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Christmas Eve, 2019:
Outside solid walls and wide bay windows that look out over the Allegheny river, snow is falling thick and fast onto the Pittsburgh pavements. They’d bought the house for the view more than anything else. Sarah had loved the way that the city lights felt so much further away than they really were – had talked Jack into it on the basis of proximity to the hospital and the way her eyes had lit up when she’d first seen the built in window seat. More often than not, in the mornings, parking the car in the driveway after a shift, he’d find her sitting there; clutching her coffee mug in one hand and a book – cracked spine and dogeared pages - in the other. Waiting, always with a smile like sunshine on her face, for him to come home.
Sarah had loved the snow. She taught literature at Pitt and always had quote on the tip of her tongue, some line of poetry that helped her make sense of the world. Frost’s ‘easy wind and downy flake’ or Muir’s ‘arctic sword across the sky’, spoken into the warmth of their home, with a self-indulgent, half-ironic lilt to her voice.
If this were last year - three years ago; five - the fire would have been blazing instead of dead in the hearth. A record crackling, somewhere in the other room, as it played out something low and slow. He would have pulled her down and into his lap, pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth and felt her laugh against his lips.
But, all Jack can think of now, are car crashes on under-gritted roads. Broken bones and traumatic brain injuries and families spending the holidays in plastic chairs, waiting on news. In the absence of Sarah, the push-pull of life doesn’t work the way it should. The carefully medicated balance of his brain chemistry pushed off kilter, barrelling towards catastrophes and worst case scenarios at the speed of a runaway train. The same stuttering heartbeat that has been haunting his footsteps since he was five years old, pulled out of the mangled wreck of his father’s car, echoing in his ears.
Five things you can see. Five things you can feel. Five things you can hear. In the distance, the sound of carols singers floats through the air. Some kids from the local church are going door to door, raising money for the soup kitchen. Jack – who hasn’t believed in God since he first saw an eighteen year old kid bleed out in the service of the United States Medical Corps, but does strongly believe that no-one should go hungry in the country he'd supposedly given his right foot to protect – had emptied his wallet into the bucket not ten minutes earlier. Choked out a half-embarrassed ‘no worries’, as the eldest one, dressed in a red sweater that matched her wind-burned cheeks, had broken off from the final verse of Silent Night to thank him profusely.
On the coffee table, his police scanner sparks into life. Sarah had always found his reliance on its staticky broadcast of other people’s misfortune to be delightfully idiosyncratic. “We’ll be well prepared for the zombie apocalypse,” she’d always teased him, grinning. Nothing else to do in the face of irrational coping mechanisms, but make light of it – to make him smile alongside her and, eventually, flick the off switch in favour of her favourite Joni Mitchell. Tonight though – no distractions – Jack is among the first in Pittsburgh to hear about the ten car pile-up on the I-79.
He checks his watch – the beat up Casio he’s worn through two tours and one heartbreak; that’s scratched only be dint of the fact that it was on his wrist the time he stood a little too close to an improvised explosive device. If the police are only just arriving on scene, if he hurries, he might just beat the first ambulance to PTMC.
He’s not working tonight. He hadn’t been supposed to work last Christmas Eve either, but he had ended up in the Pitt all the same. Feeling, helplessly, like there was some kind of invisible magnet pulling him into closer and closer orbit. In spite of his wishes, in defiance of his best intentions.
Last year the scanner had been shut away in a drawer. Their whole family had been round, covering every surface of this house in noise and teasing and love. Jack’s sister’s – all three of them – drinking wine and heckling Jess, the eldest’s, husband as he tried to put together a playmobile pirate ship for their son. Sarah’s dad and brother in the kitchen, getting a headstart on prepping the veg and singing Mariah Carey with gusto - shockingly off-key - while her mom showed Emery Walsh pictures from the grandkid’s nativity play.
