Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Samira slips away from the crowd in the park, no one takes much notice. Donnie nods as she passes. People’s eyes trail over her as she leaves, but it doesn’t register with any of them. No one has the energy to take stock of who is gathered here, let alone who has left. No one is paying much attention to anything. 

The adrenaline crash has stolen their attention away. They don’t notice that only a minute passes before Jack reattaches his prosthesis with a grimace, rises from his spot on the bench, and follows after her. 

In ten hours, they will all be awake and alert. They will work as if there are no screams lodged in their ears. They will pretend that they don’t notice the blood that has splattered on the ceiling and crusted over. They will walk along the same floor they always walk on and act like it is not haunted. They will do all of that tomorrow. But right now, under the stars, out in the open air, everyone is too focused on the sound of their own breathing and the thudding of their own hearts to pay them any attention. 

Samira recognizes the sound of his footsteps immediately, but she doesn’t turn around. She continues walking, letting her legs lead her all the way around the corner to the bus stop. Her bus won’t be here for twenty minutes. They both know this. He makes a point to know these things. “Dr. Mohan,” she keeps walking despite the quiet, familiar timbre of his voice. Despite the fact that she wants to turn around, Samira keeps walking. 

No one is paying attention to them. No one has registered their absence, but she can’t allow this conversation to happen within earshot of the hospital. She can’t allow whatever he is about to tell her to get absorbed into the gossip mill. She is not a selfish person by nature, but Samira desperately wants to be selfish after what she has seen tonight. She wants to have something that is hers. She wants to sink her teeth into something. Claim a mountain or a night alone or a conversation all for herself just so she can remind herself that she’s real. That she exists. Sometimes she isn’t so sure.

Samira doesn’t stop walking, but when Jack catches her wrist in a soft grasp, she doesn’t pull away. She lets his warmth crawl up her arm and into her chest. She lets the memory of his hands under her scrubs and her fingers fumbling with his waistband float to the front of her brain. The feeling of want and of being wanted. The excitement of a secret stowed away in the on-call room at the end of the hall. The searing burn of guilt that he kissed away. The fuzzy warmth she pushed down and attempted to ignore. 

She hasn’t worked with him since that night, not until today. She hasn’t been avoiding him, necessarily, but it isn’t difficult to only pull doubles when Shen is the night attending. To sidestep for a day and then a week and then two and then three. Samira nods to him at hand-off. Still reads the articles he texts her and sends her own in response. On any other day, Samira would have enough wherewithal to recognize that everything about the two of them is a terrible idea. That even in the best-case scenario, Jack Abbot would serve as a roadblock in her residency. 

But she’s never been more alive, more depleted, or more acutely aware of her own pulse. 

When Samira turns to face him, the glow of streetlights is caught in his eye. She can see every line on his face, every hair on his head. “Can I give you a ride home?” He asks.

“My bus will be here soon.” 

“In half an hour,” he corrects. “Your apartment is on my way.” 

“No, it isn’t.” Samira can’t even justify why she’s turning down his offer. She still hasn’t removed herself from his grip. They’re so close that she is nearly standing between his feet. 

He straightens the bag slung over his shoulder. “I want to give you a ride home.” 

“Why?” It comes out a bit too desperately. 

His lips press into a line before he speaks. Jack promised to show her everything in it. “You know why, Samira.”

She usually wouldn’t dare say what she does, so she blames it on the crash. It’s the brutal comedown of adrenaline and panic and confidence that makes her seek out his reasoning. This is not any other night. “Will you tell me anyway?” Will you give me something I can sink my teeth into?

“You’re very important to me, and I would like to make sure you get home safely.” He almost looks pained. There’s a speck of dried blood along his hairline. She wants to reach up and scratch it away. “I’m very—I care about you, Samira. A lot.”

Part of her, some part that is nestled away between muscle and bone, believes that Jack Abbot was carved out specifically for her. That someone placed him in a kiln and traced her initials underneath the glaze. She knows that isn’t true. He is a man with a life outside of her and outside of this hospital. He is a person who bends upon resistance rather than breaks. “If you give me a ride tonight, I’m going to start expecting them.” 

It’s quiet between them as they look at one another, her wrist still in his hand. They can’t be more than seven feet away from the bus stop. “I’d like to be someone you expect things from.” 

Samira nods. Just once. She can rely on him, if only for ten minutes. Just long enough to get from here to her door. She can climb into his passenger seat. Jack would like her to expect things from him. Tonight, tired and tightly strung, she can do that. If not for herself, then for him. Samira tells herself that she is not a selfish person, so she will pretend that this favor is for him. 

He is not kiln-fired, but maybe he could be hers. 

Samira doesn’t take his hand. Doesn’t lace her arm through his and lay her head on his shoulder, but she does follow him in a wordless rhythm. Allows her steps to fall in time with his. 

Jack glances over his shoulder to look at her once. He flashes her a smile, small and contained, not like the grin on the park bench, all teeth on display in a laugh, but more like the smirk when she asked to see his go bag. It’s something just for her. That’s something she has always admired about Jack. He isn’t trying to make everyone laugh, isn’t trying to calm every nerve. He’s purposeful. 

The inside of someone’s car is a bit like the inside of someone’s mind. At least, that is what Samira assumes as they approach Jack’s black CR-V, and she sees just how clean it is. It’s freshly vacuumed, recently washed. The interior is illuminated by a dim, flickering light on the other side of the parking garage. 

Samira has a car. Technically, she has a car. It’s outside her apartment in a spot she pays for but really shouldn’t, considering her car didn’t start this morning and doesn’t most mornings. She could jump it, probably, but Samira doesn’t know any of her neighbors. Certainly not well enough to knock on their doors before dawn. 

Jack’s car is clean and well-tended. Samira’s car is cluttered, it doesn’t start. She buckles her seatbelt.

Jack seems like the kind of guy who backs into parking spots, but maybe he didn’t have time today. Did he speed on the way over? Probably. Almost certainly. He turns the keys in the ignition. His arm stretches behind her seat as he turns to reverse. 

Their eyes catch. 

Their eyes always catch. Across a trauma bay and a gurney and the break room, their eyes catch. He looks at her with a shocking and gentle focus. An intensity that is so inherently Jack Abbot that Samira knows it comes naturally to him. He isn’t looking for her. He just finds her. Finds her crying on the roof as an intern before she had any idea that the roof was his spot. Finds her by the Hub before sliding a case study in front of her. He finds her during the night shift lull. 

Samira finds herself pressed against an on-call room mattress, his eyes still shocking and gentle and him. Finds that her fingers tangle deliciously in his hair. Finds that he’s just like he is in her dreams.

Neither of them talks until Jack has pulled out of the parking deck. “Eat anything other than pizza today?” 

“How do you have the energy for this?” 

“For what?” 

“That was the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life—I’m not sure I’m even in my body right now. You just ran a MASH unit on your day off on what I’m presuming was not enough sleep, and you’re concerned about getting me dinner.” The words come out a bit too rushed, a bit too rude. “Why?” Now it’s too desperate. Too earnest. “Why do you care?”

He could be hers. If she let him, he could be hers. 

“Can’t help it, I guess. People like me and you have to care. It’s in our bones.” Jack shakes his head, hands steady on the steering wheel. Green light flickers across his face. “Told Robby earlier that we’re the bees that protect the hive. Not my best work, but it’s true.” His jaw flexes at the staccato of his turn signal. “I think it’s true.” 

Samira presumes he would have said anything to get Robby off the roof. Not that she is supposed to know that Robby was on the wrong side of the railing to begin with. Not that she’s never been there herself, fingers trailing on the cool metal behind her, eyes trained on the horizon. The fleeting thought of what if. Loneliness crushed by duty.

Samira suspects, dreads, maybe hopes that the three of them are made of the same stuff. The same crazed, frenetic carbon let loose during the big bang and scattered throughout the universe has somehow been reunited now through them. Robby, who cannot stand her, and Jack, who cares despite it, and Samira, who tries and claws and pushes. They are doctors because they have no choice but to be doctors. They must work in emergency medicine, or die. That is the hand they’ve been dealt. It isn’t fair; it’s just true.

