Everyone in the business likes to come up with their own list of rules, a ranking of the things that they learned in school or in the field based on how they fit according to their own philosophies as agents. Nearly everyone ignores what their colleagues have listed as their own rules—after all, an operative's rules are personal. Agent's A's rules are useless to Agent B.
However, nearly everyone that Matt knew within the Agency agreed on one thing: most jobs will go wrong.
Of course, there were the kinds of jobs that go wrong in ways that, ultimately, mean that the mission goes better than the original plan. Then there are missions where you have to deal with a minor disaster, the kind that will one day be hilarious, like the pipe-bomb-and-dumpster disaster from Quito.
And then there are jobs that go very wrong—they usually end in the hospital—and of course, there are jobs that go wrong in the worst way possible. Those ones end with another star being added to the Agency's memorial wall.
Matt's mission to Acapulco had been both of those last two. The surprise implosion of an abandoned resort high-rise had resulted in the death of Matt's partner, and had put Matt in the hospital with a shattered left kneecap.
Matt's partner—Simmons, a Blackthrone alum who had graduated two years behind Joe—was not someone that Matt knew well. Simmons was the quintessential Blackthrone boy. He was arrogant, cold, and generally anti-social, and he also happened to be a rising star in the Circle of Cavan.
That he had died in the implosion that Matt had merely been injured in was not entirely an accident—oh, Matt certainly hadn't gone out of his way to make sure that Simmons was crushed by a falling pillar of concrete and rebar, but, as he would report with the greatest regret during his debriefing, he knew he could have done more. When Matt had trouble falling asleep, later that night, it wasn't because of regret.
The debriefing itself had been short—just an initial report on the circumstances of Simmons' death and the success of the mission, otherwise. Matt's handler and bosses had wanted a more detailed report—and they would get one, eventually—but Matt needed to be seen by the doctors at Langley first.
His kneecap had shattered like an old porcelain vase. It would need surgery, and he would be on desk duty for months, but he could take heart in the fact that he would make a full recovery. Eventually.
If Matt had his druthers, he would have had the surgery immediately and gotten it over with. But the doctors at Langley were perpetually understaffed and perpetually overstressed, so he would have to wait a full day before the orthopedic surgeon could fit him into the schedule.
When Matt had initially been admitted, a nurse had tried to call his first emergency contact (well, the first contact who had at least level 5 clearance, which meant that they hadn't called his parents). But his first contact, Joe, was in Istanbul with Abby, and Matt hadn't updated his medical information in a while, so his second contact was still listed as Dave, and he was in Saint Petersburg anyway
Which meant that, early on that Tuesday morning, after he had been settled into a hospital room, Matt had to call Rachel himself.
An hour later, Rachel rushed into the room, not bothering to hide just how worried she was. She kissed Matt twice, before sitting in the vinyl chair next to the hospital bed. They talked for nearly an hour before she had to leave, but Rachel could only postpone her phone call with a few members of MI6 for so long. She really didn't want to leave Matt alone—and she kept apologizing profusely for not thinking to bring a book or two for him to read while confined to bed. Matt brushed her off, insisting that he needed to sleep anyway, and that his own injury was no excuse to keep MI6 waiting, and would Rachel mind passing along his congratulations to the newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Baxter while she was talking to them?
Rachel returned during her lunch, bearing the news that she had taken the following afternoon off to be with Matt before and after his surgery.
"You didn't have to do that." He murmured.
"Yes, I did. After all, your usual caretaker is in Istanbul with my little sister. Also, I don't want you to be alone."
Matt nodded, his throat and heart full.
The following day, Rachel sat in the same vinyl chair and watched as the staff wheeled Matt out of the room. She was still there when they returned with him, unconscious and with a successfully repaired knee.
After an hour, Matt finally awoke, groggy and confused—two of his least favorite things to be. But then he groaned, opened his eyes, looked around the room through bleary eyes and saw Rachel, and felt just a little better.
"It's good to see you awake." Rachel said, quietly and gently.
Slowly, Matt asked "Am I… Good?"
"Everything went according to plan. Better, actually. The surgeon said that some of the breaks were cleaner than they had looked on your x-rays." She reassured. "Do you want me to call for the nurse?"
Matt tried to shake his head, but really only twitched from side to side.
"No… Just—water?"
He noticed the pitcher of water on the table to his right—his hospital bed was positioned so he was sitting up, and the water was just slightly out of reach. But he was too slow. Before he could even work up the strength to extend his arm, Rachel had already poured him a small cup of water. Dropping in a straw, she sat, gently, at the edge of his bed.
Finding just enough strength to keep his hands from shaking, he took the cup from her hands, and sipped from the straw.
"Slowly." She admonished, just as Matt went to take a second sip. He took a second, smaller sip, and then Rachel took the cup from his hands and set it down on the table. Matt still looked pallid—the hospital lighting did his complexion no favors—but his eyes were clearer than they were a minute before.
Rachel brushed a small lock of Matt's dirty blond hair away from his forehead, as he gazed up at her.
"Do you want me to call your parents? Or do you want to wait a little bit?"
Matt hesitated.
Something was wrong.
The moment he realized what it was, he blurted "You're not family."
Rachel remained impassive as she replied with a simple, "No."
"Why did the doctor give you details about my surgery? I never signed anything saying you could know about it."
She didn't say anything, but Rachel looked completely confused, and completely innocent. Matt knew her well enough to know that she didn't have any tells, that she was too good to have any tells. He was still a little drugged, but even somehow, he knew she was lying.
"Did you lie to the doctor?"
"What?"
"Rachel."
"Matthew."
"Rachel."
"I may have told the doctor we were married."
"Rachel."
"It's hardly the worst lie I've told in my life, Matthew."
"You lied to a doctor. A CIA doctor—"
"I was worried about you, I knew you would want to know how your surgery went—"
"You lied to our co-worker."
"How often does anyone that we work with talk to the CIA's orthopedic surgeon? He's a nice man, but we're all busy with our own jobs, no one— "
"I think you committed a crime, Rachel. I think lying to get access to my medical information is a crime—"
Matt's grin grew wider and wider with each accusation they traded. Meanwhile, anyone who didn't know her would think that Rachel was growing increasingly irritated, but Matt knew better—she was embarrassed.
"Matthew—"
"I think that you, an employee of the federal government, just committed a crime within your place of work—"
"Well, you know, you could always make an honest woman out of me?"
After a beat, Matt's wide, childlike grin fell; yet his eyes glittered in the harsh hospital light.
"Rachel Vivian Cameron." His voice was once again rough and grumbling. "Are you proposing to me?"
Rachel smiled and blushed.
"No. I'm telling you that, once you get home, you're going to propose to me with the ring that you have hidden at the bottom of the box of rice in your kitchen—"
"How did you—"
"Hey, I'm pretty good at my job, Morgan. Anyway, you're going to propose to me once, and I'm going to say yes, because I love you, Matthew Morgan. And then I'm going to give you the ring back, and you're going to make reservations at every fancy restaurant in DC, and you're going to propose to me again at every one of them, and—"
"And we're going to get free champagne and dessert at every one of them?"
"Yes."
"Rachel Cameron, I love you, you wonderful, beautiful, brilliant woman."
"I love you too."