All of them, hearts aching and cheerful-bright. Anxious in the way that makes smiles seem forced and still hoping that the new year would bring good news. That they’d caught it early enough; and that Sarah – beloved, the glue that held them together - would be the one in five that got to live.
His wife, tucked up against his shoulder, had given him the side-eye when he’d let his pager ring out, abandoned on the side table. Detangled herself from under his arm when it had gone silent and his mobile had started buzzing instead - a picture of Robby at a Pirates game, flipping him off with one hand and holding a pint in the other, lighting up the screen. She had given him one of those cheeky half-grins, the one that had made him fall in love with her in the first place, before she’d accepted the call on his behalf.
“Evening Robby,” she had said jovially, mischievously, as if she knew that Jack’s best friend would be pinching the bridge of his nose and wincing as he returned the greeting. Wracked with the guilt that comes with pulling a man away from the last Christmas he’ll ever spend with his wife.
“I assume you’re calling because you want to borrow my husband,” Sarah had said, a smirk dancing in her eyes as she teased Robby, letting him know it was okay, no really, it was. “Train derailment.” she’d continued. Had spoken it aloud for Jack’s benefit, raised an eyebrow in his direction as if to give him the illusion of choice.
Jack had only made a face in response, accepting his fate with the ease of someone who had learned to follow orders early, to go where he was needed most. Leant down to reattach his foot while Sarah had informed Robby that she was sending him to the ER ASAP, smile never wavering from her face. For all of her faults (of which there were many; dissected and despaired of and loved anyway), she had never minded sharing him with his profession. He’s had colleagues, over the years, who’s partners haven’t got it. Who have had to fight and justify and apologise. Sarah, by contrast, had never done anything more than shrugged and sent him on his way with a flask of tea.
He had kissed her on the cheek in parting and met a grim-faced Emery Walsh in the hallway, where she’d already shrugged into her coat – the only one of the two of them who was actually on call. “You’re coming too?” He remembers her asking, expression caught between sympathy and understanding as she’d opened the door and ushered him through – offered him a ride with a gesture towards her car.
Between the two of them, between PTMC’s trauma rooms and operating theatres – they’d saved seventeen lives. Made it so that seventeen families would be able to spend the rest of their lives hearing Christmas carols without wanting to break down and cry. The next day, his head in Sarah’s lap – after a hasty mid-morning handover and Christmas dinner he’d tried his best not to fall asleep into – he’d considered that maybe the universe owed him something. Watched the lights on the tree twinkle and thought, for a moment at least, that everything might work out alright after all.
On January seventh, clutching hands in Sarah’s doctor’s office, time, they are told, is running out. By April, she is dead.
Eight months and change later, he locks his front door. Leaves the hood of his jacket down, unzipped. He is still wearing the hideously tacky Christmas jumper he put on earlier to video call his sister and reassure her he’s not about to stick his head in the oven (which is electric anyway, so wouldn’t work even if he was feeling that way inclined). Snowflakes settle in his curls – little flecks of cold to remind him he’s here, that he’s alive . The air smells sharp and heavy, and the world is covered in a muffled blanket. He drives carefully under the speed limit the entire way to PTMC, parks in one of the attending spaces, and takes a deep breath. Walks into chaos with his emotions firmly in check.
He's already tugging on gloves when Robby turns and sees him, his face the picture of relief, before it’s overshadowed by a flash of hesitation. Jack waves it away, neither the time or inclination to assuage Robby’s worries about his state of mind, and appreciating the concern even less, “Where do you need me, brother?” he asks brusquely, feeling Robby’s hand come down to clap him on the shoulder in greeting, “I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.”
Christmas Eve, 2022:
“It was good of you to work a double,” he tells Dr Mohan, clicking his pen and shoving a spiral bound notebook into the pocket of his cargos. They’ve only met once or twice before tonight. She has spent the first five months of her residency working primarily on day shift, while Jack had been stuck with the hapless Dr Russell, who had only made it until Thanksgiving before deciding he was better suited to family medicine. Which, Jack thinks, was quite honestly a relief to all involved – even if it had meant rejigging the schedule to cover the inevitable gaping holes.
