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Her back is to him, but still Jemma almost feels Fitz wake up, a split second before she hears him shift slightly and let out a low, unintelligible murmur. Setting his chart down, she turns to stride over to his bedside, taking a moment to check the vitals on the monitor next to him. Steady, all of them. The sigh of relief catches in her throat as Fitz’s eyes flutter open; for a moment she’s back in a different room, next to a different bed, seeing his eyes for the first time in the nine longest days of her life. But this is different, she reminds herself sternly; the baffled look he’s giving her as his eyes slowly focus is just due to the pain medication they’ve got him hooked up to, not because of any mental trauma. Still, the similarities are enough to make her feel almost sick. She twists the ring on her finger round and round, nervous.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, partially to distract herself.
“Sore,” Fitz rasps. “My leg hurts.”
She laughs a bit at this. “Well, I should certainly think so, though hopefully the pain medication in your IV is taking the edge off the worst of it.”
Fitz blinks at her for a moment, then makes a motion as if he’s going to sit up. Jemma reaches out, putting one hand carefully but firmly on his chest to keep him in place.
“Oh no you don’t, mister. Stay put. Doctor’s orders.”
Now that’s he’s mostly awake, he’s staring hard at her, and she shifts a bit under his gaze. “Are you the doctor?” he asks. When she doesn’t respond immediately, he continues, “It’s just, you’ve got the whole… doctor-y… coat thing going on.” He makes a vague motion in her direction, presumably attempting to indicate the white SHIELD lab coat she’s got on.
Her heart twists painfully in her chest as she realizes he doesn’t seem to remember her. Breathe, Jemma, breathe, she thinks. You knew this was a possibility. You knew all the side effects of everything you gave him, and this was on the list. It’s only temporary, it’s just the medication, it’s fine. She forces a smile. “I suppose I am, in a manner of speaking. But…” she hesitates, then, “more importantly, I’m your wife.”
His mouth falls open and she can’t help but smile for real at his expression, even as she fights the panic trying to set up residence in her ribcage. “No, no, that can’t be right,” he slurs, shaking his head in small side-to-side motions – all he can manage in his current position. “I’d remember, I think. If I had a wife as beautiful as you. I’d remember.”
There’s a tone of such earnestness underlying his words that Jemma actually feels her cheeks flush. She tucks a strand of hair behind one ear. “It’s just the medication,” she tells him. “Can cause a bit of temporary memory loss. Nothing to worry about.” The last bit is as much for her own benefit as it is for his.
“But… you’re my wife? You’re my wife?”
“Yes, Fitz, I’m your wife.”
He appears to think about this, then, “No, still not getting it. I have a hot doctor wife?”
“Well, strictly speaking, I’m a biochemist,” she corrects. He’s still shaking his head, like he doesn’t believe her, so she sighs and reaches for his hand. Holding it up in front of his face so he can see it, she puts her free hand right next to it, splaying her fingers just a bit to show off the ring snug around her fourth finger. “Look. We both have wedding rings. Matching ones. Which you designed.” He’d spent ages on the intricate rings, insisting on making them himself despite the still-limited motor control in his bad hand.
It takes a moment for his eyes to focus on them, but once they do he looks back and forth between her face and the rings several times. “Wow,” he says, finally.
“Believe me now?” She sets his hand back down carefully on the bed, wrapping her fingers around his, and settles into the chair next to him.
“I guess so.” He’s quiet for a moment, a slightly dopey smile on his face as he considers her. “What’s your name?”
“Jemma. Jemma-”
“Fitzsimmons,” he finishes, almost automatically. “Our name. We’re Fitzsimmons.”
She knows it’s just an expression and not an actual physical possibility – not in this sort of situation, anyway – but her heart swells in her chest at the fact that he remembers that much, at least. “Yes, we are.” There’s the distinct prickling of tears gathering in her eyes and she ducks her head, pressing a kiss to the back of his hand in an attempt to hide them.
“How long? How long have we been married?”
“A year, just about. In fact,” she begins, straightening up and raising her eyebrows at him, “we were supposed to go out tomorrow evening to celebrate our anniversary, but someone had to go and get himself shot on a field mission even though I told him to be careful. Looks like I’ll be rescheduling that. But, to be fair, I was several months late to our first date, so I suppose I can’t hold it against you.”
Fitz’s eyes go wide. “We’ve been on dates?”
Jemma laughs at this, silently glad he’d chosen to latch onto that instead of her last comment. “Well, yes. Quite a few over the years.”
“Do we have kids?”
“No,” she says, then amends, “not yet.”
“Have we….” He pauses, chewing his bottom lip.
“Have we what, Fitz?”
“…kissed?” he asks, his voice dropping to a near-whisper.
