Archive of Our Own

It really was a terrible idea.

When Samira's college friends announced via their long-dormant group chat that they had planned a weekend trip to Pittsburgh, she'd figured she was on the hook for a brunch, a tour of the hospital, and maybe some sight seeing. An easy commitment and enough to get McKay and Ellis and the others off her back about not having a social life. Hell, she was even looking forward to it.

But her friends, Alanna especially, were determined to relive the glory days.

"Come on, Sam," June pestered from across the stainless steel table in the chic, gentrified brunch place they'd selected. "Just one night?"

"I don't —"

Alanna cut in. "Have anything to wear. Trust me, I know." She leaned across her latte to stage whisper to June, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. "I didn't see a thing in that closet that was anywhere close to tight, sheer, or lacy."

Samira let her jaw hang open at her friend airing her laundry, literally, in public.

"Not even any lingerie."

"My life is different now! You try juggling twelve hour shifts and a night life." She sipped defensively at her orange juice.

June's pierced eyebrow arched. "As long as you're juggling a life, right Sam?"

Her uncomfortable cough did little to fill the silence.

"Oh, we are absolutely taking you out tonight!"

She warmed up to the idea by the time they got back to the hotel room Alanna and June were sharing. Walking through downtown in the sun all day had lulled her into a more social and cooperative mood, and getting ready in a noisy, cramped space admittedly did give her flashbacks to their younger days.

They took turns in the shower and crowded in front of the full length mirror to do their makeup, blaring old school Rihanna and sipping on wine. Half a step up from their usual pregame routine, there.

She let Alanna slip her into one of her extra dresses. The silky material caught the light, bringing a ray of shimmering tones out of the burnt orange color. Samira took a deep breath as she worked herself into it and let it promptly out the minute she turned to look in the mirror. The halter neck turned into a loose cowl that cut down to her xiphoid process. She wasn't at all a prude, but she couldn't remember the last time she put this much cleavage on display. The rest of the dress hugged around her waist and hips before slightly flaring out. In one word, she looked…

"Hot."

Samira whipped her head at the voice, her friends' heads poking through the bathroom door.

"Ooooh," June pushed the door open and danced toward her like they were already at the club. "There's a sexy lady under that brilliant doctor after all."

They pushed her back to lean on the counter and set to work on her hair, which had started frizzy in the muggy Summer morning and only grown as they walked.

"I was good at this once, wasn't I?"

Alanna paused daubing body glitter across Samira's shoulders and collarbone. Her eyes shone a brilliant blue against the magenta of her dress. "Honey, none of us are in practice at this. I can't tell you the last time I was out." She waggled her left ring finger in the air between the three of them, the modest diamond making her point. "And June here spends her time around toddlers."

June scoffed and tapped on a bobby pin in Samira's hair to make sure it held. "Second graders are in a completely different developmental stage."

Samira grinned, relaxing into the back and forth for the hundredth time that day.

"Regardless, she doesn't have a reason to get gussied up any more either."

"I just do my drinking at home, where no parents can see me."

As they finished grabbing their things, Samira took one last look at herself. At the messy updo — a sexier, more polished version of her day-to-day claw clip — and the sinfully dark red smudged across her lips. She sparkled. And they weren't even under strobe lights and disco balls yet.

"The last time I was out this late, I was on night shift." Samira had to raise her voice to be heard, the astonished laughter of her friends rolling off her back.

She'd had just enough Cape Cods to loosen her up and make the night twinkle at the edges. The bass resonated in her ribs and vibrated along her skin. They were at their fourth bar and it was almost three in the morning; she hadn't felt this young since, well, ever.

"Uh oh, Sam." June nodded towards the bar in the middle of the space. "You've got another one."

Apparently she'd been catching quite a bit of attention. She didn't notice it, but the girls were quick to let her know every time someone's eyes tracked her from across the room or when a man danced a little too close to her for a little too long.

She turned her head to follow June's pointed gaze. The man in question was, quite frankly, huge. Well over six feet tall, muscular shoulders, and long black hair tied up in a bun at the back of his head. He met her gaze before giving her an intentional once-over, then tore his eyes coyly away.

"He's not bad," she shrugged, returning her attention to their table.

"Are you kidding me?" Alanna nearly spit. "He's an Adonis and he's been making googly eyes at you for the past ten minutes. Tell me you don't want to climb that like a tree."

Samira glanced at him over her shoulder. He was certainly aesthetically appealing, but she found herself more interested in the mental calculations for a hypothetical morphine I.V. to keep him under.

June and Alanna gaped at her indifference.

"He's not my type!" She defended.

June tapped a manicured fingernail on the wooden tabletop. "The only way I'm letting you off the hook with this one is if you're confessing to hooking up with Dr. Robby."

A laugh burst out of her throat. During their brief hospital tour that afternoon, June had practically drooled over him, a dazed, faraway look glazing over her eyes when he pat her on the shoulder to excuse himself back to his patients.

"Sorry to disappoint, but I am decidedly not sleeping with my attending."

Picking up her beer bottle, June picked at the wet edges of the label and raised her eyebrows. "No one with eyes would blame you if you did."

"You should go talk to him," Alanna insisted.

"Who, Robby?"

"No! Tall, dark, and handsome over there."

Samira felt her brow quirk. "Why? I'm not interested."

"Practice makes perfect."

"Actually, practice makes permanent."

Her friends threw up their hands in sync. "Jesus Christ, Sam, just go get a free drink out of him."

She rolled her eyes, even as she slid off of her stool and tugged her skirt back down over her ass. With a breath through her nose, bringing in the tangy scents of sweat, alcohol, and vape smoke, Samira straightened her spine and rolled back her shoulders. She was being ridiculous. In a trauma bay, with lives on the line and the constant threat of fatal complications, she could proceed with total confidence. But here, with low stakes and few variables, Samira couldn't compose a single plan of action that instilled that level of certainty.

The mystery man caught her eye again as she made her way across the crowded floor. She stopped a few feet short of him and turned to lean across the bar.

Feeling his eyes roving the length of her legs, Samira ordered another Cape Cod. He slid closer to her with a wave of spicy cologne wafting ahead of him.

A flurry of motion over the man's shoulder drew her attention before she could open her mouth. Two men yelled at each other, the volume audible over the booming music if not their words. Her brain, ever used to diagnosing problems and maintaining general safety, couldn't help but zero in on the fight as they postured back and forth and waved their arms in erratic motions. Samira started moving when the men began pushing each other.

Time seemed to slow down as she stepped towards the action. One of the men exploded in frustration, pulling at his hair before clutching and unclutching his hands. He grabbed his beer bottle and smashed it against the edge of a nearby table. Then, with a level of precision only capable by accident, he threw the intact half of the bottle and it struck the other man squarely in the throat. He fell straight to his knees, blood gushing into a growing pool on the floor as he tipped forward.

Time snapped back to full speed.

Samira elbowed her way through the crowd. "I'm a doctor!" She yelled, crouching on the floor next to him. The man groaned as she turned him onto his back. Responsiveness to pain; a tentative positive.

A decisive gash cut across the right side of his neck.

"Sir," she started, aware of the crowd gathering around them, "You have an opened vessel in your neck." His eyes — wide and wild with pain, fear, mortality — latched onto hers. "I'm a doctor, I'm going to reach in and put pressure on the openings. It's going to feel strange, but I need you to take slow, even breaths for me."

She slipped her fingers into the wound, immediately pinching off the jugular vein and common carotid. The pulse of the jugular was strong under her fingertips. She noted a general looseness in the carotid and let go of the jugular to feel up and down on either side of her pinch. Right before the artery bifurcated into the internal and external carotid, she felt a clean, total severance.

A few months ago she'd asked Dr. Abbot for some reading on combat medicine, and now, thanks to her steel trap of a memory, it was paying dividends. She doubled down on the pressure she kept on the artery and looked back up into the man's eyes. "You're going to feel some heaviness in your throat now. Deep breaths, come on."

Dozens of faces looked down at her when she lifted her head, most of them floating somewhere between terrified and nauseous. She began doling out assignments to bystanders. "You, call 911 and tell them we have a severed carotid artery. You, tell security that we have a situation down here." Then she pointed at Alanna and June, ignoring the horror on their faces. "Hold the guy in the plaid until security gets here."

The bartender crouched down on the other side of the patient and held out a bag of ice in her shaking hand.

"Thank you," Samira said, ducking to catch her eye assuredly.

She held the ice against the side of his neck, trying to induce some numbness. The man closed his eyes briefly in gratitude.

"You're doing great. Nice and slow."

For the next few minutes, Samira tried to help him keep his breathing even, but he was starting to slip into panic. She lifted his left hand and placed it against her sternum to help him follow her inhales and exhales. It helped for a few beats. Then, his eyes dropped to her chest and blew as big as saucers.