“You were incredible today,” Jack says. “The crash is brutal, but don’t let it take that away from you. You rocked it tonight. You lit up.”

“I don’t think I’m going to sleep tonight.” She’s never been more exhausted and never felt more wired. 

“You probably won’t.” His eyes meet hers, a red glow radiating from the streetlights. “You probably won’t for a while. The first time you see something like that—.” Jack’s foot eases off the brake as the light turns green. “It sticks with you.” 

The rest of the drive is silent. Not uncomfortably, but not purposefully either. Samira has been wrung dry, her body and her spirit clenched between angry fingers. Jack Abbot’s car smells like cinnamon gum and blood. 

At the last intersection before reaching her apartment, Samira thinks briefly about running her hand through his hair. Letting her fingers tangle in the mess of curls at the top of his head, just like she had the night he kissed her in that on-call room up against the locked door. Gently at first. Then desperately. Then disbelievingly. Like she was something he had been waiting for. Something he couldn’t believe he was able to get his hands on. 

Everyone loves a taboo. 

But there’s nothing particularly taboo about this. About the quiet companionship of a ride home. He walks her to her apartment, keys in hand. He waits in the hall when she opens the door and makes no attempt to peer inside or invite himself in. A gentleman. If she had the energy to be endeared, she would be. 

They are made of the same stuff. The same patience and the same restlessness. Jack Abbot looks at her and her only, not the dishes piling in her sink or her bare walls. He cares about her. He said it himself by the bus stop, and he would say it again if she asked. She knows he would. 

Samira is not a selfish person by nature. Maybe she is. Maybe she is selfish for feeling the most alive she’s ever felt while injured victims rolled through the doors. Maybe she is selfish for feeling pride for the first time in months when Robby relied on her in the red. Maybe she is selfish, and maybe that is why she laces her fingers through Jack’s and asks, “Do you want to come in?” 

“Do you want me to?” His voice is soft, low. Samira remembers how the buzz of his words felt against her neck. Reverent and desperate in the tenuous solitude of an on-call room.

Samira nods. On any other night, she would send him away, and she suspects that he knows that. She toes her shoes off in the entryway, and Jack follows suit, making quick work of the laces on his boots. She gets a better look at his leg as he does, black and silver carbon fiber peeking out in the space between his sock and his pant leg. He lets her take his hand again as soon as he is standing upright.

It echoes when the door latches shut, Jack looking for permission before turning the deadbolt. Her apartment is technically furnished. She has a couch, a table by the door that catches her keys, and her banged-up water bottle. There’s a giant, meticulously updated calendar on the wall, but there’s nothing to swallow up sound here. Every noise reverberates, bouncing from the walls and hitting their ears all over again. 

He follows her into her apartment, a grown man tugged along with ease. She only lets go of his hand once they’ve reached the kitchen, which isn’t actually separated from the living room by anything other than an arbitrary change in the flooring, fake hardwood meeting fake tile. She pulls open the cabinet by her sink filled with dishes and finds she has exactly two clean glasses. She only has four. Everything echoes and bounces and gets louder, louder, louder as Samira pulls the glasses from the cabinet, opens her abhorrently, embarrassingly empty fridge, and pours from her half-empty Brita filter. 

She can feel the adrenaline leaking out of her pores. Can feel herself becoming someone who did something frightening, rather than someone who is doing something necessary. Samira’s hand shakes as she places a glass of water into Jack’s grasp. He looks at her. He hasn’t stopped looking at her, actually. She has felt the weight of his gaze on her skin since he strolled in through the ambulance bay doors, and it hasn’t relented since. Still, he looks as she chugs her glass of water, her eyes trained up toward the popcorn ceiling. 

“I won’t ask if you’re okay,” Jack says. “But, is there anything I can do for you?” 

“I’ll be okay.” 

“I know you will.” His voice is so tender, Samira feels something inside her snap. A fracture, a dislocation, something dramatic and real. Samira did something. Samira was incredible. Samira is standing in her kitchen with Jack Abbot.

He could be hers. If Samira lets him, Jack Abbot could be hers. She sets her glass on the countertop with clumsy urgency as she moves forward. It’s one step, then two to close the gap between them. Her hands are in his hair before her lips are even on his mouth. Jack tastes like cinnamon gum and the last breaths of a cigarette. He feels more familiar than he should, like she’s known him for decades, not just a handful of years. He is far more coordinated than Samira as he sets down his water. 

They’re less frenzied now compared to the first time they kissed. They aren’t on the clock, side-eyeing the door. There is no one who could barge in. For the first time in fifteen hours, if someone is coding, it isn’t Samira’s responsibility. If this is a bad idea, which it certainly is, there is no one here to find out and punish them for it. It is just the two of them and the rapid beating of Samira’s heart and the sharp, unmistakable burn of a day that should never have happened. He’s so warm that Samira could melt into him if she wanted. Become nothing more than a puddle of Abbot-warmed endorphins. 

It echoes when her hand slips under his shirt, fingers splayed over taut muscle. His lips are chapped, and they are determined. Jack’s hands skim over her hips, trailing over the waistband of her scrubs. His breath is warm, just like the rest of him. He radiates heat.

Samira laughs against his neck as he mumbles, “Beautiful,” his mouth trailing over her jaw. “Don’t laugh,” Jack says. His hands tighten around her waist before he hoists her up into the air, planting her on the edge of the countertop as if it were nothing at all. “It’s true. You’re gorgeous, Samira.” 

She doesn’t have it in her to bite back and point out that she has been awake for eighteen hours now, and there is dried blood crusted in her sweaty hair. That she is crazed and certainly not worth his time. Instead, she says nothing, allowing Jack, with his lips pressed against her skin, to pull whatever sounds he wants from her. She gasps and sighs against him, leaning against the cabinets as Jack murmurs “beautiful” again and again and again. His hand moves under her scrub top, rough calluses running against her abdomen. Samira hums, hooking her legs around him to pull him closer. 

Jack’s stubble is rough against her face, the burn sparking something in her. A new adrenaline spike, a new drive. She lifts her hips, helping Jack pull her scrub pants along with her underwear down to her ankles. Jack’s fingers dance across her hips, hot breath on her neck. “Please,” Samira rakes her nails through his hair. “Please, I need—” She has no clue what she’s even trying to ask for.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

Her entire body lights up when the pad of his thumb rolls over her clit with feather-light pressure. Samira can feel him grin as her grip on his hair tightens. She screws her eyes shut as he continues to rub small, slow, almost lazy circles. “Just relax, Samira. That’s all you have to do.”

His lips dip to her collarbone as her head falls back against the cabinet door. Her heartbeat pounds in her fingertips. “This is really unhygienic,” she says, mostly to herself. 

Jack huffs out a laugh against her sternum. “I always clean up after myself.” His thumb begins to work faster, still light. None of the hard, desperate pressure that she might have imagined to come from an adrenaline crash hookup. This is deliberate and purposeful and soft. Some part of her brain that is not being engaged in this moment suspects that he’s doing this as a favor. Helping her ride through the cocktail of terrified chemicals that flooded her system four hours ago. The rest of her brain is not concerned with any of that. Not as she watches him lower to his knees in front of her, eyes sharp and shaded under his brow, before he presses a kiss against her calf, the crook of her knee, her inner thigh. His thumb still working away at her. 

“Oh, Jesus, fuck—Jack!” Samira barks out as he licks into her. She jolts, out of instinct, thighs moving to close around the man kneeling in front of her. Both of Jack’s hands move to her hips, keeping her in place. He buries his face in her cunt, tongue plunging into her core, nose bumping against her clit. Samira yanks his hair so hard it must hurt, but all Jack does is groan against her, the vibrations running through her bones.

His eyes stay trained on her. Always do. He must get tired of the sight of her burned into his corneas like a broadcast logo on an old TV. Jack’s fingers dig into her hips hard enough to bruise, and part of her hopes he does bruise her. If only for the proof that this is not something she dreamed up in the aftermath. Jack is real, just like this hazy, delicious moment. Pressure builds between her hips. A tension, growing, expanding with every pathetic whine and plea that escapes Samira’s lips. Every swipe of her clit, every moan elicited from Jack by the involuntary bucking of her hips. 

