Six weeks later, Elle returned to work, her hand fully healed and her heart lighter than it had been in years. She still saw patients, still gave her all to every recovery. But now, at the end of the day, she went home to a man who made her soup, held her hand without splints or braces, and reminded her every single day that she was not alone.

One rainy Tuesday, her body finally said no . She was helping a young gymnast learn to walk again after a horrific ankle fracture when a sharp, electric pain shot up her own right hand. She dropped the therapy ball, her fingers curling uselessly. The gymnast looked up, startled. “Elle? Are you okay?”

The next morning, there was a knock at her door. She opened it to find Marcus Kael holding a paper bag and a small pot of yellow chrysanthemums.

Elle closed her eyes. Rest. Splinting. Anti-inflammatories. A gradual return to function. She would never let a patient push through this. “I’d tell them to listen to their body,” she admitted quietly.

And on a quiet Saturday morning, Marcus proposed not with a grand gesture, but with a small velvet box over breakfast. “You’ve spent your whole life making sure everyone else is in good hands,” he said, smiling. “I’d like to make sure you are too. Forever.”

She slipped the ring onto her finger—the same finger that had once trembled with pain—and said yes.

Six weeks. The word hung in the air like a prison sentence. “I can’t,” she whispered. “My patients need me. The clinic is short-staffed.”