She looked down, realizing that her hand was covered in streaks of his blood. "Hey, hey, hey, stay with me. You're okay."

At least, he'd be okay if he didn't catch sight of the hand in his neck. The cavity was bloody even though she held the bleeder closed, and it settled tacky and warm into her skin.

The crowd parted as a gurney came rolling through.

"Dr. Mohan?"

Samira hadn't worked too many nights recently, but she did recognize the EMT at the foot of the gurney. "Lil, hi."

"I figured we'd be dealing with a professional when the call came through for a severed carotid. Don't get many of those." They shared a look. The kind that would be common place on the ambulance bay, but might seem trite and out of place to people who weren't used to emergency medicine. "How's he doing?"

"Some blood loss, but I've got the artery clamped off."

"Need us to take over?"

Samira shook her head. "I'm not letting off pressure until he's in a trauma bay."

A look of concern flit across Lil's face, disappearing as soon as Samira saw it. "Sounds like a plan." Lil and her partner navigated the blood on the floor to lift the man onto the gurney.

Even as the movement jostled him, Samira could tell his frantic breathing was its own symptom. She watched Lil's partner put an oxygen mask on him and hoped it would be enough.

They rushed back to the ambulance. "PTMC is the closest, only a few minutes away, Dr. Mohan."

"Great," she responded, focusing on trying to get into the ambulance without losing her grip on the artery.

Inside the vehicle, the EMTs immediately started taking vitals. "Breath is tachy, Doctor."

Samira screwed her eyes shut to mentally flip through combat medicine case reports. "Will this gurney hold both of us?"

"I mean, yeah, but —"

"Help me up."

To her credit, Lil reached out a stabilizing hand despite the skeptical furrow of her brow. Samira clambered onto the gurney and straddled the man's torso. She delicately placed her knees above his clavicles, kneeling gently onto his collarbones when she was happy with her position.

Lil's partner — Randy, per his ID tag — pointed a gloved finger at her. "I know you're a doctor, but what're you doing?"

"Pressure on the clavicle temporarily slows breathing and metabolism. This should help stabilize him until we get to the E.D."

Lil tucked her penlight into her pocket. "Only damage to the dermis and carotid." She turned her attention to the patient, packing gauze around Samira's fingers in the wound. "Your vocal chords are fine, sir. Can we get some information from you before you're sedated at the hospital?"

He took a labored swallow. "Caroline." His hand, shaking and uncertain, reached into his front pocket and pulled out his phone. "My fiancée. She's out of town."

"And your name?"

"Tim. Grainger."

"Okay, Tim," Lil smiled at him. "Let me get your passcode."

Tim rattled off some numbers, his eyes closed in pain.

After Randy took down his allergy information, they made the last turn into the ambulance bay. "Anything else you need to tell us?"

Tim's gaze settled blearily on Samira. "Stay with me. Please."

"You got it, amigo."

The fluorescent hospital lighting struck a particular harshness after hours in the dark. Samira distantly noted that she'd never entered the E.D. through the ambulance bay before, the air conditioning offering a harsh juxtaposition to the humid summer night.

Her hand cramped in Tim's neck. The rattle of the gurney wheels over the sliding door track sent a pang through her wrist at the knowledge that she was close to letting go, but not nearly close enough.

A night shift trauma team rushed the gurney, Lil rattling off vitals and personal information.

"Severed right carotid artery," Samira called out, "vessel has been clamped off for about twelve minutes. No other presenting symptoms or injuries."

"Samira?"

She didn't need to turn to know the shocked, gravelly voice belonged to Dr. Abbot.

"What the hell are you up to?"

"Currently? My elbows in bar fight aftermath."

Dr. Abbot shook his head, his version of a laugh on the floor, and directed them into Trauma 1. He wedged himself next to the gurney before they could push it flush to the trauma bed. "Hold it. Let's get Mohan down before we move him."

Samira swung a leg off of Tim. With one hand outstretched for her to grab and the other spanning her lower back, Abbot helped her down to the ground, her heeled feet only wobbling slightly as the blood came back to her ankles. She worked out and around the trauma bed, pressing one knee up and onto the thin mattress so she could keep her hold on Tim's artery. Even Abbot's countdown didn't help her brace enough for the accompanying burn in her shoulder as they lifted him or the jostle as they put him back down.

"I got a clamp." Abbot stepped up across from her, gowned and freshly gloved. He nodded to a student doctor she hadn't met yet standing next to her. "Stand by for suction."

He peered into the wound and pulled down the surgical light to get a better look. Wincing at the pain in her knuckles, Samira inched her hold on the carotid closer to the heart and tried to ignore the frantic pulsing of the blood she held at bay. "That enough room?"

"Oh plenty," Abbot assured her, clamping off the tissue above her fingertips.

The moment the metal latched she yanked her hand out of the cavity and extended her fingers to counter the cramp. Abbot raised his eyebrow at her in concern but she shook her head.

"Alrighty," he announced to Tim, "As far as these things go, you're in great shape. We're going to patch up your artery and send you up to the vascular wing, but we need to sedate you and put you under to get you there."

Tim nodded, unsure but not nearly as panicked as he'd been earlier.

The nurses set up his sedation and I.V. as Abbot prepped the student to intubate. Samira worked over the palm of her cramped hand with her thumb.

"Get out of here."

She looked up, not expecting to see Abbot's gaze leveled at her. "What?"

"We don't need you, go home and get some sleep."

Samira shook her head. "I promised him I'd stay."

Even as he turned to compliment the student on a perfect intubation, she could practically hear him thinking. "Fine. Go clean up." Then, to the rest of the trauma team as Samira started for the prep room between the two trauma bays: "Can we get a gown for Dr. Mohan?"

She pushed through the door and went straight for the scrub sink, blowing errant curls out of her face. The water ran pink as it passed over her skin. Blood had settled into the grooves of her hands, turning her knuckles and her cuticles and her palmar creases so red they were almost black. Samira took a deep breath and willed herself to do a thorough job despite her anxious desire to get back to her patient. As if her unsanitized hands hadn't been inside of a wound for several minutes.

Backing through the door, a night nurse immediately gowned and gloved her.

"Dr. Mohan," Abbot called, "Take over bagging."

She stepped up to the head of the trauma bed. It wasn't a typical place for her to find herself, but it gave her a front row seat to Abbot's hands making careful stitches to pull the severed ends of the artery back together.

Samira turned her attention to the student doctor. Red hair pulled back into a braid, wide eyes latched onto the wound, and knuckles clutched possessively over the suction tube. The dance floors and dingy bathrooms of the night vanished, replaced by florescent lighting and a teaching opportunity. "What's the game plan, doctor?"

The student did a double take. Still not used to be called doctor, then. "Dr. Abbot is performing an end-to-end suture so we can reestablish blood flow. Then we're going to float in a stent to support the suture site."

"Very good," Samira nodded, her eyes going back to the cavity.

The clamped off ends of the vessel glowed harshly pale against the other blood-rich tissues in the throat. Abbot's forceps and needle driver moved with quick, controlled movements in the small space.

"Why is Dr. Abbot using interrupted sutures?"

"In case of leaking. They can be replaced or taken out one at a time instead of having to take out an entire faulty continuous."

"Well done."

Abbot tied off the last suture, lifting his hands and tools out of Tim's neck. "Femoral or radial?"

It took Samira a moment to realize he was speaking to her and not the medical student. He wasn't asking for the correct answer, he wanted her opinion. Like they were colleagues. She glanced at the time on the monitor. Too much longer without carotid blood flow and they'd be looking at a stroke. "Which can you do quicker?"

"Without a full history? Femoral."

"Let's do that then. You can show off with a radial some other time."

He smirked at her, an eyebrow arched over his googles. "Dr. Shaffer, today's your lucky day: you're going to float a catheter through Mr. Grainger's femoral artery."

With that classic Abbot flair — total, palpable, unwavering support that demanded the recipient's belief — he slipped into teaching mode. The nurse shaved an area on Tim's inner thigh and set up a sterile field while updating them on his heart rate and oxygen. All normal, but Samira was mainly concerned with brain function issues that may not present immediately on the monitor.

She kept bagging, the steady crinkle and uncrinkle of the blue plastic under her fingertips helping her keep time.

Shaffer grabbed a hypodermic and stepped up to the trauma bed.

"Get a vein and go in at 45 degrees, just like any other needle."

With Abbot's direction, Shaffer placed the stent in roughly the same time it would have taken him to do it himself. Not that Samira had any doubt he could get the job done blindfolded if he really wanted to.

Shen poked his head in and stole Shaffer for an incoming M.I., saluting Samira with the dregs of his iced coffee in lieu of actually greeting her.

