Chapter Text
It feels like the first time.
-
Conrad was breathless.
Not in the way he’d become accustomed to– no sweaty palms, no panic, none of the tightness in his chest that made it feel as though someone was making a fist around his heart.
Well, maybe he was feeling a bit of that ache in his chest. But it was no cause to excuse himself, to go get some air in the alley alone. This freefall he was experiencing had everything to do with the birthday girl sitting across the bar, surrounded by friends and candles, and a warm, familiar glow.
Conrad could barely believe he’d found himself in Paris. This impulsive, free-spirited energy was usually reserved for Jeremiah. Conrad was supposed to be sensible, responsible, stable. Dependable. The kind of firstborn who held up the family in the wake of tragedy. Who never let his Atlas complex show.
Maybe Namazy had sensed this about him before he ever slipped up on residency. She’d been firm, but kind in her insistence that he take a leave of absence before continuing under her supervision. He’d been crushed. Agnes insisted Namazy was only doing what she thought was best. If Namazy was sure Conrad wasn’t ready yet, then Conrad wasn’t ready yet. End of story.
Conrad supposed he’d been leading up to a breakdown for a while. He’d gotten the panic attacks under control in therapy, with time and patience. Being in the hospital doing rounds with the other residents, seeing sick patients surrounded by worry-stricken loved ones, the anti-septic smell that stuck to his clothes; he could handle all of that. But when a young mother of two came in complaining of a pain in her chest, a tiredness she couldn’t shake, bruises she couldn’t remember having incurred, something inside him snapped.
As Namazy delivered the familiar blow– after labs, conferring with the residents, and compiling pamphlets and referral papers to the hospital’s oncology wing– Conrad barely kept it together until they politely excused themselves to send in the hospital’s social worker to help the woman figure out her next steps. Turning a corner into the alcove of the water fountains, he pressed his palms into the wall, willing his heart rate to slow, his breathing to even out. He felt the pinprick of tears, and turned to splash water on his face from the fountain.
For the rest of the day, Conrad couldn’t shake the hazy, waxy film that seemed to form around him. After the third instance of Agnes having to repeat a tidbit of gossip about another first year, she finally turned to him.
“Okay,” she whispered, “What’s going on?”
Conrad swallowed, answered just a moment too late.
“Nothing,” he breathed, “Why?”
Agnes gave him that look, the one that said I’m not an idiot, Fisher, and put a hand on his back.
“Hey,” she said, a sympathetic tone to her voice, “There will always be tough news to deliver, tough cases that you can’t walk off, but I know this one’s hard, because of…”
She trailed off, never certain how to broach the subject of a woman she’d never known. Agnes knew Susannah was a precious topic, something Conrad held close to his chest.
“I’ll be fine,” Conrad interjected, “Just need a few. Will you just tell Namazy I had to run to the restroom?”
Agnes nodded, removing her hand from his back. This was the reason the brief romance between them had never really taken root (well, that, and the fact that they had both stopped getting off entirely). He wasn’t completely closed off, but Conrad could never let her into that innermost chamber, to allow himself to unspool his grief in front of her. They always hit a wall.
He kept it under control, for the most part, going through the motions of the day. He just needed to make it to the night shift hand-off. He was labelling vials to send off to the lab, fighting to focus, to not slip back into that familiar disquietude. Conrad hardly noticed when he mixed up the forms of two different patients, his marker continuously moving, the pile of papers in front of him shuffling as he trudged through.
Namazy confronted him the next morning.
“Fisher, a moment in my office please.”
It wasn’t a request. Following her, the door to Namazy’s office clicked shut gently behind him. She rounded her desk, folding her hands in front of herself and turning to face Conrad.
“You mislabeled a blood draw yesterday, Dr. Fisher. That’s unlike you.”
“Dr. Namazy, I’m so sorry, it won’t happen again, I–”
Namazy held up a hand, albeit gently.
“No need. I knew from the moment we handled the breast cancer case yesterday that you were thrown. There’s nothing wrong with needing a moment, Dr. Fisher, but if you can’t bounce back and give all your patients the same attention to detail, you’re not ready yet.”
Conrad found himself tripping over his words, his heart hammering in his chest.
“Dr. Namazy, if you just give me one more chance, I swear–”
“That’s enough, Dr. Fisher,” Namazy said, quiet but firm.
