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The fact that her week had been going too well was making Samira suspicious of what was coming in her direction, it was just too good to be true: Robby had complimented her once, which was a miracle in and on itself because he barely did that to her, she had made an incredible safe by figuring out a stroke that had been previously missed by a junior resident and they were able to do everything to prevent the patient from having any sequelae, she even had been able to attend the weekly hangout, standing by McKay who isn’t the one she’s closest with –both in age and interpersonal relationship–, but she had stood on the edge of the dancefloor, which was good enough for Samira. Things were going great for her, so during the last day before her day off she had spent the entirety of her shift dreading and fearing what might come in to take her peace of mind away.
The night shift arrived to relieve the day shift personnel and Samira felt almost relieved to pass on her patients that hadn't been dismissed yet to Dr. Parker, talking to her about any singularities she had been able to find during her one on one with them, small things that wouldn't really show up in the medical file, but that Samira still found helpful and important to be aware of, just in case. She looks at the big clock on the wall, pointing that in less than 15 minutes she'll be able to go home. Ever since the MCI from Pittfest, Samira has been better at turning off the doctor and just being herself out of her work. Better, however, doesn't necessarily mean perfect, and before a day off she feels that anxiety that almost smothers her, just at the prospect of being alone in a quiet, silent home that feels vacant of life, just messy bed lines she doesn't really have a reason to rearrange and never ending 24 hours of time for herself that would be better used if she was helping people in getting better health.
“Samira”, she knows her night is going south when Langdon approaches her, calling her by her name instead of Slow-Mo or Mohan, his eyes pleading, “New trauma just came in, Abbot's leading but he needs a senior resident and asked for me”, so far nothing he's saying really interests her, “But I have a, hm, thing to go to. Do you mind filling in?”
Samira looks at his demeanor, the anxious way he keeps touching the wedding band on his fourth finger, shifting the ring absentmindedly, very telling of what's the thing he has to go to. It isn't like she is close to Langdon in any way, on the contrary: he was her main rival in the race for the e.r fellowship –and despite having a letter of recommendation from Robby himself, Langdon hadn't got the spot, but neither had Samira. Even so, looking at him now, the guy looks pretty miserable to get to the point of offering up for free a trauma, so Samira simply nods, only then noticing Langdon already had his backpack on his shoulders, sure of her acceptance before her, but then it is too late to accuse him of being a dick for dumping this case on her just because he wants to go home, he's already halfway across the e.r for her to be heard without screaming, but he raises his voice an octave higher to let her know he owes her one.
Trying with all her might not to roll her eyes on the way to south five, Samira enters the procedure room to find Abbot alone with the patient. No nurses trying to get a BP reading, no EMTs to get back the gurney that sits beside the hospital bed where the woman is, and she frowns in confusion because this was supposed to be a trauma, but the most critical injury on this patient is a minimal bruise on the knee, likely from a fall, apart from that the woman is fine, or at least looks like. “Was this a big trauma?”, she asks, getting close to touching the knee with gloved hands, shifting the leg. Abbot turns like a whip at the sound of her voice, his eyes growing wide as he registers her presence here. Samira doesn't really try to read into it, because she's trying to find a femoral pulse, but feeling nothing. “We need to shock this woman”.
“Stop”, he says in a serious voice. Not that he wasn't serious in the few times she worked with him, Samira can tell Dr. Abbot takes his job as both a physician and teacher to future doctors very seriously, but often his tone is more than just serious, he makes witty remarks here and there, reassurance, a much more tolerant teacher than Robby, maybe the type to teach them with love rather than fear, definitely no depreciative nicknames. Now, his voice is deadly serious, with a gravity that makes Samira take a step back and lift her hands from the patient's dying body, even if it goes against her very instinct.
“What's wrong?” she asks, trying not to show that her heartbeat is increasing with fear.
“What are you doing here?”, he asks instead of answering. “I was talking to Dr. Langdon”. Samira tries not to let it hurt her pride, but she knows medicine every so often it's a guys club. It is like that to Robby, but she hadn't expected it to be like this to Abbot as well –she doesn't even know why she's guarding him at a higher standard than Robby, maybe because on the awful, shitty day after Pittfest he had stopped everything to teach her how to do a pigtail catheter.
“Langdon left, he had somewhere else to be”, she shrugs, not finding his eyes and looking at the patient. Apart from the smell of vomit and the bruise, Samira doesn't even know what this was supposed to be. Maybe Langdon hadn't also, that's why he had tried to sell it to her as if it was some big badass trauma that would be great for her practice before boards. That fucking guy. Whatever. “Aren't you going to do anything to revive her?”
“She's beyond saving”, he says and puts a blanket over the body. The machines didn't even beep to announce the death because there hadn't been any nurses here to connect it. “This woman is a possible case of anthrax poisoning”.
It makes sense, she thinks, to Abbot say this woman is beyond saving. Her being dressed up doesn't allow it, but Samira knows if they were to search her body, they would find skin lesions that would announce the cause of death before they even needed to perform an autopsy. She doesn't even register the small oh that leaves her mouth because now she's doing her very best not to make a fool out of herself and pass out in front of her attending. It takes a few deep breaths for the lightheaded feeling to go away, but when she's back at normal self Abbot is staring at her with regret.
“Didn't mean to snap at you”, he starts, “I asked Langdon to help me with a case of severe vomiting and diarrhea, only a couple minutes after they let me know what was the case. I was already exposed to it, and texted Langdon not to come”.
Samira nods, but her mind is doing turns around the information that she may or may not have been exposed to anthrax. First of all, she's feeling almost offended at seeing Pittsburgh, of all towns, to be a possible target for an anthrax attack: Pittsburgh isn't close enough to Philadelphia to make a bigger target, nor it is the center of the American government or a big touristy city like NYC, so what the hell is this? Samira tries to think back to everything she knows about the substance, but her mind is a total blank. All she remembers is that it is deadly.
“Mh-kay”, is what she manages to shoot back in response.
“The decontamination team is on the way”, Abbot says, his voice now in a very, very soothing tone.
“Mh-kay”.
“Samira”, hearing her name makes her feel more grounded and she looks up. Abbot must be able to read her like a book because he leaves the side of the gurney he's on to be side by side with Samira. She is surprised to feel his hands on her shoulders, turning her towards him and away from the body. It's a complete waste of contact, she thinks, because above the scrubs sleeves and the isolation gown and his hands inside gloves, Samira can't really feel nothing but the slight pressure that Abbot uses to try and bring her to normal. At least, she tries to comfort herself, Abbot wasn't actually wanting to work exclusively with Langdon.
She has to remind herself that this is not a death sentence, this was a possibility of death only, and Abbot is here, so at the very least she can take comfort in knowing she won't be dying alone, but it is such a shame for emergency medicine, the medical area closest to to lose a battlefield, lose such a great warrior, and a great teacher too. She might die before she even finishes her residency and does great things herself.
“Ok. I'm okay”, she says, and her ability to at least talk again must reassure Abbot enough for him to finally let go of her shoulders, which he does in a reluctant way, as if apprehensive she might dwell into the gravity of the situation again.
He nods, his soft hum of agreement carrying a note of suspicion, but he starts reaching for his back to try and undo the tie the isolation gown he has own, fumbling with the knot until Samira sighs with resignation and walks up to him, turning her finger to indicate for him to turn around. It’s a small touch, the smallest of all because there isn’t even contact between them as she still has her gloves on while untying his gown, pushing it away from his shoulders so he can take it off, but to be this close with Abbot is making her head spin. She can notice things she never did before, like he has freckles on the back of his neck, the way his vertebrae move under his skin, the hair that’s darker on the nape.
