Archive of Our Own

Walsh's migraine feels like a spinal needle being inserted incompetently between her eyes by an intern on the first of July. She can practically hear her old roommate from med school telling her that her chakra must not be aligned if Emery is feeling so much pressure over her third eye and the trick to opening her yin tang is to center herself, let go of the stress in her life, and breathe. Of course, that same roommate dropped out of UPenn at the end of their first year to move to Asheville to study ayurvedic medicine, so Emery puts as much stock in Lola's voice-in-her-head as she did Lola's voice-in-her-ear while Lola was failing out of histology. Lola still pops up sporadically on Emery's Instagram feed, usually in pictures where she is sipping on a turmeric latte while wearing hemp clothing and posting reels about upcoming Panchakarma intensives that are "guaranteed to rejuvenate the soul."

Unfortunately, Emery is a trauma surgeon so she has neither the time nor the temperament to unwind with a spa holiday. In fact, her former roommate would probably be very sad to know that Emery is only relaxed in that stretch between the OR nurse calling time out at the start of a case and Emery snapping off her sterile gloves at the end of it. She is surprised that her third eye hasn't exploded already given that she works as a trauma surgeon in Pittsburgh where some idiot going a hundred miles an hour across four-lanes of I-376 traffic causes a multi-vehicle accident requiring all hands-on deck practically once a month.

Some people get strawberry-banana chia seed smoothies and coconut foam pillows. Emery gets the head of orthopedics losing his ever-loving mind as he shouts at, in no short order: the new ortho attending, a guy named Lance or Luke or Laront, because he agreed to send the patient up to the OR stat when they're already running two rooms and are down three fellows and a resident; Garcia for not insisting that the ER admit to ICU with an ortho consult for debridement; Mohan for not treating the patient more aggressively for hypovolemic shock as if the hypovolemic shock isn't from the tib-fib fracture that needs an emergent open reduction and internal fixation in the OR; the med student for…simply existing? Truthfully, Emery stopped paying attention some time ago and is only tuning back in now because Neil is still going on and she's got a head trauma in the next room to evaluate.

"Neil," Emery finally interrupts with as much calm as she can muster while squeezing her eyes shut and massaging her temples with her index fingers. "It's a Type 3A open fracture."

She can feel the swish of Neil's yellow gown against her forearm as he swivels to face her. When Emery opens her eyes, Neil is about to shove a sausage-shaped index finger in her face as he yelps, "You can't tell me how to run my department just because you're wearing a traffic vest, Walsh!"

"Do you want to wear it?" she snaps before taking a step forward to get in Neil's face while he staggers backwards. She's so unbelievably tired of this shit. "The patient's tibial shaft is literally sticking out of his fucking leg, Neil!"

Neil looks at the very obvious surgical emergency on the stretcher next to him for the first time and sighs before talking about resources. Emery feels her migraine expand like a mushroom cloud in her brain while Neil bitches about the fellows being away on some sort of retreat at a time like this – "Goddamn ACGME mindfulness curriculum!" – before telling her that he doesn't have the manpower to run a third room if Luke is already scrubbing in for a prosthetic hip dislocation.

"It's just not—"

"Jesus Christ!" Emery shouts exasperatedly. She doesn't know how Neil isn't embarrassed about admitting that he needs someone to hold his hand, but it would take too long to make him feel bad about it now if he hasn't developed that sense of shame in the ten years that he's been division head. Instead, Walsh orders Garcia to scrub in with Neil on this guy's surgery before he dies of vascular compromise in the ER. "Happy?"

Neil sputters, "That is hardly—"

She pulls Neil aside and hisses low enough so that only he can hear, "For fuck's sake, stop acting like your head is so far up your ass that they don't make retractors large enough to get it out and call upstairs to get an OR ready!"

Neil bristles but, upon seeing that Walsh is not fucking around, he straightens the paper gown, turns back to the team, and asks what the fuck they're waiting for before rattling off all the products he wants Garcia to have the blood bank put on hold for the procedure. As they wheel the stretcher towards the elevator, Luke Whose Last Name She Does Not Care To Remember gives Emery his most winning smile and says, "You know, I totally agree with you. Neil was being—"

Emery holds up her hand before Ortho Ken, who looks like he should be in one of those charity calendars that firefighters sell every year to raise money for their firehouses, can continue.

"I'm not your mother. Next time, man up and tell Neil that you can handle an anterior hip on your own without a babysitter before some kid ends up losing his leg."

Luke's face falls before he gives her a quick nod and rushes to catch up with the rest of the team.

Emery is in the middle of cracking her neck when Mohan, who she didn't realize was still in the trauma bay, marvels, "Dr. Walsh, that was—"

"Bad ass," Jack Abbot whistles from the door.

Whatever tension she has just released from the base of her neck springs back into it with a vengeance. Emery can practically feel his eyes boring into her scapula as her shoulders climb towards her ears. Before she can snap at him to role model – like she didn't just eviscerate a grown man in front of Mohan without so much as a drop of lidocaine to ease the blow – Jack's telling Mohan that the intracranial pressure guy is starting to wake up after the mannitol drip.

Mohan leaves to find out if she can get more information about ICP Guy's identity. Emery is tempted to follow her, but ICP Guy is not her problem because Mohan didn't take an IO gun to someone's skull this time. There are more than enough problems-in-waiting out there for Walsh to deal with so she should really keep moving, but that is also exactly the reason why she can't. Emery just needs two seconds to herself to maybe try and center her chakra after all or catch her breath or—

"Migraine?" Jack asks sympathetically.

She shrugs, closes her eyes, and leans back against the wall. She's trying to pretend she's in a yoga class when suddenly, two of Jack Abbot's fingers are pressing against her carotid. Emery's eyes snap open immediately as she yelps, "What the fuck are you—"

"You're very tachycardic," he remarks. Her racing heartbeat is not from the migraine, but she'd rather let her brain implode than tell him that. "You might be dehydrated."

"Thanks for the differential, House," she barks irritably before shoving his hand away from her, "but I don't need—"

"Juice box?" Jack asks with an infuriatingly breathtaking smile before producing a silver Capri-Sun pouch that he clearly stole from the Peds ER. "I had to fight a kid with a head lac for this."

She wants to scream. It has been a month since the trauma conference and Emery has been dropping hints that what happens in San Diego doesn't have to stay in San Diego – hints that are so obvious that even Nana Walsh with her cataracts would be able to see them. Yet, all she has gotten from Jack is business as usual and a level of professionalism towards her that, frankly, he didn't even exhibit before she knew what he looked like when he came. And now he's standing there looking amused and being charming and offering her a juice box?

"What is this, Jack?"

His smile falters a little like she's asking a trick question. "It's…a juice box?"

"And why the fuck are you giving me a juice box?"

"Did you want a popsicle instead?" he asks confusedly. "I think they're trying to hoard those for the little kids, but I could probably—"

"I want you to tell me what this game is."

"It's not…I'm just a concerned colleague."

Emery feels something tiny and hard lodge into her sternum at that. It's like a meteorite is headed straight for her chest. The longer Jack stands in front of her looking like a clueless idiot, the more speed it picks up until Emery's entire body is lit up with rage and it is taking everything in her not to reach into the crash cart for a ten-blade with which to stab him in the abdomen so he bleeds out slowly.

"Fuck off, Jack," she bites out before sweeping him aside so she can throw herself back into the mess of a ten-car pile-up that is somehow still less messy than whatever this thing between them is or was or will not ever be again.

"I was trying to be nice!" he calls out. And then: "Hey, did I do something—"

Emery whips around to give him a look that could kill.

"No, Jack. You didn't do anything. That's the problem. Or maybe it's not. It doesn't matter."

He sighs.

"At least take the—"

Emery has to leave before he says "juice box" one more time and she has a rage blackout.

*

"You want a beer?"

Emery jumps, her car keys clasped between her knuckles like her New York cousins taught her in high school when they visited for Thanksgiving. Under the faint light of the streetlamp, she can just see Jack's outline against the park bench with an unopened beer can in his left hand. He shakes it at her, which normally would be a reason not to take it from him. Walsh is not in the mood for lukewarm beer and certainly not lukewarm beer that comes with the string of spending more time in Jack's presence than she needs to, but he gets tired of waiting for her answer and tosses the can to her before she can turn him down.

Catching it, she parks herself on the bench opposite from him with a sigh. Jack grins and calls her rude.

"Fuck off," Emery says again as she holds the can away from her body before popping the tab. The last thing she needs is to smell like beer at three in the morning before she gets into her car.

"Why are you pissed at me?" Jack asks like he genuinely doesn't know. "I didn't do guerilla surgery on a single patient tonight!"

"And if I were Gloria, the state of your malpractice premiums would matter to me."

The only time she has ever cared about his out-of-the-box thinking is when she has had to clean up the mess from his guerilla surgery in the OR afterwards.

"Then what's the deal?"

Emery rolls her eyes and says, "I think we both know what the deal is, Abbot."

It dawns on Emery that she has no idea what the deal is. She thought she did, but then he offered her a juice box and called them colleagues and now Emery is wondering if all of the anger directed at him should be directed at herself for thinking a few fucks in a fancy hotel would lead to a lot more fucking in less fancy hotels when they came back home. Should she really be lashing out at him just because her pride was hurt?