“Taste so good, Samira.” It’s a murmur aimed at the crease of her thigh. Samira worked for 15 hours straight today. He certainly isn’t telling the truth, but she can’t bring herself to care as the muscles in her legs tense. Her entire abdomen tightens in the solitary want for more. For release. “I’ve got you,” he mumbles before plunging his tongue deep enough that she feels him in her bloodstream, infiltrating her. 

It’s a sweet orgasm that spreads through her, blooming from the very center of her being and radiating out to her extremities. A gentle sort of release that doesn’t shake away the terror of the night so much as shake it loose. Samira reaches down, grabbing Jack by the collar of his scrub top and hoisting him back up to her level. His face is slick, her own wetness trapped in his stubble. “You’re going to hurt your knees, Abbot.” 

“Oh, I’ll live.” Jack’s lips are salty against hers as he kisses her, hands sliding over her thighs, along her hips, and up her ribs. “I’ll stay on my knees all night.”

“My bedroom is down the hall,” she offers, nose a centimeter away from his. “If you care about your joints.”

He’s all muscle. She already knows this. Knew it before she went into that on-call room to check in on him post-panic attack, only to leave with beard burn on the inside of her thighs. But there’s something about feeling all of that muscle move around her that makes her feel just the tiniest bit lightheaded. Jack scoops her into a bridal hold, laughing at her own surprised laughter as he makes the short walk to her bedroom. She watches bare white walls pass over his shoulder.

He sets her down gently, arms not letting go until her entire body is settled into the soft hug of her mattress. “We can be done,” he offers. It’s considerate and entirely unnecessary. 

Samira’s hand moves under his shirt, fingers grabbing the chain around his neck and pulling him towards her. “You’re wearing far too much clothing.”

Jack leaves just after 4:00 AM, pressing a kiss against her bare shoulder before he sneaks out the door.

He’s already there when Samira gets to the hospital. Knee-deep in the remnants of the night before, Jack nods at her as she enters. “Dr. Mohan,” he says, eyes flitting over her just for a moment, both familiar and professional at once. “Hope you slept well.”

The haze wears off in the week after Pittfest. 

The sticky pink film of blood clouding her retinas disperses. She rubs it from the corners of her eyes. Blinks hard in the new light of reality. Samira knew, even as patients were rolling in, even as the high of saving lives continued to climb, that her life would be cleanly divided into the days that occurred before the PittFest shooting and the days that occurred after the PittFest shooting. 

The same thing happened when her father died. There was a world that existed before her father died and a world that existed after. There was a world that existed before her mother died and a world that existed after. 

There was a world that existed before PittFest, and there is a world after. 

Samira feels the heavy tug of the after. Of a world that exists only because a previous reality was lost, ground to dust beneath the rolling wheels of gurneys and the weight of restless, sprinting feet. She thought, briefly, probably stupidly, that she might escape without her life being divided up again. Thought that maybe she was far enough removed from the carnage that it would spare her. Samira Mohan was only securing airways and plugging bullet holes; she was not a patient. She was not one of the countless family members crowded in the makeshift waiting room. She walked away with all her extremities intact. 

Robby’s absence cements that things are different. He’ll be gone for a month. Dana will be gone for however long Dana will be gone for. Samira overhears Princess say that a fifth of the nursing staff are taking PTO, which seems like an overstatement until she’s confronted with just how many travel nurses are milling through the department. She’s never seen so many high ponytails before.

Welcome, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, to the after. 

She breathes in the heavy fog of the after and feels it catch in her lungs. In the after, Jack Abbot is not hers. He’s not anyone else’s either. He is Samira’s, but on a per diem basis. He is PTMC’s on a salaried, overtime schedule. He is Interim Chief of Emergency Medicine, Interim Residency Director, and occasionally, the man who rubs soothing circles between her shoulder blades when the bite of after makes her so nauseous she can’t function. 

It’s not as if Samira has a significant amount of free time. With Langdon gone, she’s the second most senior resident on most shifts. It’s not as if Samira necessarily wants Jack to belong to her. Something about it feels too tidy, too clean in the aftermath. Overworked, orphaned resident meets overworked, widowed attending. It’s a neat bow she doesn’t want to tie. A made-for-TV Lifetime movie that she would scoff at.

Exhaustion lives within her. The sting is constant and satisfying, like lactic acid building up in effort-sore muscles. It’s a pain she has earned. One she could brag about, if she really wanted to. She imagines that if her parents were alive, they would be concerned. They would tuck her hair behind her ear and tell her she is working too hard. Giving too much to a place that doesn’t really like her that much. 

Really, she has no way to know what her parents would think. Her dad didn’t get to see her start high school. Her mom missed match day by two weeks. 

She likes to think they would be proud. Allows the fading memory of their voices, the blurry wedding portrait, the handwriting tattooed along the back of her shoulder to chase her through residency. Encouragement she probably has not earned that accompanies the critique she cannot escape.

Three weeks and two days post PittFest, Samira is just starting to adjust to the sight of Jack in the daylight. The presence of him here, bright and early on a Monday, is alien. She slept in his bed last night. Well, first, she fell asleep in his massive bathtub and woke in tepid water with Jack’s hand carefully cradling her head. Then, she woke a second time in his bed, so she presumes she must have slept there. He’s so considerate it makes her teeth ache. It stirs up a massive whirlpool of doubt and denial within her that is so cliché and dramatic, she wants to roll her eyes. 

Samira finds herself at the Hub with Cassie, both of them staring up at the board, a suspicious amount of white space hanging over their heads. It should not be so calm just after 10:00 AM. Things should be ramping up; the volume in the room dialed to the max. Instead, there is an uneasy murmuring, a trickle of patients, and the quiet tap of Cassie’s toe against the linoleum.

“I’m waiting on labs,” Samira hears herself say. Cassie nods. Her silence isn’t pointed, and it certainly isn’t antagonistic, but it is there, needling into Samira’s exterior. Silence in the emergency room feels wrong. Eerie, almost. This used to be a hospital, and now it’s a haunted house. Halloween is right around the corner. If she believed in ghosts, in the thinning of the veil between here and there, the living and the dead, Samira might attribute all of this unease to just that. Ghosts, spirits, something that cannot be explained away by mere science. But Samira does not believe in ghosts. Not even the custodian who supposedly haunts the eighth floor. 

It would all be a lot easier if she did. 

It’s still quiet. You aren’t supposed to say the word quiet in the ER, so she doesn’t, though she would welcome the chaos of a massive interstate pile-up right now. Samira rises on her toes before settling back down into the heels of her sneakers. “I’ve been thinking about getting a cat.” 

Cassie exhales a laugh at that, finally looking over to meet Samira’s eyes. “Yeah?” 

“I used to have a cat. I found him by the dumpsters outside my apartment when I was in med school.” 

“You know, you’d have to leave work reliably enough to feed it, right?” 

Samira blinks. “Of course, I know that.” The words come out rushed and bright, dripping with sloppily applied positivity. “Despite what everyone thinks, I do have a life outside of the hospital.” 

Cassie’s stare goes on for one second, then two, then three before she raises her brows in either acknowledgement or surrender. “Good. You can’t be a doctor every second of the day.” She says. “You have to be a person every now and then.” 

“And doctors aren’t people?” 

Her eyes linger on Samira for just a beat too long to be comfortable. “Not always.” She shifts her attention back to the board overhead. “I’ll take abdominal rash in North 2.” 

Samira exhales, long and slow, tongue pressed flat and heavy against the bottom of her mouth. The sting of a conversation survived crawls up her skin. She’s home often enough to feed a theoretical cat; she had no problem with it before. Though she had roommates back then that Lil’ Wayne would scream at until they filled his food bowl if Samira was running behind. Or picking up an unexpected double. Or staying late to look over her research.

She could buy one of those automatic feeders, just in case. 

Her eyes survey the board once again. Hoping, against her better judgment, to find something grizzly. She resigns herself to a dislocated shoulder in North 4. 

