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Chapter Text

She is utterly and absolutely sure that the Samira Mohan of five years ago would look upon her tentative desire to have a baby with wide-eyed shock, with something approaching horror.

She is an attending now. Has completed a fellowship and published articles in not one, not two, but three well respected emergency medicine periodicals. Has been invited to speak at conferences, has the respect of her peers, has reached the end of the plan she’d sketched out for herself in the pages of the journal she’d been given for her fifteenth birthday. Has a standing fortnightly appointment with a therapist who asks her all sorts of thorny questions like, “but how does that make you feel, Samira?”

She may not have achieved self-actualisation or stopped offering to take almost any double shift that comes her way or even left the city of Pittsburgh itself. She may not have made many friend (and certainly none outside of work) but she is doing a cookery class with Parker, because after a couple of drinks at the last ER barbeque they’d  both admitted they barely knew one end of the spatula from another. Trinity calls her from Boston every now and then, barely says hello before she launches into a retelling of whatever particularly gnarly case had come through the Mass Gen ER that day. There is even the monthly standing dinner date with Emery Walsh and her very hot, very intimidating, wife – where they talk about reality television and the PWHL, and steer well clear of anything remotely work related, by dint of Samira’s graduation from the same school of cowboy medicine that so often has the surgical attending frothing at the mouth over patients they’ve opened up on the ER floor.

She may not have found a man either. A partner or a boyfriend or even some sort of very millennial friends with benefits type situation. Someone who makes dating feel like anything more than an obligation, where she doesn’t feel like she’s playing a part or like there’s some sort of switch that hasn’t flicked, a joke that everyone else seems to be in on but her. Someone who doesn’t have her questioning if this is what it’s supposed to be like, if this is really it?

And okay, maybe she’s lying to herself a little bit. Maybe there is one man. One person on this entire planet who makes her feel like she’s soaring; makes her feel like she is safe. Maybe there are moments when she thinks she might love him – when she thinks there might be something there; something more. When he brings her coffee at handover and smiles at her all crooked, in a way she’s never seen him look at anyone else. Or when they have breakfast together on their days off and he always knows what she’s going to order before she does. Or when she catches sight of him across the chaos of the ER floor, tongue sticking out slightly in concentration as he does something insane, something brilliant. Those are only moments though, and Samira has a stubborn heart, a sensible one. Has seen too much to go chasing dreams where none exist.

And so there are men that she goes on dates with, sometimes even more than once (never more than twice). Often they are handsome, often they are accomplished or successful or kind. They never make her laugh or make her blood sing in her veins – often they disappoint her. No, there are men she goes on dates with, and then there is Jack Abbot.

Jack Abbot is her friend.

*

The whole baby thing snuck up on her. The wanting of it all – the desire.

She’s just started the second year of her fellowship when it coalesces from an errant thought into something solid, some immovable flutter in the side of her brain. She’d spent the whole of her residency treating children – being perplexed or charmed or, if she’s honest, often annoyed by their presence in her ER – and it’s only now that she thinks: fuck, thinks: I want one of those. Wants the mess and the chaos that will inevitably wreak havoc on her otherwise orderly life. Wants something – someone – to love unconditionally, no matter the cost.

She finishes out her fellowship. Spends another six months researching – reading and making lists and meticulously filling out spreadsheets to reassure herself that it’s feasible, affordable. Realises she is doing this and only then does she admit it out loud, speak the idea of it into existence.

When she tells Parker, the other woman grins, takes a sip the wine they’re drinking instead of keeping an eye on their rapidly crisping quiches, tells her blithely that she can’t imagine anything worse, “A baby Mohan, Christ, I’d rather eat glass.” Samira knows that there no room in Parker’s world for a child – that she is she is happy with her life just the way it is. With her fiancée and her apartment (all clean lines and hard edges and a cream sofa). Knows they like to go to Europe for long weekend trips, that she has three nieces and two nephews that she loves handing back to their parents after a day out at the zoo. She also knows that Parker only wants good things for her – that she cares enough to slip her hand into Samira’s own and squeeze – to tell her she should go after the things she wants, no hesitation, no looking back.  

Her mom, by contrast, simply blinks at her over facetime. Asks if she’s sure, bites her lip and tells her children need two parents – worries at her about her job, her lifestyle. And of course Samira understands the reaction, knows that single parenthood wasn’t a choice for her mother – that it had been a struggle and uphill battle all the way until Samira had left home. That it still is sometimes. That nothing she’s ever chosen to do with her life has made sense to the woman who gave birth to her. She’s made her peace with it, more or less, but there is some part of her that will always feel like she’s a disappointment, that she’s failed in some deep, unknowable way.  

And then there is Jack. When she tells him what she’s thinking – half nervous in a way that she hadn’t been with anyone else and refusing to admit their might be a reason for it – he had simply nodded decisively. Hadn’t had to think about it for even a moment, hadn’t let a single doubt show on his face.

“You’d be an excellent mother,” he’d said, casual as anything, “but you already know that – you’re excellent at everything you do.”

*

Samira does know that, somewhere deep down.

Needs him to tell her nonetheless - so she can believe it, so she knows that she’s making the right decision. She knows herself, after all. Knows her need for approval is pathological. Knows she will twist herself in knots to get his and also knows that somehow, for whatever reason, she has it without even trying.

There are parts of Jack Abbot – his respect for her, the reasons he stands so close to the edge of the roof, a hundred other things both little and large – that she will probably never understand. There are others that she knows like the back of her hand.

She knows he is afraid of the dark. That he hates the taste of coffee and that no amount of cream or sugar will ever prevent him from wincing when he takes the first sip. That he is nearly always early, devours airport paperback crime novels on his days off and that his mom knitted the tattered wool scarf he digs out of his closet every winter. She knows that, like her, his father died when he was thirteen years old. That he’d watched it happen and felt his world reorientate itself on its axis - still feels that first loss under his scrubs, under his ribs somewhere like pressure.

She knows he bought Emery Walsh her first ever legal drink. Bought her the first roller skates she’d ever owned as well, for her eleventh birthday – a teenage boy trying desperately to impress the baby sister of the first girl he ever kissed. That just before Sarah (she knows the name of his wife too) had died - too young, so long ago now - she’d made them promise to look out for each other. Knows that they’ve been taking it in turns to drag the other through life, off ledges and across six different countries, ever since.

The first time Samira had watched them go at it over a patient, she hadn’t understood. Hadn’t yet seen how quickly Dr Walsh could go from calling Dr Abbot a moron with the self-preservation instinct of a gnat, to working together seamlessly on a patient – tethering the victim of a gunshot wound to life with nothing more stubbornness and the ability to anticipate the other’s moves before they’ve even made them. Hadn’t yet followed Emery and her wife half-tipsy through the front door of their house and found Jack, asleep on the sofa with the baby they’d named after him across his chest.

She knows what it feels like to hold his head still between her palms. To bite a needle through his skin. On an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday evening, in the final year of her fellowship, a car had backfired while they were outside on a quiet night, sharing a cigarette he’d bummed off Dana in the ambulance bay. The resulting bang had him reeling backwards, his prosthetic catching on the curb and sending the him crashing onto the floor, arms flailing and failing to catch himself. He had tried to shake her off – insist he was fine, eyes defiantly unfocused - until she’d snapped at him, told him she wasn’t about to let him die on account of his pride. Had watched him watch her tiredly as she’d cajoled him through the CT scanner, put six stitches in the side of his head and given into the urge to run her hand through his hair.