Walsh is about to apologize for being that much of a cliché when Jack blurts out, "I'm not the one flirting with orthopedic surgeons during a massive car crash!"

She blinks once, then twice. "Are you high?"

"I don't have to be impaired to see how bossy and mean you were to Ortho Ken!"

"And you think that's flirting?" Walsh asks incredulously.

"Isn't it?" Abbot challenges.

He gives her a look so heated that Walsh is suddenly glad that they were both working the swing shift and it's still dark now that they've clocked out. She could tell him that being mean is a love language specific to him but then Emery would have to shoot herself in the head for using the words "love language" out loud.

Besides, what would Jack Abbot know about flirting? The last time he flirted with someone, the "Macarena" was still all the rage. Unless, of course, Jack has been flirting up a storm, just not with her. Maybe Emery is the one who lost her place and has been incorrectly reading between the lines this whole time. Could it be that she has misinterpreted everything? It's a thought too horrifying to entertain so she simply chooses not to and instead scoffs, "Has it ever occurred to you that I might just be a raging bitch to people I find incompetent?"

He winces. She hadn't meant it like that – Jack is staggeringly competent to the point of sinful attractiveness – but it's satisfying to knock him down a peg nevertheless. Let him interpret it however he wants.

Emery is suddenly so tired, the grind of the past twelve hours finally catching up with her. She tosses the rest of her drink into the garbage can next to her. As Emery stands up, Jack asks if she's okay to drive like she didn't take just two sips of the subpar beer that they only drink because Robby saved the owner of the brewery from aspirating at Beers of the Burgh two years ago and the dude insists on sending over crates of the stuff every July to show his everlasting gratitude.

Jack frowns. "Can you just text me when you get home at least?"

"I don't owe you anything, Jack."

"I know," he groans, "but can you do it anyway?"

Walsh shrugs that she'll think about it before heading in the direction of her car. He doesn't deserve any updates, even if they are just of the made it home in one piece variety, but by the time Emery gets in her pajamas and opens the bottle of Clase Azul Ultra sent to her by a Fortune 500 company's CEO whose necrotic bowel she resected last week, she is feeling a lot more generous. It's amazing what good alcohol will do for the soul. As she pours herself more tequila, Emery opens her messaging app and sends Jack the middle finger emoji to let him know that she's still alive.

*

It is strange to see Jack Abbot in the daytime. His dark scrubs draw in all the sunlight shining from either side of the glass paneled walls of the hallway connecting the operating rooms and sixth floor inpatient unit of the main hospital with the Pavilion building that houses all the administrative suites and, more important to her right now, Emery's perfectly climate-controlled office. She could probably sneak behind him without Jack noticing, but Emery Walsh does not sneak. More importantly, this is her territory. Since when does he come upstairs to her domain? Emery figured that ER doctors were like cave trolls who limited their movements to the area that extended from the ambulance bay to the elevators leading up to the inpatient units where they were always trying to turf their boarders.

"What are you doing here?" she asks.

Her voice echoes in the empty corridor. It's too late for the residents to be filtering in, most of them having already started their pre-rounds on the post-op patients, and far too early for the daytime attendings to be at work yet.

Emery wishes she was still in bed. Every vertebra of her spine aches. The surgery that would normally take Emery no more than two hours took double that because neurosurgery took too long to finish their craniotomy so that by the time she got in there to repair the liver and resect part of the firefighter chief's small intestine, the 4F-PCC was wearing off so she had to stop every few minutes to play whack-a-mole with bleeders while the anesthesiologist poured in FFP like it was beer at a frat party. The entire experience felt a lot like driver's ed when they had a sub – for every three feet Emery made it across the parking lot, Mr. Johnson would hit the passenger side brakes at least ten times until it felt like they were never going to reach the cones. It's a small miracle that she was able to close without her patient bleeding to death.

When Jack turns around to face her, the light refracts to follow him. There is an honest to God golden halo behind him when he smiles at her. It's infuriating. She just saved one of Pittsburgh's finest so the least the universe could do is make Jack Abbot look haggard after his shift.

"I came to see the leg kid."

She leans against the window and releases an exhausted sigh. The glass is warm against her back from the sun.

"Leg kid?"

"The tib-fib from the other night?" Jack jerks this thumb in the direction of the surgical ICU. "Heard you threatened to castrate Neil with alligator forceps if he didn't take him to the OR."

Emery rolls her eyes. "That never happened."

"Not what the streets say," Jack replies with a wink before launching off his side of the hallway to stand in front of her.

"Since when are you attuned to the streets?" she asks with a snort. If Emery wasn't so tired, she would've cracked a joke about how spry he is for a guy with a peg leg, but all she can think about now is making herself a cup of not-entirely-shitty coffee in the mini-Keurig in her office and running the arch of her foot along the roller massage ball the Medi-Dyne rep gave each of them last year. "Neil and I simply had a healthy discussion about the urgency of the situation."

Jack leans in so he can whisper conspiratorially, "Don't worry, Walsh. I'll be your alibi if he winds up in a ditch."

Walsh ignores him to ask, "So how's the kid?"

"He'll be back to playing hacky sack in no time." For a second, there's a flash of sadness in Jack's face before it disappears just as quickly and is replaced with concern when he fixes his gaze on her. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

Except she's not. Because the guy who fell off a ladder that she just finished operating on will probably die anyway. And the kid that Jack emerged from his ER bunker to visit will never be able to meg a defender on the soccer field again. The spontaneous mesenteric artery dissection that vascular asked her to help out with two days ago survived, but the abdominal aneurysm that ruptured during an ischemic bowel resection last week died on her table.

Emery is not okay. She is tired. Too tired to do whatever this is.

"You look it."

Walsh rolls her eyes. She's about to push past Jack to finish crossing the glass connector when he curls his palm along her jaw. "What are you—"

"Relax."

His voice is like the surf gently breaking along a gravel beach. She wants to ask him to read the phone book out loud, but settles for closing her eyes and retorting without any real conviction, "Do you know how condescending it is to tell a woman to relax?"

She can practically hear him snickering, which makes it extra annoying when she finds herself leaning into his palm anyway. His other hand trails along her neck until he's pressing his thumb against a spot below the base of her cranium. Her entire body tenses up, but then he starts trailing small but firm circles down the nape of her neck all the way to her posterior cervical spinous process and Emery lets out an involuntary moan that amplifies mortifyingly in the empty hallway. She feels the tightness release from her spine.

"Let me take you to breakfast," he offers.

It almost sounds like a plea, but just because Emery has now started answering one in five texts that Jack sends her doesn't mean they're okay either.

"I have op notes to dictate," she says, her palm pushing against his chest. Emery doesn't expect him to give as easily as he does, the space between them filling with cool, re-circulated air immediately. 

"After then."

"I sent Garcia home so I have to—"

"So after that then." After that, she'll hopefully be soaking in her clawfoot tub at home. As if he senses that she's got more than enough excuses to follow this imaginary timeline to the point where there is no after left because he'll have to come back here for his next shift, Jack says in the stern tone of a pulmonologist warning an asthmatic that smoking is bad for them, "You shouldn't drive when you're hypoglycemic."

"I'll eat a granola bar."

He smiles wide at her. "But I'm offering you Belgian waffles."

"I don't like waffles."

"So what do you like?" he asks, his eyes flashing with a spark that Emery chooses to ignore.

"Guess you missed your chance to find out, didn't you?"

It's the first time she has admitted out loud that the chance existed, but he's a smart guy. If he didn't need a map for anything else, he shouldn't have needed one for this either, right? Emery stops sunning herself against the glass like the class iguana and decides not to let him derail her any longer.

As she starts to walk towards the opposite end of the hall from where Jack came, he calls out, "It ain't over 'til the curvy soprano sings, Em."

She snickers. Of course, this is what he chooses to be politically correct about.

"Except Brünnhilde already rode into the flames, Jack," she replies over her shoulder. "They're coming out for the curtain call."

*

Walsh has just finished attesting the last of the residents' notes from her in-basket when she gets a page that simply reads ROOF. It's an hour past when she was supposed to leave so she dials the call back number with a groan and starts to tell the operator to contact Steinman with any helicopter transfers because he is now on call for trauma surgery.

"Not that roof, Dr. Walsh."

"There's only one helipad—"

"It wasn't a transport call, doc. He said it was the DoorDash roof?"

Emery presses her fingers to her temples and, even though she doesn't have to, asks, "Who is he?"

"A…" The keyboard clacks from the other line. "Dr. Wagner?"

Naturally, that son of a bitch listens to opera. The strength of her annoyance carries her out of her chair, towards the opposite end of the hospital from the parking garage, and up the stairs to find Jack sitting crisscross applesauce style in front of a roof vent. Emery tries not to laugh when she sees the blue chucks pad that he has put over the metal box like a makeshift tablecloth. He flashes her a grin when he sees her.

"Just because Valhalla's burning doesn't mean we can't have French toast, Dr. Walsh."

Emery crosses her arms over her chest. "Except I'm going home, Dr. Abbot."

"So you ran—"

"Strolled," Walsh corrects him.

