the shelf.

"Where'd this come from? Patchy Claus show up a couple months early?"

"No, our baby girl brought it," Kayla answered.

"After she left Seattle, Stephanie made a pit stop in LA. She cleared out the last of what was in our storage unit and drove it home," she said, acting as a spotter when Steve grabbed hold of the deceptively heavy bin. When he struggled to get a proper grip on it, she rushed up to grab hold of the bottom corner.

"What the hell were you two storing, baby? Bricks?"

"Here, let me help. Let me help."

Once they lowered the bin to the floor, Steve unlatched the lid to reveal neatly arranged stacks of textbooks, notebooks, binders, and medical journals, categorized with post-it note labels written out in Sharpie in his wife's cursive scrawl.

"I know, not exactly bricks," Kayla shrugged, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Just my baby's brilliance all in one big box," Steve grinned, taking one of the notebooks out from it. When the post-it label fell off, smile fading, he tried to re-attach it, then swore when he realized the stickiness of it was long gone.

"Didn't mean to disrupt your filing system here, Sweetness."

"It's alright. I'm surprised those stuck on as long as they did," Kayla said as Steve sat beside her on the bed, studying the post-it.

"What is it?"

"Just trying to figure out your handwriting here, baby."

"What about it?"

"How the hell they let you become an M.D. with it."

"Steve."

"I'm serious, Sweetness. Surprised they didn't kick you out of med school for your pretty cursive."

"You may want to read the notes inside the notebook before you say that," Kayla warned.

"Which one, baby?" Steve asked, gesturing to the pile of them neatly stacked in the corner of the box.

"Yeah, there are a lot, aren't there," Kayla sighed. "But I figured so long as I'm stuck in bed, it might be a good time to try and organize all of this."

"All of it's already looking pretty organized," Steve noted. "And even if it weren't, you wouldn't have roped me into helping you on that kind of project."

"I needed you to get the box?" Kayla offered, giving him a shy smile as he gave her a knowing look.

"Sweetness..."

"I just thought there might be some good resources in here. I know the textbooks are outdated, but from what I remember, some case studies and journals here might be worth looking at. Maybe give us some kind of clue as to what we're dealing with."

"Well, look, rather than sifting through here to try and find them, let me just run down to the car for your computer."

"No, Steve-"

"Why not, baby? There's gotta be databases or something you can pull research and that kind of info from," Steve reasoned.

"There are," Kayla said. "But blue light and prolonged screentime make headache symptoms worse and-"

"You've got a headache?"

Jumping out of bed and to his feet, Steve made a beeline to the bathroom medicine cabinet.

"Here, I'll get you some aspirin, or you want Advil, Sweetness? Got some Tylenol in here, too. Which one's best?" he asked, leaving the bathroom juggling all three pill bottles.

"Steve, it's fine."

"Nope, doctor's choice here, baby. Now go on and pick one."

Taking the ibuprofen bottle, Kayla waved it in front of him, then set it on the nightstand.

"I'm due for another dose in an hour."

Nodding, Steve returned the other pills to the medicine cabinet before joining Kayla back on the bed and setting his watch.

"The headache's not bad," she said. "I just don't want to make it any worse."

"I hear you, baby," Steve murmured. Nodding for Kayla to move closer, reaching his arm around her, he tried to massage the knot out of the back of her neck.

"This helping any?"

"Yeah. Who needs painkillers when I've got you?"

Lightly Steve laughed, brushing his lips on the side of her head before reaching for and pulling the storage bin closer to the bed.

"So, which of these books are we cracking first, Sweetness," he asked. Grabbing a heap of notebooks and journals, he set them on the bed while Kayla grabbed her readers off the nightstand and put them on.

"Hand me that blue binder there. And what JAMA edition is that?"

After handing the binder over, Steve thumbed the journal open, then grinned after seeing the table of contents page.

"One that decided to get its act together. Publish someone who knew what they were talking about!"

When he pointed to the research article on infectious disease and her name in type underneath it, at the proud look in his eye, Kayla couldn't help but blush.

"How come you never showed me this before, baby?"

"It'd be like you showing me a report of a case that you cracked, Steve," she shrugged. "Getting published is an accomplishment, but it's also just part of the job."

Leaning over to see the journal year after Steve flipped to her publication, Kayla shook her head in disbelief.

"Or, in this case, part of my med school application. God, it feels like a lifetime ago that I worked on this."

"Pretty timely subject matter, though," Steve said gruffly before checking his watch, then his phone. "Speaking of timely..."

"What are you checking? I told you five minutes ago when my next dose is."

"Just checking on my former employer, baby," Steve answered.

"Wanna see if the word 'rush' means anything to that damn lab of theirs."

Not seeing any notification, he angrily tossed his phone toward the foot of the bed.

"I'll take that as a no," Kayla sighed.

"Aw, they're probably just busy. Maybe the lab at the ISA's trying to J-A-M-A, too," Steve mocked. "Yeah, they're putting their best lab techs on the important stuff. Coming up with a catchy article title. Picking out a pretty font."