“Thanks”, he says turning to her again, making Samira drop her eyes to the floor because this isn’t the most appropriate thing to do, think about him in such way, but if he noticed he didn’t say a thing about, only reaching from where he is, still face to face with her, to her back, untying her gown as well.
Samira has to swallow, very deliberately avoiding anything other than their feet –hers in crocs, his in sports sneakers– and ignoring the fact that if he were to hold on to her back, this would be a really uncomfortable angle, but she wouldn’t mind, she wouldn’t mind at all. She doesn’t know what the hell has possessed her to shift her thinking about Abbot in a 360º to the point she’s now seeing him under a different light. Maybe it is the fact that he’s wearing dark blue scrubs, instead of black, which makes his eyes look clearer than ever before, maybe –she tells herself this is the reason– it is because they are in a high stress, high emotional situation and she’s just trying to find something, anything, else to think about instead of the imminent risk she and he are both under. So she lets herself focus on the way his bare hands are touching the delicate skin of her neck, without even seeing what he’s doing, quickly untying the knot of the gown, but lingering on her skin for what seems both too quick and too long, before his hand drops.
“Thanks”, it is her time to offer a sheepish acknowledgement while she takes a conscious step back to take the gown completely, along with her gloves and copying him by throwing it inside the trash bin. “Do you– Have you ever been in a situation like this before?”, she asks, standing in front of him, her arms crossed in front of her chest.
“Not exactly like this, but similar”, he answers, “Instead of anthrax was botulism, you know, the toxin. It was an accident, much different than what this seems like it. But the proceedings are pretty much the same”.
Abbot proceeds to tell Samira what will happen, from the moment he contacted Robby to let him know what was going on, he had been waiting for the phone on the wall to ring again and let him –now them– that the decontamination team sent by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention had arrived. Then they would pass through the decontamination process, be put in quarantine, receive preventative medicine just in case it is a real attack of anthrax, but by now Samira is back –mostly– to her normal self, hearing Jack talking is stopping her from spiraling, and she can remember what she does know about anthrax.
During 9/11, that took most of the attention from the whole country, the other side of the coast had suffered a terrorist attack as well, only using biological weapons by spreading the anthrax virus via postal system, which led to 22 infections and resulted in 5 deaths. Samira only remembers this because, in between pedes and emergency medicine, she had researched which area would be more fitting for her, finding the lack of efficiency to the anthrax attack in the E.R’s very sad, because if the doctors had been prepared for it, maybe there wouldn’t be any deaths.
Before she can answer him, the phone rings on the wall, Abbot is quick to reach his arm and answer the call on the first ring. His face doesn’t let on a thing, which she doesn’t know if it is better or worse, and she waits for any useful information, but he only answers with yes or no. Once he puts the phone back on the hook, Samira is almost on the tip of her feet. “Well?”, she asks anxiously. Abbot shakes his head after a deep breath.
“Decontamination time”, he says and as if invited, two CDC agents enter the procedure room, wearing white hazmat suits that almost makes her shiver. Samira can’t even tell if they are both guys because the protection mask changes their voices when they tell that both Samira and Jack –referring to them as doctors– must take off their clothes. All of it. One agent is quickly setting up the decontamination shower on the edge of the procedure room, close to the back door, and Samira wants to whimper because despite having plastic walls, it resembles more the cheap curtains she has in her own bathroom back at home, that despite shielding her from being completely exposed, it still on the brink of being transparent and not leaving much to imagination.
“Hm”, she says, still dressed, “Wanna be the first one to go?” and Abbot shakes his head no.
“You go first, Dr. Mohan”, he says.
Samira does so, turning towards the shower to take off her scrubs under the gaze of the CDC agents, but she could swear that she can hear Abbot’s feet moving as he turns around to allow her the most privacy possible in the tight space they’re in. She enters under the cold water, thankful for the poor privacy the plastic walls give her and follows the instructions, fifteen minutes under the water and rinsing her body, washing her arms and legs, trying not to feel shy as the CDC agent follows her every movement while guiding her, as in a decontamination mimic, telling her to wash behind her ears and between her fingers, as if she’s a child. Samira thinks back to the beginning of this shitty end of the shift, wondering if the rest of the hospital is out there, worrying about her and Abbot, as scared as she is by the sight of these crazy hazmat suits.
She is feeling her skin almost sore from so much scrubbing, definitely with a shade of red-ish on her arms where she had copied the agent to clean herself, and then it signals to her to turn off the shower and get out of the room, following the other agent. Wrapped in a towel, she steps out of the room, turning her head to find that the body had been already taken, and Abbot is wearing his birthday suit, so she quickly averts her eyes before she can see anything other than his torso.
They must be going to the quarantine room Abbot had told her about, she thinks, as the other agent –is this a third one?– guides her through the hallways of the hospital she already knew, but right now are empty. The time waiting in the procedure room must have been the time it took for the CDC to find a route out of the possibly infected room and to make sure the way of two possibly infected doctors was free of anyone not wearing a hazmat suit. This agent is much more communicative, but Samira isn’t exactly in the mood for talking. She puts on the sealed pajamas the agent, who introduced himself as Agent Clark, pointed out as available in one of the two beds inside the quarantine room as soon as they had reached it, Samira ignores her wet hair dripping against the fabric even after she dried her head.
“Dr. Abbot”, she is surprised by the relief in her own voice when he enters the room with Agent Clark, who tells him the same about the pjs he had told her, but Samira is focused on Abbot. It doesn’t really matter that he’s naked from the waist up, as the towel is wrapped against his hipbone, Samira reaches up to him, stopping herself just in time not to throw her arms around a semi naked man with whom, being honest, she’s really not that close to. “I thought they were going to keep us separated”.
It had taken more than fifteen minutes, the time of her own shower she took, she was sure of it, even if there was no clock to check it. Maybe it was because he had been exposed longer than her –before she entered the room, after she had already left–, whatever it was she was already pacing the floor from one side to the other, feeling like a caged animal after agent Clark had gone and locked the door behind him. She’s not sure if she would’ve been able to handle being alone now, not when she barely manages to be alone on a regular day off, leaving her home to study at the public library just to see people. Samira doesn’t do “on her own” very well, and right now, frightened like a child and feeling anxious to the point she considers going back to the bad habit of nibbing on her fingernails, she’s grateful Abbot is here with her. “I’ll, hm, let you get dressed”, she says finally, walking towards the bed she had taken the pajamas she has on.
She half hears Agent Clark letting them know he will go now, as they are examining the contents of “white powder” inside the dead patient’s home, alongside the Homeland Security Agency, and Samira lays on the bed on her side, giving Abbot the grace of getting dressed without being watched, but she can still hear him ripping open the plastic bag and grunting as he puts on the pants and shirt. She is surprised to see him by the end of the hospital bed she’s on after a couple minutes, holding on to the frame and Samira sits up, legs crisscrossing, and she looks at him.
“Mind if I sit here?”, he asks.
“They took your leg”, she says at the same time, very rudely so when she notices he wasn’t with his prosthetic leg, but Abbot’s face is not angry, although he does a movement with his mouth that she sees as annoyed, but could be wrong.
“They have to do the right decontamination process for an item that will be used on a daily basis”, he says and shrugs. Samira nods, understanding, but he must interpret as the answer to his previous request to sit on the bed with her because then he hops on the bed. Samira doesn’t have time to be surprised because Abbot shifts on the bed till he is sitting side by side with her, their shoulders pressing against, as well as their thighs, and Samira tries to focus on her breath, although maybe that is for the worse because then she can only inhale Abbot’s smell –the same as hers, chemical soap they used and ionized water–, only in him it’s got an undertone of something fresh and masculine, maybe the remnant of his shampoo.
