Archive of Our Own

Harvey Greenwood can't remember a time in his life when he didn't want to be a pilot. 

It starts with a documentary playing on the family TV, a snippet or two piercing his focus and rapidly drawing his attention. He stares, transfixed and alight with possibility.

From there, it’s his sole mission to find out all he can about aviation. He’s a precocious child, too smart for his own good as his mother likes to say. Harvey believes in his heart of hearts that if you want something bad enough, the universe will endeavor to make it so. But not without hard work. Not without gathering all of the information one can stomach, you know, to give the universe a little nudge.

Harvey is seven years old when he first decides he’s going to be a pilot. 

And Harvey is twelve years old when he realizes, with a knot in his stomach and his breath stuttering in his throat, that a debilitating fear of heights has the potential to wreck that dream forever.

But.

Harvey, like with most other things in his life, turns to literature when his world doesn’t make sense.

And so he reads about phobias and thus begins his incredibly brief and yet fruitful pursuit into the world of psychoanalysis. One simply has to expose themselves to their fear, over and over again, in order to overcome. Nothing comes without hard work, Harvey had decided years ago. Nothing comes without pushing yourself. Nothing comes without changing your circumstances.

Until his fourteenth birthday, Harvey spends as much time as he can stomach high up. It starts small - he stands on his desk, that’s easy enough. He perches at the top of the stairs, balancing on one foot, this is child's play!

(He has to turn his mission into a secret one after a particularly harrowing attempt at sitting on the roof of their two story home, in which his sister finds him hours later, unable to climb back in through the window on his own.)

Every added height proves that he is capable of overcoming anything. And that his dream is not a wasted one.

But, here's the thing about dreams.

Hard work is important. Dedication and passion, they are the secret ingredients. All of the potential of a dream is malleable and precious and critical to achieving them.

Unfortunately, dreams can be struck down by the most quotidian of things.

He had been getting his annual check-up, had shot up over the summer before tenth grade and was beginning to feel too big for his skin, anxious in a way that he was both perfectly familiar with and completely new to. His doctor asks, in the meaningless way they all do, about what he wants to be when he’s older.

A pilot, Harvey says with a confidence that is all his own.

Not with those eyes you won't, the doctor laughs out. He laughs, right in Harvey's face, at the ripe old age of fourteen. He laughs in Harvey's face, in Harvey's dream, and it’s like he misses the last step before the landing and Harvey is falling and falling -

The thing about your dreams dying in real time is that it feels like it should be massive. It feels like the world should stop, the next breath should be choked, the vision should tunnel, the heavens should open up with a flood of apocalyptical nature.

In actuality, a doctor laughs in your face and then you have to finish your check-up. And you have to walk home and complete your geometry homework and help your sister do the dishes and get ready for school the next day and rinse and repeat, day after day.

The thing about your dreams dying in real time is that it’s not a single life-altering event that marks the "before" and the "after." Instead, it is a burgeoning feeling of bitterness and a recognition that you are not as smart or capable or in control of your life as you always thought you were.

Harvey is fourteen years old when he realizes two things about his life:

1. He is never going to be a pilot, no matter how much hard work or dedication he puts into the endeavor. He is to remain grounded, still afraid of heights and still unable to see the world.
2. If Harvey ever becomes a doctor (he'll need a new career plan after all), he will do everything in his power to ensure he is never the reason a child gives up on a dream. 

***

Harvey decides on medical school in Zuzu City because it's the farthest place he can seem to get from home. Med school comes to Harvey not in the form of a dream nor through extensive study and passion; rather, it comes to Harvey through sheer luck and a want to feed the little part of him that had stood atop the roof of his childhood home, terrified and shaking and alive.

(He is by no means nor definition an adrenaline junkie. If Harvey can't fly, he'd like his feet firmly planted on the earth, thank you very much. But there's something to be said about staring down your deep seated fear and not retreating, not giving up. There's something to be said about proving to yourself that you're not to take everything like a dog, rolled over and vulnerable belly exposed. There's something to be said about fucking trying.)

