A/N: Hello! I'm back again…I can't seem to stay away haha. The request was made by the lovely keenler-mcswarek-girl to write a story in which Rheese were married from the start so this is my take on it.

This is completely unrelated to my other works, I also have zero medical knowledge and I own nothing but the plot.

AU in which Connor and Sarah have been married for a while, Connor started at Med the same time as in the show but didn't become close with the ED staff before transferring to cardiology. Sarah completed her student rotation and residency at a different hospital and has recently been offered a fellowship in emergency psychology by Dr Charles.

This was not how Sarah had intended on entering Gaffney Chicago Medical Center after she had just been offered a fellowship. She had intended on arriving for her first shift early, with her things organised and in a calm and confident manner. She intended on arriving and making good impressions and to learn the ropes quickly.

She had not intended on arriving on a stretcher.

She blinked her eyes open in an ambulance, completely disorientated and wondering if she was having a very realistic dream.

"You're going to be okay. You were involved in an accident, we're on the way to the hospital. Just try to relax." The paramedic said, placing a hand on Sarah's shoulder to keep her lying down. "Try to stay still okay?"

"Yeah." Sarah rasped out, knowing that she shouldn't move her neck in case of extra damage. If there was one thing she had learned in her ED rotation as a student it was that you shouldn't move a patient until all the proper tests had been performed.

Her head was pounding, the pain seeming to vibrate louder in her ears than the ambulance sirens did.

She must have been unconscious for a while, she fretted to herself, because they arrived at the hospital soon after she woke.

"What do we got?" Someone called out above the noise of the ED.

"Female, late twenties, hit and run accident, broken leg, suspected concussion…" She vaguely heard the paramedics calling out her stats. She wanted to help, she really did, to tell them that she was a doctor too but her head was too sore and she felt like she had just done a 48 hour shift and was fighting sleep.

A blistering pain in her leg made her whole body spasm and she fought against the oxygen mask even though she felt like she was drowning.

"You're okay but you have to relax." A man with red hair was hovering over her, "Can you tell me your name?"

"S…Sarah." She gasped, holding back tears, everything hurt.

"Okay, is there anyone we can call for you Sarah? A family member? A friend?" A kind eyed woman in a nurse's uniform seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Everything was blurring.

"My husband." Her words were blurring together but she needed someone to tell Connor.

Connor.

Her Connor would be beside himself when he found out.

"Okay we'll find him, don't worry. What's his name?" The nurse asked.

"Connor."

"Stats are falling!" Someone called and the noise blasted through Sarah's eardrums.

A flurry of activity burst out around her and all Sarah could think of was that she wished she had enjoyed her last morning before she started her new fellowship, that she had stayed in bed like she said she would, that she hadn't gone to the food truck to get a surprise lunch for her husband.

Connor grabbed the first table he could to eat his lunch. He flicked at the screen of his phone.

Still no texts from Sarah.

He locked it and smiled softly at the photo of his wife that he had taken one morning while she was drinking coffee in bed while wearing one of his shirts. He suspected she was still sleeping, enjoying the last morning off between her residency and her new fellowship.

She deserved it. She had to be the most hardworking people he knew.

His thoughts were interrupted by Will Halstead sitting down at his table. "Hey man, mind if I sit and eat? This place is packed and the ED has been especially busy…" The other doctor nearly had half his sandwich finished by the time he both asked for permission and gave his explanation.

Connor couldn't blame him. The ED had always had a madness about it.

It was his one regret. The one niggle that he could never shift. He would have no regrets about pursuing cardiology under Dr Downey, and while he did had a knack for surgery, he did sometimes miss his trauma days. The unexpectedness and immediacy of it all.

He hadn't even spent a year in the ED but he kind of…missed it. Gaffney's ED was different to anywhere he had worked before. The staff were a team. Admittedly, something he hadn't been all that familiar with, but something that he sometimes found himself almost yearning for. They were a tight unit, they had each other's backs.

While he now spent his days bickering with Ava and waiting for more challenging cases from Dr Latham.

"It's all good." He responded, taking a sip of his coffee. "Anything interesting this morning?"

Will finished off his lunch while he contemplated the question.

"A toddler with a crayon stuck in his ear, a new outbreak of flu and a few concussions. Oh and a damn hit and run. Guy on his phone practically ploughed this woman off the road."

"Did she pull through?"

Will gave a half shrug, "Should do, but you can never be too careful." He slapped Connor on the shoulder, "Later man."

With Will gone, Connor told himself he was being paranoid.

But he rang Sarah's phone anyway.

It went straight to voicemail.

"Hey Babe, just checking in, hope you're having a good last day off. I'll see you later for dinner right? Love you."

He ended the call and told himself he was being stupid, there were thousands of women in Chicago, and his wife was probably still in bed like she said she would be.

"Hey there." Another woman in a nurse's uniform stood beside her bed as Sarah opened her eyes and took a minute to adjust to her surroundings. She was in a hospital. Gaffney. There had been a car and she couldn't get out of the way.

She felt a hand on her shoulder as she clamped her eyes shut at the horrible memory of the screeching of tires before the world spun around her.

"It's okay, you were in an accident, but you're in hospital now, we'll take good care of you." The woman said.

Sarah managed to breathe through the flashback.