“Ah, well, at least it will be cleaner than ever”, she doesn’t say it with an intent of joking, but it must come off as such because Abbot laughs at that, and Samira chuckles to join him.
It shouldn’t feel comforting, she thinks, being in the same bed with a man she’s coworkers with, not while there’s another bed totally empty, but somehow it is, feeling the rise and fall of Abbot’s shoulders as he breathes in and out by her side is soothing, and suddenly the tiredness of the day catches up to her: she had been up from as early as the sunrise, worked a whole shift and now this. Most people from the day shift must already be cosy at their own couches and beds, maybe eating dinner, but Samira is still here, too stressed to even feel hungry, and she reclines back on the bed, adjusting her legs so Abbot has more space for his, and she says that she’s only closing her eyes to give them a rest from the white lights, but she drifts off into sleep despite her best attempts to cling into consciousness.
“Samira”, the first thing she notices as she wakes up is the absence of a shoulder against hers, making her open up her eyes in a hurry, only to find Abbot hovering above her. “We’ll have to do blood tests”, she must look very, very confused because he quickly clarifies; “They did tests on the patient, the white powder at her home wasn’t a bioweapon, but her skin lesion indicates that it could be yersinia pestis”.
“The plague?”, she says, sitting up, making Abbot recede back, but for a quick second they are an inch away from each other’s face. “Like, yersinia pestis as in the black plague?”
Abbot just shrugs because yes, indeed. Samira knows this is good news, being exposed to the plague is much less deadly than being exposed to anthrax, which would demand finding which strain the virus had developed and time would be of the essence; no, it is significantly less bad. It doesn’t change, however, her shock, and she tries her best to look restrained and put together while Abbot collects the material CDC must have dropped so they can draw blood from one another.
Samira does her best not to stare, but doesn’t avert her eyes, while Abbot ties the yellow rubber tourniquet around his own arm, biting down on one end as he makes sure the knot is well secured. She had been trying to fight back the remaining sleep after being woken up, but the sight of Abbot flexing his arm, opening and closing his hand to make his veins pop, makes her very much alert. She takes a breath before taking the needle he’s offering her. “You know”, she says before uncapping the needle, “I haven’t really been drawing blood ever since my intern year”. It’s part of the nurses’ job to do so, and Samira would trust Dana or Perlah to do this with their eyes closed without bursting a single vein; she, however, is much more used to other procedures.
“It’s like walking a bike”, he says in a very nonchalant tone, Samira doesn’t think he would mind very much if she were to pinch him wrong twice, “You never forget it”.
She stands in front of him while he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his arm flexed towards her and if this was a normal interaction between doctor-patient, Samira wouldn’t really be standing so close to Abbot, she wouldn’t be placed in front of him in a way her knees often are scrapping against his legs the hang on the edge of the bed. She doesn’t make any effort to put distance between them, and Abbot’s either ignorant to it, not overthinking like she is, or he doesn’t mind. Touching his elbow to steady his arm, she cleans with alcohol and tries not to think about how he could very easily touch her waist or hips. With a careful hand, Samira places the needle in the right angle, a little bit more difficult to do while she’s standing up, but fortunately she hits the right popped vein in her first attempt and collects a tube before pulling out the needle and placing a single ball of cotton to stop the bleeding,
“Perfect execution, Dr. Mohan”, Abbot says, retracting his arm from her touch, and Samira sits down, feeling proud of the compliment in the same intensity she felt when he had told her she had done a good job with the pigtail catheter, although this is like med school 101.
“You’ll do me?”she asks, flexing her own arm. At his delayed response, Samira lifts her gaze to find his eyes wide, and only then it hits her the double meaning of what she just said. “Hm, I didn’t-”
Before she can justify herself, tell him that she hadn’t meant it like that, that it was a misunderstanding and she is sorry for the embarrassing question, the lock on the door clicks and they both turn to see Agent Clark with the other two of his teammates. “You two are free to go”, one of the unnamed agents says, maybe the boss, “The woman had tularemia, she tried self medication and died as a result of that, hence the vomit and diarrhea”. He looks to Abbot, “Your prosthetic had already been taken to our facilities when we got the results of her exam, but we’ll deliver it to your house, Doctor”.
“Oh”, Samira searches her mind for the diagnosis and treatment of tularemia, but falls short in finding the answer. Maybe an opportunity to learn about it. Tomorrow, maybe the day after, after the exhaustion wears off, but it must not be contagious from human to human since they are letting them go, Samira knows how much CDC is careful with their quarantines. The agents don't linger around the door much longer after they tell them they are free to go, maybe they have more important things to do, real infectious diseases. Samira turns her head from the door to Abbot, “That’s the worst first date ever”. An attempt at a joke, but she regrets it as soon as it is out there, mostly because right after her do me question it seems two inappropriate things for them to deal with.
“First date, huh?”, he says with a kittenish smirk that makes her feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise up, “I dunno, I had it worse than this”.
“Mass casualty incident in the Fort Pitt Bridge”, Robby starts. It’s 5 p.m. and the E.R. team is ready to leave in a couple hours at the end of their shift, shit, Robby himself looks disheveled and stressed, the neckline of his scrubs suffering under his grip as he does his best to look composed in front of the team he leads. “EMTs are not being enough to deal with all the victims and potential patients, they asked for three or four doctors to volunteer to attend the scene, help with first care and triage” he lets that settle in and Samira doesn’t hesitate before raising her arm as the first to offer to be on scene.
She barely registers who else is going with her apart from McKay, the last she heard was Robby saying he’ll be available on phone if anyone needs orientation, but primarily he will be handling the arrivals as they come, along with Dana, in case of overflowing in the nearest hospitals to the accident. It doesn’t take long for them to be out in the ambulance bay, first aid kits on their backpacks, windbreakers on so they can stand the wind near the Ohio River and the stethoscope around their necks. Samira enters in the back of the ambulance with Garcia –thank goodness there’ll be a surgeon at the scene, Samira knows how ugly it can get– and Langdon, McKay rides shotgun with the EMT and a nurse, surpassing the number of volunteers needed, but Samira is too thankful that she won’t have to be the one making small talk to care –which, mostly, she loves to do, but as of now her stomach is turning with anxiety.
The last MCI they had to handle had been a complete nightmare, the perspective of doing the same kind of work they had to do on Pittfest is making her almost unsure –almost– of being a volunteer, but then the ambulance is moving at high speed and they brace themselves best they can while they wait to arrive at the scene and she doesn’t have time to overthink anymore. Samira smells it before she can even see from the back of the ambulance, the smell of smoke and she knows they are closer.
“Dr. Mohan” it is Abbot’s voice, surprisingly, that greats her as he offers her a hand to help her get out from the back of the ambulance, “Nice of you to join us here”. It had been less than thirty minutes to get to the scene, the Presbyterian, and other two hospitals, are closer to this than PTMC, but Samira figures as they are the first to get patients they can’t really dispose of medical personnel to help. Samira doesn’t know how in this tight timeframe it was possible for Abbot to get the notice that they were needed here, and it must be showing very clearly on her face because he shrugs. “I was watching TV”.
“In that case”, she says, turning from him to watch McKay and nurse Emma walking up to them, “Nice of you to join us”, she returns with a smile.
Once they are all lined up around Abbot, he starts to give them directions, nothing they didn’t know already, but it is helpful, at least she finds, to be reminded that sometimes you have to give up on a patient too critical to help another one who stands a better chance at surviving. They were supposed to work in pairs, but the scene is in deep chaos that the most they can do is work in the same quadrant, Garcia telling them to page her 9-1-1 if they see someone in immediate need of surgical attention, and runs to the furthest part of the scene along nurse Emma. McKay is left with Langdon, going on opposite sides to where Samira and Abbot go.