He majors in environmental sciences, a decision made last minute and without a second thought. He pushes through all of his science courses, throwing himself into organic chemistry with all the vigor of a man possessed. His professor sees his dedication, mistakes it for passion, and plants the seed in Harvey's mind:

Have you thought about medical school? We need more doctors like you.

From there, it's relatively easy. Finishing undergraduate with a 4.0 GPA isn't difficult when you don't have many friends or student loans to pay off. Applying for medical school in senior year isn't difficult when you've wormed your way into a research lab with a prominent academic who can write you a coveted recommendation letter (to pair nicely with your other three, of course). Deciding on Zuzu Medical School isn't difficult when it will take a three hour plane ride from home and your father still refuses to fly.

Harvey arrives at Zuzu Medical School with a concrete idea of how his life will unfold from here. He will complete his coursework in three years, circling various specialities but spending as much time as possible learning about emergency medicine. He will earn his first choice residency and spend the next three to four years (here he gives himself some leniency since he doesn't know how this all works yet) working in an E.R. He will take his medical licensing exam in his second or third year so by the time he's done with his residency, he'll have a full year working as a licensed doctor under his belt. He will then move to the highest ranked hospital in Zuzu city and become chief of emergency medicine by the time he is 36 years old.

Harvey is freshly twenty-two by the time he arrives at Zuzu Medical School with a concrete idea of how his life will unfold.

But, here's the thing about concrete ideas.

Hard work is important. Dedication and passion, they are key. All of the potential of concrete ideas is sturdy and precious and critical to putting them into action.

Unfortunately...well, you know how the story goes by now.

***

Harvey lasts three months in emergency medicine before he has his first full-blown panic attack.

(He's had anxiety spirals since he was a child, but this? His heart racing, his vision going, this insurmountable fear that he was going to fucking die, right here right now in this dingy little hospital room with a cot and the clothes on his back.)

They rapidly become a weekly occurrence. He gets good at hiding them until he doesn't and his attending sharply suggests he might be better suited in internal medicine, not everyone is cut out for this kind of work you know. 

(He hears the laughter of his pediatrician in his head as he struggles to catch his breath.)

Another month of panic goes by and the suggestion is no longer a suggestion. Harvey is rotated to pediatrics, a "soft" transition his colleague tells him, but he can't stand the pity in her eyes.

He likes pediatrics, he really does. Up until a child dies while he is doing his rounds and Harvey spends his next two days off in a state so blindingly drunk he's surprised he survives it.

He's rotated again, this time to internal medicine. And he hates, fucking hates, that his attending had been right. Internal medicine fits him like a latex glove and Harvey spends the next five years going through his daily life with only a small ache in his chest and an occasional anxiety spiral. He takes the win.

It takes him another year to complete the medical licensing exam and he passes on the first try, thank fuck, but his concrete plan has long been put down and when his boss asks him if he would consider staying in the city for a fellowship, Harvey hesitates.

Harvey is about to turn thirty-two years old and when he returns home for the night, asking his boss if he can think about it - just need to make sure all my ducks are in a row and all that, thank you so much sir - he stares at himself in his bathroom mirror for an indeterminate amount of time. 

His hair has gotten a little longer than he usually keeps it, curls an unruly mess and about to start falling in his face. There are bags under his eyes and lines on his forehead and wrinkling at the corner of his mouth. There's a gray hair or three at his temples. His back aches, his right knee twinges every now and again (an old gridball injury he sustained in college, back when he used to do things, back when he would occasionally, every blue moon, think to have some fun). Harvey looks at himself and grimaces and he feels old, older than he's ever been before. 

I'm going to die like this, Harvey suddenly thinks, and he stuns himself.

Something has to change.

The next day, Harvey accepts the fellowship on the condition that he stays in internal medicine and he can take two weeks off this summer to travel. (He doesn't have the social capital to barter for this, he knows, but his boss must see something in his eyes, must tap into a small sense of empathy, because he acquiesces.)

Harvey goes to happy hour the next night with people he's worked with for years now and learns that Brenda has three kids, Jamie has never left Zuzu in his life, and Marcus speaks five different languages. Harvey hears about the residents who started an amateur gridball club that's mainly used for stress relief and he asks if he can join every once in a while, if they'll let the old man play. Harvey goes out the next month with a coworker and he flirts with a woman and she takes him home and when he’s got his head between her legs, his fingers grasping firmly at her hips, he relishes in the pleasure of it all.

