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It doesn’t hit all at once, the burnout. It washes over her slowly, each day bringing a new wave that pulls at the edges of her being. Lapping at her ankles, then her knees, and before she knows it, she’s barely keeping her head above water.
During her shifts, Samira hardly notices it at all. The work makes everything outside PTMC’s walls easy to ignore, every case a new distraction from the thing that swallows her whole once her apartment door slams shut behind her. Trauma cases linger, of course they do, but the challenges make it easier to push through another day. Even give her something to think about before her bedroom starts closing in on her while she desperately grapples with sleep at night.
Her life isn’t that bad, really. Her leg hasn’t been crushed in a seven car pile-up on the freeway. She hasn’t lost a child to meningitis. She hasn’t had more than a stiff neck and sore feet in months. Until her panic attack on the fourth, she just thought she was tired, cracking under the pressure of Robby’s endless criticisms. Because who wouldn’t be? The way he treats her verges on hostile, some days. She’s not sure when their wires got so crossed.
He leaves for sabbatical and she’s glad to see the back of him, even though everyone else in the ED is scared out of their minds that his little cross-country quest is more of a cry for help than it is a soul-searching holiday. And maybe it’s a sign that things aren’t going so well for her, that she finds herself unable to care about his mental health when he rides off at the end of his shift, sans helmet.
He certainly doesn’t seem to care about hers. Shit, he doesn’t even toss her a good work or a fist bump when she manages to save Orlando. And it is a good save, because she was fucking unraveling by the time he was readmitted.
Once Orlando’s vitals are stable, she allows herself a few minutes in the bathroom. No panic this time, but she sobs so hard so suddenly she nearly throws up in the sink. She’s still wiping sweat from her forehead when Dr. Abbot catches her outside of the locker room, wordlessly handing her a blue Gatorade.
She doesn’t ask how he knew she needed the electrolytes. Certainly doesn’t want to think about him potentially listening to her cry her eyes out with only the bathroom door between them.
“Thanks,” she says, cracking the top and chugging half of it before meeting his eyes. He makes it hard to do that, a lot of the time. His gaze is so piercing it feels like he’s looking right through her, down to her bones.
His mouth quirks up on one side, but it’s so slight that she might’ve missed it if she wasn’t paying attention. “Dana said you were looking for me.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She huffs out a short laugh, shaking her head. The letter of recommendation seems trivial now, after everything. “It can wait another day.”
“If you want,” he says, shrugging a shoulder — the good one, not the one she’d patched up for him earlier. “But just so you know, I’ll write it for you.”
Her heart lifts, just a little. “Really?”
“Absolutely. I’ve seen enough of your work. Even before I got a taste of it firsthand,” he adds with a conspiratorial whisper. Their little secret. “We’d be lucky to have you stick around, if that’s what you want.”
“I think Robby might disagree with you.”
Abbot’s face shutters for a moment. “He’s been tough on you.”
“Tough is definitely one way to describe it.”
“Well,” he sighs, a frustrated sound. Not at her, she understands immediately. “He’s gone now.”
“He is,” she agrees.
Abbot looks at her. Not leering, never that. Just taking her in. Probably cataloguing her frizzing hair, sweaty forehead, purple shadows under her eyes.
“Get some rest, Mohan.”
She nods, but lets him turn away first. Watches him until he disappears down the hallway and into whatever room is undoubtedly better for having him in it.
Home.
Routine.
Routine is easy.
Routine gives her a couple of hours before she’s left alone with her thoughts.
Peels off her scrubs, throws them in the washer. Takes in the clean scent of her detergent as the washer lurches with its first movements of the cycle. Walks into the bathroom, avoids her own eyes in the mirror. Shampoos her hair. Conditions it, brushes it while wet. Washes face, then body. Dries off. Lotion, moisturizer and serum. Deodorant, because she can’t stand sweating through the night. Same pajamas from the night before, still clean. Brushes teeth, then mouthwash — the whitening one for nighttime, fresh breath for daytime.