It hadn’t been a smart choice, Samira realizes, to volunteer. She loved the sanctity of the hospital –its security, lighted hallways and smoke-free environment too much– and now she is in the middle of the mass casualty. Robby hadn’t told them what they would be walking into –shit, he hadn’t even told them Abbot would be there, but Samira figures Abbot could’ve called just after they left– and seeing it so close, only being allowed to be this close to the accident because she’s wearing a badge that says doctor in capital letters. The accident could’ve been worse, she’s not an engineer but considering the bridge stands tall still it’s a good sign, but the tourist-filled boat that crashed against the underside of the bridge structure has stopped the traffic. There’s multiple cars piled up in a multiple vehicle accident, Samira can hear someone crying in the distance, but she’s too busy to do anything about it.
All of a sudden she understands the E.R rush Robby’s been trying to set into her mind and, although she doesn’t actually agree with him to apply this to every case she handles, she knows there’s no time to do anything other than what’s strictly necessary. Abbot is a figure in her sight, the only familiar one, but he is moving like a devil between people sitting in the ground, assessing their injuries and putting on green or yellow or red wristbands to mark their order of priority. Samira does the same, most people are just confused after being in a big accident and she has to stop herself, very consciously, from stopping by their side and trying to comfort them or engaging in conversation whenever someone tries to initiate it as her hands move to examine their injuries.
Samira gets lost in the loop of it: finding the most critical patient that demanded a transfer to a hospital, trying her all to maintain them alive until the next available ambulance showed up, helping with minor injuries –bandaging, administering sublingual Ativan for people in emotional distress– and applying local anesthetic on a small child, no older than 5, with a nasty cut on the forearm. She doesn't even realize the kid is her last patient, along with his mother wearing a yellow band on the wrist. Abbot approaches her from the side, observing while she wraps gauze on the arm because this is not the right place with the right equipment for her to try and sew it like she would've liked to do. She is only half conscious of his presence by her side, his attentive eyes glaring from above her shoulder, and only half of it enough to make her all too aware of every single thing that is not most appropriate.
Abbot being this close gives Samira a chance to try and figure out what his fragrance is, under all the smell of smoke: something greeny, maybe bamboo? Definitely some type of minty scent. It got stuck in her mind after they had shared a bed. When she turns her face to catch his glance from behind she can even see the shadow of a stubble growing on his face, as grey as his hair. His eyes, to her surprise, are actually green instead of blue as she had first thought, maybe an influence of the blinding white lights from the hospital. Here, under the growing twilight that spreads on the horizon as the sun sets, Samira can ignore just for a second the fact that they are in between patients, waiting for an ambulance and just try and figure out if the shade of his irises are closer to basil or olive.
“Hey”, she snaps out of it, as well as he, when Garcia's voice approaches them. Samira had missed the arrival of the rig, and she would've protested saying her patient with her son needs it more urgently, but one look at Garcia's patient being rolled out with an open femur fracture makes it very clear that they can wait a little bit longer. “Going back to the PTMC. Want me to take the kid?”
Samira looks at the kid's mom, and she refuses profusely. She can't imagine the amount of pain this woman is feeling with a broken sternum going untreated with nothing more than the last available Tylenol Samira had at hand, so she tries to reassure her that as soon as the next ambulance arrives and they go to PTMC, she'll make sure that mom and son will be together, even as her treatment goes, it’s clearly important to her to not lose sight of her kid.
“We're lucky you were watching tv earlier”, she says when Abbot comes closer. Samira is trying not to succumb to exhaustion, she's been up since before 6 a.m. and is close to 8 p.m. Normally, she's all for the workaholic-ism of it all, she's practically married to emergency medicine and thrives under the pressure, the high stakes and the risks, but today, this afternoon, had been a mess, and despite PTMC sending more than requested, she isn't sure she would've been able to handle without Abbot here. It was his presence here that made her sure to deal with a piece of glass impaled into the left chest without having to call Robby. She simply met his eyes, her hand lifting from the injury so he could see and he just… Gave her a thumbs up. Samira knew what to do, she remembers as if it was yesterday Abbot's voice saying it was too risky for me. And just like that she had made sure that a patient triaged as red would be going to the hospital as a yellow after she made sure the guy's heart wasn't leaking air, a complicated procedure to do in the middle of the road, but it was what made sure he left alive.
“And I'm lucky I got an amazing resident taking initiative”, he says. Samira tries to force a smile, but isn't sure it was successful, lucky her Abbot doesn't seem to mind much.
The ambulance arrives. Three EMTs get out of the rig, and Samira really is grateful that this is over as they help to place her patient into the back, Abbot helping the kid to get in the back with his mother, telling the EMT that will go with them to give a morphine drip to the mother if available. The broken sternum and a couple bruised ribs must hurt like hell because she whimpers at the slightest movement, her eyes filled with tears. She's still fighting not to drop a single one since her kid is here to see and be scared by it. Maybe it would’ve been better if the child had gone with Garcia, but Samira wasn’t much of a fan of adding trauma to a day this woman or kid would ever forget as it was already.
One of the EMT gets behind the steering wheel, the other joins him, shotgun, and the last one is on the back, administering the right amount of morphine Abbot indicated. She then sees the simple mathematical problem that there are too many people for too little seats.
“You go”, she tells Abbot. Her shift is pretty much over by now and there’s not really a need for her to go to the hospital other than to make sure her words to this woman are kept.
“Where do you live?”, he asks her.
“Sixth avenue”.
“Mohan, that’s on the other side of this bridge, the traffic is chaos. You go and I’ll wait for the next rig”. Abbot says and Samira doesn’t wanna accept it, not when the only one that can help her patient in being united with her son is him, who heard her making the promise.
“Look, you two”, the driver says, his voice high in the night now that things are quieter. “There won’t be a next ambulance, the rest of the team is trying to make sure everyone that was on the bridge is being taken to the hospital. Let’s go.”
If the child had gone with Garcia, she would’ve been placed in the back, along the patient, but since the boy is back there, and there’s only one more seat, Samira has to accept the fact that there isn’t a getting out of this situation, only if she’s willing to walk home without any of her belongings including the bus pass, which really she isn’t. She exchanges a look with Abbot, they are very much aware of the seating arrangement needed, and Samira tries to ask without words, not really comfortable in talking in front of the EMTs, if he’s ok with it, his nod is small, but confident, so she signals for Abbot to get into the ambulance, following behind and sitting on his lap.
In emergency medicine, often the rules are bent, broken, ignored or pushed to the limit, so maybe law enforcement can look past the fact that the vehicle has reached overcapacity, and so help her God, Samira hopes this isn’t an HR issue, it’s the most unorthodox thing she has ever got to do in the name of her work: sit on top of another workmate. She turns her head to be able to see Abbot, “Am I too heavy?”, she asks, anxious.
“No, Mohan”, his answer almost comes off as dry, but the way she stands close to him she can feel the way his Adam's apple shifts as he swallows.
The drive back to the hospital is the longest she has ever taken, even with the sirens on and the nervous foot of the EMT never leaving the accelerate pedal, Samira feels the time shifting in a way the feels longer and longer, and no matter how many streets they cross, they are never getting closer to the hospital it seems, as if under the power of the titan of time Kronos. Abbot never moves under her legs, but Samira often is moved by physics and whenever there’s a curve to take or a very sudden reduction of their speed, his arm wraps itself around her waist, his hand holding tight to her ribcage to make sure Samira stays at she is, and it’s a very ridiculous the sense of safety she feels. Fuck the fact she’s not wearing any seatbelt and if they were to crash, she would be in a bad spot, it doesn’t change the fact that Samira is able to relax against his body.