Over the next year, Harvey works hard to make his life worth living every day and many days he succeeds and when he doesn't, he tries not to let it consume him.

And yet. 

There is still something missing.

Harvey can still feel the itch in his chest, the tingle of his fingertips, the hint of that feeling - up on that rooftop, all alone - the yearning for something that he has yet to uncover and it drives him crazy that he can't work his way out of this, that he can't read his way through this, that he can't sort out the underbelly of it all.

He lets it build and build until it overtakes him in a wave of simultaneous dread and certainty that he is not where he is meant to be, not yet.

Something has to change.

He is weeks away from finishing up his year long fellowship and he is not sure where to go next. This is not something Harvey has experienced very often, this uncertainty, this doubt. Harvey has calculated so much of his life, every hour, every day, every week. He rarely lets himself exist in the in-between, rarely understands the purpose of confusion and the unknown.

But Harvey's belief in the universe prevails.

They are wrapping up a playful scrimmage of gridball, Harvey panting and sweaty and feeling the lightest he's felt in some time. His friend Vishal is waving around what looks like a letter as they come off the field to begin cool-down stretches (doctors and their habits and all that).

"What you got there, Vi?" Vanessa tries to grab it out of his hand, but she's a mouse among giraffes, always has been.

"My dad's tryin' to guilt trip me into taking over his best friend's private practice." Vishal tosses the note into her hands, rubbing his face.

Harvey's ears perk up but he keeps his head down.

Marcus just laughs. "Sounds like a sweet gig, Vishal. What's the catch?"

"It's in the bumblefuck countryside from what I can figure out, and I have no clue if he even makes any money there." Vishal is grimacing, he's grabbing the letter back from Vanessa, he's crumpling it in his hands, he's -

"Where, exactly?" Harvey speaks before he even realizes he's going to. The words tumble out quickly, instinct over any conscious thought.

Heads whip around to him, the quiet doctor who plays gridball with all the fervor of a college student without the talent.

"Uh...hold up." An uncrumpling. A close reading. A pause. "Some place called Pelican Town, what an awful name, gods -"

Harvey's heart thumps. He rubs at it, but his focus is still on Vishal.

"In Stardew Valley."

Harvey is thirty-three years old when the world clicks into place for him. He is not yet certain. He is not yet totally convinced.

But there is something alive under his skin, burning in his chest, radiating out from him so that he's sure everyone around him can feel it.

Harvey does not believe in fate. He rarely believes in coincidence and he's not sure he believes in any kind of god.

But Harvey believes that when you want something bad enough, the universe will endeavor to make it so. With a little bit of elbow grease, a lot of hard work, and maybe -

- perhaps -

A little bit of luck as well.

***

Harvey is thirty-three years old when he arrives in Pelican Town, in the heart of the Valley.

Harvey is thirty-three years old when he enters the clinic, coming face-to-face with Dr. Bhatti. He will be under his tutelage for a little less than three months. (He would have liked more, he would have begged for a whole year, if he hadn't had to sort out abandoning the life he had created in the city first.) Harvey will learn what he can while he still has the older doctor and then the practice will be his, all on his own.

Harvey is thirty-three years old when Dr. Bhatti hands over the keys to him one last time, with a wink and a grin and a promise that Harvey will find what he's looking for, whatever that is, whenever that is.

After all, Dr. Bhatti had found his wife here, had found his kids here, had settled down here because this place brought so much peace there was no way he could abandon it. He had found something in the Valley he had been unable to dream up, in the form of a delicate smile, in the form of laughter in a saloon, in the form of hard work and dedication and patients who appreciated him, in the form of births and death and comings and goings and life.

That's what he found, Dr. Bhatti summarizes. He found life here. Not a life, but the only life he could have ever been able to live.

He leaves Harvey at the doorstep with a wink and a grin and a promise.

Harvey is thirty-three years old when he puts on a white coat for what feels like the millionth time.

But this time, he has remembered his purpose. He has remembered his dreams.