"Nicely done, Dr. Mohan." Abbot stripped off his gloves.

A nurse came through the far end of the room and grabbed Abbot for a coding young girl. He rushed out, ripping off his surgical gown and barking directions at the night staff. As the chaos rushed from one end of the department to the other, a strange quiet overcame the recently-emptied room.

The environmental team entered, mopping and resetting the room around her.

"But I only bagged."

Her feet killed her.

Which she was totally used to by now, but apparently there was a marked difference between post-double-shift-in-orthopedic-sneakers-and-compression-socks pain and strappy-heels-on-concrete-and-bent-over-a-trauma-bed pain. Good to know.

She practically dragged herself to Central.

"I've never seen someone dressed so pretty who looked so shitty. You know, other than patients." Lena, the night charge nurse, gave her a motherly smile. "I heard you made quite an entrance."

"Just doing my job, Lena."

"Right." Lena typed at something on a tablet and handed it off to another nurse. "You headed home?"

A yawn snuck up on Samira. "No, I promised him in the ambulance I'd stick around."

The skeptical look in Lena's eyes caught her by surprise. At the least the second one she'd received tonight.

Samira scratched her stomach, suddenly aware of how the glittery polyester fabric irritated her skin. Her fingertips found a stiff, slightly tacky sensation she didn't expect. She looked down to find herself spattered with blood. "Any way I could get a change of clothes or something?"

Lena winked. "One set of scrubs, coming right up."

As she walked off to get Samira's scrubs, another person sidled up to the counter. "Hey, Samira." Ellis shot her a smirk. "I didn't recognize you with your ass out."

Her hands immediately shot to the hem of her skirt.

"Come on, I wouldn't do you like that." Ellis elbowed her and switched out her tablet for one off of the charger. "Is that our new uniform or something? Because I won't say a word if it means Shen has to squeeze into one."

Samira laughed, Ellis' nose crinkling at the sound. "No, I was out with friends and had to bring in a severed carotid."

"Oh shit. I didn't realize that was you."

She shrugged.

"You're a tough one, Mohan."

"I just did my job."

"What's that Ginger Rogers quote? Something about backwards and in high heels?"

Samira shook her head. "Any one of us whould have done what I did."

Doing a push up off the edge of the counter, Ellis tilted her head this way and that. "Regardless, no one could have made an entrance quite like that."

Lena returned with a stack of doctors' scrubs, topped with hospital socks and an emisis bag. "Sorry, Samira. That's the best thing I could get my hands on for you to put your dress in."

"That's fine, Lena, thank you."

"No shoes either, although you're welcome to try the lost and found."

She shuddered, hoping it came across as a shiver under the AC.

Ellis nudged her. "They're nothing fancy, but I've got back-up shoes in my locker if you want 'em."

"Thank you."

After enough hours in the exam rooms that it added up to days if not weeks, Samira figured she had a pretty good handle on them. That hypothesis, however, formed before tonight. Turns out there's actually not a whole lot to keep a person occupied when they're on a bedside vigil.

Taking a patient's history or draining a cyst or patching up a wound didn't leave much brain space to dedicate to the minutiae of the emergency department. Especially not with Robby constantly breathing down her neck to move faster, diagnose faster, discharge faster. So, needless to say, she hadn't ever noticed the way the paint, so white it almost looped around to blue, scuffed along the floorboards. Or the no smoking sign that was almost certainly older than her. Or the Covid-era guide on how to properly mask that someone must have forgotten to take down from its spot behind the door.

She slipped her feet out of Ellis' tie dye crocs and pulled them up to sit cross-legged on the chair.

A soft knock at the door stole her attention from the scrunched up corner of a ceiling tile. Dr. Abbot, trying to balance a handful of something as he pushed open the door. "I'm starting to see why Robby rags on your patient times. This is getting ridiculous."

Samira glared at him, making sure he saw it turn into a bemused grin.

"How is he?"

"No change. Any word on the fiancée?"

"She's out of town visiting family. Should be here in a few hours." Abbot eased into the other chair and extended his full hand toward her. A pack of peanut butter crackers and a cup of Pedialyte. "I don't want to know whether one of my residents was drinking when she put her hands in a patient. Just, you know. It's always a good idea to hydrate."

"Thanks." Their fingers brushed as he handed off the vending machine offering, his skin rough, warm, and coated with nitrile residue.

He relaxed into the seat back with a deep breath. "You read those articles I sent you."

"Of course I did. I asked for them."

A soft breath of a laugh escaped Abbot's nose. "I can't tell you the last time I saw the collarbone trick done. That was some major league emergency medicine, Dr. Mohan."

She shrugged, reluctant to take the win. "I just did my job." God, she felt like a broken record.

"Well you went — are going — far beyond the call of duty." Abbot caught her eyes and held her gaze for a beat. "He's lucky to have such a dedicated doctor."

A brief memory of PittFest, which were rarer and briefer every day that went by, flashed through her mind. In the cold, unyielding light of the hallway, Abbot moved from critical patient to critical patient without losing a beat. His arms were covered in other people's blood up to his elbows as he criked and intubated and retrieved shrapnel, all with a needle stuck in his arm to fill a blood bag strapped to his calf. Samira remembered thinking it was the hottest thing she'd ever seen: an unfortunate and clearly misdirected side effect of the adrenaline coursing through her system. "I learned from the best."

He shot her a smile. The kind where his cheek muscles dimpled as they pulled his mouth to the side.

"How's the rest of the shift been?"

With a dull thud Abbot's head leaned against the wall. "Just your average Summer Saturday night in the city." He returned his gaze to hers, shifting his head slightly. "Started with a gnarly M.V.A. and a case of heat stroke. I'm figuring I'll have to pump at least three more stomachs before I go home. And that's not counting the house of frat boys who came in with the worst food poisoning I've seen in months."

"Oh yeah? Exacerbated by heat and alcohol?"

Abbot shook his head. "They tried to cook a whole meal over a Yankee candle."

"Oh my god."

"I offered to pump in lavender and sandlewood to help them relax, but for some reason they didn't go for it."

Samira let out a soft laugh. Over the past several months, she'd realized just how funny Abbot was. Not in the easy, self-deprecating way Robby used to bond with patients or the sarcastic, matter-of-fact way Dana used to keep the ship afloat, but his own dry, observational humor that seemed more for himself than anyone else. She didn't always pick up on it while they were dealing with high stress cases, but now she latched onto his jokes whenever she could. "What can I help with?"

"Absolutely nothing," he instantly replied, checking his watch and pulling himself up from the chair. "Stay with your patient, Dr. Mohan." He gave her a tight-lipped smile and slipped out into the hall.

The keen powers of observation she'd gained while sitting unoccupied came back in full force as she watched Abbot through the partially frosted glass of the door. Most everyone on staff was physically fit — had to be, to maneuver gurneys, restrain patients, and stay on their feet twelve hours at a time — but he had uniquely defined muscle tone. His forearms alone showed enough muscle definition to put even the gym rats like Mateo to shame. She watched his flexors tighten and shift under tan, freckled skin as he reached out to get hand sanitizer and rub it into his hands. And his biceps — Samira wondered if he had go up a scrub size just to accommodate the movement of his upper arms and shoulders. As Abbot paused by the Hub before veering into another exam room, she caught a glimpse of pale skin just under the edge of his sleeve.

The door swung open again.

"Yo Mohan." Shen nodded his head toward the hallway, a paper cup of break room coffee in his hand. "People here to see you."

Samira slipped her feet back into the borrowed crocs and cautiously stood. Alanna and June all but tiptoed into the room, looking lost and overwhelmed in the new, sterile environment. They couldn't stop sneaking looks at Tim unconscious in the hospital bed. As if it was a bad car crash they shouldn't be watching. June turned to look at her, fiddling with her nose piercing.

"Okay, scrubs."

She couldn't help the laugh that spilled out of her. "God, you guys."

"Is he okay?"

"Are you ok?"

With a shrug, Samira gestured at the monitor. "He's doing well now, but we're trying to get him moved to cardiology so they can take a better look at him. We probably won't know more until the morning, at the earliest." She crossed her arms across her chest, suddenly cognizant of how naked she was under her scrubs. "I'm fine. You're just probably not getting that dress back, Lans."

"Don't even worry about it," Alanna breathed, wrapping Samira up in a hug. "You saved a motherfucking life, bitch."

June joined the embrace. "We all wish the circumstances were different, of course, but you were such a badass! Meredith Grey, eat your heart out."

Since med school, Samira had preferred friends and romantic partners — rare though they may have been — who were also in healthcare. It left a little less to be lost in translation. And it usually translated to a little more understanding that she didn't look at her phone for days at a time, or couldn't sleep over when she had lab in the morning, or wouldn't want anything more than companionable silence for a few hours.