Samira knows that Jack Abbot, loopy from concussion and pain meds, will call her his best friend. Will tell her - eyes glazed and utterly, irresponsibly sincere – that she is the smartest person he has ever met; that he will give her anything in the world that she wants, all she has to do is ask.

*

Maybe that’s why she does it.

Maybe it’s temporary insanity. Maybe it’s love. Maybe it’s loneliness. Maybe it’s because she believes him.

Earlier, he’d sat in the second row while she presented her research to a crowd of doctors, some of whom are definitely more interested in what she has to say than others. And even though he’s heard it all before – had given her notes on research drafts that spiralled into the thousands of words, has listened to some version of this presentation half a dozen times or more – every time she sneaks a glance at him he’s looking up at her like she’s describing the secrets of the universe. Claps when she’s done and asks an intelligent question she knows her already knows the answer too – just to let her show off a little, just so he can grin at her while she rattles off statistics in front of a crowd of people who’s respect she wants to earn.  

Later - now - they are sat at the bar together and she can’t help but feel a rush of affection. His faith in her is like a drug. He is the best person in her life and the only one who makes her feel invincible, the only person who makes her feel like she can do anything she sets her mind to. So maybe that’s why Samira, clear headed - only three sips into her vodka tonic, blurts it out before she can think it through. Turns towards him, and without a second thought, asks Jack Abbot – her colleague, her friend, some nebulous third thing that she’d struggle to define if you gave her a lifetime to do it – if he’d possibly consider having a baby with her.

Wonders, briefly, if she’s having a stroke. Feels the silence stretch between them and clamps her mouth shut. Opens it again, “I-” she starts, eyes trained on the ceiling, fully intending on telling him to ignore her. That it was inappropriate and three different types of insane. Has to force herself to look at him, completely expecting him to be horrified and awkward with it – fully expecting to have ruined every good thing they’ve built between them.

When she does finally open her eyes though he’s flushed - looks a little wild, is looking directly into her eyes – and it’s not horror she finds there. It’s hope.

And, Samira thinks, a tiny spark of something coming to light in her chest, fuck if that doesn’t change the math.

Chapter Text

It is not so simple as call and response. Samira does not just ask Jack Abbot if he’d consider fathering her child and then wait, calmly, for a stork to fly overhead and drop a baby into their outstretched arms.

No. First comes panic.

She is not proud to admit it, but five minutes after she asks the question, she’s hyperventilating into a paper bag outside of the bar, his jacket wrapped around her shoulders and his steadying hand on her back.

“It’s alright, Samira,” he’s telling her, rubbing circles against her spine. Just a hint of amusement in his voice - the sort that tells her he knows exactly what is going on in her head and is choosing to plant himself beside her anyway.  Is choosing to tell her, in words and deeds and everything in between, that he probably wouldn’t mind tying himself to her for the next eighteen years or so, and that her own particular brand of insanity is doing nothing to put him off.

Then comes the questions.

She’d had a plan, you see. Had spreadsheets and post it notes and a timeline, of all things. This, the involvement of another person – even if that person is him – is decidedly not what she had in mind.

Jack smiles at her patiently as she looks up at him through her lashes and starts to ramble; to launch a hundred different hypotheticals and what ifs and are you sures right in his direction. He throws his arm round her shoulders and guides her back into the bar, settling her into a booth and gesturing with two fingers to the bartender – who she knows he tips an almost obscene amount with every drink – to bring them another couple of glasses.

“Okay then Samira,” he says, sitting down next to her and watching as she opens her mouth and closes it again. The way he looks at her is not at all patronising, just steady and knowing, “ let’s talk it through.”

And then finally, eventually, comes acceptance.

“You want this?” she asks him, twenty odd minutes later. Straightening up in her seat and finding that she is still tucked under his arm – considers untangling herself and then decides not to. Decides that the universe owes her this much, even if it’s just for a moment.

“I want this.” He confirms, voice calm. Presses a kiss into her hairline and sighs out a breath.

And God, she thinks, this is a bad idea. God, she has never wanted anything more in her entire life.

*

The agreement, formulated on a bar napkin with a sharpie he happened to have in one of the many pockets of his cargo pants, is thus:

Samira Mohan and Jack Abbot will have a baby. He or she will be wanted and loved and kept as safe as the world will let them. They will go to the clinic and speak to the doctor Samira has picked out – there will be a barrage of tests and needles and at some point he will have to jerk off into a cup. He will not complain about this. They will share all of the financial and emotional burdens of raising a child.

And this will, of course, change absolutely nothing about their friendship.

After she has finished writing out the terms and conditions of this little piece of insanity, some impulse makes her sign it with a flourish, pass the pen over so he can do the same. He glances at her sideways, but doesn’t comment, just prints his name in his neat (and decidedly un-doctor like) handwriting next to her messy scrawl.

“Well then Mohan,” he says, all crooked grin and sparkling eyes, waving the napkin back and forth like surrender, like he’s willing the ink to dry faster, “guess you’re going to be stuck with me after all.”

*

Neither of them are idiots. They both realise, that if this plan of theirs gets out, money will change hands, at least one of them will have to sit through an incredibly awkward conversation with Robby and no less than four people will try to talk them out of it.

At the same time, she knows Jack has not tried to keep a secret from Emery Walsh since he conveniently forgot to inform her that she was his emergency contact and then managed to get himself blown up. She knows theirs is a complex history; that they are family – legally, once upon a time, and now just in all the ways that matter.

“You can tell her, you know,” Samira murmurs to him, watching him watch Emery all through a shift, avoid her eyes and give only half-hearted responses to her pointed barbs, “you’re not exactly doing a great job of subtlety as is.”

Jack groans and shoots her a look that has the MS4, who had been on the approach, scurrying back off into the depth of exam room five. “She’s going to give me so much shit.”

“Mhmm” Samira agrees. Knows that he is right, but also knows how Jack’s brain works by now - the outlets and coping mechanisms it needs to process new information, unexpected situations. She nudges his bicep with her elbow, and allows it to rest there for long than is strictly necessary, “tell her anyway,” she says to him, softly, “you want her to know.”

*

“So,” Emery asks, all relaxed, eyes glinting like a lioness getting ready to strike, “What’s new with you?”

Samira, who'd been looking forward to a nice chilled out dinner, but hadn't really been expecting it regardless, sighs, “He told you then?  

Opposite her, Caroline, who’d swung in five minutes ago and is currently engaged in the delicate act of stealing fries off of her wife’s plate, cackles with laughter. Answering the question that Samira hadn’t really needed to ask with a grin that’s edging on malevolence, “Sweetie,” she says, “if you were looking for a donor all you had to do is ask – Em and I have binders.”

*

“It’s a good thing,” Emery tells her later, in the car on the way back. Half a bottle of wine softening her edges, as she turns round in her seat to shoot Samira a brilliant smile.  In the mirror, she can see Caroline nodding in agreement, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other on her wife’s thigh.

“I know,” Samira grins, happy to hear it anyway. If there is anyone in the world who’s approval Jack seeks outside of the hospital, it is them. And so she wants their approval too – wants the reassurance that while they are probably mad to do this, they aren’t the only ones who can see the vision.