“Dr. Mohan,” he still won’t call her Samira on the clock. Everyone calls her Samira, except Jack. He always seems confused when she points out that he is the sole holdout. He stands just to her right, tablet in hand and reading glasses on the end of his nose. “Do you have a minute?” 

“Of course,” she says.

“PTMC has been,” Jack glances down to read directly from his tablet, “invited to speak about our harrowing and impressive handling of the PittFest mass shooting at the New Orleans Topics in Emergency Management conference in January.”

“We aren’t even a month out, and they’re already asking you to present?” 

“They’ve been emailing Robby daily for the past two weeks. Finally got fed up with that and found Gloria’s email. She graciously accepted on behalf of the department.” Jack gives a faux smile. “Admin thinks it would look good to have a resident co-presenter. You were our senior-most resident. You were in the red the entire night. Pigtail catheter, IO borehole, I mean you—" he stops himself. “You can say no; I wouldn’t blame you, but if you’re interested, the spot’s yours.” 

Samira clasps one of her hands in the other, thumb running over her knuckles. She pretends to consider the offer, as if there is a single thing that would prevent her from going. If she had a cat, she would need someone to cat-sit for her. Samira does not have a cat anymore.

Samira has been reading a lot about shock. About what you are supposed to do in the aftermath of a mass tragedy. There is a tab open in her browser titled ‘Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Emergency Medicine Residents.’ She has read it twice. Samira is almost certain that she does not have PTSD. She’s shaken to her core. Something inside her has been knocked loose. But she simply does not meet the diagnostic criteria. There is no condition to explain away witnessing something horrible and promptly feeling miserable afterwards. Maybe it’s just the human condition. Maybe merely witnessing a mass casualty event is enough to make you sick for weeks afterwards. Maybe sitting alone in an apartment that is so silent you can feel the pressure of absence squeezing tight around your ribs as you stare at the ceiling only makes things worse. 

Jack calls one night, and she does not answer. He could be hers. 

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she wakes with a start. She vomits in her too-small bathroom. The sound echoes. Samira rereads Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Emergency Medicine Residents. This is her routine in the after. 

It’s Friday, or maybe it’s Thursday? The weekday is unclear, but Jack knows for certain it’s September 27th. Knows it like he knows the lines of his own palms, the weight of his own tongue. It’s something entirely native to him. Cell-deep memorization. It is probably Friday, and they’ve been slammed since the moment Jack walked through the door.

The last gasps of summer injuries have flooded the waiting room alongside all the new back-to-school infections. Well past noon, and Jack hasn’t had the chance for a smoke break, hasn’t had time to piss, and his phone will not stop ringing. His sisters, his mother-in-law, Lizzie’s oncologist. He’s grateful for the grind, in all honesty. For the excuse to ignore the calls for just a few more hours. 

The buzzing has not relented in the past two minutes, sending vibrations down through his prosthesis and back up into his residual limb. Jack fishes his phone out of his pocket as Perlah places a folder full of bullshit paperwork he’ll have to open and read and make sense of eventually in front of him. “You’re popular this morning,” she says over his shoulder. 

All Jack can do is grumble in response, not bothering to actually find words. She’s gone before the sound even leaves his mouth. No one is standing in one place for longer than a second today. The words Michael Robinavitch stare up at him from his screen. “How ya holding up, brother?” Jack holds his phone between his ear and his shoulder, his hands attempting to coax Epic into actually loading on the desktop in front of him. 

“Oh, you know me. New reason to smile every day.” Robby’s voice is thin on the other side of the line. The quiet static of an empty room manages to make its way into the phone. “How are you?” 

“Awake.” Jack’s entire screen goes dark before rebooting. Epic cackles at him. Taunts him. He has never wanted a cigarette more. “Is this a wellness check, or do you need something?” 

“Tough shift?” 

Jack runs a hand across his face. “You know how I feel about sunlight.” 

“Look, I know it’s a big day.” Jack does not laugh. He’s almost proud of himself for not laughing. Big day. Like there’s a party, something big and exciting, instead of a cool, seeping cruelty. “I just—I wanted to check in, I guess. 

“Robby,” 

“That therapist of yours said I should work on communicating my concern,” Robby says. “It’s Lizzie’s birthday. I’m concerned.”

Instead of responding, Jack watches the choreographed chaos of the Pitt from his chair. Before it all fell apart—before Jack fell apart—he wanted to be department chief. He’d put up a good fight. He came prepared to all the interviews with proposals and statistics. Sharp answers loaded regarding his “unconventional background” and his approach to teaching. He’d wanted this once.

His eyes track the new intern, Santos, as she ducks into Central 10. Collins strides across the bullpen towards BH2, walking just a half-step behind Donnie. McKay ushers someone from Chairs inside. Samira sprints past towards the bathroom, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth with an urgency she typically reserves for a rapid response. He watches as she grabs a recycling bin from underneath the hub and doubles over, retching. A medical assistant takes a wide berth around her. 

Jack sits up straight in his seat, wheels rolling underneath him. “I have to go.” 

“Take care of yourself.”

“You first.” Jack doesn’t actually hang up; he just drops his phone by his desktop as he jumps to his feet. “Dr. Mohan,” the front tendrils of her hair dangle in front of her. Jack runs his hand over the crown of her head, gathering her curls away from her face. 

Gasping, Samira shakes her head. “I’m so sorry.” 

“Don’t apologize.” Jack guides her to one of the abandoned rolling chairs, motioning for her to sit. “Nothing to be sorry for.” He presses his hand flat against her forehead. “No fever, at least. You can have the next bed that opens up.”

“Absolutely not.” Samira takes a tissue from his outstretched hand, wiping at her mouth. “I don’t need a bed. I need a water and ten minutes.”

“You’re sick.”

“Everyone is sick. I’ll wear a mask.” 

“I’m not letting you see patients without a work-up.” Samira scoffs in protest. He can see her eyeing the board. Not all doctors are terrible patients, but all of the best ones are. Samira is an excellent doctor. “Five minutes. You can have Collins, McKay, whoever you want, but I want to make sure you haven’t ruptured your appendix.” Or developed a hernia or gallbladder disease or a sudden infection. 

Samira is silent, eyes bloodshot. Her hands still clutch the small trash can. Her eyes are so wide that sometimes he feels overwhelmed by them. Like he’s drowning in the rich pools of her irises. It’s impossible to look away. Not that he’d ever want to. Only a stupid man would want to look away. “Can you do it?” She asks. 

“Of course I can.” 

Jack knows before she does. 

Honestly, that is the worst part. Samira never envisioned herself as the type of resident who sleeps with an attending. That isn’t something you do as a serious physician. That is something the Lifetime Original version of Samira would do. But this is real life. In real life, Jack Abbot’s face is trained into a look reserved for patients. His voice is just a half-step higher than it usually is. He hands Samira his tablet so she can look at her own chart. “Do you know that you’re pregnant?”

Samira immediately shoves the tablet back into his hands, her legs swinging off the side of the bed. “I have to—” She stands on unsteady feet. “Dr. Abbot, I have to go. I have patients.” 

Chapter Text

“Samira,” Jack steps halfway in front of her, stopping Samira in her tracks.

Her hands grip either side of her stethoscope, pulling the tubing snug against the back of her neck. Another rush of nausea surges through her. She doubts it has anything to do with her hCG levels. She is going to throw up all over Jack Abbot’s shoes if he doesn’t fucking move. 

She’d like to say that none of this makes any sense. That the unnecessary bloodwork Jack ordered is lying. Or, that the 32,100 mIU/mL of human chorionic gonadotropin that’s cycling through her veins, and stated plainly on her medical records, is actually the result of a previously undiscovered cancerous growth. Samira would like to think that she’s stuck in some trauma-induced stress dream. That all of this is a misunderstanding fueled by the prodrome of a migraine she can feel creeping up her spine, latching onto her brain stem. 

Samira would like to say any one of these things is true, but unfortunately, she is smart enough to recognize just how stupid she has been. Unfortunately, her extensive medical training included a month-long OB/GYN rotation, meaning she knows an hCG level of 32,100 is not merely indicative of pregnancy, but likely a pregnancy somewhere around its sixth or seventh week. Unfortunately, she is staring down a man who knows all of this information as well. A man who is undoubtedly running over the timeline in his own head. 