"Speed walked," Abbot counters obnoxiously, "up five flights of stairs to tell me that you don't want to have brunch?"

"I'm a big believer in closed loop communication, jackass."

"Well, then, in the interest of full disclosure…" Jack holds up a bottle of V8 in one hand and a plastic bottle of Smirnoff in the other. "I come bearing Bloody Marys."

"That's a stretch," Emery says even as she mirrors his posture when she sits across the faux picnic set up from him. "But I could use the antioxidants."

*

Even though Walsh knows that it's not the intern's fault for the repeated calls on what was supposed to be – and what, for everyone else, probably still is – a slow night for consults from the ER, the fourth time she gets woken up right before she drifts into REM sleep, she's already tapping out an annoyed text to Garcia on her way downstairs from the surgery attending on-call room to inform the future chief resident that if she schedules an intern to be on nights during flu season next year when Walsh on call, Emery will change her stellar letter of recommendation for Garcia's trauma fellowship to read like an indictment:

Walsh: by the time they get to the end of the letter, they'll think you don't even know how to do an instrument tie, Garcia

Garcia: if it makes you feel better, I heard carson got admitted for high-flow so at least we know he wasn't bullshitting!

Walsh: on for two more nights this week – why would that make me feel better?

Garcia: I'll make sure jacobs finds backup resident coverage for your next shift!

Garcia: fyi: hopkins head of trauma spent the entire whipple talking about the thoracic aortic dissection repair you did solo with just two OR nurses and a scrub tech (!!!) during a blizzard (!!!) halfway into your second year of fellowship (WHAT????)

Walsh: untrue

Walsh: technically, it was more like 1.5 nurses since the second one was still on orientation

Walsh: how was your dissection of the proximal SMA during the whipple?

Garcia: perfect, as always

Garcia: levinson said he recognized your influence

Emery grins to herself. She wouldn't have encouraged Garcia to do a trauma elective away at her fellowship alma mater if she thought she couldn't hack it, but it's still nice to hear that her protégé is making her proud. Still, as the elevator dings open to the first floor, Emery wishes her favorite resident was in the Pitt tonight to filter some of these calls. The first-year resident could have precepted the last three bullshit consults with Garcia while Walsh slept so that the only bullets she heard were the ones that were true surgical emergencies requiring her immediate evaluation in the ER.

Instead, Walsh is stuck with an intern who is trying not to drown under the weight of so many consults that Dr. Abbot keeps telling her could be deadly if she doesn't get a board-certified surgeon to lay hands on the patient right away. So far, Emery has diagnosed pneumonia, a nosebleed that stopped bleeding before she even stepped into the room, and a malfunctioning pacemaker that Jack damn well knew was in cardiology's wheelhouse, not hers.

"I'm so sorry, Dr. Walsh," Francis says the moment Emery walks into the room. "Dr. Abbot is worried about peritonitis."

Emery doesn't even have to listen to more than two lines of Francis' presentation to know that this is not peritonitis. It would be so easy to lose her mind, but Emery didn't win all those teaching attending of the year plaques for no reason. After talking to her intern about concerning physical exam findings and going over what the next steps would've been if this were peritonitis – which no one who has been practicing medicine for as long as Jack has would ever put on a differential – she shoos her off to finish her consult note and grab a sandwich from the cart. The intern is about to ask if she should tell Dr. Abbot their recommendations first, but Emery tells her that she will take care of that.

When she steps out of North 3, Emery immediately looks around for the part of the ER that seems like it is the most chaotic. Good money puts Jack right in the middle of that action. She sees a nurse running out of Trauma 1 and heads in that direction. When she walks in, there's a manic guy who smells like Everclear and pot pie shouting that he's going to kill any motherfucker who tries to touch him. Jack moves around the security guards holding the man on bath salts down so he can press two fingers against his brachial plexus and immediately immobilize him. It is no doubt another one of those survival tricks he learned as a marine and Emery hates how attractive she finds it when he looks up at her and smiles.

"Well, hello there, Dr. Walsh."

"It's not surgical," she deadpans.

"But it's extreme constipation," Jack says with a grin.

"And extremely GI's problem to manually disimpact, which you already know," Emery snaps. "I swear to God, Abbot, if you consult me on nonsense one more time tonight…"

"You're bleeding like…a lot," Javadi interrupts to tell Jack as she stares at the switchblade sticking out of his thigh. His med student looks like she might throw up, which is strange because Walsh knows for a fact that she jammed a chest tube into one of the yellow zone patients in the aftermath of Pitt Fest.

Jack shrugs. "Nothing that a little super glue won't fix right up, Javadi."

Then Jack rattles off labs, a Haldol order, and a request for someone to bring a set of soft restraints so he doesn't have to stand here all night. He keeps sneaking glances in Emery's direction while going through a differential with Javadi until finally, Walsh runs her eyes over him in a way that is sure to make him feel like a bug under a microscope and perhaps like he's in that giving a presentation naked recurring dream that everyone has about high school. It is only when he squirms a little that Emery allows herself a satisfied grin.

"What's with all the blood?" she asks very casually. "Patient satisfaction not so great?"

Jack grins and tells her that he got dinged for not putting a mint on this guy's pillow.

"Um, but seriously, Dr. Abbott," Javadi says, "shouldn't we at least be wrapping a tourniquet around your leg to stop the bleeding? Or at least, you know, taking out the knife?"

"Would that make it easier for you to tell me what else could be causing this level of agitation in our patient?"

Before she can answer, Jack yanks out the knife. Javadi staggers back like he is insane just as one of the nurses returns with Haldol and Santos runs into the room with the soft restraints.

"Holy shit!" she whistles when she sees the not insignificant laceration on Jack's leg. "You really need stitches."

"As I told Javadi—"

Walsh rolls her eyes at the thought of even more jungle medicine. Magnanimously, she offers, "Since your page woke me up from a nap—"

"Surgeons really have it so easy," he says to Santos with a wink.

"And I'm down here anyway," Emery continues like he hasn't even spoken. Jack beams so she immediately rolls her eyes and turns to his resident instead. "Dr. Santos, I trust you can handle this while I make sure your attending doesn't bleed to death?"

"Absolutely."

The man is already in restraints and dozing by then so Jack finally takes his fingers off the patient's shoulder and shuffles towards the foot of the bed. Emery not-so-gently shoves him out of the room and ignores the charge nurse's suggestion that the next bed in curtains is available.

"We're going to South 2," Emery says because she is just mean enough to ignore the empty rooms around them to make him walk all the way across the ER. Jack tilts his head like he's amused before following her with a slight wince. As an afterthought, she tells him, "Need to make sure we're in a room with a door in case someone else wants to give you feedback on your patient care."

Once they're inside, Jack leans against the exam table and grins at her while Emery gathers suture materials from the cabinet.

"I am pretty sure this is not surgical, Dr. Walsh."

"Nothing you ever call me for at two in the morning is surgical, Dr. Abbot." Jack chokes on air. Emery shoots him an intrigued glance before ordering, "Now shut up and take off your pants."

Abbot gives her a little salute. "Yes, ma'am."

Emery mumbles that he's so obnoxious like her neck isn't suddenly very hot. He chuckles and then she hears the creak of the bed as he hops on. When she turns around, Emery sees that at least Jack had the decency to put a chuck down so he wouldn't bleed all over the place, but of course he completely ignored the gown on the bed. Asshole.

"Be gentle," Jack says with a cautious twinkle in his eye.

"You're such an exhibitionist," she says as she rolls the stool closer to the bed.

"Nothing you haven't seen before."

Yes, Emery remembers his Calvin Klein boxer-briefs very well, but she will not justify that with a response. Instead, she irrigates the wound with sterile saline. It looked worse in the immediate aftermath than it actually is, which is why Walsh feels no guilt about pouring the betadine on generously while Jack hisses at the sting. She waits longer than she needs to before injecting the numbing lidocaine around the cut.

She hadn't planned on having a conversation while she was suturing up a half-naked Jack Abbot in the ER tonight, but the alternative – an oppressive silence between two people who very recently saw each other a lot more naked than this – is infinitely worse.

"You let yourself get stabbed in your good leg to orchestrate an HR moment?" she asks incredulously.

"An incidental perk." When she rolls her eyes, Jack sits up like he's not at all worried that she's in the middle of taking a bite with the curved needle. In many ways, Jack's easy confidence in her ability to keep a steady hand even when he is actively making it difficult is hotter than him stripping down to his underwear. "Maybe I wanted a captive audience. Now you can't walk away."

"And now you really can't chase after me," she scoffs.

He laughs. "Even when I am grievously injured—"

"Hardly."

"You still won't make it easy."

She looks up from where she has been approximating the edges. "Easy to do what?"

Jack runs a hand through his hair. "You know."

Emery shrugs before returning to her task. "I don't speak Idiot, Jack."

"I thought you didn't want…I thought it was a California thing," he finally admits. "I mean, you got on an earlier flight on the last day of the conference—"

"To go to a wedding," she snaps, "which I told you about the night before."

"Excuse me if I was pretty distracted then."

Walsh rolls her eyes and asks if he was also distracted for the two weeks after they came back or if he just has a preternatural inability to read the room. "Because I'm pretty sure my message was unequivocal until you made me feel like I was insane."