She rolls her eyes at him and leans forward, kissing him on the corner of his mouth. “Does that answer your question?”
“I might need one more to be sure,” he tells her, and she laughs and obliges him. When she pulls back he’s grinning widely at her, eyes bright. “Wow. I got kissed twice and I have a gorgeous… biochemist… for a wife. This is the best day of my life.”
“Says the man with two bullet wounds in his thigh!”
He shrugs as if that’s an acceptable price to pay. “The best day of my life,” he repeats.
“I certainly hope that our wedding day tops the day you were shot and wound up in a hospital bed all hopped up on pain medication,” Jemma says, a bit archly.
“I’m sure it will, as soon as I remember it.” His eyes close briefly and Jemma starts to stand, but Fitz’s fingers tighten around hers and he tugs weakly at her hand. “Stay,” he murmurs.
“I’m not going anywhere, but you need to rest, Fitz, and I need to check on a couple things.”
“Will you be here when I wake up?” he asks, voice already thickening with sleep.
“Of course I will.” She’s never left his bedside before, and she’s hardly about to start now.
“Good. Good.” He releases her hand. “I want to see you again. When I wake up.”
“You will.” She bends down to kiss his forehead. “Get some sleep.”
The only response is his deep, even breathing.
She’s nearly forgotten about the incident when Fitz bursts into the lab a week or so later – as much as anyone can burst into anything on crutches, anyway.
“Jemma!”
Looking up from her project, her brow furrows in worry; he’s clearly agitated, and he’s coming toward her at what is probably a very unsafe speed considering he’s still getting used to the crutches. “Fitz? Slow down, be careful, you’re going to aggravate your injuries if you zip around like that-”
He comes to a sudden halt right in front of her, trying to reach out but nearly toppling over in the process. She steadies him, looking at him with concern. “Fitz, is everything okay?”
“You know I would never forget you, right?” he asks, fixing her with an intense, almost desperate stare.
“What are you-”
“Skye, she said that… the other day, after surgery, when I was hooked up to the pain meds – she said I couldn’t remember who you were, that we were married.” He trips over his words in a rush, stopping and starting and stuttering, but intent on getting them out.
“Oh. That.”
She’d relayed the story to Skye over a quick dinner the day after it happened, because after her initial panic the situation was funny, even endearing, and they’d laughed about it together. It’s sweet – how he loves you even when he doesn’t know a thing about you, Skye had observed with a smile after their laughter subsided, and a warmth had settled itself in Jemma’s chest as she had idly fiddled with her wedding ring.
“Fitz, don’t worry, really, it wasn’t your fault; it was just a side effect of the medication.” She decides to leave out the irrational fear she’d felt at first – he’s upset enough as it is.
“But I’ve never before – not when I got that concussion when we were at the Academy, or after the pod, or-”
“Fitz!” She takes his face in her hands, holds it steady. “It’s fine. You remember me now, don’t you?” He nods as best he can with her palms on his cheeks, and she lets them drop, satisfied. “Then there we are. No harm done.”
He’s still looking at her uncertainly. Skye’s words come back to her then, and she echoes them to him. “Besides, it was sweet. You loved me and you didn’t even know who I was.”
The corners of his mouth quirk up at that. “Well, of course I did.”
“And you remembered who we were – that we were Fitzsimmons. That was quite sweet as well. You were also very insistent that it was the best day of your life.”
Fitz scoffs. “Well, that’s completely ridiculous. Obviously the best day of my life was the day we got married.”
Jemma stretches up to kiss him on the cheek. “Right answer.” She shoves lightly at his shoulder. “Now, shoo. You’re still not supposed to be up and about too much, and I’ve got work to finish here. If you wait in the kitchen I’ll come make us tea when I’m done. Shouldn’t be too long.”
Obediently, he turns to leave. Jemma shifts her attention back to her work until the sound of Fitz’s crutches on the linoleum stops suddenly, and she looks up to see that he’s paused halfway to the door and is staring at her.
“Fitz?” she prompts, after he doesn’t say anything.
“No, it’s nothing, I just… even without the pain meds, sometimes I still can’t believe we’re actually married.”
She holds up her hand like she’d done the week before. “Got the ring you made to show for it and everything.”
“Right, yeah.” He looks down at his own ring for a moment, and she can see him smiling. “It’s just, after – after everything that’s happened, all the things we’ve been through, we… it’s good, you know. I’m glad. That we’re here.”
He’s looking at her, really looking, and she feels her breath catch the way it did when she’d finally worked out he was asking her on a date, or when he had proposed in the middle of a mission they weren’t sure they’d make it out of, or when he’d leaned down for their first kiss as a married couple. She smiles.
“Yeah. Me too.”