Samira presses her hand flat against her sternum and swallows down the bile rising in her throat. “Someone else could use this room. I think we’re done. I think— we have patients.” 

“Hey, take a second.” Jack moves to touch her shoulder. 

“I can’t talk about this right now.” Something flits across his eyes as she moves away from him. Neither of them has time for this right now, and even if they did, Samira cannot entertain whatever soft-spoken conversation he wants to initiate. She shakes her head, blinking hard. Panic and guilt flood her nervous system. A jittery, fanged sort of guilt that is entirely illogical but sharp and real nonetheless. “After shift, please. We can talk, I promise, but I need to get back to work.” Her voice wavers. “I need to work.” 

“Okay,” Jack steps to the side, gives her room like she is some sort of frightened animal. Maybe she is. “Okay, just do me a favor and catch your breath before you go.” Jack makes a point to model himself taking deep breaths. Samira feels both insulted and comforted by it. She watches Jack’s chest rise and fall beneath his scrubs as her heels dig into her sneakers. Every instinct in her body tells her to bolt. 

She takes five big, uneven breaths before giving in to that instinct, brushing past Jack through the door. The overstimulating buzz of the Pitt seeps into her cells. Cassie gives her a concerned, quizzical look from the other side of the room. Samira shakes the past fifteen minutes from her memory. She is an emergency medicine physician. She is excellent at compartmentalization. When someone asks if she’s okay, Samira tells them the truth: she has a migraine. She isn’t contagious. She’s fine to work. All of these things are true. 

And Samira is fine to work. She’s the most focused she has been since PittFest. Her mind is sharp. It has no room for anything other than medicine. “Excellent catch, Samira,” Heather says at one point, a hand placed on Samira’s shoulder. All she can do is nod, her breathing too labored, her eyes surely too dark based on the way Heather cocks her head to the side just slightly. “Are you feeling alright?” 

Samira nods, her lips pressed into a smile. “I’m fine.” This is an emergency room. Samira resuscitated someone’s grandfather forty-five minutes ago. Pregnancy, in and of itself, is not an emergency, and she is not going to delude herself into thinking that it is. There are many, many problems to solve in this overrun department. Lives to save, and all that. Samira is fine.

“It’s okay to sit down for a minute if you need to,” she offers. “We have things under control.” 

“I don’t need to.” 

Jack might be haunting her. It feels like he is haunting her, at the very least. He’s everywhere. Of course, he’s everywhere; he’s the attending on shift. It’s his job to observe her, but Samira has never been more aware of the sheer heft of his attention. He looks, he haunts, but he doesn’t press. Doesn’t approach. 

The stream of patients is relentless, even as the day stretches into the afternoon. One trauma is immediately replaced by another. One open seat in Chairs is filled by three new occupants. It is a marathon, not a sprint, but Samira’s heart rate doesn’t  ever even out. She is perpetually tachycardic. A new ambulance, a new trauma. Intubation, escharotomy, fasciotomy. Their patient is halfway to the elevator, and the lingering stench of full-thickness burns clings to the stale air. 

Samira catches Jack looking at her out of the corner of his eye again. She can feel him breathing from the other side of Trauma 2. Can feel the snap of nitrile as he peels off his gloves, even as hers remain plastered to her hands. He doesn’t look guilty or scared; he looks concerned for her, which is infuriating for some reason. He slips away. Doesn’t press, but he looks, stares enough that Jesse follows his line of sight and finds Samira at the end of it. 

Another patient from Chairs, a little boy who fractured his rib on the playground. Samira prescribes rest, ice, and a visit with his pediatrician. She nods, smiles, and listens as his father recounts the story. He’s so visibly shaken by the ordeal that Samira can’t help but be endeared by it. By how much this man loves his child. They’re discharged. The room is turned over and filled by someone else as Samira orders imaging for a woman with a concussion on the other side of the department. 

Another trauma, another patient, an ambulance whoops in announcement of its arrival. It’s a near save. An almost save. If the car had been any slower, the cyclist brought in two minutes earlier, if the strap of her helmet had snapped a second later, everything would be much different. But it’s not different, and none of them cry. They wouldn’t have the time to cry anyway. 

Again and again. Trauma, Chairs, charting, a ragged breath that knocks around in her bronchi, snags a tear in her pleural tissue, a half-sip of water from a bottle is probably hers, a glance from Jack. Trinity Santos has her head in her hands at her desktop, heels of her palms digging into the soft divots of her eyes. Another trauma. A save this time. Back to admits from Chairs. 

Around 5:00, there’s a reprieve for four, maybe five minutes. For the first time in hours, her body exits fight or flight mode only to immediately re-enter it. For the first time in hours, Samira does not attempt to duck away from Jack Abbot’s gaze—she walks towards it. Towards him. 

The conversation is brief. It has to be brief, or Samira suspects the ground would swallow her up. “That sandwich place you and Parker always try to get me to go to.” She tries to phrase it as a question, but it comes out as a statement instead. 

“Carson’s?” Jack asks. His arms are crossed over his chest, arms tensing and relaxing again and again. 

Samira nods. It’s neutral ground. Not the hospital where their coworkers linger. It’s not Samira’s apartment or Jack’s house. “We can meet there, if you want.” Again, not the question that she wants it to be. “7:30?” 

Jack clears his throat. “7:30,” he echoes. “If you need to head out early, we can manage.” 

“I don’t.” Pregnancy is not an emergency. 

A case from Chairs, then another. Patient notes, discharge paperwork, a trauma, a joint reduction, a laugh forced out of her when a med student manages to knock an IV pole onto an instrument tray, puncturing it with a scalpel and sending saline everywhere. A handful of trail mix from a styrofoam bowl. A discharge, a patient, a trauma, a pair of gloves just a size too small. A tap on the shoulder from Parker at 7:05. 

Samira is, first and foremost, data-driven. 

So, without doing any cursory research, she knows that a twenty-year-old woman having unprotected sex has a 30% chance of getting pregnant in a given month. A thirty-year-old woman having unprotected sex has a 20% chance of getting pregnant in a given month. By forty, that number is somewhere between 5% and 10%. 

Regardless of specialty, female physicians have children later on average than their peers.

1 in 4 women is expected to have an abortion by age 45. 56% of all abortions performed in the United States are performed on people between 20 and 29 years old. 

Over 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of all developed nations. 

8% of pregnancies experience complications that, if left untreated, could result in death. 

1 in 6 people struggle with infertility. 

4 out of 10 pregnancies are unintended. 

Samira runs over the stats, but she knows most of the statistics involving fertility and reproductive health are unreliable, unclear, or just false. 

Statistics are merely statistics. An attempt to quantify billions of experiences. They cannot ever represent one person. They cannot represent the entire truth. Truth is difficult to grasp and harder to distill. Scientists dedicate their lives to the pursuit of a truth that they know, deep down, they will never be able to fully synthesize. Truth is messy and it is sharp and it is loathsome and it is punchy and it is hidden away. Truth is what Samira is constantly, constantly striving for. 

The truth is, Samira is lonely. Disastrously lonely.

Her father died when she was 13. She was so young that she didn’t have to face any complicated feelings. She has mourned a perfect man for 16 years. A man with graying hair,  endless patience, and a booming laugh.  He died quickly. Cruelly. He was stolen away in the blink of an eye by a heart attack and by a lack of care. 

In Samira’s mind, he remains an endlessly supportive cheerleader. He remains a man with no qualms. A ghost she chases with her arms outstretched with a childish desperation. 

The ghost of her mother lurks around every corner. 

Cancer is not quick, but it is cruel as well. It takes in all the ways a heart attack takes, but unlike a heart attack, it is not something Samira can spot from the other side of the department and treat. Her mother's memory is more complicated. It is built upon conflict and care and misunderstanding and grief.