She feels pleasantly tipsy as she follows them up two flights of stairs to their apartment. To where Jack is waiting, as always, to give her a lift home.

 “The boys are in bed,” he tells Emery, kissing Caroline’s cheek as he opens the door for them. There is a journal on the coffee table, folded open by the baby monitor. He is on his crutches, has clearly been reading by candlelight under the patchwork blanket that’s thrown over the back of the couch. For some reason it makes her imagine him as a child – to wonder if, like her, he’d spent years reading by torchlight under his covers at night.

“We’ve just been telling Samira that she could do better,” Emery responds, sticking her tongue out at him, kicking off her boots haphazardly in the entrance, as Caroline darts off down the hallway to poke her head round the door of their children’s room.

“Undoubtedly,” he agrees, rolling his eyes in a move that, Samira realises, must have played out across the decades, across the whole damned world. Jack has, she thinks, been watching Emery Walsh express her affection for him in a myriad of cruel and unusual ways, for longer than she has even been alive. Samira is the only child of only children. She has a mother and stepfather in New Jersey, and a stepsister who she’s lucky if she says three sentences to, ones that aren’t about work or the weather anyway, every year over thanksgiving dinner. She doesn’t have the web of hopeful, messy love that so clearly exists between the occupants of this particular apartment – except maybe she does.

Except maybe she does, or at least if she doesn’t, then her baby will. Whatever shape of family she builds with Jack, her baby will have aunties and cousins and people to look out for them. If the worst happens, they will not be alone; if the worst happens, they will be loved. Samira bites down so hard on her lip that she thinks she thinks it might bleed and wonders if this is what her therapist meant when he’d told her that having child could be as healing, as it might be triggering, to all the emotional landmines in her head.

Jack must notice something in her expression because he smiles at her, “Shall we get you home?” he asks, flopping himself down on the sofa so he can reattach his prosthesis. She knows he is working the worst kind of swing shift, midnight to midday- the kind that fucks with your sleep schedule for weeks. But he is still here, putting his nephews to bed and driving her twenty minutes out of his way just so he can see her home safe. There is a steadiness to Jack Abbot’s friendship that has more than once pulled them all back from the brink.

“Yeah,” she tells him, pulling the sleeves of her top over her fingers, in case she does something stupid like try to hold his hand, “Yes please.”

*

She starts awake to find him gently shaking her shoulder, “We’re here,” he tells her, unnecessarily. Parked up in one of the few free spaces outside her building.

“Shit,” she says, “thanks. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

Jack shrugs, “you looked like you needed it. It’s been a week.”

If she wasn’t so damned pleased that Shen had finally got his act together and proposed (if only so she didn’t have to see any more photos of the ring) then she’d be more annoyed about having to cover a bunch of his shifts so he could whisk Donnie away on a romantic mid-week break. “You can say that again.”

He huffs out his agreement. “You have tomorrow off?” he asks her, like he doesn’t already know the answer. Doesn’t even wait for her to confirm before barrelling on through, “then we’re both on shift Thursday – and then, the appointment’s still on for Friday, right?”

“Right.” She confirms, grinning. She has double checked it, triple checked it even. Sent him a calendar invitation with an innocuous sounding cover name that her tired brain is struggling to remember.

He returns her smile, leans over her to pop open the passenger side door, “Get some sleep then, Samira.” He says, “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

*                                                                                                                                       

Of course, because she might actually have the kind of luck that suggests she walked under too many ladders in childhood, maybe pissed off a black cat or two, Thursday rolls around and the very nice clinic she had so carefully chosen declares bankruptcy. Something about tax evasion that goes right over Samira’s head and leaves her sitting in a diner with Jack after they’ve clocked off on Friday morning.

The next appointment she can find with a halfway acceptable doctor is six months away.

Her plans are in tatters around her feet and she says as much to Jack, who’s stealing a hash brown off her plate. “It doesn’t matter really,” she tells him, even though it does, even though it’s a pain in the ass and an aching loss and about a million other things she doesn’t want to admit.

He clocks her immediately, has had her number for years, since long before they were friends. When he was nothing but her mentor and he’d effortlessly figured out how best to teach her without ever really trying at all. Shakes his head at her protests, “You’re allowed to admit that it sucks, Samira,” he tells her fondly, taking a sip from his coffee and scowling into the dark liquid.

She nods, bites her lip. “Fine.” She says, more to herself than anyone else, “It sucks – I don’t want to wait.

She watches him look at her. Watches him very visibly hesitate, running a hand through the curls that are more or less flat to his scalp after running around the PTMC emergency room for the last however many hours. “Well, there’s always…” he trails off, waving a hand as if dismissing whatever he was going to say. Takes another sip of coffee and refuses to meet her eyes.

“Always what?” she asks, scrunching her nose at him. Wonders if he has some sort of in at a clinic he hasn’t told her about, or if he’s going to suggest that it’s probably for the best – that more time to think it through would be wise. Grits her teeth, ready to agree with him even if it will break her heart a little.

The look he gives her is unreadable, inscrutable. "God," he intones dramatically, scrubbing his palm across his rapidly reddening face, "you're actually going to make me say it." He pauses, re-setting. Breathes in once and relaxes his shoulders, fixing her with that heart stopping gaze of his.

“Well,” he murmurs, as if he already regrets it, but can’t seem to help himself from speaking anyway, “there’s always the old fashioned way.”

Chapter Text

Samira’s brain does a full system restart. Plays back the conversation, stutters and rewinds. Plays it through again.

“The old fashioned way?” she asks eventually, after a pause that she’s sure can’t have been as long as it felt in her head. Half a question, half incredulous - like she’s checking he understands what he’s offering her.

“You know…” Jack trails off, colour seeping further into his cheeks. His hand is caught in the short hair at nape of his neck and he’s studying her expectantly, as though she’s a resident again and he’s waiting to see what she will do response to one of his more insane suggestions about patient care.

The answer is obvious. Samira looks him dead in the eye; looks for some trace of regret or uncertainty. Knows the bones of him well enough to be confident she’d catch it –a flicker of unease, a slight slant to his shoulders – but she finds nothing. Staring back at her is steadiness. He has the same determined look he’d once given her, concussed and exhausted, when he’d promised she could have anything she wants from him if she would only ask.

Samira has never been sure where the line is, but she knows it exists. Anything never means everything. Jack Abbot is her best friend and her mentor – he will be her child’s father if things work out the way they both want – but he doesn’t love her the way she wishes he would. And all these things that he will give her, all these things that brush up against that invisible line, but don’t quite cross, she will take. Wonders if they will hurt more than they will help and decides, on a knifes edge, that she is willing to find out.

“Yes,” she tell him, looking down at the table then up at him again. Her voice is measured, like she hasn’t just come face to face with all her most shameful desires and decided to let them rule her, “alright then. The old fashioned way.”

*

“My place or yours?” she asks him, taking a gulp of her whisky for the prerequisite liquid courage. Nose wrinkling as it burns down her throat. The thought of it infecting her, the only thing on her mind now it’s been presented as an option.

He chokes a little on his own drink and then he’s not quite laughing at her, but it’s a near thing. “Steady,” he tells her, grin around his lips, around the crow’s feet at his eyes, “We’re not having sex off the back of a twelve hour shift and four shots of whisky.”