“It’s no problem, Dr Abbot.” She returns softly, shrugging her shoulders. She’s wearing a soft looking woollen cardigan over her scrubs, but has eschewed any of the festive trappings that some of their other colleagues have affected. He wonders distractedly if she celebrates the holiday, and just as quickly decides it’s not really any of his business to ask. Three years from now, she will tell him that her father had arrived in the US as a teenager, disembarked the plane at JFK and walked straight into a New York Christmas. Had fallen in love with the lights and sounds of it all; that he had bought a tree every year and lifted her up so she could put the star on top; even when she was twelve years old and rolling her eyes over how embarrassing it all was. Three years from now, curled in on herself, after a man with warm brown eyes and a broken teenage daughter has died on her watch, she confesses that she hasn’t had the heart to celebrate since he passed. Wonders aloud if he would be disappointed in her, find her lacking somehow.
“Never,” he will respond. Nobody’s father, not yet, and certain of it nonetheless. “I promise you,” he will say, serious and forcing himself to stay still beside her, knees touching on the bench, even as rain drizzles down around them, “there is nothing you could do to disappoint your dad. To disappoint anyone, come to think of it.”
Now though, Christmas Eve goes quickly. A steady stream of the usual traumas, interspersed with the inevitable consequences of seasonal bar fights and every possible type of overindulgence. Shen – halfway through his third year of residency – is doing a more than adequate job of supervising Mohan in chairs, so it’s not until nearly four AM that things quiet down enough for him to check up on her.
They are both taking a breather, charting at the hub. She seems relaxed, if a little keyed up; tendrils of her hair escaping from her ponytail where it’s been cut shorter at the front as she leans over her tablet. He’s about to ask her a question about her patients - review her workload and identify weak spots, risks her untrained eye hasn’t yet learned to manage. Assess where she’s at and add her stats to the mental list he keeps for all their trainees, but before he can open his mouth, Emery Walsh steps into his line of view.
“Do you need a lift to mine later?” she asks him abruptly. Slightly spiky, still smarting from the chest tube he inserted while her intern was still fumbling for their pager. He can see the outline of her phone in the pocket of her scrubs and would bet his entire life savings that Jules has guilted, or otherwise bribed, her into asking. That left to her own devices, Emery would have simply labelled him a flight risk and herded him into the passenger seat of her jeep at shift change – wouldn’t have said a word until they were both drinking coffee in those stupid hats you get out of crackers and, even then, only to call him a dumbass.
He smirks at her for a second – until he can physically feel the annoyance radiating off her – before nodding. Makes the mistake of glancing in Mohan’s direction and catches her raising an involuntary eyebrow as Emery storms off in the direction of the OR floor
“Go on,” he says wryly, taking a step closer to where she’s standing, “Ask. You know you want to.”
She hesitates. “You’re going to Walsh’s for Christmas Dinner?” Her tone is slightly amused. She’s been around long enough, Jack reckons, to have heard the nightmare of recriminations and rumours that surround the two of them. And while he’s not in the habit of airing his private life at work, lest he become more of a tragically romantic figure to a certain segment of the nursing staff than he already is, something about her makes him want to tell her the truth.
“I’d hate to ruin the betting pool.” He says instead.
She smiles, careful and controlled. He knows her only a little. Can only go off of Robby’s assessment and a few overlaps at shift change, but he can see that she clearly feels things deeply, clearly cares just the right side of too much. She is measured with it too though, he thinks, knows how to compartmentalise in a way that is taught by experience, and sometimes can’t be taught at all. “I won’t tell.”
Her lips curve upwards; to his surprise, his heart skips a beat.
“She’s married to my baby sister.” He admits, out of excuses, and grinning despite himself.