This time, it brings with it change.

And fortunately...well, maybe you don't know this story. Not yet, at least.

***

Harvey is thirty-three years old when he enters Pelican Town, in the heart of the Valley, and decides to stay.

Harvey is thirty-four years old when he determines that he has earned the trust of maybe half the town. 

He patches up the consequences of Vincent’s childlike clumsiness enough times to fall easily into Jodi and Sam’s good graces. (He meets Kent, only once, before he’s deployed and he wonders about a man who leaves his family for a perceived greater good. Harvey tries not to think too much about it after that.) 

He connects Shane to a liquid IV more times than he can count and Harvey’s lack of judgment offers him the barest of head nods when he sporadically finds himself in the Stardrop Saloon. (He helps break Jas’ fever when she contracts the flu and he’s sure that it earns him more respect in Shane’s book than anything he could do for the man himself.) 

He visits Alex’s grandparents, much to George’s chagrin and Evelyn’s pleasure, and even though he’s dealt with more vitriol in one day in the E.R. back in Zuzu, he finds his walk back to the clinic always a little bit harder, the old man’s complaints rattling around his head. (He slips Alex a condom or three when he starts asking the evasive questions, the ones he’s not sure he can rely on the internet for, and Harvey wonders if he should create a pamphlet on different sexual healths or if the mayor would accuse him of trying to indoctrinate the youth in their tiny little town. Not that he cares per se, but it’s a little too soon in his career here to be ostracized.)

The rest of the town, though, remain a mystery outside of their annual check-ups. Harvey attends the seasonal festivals religiously that first year, wanting to prove to himself and all of the rest of them that he belongs here, that he may be introverted and a little anxious but he’s trying his fucking best. 

(Harvey is skeptical of the Dance of the Moonlight Jellies until he isn’t. He sits heavily on the docks as the iridescent light seems to seep in like a fog, like a spirit, and he is made speechless by the witnessing of something that is the closest he’s ever felt to the divine. He sits and he stares and Harvey wonders if the past decade of his life was meant to bring him here. He is the last person on the docks, remaining long after the mayor goes home and the jellyfish disappear back to where they came. He stumbles home in a daze and can’t fall asleep, and for a week after he tries to burn the memory into his mind so he will never, ever forget.)

Harvey is thirty-five years old when he hits his two year anniversary in Pelican Town, in the heart of the Valley. He’s not sure how to feel.

Some things have changed, that’s for sure. Harvey wakes up most days and, while he may not jump for joy at the long or short list of appointments, he feels a solid contentment that he wouldn’t trade for much else. He feels important here, in this little village. He feels worthwhile, like he can help and he doesn’t seek out reward but the way the people of the town have shifted themselves just slightly, just enough for him to squeeze in, is recognition enough. 

There had been a moment during the summer, a day that lulled one in with its bright sky and oppressive heat. He had wandered down to the beach purely on muscle memory (Harvey didn’t believe in coincidence, didn’t believe in chance, still didn’t know what to believe in), decided to stay only to say hello to Elliot, an unlikely blossoming friendship. He had looked out to the ocean to see if Willy was fishing, to see if the larger fish had gotten close like they had in the spring - 

He had stopped, frozen for a second, because Sam was near the edge of the ocean pouring a water bottle into his eyes to flush them out as he yelled at Haley, what are you stupid?! And Haley was laughing as she walked away, strolling towards Harvey, and Jas was staring out into the water, looking exactly where Harvey was looking.

Vincent. In the water.

Not splashing, not waving. His mouth just barely over the wave that came in. His eyes, from what Harvey could see, glassy. 

Harvey was sprinting before he took his next breath. 

He wrenched his shoes off, his jacket quickly following. He only barely registered Haley’s confused look as he was past her, Jas’ scream as he dove into the water. He had the young boy in his arms within seconds, shoving him above the surface. The water here wasn’t deep, but the current was strong, he could feel how it was trying to rip him back into its depths. 

Vincent was on the shore of the beach less than 30 seconds after Harvey had seen him, but still.

He wasn’t breathing.