Which maybe isn’t the best idea, because by doing so she is touching him pretty much everywhere, with all her body, her back against his chest and their hips closer than it would be acceptable with her backside against his groin and her thighs touching his. It doesn’t matter that there’s six barriers of clothes keeping them apart, the sheer knowledge that they are pretty much in a grinding each other is enough to make Samira both horny and ashamed, and it doesn’t really help when Abbot’s chin rest against her shoulder, it only puts the thought on her mind that his lips are very close to kissing her neck. That’s the most action Samira has gotten in god knows how long. It’s so intimate, much more than it had been sitting beside each other in a single bed a few weeks ago when the whole anthrax-not-anthrax shit happened, and it’s because there’s new points of contact, and Abbot’s breath against her ear.
“Is this ok?”, he asks, opening and closing his hand that keeps a tight hold on her waist, his thumb touching her on the area of her –fuck anatomy classes, god– costal cartilage and Samira doesn’t trust herself to say anything so she simply nods, which makes her ear tickles when it touches his hair. She has to be very mindful of her own breathing, trying not to let on the fact that she’s feeling more than she should about this. There’s a bump followed by a swerve that makes her hand reach down and hold onto his forearm in spite of herself, an involuntary physical response really, but Abbot tightens his hold around her. “I’ve got you”.
When the ambulance reduces the speed to enter the parking area behind PTMC, Samira’s foot is launched to the back before she can stop it, hitting his prosthetic leg. “They gave you your leg back” and the EMT in the middle looks at her very weird because if you don’t know the context, it would be a very weird thing to hear, but Abbot laughs and it hits her nape with the warmth of his breath.
“They did, but I’m with another one”.
Samira waits until the rig is totally stopped –God forbid she commits another traffic infraction for another six months, at the very least– and reaches for the door handle so she can open the door and leave this ambulance and go home. Her backside moves on top of Abbot’s lap at this, very slightly –she had tried to keep her weight not entirely on him the whole time, her abdominal muscles are protesting in return– and she can feel his, hm, shaft. She holds on a breath and can tell he pretty much is doing the same, so she lifts her butt from his body entirely and opens up the door, almost taking a jump to finally be free from the never ending ride that, at last, had finished. It takes only a second for Abbot to follow her, exiting the ambulance with careful step on the floor, adjusting the waistline of his pants, which is enough for Samira to change her glance from him to the back of the ambulance, where the EMTs are already helping the woman out, rolling her gurney into the hospital after Abbot said he will be there in a second.
“Want me to stay?”, Samira asks, it’s not like they’ll be filled with patients since most had been taken to the hospitals closer to the accident site, but this one patient is the one she helped and half of her, the half that is not tired beyond what she ever knew was possible, wants to stay here and see the rest of her case through.
“No”, he answers quickly, and then cleans his throat. “No, ahrm, it isn’t needed. I’ll make sure mom and kid stay together at all times. If they are discharged before your shift starts tomorrow, I’ll let you know.”
“Do you have my number?”, Samira asks and Abbot must have another interpretation of what she’s saying because he turns his neck to the side like a very confused dog while staring at her and then shakes his head no. “Do you have your phone with you now?”, she asks and he hands it to her after he gets the phone out of his back pocket. Samira tries not to smile at his wallpaper, the logo of the Pittsburgh hockey team, and writes her number, saving the contact info as in Samira Mohan PTMC.
“I don’t know another Samira Mohan”, he says as he takes back his phone and stares at the screen.
“Good to know”, she says and walks into the hospital after waving goodbye, almost running, because she fears that if she stays in the presence of Dr. Abbot a second longer she will do something very, very stupid.
Samira feels her head aching in protest for the lack of sleep when she walks out of a patient’s room to deliver the blood sample to the lab, what could be an intern’s job, but she’s trying to flee from the E.R room because it is close to 7 p.m and that means Abbot will be here in a few minutes, and that always means receiving a smirk from Cassie whenever she catches him arriving. It was maybe a bad idea to have trusted Cassie and told her that she might, just might, have teeniest tiniest crush on Abbot, and ever since this half-drunk confession her friend –Samira has to call her her friend now– had been very much oblivious to the signs of discomfort Samira shows, keeping on the shared knowing glances, and she can only hope Abbot himself hadn’t noticed. It takes a second for Samira to be met by Cassie and her plans of walking alone are down the drain.
“I have something to tell you” McKay says, walking beside her as she heads to the elevator.
“Can’t it wait? I have to drop these downstairs” she raises her hand, signaling to the blood drawn.
“I’ll join you, no worries” she pushes the elevator button and Samira has to contain herself from sighing. It was definitely a bad idea to have told Cassie about her crush, since then she was getting closer and closer to Samira, sharing E.R gossip and checking in to see how she’s doing and Samira isn’t really used to the whole friendship thing. She knows McKay is well intended, but that doesn’t make it any less weird to get used to being included. “Wanna know what it is?” McKay asks as soon as the elevator’s doors close, locking them inside. Samira simply nods because she doesn’t want to hurt Cassie’s feelings, and turns her head towards her friend.
“Everyone is talking about how Abbot’s finally stopped wearing his wedding ring” Cassie can barely disguise her smile, as if she’s telling Samira something amazing. It was old gossip about Dr. Jack Abbot being a widower that wasn’t really open to all and any invitations for get togethers one-on-one, going on a date or simply making out to blow off some steam with a random coworker. It was, indeed, new gossip, the fact that he had stopped wearing it, the symbol that kept any person with a little less courage, his wedding band on his finger shined as bright as a red stop sign. And now he has parted from it.
“Hm” she starts without even knowing how to finish, “I- I think it’s a good thing” Samira shrugs and Cassie simply raises a brow, but she doesn’t know what her friend expected her to say. Maybe she expected Samira to ask for her to be her wingwoman and act in her interests by setting up a date with Abbot, but she won’t ask her that.
“I’ll go back up”, Cassie says, not even getting out of the elevator once they reach the lab floor, maybe unsatisfied by Samira’s lack of interest in the big news of the E.R.
Samira is thankful for the silence as she walks up to the lab to ask for a CBC and BMP. Her mind, however, is in complete turmoil. Ever since the MCI, when she had very bravely taken Abbot’s phone and wrote her own number on it, they had been texting. Silly things, mostly, not even full on conversations, more like she would send him a text that would only be answered in three or four hours, along the answer an article he had read and found interesting, she would mock his beloved Penguins when they lost, which created the ridiculous habit of walking up to buy the newspaper on the bodega near her building after game day –she refused to actually watch the thing–, ignoring everything but the crosswords and the sports section.
Before catching the elevator again, she heads back to the lab when she hears her name being called by one of the lab techs that, at least it’s what she thinks, likes her. The guy lets her know one of her other patient’s test results are in and Samira thanks him with a smile, avoiding the longer eye contact he shifts in her direction because she already unlocked her phone to find a notification from Abbot, but she opens up the hospital’s system first.
As if summoned by her sheer never-ending thinking of him, as the elevator’s door opens up, Abbot himself exits the cubicle, registers her presence there with a quick movement of his eyebrows and walks towards the lab with a plastic bag on hand. Mid walk, as Samira walks into the elevator and presses the E.R floor, Abbot turns in the middle of the hallway. “Hey, do you mind holding up the doors?”. Samira does mind. She very much does, because apart from texting –which she doesn’t have to face him– she had been avoiding him around the E.R in a very careful dance around patients, walking up to Dr. Parker, who arrives earlier to make the patients’ exchange at the shift change and even using the bathroom on the floor above the E.R, just so she won’t cross his way whenever he comes in or out the attending’s lounge. But she’s her mother’s daughter through and through, so she simply holds on the door, pressing the “doors open” button until she sees Abbot walking from the lap towards the elevator, the small, almost unnoticeable drag of his prosthetic foot a flair in his stance.