“We’re not?” she asks, raising an eyebrow and trying to make it sound arch or challenging. Trying to make it sound like she doesn’t feel just a little out of her depth. They have been talking in euphemisms up until now, and this, a bald statement of the facts scares her as much as it sends a thrill down her spine.

“No,” he answers, soft and sure, “if we’re doing this, we’re thinking it through.” There is something Samira would hesitate to call heat behind his gaze as he continues,  “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.”

*

When Samira saunters into the Pitt three days later, she’s just in time to overhear one of the new interns ask Parker a question that’s been asked on and off since she was a senior resident: "What's the deal with Abbot and Mohan, anyway?"

It has been a more frequent occurrence recently, since she finished her fellowship and she and Jack – Drs Mohan and Abbot – have adjusted to being equals professionally. Have stopped trying so hard to pretend they can’t finish each other’s sentences or that they don’t see each other socially quite as much outside of the fluorescent ER lighting as they really do. And yeah, maybe the question should bother her a little more – make the what if and never will be’s of it all pool in her stomach like disappointment – but today, like always, she simply rolls her eyes in Parker’s direction and flashes her a tiny, knowing grin.

“They’re friends.” She hears the other attending answer. The clipped, cold edge to Parker’s voice somewhat belayed by the wink she levels at her over the intern’s head. Communicates, without words, that she has Samira’s back a thousand percent and also that she believes not a single word of what she’s just said.

Which is fair, Samira supposes.

After all, in approximately twelve hours’ time, she will shower in the locker room. She will scrape her wet hair back into some sort plait, sit in her car for several minutes longer than needs be and try not to lose her shit entirely. And then, when she has calmed her breathing and convinced herself everything is fine, she will drive over to Jack Abbot’s house to sleep with him for the first time.  

*

Jack must have taken his wedding ring off at some point between handing her a coffee at shift change and opening the door to let her into his apartment.

“You didn’t have to do that.” She tells him quietly, after he’s poured them both a glass of wine. Feeling oddly nervous and somehow not at the same time. He does nothing without reason; she’s simply hoping that reason isn’t to spare her feelings or out of some unnecessary sense of guilt. He has been wearing it, after all,  as long as she has known him, and for decades before that as well – as much a part of him as his limbs, both flesh and carbon fibre.  

His eyes flash down to his empty left hand and then back up to her face just as quickly. Has the gall to look surprised, like he hadn’t thought she would notice. Opens his mouth once, twice and then seems to decide that the best course of action is a wry smile and honesty, “I’ve been meaning to for a while now.” He tells her, voice slow and measured, “It’s not so much about you or, well, this,” he gestures expansively as if to encompass the plans they are making, whatever it is they are trying to build.

Without permission, her gaze flits to the wall behind his head and the neat rows of photos he’s hung there.  Army units, and Emery’s children at various ages and stages. The ER softball team, toting a trophy and sporting triumphant smiles. Herself and Parker the night they’d passed their boards, arms round each other, grinning into the camera flash. To the right, slightly off centre, are Sarah and Jack on their wedding day. Impossibly young and in love; lost to time and foreign wars and drunk drivers going eighty the wrong way down the road.  

There was a future, Samira knows, that Jack had planned for himself. That was ripped away cruelly - piece by piece, in a hundred different ways. She knows a little something about that, about rebuilding from the ashes, about keeping on moving forward.

She puts her wine glass down on the counter and reaches for his hand. There is space there, she thinks to herself, for more frames; more pictures, more life. A different sort of future, sure, but a future nonetheless

*

The ring that no longer lives on his finger has migrated to the chain around his neck. It  clacks against his dog tags as he leans over her, his knees bracketing her hips, his shirt discarded somewhere in the corner. Her brain is working in slow motion and it doesn’t catch her hands before she’s  ghosting her fingers over them. Reaching out and flipping round the flat sheets of metal so she can read what is stamped there:

Abbot, Jonathon

(Jonathon James. He has had all sorts of names and titles since the kids on his block, running around in the dirt, in dirty clothes, had called him JJ. Since he’d traded in his dad’s surname for his stepfather’s. The one he keeps now out of spite – uses it to step between his patients and cops, to dole out abortions like there isn’t a law preventing it, to correct every injustice he can until the night fades and he wants to die trying.)

Catholic

(Lapsed anyway. Hasn’t been in a church, he’s told her, offhand and irreverent, since his wife’s funeral. Had, at some point in the last quarter century, traded organised religion for organised violence; organised chaos. Left now with only bits of metal and guilt that feels inherited, that feels all his.)

O-

(And yeah, this is the thing that sends a spark of electricity down her vertebrae. The first time she’d every consciously realised she was attracted to him, they were stood on the ER floor, in the middle of a tragedy that was playing out on epic scale all around them. He had a needle in his arm, a blood bag taped to his ankle, and this – the want that she felt then, that she feels now - is like déjà vu.)

Unconsciously, she tilts her hips up against his and hears him groan into it, holding himself up on arms taught with effort, eyes dark

Somehow, they are both still wearing pants. With a clarity that’s already threatening to elude her, Samira untangles his fingers from the chain around his neck -  yanks slightly in a way that has him letting out a sharp breath, rocking into her without warning - and moves to correct that particular oversight.

*

Samira Mohan minored in statistics. There is a surprising amount of maths in medicine and even more of it behind her research projects – control groups and percentiles and on-the-fly dosage calculations.

Statistics are a surprising comfort when things go expectedly wrong, ‘we did everything we could’ always feels just slightly better coming out of her mouth when it’s backed up by data. Conversely, it is an outrage when a patient defies the odds and dies anyway. When they should have had every chance, every opportunity, at a future.

On entering the ER, the projected survival rate for her father was eighty- five percent. Seven and a bit hours later, when he’d died in front of her and the screaming monitors, there was nothing, statistically speaking, that could be done to save him. With the benefit of hindsight and three years of therapy, she is just about willing to admit that she’s staked her entire professional life on trying to understand her father’s death. On trying to undo it. Has just about reached the point where she’s realised that it is okay that she never will; that it is okay that some part of her will never stop trying anyway.

Statistics worm their way into her personal life as well. In what seat she chooses on an airplane and the brand of her running shoes and the type of wine she picks out to share with Parker at their cooking classes. She has used math to understand things she hadn’t before, to quantify and find comfort in the normality of her experiences.

When she’d been twenty three and contemplating a string of disappointing - ultimately  unsatisfying - relationships, she’d flipped open her laptop and started googling. Statistically average heterosexual sex, as it turns out, happens about once a week and lasts between three to seven minutes. Men report orgasm rates of between 22% and 30% higher than women. On average, woman have less than one orgasm per sexual encounter.

Jack Abbot has built a life on being an anomaly, an underdog. Should have been dead in a ditch ten times over and is still alive and kicking in spite of it all. Never does anything by half-measures. Never met an expectation he didn’t surpass.

It shouldn’t surprise her then, but somehow it still does; sex with Jack Abbot is far from statistically average.

-

After, she rolls over. Catches him looking stunned for half a second and then thinks she must have imagined it with how quickly he turns to her, half smiling. “Think it worked?” he asks, and oh right, there was a purpose to this. Something more than how good it had felt, the rush of blood in her ears and the stupidly unfair rightness of it all.