"In retrospect, I might have freaked out a little."

"Hot," she deadpans.

Jack releases a slow exhale.

"Look, I get in my head sometimes. I try not to, but it's, you know, a work-in-progress. But I do eventually figure it out. Besides, my therapist says you might be good for me."

"Congratulations," she says coolly. Emery double knots the 4-0 Monocryl and snips off the end with a very loud snick. She jams the end of the needle into the little cushion on her tray before lifting her head to give him a look so murderous that she'd be charged with a crime if there were any witnesses nearby. "I'm glad you have found clarity."

Jack groans miserably. "Don't say it like I joined a cult when I'm…"

"Yes?" Walsh arches a perfect eyebrow at him.

"Trying to ask you out."

"That's what you call this?"

"I was working up to it!"

"Christ, Abbot," Emery whistles as she rises, grabs the tray, and starts tossing sharps into the red container attached to the wall. "By the time you finish putting in the work at this glacial pace, we'll both be dead."

"Em—"

"Don't say Em like I'm supposed to swoon," she bites back. Jack Abbot is a complication she doesn't need in her life right now. In fact, it's stupid that she ever even entertained the thought that the complication would be worth it. "You're right. California was a bubble. We fucked a bunch and it was fun, but I've moved on and you should too."

"We could—"

"No," she snaps. Her eyes sting with fury. "We can't. Turns out I'm not into waiting until someone else tells you that this could be a good thing before you consider that it might be."

Jack's face falls. Walsh quickly turns away to toss her sterile gloves in the trash and wash her hands. He waits until the water stops running before saying, "That's not what I was saying, Walsh."

She gestures at his expertly sutured left thigh. "Keep the wound dry for at least twenty-four hours. You can wet it after two days—"

"Emery, I know."

But she's not sure what he's talking about and she doesn't care to find out.

"They're absorbable sutures so you don't have to get them removed." Emery goes on autopilot as she rattles off more instructions.

"I'm sorry," he says desperately.

"You need to get it seen if there's pain, color change, or signs of cellulitis. And you should probably start yourself on a course of Augmentin too just to be safe."

"Em, come on…" He tries to reach for her but she expertly dodges out of his way.

"Please stop calling my intern with bullshit consults," Emery says before pushing open the door and leaving Jack standing there dumbfounded in his underwear.

*

She gets off work at three in the morning, hands over the attending phone faster than she ever has before, and is halfway to the exit before her relieving attending has even finished telling Emery about how he spent the weekend. She was so tired at work, but the moment she gets home, showers, and lets her head hit the pillow, Walsh finds herself wide awake. She tries counting sheep, counting states, counting countries she visited, but none of it works. Finally, she gives up chasing sleep – it never works when she's this dangerous combination of tired and wired – and pads into the den to watch a Chopped marathon.

At half past four, there's a knock on her door. And then another. And then another until finally the person on the other side decides that only persistence will be rewarded. When she looks through the peephole, she sees the logo of the Korean food place that is open all night. As she opens the door, she starts to tell the delivery man that she didn't order any food when she looks up to find that there is no delivery man, just Jack Abbot.

"You said that I needed to be seen if it hurts more."

"You're surrounded by medical—"

"It hurts more."

She doesn't know if he's still talking about the leg, but Jack is jostling from one foot to another so Emery sighs and moves aside to let him in because she's not a complete monster. He makes a beeline for the couch, placing the brown paper bag full of food on the coffee table before sitting down with a sigh.

"If the knife was dirty—"

"It hurts more to pretend like what happened in California didn't mean something when it did," Jack blurts out. "I liked who I was when I was there with you."

"That's not a good enough—"

"I didn't need Charlie to tell me you were good for me. I just needed him to tell me that it was okay."

"You're a grown man, Jack. When have you ever needed anyone to tell you something is okay?"

"It freaked me out because I was happy. I haven't felt that light since…" He looks down at his right leg before scrubbing his palm along his face. "And I was okay with the status quo! I didn't need to have fun or be happy ever again. Charlie had helped me figure out a way to just…be alive and I thought it was enough until you made me want more."

"You deserve more," she says softly before clearing her throat and telling herself to snap out of it. "But you don't need me to be your fun sherpa, Jack."

He flashes her a wry smile. "I know. What if I just…want you anyway?"

Emery frowns as he looks up at her hopefully. "That's a lot of pressure."

"Does it freak you out?"

She straightens her spine and tells him, "I told you that nothing freaks me out."

This completely freaks her out.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to, like, pitch myself off the roof or anything, I promise," he chuckles. "I just wanted to tell you that you weren't insane because I do like you too."

When Jack looks down at his hands like he is unsure if he should be saying any of this out loud, it kind of breaks Emery's heart a little. It's uncanny to see someone who is normally so in control and confident that everything he is doing is the absolute best thing he can do in that moment looking so lost now. 

"Jack…"

"You don't have to say it back. In fact, I totally get it if you don't. I'm a mess and—"

"Jack," Emery says more firmly.

His head snaps up at her tone so he can meet her eyes. She reaches out her hand to run her fingers through his slight curls. Emery steps forward a single step so that his knee brushes her leg. Jack looks like he's about to ask what she's doing because, as they've clearly established by now, he is An Idiot. So instead of giving him the opportunity to remind her of that again, Emery pushes his shoulder until his back is against the couch cushion.

"Em, what are you—"

She presses one knee on the cushion between his legs and the other against the outside of his right knee because there's still a fresh bandage on his left thigh. He really did choose the worst time to get stabbed, Emery tells him as she slowly lowers herself down until she's straddling his leg and close enough to press her palms against his cheeks. His hands immediately go to her waist to steady her. Emery dips her face down until it's simply a matter of him pushing up or her pushing down to cross the whisper of a breath between them to kiss. 

"I was wrong too," she says. His forehead furrows. The corners of her mouth slowly curl up as Emery says, "You definitely wouldn't know how to have fun without me."

"Is that a fact?" he asks, beaming.

"Oh yeah," Emery replies with a nod. "Lucky for you I'm a surgeon so I've got a thing for fixer-uppers."

And this time Emery doesn't know who moves first, but all she knows is that one minute their lips are at a semi-respectable distance away and the next they're kissing each other like it's their last day on earth. Emery feels a little embarrassed when she lets out a moan, but he swallows the sound with his mouth. In fact, Jack is doing such great things with his mouth that she lets him pull her flush against him. He groans into her neck as his crotch brushes against her knee. Emery is tempted to let him get himself off just like that, but then she remembers the knife and the stitches and shifts her knee back just a little.

"It's been so long," Jack whines. When Emery chuckles, his eyes snap up to hers as he insists that it's not funny.

"It's not my fault you're slow on the uptake." Then, she repeats meanly from their time in California: "You should've said something sooner. You could've had me sooner."

"So let's make up for lost time." He tries to draw her back, but Emery stays rooted in place.

"I just stitched you up." 

"Which is how I know that it'll hold," Jack says with a grin.

"Nice try, Don Juan, but we're not having sex."

The rumble of his voice saying her name against her chest is almost enough for Walsh to forget the hard rules she just laid down for something harder she could be riding. When he asks her why not, Emery cheekily replies that she just made her bed with eight hundred count sheets that she simply will not let him bleed all over. Jack covers his laughter against her navel and mumbles into her heated skin, "Well, then, happy birthday to me."

Emery frowns as she grabs the hair at the back of his head and pulls down to force him to look at her again.

"It's your birthday today?"

"Yeah," he says with a shrug.

"Why didn't you bring a cake then?" After a beat, she adds, "Although, it might be a fire hazard to light that many candles together at once…"

Jack chuckles. "You're not that much younger than me, you know?"

When she grinds down on his good thigh, Jack can't help but whimper. Emery feels so powerful that in that moment she chooses benevolence and leans forward to whisper against the shell of his ear, "If you're good, I might give you a present after all, birthday boy."

*

Jack Abbot is very keyed up. He's red from his hairline to the flushed cock Emery's got her fingers curled around. Her other hand presses down lightly on his gathered wrists above his head as Emery tucks herself closer against his side before nipping along his jaw. He turns his head to try to capture her lips, but Emery moves herself out of reach.

"Em," he keens desperately into the air. It sends a spark between her legs even though he has already made her come twice with his mouth and once with his fingers. "You promised."

"But have you been good?" she asks him again before giving him a quick stroke to remind Jack who has got the upper hand.

"Very," he huffs.

And he has. She could let go of his wrists right now and he'd still keep his hands up there until she told him differently. This whole time, he's been letting her take and take and take like it's penance for denying her before. It's so Irish Catholic of him that she has to laugh, but when he asks what's so funny, Emery smooths out the furrows in his forehead and reminds him it wasn't very nice to keep making her intern do bogus consults. 

"She probably had a panic attack every time she had to call me down."

"Well, I missed you," he pants as Emery kisses down no man's land. When she dips her tongue into his belly button, she sees the veins in Jack's forearm jump as he clenches his fists tighter.

"And you committed insurance fraud to show that you care?" she coos before pressing a kiss against his hip. Her other hand keeps moving against him, Jack doing his best not to buck his hips when she starts to go faster. "Not sure Gloria would find your idea of romance very fiscally responsible."