Her memory is fresher and fuller. In so many ways, it’s worse because Samira does not chase after the specter of her mother. She remains haunted anyway. Mourns a memory that is complicated and crooked and treasured all at once. A woman who would have sighed upon hearing that Samira matched into Emergency Med, but would have hugged her tightly nonetheless. 

15% of all deaths are a result of cancer. 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. 

In the United States, someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds. 7.1 million people die from heart attacks each year. 

These are just statistics. They don’t represent the wholeness of a person or their experience, but they are integral to the scaffolding propping up Samira Mohan. 

The data tells her that having a child is simply not a good idea. Women with children make less money than their peers. That is a fact she read in a Pew research article, as she sat buckled in the front seat of her car. The data tells her that the average mother of a child under 6 spends nearly 8 hours caretaking every day. That is time Samira simply does not have. The data says 88% of mothers view parenting as the most important aspect of who they are. The slippery, difficult to pin down truth tells her that she is an island, isolated and uninhabited. That she lives in an apartment so sparsely decorated that it echoes when she sets her keys down after each shift, and that no matter what setting her white noise machine is set to, no matter how loudly she plays reality competition garbage on the television she got for free off Facebook Marketplace, there is a loneliness that overpowers it. 

Her fingers are tapping against the redtop diner table when Jack finally makes it inside, bell jingling above his head. 7:32 PM, two minutes late. It might be the latest he’s ever been. He spots her immediately, eyes finding hers the moment the door closes behind him. Jack smiles as he gets closer, his keys grasped securely in his palm. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I should have texted,” he says, sliding into the seat across from her in the booth. “Robby,” he offers as a justification in full. 

“The server hasn’t even come by yet.” 

Jack nods one of his big, full-body nods, shifting in his seat as he shoves his keys in his pocket. His hands move to the sun-faded, laminated menu in front of him, plastic peeling in the corners. He looks at Samira, the menu, then back to Samira. “Look, I don’t—” he begins quickly before literally snapping his mouth shut. He takes a breath and tries again. “I am more than willing to write a script for Mifepristone right now. Or, to help you find another provider who will. You don’t have to explain anything. You don’t owe me anything. I don’t want you to think that you do.” 

Samira digs her thumb into her palm. “So you want me to terminate the pregnancy?” 

“I want whatever you want,” he says simply. “You’re young. You have an incredible career ahead of you.” 

He seems taken aback as she laughs down towards the red tabletop. “Well, that’s not very helpful.” 

Silence stretches between them. Condensation collects in a ring beneath her ice water. The plastic straw she did not ask for has a puncture mark from her canines. The average American has their first child when they are 29 years old. Samira is 29.

Samira orders a sandwich she knows she won’t be able to stomach when their server finally comes to take their order. Jack orders the same thing. Their feet touch accidentally beneath the table. She decides silence will not solve anything. She has enough silence already. Enough silence for a lifetime. She bites first. “Do you… I don’t know, do you want kids?” Does he like them? Does it even matter?

“This isn’t about me.” 

She has to wonder if his selflessness is trained into him or if it’s genetic. “How am I supposed to make an informed decision if I don’t have all the relevant information?” Samira counters. 

The corners of his eyes soften, just a bit. He twists his wedding band between his thumb and his index finger. Samira forgets it’s there most days. Her eyes never catch on it, her mind doesn’t snag on it. He has worn it for as long as she’s known him. “We tried for a few years—me and Lizzie—but we didn’t have any luck.

“So you do?” 

“I want whatever you want, Samira.” 

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the truth.” Jack’s hand knocks against the table as he gestures. “I shouldn’t have put you in this position to begin with.” 

Samira kissed him first. Samira pulled her own scrubtop off over her head in a desperate frenzy. “I’d say the blame is pretty equal.” 

“I don’t think Human Resources would agree,” Jack says. There has to be at least one policy in the handbook that forbids an attending from having unprotected sex with a resident on hospital property. Well, the unprotected aspect probably isn’t written down anywhere. Doctors should be smart enough to discuss birth control before their illicit on-the-clock hookups. “I want what you want. Whatever it is, I’m in.” 

And, what does she want? What should she want? Samira has thought about having children, has slotted them into her exhaustively detailed plan. Children, the very concept of children, is at least four years down the line. She needs to complete her residency, her fellowship, and get settled in her position as an attending at a high-volume trauma center before she starts having kids. Two kids, preferably two to three years apart, with a partner she has thoroughly vetted. 

“Whatever I want?” There’s an incredibly serious, furrowed look on his face like she might ask for something he hasn’t considered. Marriage, cohabitation, a declaration of love. He’d probably offer all of them to her out of some hardwired chivalrous instinct.

Jack’s phone rings. He barely looks at the screen before silencing it and turning it face down on the table. They’ve reached some sort of stalemate. There’s an awkward distance between them, an arm's length of separation that has never existed between them, even before they started sleeping together. Things have always been easy with Jack, even when they’re stilted with everyone else. His phone rings again. 

“Do you need to take that?” Samira asks. 

“Sorry, it’s Amber. I’ll call her back later.”  She’s seen Amber’s picture on Jack’s mantle, her curls in a heap on the top of her head, her arms wrapped around two little girls in matching blue dance costumes with her husband, Ethan, and Jack standing proudly on either side, bouquets in hand. There’s another photo of Amber in his entryway, a baby-faced Jack in military fatigues surrounded by his sisters, Amber, Kelly, and Nicole. Jack’s house is full of photos. His sisters, his nieces and nephews, his wife and her family, pictures of old Army buddies and med school friends. It must be overwhelming to be loved by so many people. To have a sister to annoy you with phone calls. He even has photos in his locker. There’s a glossy snapshot of teary-eyed Jack in a Labor and Delivery room with his nephew cradled in his arms. 

Samira has no problem recognizing that she is intelligent. She graduated with a near-perfect GPA. She could have matched into any specialty she wanted–plastics, dermatology, or neurosurgery. Samira is a smart person. Objectively. She does not feel any guilt in acknowledging this fact. She knows that being lonely is not a justification to have a child. She doesn’t need data to know that.

The vision of Jack Abbot holding a baby in his arms shouldn’t tug at her heartstrings the way it does. It shouldn’t make her actually consider having a baby as a 3rd-year resident, especially when he refuses to tell her what he wants. She shouldn’t consider it, even for a minute. 

But she can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t stop thinking about what he would look like holding a bottle. Can’t stop thinking about a child that is half-Samira and half-him. A baby with her hair and his nose. A baby with her eyes and his freckles. A permanent connection between the two of them. A source of noise and warmth.  

Their server, some poor teenager with braces who can clearly sense the tension settled over their table, places two identical paper-lined red plastic baskets in front of them and leaves without saying a word. The two of them talk quietly, passing the heavy responsibility of speaking between them. 

Jack wants whatever Samira wants. But what if what she wants is selfish, inconvenient, and ill-advised? She pokes at her food with a plastic fork and boxes it up uneaten. Jack immediately reaches for the check and won’t listen to her protests. “Let me buy you a sandwich, Samira. Please.”  

Samira almost kisses him in the parking lot for no other reason than to feel the warmth of another person. Unsettled and unresolved, they part ways. Jack doesn’t pull out of the parking lot until he sees that her car starts. Samira tries to push the photo of Jack and his nephew from her head. Tries to stop thinking about a tiny hand wrapped around his index finger. She presses her forehead against the steering wheel and really, really tries to stop. She tries to imagine what her parents might think and finds nothing helpful. Nothing other than the dreadful knowledge that if she ever has children—nine months from now or nine years from now—they won’t ever meet her parents. 

As intelligent as she is, Samira taps through her contacts and finds Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights) while she’s still sitting in the parking lot. 

Jack picks up on the first ring. “Hello?”

Samira exhales, grounds herself from her stationary driver’s seat. “I’m not marrying you. I’m not moving in with you, but I think—but I want to have a baby. With you.” She tacks on the last two words not as an afterthought but as a clarification. She’s going to have a baby. With Jack. 

Jack is quiet on the other side of the phone. “You didn’t want to sleep on it?” She can imagine his face, the furrow of his brow. The way his hazel eyes would search her features for the truth if they were face to face. 