“You’re a doctor,” she tells him, raising an eyebrow and covering herself with his sheet. Swinging her legs off the side of the bed and trying to force her heartrate back to normal by strength of will alone, utterly refusing to be the one who appears to care more, “what do you think?”

-

“He's not wearing his ring,” Emery sidles up to her at the hub a few days later. Eyes wide, slight smile on her face as she watches Jack move across the ER floor.

Deflect, Samira thinks wildly, deny. “It doesn’t mean anything.” She tells the other woman, all in a rush, because of course it doesn’t. Of course it couldn’t.

“Convincing,” Emery tells her, snorting. Looks Samira up and down and must see something that she desperately hopes isn’t outright panic in her face, because Emery’s next words are softer, “it’s okay if it does mean something, you know?”

Samira bites her lip and looks away, because of course she could try to make it mean something. She could walk up to him and say, in wild run- on sentences, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before – I don’t think I know how. She could say the last person who told me they loved me died and I am terrified.” She could hope that he feels the same way. Can’t take the risk, won’t let herself.  

Jack deserves a friend who doesn’t ask him for more than he can give. He deserves to have what she has offered him, that he has only recently admitted he desperately wants. Lips against her ear like a prayer to the god she thinks he probably still believes in, who he has been mad at since before she even knew him.

She loves him enough, not to let him go, but not to back him into a corner either. There is safety in cowardice, she thinks, and honour there too.

*

Months go by and Samira slips in and out of Jack Abbot’s bed like a ghost. Sometimes, after, he holds her, presses a kiss into her hair. Sometimes she lets him.

Mostly though, she leaves. Makes an excuse and goes home and stands in her shower under scalding hot water, as if that will be enough to stop her from feeling his hands all over her, from wanting more. Rarely she stays in the guest room - if its pouring rain or he offers to order take out from her favourite place or if it’s been the kind of day where neither of them really want to be alone.

Once or twice, after a particularly long shift, she even falls asleep in his bed, his body wrapped around her like she belongs there.

It's on one such day that she wakes up and feels the room tilt, knows something is wrong immediately. Has been a doctor long enough to have seen any number of failed guesses, turned ineffective flu shots, cycle through the world. Knows what nausea feels like, knows the moment it flicks over into something urgent and scrambles to free herself from under Jack’s arm. Launches herself towards his en-suite bathroom.

She’s too distracted with the process of emptying her stomach contents into his toilet to hear the tell-tale thump of his crutch on the floor coming towards her. Only becomes aware of his presence when he slides down onto the floor beside her and pulls her hair away from her face.

Samira is used to looking after herself. She is used to being alone - knows how to door dash groceries and order from the online pharmacy when she unwell. How to politely rebuff any offers of assistance. It is strange then, to be able to lift her head and lean back against him, close her eyes and catch her breath.

“You alright?” Jack asks her after a minute, stroking his thumb featherlight across her hair.

She makes a non-committal noise in response, a little concerned that moving too much might bring on another round of vomiting. Content to lean her head against his chest for a while and trying to keep her brain from spinning out. No such luck of course, she’s already doing the math, running the possibilities.

She’s exhausted, but she’s worked two doubles this week. She’d got her period last month – had been disappointed - but thinking back on it now, it had been a light one. It could have been spotting, she supposes. They had shared half a hospital-granola bar for lunch, and Chinese from the place three blocks over from his apartment for dinner and yet she is the only one trying desperately to fight nausea on tiles of his bathroom floor. And sure, while there are other explanations – his army-earnt iron stomach for one – none of them seem all that likely. Not when you add it all up. Not while they are actively trying to have a baby.

“You need anything – water?” Jack suggests. She can feel his eyes drilling into the back of her head, the slight tinge of worry in his voice.

She cracks an eyelid, looks up at him. The differential isn’t that tricky. “A pregnancy test?”

He goes so still she’s genuinely concerned he’s stopped breathing. “Yeah,” he says, more to himself, she thinks, than anybody else – the arm he has wrapped around her shoulders tightening ever so slightly, “yeah, that we can do.”

Chapter Text

Jack Abbot wasn’t a Boy Scout, but he nevertheless appears to have taken their motto to heart. Eases away from her as soon as he’s at least partially confident she’s not In danger of throwing up again; levers himself up and ducks out of the room. Comes back seconds later, a cup of water in the hand he’s not using to balance on his crutch. and his backpack slung over one bare shoulder.

By now, Samira has seen its contents spread out across his kitchen table any number of times, inventoried and impeccably maintained. Half thinks, despite knowing better, that she could stick her hand in and come out with just about anything – that whatever she needed in the moment would be there waiting for her.

It’s why she isn’t wholly surprised to see him rummage through it and pull out a plastic wrapped pregnancy test, mere minutes after she’d asked him for one. Has to grin up at him regardless and ask, “Is that standard issue?”

His expression is slightly sheepish. “Not entirely, It’s been in there a while though,” he adds, squinting down at it to, she assumes, check the expiry date, “since Em and Caroline were trying to have JJ.”

She feels a rush of affection for him; for the way he cares about the people he loves. Pulls herself up on one of the many conveniently placed grab bars in his bathroom and feels momentarily dizzy. Tries her best to breathe through it, to avoid letting it show on her face, where it will no doubt worry him – no doubt persuade him that she should stay sitting down when all she wants – all she needs – to do is move forward. She must do at least a passable job, because when she hold out her hand towards him, he puts the test into her open palm.

“Okay,” she tells him, voice full of false confidence and betrayed by a tremor on the second syllable, “let’s do this thing.”

*

She kicks him out of his own bathroom to pee on the stick. Makes an excuse about there being some things that should stay a mystery – laughable really, when she considers all the different ways he has seen her, all the things she has shown him and nobody else. In truth though, all she needs is a minute to breathe. A minute to try and exert control over her mind, overwhelmed and reeling in a hundred directions at once.

He must have tugged his prosthetic on while she’d been sat on the toilet, reading the instructions like she isn’t a doctor and they aren’t blindingly obvious, because she can hear him pacing through the door. The ever so slightly mismatched sound of his footsteps echoing through the walls and keeping time with her heartbeat, rapid and loud in her chest.

She put the test face down on the counter. Takes her time washing and drying her hands, mentally counting down the seconds in her head. On the other side of the wall, she hears his phone beep - because of course he had started a timer, of course her did. Samira thinks she could set her watch to him (his consistency, his steadiness, his habit of turning up at the ER at least an hour before his scheduled shift). Has bet her life, her entire future, on his back and trusted him to always show up exactly when she needs him, to bend rather than break.

She takes a deep breath and flicks the lock. Opens the door to find him standing on the other side, hair sticking up like he’s run his hand through it half a dozen times or more, and looking down at her expectantly.

“I didn’t check,” Samira tells him. Watches as he hesitates, expression entirely unreadable as his eyes move from her face to the counter and then back to her face again.

“Do you want me to…?”

She nods. Her brain stuck on the single philosophy class she’d taken in undergrad, before she’d decided she hated the uncertainty of it all. On Schrodinger and cats in boxes: a pregnancy test unread is at once positive and negative. Samira is afraid – of both those answers, the one she wants and the one she doesn’t; of what that will mean and what it will change – but she is not alone.