A decade and change ago, Jack had been on the phone to Sarah, Christmas morning in Germany. She’d snuck out of midnight mass just to talk to him, her voice low and getting sleepy. The night before he’d sent her a stupid video of his unit singing Christmas songs over what the army considered a festive dinner, and she’d been laughing at his dancing and the comically oversized Santa hat one of the squaddies had jammed onto his head halfway through.
“By the way,” she had told him, a smile he could hear in her voice, “Jules wants to know the name of– and here I quote – the hot chick singing Last Christmas.” Had continued cheerfully, amused, when Jack choked on his outrage, “She’d like her phone number too, if you can get it.”
Five years later, four years after they repealed don’t ask don’t tell, he’d walked Jules down the aisle. Emery at the other end, grin splitting her face in two. Whatever else may be true, his youngest sister has always been safe as houses in her steady hands.
What had been left of their unit – down three bodies and two limbs after a roadside IED had flipped their truck three miles south of Camp Bastion, three weeks after Christmas in twenty-twelve – had reprised that particular Mariah Carey number at the reception. Jules looking at him with something almost unbearably soft in her eyes, while Emery tried first not to laugh and then not to cry.
Now, what feels like a lifetime later and under fluorescent emergency room lighting, Jack shakes away the memories, glances at the board. “Have you ever reduced a hip dislocation?” he says to Mohan, all casual-like. And then, when she shakes her head, he grins at her - can feel his eyes crinkling at the corners as he asks, “Would you like to learn?”
Christmas Eve, 2025:
It’s one of those nights where nothing seems to be going right and people just keep trying to die on him. Taking raspy last breaths in ambulances out front, fine one moment and keeling over the next in chairs, or bleeding out into abdominal cavities in trauma room one. Crying kids, wide-eyed broken stares, and too-bright lights. Lives ruined in heartbeats, while he tries every trick in the book. Comes away empty handed all the same.
It's one of those nights where it’s too cold for the roof. One of the those nights where - when he finally gets ten minutes of peace, ripping off his gloves into the nearest hazardous waste bin – where he knows he shouldn’t risk it. Already too close to the edge, metaphorically speaking, to put himself there physically too.
And so, the hospital chapel it is.
It’s supposed to be an interfaith reflection room these days, really, but Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre was built by the Catholic church – run by the Catholic church, until it was taken over by one large medical conglomerate, and then later sold to another on a shareholder’s whim – so the stone room, with its stained glass window and the bracket on the wall where the cross used to be, remains distinctly Christian in flavour.
Mostly, Jack likes it for the candles.
His earliest memory is of waking up on Christmas Eve. What had felt like late to him at the time, dark, the air a little cold, even inside the house. He’d tiptoed down the hallway towards the sound of his parents voices, found them wrapped together under a blanket on the sofa, holding hands by candlelight. “It’s just a power cut, son,” his dad had explained, voice soft, hands rough with callouses, lifting Jack into his lap and tucking him under the covers.
Jack remembers drifting into sleep to the sound of his father’s breathing and classical music playing tinnily on the wind up radio, something safe and warm inside his chest. Remembers waking the next morning in his own bed, Christmas tree lights shining and a new bike under the tree. Wonders sometimes, even now, if it had all been a dream.
Back in the chapel, the flames flicker - drawing shapes on the walls. It’s a fire hazard, probably. Someone will figure that out someday and they’ll be replaced, with electric bulbs or not at all, and Jack’s world will be a poorer place for it. Now though, he strikes a match, lets sparks lick at his fingertips before leaning across and lighting a candle. For his patients both lost and fighting, for their families and friends and all the people who will suffer because Jack cannot work miracles. Sends up a silent prayer to the God he mostly doesn’t believe in; and to St Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes.
It's 3AM, so he doesn’t expect anyone to disturb him. His coping mechanisms enough of a known quantity that none of the regular night shift crew are likely to follow him away from the ER floor. So it’s a surprise then, when he hears the door open and close softly – like someone is taking care not to startle him. He turns immediately anyway – once a soldier, always scarred by it.