The lamp turns off, and she’s left alone with her thoughts. The waves crash over her again.
Tears don’t come. They never do, here.
*
Dr. Abbot writes her the letter of recommendation. It’s thoughtful but professional. He mentions her work during the Pittfest shift, the pigtail catheter procedure she performed with his oversight. How she remains cool under pressure, how she gives serious consideration to all options and outcomes before treatment. An asset, he says, to have someone in their hospital who thinks before they act rather than jump to the simplest solution like so many residents are wont to do.
Robby considers that a character flaw. Apparently Abbot sees it differently.
She picks up more night shifts.
The change screws up her sleep schedule, but she figures she wasn’t getting much of it anyway. It’s kind of nice, being able to go outside while the sun’s still up. She can make pilates classes a few times a week now. Another part of the routine.
Samira likes the night shift team. Not that she dislikes the day shift team, but it’s nice to work with some new faces. Especially ones that haven’t been witness to Robby’s regular dressing-down of her abilities. Everyone seems so much more laid back, level-headed even when there are disagreements.
It has a lot to do with the way Dr. Abbot leads, she thinks. He’s a solid presence, letting residents take the reins while providing invaluable guidance. When he corrects them, it’s not brash. If someone comes at him with an attitude, he diffuses the situation — either with his sense of humor or with a blunt assessment that cuts right to the core of the real problem.
He really does see through most people. So of course, he sees right through her.
*
The routine. The routine is good.
It is good.
Then they lose a patient and she could’ve saved them, and now there’s a woman without a husband. Two kids without a father. It’s September, barely two months since July fourth, and sanity’s slipping through her fingers again. But it’s not a panic attack this time. Samira thinks this actually might be worse.
She just doesn’t feel anything.
Her mom calls and she doesn’t answer. McKay and even Javadi text her, saying they miss her on the day shift, but she doesn’t reply. The only thing her phone gets used for is doomscrolling and to tell the time when her watch is dead.
The routine. That’s all there is. And she’s making it through, really. Her life’s not that bad. It’s just that there’s a black hole when she goes home. There’s a black hole at PTMC. She gets sucked into both of them, every day. Every night. Day in. Day out.
Patients live. Patients die.
Laundry. Shower. Brush teeth. Skincare. Sleep. Exercise. Work.
Is this what life is?
It is.
*
Samira’s making it through, really.
Apparently Abbot sees it differently.
She’s staring into her empty locker at the end of the shift when a light knock on the metal startles her. Dr. Abbot’s there, arms crossed, leaning up against the locker next to hers.
“Doing okay, Mohan?”
“I’m good,” she says, and he just looks at her the way he does. She suddenly feels the need to defend herself. “Really.”
She’d cringe at how flat it sounds if she cared more. She just doesn’t.
“Convincing,” he replies, that tiny smirk she’s grown familiar with a ghost on his lips.
It’s not condescending. With Robby, it would’ve been. With Abbot, it never is.
Samira just stares at him, unsure of how to respond.
“C’mon, let’s get breakfast,” Abbot says.
This is not part of the routine. Anxiety settles around her shoulders. If they go out to breakfast, she’ll have to wait a couple more hours to take a shower. Her skin is dry. She won’t get to sleep early enough and she won’t be able to make pilates at two.
“I can’t,” she mumbles, closing her locker.
“Samira.”
The gentle way he says her name — it’s rare, him calling her by her first name — and the way he stares at her makes her pause.
He can see right down to her bones, she knows. He sees the routine. Is asking her to break it.
Just like with the pigtail catheter, his unwavering presence gives her the courage she needs to do something she wouldn’t be ready for if he wasn’t the one asking.
“Okay.”
*
They walk a few blocks over to a diner that most of the PTMC staff and other nearby first responders usually frequent. Samira’s been here before, more than once, but probably not in the last six months.