Jack looks about the same ways she feels. Scared and on the edge of something. But Jack is braver than her too– has had to be, has always been willing to do the hard thing if it means she doesn’t have to - and so he is the one to grit is teeth, to reach out and flip the plastic over.

*

He holds it between them; white background and two pink lines, clear as day under the soft glow of the sunrise streaming through his bathroom window.

Shit, Samira thinks, she’s pregnant.

She only has a split second to process it – to glance at him and hope that she will remember the look of quiet wonder on his face for as long as she lives - before his arms are coming up around her. Before his face is pressed up against her forehead and she feels, more than hears, him exhale a quiet ‘thank you’ into her hair.

She is pregnant. They are having a baby.

*

The problem, after it has sunk in and they are sitting at his kitchen table drinking tea, is that they are both scientists and sceptics and used to being disappointed. The problem is that home pregnancy test have the kind of failure rate, which is, in the cold light of day, entirely unacceptable to the both of them.

There are solutions too, of course. The most obvious of which is to make use of the medical equipment and facilities available to them by dint of their chosen profession. They are both on shift tomorrow evening and a blood draw between patients, sent up to the lab under a false name, is the sort of thing that should go entirely unnoticed.

Should, but absolutely will not.

Someone will walk in or interrupt with a question. The lab will want to follow up and the system won’t show a corresponding patient. Gossip will start and before the shift is up, the entire ER will know that something is going on.

Samira takes a sip from her mug. It’s a sturdy kind of thing with a good sized handle and a speckled glaze. It comes, she knows, from a set of four Adamson had bought him when he’d finally moved out of Emery’s spare room and committed to a permanent contract at PTMC. She had been a third year medical student on her first emergency medicine rotation when they’d been handed over at shift change, laughter in their eyes as the older of the two men had jokingly welcomed Jack home for good.

They are, the two of them, mostly alone in the world. The Pitt is – for better or worse and whether they will admit it or not - their home and their family. But this – this baby - is theirs and theirs alone. It’s not fodder for the rumour mill and it is too early, too fragile and uncertain to share just yet.

Then again, Samira thinks, pulling out her phone and shooting off a quick text, there is always a loophole – a happy middle ground. Shakes her slightly at Jack’s questioning look, “Don’t worry,” she tells him, smiling as her message is returned with a ping, “I have a plan.”

*

Between Pittfest and now (Cassie’s offhand remark about her needing something more, needing a life, ringing in her ears and forcing her into action), Samira likes to think she has learned something about friendship.

Friendship can be all-consuming; like whatever it is she has with Jack. The first person you want to call when you have good news or the last person you speak to before you go to sleep after a horrible shift. More often, it is jokes in the locker room and bad taste pictures of patients with bizarre injuries and cooking classes with Parker. Monthly wine nights with Emery and talking about anything and everything that isn’t the hospital with Caroline.

Sometimes it is just the occasional phone call – a check in after the whole city has been overrun by an MCI – or dinner when you’re in the same town for a conference. Someone who you can text to ask for a favour and know, before they even respond, that they will say yes.

Mel King is an attending over at Presby now. Still radiating an unbroken kind of optimism that even an emergency medicine residency couldn’t beat out of her. Mel King (saved in Samira’s phone with the sunshine emoji next to her name) texts her back almost immediately. Promises she can help out with whatever, if Samira meets her round the back of her hospital’s ambulance bay before her shift starts at twelve.

Samira smiles when she reads her response, double taps to like the message, and takes a look at the digital clock on the top of Jack’s oven. Tells him that they are taking the rest of the tea to go.

*

“It’s been ages,” Mel greets her with a wave and an enthusiastic smile, coming round the corner just a moment after Samira messages her to say she’s arrived. Scrubs already on and stethoscope firmly in place around her neck. “Dr Abbot,” the other woman adds, not quite a question, but a hint of curiosity in her voice nonetheless, when she notices Jack standing behind Samira like a shadow.

“Dr King,” he returns, one hand in his pocket and the other hovering in the empty air at Samira’s back. Looking like he hasn’t got a care in the world; as if he belongs by her side and this whole thing isn’t even a little bit odd.

Mel, bless her, takes all this in and rolls with it. “You wanted a blood test?” She asks, turning her attention back to Samira.

Samira nods, crosses one arm across her body and holds onto the hoody she had borrowed from Jack on their way out the door, knuckles resting on her ribs. “I think I’m  pregnant,” she tells the other woman quietly. Saying it aloud makes it feel like smoke, as though she’s trying to catch it in her hands and keep it there. A secret she’s not ready to share in case it makes her into a liar. Without a word, as though he can read her mind or maybe just because he feels the same way, Jack’s hand settles against her shoulder blade.

“Oh, okay,” Mel’s eyes widen ever so slightly, looking between her and Jack with careful, practiced, indifference, “Well come on in then. I’ll sneak you past chairs.”

*

In the cubicle, sleeve rolled up past her elbow and Jack flattened and silent against the wall, Samira smiles at Mel. Tells her, hands shaking ever so slightly, that this is wanted, that it’s a good thing.

She is rewarded with a grin in return. “I’ll email you the results as soon as I get them,” Mel tells her, labelling the tiny vial of Samira’s blood in her usual neatly printed block capitals.  Like Jack, Samira thinks, her handwriting is really too good to belong to a doctor. Like Jack, she has a knack for making Samira feel safe.

“Thank you.” She says, pulling the hoody back down over her wrists, “really, Mel – this means a lot.”

Mel ducks her head. She’s got a well-earned reputation as an excellent doctor and has the spine of steel to prove it, but she still finds it difficult to accept praise sometimes. Samira had known it as her senior resident, knows it now as her friend and her patient. Gives her the compliment anyway.

“Anytime,” Mel tells her, meaning it, “I hope you get the answer you’re hoping for.” She adds, darting her gaze over to Jack and hesitates before continuing, “both of you.”

*

They are two hours into their own shifts before she has a chance to check her inbox and see that she has an email from Mel. Takes a deep breath and opens the attachment first. It is a photo of her own lab results with one column circled.

She flips desperately to the body of the message, worried she’s misunderstood or hallucinating or that this is anything other than what her brain now knows to be true. One word in black and white, congratulations. Her hands feel like their working in slow motion as she hits forward – types the letter J and selects the first option that drops down. Presses send.

She gets lucky. Jack is just walking out of a consult, shucking nitrile gloves into the bin, when his phone vibrates in the pocket of his cargos. He keeps it on do not disturb when he’s working, but she’s known how to bypass that for years now.

She watches as he unlocks it, swipes to the notification. Sees the moment he understands and his entire body freezes, still as a statue, right up until he looks up at her, the widest grin she has ever seen spreading slowly across his face.

Holding his eye contact, sharp and focused and almost wild in its intensity, she juts out her chin, nods once.

This is real.

*

Samira is a doctor. She knows this is less a baby and more a clump of cells. Knows that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. Knows that there are a thousand things that could go wrong; a thousand things she’s carefully thought about and catalogued and decided are worth the risk.

Samira is human and she is allowed to want things; is working hard to believe this is true. She is allowed to trust that this thing she and Jack have made together – out of hope and stubbornness and something close enough to love - is more than logic says it should be.