Jack groans and covers his eyes with his forearm. "Can we not talk about Gloria right now?"

Emery is careful to avoid the Tegaderm holding the gauze dressing against his thigh, but his skin jumps like it has been electrified when she blows on it. She licks along his happy trail until her mouth reaches the hand at the base of his dick.

She doesn't mean for it to sound like a plea when Emery says, "Talk to me. I like the sound of your voice."

"Talk about what?" Jack asks, his voice strained as she slowly licks up the vein on the underside of Jack's cock. The moan it pulls out of Jack is enough to make her feel galvanized with unbridled want. She considers how much of a hassle it would be to re-suture him if needed but then tells herself that it would go against her oath of non-maleficence.

"Anything you want, baby." His whine at baby is very interesting. Emery files it away for later. She looks up from his dick to grin at Jack and say, "Pretend you're talking to your therapist. I'm a very good listener."

"I don't do this with my therapist," he breathes out with a chuckle.

"Because that would be a Dateline segment, Jack."

"Emery, you're killing me here."

"I'm going to be very nice to you." She scrapes her nails against his abdomen and feels the muscles vibrate against the heel of her palm. "I promise."

Jack takes a deep breath and starts telling her about an emergency pericardiocentesis he had to do last week in the rig because the gears of the machine to lower the stretcher down from the ambulance were stuck. Of course, this is what he'd choose to talk about when given the option to say anything, but Emery gets it. In med school, she was dating this grad student from Penn for a few months who used to get so upset when her mind was elsewhere during the dinner dates that he always planned because she was too busy studying in the library to remember relationship milestones. In what one would say was not her finest hour, they finally broke up when she couldn't stop going over the different metabolic diseases associated with enzyme deficiencies in the urea cycle while he was fucking her on their six-month anniversary – again, who celebrates such a thing? Jared pulled out of her as she was rattling off the substrates that built up in OTC deficiency and snapped, "I don't think this is working, Emery!" before scrambling out of bed and shoving his legs into his boxers. Emery remembers Jared standing there with his hands on hips waiting for her to apologize or promise to stop thinking about X-linked genetic disorders for the rest of the night, but all Emery did was ask Jared to lock the door on his way out.

Now as Jack is talking about how the EMS guys couldn't find the eighteen-gauge in their supply bag, Emery presses a smile against his thigh to stifle her laughter. 

"What?" Jack lifts his head up and scrunches his brows together in concern. "Fuck, did I do something wrong?"

"You didn't call cardio, for one thing," Emery says after a minute, "but what else is new?"

"First of all, you know those assholes can't do anything without dragging in the ECHO machine—"

"The heart is their responsibility, Jack."

"The heart is everyone's responsibility, Emery," he says with a Cheshire cat grin.

Jack grunts as Emery hand strokes him again. It's like he has suddenly lost his thread of righteous indignation and remembered that there are more important things at play here. She watches Jack try to even out his breathing, an especially futile endeavor when she twists her hand on the upstroke and his hips practically leap off the bed. 

"So then what happened?" she asks innocently.

"Uh, used a landmark, popped in the needle, and took out fifteen ccs of fluid. The end."

"The end?" Emery asks with a grin. "You're a terrible storyteller, Abbot!"

"Well, you're not so great at multitasking either."

"Don't be a dick," she admonishes before pinching his hip with a frown.

Jack raises an eyebrow while she rolls her eyes. After a moment of hesitation where it seems like he's at war with getting what he wants versus telling her the cool part of the story, Jack finally adds with a grin, "But actually it turned out the woman had Brugada Syndrome—"

Maybe his voice is too distracting after all. He's talking about the rhythm strip abnormalities that were so obvious that even the med student picked up on it when Emery takes his cock into her warm, wet, inviting mouth.

"Fucking hell, Em!" Jack exclaims. His voice taut with the effort it takes not to thrust into her mouth. Emery grasps his hips to hold him in place as she sucks. She knows that Jack is watching as his length disappears inside her mouth, her cheek bulging with the outline of his cock. He cradles that side of her face with his palm so he can feel himself moving against her cheek. Jack squeezes his eyes shut and groans. "Jesus."

Emery lets him slip out of her mouth with a pop. "No audience participation, Abbot?"

"You won't let me," he pouts, his brown eyes blazing. The lack of chill is so evident in his voice that if Emery wasn't burning up already, she would be now. She pushes up his body until her face is hovering over his. Jack surges forward before she can even offer a compromise, his fingers tangling into her hair as he pulls her down for a kiss.

"If you pop out your stitches, you're suturing yourself and buying me new sheets."

Jack grins against her collarbone. "It'll be worth bleeding out if I get to fuck you properly."

"Not funny, Abbot." She thumps his shoulder with the back of her hand. Scrambling to reach the night table, she grabs a condom from the drawer, tears the foil, and rolls it on him before he can say something so dumb that she'll change her mind. Jack groans when she gives him another tug just to be mean. "I'm in charge."

He takes his hands off her and holds them up by his ears in surrender. Emery briefly wonders how she can get this complacency to translate into more aspects of their lives and then quickly abandons the thought in favor of lining them up and slowly sinking down on him. They both let out simultaneous groans as his cock stretches her, Emery's nails digging into his chest for purchase. Her excellent suturing will not leave a mark, but this certainly will. She leans down and kisses the four half-moons she has left behind and mumbles sorry.

"I don't care," he promises with a groan and she can tell that he's holding himself back. She just spent the last hour making him wait and he's still waiting until she gives him the go-ahead. On second thought, maybe Emery doesn't want how he is in bed to translate to how he is out of it because then she'd never be able to get any work done.

"How's your leg?" she mumbles into his skin.

"What leg?"

Emery snickers.

"Jack."

"I don't care about my leg. It's fine. Please can I…" When Emery raises an eyebrow at the naked desperation in his voice, Jack lets out a shaky laugh before pulling himself together enough to slot his mouth against the shell of her ear and whisper, "I did say that you are top banana, baby."

His hands flex at her hips and Emery knows that Jack knows exactly what he's doing with the stupid term of endearment too. Her body, already a livewire this close to him before she even decided to let him fuck her, now sizzles. It turns out that was the spark she needed to short out her system as she grinds her hips down and says, "For fuck's sake, Jack, fuck me already."

She's barely done with the order before his hips snap up and however full she felt before is nothing compared to how she feels now. Emery grips onto his hair for purchase as she turns her face to give him a sloppy, filthy kiss, her teeth pulling at his bottom lip while she rolls her hips to a slower rhythm that he has no choice but to follow. When she gasps at how good this feels, Emery can feel Jack twitch inside her. For all his talk about surgeons needing validation, his praise kink is out of control.

"Fuck, Em. I'm not going to—"

"It's okay," she soothes.

"Like hell it is," he says. His eyes flash with determination as he pushes himself up, the angle at which they are joined changing so deliciously that Emery's mouth falls open even before he presses his thumb between her lips. Her tongue darts out to swirl against the pad of thumb before he drags it down her chest, circling her nipples before replacing his finger with his mouth. Her fingers dig into his scalp as she presses him closer to her chest while he sucks, forgetting the journey of his thumb entirely until it's pressing against her clit. Emery gasps at the triple sensation of his mouth on her breast, his cock fucking into her, and his thumb pushing her that final bit over the edge. Her orgasm hits her unexpectedly, Emery coming with a gasp as he fucks her through it.

Jack groans that he's really close before switching his attention to her other nipple. She doesn't know how he's not there already, how he didn't shoot off the moment she squeezed around him. It must be another one of those things that Jack Abbot is inexplicably good at, but before Emery can tell him to stop showing off, he flips them so that she's on her back, hitches her thigh up to his hip, and thrusts in so deep that she comes a second time, Jack following close behind.

He collapses against her a second later. Emery traces circles against his shoulder blades while he evens out his breathing to match hers. Once he has caught his breath, his hand slides down to his left thigh and pats the intact, non-bloody bandage. He lifts his hand up to flash her a thumbs up like a total dork before rolling off her. Emery shifts onto her side and buries her face into his neck and laughs against the sharp line of his jaw.

"Do I know how to throw a birthday party or what?"

*

"I have to go," she groans into her pillow, but makes no attempt to move.

"No, you don't," Jack counters as he slowly kisses down her spine. Emery can feel the ghost of his smile hovering over her vertebrae as he stretches his arm so that he can press her wrist into the down pillow next to her head and keep her in place.

"Then you need to go," Walsh says even though she wants that even less once she feels how hard he is when his boxers brush against the back of her thigh. He shifts his weight off his hands and rolls onto his side next to her. At once, Emery misses being caged in by him. She scooches over in bed until she can rest her palm against his cheek, his hand immediately finding her hip to pull her closer still. She can feel his breath on her face when Emery grins lazily at Jack and whispers, "Hi."

His face splits into a rare smile as her leg hooks against his hip. He traces circles over her ankle before his fingertips skate up her leg so slowly that Emery thinks she's going to combust if he doesn't start moving faster.

"Do you really want me to go?" Jack asks with a pout because he knows that what she really wants is for him to touch her all over.