Having June and Alanna around was a surprisingly nice change of pace.

They broke the hug, eyes leaping to Tim's form subconsciously. "Here," June hastily added, like she'd just remembered, and shoved Samira's purse towards her. "You left this behind."

She took the bag as the door swung open. Parker stuck her head in. "Need you, Mohan."

"Should we wait for you?"

"God, no. It could be hours and at least some of us should get sleep tonight."

Her friends hugged her, leaving sticky remnants of their lip gloss on her cheeks when they kissed her goodbye.

"Alls I'm saying is, it's hard to take your statement at face value when you're intoxicated." The cop prodded the gum out of his cheek and started chewing it again.

"Like I said, I was not, and am not, intoxicated." Samira's kingdom to be having this conversation anywhere other than the literal middle of the emergency department. Or at all, actually.

"You'd had multiple drinks, is that right?"

She plastered her best non-threatening-brown-girl look on her face. "Over the course of almost six hours with plenty of food and water, yes."

He snapped his gum. "So then you really can't say that you weren't drunk, can you?"

"I'm a physician. I think I can say that better than almost anyone."

The cop paused his chewing. "You know, sweetheart, being in nursing school doesn't count."

When the energy of the hallway shifted, Samira figured it was just because she was seeing red.

"Excuse me, officer. Do you have a problem with my resident?" Ah. Dr. Abbot storming in, not her righteous anger seeping out her ears.

"I'm just tryin' to get all the facts from this witness in case the victim wants to press charges."

"Charges?" Abbot all but spit.

"Well, if something goes wrong, they might want to have some information on the drunk woman who put her hands in his wound."

Abbot crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows, his alternative to breaking noses. Not that the cop knew that. "I'm sorry, I think I heard you wrong. I think you meant to say that they may want to thank the Head Emergency Resident who acted in the field to save a man's life. If she says she wasn't drunk, she wasn't drunk. If her efforts fail to save this man, then nothing could have saved him."

Samira recognized Abbot's tone — the one that laid bare his military edge and gave the sense that he was accustomed to having his orders followed — as one he didn't use often. Usually combative patients or McKay's shithead parole officers or Walsh could be placated without it. Usually.

As the cop swallowed his gum stammering for an answer, Abbot doubled down. "Any other questions you have for Doctor Mohan can be directed to the hospital's legal department."

"Well, actually, sir, I still need to ask the victim for his statement."

Abbot turned to her. "Doctor?"

"Patient is still unconscious and, after the planned consult, will be unavailable for questioning for at least forty eight hours."

Her report made Abbot fix his attention on the cop, silently challenging him to ask another question.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt to come back in a few days. When everyone feels more like talking." The officer walked away toward his partner, trying and failing to look in control.

"You didn't have to do that."

Abbot scoffed, not turning to look at her until the cops reluctantly retreated out the waiting room doors. "Yeah, I did. He'd been peacocking around here and needed to be knocked down a few pegs." He coughed. "And besides. You know I look after my people."

A thrill shot up her spine at being included. She got on with the night shift like a house on fire, but never felt like she was in a place to be part of a collective. "Thank you." She crossed her arms. "As long as you also know I can take care of myself."

"Wouldn't doubt it for the world." He smirked, warmth settling over her. "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Doctor Mohan?"

"Sure."

"Is there a reason the head lac in 18 hasn't stopped staring at you since you walked out here?"

Samira turned over her shoulder to see tall, dark, and handsome from the bar wearing a brace around his neck and holding an ice pack to his head. She spun back around, her hands over her face. "Shit."

"Oh?" Abbot questioned, his eyebrows raised in amusement.

She made a beeline for the Hub. The subtle lilt of the attending's footsteps followed behind her as she sidled up to Lena again. "What's the story on 18?"

Lena typed away at her computer, clicking her tongue. "Brian Pangai, 35, head lac and moderate concussion. Waiting on head and neck CTs to come back." She closed the patient profile window and gave them her full attention. "He came in with the other guy from the bar. I guess he passed out when he got a look at your patient, Samira, and knocked his head on a barstool." Leaning toward Samira, she stage whispered, "Pleeeeease tell me he's a friend of yours."

"God, no."

"Oh, now you have to tell us," Abbot teased, leaning sideways onto the counter.

Samira sighed. "I guess he was making eyes at me across the bar tonight. My friends talked me into trying to get a free drink out of him, but that's when the fight broke out and I got side-tracked."

It must have been part of Charge Nurse training, the way they could all break into absurdly evil grins when they wanted to. "So I'm hearing now's your chance."

"Come on," Abbot agreed, "He's a captive audience and everything."

"Nope." She raised her hands to fend off their objections before they started. "It's deeply unprofessional and he's not my type."

"I'm not sure I want to hear what your type is, if it doesn't include him," Lena accused.

"Whatever it is, my type doesn't include squeamish."

They both laughed at her as Lena turned to handle a question from some student nurses. Abbot knocked his shoulder into Samira's, still fighting down a chuckle, as he went off on rounds. She felt compelled to watch him walk away. His straight, soldier's posture and the broad, defined stretch of his shoulders exuded confidence, the kind that his warm hands and quick smile and all-seeing gaze couldn't undercut. As she watched him pump hand sanitizer and shoulder in to a patient room, she felt an awfully big realization land in her stomach.

Maybe her attraction to Abbot during Pitt Fest wasn't misguided or momentary at all.

"Samira. Samira."

Hands at her shoulders shook her awake. She blinked and unscrunched her neck from her shoulder. Ellis, along with her signature nose crinkle, slowly came into view. "Yeah. What's up?"

"A room opened up in vascular. We're moving him now."

Right. This wasn't an on-call room rollover, she was sitting with a patient waiting for surgery or next of kin. Whichever came first. "Let's do it."

A team of MAs were already working on readying Tim's I.V. and oxygen monitor for transport, seamlessly switching the bed into travel mode as they worked. She picked up her shoes, purse, and epesis bag and ducked into the hallway so the MAs had more room to move the bed.

The warmth of a hand hovering over her back drew her attention to Abbot coming up next to her. "I just checked in with Lena: no update from the fiancée, but she left a message to let her know we're moving him."

"Thanks," Samira said, the yawn that followed cutting its sincerity.

Abbot looked down at her for a moment. "You look beat, kid. Go home and get some sleep."

She couldn't help but laugh a little. "No, thank you. I promised him I'd stay."

"It could be hours, still, and —"

"I know. I want to see him through."

A beleaguered sigh. "Alright. But text me if you need anything. Even another cup of Pedialyte."

"Thank you. Really."

"Don't mention it."

She held his eye contact for a long while, mostly just because she could. She catalogued the shrewd eyes set between twin sets of wrinkles that made him look older than he was, the freckles dotted across his forehead and high cheekbones, the silver-auburn stubble that had grown in over the course of shift. God, she really liked him. He brought a sense of safety, of being seen and known and appreciated. And access to all kinds of case studies and journal articles from subscriptions she'd never be able to afford with lived experience that helped flesh out her research better than any annotation she'd ever read. And he was just nice to look at. She straightened her back and tried to breath in slowly.

Abbot nodded, pursed his lips, and moved on.

Early morning in cardiology was much quieter than Samira expected. Every time she'd been dragged up there on a consult, the incessant beeping and thrum of machines clawed at her brain. The ED was no sanctuary, sure, but those sounds were mostly human. You know, diagnosable. Or at the very least treatable, even if it was just with conversation or a sandwich from the cart.

But in a private room, the noise faded to gentle reminders that Tim's heart was still beating.

She slipped off Ellis' crocs and tucked her feet up on the chair, — she hesitated to even call the plastic monstrosities in the ED chairs after this —hugging her legs to her chest. It was strange to be in the hospital and looking out a window. Time never allowed for it, and if she managed to steal a moment on shift she was looking up at the street. Dawn had just started to lazily draw her fingers across the top of Pittsburgh, soft pink and orange light beginning to drive out the inky black of night.

She dozed between nurses' rounds.

After about an hour, she broke down and asked for an extra blanket to protect her from the air conditioning slicing straight through her scrubs. The scratchy-stiff material sent her back in time to a Cherry Hill emergency room where she also sat vigil. Only then she had braces on her teeth, tears in her eyes, and an Animorphs book on lend from the library. She also had a mother unbraiding and rebraiding the hair down Samira's back in a futile attempt at self-soothing and a childhood crumbling before her eyes, but all of that grief had mostly worked itself out by now. What hadn't dissipated was the way she missed her father. She'd give anything to open one of his birthday presents in seventeen layers of gift wrap, or wake up on a Saturday to his breakfast, or listen to him rib her for how much she worked.