*

Having felt that registering with an OBGYN after the catastrophic collapse of her last doctor’s office was definitely tempting fate, Samira is now left with the consequences of her lack of action

She’s bemoaning this fact to Jack, sat on his sofa after his shift, while he door dashes them some food in the hopes that she will actually eat “something containing a form of protein or carbohydrate, Samira, please,” and she wonders if she’s going to be able to summon the energy to pick up her laptop and research the shit out of the problem before she falls asleep on top of his absurdly comfortable throw pillows.

“I might be able to call in a favour on that one, actually,” he tells her, flipping round his phone and showing her a bio. The website is for a local clinic, and the photo staring out at her is of woman a few years older than her. Dr Kathleen Alexander, with a degree from UPitt, bleached hair close cropped to her skull and a brilliant smile.

She blinks up at him tiredly. About a million questions she should probably ask but only one that she can think of that matters, “You trust her?”

His smile is crooked, “with my life.”

“Well okay then,” she tells him, closing her eyes and ticking it off of her ever expanding mental list, “schedule away.”

*

When they walk through her waiting room door, Kathleen is there to greet them. She smiles and shakes Samira’s hand professionally, leading them into her office and gesturing for them to sit down in front of her desk. Allowing a few moments for Jack to pull out one of the empty chairs for Samira and collapse into the other, before she leans forward on her desk and surveys them with a smirk. “Well,” she teases cheerfully, “I can honestly say I’m surprised your dick still works Abbot.”

“Piss all the way off, Alexander,” he responds immediately, folding his arms across his chest and winking at Samira as if to say situation normal, all fucked up.

Later, at the café on the corner of his block, over peppermint tea and pain au chocolate, he will explain. Will tell her that, a decade and half ago, Kathleen Alexander - all of twenty two years old and a private first class, United States Army Medical Corps – had been the one standing next to him when the IED had exploded. That, not quite five years later, he’d been the one that had written the recommendations for her med school applications. That she’d lived in his spare room for nearly six months as an MS3.

Later she will think that Jack is good at building family from the dust; from fire and floods and nothing at all. Knows how to latch on to someone and say yes, say this one is mine. I’m going to love them - I’m going to do it on purpose.

Now though, Samira simply rolls her eyes. “Army?” she guesses, passing the questionnaire she’d been asked to fill out before the appointment over the desk.

“Medical Corps,” Dr Alexander confirms, “decided to balance the scales by bringing life into the world after my discharge,” she shrugs, scanning down the paperwork Samira had handed her, “Not sure it’s working – but, hey, it pays the bills.”

“You’re good at what you do, though?” Samira challenges, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Very.” The other woman confirms, clicking her pen and signing something at the bottom of her clipboard, “but you knew that already. There’s not a chance in hell Abbot brings you here if I wasn’t.”

Samira nods slowly, because yeah, she’s not wrong. Jack will take chances with patients and law suits and his own damn life – no frills, combat zone medicine - but he wouldn’t risk this. If she’s here, it’s because this is the best he can find, the best he can do.

“Anyway,” Kathleen adds, gesturing as if to say ‘now that that’s out of the way’ and standing up to point over at the corner of her office where the examination table sits, “you guys want to see your baby or what?”

*

Samira knows what to expect from the grainy image and the whump whump of a heartbeat that’s always faster than she thinks it ought to be, but it’s different apparently, when it’s hers. When she can feel the cold ultrasound gel pressing uncomfortably on her stomach and that tiny alien-looking thing on the monitor is going to grow up to be a person who calls her mom.

“Wow.” She says helplessly. Isn’t conscious of reaching out her hand to him until his fingers lace through hers.

“Yeah,” he agrees with a choked off laugh. If she could tear her eyes away from the screen she might notice that his cheeks are wet, “Shit. That’s our kid.”

*

Emery is holding the ultrasound photo upside down and examining it like it’s a piece of art, like it’s something valuable, precious. “I think it’s got your ears, Abbot.” She says, twisting round and sticking her tongue out at him.

Underneath the table, Jack’s hand flexes, knuckles curled against her knee. A smile breaks across Samira’s face as she lets herself be seduced by this moment – by the happiness of their friends, by the closeness of Jack’s hand and the grin splitting his cheeks, thrown so casually over at her in the face of Emery’s joke.

There is a universe where she gets to have this – gets to have him as something more than just a, well, whatever the word is for what Jack is to her – but this is not it.

She needs to keep her treacherous heart in check. To remember that she is the one who asked for this. That if this - if these feelings - are anyone’s fault, they are hers.

*

She is happy and excited and utterly terrified. Mostly though, she just feels vile. Like every symptom she’s been ignoring has suddenly dialled up to eleven just to spite her.

She’s managing though; is planning to drag herself through the rest of her shift by sheer force of will alone. Refuses to admit any kind of weakness and volunteers to work a double just to prove she can. For her whole life, being a doctor is what has counted – her research and patient care are the most important things she has ever done, and she’s promised herself that her commitment will never waver, not for anything. Not even for this. Woman have babies every day, after all, and there will always be a patient in this emergency room far worse off than her. Samira can help them, and so Samira will.

When Jack turns up though, early for his shift even by his own ridiculous standards, he takes one look at her and shakes his head. “Yeah,” he tells her, “no. This isn’t happening.”

She musters up enough energy from her position charting by the hub, to lift her head and glare at him. Is about to tell him exactly where he can stick his opinions on her fitness to practice medicine, when Parker appears at her elbow.

“Oh,” the other woman tells Abbot in a stage whisper, “You’ve noticed Mohan looks like she’s about three seconds from keeling over too.” There is, Samira thinks with sudden clarity, probably a reason he is here this early, and that reason is probably that Parker called him.

“Traitor,” Samira levels the accusation without any real weight behind it. “I’m fine to keep working.”

“You’re literally grey.” Parker replies, “take whatever gross bug you have out of here before you infect the rest of us.”

Samira lets her head rest against her fingertips and thinks about arguing. Plays the only card she has left, “I’m pregnant.” She sighs, “which as far as I’m aware, isn’t a communicable disease.”

“No shit. Congrats!” Parker looks momentarily stunned, before she breaks into a huge grin, nudging Jack (who’s been hovering awkwardly beside them for the whole conversation) and glancing up at him as if to check his reaction.

There must be something written there in his expression though, because Parker stalls. Raises a single eyebrow, “You don’t seem particularly surprised by that revelation, old man,” she tells him, clearly delighted by whatever invisible cue she’s picked up on. Has seen through the both of them in five seconds flat, joined the dots that absolutely exist, added two and two together and come out with four.

Samira feels almost uncomfortably known.

Jack though, only rolls his eyes. Warm, but mostly just exasperated, “If Ellis is finished,” he tells her dryly, jangling his car keys, “I’ll drive you home before I clock in.”

Faced with the alternative - several more hours of Parker’s questions while she tries to avoid dry heaving into the staff toilets - Samira has no choice but to agree.

*

“You worry to much,” she tells him, head titled back against the passenger seat of his car. Already fighting against sleep. Frustrated with herself and her body, and fond of him in equal measure.

She knows he’s smiling without having to look over, something about the way he speaks, the words curling upwards, “I worry,” he tells her, slow and measured, “exactly the right amount.”

*

“Samira,” Robby asks genially, a somewhat apologetic look on his face as he corners her just before the end of her shift, “Thanksgiving?”

“Absolutely not,” she replies immediately, backing away with her hands raised, “I’m on the schedule for the Fourth and Labour Day, and I’ve already agreed to work Halloween.” She tells him, “Find someone else.”