Shit, has it been six months?
Abbot doesn’t say much. Samira feels panic prickle at the back of her neck, because she knows why he’s doing this. She knows, with more clarity than she’s had about anything in the last couple of months, that he can tell what’s going on with her. He can see the black hole she’s been sucked into. Every coffee he’s left beside her while she was charting, every gentle touch on the shoulder. Every time he’s searched her face, lingered on the bags beneath her eyes.
He wasn’t looking. He was observing. Analyzing. It’s so obvious to her, now.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she tells him when he holds the diner door open for her when they arrive.
“It’s just breakfast, Samira.”
“I’m fine,” she says, but it sounds a little wild. A touch desperate.
“Okay,” he replies. “But are you hungry?”
She laughs, and he smiles like he’s won something.
Samira is hungry, actually. She orders a chocolate chip waffle and slathers it with butter then smothers it in syrup, the way she used to when she was little. Jack does a bad job containing his grin when she devours more than half of it in five minutes; it’s blatantly visible despite his attempt to hide behind the breakfast sandwich he lifts to his lips.
She doesn’t know why her mind automatically switched him to Jack as soon as they sat down.
They talk through a few of the shift’s cases, but she can tell that he doesn’t really want to discuss them — he’s only entertaining her, letting her wade through the shallows she’s comfortable in so she doesn’t slip and drown into deeper waters.
Jack is waist-deep already. He’s just waiting for her to join him.
She wipes the sticky syrup from her lips with a napkin, finally looking into his eyes fully for the first time since they sat down.
“I have a routine,” Samira tells him. She’s not sure why she says it.
“Most of us do,” Jack concurs.
Sweat gathers in her armpits, on her back between her shoulders.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Her voice cracks embarrassingly, and she looks up at the ceiling to mitigate the sudden burn in her nose, the tightness in her throat.
His hand is warm on her wrist. Like she has no control over it, Samira flips their hands, her grip aggressively tight on his fingers. Her palm is damp, and his is dry. When she finally detaches her gaze from the ceiling, there’s no pity on his face. Only concern. A little hurt. All softness.
It cracks her open.
Jack leaves three twenties on the table and ushers her out before anyone in the diner sees her distress.
Samira isn’t sobbing. She’s aware of that — that she’s not making any sound as the tears fall freely down her cheeks. Jack leads her down the sidewalk, putting some distance between them and the diner. He finds a bench and sets her down on it with a gentle press to her shoulders, then sits beside her and lets her fall into him.
She buries her face into his shoulder, tears soaking into his scrubs.
“I’m sorry,” she apologizes thickly into the fabric. There’s a gentle touch on the side of her head, covering her ear. It’s brief, but it feels like a shield from the rest of the world.
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Samira repeats. “I just feel like—” He waits for her to finish. She swallows hard. “I just don’t feel like anything.”
The admission sets off a fresh wave of tears. Jack stays quiet, a strong and solid presence beneath her cheek with a reassuring hand on her back. When she gets through it, she pulls back from his shoulder to peer up at him through wet lashes.
“How did you know?”
The smirk, this time, is small and sad.
“The routine,” he answers gruffly. His hand comes up again, swipes at her cheek. “And your eyes. I’ve seen it enough times in the mirror to know it by now.”
She scoffs, though it comes out as more of a gurgle between the snot and mucus built up from all the crying. “Did you cry into your attending’s shoulder, too?”
He huffs out a surprised laugh.
“Nah, I wasn’t smart enough to accept the help. Neither was Robby.”
That hits her like a truck. He sees the statement land, lets her live with it for a minute.
“You gotta talk to someone,” he tells her when he finally speaks again. When she opens her mouth to object, he cuts her off. “It doesn’t have to be a therapist. Just somebody. I’ve asked around, Samira. I know you don’t have anything else. Just the routine.”