“Are you in or not?” Samira picks at her cuticles. Her nails aren’t long enough to bite. 

It’s safer to have this conversation over the phone, but part of her wants to see his face. To see the way he smiles as he says, “If you’re in, I’m in.” The uncertainty that was grasping at her insides loosens. Unfurls in a way that frightens her even more. “Let’s have a baby.”

There’s a spare room in Jack’s house. A long time ago, he and Lizzie thought it might be a nursery. It has a window seat and two built-in bookshelves on either side. It’s empty other than a neatly made queen bed and a singular nightstand. It only exists in case the usual guest room is occupied. The bed frame is the third cheapest option from IKEA. The door stays closed most of the time, but when Jack gets back home, Samira’s voice ringing in his ears, he pushes open the door. He sits in the dusty window seat and calls his sisters, his mother-in-law, all the other well-intentioned people who require proof of life.

His own words echo back towards him, call after call. 

Jack was born in an unincorporated town in a smudge of a county in West Virginia. He grew up surrounded by bright fields of goldenrod growing among thick mats of kudzu. He ate climbing bittersweet berries and honeysuckle flowers and wild goose plums picked straight off the tree. He spent his childhood painting with his sisters. Well, he watched his sisters paint from what they deemed to be a safe distance. He watched Amber and Nicole attempt to capture what it looks like when the Blue Ridge Mountains spring to life, foggy greens and blues too brilliant to be believed. He watched them layer cascades of deep reds and oranges as autumn took hold of the high country. Watercolors overtaking and overwhelming one another, no one shape having a solid beginning or end. No one color exists without all the others. 

His mind is a mess of watercolors. No one thought exists independently. No one feeling isolated and easily understood. Overtaken, overwhelmed, loud, and unceasing, the colors bleed into one another. A brain bleed empties into Jack’s skull. Surely, this is a trick of the light. The last wild moments of a conscious mind overtaken by an uncontrolled bleeder. 

Samira Mohan is pregnant. It’s Lizzie’s birthday today. Two things that should be entirely distinct but have somehow meshed and fused both in his mind and in time. Samira Mohan is having a baby. Lizzie would have been 43 today. Samira Mohan is having a baby with Jack. Lizzie always thought this room would be a nursery. They pictured butter yellow walls, dark wood, and a mural above the crib. Lizzie thought this room would be a nursery, and it finally will be. 

This room will be a nursery. Probably. They have discussed exactly zero details, so maybe Jack is lying, even on his wife's birthday, he’s lying. Or maybe he isn’t, and he is still horrible anyway, because the baby that may or may not sleep in this nursery that Lizzie always envisioned won’t be hers. 

Jack calls Amber. He calls Kelly and Nicole immediately after, so he can’t be accused of picking a favorite sister. He calls Lizzie’s mother, Allison, and Lizzie’s brother, Christopher. He deletes the voicemail from her oncologist without listening. He lets his head slump against the window. The world outside is dark by the time he has answered every call, read every text, and allowed himself to exhale. 

It’s dark. His house is quiet in ways it never used to be. 

Samira expects to feel different. To feel maternal. The greatest observable change in her life is her lowered caffeine intake. There is no overwhelming wash of emotion. No sudden connection to babies that come into the Pitt or mothers in line at the grocery store. 

She’s still herself. Still nauseous. Samira is still Samira, just underlined by a current of anxiety because she is not different when it feels like she should be entirely different. She should glow, right? She should feel a radiant sort of love unlock within herself. Instead, she remains entirely ordinary.

A week after he was supposed to come back, Robby finally returns, and Dana comes with him. They both find her with an emesis bag in the staff lounge and corner her as if she’s a patient with a history of eloping. She has morning sickness down to a science, though Jack does not entirely agree. He’s already tried to diagnose her with hyperemesis gravidarum. She keeps an emesis bag on her, ducks away from whatever patient she’s with when the nausea first hits her, disposes of her biohazardous medical waste in the biohazardous medical waste bin, washes her hands, and goes about her day. 

“I’m fine, really, Robby, I promise.” 

“You don’t seem fine.” 

Dana swats at him. “If you don’t leave her alone.” 

“If you’re infectious, Mohan, it’s irresponsible.”

She should wait. They haven’t told anyone yet, partially because she’s still in the first trimester, partially because Samira and Jack both know the situation will immediately spiral beyond anything either of them can control. They aren’t together. They’re having sex, they’re having a baby, but they aren’t doing most of the other things people probably expect them to. The specifics aren’t really anyone else's business. She should just lie, or she should let Robby send her home and put a dent in her overwhelming sleep debt. She could drive back to Jack’s and curl up against him. She could go back to her own apartment and sprawl out on her cool mattress. She could just get up and walk back into the bullpen. 

Samira can’t entirely admit it, but one small, petty part of her wants to see Robby squirm. Once again, she knows something that he does not. There’s a diagnosis he has missed. Again. 

Samira has been here, and he has not. She has worked through the messy and the terrible aftermath that he could not face, and she did it pregnant. She takes a breath, locking eyes with Dana’s before she says, “Morning sickness isn’t contagious."

Robby stares at her. His attention jumps to her abdomen as if he’d suddenly notice a difference. Like if he rubbed his eyes, a baby bump would materialize. “I see.” Robby’s head bobbles on his neck as he runs his hand over his beard. “I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No one does.” It’s not entirely truthful. Jack knows. Her OB/GYN knows. Anyone who cares enough to put two and two together probably knows. Robby doesn’t know because Robby hasn’t been here. Robby couldn’t handle the after. “And, I would really like to keep it that way.”

“Of course. Right,” Robby nods. “Congratulations,” he immediately presses his lips into an uneasy, thin line, like he might have said the wrong thing.

She can’t help but feel that they should mean more to each other. Or maybe, they should mean less to each other. They are made of the same stuff, and somehow, that infiltrates every interaction they have. He took a month off, and Samira stayed. She worked her ass off while he haunted a house owned by Jack’s mother-in-law. “Thank you,” Samira says. “I appreciate that.” Robby is also the first person to congratulate her. And she deserves congratulations, doesn't she?

Dana breaks the tenuous silence with a gentle shove against Robby’s shoulder. “Go do your rounds. She’ll be out in five minutes.” She shakes her head. “That man,” she says under her breath. “Morning sickness should clear up in the next few weeks unless you’re unlucky enough to be like me.” 

“Oh, god.” 

Dana grins, both fond and all knowing. She moves to the other side of the lounge, pulling open one of the top cabinets and grabbing a box Samira’s never noticed. “Ginger tea’s supposed to help.” It’s likely a placebo effect, but Samira doesn’t voice that fact. Dana knows that fact just as well as she does. “Excited?” She asks, filling a disposable coffee cup with tap water and placing it in the microwave. 

“Terrified.” Samira screws her eyes shut. That’s not the right answer. It’s not even the most accurate answer. “Sorry, I’m bad at this. I haven’t really talked to anyone about it yet. I am excited, I’m just…” 

“Terrified?” 

“Yes.” 

“Oh, everybody’s terrified, honey.”

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights)

 [8:08 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

Feeling okay? 

[8:08 AM]

Samira: 

oh my god.

Samira: 

just nauseous 

[8:09 AM]

Samira: 

i wonder whose fault that is?

[8:10 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

Do you think it’s HG?

[8:10 AM]

Samira: 

i think it’s morning sickness

[8:13 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

The-impact-and-management-of-hyperemesis-gravidarum: Current-and-future-perspectives.pdf

[8:15 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

Assessment-of-management-approaches-for-hyperemesis-gravidarum-and-nausea-and-vomiting-of-pregnancy-a-retrospective-questionnaire-analysis.pdf 

[8:16 AM]

Samira: 

abbot.

[8:17 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

I don’t want you to pass out.

[8:18 AM]

Samira: 

if i let dana administer fluids will you stop?

[8:18 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

Yes ma’am.

[8:22 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

I could put in an order for prochlorperazine.

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

25mg twice a day.

[8:23 AM]

Samira: 

i’m turning my phone off

[8:25 AM]

Samira: 

wait who told you i was sick? 

[8:25 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

I just heard you might need a ride home.