She almost feels bad – knows he has some sort of camping trip planned with Jake who’ll be home from college. Also knows that neither her nor Jack have caved and told Robby she’s pregnant. That he is not yet aware of the absolute shit storm of a spanner the two of them are going to throw into the works of his scheduling app in the not too distant future.

Normally, of course, she’d say yes in a heartbeat. Has been a reliable fixture on the holiday schedule since she was an intern. Never has a plan she wouldn’t ditch in order to pick up an extra shift – right up until this year. Right up until Emery had extended an invitation to spend Thanksgiving with her family, with Caroline and the kids, with Jack, with her parents who are also his in-laws. Right up until Jack had looked her dead in the eyes and said please.

A part of her wants to fall into the arms of the shift instead. To take the lifeline that’s offered and save herself from playing happy families in a house where she’ll always feel just a little uncertain of her place. The other part of her - the part that aches to learn what it is like to be part of something, to be wanted – is trying to practice the art of not running away.

“Sorry,” she tells Robby, as steady as she can manage, “I made plans already.”

He sighs in response, offering her a put upon smile. The hospital stays standing, the world does not end and, surprising herself, Samira relaxes into her fate.

*

Shen and Donnie elope and don’t bother to tell anyone until after, until they’ve been back a week and everyone’s phone’s ping with a simultaneous invite to a free bar tab. Samira is on shift later in the evening, but she still makes sure to show up in time to congratulate the happy couple. Standing next to Jack at the bar, and laughing as Parker,  already into the whiskey and tugging her girlfriend around after her, gleefully collects her winnings (she’d called the wedding date so accurately that Samira isn’t entirely sure there wasn’t some insider trading going on) from anyone who doesn’t have the sense to avoid her.

After handing over a twenty in the face of a rare loss, Dana takes a gulp of her wine, “I need a smoke,” she sighs, turning to Jack, who is, entirely unsubtly, standing guard at Samira’s elbow, “want one?”

He shrugs easily, “Nah, I’m trying to give up.”  

“Oh yeah?” Dana smirks, eyes trailing a very obvious path towards Samira and then back, “I wonder why that might be.”

Jack is clearly amused. He runs his hand along the few days’ worth of stubble he often lets himself grow out when he’s got stretch of time off, before answering. “Keep wondering,” he tells Dana, like he’s telling a cat to scram. In the tone of a man who has put up with Emery Walsh’s inquisition for all of his adult life.

“Oh I will,” Dana winks. Really Samira should be more bothered by the conversation. That they are so easy to figure out. That Dana has their number so utterly and absolutely that she’s willing to put her cards out on the table, checkmate, et tu Abbot, and all. It should send her into a tailspin of worrying about HR or cause her cheeks heat with the implication. It should do a lot of things, but in truth, all Samira can do in response, is wink back.

*

She has worked every fourth of July since she was an MS3. Has seen the damage fireworks and poor judgement do to a body. The uptick in overdoses and car crashes, in lives ruined. Has seen the way Jack goes silent, folds in on himself like origami, and still holds it all together. Saves one life after another until he has nothing left to give.

Last year, at the end of rare day shift, she’d sat next to him in the back of Emery’s truck and watched him flinch at every speed bump, every bang in the sky. Had continued sitting next to him when Caroline had opened the front door and hustled them towards her kitchen table. When they’d dumped the baby into his lap, turned a jazz record up high and passed round the good tequila. Teased, with carefully smoothed edges, until there was a smile playing at the corners of Jack’s lips.

When she’d woken up the next morning, still in her scrubs on Emery and Caroline’s obscenely plush couch, it had been to the sound of Jack playing fire trucks with four-year-old Cade. The kind of dark circles under his eyes that said he hadn’t slept a wink, and determination on his face nonetheless.

Tonight though, seven am fast approaching, the casualties from a bicycle pile up – of all things – have kept her so busy that when it’s only when it finally calms down, that she realises she’s lost track of him.  

“Abbot?” she asks Dana, leaning up against the hub and letting her tablet clatter onto the desk.

“Getting some air.” The charge nurse replies, eyes darting towards the staircase. She doesn’t look worried so Samira tries not to worry either. Had long ago realised that his flirtation with the edge of the hospital roof is more about reminding himself he’s alive than any real desire to fling himself off it. “Shen just got here,” Dana adds (because of course he has. Of course he is here early with an iced coffee and a no doubt made up excuse about escaping his in-laws in hand. Of course he is looking out for Jack Abbot in the same way they all are today.) “If you wanted to go check on him?”

Samira doesn’t even bother to pretend to consider it, just smiles at Dana and slips off after him.

*

He’s not at the edge today. No, he’s sitting by the door against the wall as if his legs had carried him this far and no further. Staring out at the sky with all its whizzes and pops like he’s barely seeing it at all.

She sinks down next to him. His eyes track her movements even if he doesn’t say anything to acknowledge her presence. “Here,” she tells him, careful to telegraph her movements as she slips the headphones she’d retrieved from her locker on the way to the elevator onto ears; hits play on her phone screen and fills his brain with the sound of a heartbeat. One hundred and fifty or so beats per minute. Audio file recorded at her last ultrasound and emailed to her by Kathleen only that morning.

She knows the moment he recognises it, because it’s the same moment his head comes down to rest against her shoulder. Shifts a little to let her reach her arm round his back and hold him against her as the recording loops.

*

“I’m scared I’m going to fuck it up.” He tells her after a while – after they’ve made their way down from the roof and handed over to an utterly unbothered looking Shen, already directing patients and residents all around them like traffic. He’s leaning his head against the window of her car as she drives them home, refusing to look at her. “That I’ll fuck them up. That everything wrong in me is going to come boiling up into them.”

There is nothing wrong with him, she thinks to herself. Know’s it isn’t true. Knows he’s missing a spleen and a foot and more than half of the hearing in his left ear. Knows that his mental state is reliant on the specific and effective cocktail of prescription drugs that he pops throughout the day like candy with regimented efficiency. That his stepdad hit him and his wife died young and the army tore down his psyche, rewrote it in an image they liked better.

Knows, with a vehemence, a protectiveness that surprises her, that none of the things that made Jack Abbot the man he is today will be allowed to happen to their child.

“Jack,” she says, and then doesn’t know what say next. Wants to yell at him and cry for him. Wants to force him into having this conversation with his therapist- wonders if Simon will beat him round the head with it when he finally says it aloud, force him to go three rounds with his own emotional damage.

But Samira does none of these things. “Jack,” she asks him instead, in her car, parked outside of his apartment, “what do you need?”

He has shrunk in on himself, hands in the pockets of a hoody she’s pretty sure Dana stole for him out of Robby’s locker. “To feel something other than this.” He tells her eventually, looking up at her through his eyelashes, tired and just a bit uncertain.

She is used to Jack Abbot being the steady one, sure of himself and unhesitating. The man in front of her now, breaks her heart a little bit. Her turn, she thinks, heart hammering in her chest, to be the constant; the metronome in the chaos.

“Jack,” she says again, leaning over the gear box to unfasten his seatbelt, to push into his personal space. “Trust me,” she whispers, tugging a gentle hand over his cheeks so he’s facing her, so he can see exactly what she’s doing when she leans in to kiss him.