His shoulders relax when he sees it is her; Samira Mohan. Dark scrubs a little too large on her slim frame. Her hair neater than usual, pulled back into a ponytail and tied of with a red velvet bow. Earlier, he’d noticed that the ribbon fell perfectly into the dip at the base of her neck – stared at it just a beat too long to be entirely casual.
Since Pittfest, she has become sharper to him. Like a puzzle he’s slowly figuring out, putting together from the edges in. Her smile, in the half-light, feels like safety and relief and a hundred other things it’s probably unfair of him to lay at her feet.
She walks towards him with careful, even steps. Her sneakers have seen better days, all scuffed and dotted with rust coloured flecks from blood that he knows won’t come out, no matter how many times she tries to scrub them. In her hands, she is carrying two takeaway cups from the pile they have stashed in the breakroom. “Hot chocolate,” she tells him. Neither of them drink coffee. He’d noticed that about her, and something thaws in his chest to know that she’d noticed it about him too.
“Thank you,” he tells her, aiming for warm and probably only landing on gruff, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Only leans over and passes him the hot chocolate, fingers brushing his as she does.
“Mery Christmas, Dr Abbot.”
“Jack,” he corrects her reflexively. Finds he doesn’t regret the impulse, even if it betrays something he wasn’t quite ready for her to see. Thinks he might be blushing and hopes, desperately that it’s not visible in the candlelight.
Her dimples flash. His heart skips in his chest and the hand he’s not using to clutch at the paper mug she’d handed him like a lifeline, unclenches just a little. “Well,” she tells him, “Merry Christmas then, Jack. ”
Christmas Eve, 2027:
It is the first Christmas Eve he has worked without Samira Mohan in four years. He feels her absence like phantom limb pain. Keeps rounding corners and expecting her to be there, or opening his mouth to cite a case study and closing it again when her face doesn’t suddenly appear in his line of vision.
Instead of taking sips of matcha and scanning the board for an interesting case – coat still dripping from the sleet outside, not even clocked in for her shift yet – she is five hundred miles away. All the way up the east coast in Boston – chasing opportunities and living up to her potential and a hundred other things he wants her to have; would hate to hold her back from. The recruiting packet for the two year fellowship she’d eventually been accepted onto could have been written for her. Opportunities to learn from leaders in their field and funding for her research. Just a little bit of teaching and enough ER shifts to remind her of the difference she’s trying to make in the world.
He is happy for her. It is impossible, he thinks, to know Samira Mohan – to really know her, warts and faults and all - and not want the world for her.
Somewhere in the last year she had become one of his best friends. Somewhere in the last year, he’d been surprised to find that he is one of hers too. He’s never been a person who has had a lot of them (Robby, when he's not spiralling into a crisis of his own; Emery, like a curse he's never quite shaken) but then she’d said it out loud. Like a fact. Kissed him on the cheek after her last shift at PTMC and hugged him for so long that he’d had to be the one to let go first. Had been equally surprised that her insistence that they should stay in touch was more than just politeness. That the last year of sitting across from each other at café tables - her revising for her boards, while he applied for grant funding and bought her endless hot chocolates - had meant as much to her as to him.
These days Samira calls him while she is grocery shopping or walking home from a shift at her hospital. He thinks that he might be the last person she texts before she falls asleep, and knows that he is the first she messages when she sees an unusual presentation in chairs, or makes a catch that gets her blood singing. He has told her almost every one of his secrets, things he hasn’t said aloud since Sarah died – ten years, and what feels like several lifetimes, ago now. Almost every truth about himself, except for the fact that he’s in love with her.
Tonight, all shift, his phone has been burning a hole in his pocket. Earlier, while he was clocking in and she was cooking dinner, she’d sent him a text message. An addendum to their long running conversation about what kit she should be stocking in the go-bag she’s building for herself, and which colour of sneakers he should get his eldest niece for Christmas.