“Thanks”, he says and Samira nods, a smile in her mouth that she can’t seem to make it stop from appearing whenever Jack Abbot directs her his words. “Penguins will be playing this Sunday”, he says in his nonchalant voice as he reclines against the elevator’s wall, his eyes on Samira waiting for her reaction.
“Then I guess by Monday I’ll have three or four new articles on arrhythmias, respiratory failure and techniques to remove objects from the anal canal, depending on the result of this game”, Samira says after a couple seconds and Abbot full on laughs, like, belly laughs to the point his body bends forward.
“Samira Mohan”, he starts, still a lingering smile on the corner of his mouth. Damn rascal. “Not even our third date yet and you’re already mentioning anal canal”, he does a tesc-tesc while clicking his tongue, his left hand moving to mess with his hair.
She doesn’t know what she likes most, the way he says her name with such intimity or the absence of a shiny ring on his fourth finger. “Third date? We haven’t even had the second”. She remembers quite well the anthrax accident when in an attempt to make a joke to lighten up the situation, she had called their confinement together –while being mostly naked in front of one another and laying on the same bed– their first date. Abbot goes with it, but Samira doesn’t really know what second date he’s referring to.
“I would’ve thought that maybe being in an ambulance on top of me would’ve left a more lingering impression”, he raises his eyebrows, “But I just might be a cocky bastard”.
“I don’t know about bastard”, she starts, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, “But cocky–”.
His laugh is interrupted the moment the elevator jams into space, stopping entirely, the power dying quickly and even the light of the cubicle turns off from very bright to barely there. Not even the soft humming sound the elevator’s engine does is on right now and Samira shuts her eyes closed because despite not being necessarily afraid of elevator, she does not have much patience in herself to be locked anywhere –same feeling that had took over her when the CDC agent had locked her up into the quarantine room.
Before she can even think of doing anything, Abbot is already pressing the phone call button inside the elevator, trying to contact maintenance. Samira takes a breath before pulling her phone from the back pocket, the little stripes that indicate the intensity of the signal are on the lowest level and she writes up to Robby locked into the elevator, Dr. Abbot is here too and she tries to send it, staring at the screen as if the mere angry expression on her face is enough to make the text go through.
“By the way the maintenance guy asked me over and over if there was a patient with us”, Abbot starts and Samira lowers her phone to turn to him, the blue-ish light from her screen making him look almost phantasmagoric, “Makes me wonder how many times the hospital has been sued for a patient that got stuck inside the elevator”.
“Did he tell anything about them coming to fix the elevator?”, she asks after a smile at his attempt at a joke.
“No”, Abbot clears his throat, “The company that handles the elevator emergency sent its techs to another building that has the same problem right now as well, as soon as they finish there they’ll come to PTMC”.
Samira nods, sliding down the elevator’s wall to the floor, sitting with her legs crossed. If they’ll have to wait for potentially more than an hour, she might as well be seated. Abbot copies her and sits by her side, not really touching, but not really distant either. Hospital elevators are gigantic, they have to be in order to fit multiple doctors, nurses and a gurney with a patient in it during an emergency that demands that a patient must be brought to CT or straight into surgery. So it is a surprise to her that he chooses the place right next to her.
Maybe it is like the anthrax situation, where they had both been anxious and needed the constant reminder that another human being was there, in the same situation as you are. Samira takes off the remaining latex glove on her left hand and pushes it into her pocket, along with her phone –the text to Robby is still to be sent and she'll lose her mind of checking it every five seconds. Instead, she pulls her legs close to her chest and looks at Abbot at her side, but he's already looking at her, and she gives him a small smile, which is all she can master at the moment. “I'm not the biggest fan of tight spaces”, she confesses.
“Talk to me”, he offers. It's a genuine offer, Samira can tell, and his eyes are locked in on her face.
“About what?”, she asks, absentmindedly her voice dropping to a whisper as if they are sharing a secret here, apart from everyone else and the chaos outside.
“Hm”, he hums, considering. “Tell me something you never told anyone”.
Samira considers the question and she has to think about it, searching for something she can share with Abbot that she never told anyone else. She considers telling him she's into him, that would be something, but she has told Cassie already. She considers telling him about how it had been her dad's passing that pushed her into medicine, but it's way too dark and they're already in a shitty situation for her to make it worse by talking about a subject that is sure to make her cry.
“I know”, she says after a brief silence, “I refused the acceptance from Harvard med school, I went to Columbia instead”.
“Why you never told anyone?”, it's his question. Not judging, not skeptical about it, only curiosity.
“I was 21, fresh out of undergrad in Jersey, my home state, and it would've been too much, I think, for my mother to see me going so far from home. At Columbia at least I could go home for the weekends, less expensive too”.
Most people wouldn't have turned down Harvard, it was the best med school in the country. Samira wonders what her life would've been like had she chosen that instead of Columbia, her residency could've been in a totally different hospital. But her mother was the most important person in her life, to the point Samira wouldn't even tell her about this choice, it would make her feel bad and she never would wish that upon her. Abbot looks at her in a way that almost makes her feel ashamed, not because it is in a weird way, but because there's admiration in his glance, as if he understands her reason without her having to voice them.
“Now you”, she shifts her gaze away from his face.
“What do you wanna know?”, his voice is very soft, unlike her he doesn't shift his eyes away from her face at all. If he were to touch her cheeks he would find them warm under his touch. Samira thinks back to Cassie earlier today, how she had told Samira about Abbot’s new fashion that was the absence of a ring and how each time he would move his hand she would notice, trying to urge the butterflies in her stomach away because it was very undignified for a woman her age –for goodness sake, she was almost 30– be feeling this giddy.
“Ok”, she starts, pulling a strand of hair behind her ear. Thank God the elevator is only halfway lit. “I wanna know why- the reason you are not wearing the ring anymore”.
“You noticed, uh?”, he asks, a smirk on his mouth that is quickly exchanged for a calm expression. “When I lost my wife 10 years ago, I swore to never again feel like that again, you know, the feeling of complete misery when you lose someone you love and there wasn't any reason for me to break that oath to myself and the ring above anything kept the reminder. Until a few months ago when a resident did a pigtail catheter better than most attendings would”.
He's talking about me, Samira thinks like an idiot. When he talks about the resident, that's me.
Her mind is trying to adjust to what she just learned. She thinks back to a younger Jack Abbot, in love and missing the person he loved, promising to never let any chance of loving again enter his life ever again, and she can't barely hold onto herself because at that very same day it had been where it started for her. In the midst of chaos and bloody gunshot wounds, watching him walking around donating blood while still practicing medicine had been something she would never forget in her life, the sheer want to help people in whatever possible way, going above and beyond to make sure people would leave and still finding time to be a teacher and mentor. Samira had confused, for a long time, that feeling for appreciation. She had thought it was a student crush. And then the anthrax shit and after the MCI and now this and she feels it again, those stupid butterflies making her feel lightheaded because Jack Abbot, bless his heart, was a very brave person, because she doesn't think she would ever be the first one to voice it out. Samira reaches for his hand that stands touching the floor, the thin space between their bodies and she holds on to it, making the first movement because now that she knows it isn't one-sided, she can.