Tim wasn't her father, she knew that. Contrary to every hospital-appointed counselor's opinion, she knew that. No amount of trauma-informed doctoring or racial disparity research could bring him back. It's just that sometimes, she couldn't help but remember what it felt like to be small and out of control and helpless in a hospital room.

She pulled the blanket tighter around herself.

It was another hour or so before the door jerked open. "Tim, oh my god." A brunette woman lunged into the room, a flash of mauve athleisure against the sterile blues and whites. She clung desperately to Tim's arm and felt across his chest as if to check him over herself for injuries. Samira watched as her eyes caught on the gauze-packed wound on his neck. "Oh my god."

Folding the blanket in on itself, slipping her feet back into the crocs, and grabbing her small pile of belongings, Samira stood and cautiously approached the other side of the hospital bed. "Caroline?"

The woman nodded.

"I'm Doctor Mohan. Tim is stable and resting comfortably. Can we step into the hallway so I can update you on his condition?"

She hesitated, her hand gripping Tim's hand even harder. "I don't want to leave him."

"I understand," Samira nodded, "but he's perfectly safe and I don't want to wake him up if we don't have to."

Caroline swallowed heavily before straightening up and patting Tim's hand. Out in the hallway, she worked at a crick in her neck and kept her eyes locked on Tim until the door clicked shut. "You're the doctor that brought him in? You saw what happened?"

Samira paused. "I don't have all the details, but there was an altercation in a bar downtown that I saw from across the room. The other man broke a bottle and threw it and it wound up slicing through Tim's neck."

"On purpose?"

"No, no," Samira rushed to correct, "It didn't seem that way at all."

The fiancée scratched at her forehead, processing. Then she started to laugh. "You know, it was probably over baseball."

Samira let herself break into a small smile. "Believe it or not, I've seen a lot worse come out of sports rivalries." The nose setting record she broke during the 2022 playoff series against the Rangers leaped to mind.

The half-joke and a deep breath seemed to calm Caroline down slightly. "What is it I'm supposed to ask here: what's his diagnosis? What's his condition?"

"Both are a great place to start. He had a severed carotid artery, which is one of the main vessels that brings blood from his heart to his brain. We got it reconnected as quickly as we could and floated a stent in to support the tissue while it grows back together. One of the vascular specialists will be by shortly to talk about next steps."

"Which are?"

"He could be fine to go home after a few days. They may need to do more serious reconstruction work or put in something stronger than a stent, but I'm not qualified to make that diagnosis for you." She took a deep breath. "Either way, he's in very good shape. His vocal chords and ability to eat shouldn't be impacted at all."

"Okay." Caroline rubbed at her upper arm absentmindedly. "Okay, thank you."

Samira watched her turn toward the door, reach out for the handle, and pivot back on the heel of a pristine sneaker.

"They said you stayed with him the whole time."

"I promised him in the ambulance that I would."

Caroline's green eyes brimmed with tears. "Thank you, Doctor Mohan." She pulled Samira into a hug, desperate and wobbling.

"It was my pleasure," she insisted, rubbing a hand up and down the woman's back.

"Really, you have no idea how much this means."

Samira squeezed her once and stepped away. "Listen," she guided Caroline over to the nurses' station, swiping a pad of sticky notes and a pen. "I won't be back in the Emergency Department until Monday morning, but please text me if his status changes or if you have any updates." She scribbled down her name and number. "Or anything else you need."

Caroline's trembling hand took the sticky note. "I can't begin to thank you enough for looking out for him."

They hugged again. "Text me, really," Samira urged, taking Caroline by the elbows and ducking to meet her eyes. "Please."

Caroline smiled, sheepishly, and ducked into Tim's room.

The click of the soft-close door felt like a shift. The transition between a before and an after. She exhaled a long breath, letting the stale hospital air settle into her skin and the incessant beeping take over her brain.

"See, we'd taken up a pool on whether your patient satisfaction scores were actually bribes. You just cost me 50 bucks, lady." Abbot, talking to her from the elevator doors.

"You win some, you lose some."

He smirked and strolled down the hallway toward her. "I was coming up to check on you before I headed out. I should've known you wouldn't need me."

"Patient is resting comfortably, no drainage from the wound, next of kin has arrived, and the vascular doctor should drop by in about…" she leaned around him to consult the wall clock over the nurses station, "twelve minutes."

"Not bad for pro bono."

"It's not like I did anything —"

"So help me god, Samira, if you say you were just doing your job one more time. You're a damn good doctor. And you got there by going after things that other people don't."

Well. Damn. Consider her properly put in her place.

"Eventually, you'll have to start taking wins for yourself."

"Okay."

He did a double-take. Not expecting her to agree, then.

"I did a great job. I used skills that aren't typically demonstrated in the field. And my timing was impeccable."

Abbot's teeth dimpled his lower lip. "Atta girl."

He really wasn't helping this whole workplace crush, adult infatuation, semi-platonic kismet situation. Samira moved to the elevator and pushed the down button, knowing without looking that he'd follow her. They stood shoulder to shoulder in silence for the first few floors.

"Am I allowed to ask about the emesis bag?"

"It's my dress. Couldn't find anything else to put it in."

He nodded approvingly. "You looked, um, you looked good. You know, normal."

"Oh thank you Dr. Abbot. I'll have to write down in my diary tonight that I looked normal."

"You know what I meant."

She elbowed him, letting him see her teasing smile before she stepped out into the ED. The pit was alive with the bustle of shift change. Shen, clearly gearing up for the latter half of a double, tipping a delivery driver for a carrier of four large iced coffees. Nurses, huddled over tablets in the hub, exchanging patient notes and gossip from one moment to the next. Shaffer, the student from earlier, dragging herself up to Abbot for a report.

Ellis popped up next to her. "Finally quitting time?"

Samira nodded. "His fiancée finally showed."

"Good. You look beat."

"Thank you. So much."

"I just mean, you had a hell of a night. Go sleep for a day or two."

She dipped her head to the side, not wanting to concede the point. "Thank you for the shoes. You saved my ass."

"Anytime. Just drop 'em off next time you're in, okay? No rush."

"You got it."

Ellis shot her finger guns, then slid her shades on top of her head and walked out. A work friend. She shouldn't be nearly so proud over the fact, but she had to start giving herself wins, right?

She stretched out her back and pulled her phone out of her pocket.

"You need a ride home?"

Abbot was turning from Shaffer, eyes already locked on Samira. "No, thanks. I was about to call an Uber."

He shook his head. "Absolutely not."

"It's seven in the morning, I think I'll survive."

"Oh I don't doubt that." The stubborn way he put his hands on his hips unfortunately served to accentuate the shape of his biceps and the solid weight of his torso. She forced in a breath. "But it's a waste of money. Let me take you home."

"Okay," she decidedly did not whimper. Her willingness shocked them both.

Creed blared out of the speakers as Abbot turned the key in his old Chevy Silverado.

"Shit, sorry." He fumbled with the volume knob.

"I should have known you were a dad rock enthusiast."

"The heart wants what the heart wants, Mohan."

"Okay," she chortled, "Whatever you say, old man."

"Remind me to stop offering you rides." He tucked his right arm around the passenger headrest as he backed out of his parking spot.

The movement — the stupid masculine display of it all — pulled her attention. This new attraction she noticed was too interesting to pass up exploring. And she was too exhausted to play it cool if she wanted to. She turned her head, leaning against the headrest to watch Abbot as he maneuvered out of the parking garage. The morning light danced through the gray in his hair and caught on his eyelashes. She could handle this. Could handle having a burgeoning friendship with a mentor figure while also finding him incredibly handsome. Surely this was something regular people did all the time. It didn't mean she wanted to jump his bones. Although, with those thick hands and the precision he exhibited in trauma bays…

"Is there something on my face?"

Samira startled back into her body. "No, sorry."

He hummed and resituated his grip on the steering wheel.

The rest of the drive to her apartment, after he'd handed her his totally impersonal cell phone and had her type in her address, consisted of Samira trying to keep her focus off of Abbot's face and on his arms. Which, like, she couldn't even complain.

Abbot pulled into the numbered spot for her apartment that she'd never once used and threw the car in park. "You okay to walk up by yourself?"

"Jesus Christ, you sound like that cop."

"Do I need to ask you to recite the dangers of sleep deprivation?"

Holding his gaze, she unclicked her seatbelt in protest. "Thank you for the ride. And for your concern. I'll see you at shift change on Monday." It was probably a trick of the light, the way his eyes glowed at her defiance. She grabbed her small pile from the floor of his truck and popped the door open. She slid sideways out of the seat, not confident in her ability to judge the cab height. Thankfully, she was helped to the ground when her croc strap caught and she went spilling onto the asphalt.

"Samira?"

"I'm fine!" She wailed in a distinctly non-fine way.