The commotion was in full swing now - Haley was back by Sam’s side, her eyes wide and unblinking. Elliot was running from his cottage, alerted by Jas’ incessant screaming, grabbing the young girl immediately to turn her away from her friend. And Sam was frozen, his face pale and his eyes red from the rubbing and his hands shaking. 

Harvey had no time to pay them any mind, his hands already locking together to begin CPR. He can’t have been in the water for too long, Sam wasn’t irresponsible, just easily distracted. He pushed down once, twice, again and again, before pausing to check. Nothing.

“Haley.” Harvey’s voice returned to him, clipped. “My jacket pocket, there are keys. Grab them, open up the clinic, and bring one of the rolling tables to the front door.”

She’d turned her gaze to him, but didn’t move. “Now, Haley!” And that got her. She was off like a shot, faster than he had ever seen the girl move since he’d known her.

Compressions resumed. One, two, three, four…

“Elliot.” Harvey had started, but needn’t worry.

“I’ll bring Jodi to the clinic.” And he was gone, Jas thrown over his shoulder even as the girl beat her little fists against his back, calling out for Vincent -

(- he’d watched a child die before, this had happened before, this could happen again, he’d watch a child die again -)

- and then there was a sudden rush below his hands, a loud sputtering, and Vincent was throwing up water. Harvey felt light-headed, just for a second, and then he was holding the boy up, patting his pat gently to expel anything left. He was cold, he was pale, but he was breathing, he had a strong pulse.

“Sam!” Harvey scooped up the boy (he was waterlogged, but so small) and was jogging towards the path that led back into town, not waiting to see if the brother followed. He didn’t need to run, Vincent was alive and sobbing in his arms and the worst was over, but it didn’t stop Harvey from pushing himself - 

(- he would not watch another child die in front of him -)

- gently placing Vincent on the gurney that Haley had steadfastly rolled to the doorway. He could hear Sam behind him now, could hear another set of feet a little farther away (Jodi, hopefully), he could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. But he grabbed the stethoscope from Haley’s outstretched hand (good girl, he’d have to remember to thank her after) and the lungs were clear, good, he’d have to do an ultrasound, he’d have to get the blankets to warm him up, he’d have to insist he stay overnight to keep an eye out but he, he - 

He was alive. 

It’s days later when Sam walks into the clinic, sees Harvey waving at Abigail as she leaves her annual, and pulls him in for a hug that lasts longer than Harvey has ever experienced. Harvey studiously ignores the wet he can see on Sam’s face as he pulls back, shakes off Sam’s thanks, but as he asks for Harvey’s forgiveness he -

“You did nothing wrong, Sam.” Harvey clasps him on the shoulder, tilting his head slightly to catch Sam’s gaze and hold it. “Do you hear me? This wasn’t your fault.” 

And Sam lets out a sob and his arms are around Harvey again and the doctor lets him hold on, lets him release all the pain and the anguish he hasn’t been able to process since he saw his little brother lying, near dead, on the sandy beach. He lets Sam rely on him, even for this brief moment, and his chest twinges and his hands are steady and the universe hums in agreement with him. 

Harvey is thirty-five years old when he hits his two year anniversary in Pelican Town, in the heart of the Valley. He isn’t always sure how to feel, but much of the time, Harvey feels like he has a home he can call his own and a community that knows him, at least a little bit, and a purpose, a drive, a reason. 

And.

Harvey is thirty-six years old when a rumor starts. 

Someone’s bought up the abandoned farm west of the town, the one that the old farmer ran until his death a handful of years ago. (Harvey hadn’t met him, had apparently just missed him before he was sent to hospice care. He’d been friends with Dr. Bhatti, that’s all he knows, one of the compounding reasons that he had decided to retire in the first place.) 

No, not just anyone. His granddaughter.

The young farmer.

Harvey gets snippets here and there, idle gossip that he pretends he’s above but also feels like one of the things that tethers him to this place. 

She arrives, according to Caroline, with two bags to her name. She looks, according to Pam, like a city girl who’s gonna get eaten alive here. She works, according to Maru, her ass off trying to clean up the farm that she has no time to actually come in and meet the people who live here.