“I’m not usually one for second chances,” she paused, a decision on the tip of her tongue, “But I see potential in you, Conrad. Take a leave of absence. If you’re ready in the spring, I’ll still bring you along for the conference in Prague.”
Conrad stood there, not quite defeated, but all the fight had gone from him.
“Dr. Kosciusko is looking for help in the lab for the winter. I’ll send a letter of recommendation over, if you’re interested.”
Conrad nodded. Lab work was hardly the field he had grueled through countless hours in med school for, but it was better than twiddling his thumbs. He accepted a handshake from Namazy, collected his belongings from his locker, and drove slowly the whole way home. Back in his apartment, staring up into the hot stream of the showerhead, he wondered how he could’ve been so stupid, how he had made such a glaring error.
Winter in the lab was centering. Kosciusko was kind, a whetstone of a man, pushing Conrad in the sterile, fluorescent-lit environment. When spring came and Conrad met with Namazy again, she was unsurprised at his growth.
“I would take credit, but that would be a disservice to Dr. Kosciusko.”
Conrad smiled shyly.
“And you,” she added. “Welcome back, Dr. Fisher.”
As Conrad prepared for the looming conference in Prague, he found himself calling Jeremiah more and more, missing his brother’s lightness, his buzzing energy. Susannah always used to joke that Conrad and Jeremiah were like Yin and Yang, each needing the other for balance. The older Conrad got, the more he realized how necessary his brother’s carefree mentality was to even out his own– a terminal realist’s point of view.
“Con!” Jeremiah exclaimed over FaceTime, exasperated with his brother, “What do you mean you’re going straight there? Prague is within spitting distance of Berlin, Rome, Paris…”
“And none of those places host the single most anticipated annual international medical conference of the year!”
Jeremiah put his head in his hands, laughing.
“You are so predictable. What are you afraid of? That if you let loose, you might actually find out that you can have fun?”
Conrad gave Jeremiah a look of faux-shock.
“Who? Me? I’m fun! I can be loose!”
“Oh my god, dude, no one who actually lets loose would ever say they can ‘be loose.’”
“Whatever,” Conrad laughed, rolling his eyes at his brother, “I have to pack. Later, man.”
“Later loser. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Sitting in the silence following the disconnect tone, Conrad mulled over the last year of his life. He’d graduated with flying colors after a particularly draining final year of med school at Stanford; been accepted into a competitive residency program, only to be forced to take a leave of absence; and spent his winter inside a brightly lit, quiet lab, keeping his head down until he could prove he was worth his salt. His definition of “fun” this past year had been cram study sessions with well-worn medical textbooks, marathon prepping with Agnes, and reading about coffee Q-grading courses (but never finding the courage or time to sign up for one).
Not exactly the kind of fun Jeremiah was getting at.
Without thinking, he found his fingers whisking across the keyboard of his laptop, canceling his previous travel itinerary, and booking a flight to Paris with a connecting train ticket to Prague. He could let loose. He could let go, even if only for a brief forty-eight hour window, before continuing on to his conference.
When he landed in Paris, he spent eight hours dedicating himself to tourist attractions, eating buttery pastries, and appreciating the cool spring breeze that floated through the city like fingers through your hair. Before heading back to his hastily-booked hotel, he stopped into a bistro a few blocks away, the warm light from the bar inside glowing faintly.
Walking through the open door, Conrad called out an unsure “Bonjour,” and headed to an empty barstool. That was when he saw her.
Coming around the curve of the bar, a girl with red lips and dark hair extending just past her chin. She looked at him with an easy confidence, one hand on her hip, leaning the other on the counter between them.
“Uh, bon jour, s'il vous plaît…” he trailed off, his rusty high school French rattling around in his head as he looked back at the girl in front of him, a knowing smile on her lips.
“American?” she asked, her brow cocked like there was an inside joke between them.
“Oh thank god,” he laughed, hearing her familiar American lilt, “I was already making a fool of myself and I’d barely remembered that cabernet is still called cabernet in France.”
She laughed softly, her mysterious smile leaning easily into a grin.
Whoever this girl was, he was entranced.
As if reading his mind, she reached out a hand over the bar to shake his.
“I’m Isabel. From Philadelphia. You have no clue how good it is to hear your voice.”