As she reached up to try and free herself, the rumble of the engine stopped and the cab dipped as the weight distribution changed. "Sure you're okay down there?"

"Only thing bruised is my ego."

He deftly unhooked the plastic strap from the metal lever. "Come on," Abbot urged, extending an open hand toward her.

"I don't need help."

"I know."

She felt almost silly keying into her apartment while Jack Abbot of all people hovered at her elbow, her heels hanging off of his fingers.

"Purse, please." Abbot passed over her bag so she could deposit it with her keys on the table inside her door. Just his presence seemed to shrink the studio in on itself. The kitchen to the left, the bathroom straight ahead, and the rest of the apartment to the right seemed crammed on top of each other now that there was a real live person in it.

He insisted on laying out her dress in her bathroom as she put her heels away, which was all very gallant until he started hounding her about drinking water.

"I'm not a patient, Dr. Abbot."

"Never said you were." She crossed her arms at him, watching in mortified amusement as he walked into her kitchen. "Where are your glasses?"

"Come on. I'll take a shower and hydrate and go to bed, I promise. Is that good enough?"

He tsked. "You know what they say about doctors who become patients."

"I thought you said I wasn't a patient."

"I say a lot of things."

Samira's heart thrilled at this back and forth, uninterrupted by crises. She knew better. Knew that they both needed sleep and that she was bound to do something that jeopardized her whole residency. But. Spending her days in the emergency room quickly dispelled the idea of 'impossible' from Samira's head. Every single day she witnessed events with no logical explanation and no impervious medical rationale. As Abbot located a wine glass and filled it with tap water, her brain latched onto one thought: it was impossible for her to let him leave her apartment. She couldn't even conceive of it.

She brushed her fingers against his as she took the cup from his hand and started to drink it.

"If this is your bedside manner, I'm not surprised I have the highest patient satisfaction scores."

"Don't think I won't call Ahmad on you."

She took a sip, holding the cool glass against her chin. "I'm really okay. Just have a cluster headache starting, but you're welcome to take my vitals if it makes you feel better."

Abbot's chest rose and fell with a deep breath. "I guess if you're feeling good enough to joke about it you must be stable." He moved closer to her, the narrow space inside her front door making him seem nearer than he possibly could be, and reached out with a single finger to tug a strand of hair out from behind her ear.

The look in his eyes — like he was jealous of the hair skirting across her cheekbone — suddenly seemed familiar. It was the same look she'd seen over a patient after pigtail catheters and fourteen hours on her feet. The same look she'd seen comparing patient notes in the elevator. The same look she'd seen over articles and burnt coffee in the break room when their shifts overlapped. Her heart raced in her thoracic cavity with the same type of thrill she got when she started to see the connections in her data.

Her hands lept to her face. "Oh. My. God. Have you been flirting with me?"

"For months now, yeah."

"Oh my God." She shook her head as her fingers trailed down over her eyebrows and cheekbones and jaw. Months? "Why haven't you said anything?

Abbot's arms, and even if she'd been oblivious to his flirting she wasn't stupid enough not to realize what fucking good arms they were, crossed against his chest the way they did during a puzzling case. "Because I've been good." His jaw flexed and his head twitched upwards. "Because I've behaved myself so far. I haven't crossed any lines or broken any boundaries between us. I've kept things to myself." He let out a short, humorless laugh, and gestured with one hand into the middle distance. "And then you came in tonight dressed like that and kneeling on some guys fucking chest and I'm only human, Samira."

A breath caught in her throat. It wasn't the first time he'd said her name. But it was the first time it had fallen from his lips so desperately, with a reverence that religious scholars would no doubt study someday.

"Look, I don't want to do anything to make you uncomfortable, or put our working relationship on the line, or do anything we live to regret."

"What if I'm not uncomfortable? What if I won't regret it?"

"Come on, Mohan. You're better than that."

She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. "You've spent every shift we've had together telling me how smart and capable I am. Do you not believe that? Or are you just not ready to admit that I'm smart enough to know what I want? Does that scare you?"

Abbott stared down his nose at her, a deadly coolness in his eyes. "For the smartest person I know, you can be so fucking thick."

The same broad, strong hand that had freed her curl palmed the back of her skull and pulled her close. She gasped softly when their chests brushed. His lips crashed into hers: hot and desperately insistent. All Samira could do was bunch his scrub shirt in her hands and meet his enthusiasm.

She leaned into him, borrowing his strength like she seemed to do so often, and felt a thick, muscled arm wrap around her waist.

When he pulled back, she couldn't contain a brief gasp. "You really didn't realize I was flirting with you?"

Samira shook her head.

"What? Dr. Samira Mohan missed something?" God, it was right there, wasn't it? His thumb swept back and forth on her side, reassuring against his sarcasm. He ducked his chin to catch her eye. "Sweetheart, you were flirting right back."

She shrugged, embarrassed. "There were patients! I wasn't thinking about…" The amused skew to his brow made her trail off.

The hand on the back of her head slid around to cup her jaw as he shook his head. "You are so perfect."

Leaning in to kiss him, she slid a hand up his chest and into his hair, tangling her fingers in his curls. The groan that rumbled in his throat forced his mouth open. Far be it from Samira to leave an opportunity unexplored. She licked into his mouth, her teeth catching his bottom lip.

Their mouths opening — the slick wetness, the intimate taste, the rush of being granted access to the inside of another person — sent an electric desperation through their bodies. Close no longer seemed close enough. She pressed into him and tugged urgently at his scrub top and wrenched his undershirt out of his cargo pants. Abbot returned the favor, slipping the hand on her back up under her scrubs. His thick, capable fingers spread across her skin, jolting and briefly digging his fingertips into her scapula where her bra strap should have been.

"You're going to kill me, you know that?"

Samira smirked, unable to tear her gaze from his mouth. "Good thing I'm a doctor, I can fix that."

"You would, wouldn't you," he groaned. "If anyone could find a way to reverse death it would fucking be you." The hand on her back dropped down to her ass and pulled her close. The new proximity made Samira acutely aware of Abbot's erection against her stomach.

Emergency medicine, contrary to Robby's probing on the floor, instilled a constant sense of urgency in her. Every symptom, every allergy, every update demanded a response from her. Evidence of Abbot's arousal — aroused by her, nonetheless — was no different. She lowered to her knees and raised her hands to the waistband of his cargo pants. "Is this alright, Doctor Ab—"

"Don't you dare call me that right now." He sounded wrecked and she'd barely touched him yet.

"Okay. Is this alright, Jack?" His head thunked against the wood of her door. "I'll take that as a yes." She unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, tugging them down around his thighs.

"Samira, shit, hold on."

She paused, hands on his toned, freckled, and frankly perfect legs.

"You really don't have to do this. I'm coming off of a full shift, I'm sweaty and —"

In light of the new data she'd received, she took a gamble on her response. "Would that stop you? If the roles were reversed?"

He barely stifled a groan.

"That's what I thought." She pulled down the grey heathered cotton of his boxer briefs. When his cock popped free, she couldn't quite keep in her gasp. And okay, yes, it had been more than a while since Samira had been this up close and personal with anyone outside of a clinical setting, but it was a really nice cock. Compact, like the rest of him, even if he was a little longer than she expected. Her mouth watered. "You clean?"

Jack nodded and worked a gentle hand into her hair.

Unable to stop herself, Samira took his head into her mouth. She flicked her tongue across his slit as she luxuriated in the salty, musky taste of his skin. She pulled off to suck wet kisses up and down his shaft, stabilizing him with a hand around his base, the graying hair there tickling her palm. Humming, Jack applied light pressure to the fingertips on her scalp.

Samira opened her eyes finding, with no amount of surprise, Jack's eyes already trained on her. Without breaking eye contact — god, speak of impossibilities — she took his cock in as far as she could and began bobbing her head.

As she moved, testing her tongue against the velvety skin of him, she watched his teeth fidget desperately with his bottom lip. His hand twitched in her hair. The thigh and pelvic muscles under her hands spasmed. Samira curled the hand at the base of his cock around Jack's balls and upped her mouth's suction, keeping a keen eye as his gaze never faltered. After a moment, she took pity on him.

"Let go, Jack," she murmured against the now-soaked skin of his cock.

Instantly, his hand lifted off of her head.

Samira couldn't help but smile. "No, I mean you won't hurt me. You can fuck my face, if you want."

"Shit." Jack pulled his hips away from her grasp and up against the door. He leaned minutely over her and gathered Samira's loose updo in both his hands. "I wouldn't ever, ever do anything to hurt you: do you understand?"

Nodding, Samira wondered how exactly the script got flipped on her so quickly.