It mustn't be the first time their hands touch, it would be impossible as they work closely together every now and then, but it might be the first time they touch hands with intent, with something other than a happenstance in the middle of a procedure, and Samira thinks, it's the first time their hands touch while ungloved, the contact of his bare skin against hers making her feel like an imploding star. Samira considers just how unethical it would be to leave the place she's sitting and push her body on top of his inside this elevator, the lights are so dim it might be that the cameras inside the cubicle won't be able to catch her as she pushes herself against his chest, face to face this time, and kisses him for the first time. Before she can come to a decision, the elevator starts moving again, the lights turning up all the way and it is almost blinding, but Samira is thankful to be able to see Abbot's face clearly, his lip being held between his teeth as if he had been considering the same as her and the light part of his irises taken by the pupils dilated.
Then there’s a thudding sound, like someone had punched the doors, that echoes through the elevator and makes Samira have to bite down on her lip to stop herself from whimpering out loud. The light touch of hands goes into a full squeeze, his fingers crossed against the back of her hand in a tight grip and Samira does the same. She had thought it would be a free fall, instead, slowly, the machine gets into life once more and she watches in suspicious hope as the elevator beings to go up again, the lights flickering until it goes back to normal and before she has time to get up and let go of Abbot’s hand, the elevator does the pleasant ‘ding’ to indicate it got to the floor of the E.R, the light turning off on the button that says 0.
When the doors open, Robby is there, looking at them with a very suspicious glance on his eyes, as if Samira and Abbot had gotten stuck on the elevator on purpose instead of by a freaky accident, and it doesn’t help them that they just then are letting go of each other’s hold, under Robby’s menacing expression and Samira avoids his eyes with all her might. “I, hm, have patients to see”, she says to avoid giving any kind of explanation and pass through Robby without looking back, her skin still buzzing from where it had been in contact with Abbot’s.
Samira knew it was a bad idea from the start, there’s just no way she could walk out of the hospital, take the night train to Philly, make her fellowship interview, get back on the train again and go back to the hospital for another shift. But she did it anyway, because once the door for a fellowship at PTMC had closed, she had to start looking elsewhere for new spots. So far she had gotten 4 interviews in Pennsylvania, all in Pittsburgh, 5 now with the one in Philly, and she had gotten to the point of resignation, she might as well just buy a plane ticket back to Jersey and skip the fellowship, going straight into attending in a hospital near her childhood home. At least she would be close with her mother, she thinks, which she had been anxious for for all the years of her residency.
There was before, however, that was another thing, another person, to consider in her decision making for her future. Until now, Samira had been planning her life around her mother, it was hard not to when she was her only living parent, and Samira and her mother had gotten so close after her father had passed. It had been really hard for her to leave the state of NJ, hanging around until it wasn’t possible anymore, and then she had even tried to match for a residency spot back in Jersey or NYC, but the closest option had been Pittsburgh. It changed when she and Abbot got stuck together inside the elevator.
It isn’t like things had changed overnight and she had professed her love for him under the moonlight, there wasn’t even a time for doing this or something less dramatic because in the following week she had been going from one hospital to another, doing interviews in vichy tailleurs and scarpins, hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, trying her best to look as a responsible and worthy candidate, rehearsing her answers before she was called inside the program’s director office. And in between car rides, bus trips and walking out of metro stations, she still had him on the edge of her mind, always there.
Samira doesn’t really do the non committed hooking up, either she is with someone for real or she isn’t, there is no in between for her. She would’ve liked to walk to Abbot and tell him that, ask if he had really meant what he told her or if he’s just looking for a casual kind of thing, because if that’s the case she wouldn’t keep on considering other options in Pittsburgh. It would be annoying, she knows, to be walking on eggshells around him for the rest of her residency, but better lay it out on the open her real thoughts and intentions, at least she found. It passed through her mind the possibility of texting him about it –they were still very much casual texting– but their online conversations are so casual and she doesn’t wanna be a killjoy.
The trip to Philly had been both a waste of both money and time, Samira knew as soon as she stepped out of the director’s office, a very arrogant man that didn’t seem at all interested in hearing her talk about the research she was conducting back in Pittsburgh about the poor treatment people of colour often received, that she wouldn’t really be picked to a position at their hospital.
Samira walks out of the train station and almost groans in frustration because instead of going home after a 7 hour train ride, she’ll have to go to the hospital. Dr. Parker, bless her heart, had agreed to change shifts with Samira so she could take the interview in Philadelphia and Samira only feels sorry to have wasted a favour in something that won’t really have any good results, but it’s too late to dwell in regrets over something that’s over and done.
The bus ride to the PTMC is short, during which she unlocks her phone to see what’s new. There’s a couple texts on the residents text chain and she ignores it for now, Parker texted her to let her know everyone was asking for her whereabouts when she showed up instead of Samira, she only sends a laughing emoji, there’s a new text from McKay asking if she needs help with anything, but she ignores it for the time being. Going down the app, she gets to see an unread text from Abbot, sent at 7:43 am.
A (7:43am): Missed you today when you didn’t show up. Everything’s ok?
S (5:17pm): Missed you too :( everythings good, just an interview out of town for a fellowship in emergency med
A (5:18pm): Nice. Hope it went well. Are you going to the night shift?
S (5:20pm): yes, almost at PTMC
If he sends anything further she doesn’t check it because then she’s at her bus stop and finishes the path by foot, the heavy backpack with her clothes and change of shoes. Samira wants to curse the fourth year of residency because at the same time it is moving way too fast –by the december she’ll be an attending–, it’s also very little time for every single thing she has to do: boards, search for a fellowship, get ready to move out of her apartment or sign a lease to extend the rental. All of this and she still had to put on the hours the residency program said it was necessary for her education to be complete. If it was up to her alone, she would like to go home and sleep, but she’ll have to make do with the one hour power nap in the on-call room.
“Dr. Mohan”, it’s Robby’s voice that meets her when she first steps into the emergency department, she has managed to go unnoticed by the nurses station, but he catches her mid way towards the on-call room. “Everything’s ok?”
Being the third person to ask her that, Samira has to take a breath to not snap back and regret immediately. “All good”, she answers, signaling to her backpack on her shoulders, “Going to the on-call room”.
She can tell he’s fishing for more info, but she’s not really willing to go into it now, not while she’s still pissed about it and definitely not with Robby, not when everyone knows he had written a letter of recommendation for Langdon, making it very clear who he wanted to keep on working the next year and that’s not Samira. She excuses herself and finishes the walk to the on-call room.
There’s so many misconceptions about doctors and Samira blames it all on medical dramas that get called prestige television. It’s actually a very bad representation of doctors and it got to a point where even the place for rest during their shift was seen as a) doctors avoiding working, b) doctors avoiding work by sleeping while being paid and c) doctors avoiding work by using the hospital facilities for having sex. Due to this, the administration of the hospital had taken a stance –even though they knew it wasn’t true– to change the furniture inside the on-call rooms. Instead of a comfy larger bed, they now had to make do with a bunk bed that seemed mostly unsteady and whenever someone climbed up it would make protesting noises. Samira doubts the beds for the surgical staff are like this.
She takes the bottom bunk, letting her backpack on the floor and setting her alarm for an hour from now. It would allow her time to take a shower before heading into a shift and grabbing something to eat, maybe at the Dunkin's across the street. Samira sleeps like a stone, not even dreaming, and the beeping sound of her alarm brings her to consciousness. With half an hour for her shift to start, she stops dragging on the bed and heads into the shower with her change of clothes and toiletries.
When she exits the bathroom, she is only half surprised to see Abbot sitting on the bed she had been minutes ago. He’s already dressed in black scrubs, a leg crossed under him and the only light keeping them from darkness is coming from the halfway closed bathroom door. Samira looks at the door, finding it closed and lifts her eyebrows because there must be some kind of rule established by Gloria’s reign of terror that dictates male-doctor mustn’t stay behind closed doors with female-doctor. Samira tries to find it in herself to see if she gives a damn and she doesn’t, instead she closes the distance from Abbot and sits on the table beside him.