“Conrad, from Boston,” he replied, taking her hand in his. It was soft. “I would’ve assumed Paris is full of American tourists this time of year,” he murmured, cocking his head as she laughed again. What did he have to do in order to keep hearing that laugh?
“Well,” she started, humor in her eyes, “Not all bumbling American tourists are handsome strangers who wander into my place of work.”
They made small talk about current events, before he learned about her family (a mother and father back in Philly, a brother in New York who was engaged to her best friend), her work (an internship with a women’s football club while she finished out grad school for sports psychology), and her friends (a ragtag group that sounded almost too good to be true). As the daylight faded outside, Conrad found himself drunk on Isabel’s presence, her laugh, her smile. The way she went to smooth her hair between her fingers, only to find it wasn’t there (the haircut was fairly recent). The gentle way her hand landed on his when they exchanged stupid jokes. The fact that after serving her rotating queue of regulars, she returned to the spot in front of Conrad’s seat every time.
He barely thought to stop himself as the words tumbled out of his mouth.
“What are you doing after this?”
She paused where she stood, polishing a wine glass that had long been cleaned of water stains, before flashing him a crooked smile. “Going out on the town with you, it seems.”
As she closed up shop around Conrad, he studied her movements. Her practiced way of shutting down the bar, putting chairs on tables, half-heartedly sweeping the cafe.
She looked up at him shyly from her work as he gazed at her. “I promise I’m usually more thorough than this. I guess I’m just anxious to get it over with tonight.”
Conrad chuckled, running a hand through his hair, willing his cheeks not to flush.
“I don’t mind if you take your time.”
It came out wrong. He thought it sounded stupid the moment he said it, but she just laughed like it was a premonition, and he couldn’t help but do the same. She slipped in the back, only to return with her jacket and bag.
“Conrad from Boston,” Isabel said mischievously, “I have something I want to show you.”
The something in question was a skyline unlike any back home, in Boston or in Stanford. Looking out on the city from the rooftop Isabel had brought him to, he felt a tug in his chest– a reminder of coming to California in the wake of his mother’s passing, and looking out onto the Pacific. The feeling that the world was so much bigger than he was, and that that might not be such a bad thing. The sense that there was so much more to life than what he’d seen thus far, but that everything he’d seen was still precious.
They stood at the railing in a comfortable silence for a moment, before Isabel broke the spell.
“I almost got married at the end of college.”
He was surprised at the admission, but stayed quiet, giving her his focus. Whatever she had to say, he was rapt with attention.
“I got cold feet, for good reason, and I ran away. Took a gap year here in Paris, technically illegally, on a tourist visa. When my mother told me I could come home anytime I wanted, I applied for grad school here. I was so terrified of what would happen when I came home. As if everything that had happened wasn’t real, so long as I was an ocean away.
“I used to come up here a lot that first year, looking to the Sacré-Cœur and the stars for guidance. But in the end, it wasn’t a landmark from my favorite movie or Venus disguised as an evening star that gave me strength– it was me. It was the friends I made. It was the love I finally decided to allow myself. I feel like you might know the feeling, Conrad from Boston.”
She turned to look at him then, hair a little wild from the wind, her lower lip between her teeth as she sized him up. Conrad wanted very much to kiss her.
“I think,” he breathed, “I’m still learning, Isabel from Philadelphia. But I’d very much like to meet these friends of yours, and see this city the way you see it.”
Her smile warmed his insides. “Anything else?”
“If you’d let me,” he said, stepping towards her in the cool night air, “I would love nothing more than to kiss you. It’s sort of torturous not to.”
“Well, I’d hate to torture you any longer.”
She stepped forward, her gaze focused on Conrad, her brown eyes searing into him. He reached out to Isabel, taking her waist gently in his hands as she reached up to kiss him. It was gentle, trepidatious. Until it wasn’t.
Isabel dipped her head back, her arms wrapping around his neck. Conrad’s hands traveled down to her hips as he deepened the kiss, his tongue grazing her lower lip. She smiled against his mouth, pulling him closer, bringing his chest flush against hers. When they came up for air, she kissed him first on his jawline, near his ear, her breath hot. She moved down, another kiss on his neck against his pulse. Conrad could hardly breathe. His heart pounded against his chest as she took him by the hand and led him away, back down the staircase and into the night.