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It’s a routine procedure.
That’s what she keeps telling herself. Aaron’s ENT’s words going around and around in her head as she waits to be told the surgery is over, a useless echo of the kind doctor’s reassurances that do Emily no good, because she knows she won’t relax until she sees him.
It started with an ear infection. He’d been susceptible to them ever since his eardrum burst in New York in the explosion that killed Kate Joyner, and they had a routine when it came to solving them. Emily would clean out his ear and put his drops in for him, all the while joking that they should have put this in their vows. He’d quip that it was just an excuse to lie with his head on her chest with his bad ear facing up as the drops did their job, and she’d play with his hair, scratching her nails back and forth on his scalp to soothe him like she did for Jack and Lucas when they were sick.
One thing the boys had certainly got from their father was their desire to be as close to her as possible whenever they were sick.
This time, the infection hadn’t cleared. No matter what they did, it didn’t get any better, and Emily knew they needed to go to the doctor when Aaron, her stupid, loving, idiotic, husband, finally admitted he was in pain. His ENT, Doctor Jacobs, had asked why he’d waited so long to go and see her, and advised that surgery was their only option.
While the very idea of it, the thought of waiting in a hallway in a hospital for news about how he was doing, opened up wounds she thought had long since healed, she tried to shake it off. To be the support he needed her to be. It was what they’d always done for each other, since long before they were together.
They showed up and they cared, even before they had words to explain why.
She’s just about to go and ask the staff nurse if she has any updates, again, when Doctor Jacobs walks through the double doors they’d disappeared through only an hour ago. She feels her shoulders relax at the easy smile on her face, and she stands up, not wanting to wait for the doctor to make it to her to hear any update.
“Hi, is he okay?” She asks, twisting her wedding rings around her finger, a habit that had long since replaced picking at her cuticles.
“He’s fine,” Doctor Jacobs assures her, “Everything went as expected, and he’s in recovery if you want to see him.”
She sighs in relief, and she nods, grabbing her purse from the chair next to where she’d been sitting before she follows Doctor Jacobs down the hallway, “Is there anything I need to know?”
“He’ll immediately feel some relief from the pressure in his ear, but sounds might sound louder to him for a day or so while he adjusts, but the cotton wool will help with that.” Doctor Jacobs says, her smile widening, “But those precious little boys of yours might have to be careful around him while that all settles down.”
Emily chuckles as she thinks of Jack and Lucas, of how their excitement permeated the walls in their home. It was never quiet in their house, and that was how she and Aaron loved it, a reminder of all they had fought for together and apart, the prize they had earned after everything that they had survived.
That lack of quietness, the lack of peace, she knew her husband would get with two kids around - one of them a toddler - was exactly why she’d asked Jess to take the boys for the night.
“And he should be okay to come home tonight?”
Doctor Jacobs nods as they come to a stop outside of the room Aaron was in, “We’ll keep an eye on him for an hour or two, make sure he can keep some food down, and then he’s all yours.”
Emily smiles, and she feels something ease in her chest, feels her lungs fully expand for what feels like the first time since they found out he’d need the surgery in the first place, “Thank you.”
Doctor Jacobs reaches out and squeezes her forearm, “My office will be in touch to arrange his follow-up appointment, but if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.”
She nods, but the politeness that had been instilled in her when she was still too young to really understand what it meant wanes, and she turns to walk into Aaron’s room.
He beams at her the moment he sees her, his smile wide and unbidden and his eyes hazy with whatever painkillers they’d given him, his focus torn from the cup of jello he’d been halfway through eating. She can see the cotton wool sticking out of his ear from where she’s standing in the doorway, and it makes him look nothing short of adorable.
“Hi,” he says, his smile impossibly wider as she walks over, dumping her purse in the chair in the corner as she sits on the edge of his bed.
“Hi, honey,” she replies, careful to make sure she’s as quiet as possible. She cups his cheek and strokes her thumb back and forth over it as she kisses him, smiling when she tastes the strawberry jello on his lips, “How are you feeling?”
“‘uch better now,” he slurs, smiling at her in a way she thinks is supposed to be charming, and she has to bite her lower lip to stop herself from laughing, never wanting him to think she was making fun of him. “‘ow ‘re you?”
“I’m fine,” she assures him, thinking it was just like him to make sure she was okay when he was the one who had surgery that day. She leans in to kiss him again and lets her eyes drift closed, still stroking his cheek, focuses on the rise of his chest against hers and the feel of his eyelashes fluttering against her thumb as it passes underneath his eye, “Much better now I know you’re okay.”
He smiles at her again when she pulls back to look at him, the same goofy smile full of love he usually threw her way when he had one too many glasses of scotch, “You’re so pretty.”
She blushes. She doesn’t understand why, because he’s a sentiment he’s thrown her way countless times over the years, a sentiment that barely touches some of the praise he lavishes her with. She wonders if it’s because of the pure, unadulterated love in his eyes, although she’s no stranger to that either.
She hums and runs her knuckles down his cheek, “You’re not so bad yourself, handsome.”
He attempts to waggle his eyebrows at her, but doesn’t quite pull it off, “Even with cotton wool in my ear?”
“Always,” she chuckles and leans in to kiss him, first on his lips and then as close to his ear as she can get without actually touching it because she didn’t want to hurt him. She nods towards his half-eaten jello, “You going to finish that? The sooner you do, the sooner we can go home.”
He nods, and he reaches for it, but every time he tries to scoop some from the cup onto the plastic spoon he’d been given, the jello slips back into the cup. He frowns, his confusion and frustration clear as they mix on his face, doing nothing except make him look all the more endearing to her.
“‘hat?” He says outloud, unsure why he didn’t seem capable of getting the sweet, jiggly dessert onto his spoon.
“Give it here,” She says, taking pity on him and sitting back just far enough that she can take the spoon and the jello cup from him. She raises her eyebrow teasingly at him when she scoops up a spoonful on the first try, and she holds it out to him. He furrows his brow, and she rolls her eyes at him, “What? I can scoop gunk out of your ear, but I can’t feed you jello?”
He huffs, but doesn’t fight it any further, his shoulders relaxing a little as she holds the spoon up to his mouth and he takes a bit, “It’s sweet.”
“It’s jello.” She quips, and his hand finds her thigh, heavy and clumsier than usual as he squeezes.
“‘hats not what I meant,” he says, and she smiles at him, winking as she scoops up another spoonful of it for him.
“This reminds me of when we started feeding Lucas solids,” she says, and he rolls his eyes, his smile doing very little to dissuade her from her gentle teasing of him.
“Em.”
“I think he was less messy, though.” She laughs when he moves at the last moment, and the jello slips down onto his hospital gown. She puts down the jello cup and finds a Kleenex, cleaning up the jello from him and the bed before it could get too sticky, and when she sits back down on the bed, he’s looking at her like she’d hung the stars, his eyes shining with tears. “Hey, what’s wrong, honey?”
He shrugs, “Thank you for looking after me so well.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” She says, using the nickname that he usually used on her. She cups both of his cheeks and kisses him before she briefly rests her forehead against his, “You don’t have to thank me, that’s what you do for people you love.”
“I love you too,” he replies, and she nods, because she already knows.