[8:26 AM]

Samira:

oh my god.

Samira: 

i’m getting fluids

[8:26 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

Have a good shift. 

[8:26 AM]

Samira: 

always do 

[8:27 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

Attagirl 

[10:17 AM]

Samira: 

robby & dana know. i didn’t tell them about you

[5:27 AM]

Jack Abbot (Attending, Nights): 

Don’t worry about me. 

“Abbot.” Robby’s face is pulled into a clinically neutral mask. “You got a minute.” He doesn’t bother pretending it’s a question. 

Jack has barely crossed the threshold when Robby calls out to him from the other side of the room. Beers of the ‘Burgh hoodie back after a month and some change of absence. “Yeah, brother, what’s up?” 

Robby doesn't answer, just motions out the door with his head towards the ambulance bay. He sets the tablet down on the Hub, letting it clatter against the blue counter. He turns on his heels. Jack follows, bag still slung over his shoulder. “Could use a cigarette,” he finally supplies. He looks expectantly at Jack through his reading glasses pulled to the bottom of his nose. 

“Oh, I’m quitting,” Jack says. “I meant to tell you.” It’s a terrible habit as is, worse for a newborn. A physician who exposes their own child to secondhand smoke probably deserves to have their license revoked. If he’s going to have a baby, he needs to stop smoking. And he is having a baby, so he does need to stop smoking. He’s been working through packs of nicotine gum like they’re Tic Tacs. 

Robby slides his glasses off his face, folding them into his pocket. He rubs an exasperated hand against his beard. He’s more manicured now than he usually is. The mandatory rest and relaxation have done him good. The circles under his eyes are gone. He looks rested in a way that Jack hasn’t been in thirty years. Maybe ever. “So, Mohan?” 

“What about Dr. Mohan?” Jack straightens his shoulders, twists his neck reflexively at the sound of Samira’s name. “I heard she wasn’t feeling great. Is everything okay?” 

“Don’t lie.” 

“I don’t.” 

“I’m not blind,” Robby’s voice raises a decibel or two. 

“Just say what you want to say, Robby.” He’s been back for one day. Jack just did him one hell of a favor. The least Robby can do is just tell him what they both know he knows. 

Robby shakes his head, tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek. “Do you know how much paperwork this is going to be for me?” 

Jack’s had a taste of the paperwork now. The incessant meetings and Emails and bullshit that don't amount to anything—have nothing to do with patient care or outcomes. The bureaucracy of this place is layered and never-ending, and yet Jack does not particularly care about that right now. “That’s what you’re concerned about?” 

“Of course not.” He shrugs, hands deep in his pockets. “But you know things get messy when attendings get involved with residents. Now there’s a kid involved.” 

Jack rocks on his toes, shifting the weight of his stump in his socket. “Do you want me to apologize for the inconvenience?” 

“You know that’s not what I’m saying.” 

“Then what do you want from me, man?” 

“I want you to be careful you’re not getting in over your head just because you’re, I don’t know, lonely.” Jack can feel the abrasive grind of his molars reverberating through the rest of his skull. “Mohan is great, but is she—” 

Jack has made a million mistakes in his life. Has made the wrong decision, even as the correct answer stares him in the face, announces itself with a stark, obvious clarity. Only Samira gets to tell him that their connection is one of those mistakes. Robby, of all people, does not get to insinuate anything of the sort. “I think this conversation is over.” Robby's sigh follows him back into the building. 

He catches sight of Samira, and the tension in his shoulders drops. Jack hopes no one notices.

Samira Mohan

Oct 6, 2025 [1:12 PM]

Samira Mohan: 

FWD: Hi SAMIRA MOHAN, your appointment with Virginia Davis, DO at UPMC OB/GYN Associates of Pittsburgh is booked for OCT 15, 2025 at 10:30 AM. Please reply with C to confirm. Call or text this number to reschedule/cancel. 

Samira Mohan: 

10 week scan next week

[1:14 PM]

Samira Mohan: 

if you want to come

[1:16 PM]

Jack:

Do you want me to come?  

[1:19 PM]

Samira Mohan: 

of course i want you to come

Samira Mohan: 

if you want to

[1:20 PM]

Jack:

Pick you up at 10:00? 

[1:20 PM]

Samira Mohan: 

worried i’m too fragile to drive now?

[1:22 PM]

Jack:

Worried your car won’t start. 

Jack:

I am under no assumption that you’re fragile, Samira

[1:26 PM]

Samira Mohan: 

10 am works for me

The day of Samira’s appointment, he’s in her parking lot at 9:45, car idling in one of the guest spots at the very end of her apartment complex. Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable. It’s an idea that has been drilled into his head since before the Army cemented it as an inarguable truth. Jack is always early at work. He spends half an hour behind the Hub with Dana, listening with a furrowed brow as Princess updates him on her after-work plans. He’s always the first at the restaurant, first at the bar, the only person in the gym. Dana lectures him about all the unpaid labor he gives the hospital, the hours of his life he is losing. Everyone else thinks he’s crazy. Everyone, but Samira. 

She knocks on his passenger side window at 9:49, bag slung over her shoulder. Her knuckles are quick. Three decisive taps against the glass. Jack reaches across the center console, popping open the door, even though it’s already unlocked. Samira’s hair is down, her curls swept to one shoulder, spilling over her pink sweater. Jack rarely gets to see her wearing anything but scrubs. It feels like an invasion of her privacy whenever he does. Like seeing the inside of her apartment and witnessing what she chooses to surround herself with—what she chooses not to surround herself with, he knows it’s not for his eyes. Anything he witnesses is incidental.

Samira settles into the passenger's seat, slipping her bag by her feet. She clears her throat. “Morning.” 

“Morning,” Jack echoes. Neither of them has spoken to anyone yet this morning. At least, that’s what he assumes. Maybe Samira ran into a neighbor on her way down the stairs and talked to them about their terrible landlord. Maybe she called a friend the moment she woke up. Maybe. 

“This is early for you, isn’t it?” Samira asks as she pulls her seatbelt across her chest. “Or is it late?” 

Jack can’t stop himself from smiling at her question. “Late,” he says. “I think.” 

“Well, thanks for staying up late.” 

“Anytime, Dr. Mohan.” She rolls her eyes at that, smiling just a bit before her eyes trail towards the windshield. Jack allows himself to soak up the way she looks in his passenger seat for several seconds too long before shifting into reverse. 

She went to the first ultrasound alone; she hadn’t even invited Jack. The first ultrasound exists mostly to confirm the results of a blood test. So she had come alone, endured the slightly awkward experience of a transvaginal ultrasound, and nodded along as Dr. Davis told her about prenatal vitamins (which Samira already purchased), unsafe foods (which Samira had already stopped eating), and common questions (which Samira already knew the answers to). She felt like an asshole when they handed her a row of glossy ultrasound pictures and asked if she wanted extra for her partner. Jack had only smiled when she handed him half of the strip. There are 3 pictures of an 8-week 2-day embryo stuck to the front of his fridge with a Smokey the Bear magnet. 

It feels different to have someone tag along with her. Better to have someone tag along with her. A warm body in the chair beside her. 

Samira is not an ultrasound technician or an obstetrician, but Samira knows exactly what she’s looking at on the monitor. Jack does too, probably better than she does. At 10 weeks, a fetus is barely a fetus, just a week past being categorized as an embryo. 3 centimeters long, 4 grams in weight, 10 defined fingers, 10 defined toes, and tiny, rudimentary organs. The singular source of all of her nausea. Not a baby, more so the idea of a baby. The unsteady promise of a baby 30 weeks from now. 

Samira reaches out for Jack’s wrist, a grounding reminder that this moment is real. She can feel his quickened pulse beneath her thumb. This is the unsteady promise of their baby. Their loud, needy, demanding baby. Chubby arms and newborn curls and tiny fingers. Noise and warmth and connection. “That’s our kid,” Samira finds herself saying. It is not their kid yet, but it will be. 

Jack’s fingers run across her forehead, just barely brushing along her hairline. She looks over at him to find that Jack is already looking at her. Of course. He always is. “That’s our kid.”