I miss you. She had written. I wish you were here.
Jack is a man who has built his life on taking risks. On finely balanced judgements and decision making under pressure. When his shift ends, her will begin. The drive to Boston is nine hours. If he pulls over halfway for a nap, he can be there in time to pick her up.
*
After he’s handed over to Robby the next morning, he finds Emery waiting for him in the parking lot, standing between the cars they’d left in adjacent bays the night before.
“Are you stopping to pick up Jess’ lot or am I?” She asks him, shifting one foot to another, laughing a little as she shows him a picture on her phone of her kids – Jack’s nephews – in their Christmas pyjamas. Gus, the youngest, with chocolate sauce and pancake crumbs smeared all round his mouth, while his older brother, Charlie, pouts – no doubt outraged about not being allowed to open presents until his mommy gets home.
Jack hesitates, “I-” he starts, glancing away from the screen and up to Emery’s slightly impatient face, “I actually might not come this year.”
Her eyes are on him at once, sharp, until she takes in Jack’s sheepish smile. The gift box balanced in the crook of his elbow – the one he never got around to posting, half convinced he’d end up doing something mad like this – and a tired but determined look in his eye.
“Oh yeah?” she asks, leaning up against her car door, wearing the stripy scarf Sarah had bought her for Christmas the year before she died. “Where are you going to go instead Jack?” Emery, he thinks, has always loved to ask a question she already knows the answer to. If she’s not mocking him yet on this one, then it’s a near thing. The kind of potent, endlessly supportive, endlessly on-the-wind-up teasing you get from family.
Jack has three sister. Jess, Jenny and Jules - ten, twelve and thirteen years younger; loud, chaotic and nosy. Fifteen years ago now, at a forward deployed army base in Afghanistan, Jack took one look at Emery Walsh and thought, what the hell, what’s one more. A decision he’s been pretending to regret ever since.
“Something stupid.” He mutters in response - under in his breath, but apparently still loud enough for Emery to hear, because she snorts out a laugh. “Thought I might take a drive,” he continues, louder this time.
“I hear Boston is lovely this time of year.” Emery agrees, clicking a button on her keys so her trunk opens and gesturing at Jack to load all his presents into the car. The only thing worse, of course, than not showing up to Christmas dinner, would be leaving the kids high and dry for presents from an uncle with more money than he knows what to do with.
“Emery.” He says, once he’s finished transferring various boxes and bags into her car. Not a question, exactly, but not a statement either.
She rolls her eyes at him. “Didn’t take you for a coward, Abbot,” she tells him. Has said the same words to him only once before – in PT after he’d lost his leg and trying to walk again felt like something monumental, insurmountable. Then, just like now, it had made him put one foot in front of the other.
Love is a choice, after all – and Jack chooses to get in the car, point it towards Boston.
Christmas Eve, 2029:
Jack, as always, arrives early for Handover. Walks through the ambulance bay thinking about how (two years and twenty four hours ago) he’d pulled up out front of a hospital not unlike this one. Parked out front and waited for Samira’s shift to end, anxiety seizing in his chest. Wondering if he was too much; if he’d misjudged or misinterpreted.
The look on her face when she’d walked out of the ER doors and found him waiting, leant up against his car bonnet, will be burned into his mind until the day he dies.
Today, when he arrives at the hub, Samira nods at him in greeting – a little distracted, hair falling out of her bun in the way that he knows means it has been a busy shift. She’s talking to one of the interns – there’s a whole posse of them, new enough that Jack’s still getting to know all their names – and answering the young woman’s questions with the kind of intense focus that probably shouldn’t turn him on nearly as much as it actually does.