“Let me guess”, she starts, running her fingers through her hair that’s finally free from the ponytail “The door got jammed and we’re stuck here till morning because maintenance is already at their homes”.
Considering the most inopportune times the gods, the universe or just her luck find to put them in situations together, it wouldn’t really surprise her. Abbot laughs and shakes his head. “As nice of a prospect that is, I didn’t even lock the door so as to not give bad luck a chance”, he says and shifts on the bed to be turned to her. The way the light coming from the bathroom lights him from behind, it almost makes it look like he has a halo. Samira thinks of what she’s doing here, if she wanted to she could just walk out that door and he would know, he would understand immediately and never bother her about it. She doesn’t. She stays where she is and doesn’t think that would be a better place for her to be than right here.
“Hi”, she says at last. Apart from the elevator, they hadn’t really talked talked in almost a whole week, not considering of course the texts that were really sparse to be considered a real conversation. Samira feels her stomach doing jumps just by looking at him.
“Hi”, he says back. Abbot reaches to move a strand of hair away from her face, his fingers ever so lightly touching the skin of her cheek and then her ear, moving down to her jaw and she wants to avert her eyes from his glance because he makes her feel aflame from just the most innocent touch, his eyes staring at her with tenderness. “You trip was ok?”, he asks.
Samira’s face frowns. “I don’t think the director liked me very much”, she explains how he had ignored her attempts to explain her research at every turn.
“You know”, he starts and she can tell he’s hesitant, “PTMC has funds and researchers are often granted some space here. You could do a grant proposal”.
Samira thinks about what he’s saying. She likes her research, she likes PTMC and she likes the prospect of building something, of having something that’s hers and hers alone, the knowledge that she can collect while doing what she loves and what she’s been waiting all her life to be able to prove: the structural bias against non-white patients that can lead to their death. She could keep on researching more instead of publishing the halfway ready results she has at hand as of now.
“And you’d be here”, he completes after and she looks back at him.
Samira reads in between the lines. Had Abbot been thinking about this ever since she had texted him? He comes up with an idea to keep her close to him and Samira feels the surge of feelings: run, stay, go back to the way things were, it’s not safe, you can get your heart broken. But this is Jack Abbot, she thinks, looking at him, the man who had been trying to keep any romance and love at bay because, just like her, he had been avoiding getting hurt and Samira doesn’t even know where to begin explaining it to him, explaining how that, at the same time she doesn’t do well being alone, she also never really gave a chance to anything that could last more than five or six months, just flings that came and went and she was happy like that to just get her physical needs met and protecting her emotional with all her might.
She thinks back to the reason she has to go back to Jersey, her mother, but it isn’t even like her mother lives alone, she has her friends and her boyfriend and Samira knows, deep down, that the reason she wants to go back instead of moving forward is simply because it is the safest option. Here, trying something new, avoiding a fellowship for a year or two while doing a more extensive research, opens up doors to her getting disappointed and hurt. If she gets into a relationship with Abbot without even knowing if it will last, she subjects herself to the prospect of a broken heart.
She had avoided answering for a considerable time and he must think she’s trying to find the most polite way to turn him down gently. Samira is an overthinker, she sure as hell would be thinking that had she been in his spot. She shifts her body to get closer to him, her flexed leg touching his knee and very slowly, very tentatively, Samira closes the distance between them to touch her lips against Abbot’s. It starts off innocent, just a peck on the lips and nothing more than their legs touching, but then Abbot hands moves to hold her waist, as unsure of on what ground they were standing as Samira was, she just knows, so she presses her mouth on his with more intent, opening her lips against his to move her tongue on his, feeling that this isn’t close enough.
“Is this a yes?”, he asks, breathy, putting enough distance between their faces just so his words can be heard.
And Samira knows there are another hundred things they must talk about and get straight in between them, because she just knows Abbot, just like herself, isn’t the type to enter a relationship recklessly. But right now, Samira doesn’t have a thing on her mind apart from wanting to have him kissing her again, so she just nods, unable to stop the smile from growing into her lips as she does so because, most of all, it feels like the right decision –and even if it fails, if her request is denied, there’s still four other hospitals in Pittsburgh to which she had applied for a fellowship position and worst comes to worst, she’ll be ready to take a job as an attending.
Abbot smiles too, so open that when he kisses her again his teeth hit hers, which makes her belly laughs, not the most sexy thing to do mid making out, but he looks at her mesmerized, a look so softhearted that Samira’s breath is taken away from her and she doesn’t have much time to think about what it means because Abbot is kissing her again, his hands moving on her each and every spot of her body, pulling her to be on top of him as he lays on the bed with Samira straddling him from above. She lowers her torso against his as she reaches for his mouth once more, feeling dizzy with so many points of contact between them that that ambulance ride feels like a joke in comparison. He touches her from inside the scrub top, his hand gripping on the skin of her back and Samira sighs onto his mouth.
“God, Samira, you’re making me insane”, his voice on her ear is almost as hot as the following hickey he gives her neck, not enough strength to pull the blood to the surface and leave a mark, but enough to make her shift her legs to tighten her hold she has on him underneath her.
She had been holding herself back because somewhere in her mind she remembers that this is their workplace, but most of all she remembers him saying the door was left unlocked and she tries to shake away her thoughts and worries when she feels his fingers playing with the waistline of her scrub pants, pulling on the knot that keeps it in place and then leaves her wanting for a touch that doesn’t come, he moves his hand to knead her ass and Samira bites his lip in response, moving her hips just enough to make the sewing of her pants shift and hit just the right place between her legs, and she moves on top of him, feeling his erection under her and that just makes her even more eager to go on and go further.
But she can’t keep her mind clear of outside thoughts and the perspective of Robby walking up to this on-call room he knew Samira was and seeing her with Abbot like this –a much less explainable pose than a simple hold of hands on the elevator, and that one could be explained as for comfort in a distress situation at least– makes Samira take a break from kissing Abbot, putting a hand on his chest when he tries to lift himself from the bed. “You know, I’m a fifth date kind of woman”, she says.
“Lucky for me we had three dates already”, Samira has to laugh at his answer and she supposes that, in spite of the joke, they do kinda, sorta, have. For fuck’s sake, she had slept beside the man and sat on his lap already before she even knew it wasn’t one sided.
“We have a shift now”, she says, and as reluctant as she feels, the thought of being caught in this, hm, compromising position with her attending is enough for Samira to finally get up from his lap and get on her feet. “We’ll talk about a fourth date after”.
“Hm”, he hums as he sits down and Samira tries not to stare at the bulge on his pants, “What do you say we go on a 12 hour long date? I promise you it won’t be boring”.
She laughs, adjusting the knot on her pants he had undone. “Jeez, you’re relentless”.
“You’re still going out with me”, he shrugs and fuck, he manages to look cute even with his hair all disheveled from making out just a couple minutes ago and Samira, well, she doesn’t deny it because it is the truth, she’ll go out with him after the shift and she just hopes there’s a way she can survive 12 hours of working close to him, under his eyes and not thinking back to this moment –not the kisses or touches, this exact moment– where he looks at her with something that resembles adoration, that makes her want to lock the door and not leave the room until the end of the week. Samira resists the urge to reach out for one last kiss before she heads out into the hallway, but she doesn’t resist the urge to look at him one last time before stepping out: Abbot sits on the edge of the bed, hand over his heart and his eyes on her as if she had carved herself into him and she knows, as she walks into the noisy E.R, that this is what it looks like to be in love.