But Dr. Finley texted her earlier this morning to beg Walsh to take his day shift this morning before his wife divorced him for forgetting about his daughter's preschool graduation in exchange for both of her next two overnights. As curious as Emery is to discover what an openly flirty Jack Abbot looks like, she values her sleep hygiene so much more.

"I'm on call."

"The sun's out."

"And if I had specialized in vampires, this would be a dealbreaker. But unfortunately, they didn't offer that at Hopkins so I'm stuck operating on people when the sun is out too."

"But you're on nights this week," Jack says with a frown.

Emery grins. "Have you been stalking my schedule, Dr. Abbot?"

Jack turns bright red, but Emery assures him that it's cute how much of a loser he is before leaning over to kiss his chin.

"But I had plans for the morning!"

"I only just stopped calling you a douchebag, Jack. We did not make any plans."

Jack rolls over onto his back and tries to get her to come with him.

"I had plans." Jack is already fully erect, his boxers tenting before her like a gift she can't wait to unwrap.

Emery does the mental math. If she skips the Starbucks run, her day will probably be atrocious, but she can stay in bed for a little bit longer. She halts Jack's hand on her hip to grab her phone and set an alarm.

"You have seven minutes," she announces before invading his personal space.

"Did you set a timer?" he laughs.

"Do you want to discuss my impeccable organizational skills or do you want to start the morning off with a bang?"

"Excellent point," Jack concedes before hauling her on top of him.

*

"How have you never seen Flatliners?" Emery asks as she swirls her fork into the takeout carton of Pad Thai.

Normally, she wouldn't be eating in bed, but she has gotten bold ever since Jack didn't hemorrhage all over her sheets the first time he stayed over. Now that he's all healed, the world is their oyster. She tilts her head to the side to watch Jack scroll through his phone before he announces that the movie has a fifty percent Rotten Tomatoes score.

"There are so many defibrillator puns in these reviews and none of them are even that good!"

"You can't judge a movie by its punny reviews, Jack! You need to judge it based on how fantastic Julia Roberts' hair is!" she insists.

Emery grabs his phone, goes to google images, and shows him the crazy volume on Julia's ginger locks. He chuckles, takes the phone back from her, and tabs back to the Wikipedia page while chewing thoughtfully on a spring roll. His eyebrows slowly rise higher and higher until they're practically at his hairline before he turns to her and deadpans, "This is not how asystole works."

"I didn't say it was a good movie," she reminds him again. "I said that I loved it. There is a difference between the two!"

"Good taste?"

Emery rolls her eyes.

"Clearly, my taste has come into question lately," Emery says before fixing him with a pointed stare. Jack's face splits into a smile before he steals one of her curry puffs. She blocks the container before he can go for a second one – that's what he gets for calling dibs on the tofu triangles instead. Before he can pout to get his way, Emery asks again, "How have you not seen it?"

"How have you seen it? Weren't you, like, potty training when this movie came out?"

"First of all, Blockbuster did still exist when I was a kid, Grandpa." Abbot raises his hands in surrender. "Secondly, you're a whopping eight years older than me, Jack. Even my old guidance counselor would be like, 'Go ahead and keep fucking that old man, Emery.'"

"That's a very bad guidance counselor."

"Obviously, she wouldn't say that then." She smacks his shoulder. "But I used to volunteer at a nursing home once a week when I was in high school and if I ran into my old guidance counselor now at, like, at a Phillies game or something, I know that she'd tell me to keep doing geriatric outreach."

Jack drops his face into his open palms with a groan. For a split second, Walsh wonders if she has offended him – with what? the truth? – but then his shoulders start to shake as his laugh spills from between his fingers. Emery likes the sound of his laugh. She likes the sound of Jack's, well, everything, but he rarely laughs this freely so it feels like a special treat.

"You're going to make me watch this right now, aren't you?"

"I'm doing it for you, Jack. You're not old enough to be this uncool."

He sighs as Emery grabs the remote and rents it off Prime before starting the movie with a clap. The Columbia Pictures title card has barely popped up when Jack says, "Even if they were miraculously able to revive Kiefer Sutherland after nine minutes without a pulse, he would most certainly have long-lasting neurological sequelae from the hypoxia alone!"

Emery throws a curry puff at him. He catches it in his mouth and gives her a self-satisfied grin before throwing an arm around her shoulder and leaning back against the mountain of pillows behind them.

Dammit. She walked right into that one.

*

"Do you know what the problem is when you Gorilla Glue a person's insides?" Walsh shouts at Abbot. "We have to sand that down to remove it once they're ready for the permanent fix!"

King looks like she's going to throw up, the glue still dripping from the upturned bottle in her hand.

"She's exaggerating," Abbot insists to his resident before telling them to get another set of coags on the patient before following Walsh out of the room.

Emery stomps across the ER while Jack insists behind her that they didn't have the luxury of time and there was a very well written case report from Malaysia on the utility of polyurethane adhesives for abdominal trauma. She swivels on her heel and tells him that the guy had four seconds to wait for a surgeon and now he's probably going to lose part of his gut from the adhesions alone! Jack's eyes flash amber before he looks around to see everyone at the nursing desk eavesdropping-but-pretending-not-to-eavesdrop.

"Can we speak privately in there for a second, Dr. Walsh?" he says in a clipped tone. As she enters the empty exam room, Jack turns to the rest of the ER and wonders out loud if they don't have patients to bring back from the waiting room. Immediately, everyone gets very busy very quickly before Jack slips into the room and locks the door behind him.

"Gorilla Glue?" Emery asks right before he crosses the room to crowd her in no less than three seconds. "Seriously? You're lucky Orson has to deal with this mess and not me."

Jack shrugs before smiling at her, his hands going up to her face before pulling her in for a kiss. It feels like he's stealing her breath away, Emery's lungs screaming for oxygen even as she claws at the back of his scrub top like she's trying to fuse them into a single organism. It's only when it feels like her vision is going to start to blur that she finally peels herself off him for air.

Jack leans his forehead against hers and pants, "When do you get off?"

Emery smirks. "In a perfect world, right now."

"Em," Jack growls.

"But in the unjust world that we live in, ten o'clock."

"My shift ends at three," he tells her like she doesn't already know that. In the last few months, Emery has started to pay a lot more attention to the monthly shift schedule that the ED secretary sends to all the other services.

"Come over after," she says as he kisses behind her ear. "You know where the spare key is."

Jack groans against her carotid. They've had this argument so many times by now that she can perform both sides. She tells him that the point of having a hidden spare key is that it should be easily accessible if she locks herself out, which means that it should be near the door; he tells her that the point of a hidden spare key is that she shouldn't tape it above her door where anyone with enough arm stretch could just reach up and brush their fingers along the frame to find it.

"Might as well put up a sign asking someone to rob you," Jack grumbles again now.

"Are you going to come or not?" Emery asks.

Now it is Jack's turn to grin when he whispers against her ear, "Well, I guess that depends on whether you're going to stay up or not."

*

Walsh wakes up to the sound of buzzing by her ear. Groaning, she rolls onto her back and is disappointed when she stretches out her arm and finds nothing there but more empty space. She'd fallen asleep last night as soon as she got home and had a bowl of cereal, but Emery thought for sure that Jack would wake her up when he got home.

She reaches for her phone to text if he changed his mind about coming over only to find three missed calls from her hippie neighbor Dave. She doesn't have time to unlock the screen before Dave is calling her again. Emery half considers letting it go to voicemail. It's no mystery that he's got the hots for her, but the patchouli smell that wafts from his person at all times gives her such an intense headache that she had to admit to him the last time he invited her to a Grateful Dead concert that she was seeing someone and then, to really sell the point home, she doubled down by confessing that it was so serious that she'd caught him searching for rings online. It was a total lie, of course, because Emery would be anything but calm if that was a reality, but at least it worked so that Dave gave her the saddest two thumbs up and told her he'd ask another Deadhead.

Against her better judgment, Emery answers Dave's call now.

"Hi, Dave," she greets wearily.

"Yo, Em. What's up?"

She peers at the alarm clock on her bedside table.

"It's seven in the morning, Dave."

"Shit, were you sleeping? Sorry, Em. It's just that," Dave pauses, probably to take a bong hit, "there's some dude asleep in front of your door and I thought you should know. Do you want me to call the cops?"

"What? What dude?"

"I don't know! Just some dude."

Emery pinches the bridge of her nose and asks without needing to ask, "What does he look like, Dave?"

"I don't know. Kind of old?" After a beat, Dave asks, "You don't think he's got Alzheimer's or something, do you?"

Emery rolls her eyes. Jack Abbot is not that old, but Dave is a twenty-something who thinks he's going to be young forever so it makes sense that Jack might as well look like the crypt-keeper to him.

"I know him. It's fine. I'll take care of it.

"Are you sure? Maybe stay in there for a bit. I know I have a metal bong in here somewhere…"

"Not necessary, Dave, but you're very sweet for offering," Emery says, trying to stifle her chuckle. "Have a great day at work, bud."

She hangs up the phone and stays in bed for a few minutes more. By the time she finishes brushing her teeth and trots over to her front door, she can just hear the jangle of Dave pulling his keys out of his front lock. She counts to twenty before opening her door, Dave and his scooter nowhere to be found.

