Chapter Text
The thing about kitchen knives is they're sharper than you think they are - right up until you're not thinking about them at all.
Belly had been dicing an onion, distracted by a text thread with Taylor about whether they should do matching Halloween costumes this year (Taylor: obviously yes, Belly: we're 23, Taylor: your point?), when the knife slipped. Not dramatically. Not with any fanfare. Just a quick, clean slide across the meat of her left palm, just below her thumb.
For a second, she didn't feel anything. Just watched the line of red bloom against her skin like watercolor on wet paper.
Then the sting hit, sharp and hot, and she sucked in a breath through her teeth.
"Shit," she muttered, grabbing for the dish towel. Blood soaked through the blue cotton almost immediately, spreading in a dark, uneven circle. "Shit, shit, shit—"
Her phone buzzed on the counter. Taylor again: so that's a yes?
Belly pressed the towel harder against her palm, her heart doing that stupid panicky flutter it always did at the sight of her own blood. She'd been fine with scraped knees as a kid, fine with paper cuts and hangnails, but something about a real cut, deep enough to matter, made her stomach twist.
She fumbled for her phone with her right hand, thumb shaky as she pulled up Conrad's contact.
belly: um
belly: i cut myself cooking
belly: not like bad bad but
belly: kind of bad?
The response came in seconds.
conrad: how bad, send a pic
conrad: scale of 1-10
She looked down at the towel. Still bleeding.
belly: 7?
belly: maybe 8
conrad: where are you
belly: apartment. kitchen
conrad: keep pressure on it. i'm leaving now
Belly exhaled, shaky and relieved, and slumped against the counter. Her hand throbbed in time with her heartbeat, a dull, insistent ache that made her wince every time she shifted her grip. She kept the towel pressed tight, watching the seconds tick by on the microwave clock.
Fourteen minutes later (she'd counted), she heard his key in the lock.
"Belly?"
"Kitchen," she called back, and hated how small her voice sounded.
Conrad appeared in the doorway, still in his scrubs from his clinical rotation, stethoscope shoved into the pocket, hair slightly disheveled like he'd been running his hands through it. His gaze went straight to her hand, then her face, reading her in that quick, assessing way he'd developed over the past two years of med school.
"Hey," he said, voice calm, and crossed to her in three strides. "Let me see."
"It's not that bad," Belly said automatically, even as she let him take her wrist, gentle but firm.
"Uh-huh." He peeled back the towel carefully, and she looked away, focusing on the cabinet hardware, the scuff marks on the floor, anywhere but the cut.
Conrad was quiet for a moment, thumb brushing the uninjured skin near her wrist. "Okay. This needs stitches."
Her stomach dropped. "Are you sure? Maybe a butterfly bandage—"
"Belly." He tilted her chin up with his free hand, meeting her eyes. His were steady, that particular shade of blue-gray that always reminded her of the ocean in early morning. "It's clean, but it's deep. If we don't close it properly, you'll have a worse scar and a higher infection risk. I'm sure."
She swallowed. Nodded.
"Good girl," he murmured, and pressed the towel back against her palm. "Urgent care's ten minutes away. I'll drive."
The urgent care waiting room smelled like antiseptic and anxiety. Belly sat with her hand elevated, towel now spotted through with rust-brown stains, while Conrad filled out her paperwork. He'd done this enough times (for himself, during his clumsy teenage years; for Jeremiah after a stupid skateboarding incident; for Steven when he'd gotten a fishhook stuck in his thumb at Cousins) that he didn't need to ask her most of the questions.
"Insurance card's in my wallet," Belly said, but he was already pulling it out of her purse, along with her ID.
"I know," he said, and there was something almost fond in the way he said it, like her patterns were a language he'd learned to speak fluently.
When the nurse called her back, Conrad stood automatically, and Belly didn't argue. She didn't want to be alone for this, and they both knew it.
The exam room was small and overly bright, the kind of fluorescent white that made everything look slightly unreal. Belly sat on the crinkly paper, and Conrad stood beside her, hand resting on her knee.
The PA who came in was a woman in her forties with wire-rimmed glasses and a brisk, efficient manner. She smiled at Belly, glanced at Conrad's scrubs, and raised an eyebrow. "You work in healthcare?"
"Second year med student," Conrad confirmed. "I can step out if—"
"No," Belly said quickly, fingers tightening on his. "Stay."
He squeezed back. "Guess I'm staying."
The PA nodded with a small smile, already pulling on gloves. "All right, let's take a look."
Belly turned her head into Conrad's shoulder as the woman unwrapped the towel, cataloging the injury with a soft hum. "Clean edges, no debris. You're lucky, this'll close up nicely. We'll do a local anesthetic, five or six stitches, and you'll be good to go."
"Okay," Belly whispered, though her heart was doing that awful hammering thing again.
Conrad's thumb traced circles on her knee. "You're doing great."
The anesthetic was the worst part: sharp, burning, a pressure that made her gasp and bury her face against Conrad's side. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, murmuring something she couldn't quite hear over the rushing in her ears, and then it was just the strange, distant tugging sensation of the needle and thread.
She didn't watch. She focused on Conrad's breathing, steady and even, and the warmth of his hand on her back.
"All done," the PA said finally, and Belly looked up to see neat black stitches marching across her palm. Her stomach lurched, but she swallowed it down.
"You did good," Conrad told her quietly, brushing her hair back from her face.
The PA wrapped the wound in gauze, taped it secure, and handed Conrad a small paper bag. "Wound care instructions, antibiotic ointment, extra gauze. Keep it clean and dry. Come back in ten days for removal, or..." She glanced at Conrad again. "I'm guessing you can handle that part."
"I can handle it," he said, and there was no arrogance in it, just certainty.