Hurts So Good (Neil Melendez (The Good Doctor) x OC)

Hemoperitoneum

The next few days are full of "don't stare at that screen for too long, you're gonna stress your black eye!" and "you can't possibly go to work with that eye!", yet Neil stared at his computer screen for way too many hours and also went to work, although just for consultations, not surgeries, as he wouldn't have been able to do that with his still kinda sore and bruised eye.

Tonight we're watching a movie on the couch in my apartment while eating instant ramen (it is Neil's first time eating it, the exchange earlier today was something like this: "you never what?!", "I've never eaten ramen before, I don't even know what that is to be honest." "You're not for real!", "I really am though." "You're gonna have ramen tonight, whether you want it or not.") and the scene we're watching shows a little boy running, he runs and runs like his life depends on it and the he falls to the ground. The scenary is idyllic and it would have been an amazingly happy scene were it not for the boy tumbling down. He then sits up straight, the camera getting closer to his face right on time to catch the first tear spilling from his lashes. A woman, his mother I'm presuming, walks up to him at a leisurely pace and then kneels down smiling at the boy, wiping the tears away from his face with her hands.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"Y-yes mommy."

"Let me see..."

The boy gently lifts his right leg, exposing his knee while sobbing even harder than before.

"Oh baby, it's nothing to worry about. Just a scratch, here. I'll give it a kiss and all the pain will go away, I swear."

I adjust myself to Neil's side and I hear him stifling a sob, "hey, you okay?" I ask him quietly, making sure to look at him to see his reaction.

"Yeah, I'm okay. It must be a bruise or something."

"Let me see, maybe we can apply some gel or something," I tell him while putting down my cup of ramen and taking his as well. He switches position, sitting more upright then he was before and I carefully lift his shirt.

"Oh god, this doesn't look good," his left side is a sickly yellowish-purple color. I slowly stand up, putting an arm around my giant belly, almost as if I could hoist it as a separate part, and the other on the edge of the couch, to help me up. Neil tries to help me but soon realizes that he can't stretch his arm all the way, as the motion would put too much tension on his abdomen.

"I'm getting you ice and that gel thing for bruises, wait here," I tell him while heading toward the kitchen. Then a scary thought comes to mind.

"It's not a hemoperitoneum case, right?"

"And where would you have heard of that?"

"I might have watched a few episodes of this Korean drama... Set in a hospital... They constantly get hemoperitoneum patients and now I'm getting anxious, it's not that, right? Can you tell?"

"Jayjay, don't worry love. It is not, it would have showed up in my CT scan and I probably wouldn't be here now if that were the case."

I let out a sigh and I lean toward the kitchen counter, "right. I shouldn't let that show get to my mind, but I can't help it!"

Neil laughs, and I open the freezer as he says, "I think I saw your episode progress on Netstream, isn't it that show where doctors keep saying that they want to be good doctors?"

"Yes! How do you know that?!" I'm back in the living room and I'm softly laying down the ice pack on his bronze skin.

"I got curious when I heard Korean being spoken and I watched a couple episodes myself."