Sure enough, Jack is sitting on the floor, his head leaning against the wall next to Emery's door as he lightly snoozes. She nudges his arm with her toe, Jack stirring a second later. He's always hyper-alert when he first wakes up like he's in enemy territory in the middle of the desert. Jack looks confused, both about his surroundings and his vantage point, so Emery decides to help him out by saying, "You look so creepy."

"Em?" he asks, still groggy from what couldn't have been a restful sleep. Jack runs both hands through his hair, which only messes it up even more. It has the double effect of making him look even crazier but also so attractive that Emery has to stop herself from reaching over to feel his curls. He scrubs his face with his hands and says, "I got out late."

"And you came over to sleep in front of my door like a wino?"

"I wanted to see you," he admits.

"With what? X-ray vision?" Emery asks, still peering down at him. "Jack, I told you to use the spare key!"

Jack looks rung out before he finally pulls his gaze from hers, shoulders dropping as he stares at his hands and admits, "I didn't want you to see me."

Emery frowns and slides down the door until she's sitting next to him. Her left leg brushes against his right. Emery cups her palm over Jack's elbow before slowly sliding her hand down his forearm until her fingers can fit in the spaces between his. Jack takes a deep breath and then lets out a slow exhale before he slumps down even more so he can lean his head against her shoulder.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No, not really."

Her thumb traces circles against the web of his hand until she can hear his breathing even out. After a few minutes, Emery turns to Jack and asks, "Do you want to come in and make me breakfast instead then?"

He snickers.

"Yeah, I can do that."

*

Emery is not sure how he manages to make huevos rancheros from the contents of her fridge, but she eats slower than she ever has before because if there's one thing Jack Abbot is incapable of doing, it is leaving dirty dishes associated with a meal that he has prepared in the sink for someone else to clean up later. It's one of his best qualities and one that Emery is currently exploiting to keep him in her apartment for longer. To say that she is worried about Jack is an understatement. She briefly considers texting Shen to ask about last night's shift, but that would be the equivalent of making it Instagram official by letting TMZ beat them to the punch.

"I should go after breakfast," Jack finally says because Emery has been cutting the same final bite of her eggs into smaller and smaller pieces to draw this out for longer.

"Yeah?" she asks. "Do you have work tonight?"

"No. I'll probably just go home and crash for a bit. Maybe run some errands."

Left with no other choice, Emery pops the last piece of tortilla into her mouth. Jack sweeps the plate out from under her and takes it to the sink. She watches him don a pair of dishwashing gloves she didn't realize she owned and get to work scrubbing the pan he used for the eggs. She wants to ask him if he's okay again, but Emery knows how much it pisses her off when she's not okay and someone keeps forcing her to lie about it; she imagines that he also feels the same irritation about it.

He has put the last of her plates on the dryer rack when Emery blurts out, "Do you have gym clothes in your car?" It's like asking MacGyver if he has anything with which to disarm a nuclear bomb. Emery doesn't wait for his answer before saying, "Come to hot yoga with me."

*

"Come on, Patti! You're always telling me that I need to put myself out there more and get a life."

"You do," Patti, her hot yoga instructor, says, "but I'm still not allowing walk-ins. It's a slippery slope, Emery! I let you do it this time and then Stan's going to ask me to let him bring a walk-in next week—"

"Stan will just invite hot moms he met at drop-off to impress them with how attuned he is to his emotions so that it's easier for him to cheat on his wife!" Emery insists. Patti considers this for a second and then agrees. "But this is different!"

Patti narrows her eyes. "How?"

Hot yoga is the only mindfulness practice that Emery enjoys. She likes the stifling heat and the head-empty feeling she gets when she is asked to do nothing more than go through the motions and breathe. The place that she goes to is a hot ticket that absolutely does not take walk-ins on the weekend, something that Emery normally counts in the pro column, but now that she has convinced Jack that this is a great idea, she has to somehow figure out how to make it a great idea that is also a reality. Jack is still looking for parking in the lot behind the studio, but that's probably not going to take forever.

"Because Jack is my boyfriend." That's the second time in as many weeks that Emery has used the label to get out of a jam. She waits a beat for lightning to strike her down before laying it on thick, "You inspired me to take a chance, Patti! You have to let me see it through now!"

Patti is downright beaming at the thought that Emery finally has a love life. She literally starts clapping like a tradwife excited about the upcoming bake sale calendar at a PTA meeting. Emery quickly stills her hands to bring her back down to earth and hisses at her not to make it so weird that she freaks out Jack.

"So what does this Jack do anyway?"

"He's a doctor."

Patti's smile falls. "Oh, honey. I thought I told you that there are so many fish in the sea?"

"Gotta swim in my own pond, Pat," Emery tells her apologetically. She sneaks a glance at her watch – Jack has been out there for five minutes – and then looks behind her to see if he's coming in.

"If you're a doctor dating another doctor, when do you have time to see each other?"

"We don't, Patti, which is why I brought him to hot yoga today." Finally seeing an in, Emery schools her face into a look of melancholy and unleashes her most wistful sigh. Lowering her voice to a secretive whisper, Emery adds, "I really like this guy, Patti."

Walsh can practically see the heart on Patti's sleeve break in half before her instructor hisses, "Fine! But just this one time! If he wants to come back – and why wouldn't he? – he needs to sign up before Thursday like everyone else next time."

"You're the best, Pat!" Emery exclaims with a hug just as Jack walks in.

He raises an eyebrow because Emery is not usually a hugger, but she ignores it. Patti simply just doesn't see it because she's too busy pushing Emery to the side to extend a hand to Jack and welcome him to the studio.

"I've heard so much about you, Jack!" Patti lies expertly. Or it would be expertly if she and Jack ever talked about each other with anyone else, except maybe Jack to his therapist.

"Oh?" he asks with an amused grin.

"Shouldn't you be heading in there?" Emery asks Patti.

Patti looks at the clock and excuses herself to do a quick guided meditation to get in the zone.

Once she has disappeared into the room, Jack turns to Emery and asks, "I can't believe you do hot yoga."

Her mouth quirks up at the corner. "Control yourself, buddy."

"The germs alone, Em! Those mats must be a breeding ground for MRSA!"

"I brought us mats!" she huffs. Does he think she's an amateur?

"They probably don't even mop up the sweat properly!"

"Do not ruin this for me, Abbot!" She rolls her eyes. "Besides, we're not immunocompromised! It'll be fine!"

"Famous last words for someone rolling out the red carpet for a staph infection to enter her body," Jack scoffs.

*

Jack ends up not hating hot yoga, which is a surprise, but he also has her promise to never make him go again. That'll be a problem for future Emery when she has to pretend that Jack is working every time she ever attends a hot yoga class again for the rest of her life so that Patti's feelings aren't hurt. But it's worth the added hassle because he looks a lot less tortured now than he did earlier. 

As he exits the parking lot, Emery tells him that they need to go to the farmer's market. She's an Instacart girl through and through, but Jack seems like the type to get very nerdy about fresh herbs and artisanal jam. When he asks why, she pulls up her calendar app and shows him the reminder for today that reads: TRY MAKING BEEF BOURGUIGNON!!!! 

"Em, it's like eighty degrees outside."

"Which is why I have an air conditioner."

He doesn't need to know that she put the reminder in twenty minutes ago while he was in the bathroom.

*

"You got the beef bourguignon going?" Jack asks from the clawfoot tub when she walks in.

The first time he realized that she had a bathtub and a shower in her bathroom, Emery saw Jack's eyes glaze over. Sometimes she thinks that the reason he keeps coming over is because he really loves her bathtub and not having to think about keeping his balance the whole time he's getting clean like he has to do in the shower.

"Yup," Emery says as she puts her hair up and peels off her t-shirt.

"Really?" he asks incredulously as he watches her strip out of her yoga pants. "You preheated the oven?"

Emery pauses. "Uh, didn't want to make the place too hot so I figured we can do that later."

Jack nods and then asks, "And you seared off the beef already?"

She bites her bottom lip. "Sort of?"

"You sort of seared the meat?"

"Okay, so I…pulled a recipe for beef bourguignon up on the kitchen iPad and had half a glass of Bordeaux," she confesses as she walks towards the tub.

"So when you said that you were going to cook a beef bourguignon today, what you meant was that I was going to cook a beef bourguignon today," Jack simplifies with a grin.

"We are going to cook a beef bourguignon today, babe," Emery clarifies even though they both know that her contribution will most likely be in a supervisory rule, if even that. Before Jack can start telling her everything he knows about stews, Emery takes off the last of her clothes and gets into the tub with him.

"Now we're both sitting in each other's sweat!" he reminds her with a groan.

Emery leans back against his chest before she turns her face to get a better look at his side profile. She waits for him to crack under the pressure and turn his attention to her before deadpanning, "We've done a lot sweatier and filthier things with each other than take a bubble bath together, Jack."

"Very true." Jack's face explodes into a wide grin. "It's good for the microbiome."

"Please do not talk about the microbiome when I'm trying to seduce you."

Both of his eyebrows arch up. "You're trying to seduce me?"

"Almost always."

"Interesting."

