Dr. Park was there, seated near the middle with a cluster of nurses and residents from Queens General. My colleagues. My people. The ones who'd watched Brian drop to one knee in the ambulance bay, who'd cheered when I said yes, who knew exactly what kind of life I was signing up for.
And at the end of the aisle, Brian.
He was watching me like I was the only thing in the room. Like I was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life. His eyes were bright, and when I got close enough to see his face clearly, I realized he was crying.
When I reached him, I took his hands. That rare, unguarded smile spread across my face—the one I used to save for no one.
"Hi," I whispered.
"Hi yourself." His voice was rough.
"Nice turnout."
"They're mostly here for the cake."
I laughed, and the sound echoed across the garden, mixing with the splash of the fountains.
We said our vows.
Brian went first. His voice was steady, even though his hands were trembling in mine.
"I'll never forget the day you moved in," he said. "You were carrying a box of textbooks up the stairs—too stubborn to make two trips—and I offered to help. You almost said no. I could see it on your face." A ripple of laughter from the guests. "But you let me carry your books. And that night, we ended up on our balconies at 3 AM, both of us carrying things far heavier than textbooks. You'd lost your first patient. I'd come off a bad call. And we talked until the sun came up."
His voice softened. "I spent years thinking I wasn't enough. That I'd never be the kind of man someone would choose. But you—you quizzed me for my paramedic exam. You pushed me to be better. You believed I was worth investing in before I believed it myself." His voice cracked. "You're the most brilliant, most stubborn, most incredible person I've ever met. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life showing up for you. The way you've always shown up for me."
My turn.
"I made a vow when I was eighteen," I said. "That independence wasn't a preference—it was survival. I watched what happened when you let someone else define your worth. I promised myself I'd rather die than become that woman." I looked at Brian—really looked at him, the way I hadn't let myselflook at anyone for fourteen years. "And then you smiled at me on a staircase and carried my books without being asked twice. You sat with me at 3 AM when I was falling apart and didn't try to fix it. You just... stayed."
My voice wavered. "Four years of coffee on the balcony. Four years of you showing up, again and again, until I stopped waiting for you to leave. Four years of you seeing all the parts of me I'd hidden from everyone else—and staying anyway."
At some point, I noticed Garrett standing alone near the edge of the room, checking his phone with an expression I couldn't read. There was something distant in his eyes—something that looked like longing, or maybe loss. I squeezed his hands.
"You ran into a burning building because I was inside. You showed me that needing someone doesn't mean losing myself."
Brian's eyes were streaming now. He didn't seem to care.
"I love you, Brian Torres. I'm going to spend the rest of my life being brave enough to let you love me back."
The officiant pronounced us married.
Brian kissed me, and the garden erupted in cheers.
Watson—wearing a tiny bow tie that Zoe had produced from somewhere—meowed from his carrier in the front row, thoroughly unimpressed by all the human emotion.
The reception was chaos. Good chaos.
Music, laughter, and too much champagne. Rodriguez's kids ran between tables. Shane gave a speech that made everyone cry, laugh, and then cry again. Maya pulled me onto the dance floor even though I'd warned her I couldn't dance.
"You're a surgeon," she said, spinning me around.
"I'm not a surgeon. I'm an ER doctor, and those are completely different skills!"
She laughed and kept spinning.
Brian's mother cornered me near the dessert table, showing me phone photos of Brian as a child—chubby cheeks, gap-toothed grin, Halloween costumes she'd sewn by hand. "He was always saving someone," she told me, eyes bright with happy tears. "Birds with broken wings. Stray cats. His sister's goldfish that one time, though that one didn't end well at all."
"He saved me," I said.