He simply stands and watches her for a long moment. Long enough that Dana, phone pressed to her ear and clearly on hold, shoots her elbow into his hip. “You going to clock in and get some work done or just stare at her all night, Loverboy?” She asks him, in an undertone. Dana has had his number where Samira’s been concerned since day one, but he appreciates her attempt at discretion nonetheless
“Don’t see why it can’t be both?” he mutter back, winking at her as he pushes off from the desk and saunters towards where Samira and the intern are standing. “Are you ready for handover, Dr Mohan?” he asks her.
“Only if you’re sure you don’t want me to stay any longer?” she half-offers, rolling her shoulders as she passes him her tablet. “We’ll finish this up next shift,” she adds, looking towards the intern with a smile, “I’ll email you that article I mentioned in the meantime.”
The intern, understanding that she’s been dismissed, albeit kindly, scampers back towards chairs, and Samira turns serious eyes and her full attention towards Jack. Giving him a rundown of where they are at with admissions and the growing queue of patients waiting to be taken upstairs.
Tomorrow morning - after she’s gone home, showered and shoved leftover takeout into her mouth; collapsed into the bed that’s gained at least three extra throw blankets since she moved back from Boston – she will pick him up and drive the three hours to his middle sister’s house on the outskirts of Philly, while he naps in the passenger seat.
Now though, he just smiles at her. The kind of smile that says more than words ever could. I love you and you’re incredible and be safe driving home, even if all he actually says out loud is, “Get some rest, Dr Mohan.” Ghosts a hand over the air next to her shoulder – as close as he usually gets to touching her when they are on shift together.
Somewhere to his left, Shen fake coughs. Jack follows the line of his outstretched arm (the one that isn’t clutching a takeaway Dunkin’ cup like it’s his single tether to sanity) and finds that someone – Ellis probably – has pinned a sprig of mistletoe above the hub.
Jack flips him off instinctively, but some part of him is tired of pretending that their colleagues don’t already suspect that there is something going on between them. That Samira hadn’t moved back from Boston five months ago and straight into his townhouse. That there isn’t a ring box, slid to the back of his sock drawer like a proper cliché.
Even so, he feels red heat sweeping up his cheekbones. He looks across at her, expecting to see an equally embarrassed grimace on her face, but instead she’s got one eyebrow arched, expectant and teasing.
Maybe they are both tired of hiding.
Moving slowly, telegraphing his movements – so as to give her a chance to object if she wants to – he moves his hand to her waist. Turns her towards him like he’s been doing every day for the last five months. When he dips his head slightly, she’s already moving to kiss him.
Somewhere behind him – distracted by the feel of her lips against his, the taste of sugar and strawberry chapstick - he registers the sound of a wolf whistle. A scatter of applause; a whoop.
Not now, but someday – someday soon – this same crowd of people will cheer when a judge pronounces the two of them man and wife. Will offer unsolicited, well-meant advice, about honeymoon locations and work life balance. At least one of them – Shen, obviously – will squeal so loudly when he notices a printed out ultrasound photo in Jack’s wallet at post-shift breakfast, that the waitress will think there is a legitimate medical emergency underway
And not now, but someday – three years from now, after a Christmas Eve shift not unlike this one – he will look up to find Samira standing among the quickly assembling day shift staff, wearing scrub pants and an oversize Christmas jumper that one of his niece’s bought him as a gag gift in the family secret Santa. Their daughter in her arms, babbling away at a charmed looking Robby. Watching them, he will think of every bad thing that’s happened to him in his life - and still, he will think, Christ, how did he ever get so lucky.
Now though, there’s just the flash of one of the polaroid cameras they usually used for victim identification in MCI’s, clutched tight in Parker Ellis’ steady hands. “Well,” she drawls, pocketing the printed image (which will make it onto the breakroom fridge by the end of shift) and holding her hand out towards Donny, who reluctantly passes her a twenty, “It’s a good thing HR closes up shop over Christmas.”
Jack, who can think of nothing else to do in the face of such unbridled joy, but press a kiss into the side of Samira’s hair and get to work, simply smiles.