Emery can tell he means it because she can feel him start to get hard against her thigh. She tells herself that he can't be too sad if he's still going from zero to sixty in three point five, but Emery's not sure that's a true litmus test. She could be wearing a garbage bag and his flesh would still be ready, willing, and able.

"I've got an almost hundred percent success rate."

Jack frowns. "Why almost?"

"That time you fell asleep."

"Are you never going to let me live that down?" Jack groans like he's not the one who brought it up in the first place. "I did six hours overtime that night and have never cared about the lives of any of The Real Housewives, Emery!"

"You're the one who asked," she snickers. "It was a relief actually. I was starting to worry that you were only with me because I'm so great in the sack."

Jack frowns and sits up so he can get a better look at Emery. His voice is soft when asks, "You don't really think that, right?"

"Of course not. The hottest thing about me is my brain and sparkling wit."

"Emery," he continues seriously. "The sex is excellent, but we're not…that's not the only reason we're together. You know that, right?"

This seems like far too heavy a conversation to have when they're naked in a hyacinth-scented bubble bath. Emery curls her hand against Jack's jaw and leans back against him again.

"I know. I promise I was joking."

"Okay, good," he says before settling back down into the tub. He absently draws circles along her arm and sighs. Emery knows when he gets like this, it's because he's trying to formulate his thoughts before he finally tells her why he has gotten like this so she does what she always does and waits him out. After a few minutes, Jack exhales slowly and says, "It was a shit show last night."

"Yeah?"

"My last patient was a construction worker who got a crush injury on the site." Walsh waits him out until he says, "He's going to wake up to a below-knee amputation of his left leg."

Emery's heart drops. She twists until she's practically in prone position on top of him, her mouth pressed against his jugular as she says softly, "Why didn't you say anything?"

Jack shrugs. "He's twenty-two and now he's never going to be whole again."

Emery calls his name out so sternly that Jack snaps out of being in his head. Looping her arms around the back of his neck, she pushes closer to him until she's right in Jack's face and says, "You are not broken. You're the most whole person I've ever met."

"You don't have to say—"

"Shut up, I know I don't have to," she retorts. "But the best and worst things about you have nothing to do you with your leg. You're mostly an infuriating idiot and occasionally a wonderful genius—"

"Is this because I figured out how to turn off motion smoothing on your tv?"

"Yes," she replies without missing a beat. "And you're caring in a casual way that doesn't freak people out and you want everything to be perfect, but you recognize that sometimes good enough is good enough. You like taking care of people even though you hate letting other people take care of you—"

"That's not true."

"Oh yeah?"

"I let you take care of me."

Emery scoffs. "When?"

"You convinced Patti to let me join hot yoga today because you knew I'd never ask to stay, but that I also didn't want to be alone."

Emery bristles. "I didn't have to convince—"

"Stan was using the urinal next to mine."

"Like right next to yours?"

Jack makes a face. "There were like three other ones that were free too! It was so weird, but I think he wanted to let me know how unfair it was that I could just drop in to class when it was one of Patti's sacred weekend rules that everyone had to sign up."

Jack smooths his thumbs along Emery's clavicles.

"Well, you didn't even have a good time so…"

"It was fine."

"You were counting down the minutes before you could rub yourself down with hand sanitizer in the restroom."

Jack grins. "Okay, so the actual hot yoga part of it was awful, but if you asked me to go again—"

"I won't," she promises.

"But I would if you wanted me to because I like you so much. Em, you…make things okay for me and I—"

"Make things more complicated for me?" she asks with a grin because whatever Jack might really want to say is not something that she wants to hear for the first time from him in a bathtub.

"Spice of life," he replies.

Emery smiles. "Didn't you tell me that was cumin?"

"Wow," he remarks with a low whistle. "I always thought you tuned me out whenever I started talking about cooking."

"Only most of the time."

Jack laughs before tugging her up his body until his hands can easily curve along her hips. He looks at her with a fondness that would normally freak out Emery except this time the softness on his face feels like a piece of duct tape someone has slapped onto a pierced balloon that was at threat of deflating completely. She knows he's going to be okay even before he asks if she wants to improve her seduction success rate right now.

*

"We make a pretty mean beef bourguignon," Emery exclaims at the first taste of their dinner.

"We?" Jack asks incredulously. "There was no we in this, Em."

"I chopped the vegetables!"

"Did not."

"Yes, I did! I chopped the onions!"

Jack laughs and shoves a spoonful of mashed potatoes in his mouth, probably to piss her off because now she has to wait for him to finish swallowing before he explains himself.

"You started chopping an onion and then said that it was making you so teary that you needed your goggles. So then you left to look for goggles for forty minutes and by the time you finally came back, it was without goggles but with a whole lot of new theories about that show we were supposed to be watching together."

Emery has the grace to look sheepish. "I couldn't resist!"

"Hmm."

"Well, I found the recipe! I get contribution points for that, right?"

"Well…"

"Well?" she yelps.

"She spent two pages talking about her trip to Spain first! Beef bourguignon isn't even Spanish! I ended up just tweaking the original Julia Child recipe."

Emery lifts and drops her arms in exasperation. "So I didn't help at all?"

Jack thinks about this for a long time before he says, "You did choose a fantastic wine pairing to go with the meal."

"I did, didn't I?" She grins before suggesting, "We should cook together more often."

He smiles behind his wine glass and asks, "Still using the royal we, huh?" to which she responds by flashing him the middle finger.

Jack guffaws as Emery shoves another spoonful of beef bourguignon into her mouth. It really is quite delicious and despite the time commitment – after he shooed her away from the kitchen, Emery lied about taking a nap and instead finished the entire season of the critically acclaimed tv show she wasn't supposed to watch without him – Walsh is already trying to figure out how to make Jack add this to a bimonthly rotation when he comes over for the weekend.

*

Emery feels bad enough about not helping with the cooking that she offers to dry while he washes. They're listening to one of her Spotify daylists while they tag team a mountain of dirty dishes. She is distracted by the awful Bruce Springsteen cover that Spotify thinks she would enjoy and asking him what she did to hurt the algorithm this badly when Jack tells her that he's going home after they finish cleaning up.

Emery frowns. "Just spend the night, Jack."

"I ran out of clean clothes."

She waggles her eyebrows. "So sleep naked. I won't complain."

"I'm not going to fall apart if I spend a few hours at home," he assures her.

"I know," she says defensively.

Emery's not really worried about that, not anymore. But she is worried that she's going to miss him after spending all day doing boring domestic stuff with him and not wanting to shoot herself in the face afterwards. She's not sure what that says about them nor does she think she wants to know the answer right now, but she wouldn't mind having more days like this in the future. Having made up her mind, Emery tosses the towel on the counter, grabs his hand, and pulls him towards the front door.

"Wait, you're kicking me out right now?"

"No way! I'm not handwashing a Dutch Oven!"

Emery opens her front door, feels above the frame, and plucks her poorly hidden key from its poorly hidden spot before stepping back into her apartment. She closes the door behind her and hands Jack her spare key.

"Have you finally realized the error of your ways? Because I've been thinking about this," he starts, "and I think maybe if you get a big plant, we can bury one of those key fobs that look like rocks in the soil—"

Emery shakes her head.

"It's for you," she clarifies. "For the next time you want to see me."

His face goes from looking confused to jubilant as Jack pulls Emery into his space by her hips.

"What happens if you lock yourself out?"

"I know where to find you."

His mouth splits into a Colgate smile. It's as warm as the sun with a gentle brightness that makes her think she could stare at it forever and never tire of the sight. Emery lets herself lean further into him until Jack crosses the final bit of distance to kiss her, his stubble scratching her chin and cheeks as if to ground her in the knowledge that, yes, this near-perfect day did happen and neither one of them freaked out and messed things up somehow. Jack wraps his arms around her as they sway to a one-hit-wonder by some late aughts musician discovered on American Idol – seriously, why does her Spotify think she has such questionable taste? – until Jack absently tells her that he set up her Roomba while she was "napping."

Emery freezes in place and pushes off him to give him a look.

"Really?"

Jack shrugs. "It's still in the box every time I come over!" After a beat, he asks with a horrified gasp, "Wait, it wasn't a gift for someone, right?"

"No," she says. "Mapping my apartment just seemed like a cumbersome process."

"It was shockingly simple, actually," Jack replies with a laugh. "And now when I come over, I won't have to Swiffer as much."

"If you recall, no one has ever asked you to do that," Emery points out with a laugh. "I mean, that's why I have a Roomba."

He snickers. "That you never set up."

"Oh my God!" she exclaims as the light bulb goes off in her head.

"Well, it's true!"

"Not that!"

Emery disentangles herself from Jack to grab her phone from the kitchen counter. Jack steps up behind her and rests his chin on her shoulder while Emery scrolls through her contacts until she gets to the J's. She taps on Jack Abbot, ER dick and changes the name on the card before showing it to him proudly.

"Seriously, Em?"

"She's bionic too!"

"Technically, I think she had wheels…"

"A whole new world of sext-based flirting has opened up to you and, instead of rejoicing, you're choosing to be literal about this?"

All at once before Emery can do it, Jack hurries to tap the done button on the corner of the screen, his number now listed under ROSEY THE ROBOT in her phone.