"I'm April, can you remember your name?"

"Sarah." April smiled.

"Okay Sarah, the doctor will be back any minute to see how you're doing. Can you stay awake for me?"

She tried to clear her throat but the motion made her entire chest feel like it was on fire and she flinched.

"We'll up your pain meds, don't worry." April tried to get her to sit back.

"Hey there Sarah, good to see your awake." The doctor from before breezed in, passing a torch in front of her eyes. "It's good news, relatively, there doesn't seem to be any damage to your spinal cord but we still have to go through some routine checks and blood tests. How are you feeling?"

"I've felt better." She gritted out.

"I hear that a lot." He grinned as he checked her chart.

"Me too." She said just to have something to focus on other the fact that she was in a hospital bed.

"Really?"

She nodded as he asked for more blood tests. "I'm a doctor too."

"It's always horrible having to take the treatment instead of dishing it out huh?"

"You could say that."

That made him chuckle, "Say, that husband of yours you mentioned, he got a second name? We'd like to contact him, just to be safe, you know how it goes."

She did. So she wasn't out of the woods yet. It was never good news if they were rushing to get the next to kin.

"Doctor." She wheezed. "Connor. Here." Her head felt like it was filling up with cotton wool. "Rhodes. I'm Sarah Rhodes."

"We'll get him right away, don't worry." Will said, "Just worry about him, he worked with us here and never told us he was married. Just try to rest. We'll be back soon to check on you."

Maggie paged Connor while he was looking over case notes for his next surgery.

His eyes needed a break anyway, he admitted, as he stood up to head on down to the ED to clarify with Maggie that he wasn't on trauma today.

"Hey Maggie, I'm not on call today." He said when the elevator doors opened and the ED Charge Nurse was waiting for him.

"Connor, I'm going to need you to come with me." She said, placing a hand on his upper arm and guiding him with her into the ED. His blood ran cold. He knew that move, that was Maggie's move for patients' families.

His mind went into overdrive and he felt momentarily weak.

"Okay we have a woman, late twenties, she was in a car accident, she claims that she's Sarah Rhodes, your wife?" Maggie asked with a balanced look. Connor would have laughed if the circumstances weren't heart pummelling. Maggie didn't know whether to be outraged over the lack of information on his part during his stint in the ED or wary that the so called 'Sarah Rhodes' was claiming to be someone she wasn't.

"Where is she?" He nearly coughed out, "Maggie…" His voice was raw and broken and he needed to see his wife.

"Come with me, she's in trauma three." She said, leading him over. She didn't need any more clarification, she must have known from his expression that Sarah had been telling the truth.

Connor braced himself, thanking his lucky stars that Sarah wasn't in Baghdad. Maggie pulled back the door and let him in and…

He couldn't breathe but his body moved by it's own accord to her side. After everything he had been through in his life, his parents incessant arguing, the aftermath of his mother's dead, his friend's death by OD, his first day in medical school in Guajajara, he had never once ever been this terrified.

Sarah was lying there, looking pale with a nasty cut on her head and her eyes were closed.

He placed a hand on her forehead, "You're going to be okay Sarah." He didn't know if he was telling her or just trying to convince himself.

Her breath seemed slightly shallow but nothing too serious and his fingers itched to get his hands on her file but he wouldn't couldn't leave her side.

He felt sick to his stomach. She was his everything. She had to be okay.

Everything was so bright. And loud. There was noise everywhere. Machines beeping, people talking. Sarah squinted her eyes open.

"Sarah?"

His voice gave her entire body instant relief, if only for a second. She turned her head towards the direction of his voice and leaned into his touch. He was running his thumb over her cheek and she tried to focus on that and not the pain.

It wasn't as bad as before, she noted, as she wiggled her toes and her fingers. Good movement, she thought, no obvious nerve damage…

"You should relax." Connor told her. "I can see you trying to self-diagnose." He tried to smile, but she could see the fear in his eyes.

"I'm glad you're here." She told him.

He wasn't able to talk so he placed a feather light lingering kiss to her forehead.

She opened her hand and he tangled his fingers with hers.

"Oh good, you're awake." Her doctor came in with April.

He glanced at the tablet in his hand. "How are you feeling Mrs Rhodes, you know your husband worked here for months and…" He was grinning like a Chesire cat and while Sarah appreciated his good nature, she could feel Connor tense his hand. Her husband was in no mood for joking.

"What's her progress Will?" Connor asked.

Ah, Sarah thought, her doctor must be the infamous Will Halstead whom Connor had butted heads with.

"She took a bad hit from that car." Will said. "Sarah you're lucky there was no internal damage, you have a concussion and a badly broken leg, along with a few suspected broken ribs and bruised lungs."

"Suspected?" She asked, her eyes brows furrowing.

"Yes. We were going to run the x-rays but something showed up in your blood work that we need to double check first."

"What?"

"What was it?" Connor echoed.

"There was some slightly elevated levels and I had Nat take a look and we want to run another test, just to be safe."

"What test?" She asked, her mind racing with possibilities.

"A pregnancy test."

A/N: I'm not so sure about this so I'd love to know if you think I should continue (I'm also not used to writing stories about established relationships so bear with me!). Any questions, opinions, feedback all welcome!