"But I also know you're made of the toughest stuff out there." When she licked her lips to sooth herself, his eyes latched hungrily onto the movement before finding her gaze again. "I would love nothing more than to make this as interactive as possible, but if you'd like this to go anywhere else tonight, I think we're going to need to move on."

She sat back on her heels. "That bad, huh?"

"In your dreams, Mohan."

In hindsight, she'd remember that her neighbors were having Sunday morning lie-ins or getting ready for church when she screamed Jack's name. But her world had narrowed to the gentle, inquisitive way he stripped her out of her borrowed scrubs as they worked across the apartment to her bed. She hadn't even remembered to take off the hospital socks before he'd followed her onto the mattress, laid her down, and shouldered between her thighs. She hadn't even remembered to pat herself on the back for wearing her special occasion underwear (not that there was anything particularly special about cotton French-cuts or that she had many occasions to wear them) as Jack nosed through the black fabric and tugged them to the side.

So, needless to say, when he finally put his mouth on her like he'd been stumbling through the desert and she was a fucking oasis, she lost her cool a little bit.

"Oh my god, Jack, oh my god."

His curls felt just as wiry as she thought they would under her palm and between her fingers. Her other hand curled around her breast, pinching and unpinching her nipple at a semi-regular pace. She could feel him smirk against her, his hazel eyes twinkling in the morning light and his tongue never losing its rhythm. Without warning, Jack sucked her clitoris into his mouth.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, holy shit." Despite the pleasure building behind her pelvic bone and turning her brain into jelly, Samira fought to keep her eyes open and her attention zeroed in on the man between her legs.

Jack adjusted his hands on her hips. With rolling motions of his capable, precise wrists, he worked her into his mouth over and over. She followed the suggestive pressing of his fingertips to ride his face. The drag of his stubble through her pubic hair and across her inner thighs almost distracted her from the perfect slick insistence of his tongue.

She moaned through her teeth, trying desperately to cling to a plane of existence where she cared what her neighbors overheard during breakfast.

Slipping one hand from her hip, Jack skirted his fingertips over her iliac crest and moved his hand under his chin. He hooked his thumb against her labia, sliding over her opening. The pressure married with his renewed suction on her clitoris set her thighs twitching. She slid the hand from her breast down to thread her fingers into Jack's on her hip. He let a groan out against her at the contact.

"Just - just like that."

Pleasure built and built and built under her skin, expanding until the current spread thin and electric across her nerves. Samira tried to focus her attention on keeping her legs spread. Now that she had him right where she hadn't even realized she wanted him, she wasn't about to suffocate Jack if she could help it.

"Please, Jack." He slipped his thumb into her up to the knuckle, his unwavering gaze taking on a knowing shade.

Samira, first and foremost, was an intellectual. She dealt in data, patterns, and conclusions. The visceral and overly emotional all paled in comparison to facts and concrete figures. So while the feeling of Jack's thick thumb breaching her entrance and the sticky, wet sound that accompanied it helped pull her towards her orgasm, the knowledge that he was finally, really, truly inside her pushed her over the edge.

She'd send the neighbors fruit baskets later to apologize for all the screaming.

Jack crawled up her body, pausing to lave the flat of his tongue over each of her nipples.

She rushed to kiss him. It was an insufficient 'thank you,' but Samira was hardly firing on all cylinders.

"I should have known how good you'd taste," he murmured against her mouth. She shuddered, even as he brushed more kisses to her lips. "Do you have condoms?"

Nodding, Samira reached up and over toward her nightstand.

He stopped her with a soft hand on the underside of her arm. "I got it." Unfortunately, Jack getting it required him to slide off of the bed and impossibly far away onto the floor. She rolled onto her side to watch him, only to find him already watching back and working his scrub shirt over his head.

The moment — the first real breath she'd taken since Jack kissed her against the front door — landed on her. She quickly parsed through the bundle of nerves in her stomach. Where she expected to find regret and panic, she instead found eagerness. And the anxiety that came along with it. "Jack."

He hummed.

"It's been a very long time since I've done this."

Jack's smirk was lethal. "What a coincidence. We seem to be in the same boat." The way he stripped off his undershirt kept him from witnessing Samira's whimper. "You want to keep going?"

She couldn't keep her eyes off of his torso. All pale muscle, perfectly compressed into his lean frame and dusted with a collection of freckles, scars, and greying hair she would need to comprehensively catalogue later. For science. "Yes please."

Catching her looking, he held her gaze for a moment before treating her to the same visual exploration. Her skin pebbled under his attention. Then he turned back to the task at hand and opened the drawer in her nightstand. Jack rummaged around, pushing aside her half-forgotten chapsticks, backup phone charger, and pill organizer. Samira blushed as he picked up her vibrator, a blue bullet bought for its silence (to release all the pent up frustration she acquired in her mother's guest room) and its efficiency (to maximize the four to five minutes between her head hitting the pillow and falling asleep after a shift), and slid his eyes to her.

"Don't judge me," she pleaded.

He rolled his head back and forth. Considering. "Not judging, sweetheart. Just weighing my options."

Samira swallowed a gasp. "Whatever option gets you naked and inside of me sooner rather than later has my vote."

At that, he tossed the vibrator into the drawer and ripped a condom loose from its strip. He turned back to face her and immediately grimaced. He caught both hands on the edge of the mattress, trapping the foil packet under one broad palm. "Shit."

She sat up.

"I thought I could -" Jack started, straightening up. "Can I take my leg off? Is that okay?"

"Of course. Whatever makes you most comfortable."

He tugged his cargo pants down and off before maneuvering to sit on the edge of the mattress. The lever clicked as he released the prosthetic from his calf. Wedging the limb between her bed and nightstand, he rolled off the sleeve and massaged the scars on his leg.

"If this is too much, we can rain check."

"Samira," he breathed. His free hand grasped the side of her face. "Never too much. If you think a decades-old twang is going to get in the way of me finally getting my hands on you, you're out of your mind."

She kissed him again, unable to communicate the effect of his overwhelming want with words.

Jack worked off his underwear and found the condom packet. With the same precision he brought to intubating or suturing or epinephrine injections, he tore the packet open and rolled the rubber over his dick, still flushed and leaking.

"How do you want me?" Samira asked, somehow successfully prying her eyes back to his face.

He shot her a look. One filled with the darkness of danger and desire.

She rolled her eyes. "I meant, what's most comfortable right now?"

Gentle hands at her shoulders urged her back down on the mattress. "Can you roll onto your side for me?"

She followed the direction and the jerk of his chin that accompanied it. Laying naked, facing away from him felt foreign. Like if he wasn't in her line of sight the whole night might dissipate into smoke even as she felt the bed shift with his movement.

His chest settled warmly against her back. "I'm right here," he murmured, pressing kisses to her neck and stretching out an arm to support her head.

Samira reached up to lace their fingers together.

With a hand on the inside of her thigh, Jack eased her top leg up and out so he could slot his cock against her folds. The first press of him inside of her made Samira gasp so hard she thought she pulled something in her neck. Jack's hand trailed up her hip to hold her close by the sternum. "You got it, good girl."

She clenched around him, openly mewling when he bottomed out. "Please, Jack."

The slide of his nose behind her ear accompanied the back and forth of his hips as he found his rhythm. Once he set a pace, and adjusted the angle of Samira's hips for a deeper angle that still nudged him right against the spot that made her see stars, Jack's mouth started running. "So fucking perfect, Samira."

She wrenched her head back for a sloppy kiss. "You feel so good. So good."

"God, baby," he snapped his hips especially hard. "Should've known the most beautiful woman in the world, th-the smartest doctor — so kind, so brilliant, so fucking empathetic — should've known you'd take my cock like you were made for it."

Her moans reverberated in her own ears. She figured they may have really been that loud given the way Jack shoved two fingers in her mouth. The electric charge of pleasure turned her wild: she sucked at his fingers, spit sliding out of her mouth and down his knuckles, and ground back into Jack's pelvis.

"Shit." Jack let slip, squeezing their joined hands. "You needed this, didn't you? Needed me?"

She nearly hiccuped in the relief his words brought her. He brought his hand away from her face and tucked his soaked fingertips down to her clit, pressing firm circles there. "Oh my god, you're kidding me. You've got to be kidding."

He laughed into her shoulder. "I'm the real deal, baby."

Panting in his arms, she let him continue until she felt the beginning of an orgasm creep into her spine. "Jack, hold on, please."

He stopped his hips mid-thrust and removed his hand from her clit to her stomach the moment she spoke.

"I need to see you." She craned her neck to make eye contact. "Don't want to come without seeing you."

At her confession, he growled into her shoulder. Slowly, surely, he slid back into her and pressed his palm under her bellybutton.

The pressure seared her nerves straight through. She couldn't help but whine. "Jack, fuck."

"Any ideas?"

"Please let me ride you."