(Harvey starts a little at Maru’s tone, biting and just slightly impatient. He has rarely heard her like this since she begged him to bring her on six months ago. She was untrained and unqualified, but Harvey was understaffed and unable to continue all the bureaucratic nonsense on his own. They had come to a mutual agreement, with Maru agreeing to head to Zuzu City for a week-long training seminar that would allow her the basics of first aid and emergency care, as long as Harvey paid for it. He didn’t necessarily have the money for it, but he was already underpaying her and wanted to help her invest in her future. It was the least he could do.) 

Three weeks go by, the presence of the young farmer like a specter haunting their town, before he asks Maru to put a notice in her mailbox that the clinic is open and her annual can be added to his books. He’s coaxing, he’d never admit, but he also knows what it’s like to be an outsider here, to be overwhelmed here, to be lonely here. 

It isn’t until the Flower Dance that the specter becomes corporeal. 

(The young farmer misses the Egg Festival and it causes such a whispered uproar that even Harvey has to ban the gossip spreading in his own clinic.)

He’s helping Gus set up the last of the drinks on one of the tables, listening to Elliot wax on about a specific line in his new poem that makes him feel “erotically charged”, as he likes to say (Harvey wonders what the fuck “erotically charged” means and whether it could be classified as a medical condition). There’s sweat pooling at his lower back and he’s rid himself of the blue jacket that completes his ensemble. He feels strange outside of his usual green and brown, but Maru had practically begged him to dance with her again so that her parents didn’t try and make her and Sebastian dance together like they’re children. 

It isn’t until he’s left George and Evelyn in the shade - doing his due diligence and all that - that he notices her. 

There’s a figure talking to Penny, the only young person not decked out in the white and blue that the dance forces them into each year. He’s heading in her direction before he even realizes his feet are moving, until suddenly Maru is in his face, grabbing his wrist and dragging him towards the center of the field where everyone is gathering. 

This dance is the bane of Harvey’s existence and as the music starts, he finds himself hyperfocused on the steps, determined not to make a fool of himself (or Maru) for another year.

(Harvey is not a good dancer, less from lack of talent and more from lack of trying. He may believe in the power of hard work, but he does not believe that everything requires hard work.)

But as he looks up from his feet, as he twirls Maru around, his gaze flits to the young farmer once more. 

She’s standing beside Jas, squatting down and whispering something to the young girl that gets her into a fit of giggles. The young farmer is clad in a set of overalls and a loose t-shirt, some long washed out logo slightly hidden. Sturdy work boots on her feet, a sun hat trying to constrain a ponytail with curly flyaways. A thin layer of dirt covering much of her exposed skin, a bruise or three on her arms, and a raised scab on her collarbone. 

Harvey watches intently as she mock bows to Jas, who laughs loudly but curtsies all the same. The young farmer encourages the girl to step on the top of her boots and then they’re turning in circles, an enormous grin on her face as she holds onto the little girl’s hands carefully. 

Harvey blinks once, and then twice.

And then the song is ending, he’s hurrying into a bow reminiscent of the farmers towards Maru, and they’re all dispersing to the drinks table to finally get as drunk as they want. Harvey is laughing as Maru jokes with him, he’s passing a drink to Leah who’s saying she still owes him for her last round of antibiotics, he’s offering an elbow to Evelyn so he can ensure she gets to her grandson in one piece. 

And when he looks around again, searching for the curly hair and the brown eyes and the gap-toothed smile, she’s gone.

***

The next time Harvey sees the young farmer she is perched on one of his exam tables, the hospital paper crinkling as she shifts her weight from one thigh to the other. There’s a blood pressure cuff on her arm and Harvey’s eyes can’t stop flickering to the light scar on her collarbone.

“Where’d you get that?” Harvey asks, nodding towards the mark as he listens through his stethoscope. 

“Hmm?” She’s got this look in her eyes that Harvey hasn’t been able to place yet. They’re shifty, like she can’t focus on one thing. She’s sitting on her hands but her leg won’t stop kicking against the table under her. 

“The scar.” The cuff is removed. “Going to listen to your heart now, is that okay?” 

