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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.”