"Steve..."

"Oh, it'll be some brilliant research, baby. Only no one will see it 'cause it won't get rushed to the printer on time."

"Steve, they're just being thorough. They were thorough when I was an admin in one of their labs, and that was before half the new protocols and standards were even in place."

"You ran an ISA lab?" Steve asked as Kayla nodded.

"Shane provided the funding, but the lab was part of an operation trying to take down Lawrence Alamain. There was a virus he had a hand with designing, and we were trying to find a cure."

"And did you?"

"Why don't you take a look for yourself?" Kayla said, nodding to the journal Steve had flipped open to her publication's page.

"Baby, this is a lot of jargon to sift through for a simple yes or no."

"I did as much work as I could in that lab to try to find a cure, and it's all documented there."

"Looks like it took a lot of trying, Sweetness," Steve noted, seeing how lengthy and detailed the article was.

"Well, once I found out that Bo contracted the virus, I was pretty motivated."

"Wait, Bo is the Patient X that you're-"

"Yeah, and I went to a lot of extremes to try and help him. Protect him."

"Full-on big sister mode, huh?"

"Yeah," Kayla said with a sad smile. "Even got myself suspended from the hospital for him, if you can believe it."

The look on his face showing full disbelief, Steve shook his head.

"Why in the hell am I just hearing about all this now, baby?"

"Honestly, it all just seemed like ancient history," Kayla shrugged, taking her readers off and setting them on the nightstand.

"Til now, anyway," she sighed, her eyes clouding over.

Shifting closer, slipping his arm around her, Steve eased back against the pillows alongside his wife.

"Hey, look at it this way. You managed to save a Brady from a maniac's lab-grown mystery sickness before you even made the jump from NP to MD."

"Steve, the cure for that virus wasn't all my doing, far from it. And what we're dealing with now isn't the same thing as-"

"I know it's not. But I know sometimes history's got a way of repeating itself, Sweetness."

Reaching to hold her face, Steve softly smiled, thumbing a tear off her cheek.

"You've got a point there," Kayla admitted. "And speaking of history, you're no stranger when it comes to saving Bradys either."

"Kayla..."

"It's true! You bailed out Roman in Stockholm, well...Roman before we found out that he was-"

"You trying to make your headache worse there, baby?"

Rolling her eyes, Kayla smiled, squeezing his hand that was still cupping the side of her face.

"Obviously, you helped Bo, but my folks, Kimberly, Frankie, and Max...you were always there for them, too."

"You trying to make me blush, Sweetness?"

"I'm trying to point out your track record. And remind you that if it wasn't for you..."

When her voice broke and trailed off, shaking his head, Steve thumbed another tear from her cheek.

"Shh, baby. You don't need to remind me. I remember, okay? You know I remember."

"Yeah, I do," Kayla sniffled. "You saved me even when you didn't remember."

"Kayla-"

"It's true, though. You and me in that quarantine together, even with Billie right outside and you barely remembering us, even with all that in our way, we...we pulled off a pretty amazing miracle, right?"

Steve managed a nod, but between her tearful smile and flashing on that damn aquarium, swallowing hard, he fought to keep his own emotions at bay. From the look on Kayla's face, though, his efforts weren't successful.

"Steve..."

"Sweetness, I'm not arguing. Everything that happened that day, you finding your way back. It was a miracle. I just wasn't counting on us needing to stage a revival. Especially not..."

"Not what?"

"Baby, in that aquarium, what scared me the most, was the look I saw in Stephanie's eyes. The idea that our baby girl was gonna lose her mama had me so..."

"Of course it did," Kayla insisted. Moving Steve's hand from her face, she twined their fingers together and shifted closer to him.

"You think I'd expect anything different? Being terrified most for your child, grieving for their loss, that's natural, Steve. That's how I would have been if the situation had been reversed!"

"Sweetness, it was reversed," Steve reminded. "And when you thought I was dead and gone, you weren't just grieving for Stephanie's loss. When I was out there in limbo land, though, I told you how it was, baby."

His voice breaking now, Steve shook his head, blinked back tears when Kayla stroked his hair, then let her hand rest on the side of his face.

"My messed up head was in the game as Nick Stockton, and the rest of me was benched, Kayla. That's the only reason I didn't have a full-blown breakdown when I thought that you'd-"

"Steve..."

Shaking his head, sliding her hand off his cheek, Steve brought it to his lips before kissing it, squeezing it tight.

"The only reason."

"No, it's not. Y...you would've held on for Stephanie. You would've found a way for our baby girl. Same as I-"

"No. Not the same, Kayla," Steve said sharply, bowing his head. "Sure, I can get a heavy box of books from the shelf, but when it comes to what counts? We both know you're the strong one, Sweetness. Not me."

After she dropped his hand abruptly and sat back, reluctantly, Steve looked up only to see his wife staring him down.

"What?"

"You're hopeless. You know that?"