He kissed her hairline. "Anything you want, sweetheart. Anything you want."

The moments after he pulled out of her stretched into an eternity. Then, she turned and saw Jack Abbot laid out naked in her bed and all thoughts of her emptiness disappeared. She scratched her nails down Jack's chest. "Next time, I'm going to have fun with you."

He flushed red across his cheeks and chest. "If you don't get those stupid-ass socks off and get over here."

She shucked the socks off of her feet and somewhere into the giant Jack-less expanse of the rest of her apartment.

They moved together as he scooted back to lean on her pillows and she stalked closer to her seat on his lap. His hands covered her skin the second she straddled him. "The most gorgeous woman I've ever seen," he confessed, sliding his palms up her sides and swiping his thumbs across the undersides of her breasts.

"My view isn't half bad either." Samira bit her lip at the displayed definition in Jack's pecs and abdomen. His body, pushed to its limits long ago, was showing signs of middle age and stagnancy. The extra weigh around his stomach fascinated her. As did the expanse of freckles that faded to pale, soft skin under his arms. Jesus Christ, his arms. Alanna used to say that love was worthless if the other person couldn't carry you out of a burning building. The thought alone made Samira's vagina flutter.

"I'm not even in you and you're already moanin' like that, huh?"

"You're hot, okay?"

He hummed, the smirk on his face hiding something. As Samira tilted her head to try and piece together his game, he slipped one hand in between her legs. "You're this wet just looking at me, and you really didn't know?"

She tried not to grind down on his fingers as she shrugged one shoulder up. "I'm here now."

"Yeah, baby, you are." Jack pulled her in for a kiss as he lined up with her entrance again. "You ready?"

Nodding, she began to sink over his length, taking her bottom lip between her teeth at the stretch. She'd been on the verge of coming, she remembered, and had gotten so caught up in the back and forth with Jack and his stupid, perfect body that she'd completely forgotten. Samira found an angle she liked and started rocking up and down, finding a grip on one of Jack's biceps to keep her upright.

"That's my girl. So strong, so beautiful, taking what she wants."

"Want you, Jack, need you." With all she'd put her legs through that night, her thighs were already starting to burn. But it would take an act of god-like proportions for her to stop.

"Jesus, Samira. I never stood a chance." He leaned forward, then, putting his mouth to use around her nipple instead.

She groaned, grasping at the curls on the back of his head. "You make scrubs look sexy. I was bound to come to my senses eventually. God, that's perfect."

Jack moved his hands down to her hips and helped support her bouncing. In thanks, she pulled his head from her chest and kissed him. "You held a man's artery in your bare hands tonight."

"Mmhmm."

"How did it feel?"

"Right," she confessed. "It felt right."

He crushed their lips back together and chose that moment to begin grinding his dick up into her on her downstrokes.

"Please."

One hand tightened on her hip. The other slid down between her thighs, rubbing her with sure, solid movements of his fingers.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Samira thought she heard herself chanting.

"Come on," Jack urged. His eyes, as always, focused on her face as he looked up through his lashes. "Take your win, Mira."

An orgasm overcame her immediately. Her legs shook with the combination of effort and release as she collapsed into Jack's chest. Time spun out into thin, indiscernible spindles, but she was fairly sure his orgasm followed shortly after, with a grunt into her hair.

Jack took her with him as he fell back into the pillows. He brushed her hair out of her face and kissed her forehead. Grateful for his wherewithal, Samira let herself catch her breath against Jack's neck before rolling her dead weight off of him.

She'd missed his face, really the entire experience, when he came, but the flush and looseness of his post-coital face was a joy to witness on its own. Even has he pulled out of her and disposed of the condom in the trash can by her bed.

"Don't worry." He looped an arm around her. "Next time I'll come better prepared."

Samira perked up, suddenly full of energy. "Next time?"

The late morning light streaming through her blinds, the ones she was too distracted to close earlier, woke Samira from her slumber. Her body aches set her settling back into the mattress. As she blinked awake, she realized she'd rested her head on Jack's outstretched bicep. It gave her a lovely view of the curve of his shoulder, the strong line of his neck, and the youthful slack of his sleeping face. She purred.

Flashes of their morning together floated through her mind. The sex, of course, but also everything that followed it. Jack insisting that they showered before sleep, letting Samira help him across the apartment instead of putting his leg back on. Then pulling her into his lap on the closed toilet as he waited for the water to heat up, pulling the bobby pins out of her tangled hair. Then reclining, naked and gorgeous and Classical, in her bed as she scoured the pantry for snacks, insisting on feeding her peanut-butter pretzels even when her eyes drooped.

Samira was a generally happy person. She liked her job, liked her coworkers, liked Pittsburgh, liked her apartment. But this feeling, one that settled into her marrow and burst out through her pores, surpassed understanding. She'd never seen this feeling on a wheel in a therapists' office.

Her phone vibrated on the nightstand behind her. Jack must have plugged it in while she was in the kitchen. She needed to collect more data, almost certainly, but her hypotheses would favor the L word creeping up earlier than anticipated if this kept up.

She rolled over, away from the warm smell and feeling of his skin, and onto her elbow to pick up the call. "Samira."

"Oh shit, did we wake you?" June, with Alanna whooping in the background.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah a little."

"Sorry!" Alanna yelled over the line.

June shushed her. "Are we still on for coffee before our flights?"

Fuck. She'd forgotten amidst the… well, everything from earlier. A thick arm snaked around her waist as Jack pressed open mouthed kisses to the back of her neck."Yes! Absolutely. I'll be there."

"Amazing. We can pick you up in like twenty?"

"No!" Samira insisted. "No, I'll meet you there."

"Oh. Okay. Then let's make it thirty?"

"Yes, perfect. That's - that's perfect." Jack curled closer to her, held her tighter.

"Jeez, Sam, you were so jumpy it almost seemed like you had a man there with you."

Samira blushed. "I was at the hospital all night. Where would I have found a man?" Jack barely tucked his face into Samira's scapula before a laugh leaked out of his mouth. "I just haven't gotten to clean up from last night, and you guys don't need to see that."

"Right, right. Are you okay after all that?"

"Of course," she shrugged, then realized they couldn't see her. "Just a day on the job. I'll see you in a half hour?"

"See you!"

The line had barely dropped when Jack flipped her onto her back under him. "Hi." God, he was a sight.

"Hey. Did I wake you?"

He shook his head no, then ducked to kiss her. It was foreign, and utterly delicious, to spend time lazily making out with no agenda or rush. "Couldn't find a man at the hospital, huh?"

She couldn't help but laugh out loud in his face. "I'm sorry, did you want me kissing and telling all over town?"

Jack shifted his weight to tuck one hand around her cheek. "It's yours to tell. I just think it's funny."

"Besides, they think I should be hooking up with Robby."

"They may be onto something, I've heard some rave reviews over the years."

"Oh yeah? Maybe I should see what he's up to." Samira rolled toward the edge of the bed, as if to get up and leave him.

He tugged her back into place and nipped at her neck. "You're impossible."

Humming, she reached up to drape her arms around Jack's neck. It was nice. To be physically intimate without it being about sex.

"Shouldn't you be getting ready?"

"Yeah. I'm comfortable here, though."

"Come on, Mira. Go see your friends." This time, he let her get up. She still felt a rush of confidence and bravery around him. Following an unidentifiable impulse, she plucked his undershirt off of the floor and slipped it over her head.

Jack's eyes flitted over her form, unable to land on any part of her for long, even as he pulled his lip between his teeth. "I'm going to need that back, you know."

Her brows pulled together. "Why?"

A laugh danced in his gaze. "As much as you appreciate the view, I'd like to be dressed when I leave your apartment building."

"You're leaving?"

"Yeah, baby. I don't want to butt in while you're not here."

"Jack," she admonished, walking closer to his seated position at the edge of her bed. "You worked a full shift."

"And then some," he added around a smile.

"And then some," she conceded, "Sleep it off here. I really don't mind."

He settled his hands at her waist and pulled her closer. "Don't let me overstay my welcome, please."

Samira straddled his lap. "I know I'm newer to this feeling than you are, but I like the idea of you around. Of being around each other. A doctor as smart as I am wouldn't keep you around if you weren't welcome."

Jack's arms bracketed her back. "When you put it like that."

"Besides," she trailed off, fingers winding through his curls, "When I get back…"

"Oh, the long game, I see."

She kissed him through matching smiles until he pushed her away by the hip bones.

"Okay, okay, I'm going."

In the bathroom — she'd really have to see about knocking down all the walls in her apartment so Jack was never out of sight — she looked at herself in the mirror. At Jack's shirt hanging low on her collarbones and her hair wildly sticking out in all directions and the bags smudging under her eyes. She looked herself over and let a smile light up her face.