(Abigail had asked him once why the fuck - her words, not his - he kept asking her if he could do normal doctor check-up stuff - again he has to be clear, her words - instead of just, like, doing them. Harvey had explained that just because he was a doctor didn’t mean he could just touch somebody or perform a medical procedure without their consent. In fact, this was the reason why many people were so anxious around doctors in the first place. Because doctors often believed they were gods, they were privileged, and they were helping - even when they most certainly weren’t.)

“Oh, uh, okay.” She nods and then she swallows, hard, and Harvey pauses. 

“Are you sure?” He waits.

She looks up at him, a little stunned and a little lost. He waits. Her eyes don’t leave him. 

“Um, yeah. Yes. You can.” This time her nod is more sure, and he mirrors her, hoping it makes her feel better. Or just less anxious. He’s no stranger to anxiety, that’s gotta be what all the restlessness is about. 

Stethoscope over her heart, he decides to let the scar go for now, reasoning she’s not comfortable answering his questions yet -

“Uh, I got it when I first got here.” Oh. Well, scratch that then. “I was trying to climb a tree to hack off one of the dead branches - I know, I know, I promise I recognize in hindsight what a bad idea it was.”

She chuckles weakly and he rearranges his face away from the disapproving expression he knows he starts to wear when he hears shit like this. 

“Sharp branch meets skin. Body meets ground, rather rapidly. You know the story.” The young farmer shrugs, as if it's a silly tale. 

“You fell from a tree?” He blinks at her rapidly, sweet Yoba, what else had she done in the five months she’d been here? “How high? Did you feel anything twinge or, or did you feel any soreness -”

“No, no, I swear I was fine!” Her hands clench tightly together and Harvey realizes his plan of delicate care is kind of all out the window at this point. “It was very low, barely a couple of feet off the ground. Just a bruised ego, I swear.” 

Harvey nods as he takes the stethoscope away but he can’t help as his gaze roams over her, searching for any lingering bruises or swollen joints. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he just sighs and shakes his head, jotting some notes down on her papers. 

But.  

There’s something in the way she stares at him when he finally meets her eyes again, there’s something in the way she can’t stop fidgeting, there’s something in the way her heart rate steadily increases under his observation. 

“Are you alright?” It’s a careful question. If Harvey has learned anything in Pelican Town, it’s how to ask a careful question. Just this side of nonchalant. No judgment. Like he’s asking about the weather and it really couldn’t matter to him what the answer is. “Your heart rate is just a tad higher than where I’d like it to be.”

She blinks at him, slowly. “Oh, uh. No, yeah. Just don’t really like doctor’s offices too much.” Another blink and then the shifting is back.

“I get it.” Harvey nods once and then he’s at the exam room door. “Well, everything else is great. Any questions for me or anything you think is important for me to know?”

The young farmer pauses, like she’s really considering the question, and it’s such a mundane thing, such a normal occurrence that he’s seen numerous times before. But there’s something in her pause, in the little furrow of her brow. Something in Harvey’s chest twinges, suddenly, and he casually puts a hand on the door frame to steady himself. 

“No. I think I’m okay.” She’s up, stretching her arms above her head and shaking out all her nervous energy and Harvey is turning and opening the door and out, he needs out of this room.

He’s filing her chart at the front desk and she’s thanking him and she’s nearly at the clinic door -

Harvey calls her name. 

“Please try not to fall out of any more trees. But, Yoba forbid, you do, please don’t hesitate to come to the clinic. Preferably immediately after.”

The young farmer stares at him and for a second he’s sure he’s miscalculated, until -

A laugh bursts out of her all at once and her eyes crinkle and what’s left after is a brilliant grin and a lazy salute in his direction.

“No promises Doc!” 

And something in Harvey’s chest pulls.

Oh.

Oh.

Harvey is thirty-six years old when he meets the young farmer, far from her home and far from herself.

Harvey is thirty-six years old when there is a shift in the life he has created in the Valley, the only life he could ever be able to truly live. 

Harvey is thirty-six years old and he believes in his heart of hearts that if you want something bad enough, the universe will endeavor to make it so. 

But not without a little hard work.

But not without some dedication and some passion.

But not without a little bit of luck. 

Harvey Greenwood is thirty-six years old and he thinks, maybe, he’s one lucky bastard.