Her face heats with shame. She pulls away from him to bury it in her hands.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he orders her, like it’s something she can just stop because he said so. “It’s a cycle we all get stuck in. Happens to everybody… especially those of us who don’t have something to go home to.”
Samira’s hands drop from her face. She glances at his wedding ring without meaning to, and he’s too quick to miss it.
“She died,” he reveals before she asks the question. “Just over two years ago, now. But I’m sure you already knew that.”
It’s true. Gossip works its way through the hospital like wildfire. She’d been an R2 when his wife died, and while they hardly worked together on the same shifts at the time, everybody at PTMC knew what had happened within hours.
Robby never said, but everyone knew he was grateful it hadn’t happened in their ED.
“The nothing you feel,” says Jack, “I’ve been there more times than I can count. Find myself there most days. The routine — it’s a crutch. It’ll hold you back if you let it.”
“So, what?” she asks irritably. “I’m supposed to go out after work every night? Never make time for myself?”
“That’s not what I said,” he chastises. “Routine is good. It can be grounding. But it can’t be all you have. If you go two weeks without talking to someone who’s not a patient, something’s wrong.”
Samira sniffs, wiping at her nose with the sleeve of her sweater.
“Day shift’s been asking about you,” Jack continues, nudging her knee with his. “And Ellis says she feels like she’s working with a ghost. They’re worried about you. Not just because you work together.” Then he smiles, and it’s a gentle thing that makes her heart flutter. “It’s okay to make friends with them.”
“Are you telling me to get a life?” she jokes.
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “I am.”
“So, what about you? Did you get a life?” Her stomach twists when his smile dissolves, wondering if she’s overstepped. She hopes she nails his signature self-deprecating humor with what she says next. “Getting shot at with the SWAT team doesn’t count.”
His eyes have a little sparkle in them when he looks up at her again.
“I’m working on it.” He holds out a hand to her. “Will you?”
“Maybe,” she says slyly, placing her hand in his. “If I get more waffles out of it.”
He laughs openly at that, head thrown back. His fingers squeeze around hers with the movement.
“I’ll see what I can do about that.”
*
They walk back to the hospital, and Jack drives Samira home despite her insistence that she’s totally fine to take the bus.
It sends a thrill through her that he knows where she lives now.
He doesn’t pull away until she’s dialed her entry code and buzzed herself into the building. He even waits to see that she’s walked up the stairs, sending her a wave when she turns back to sneak one last glance at him.
She still finishes her routine. Scrubs in the laundry. Shower. Teeth. Skincare. Bed.
It feels less oppressive this time.
*
Next shift, he’s already at the board when she clocks in.
“Feeling better?” he asks, dragging his eyes over to her. Assessing, like always.
“Working on it,” she answers honestly. “You?”
He tips his head, sends his smirk her way.
“Working on it.”
They fall into their routines for the rest of the shift. Abbot leads them, with a solid stance but a gentle hand.
*
Samira’s packing her bag in the locker room when the whisper lands in her ear.
“Waffles?”
She knows he’s smiling. They’ve worked together enough now for her to recognize the sound of it.
“Careful,” she warns, only looking at him when he plants himself onto the bench next to her bag. “I might think you’re making this into a regular thing. I heard those’re bad for you, or something.”
“That’s not what I said,” Jack chastises, leaning back on his hands. The ring is gone, Samira notices, but there’s a chain around his neck that disappears beneath his scrub top.
She is very much not blushing when she realizes his eyes were tracking the path of hers.
“I’ll take you up on the offer,” she accepts, “but I think I’m gonna get something different today.”
“Breaking the routine,” he nods sagely, getting to his feet. “Very wise.”
“Doctor’s orders.”
Jack rolls his eyes, but manages to beat her to the door and hold it open for her to walk through, ahead of him.
*
The black hole is still there. At work, and at home.
She’ll crawl her way back out of it.
She’s working on it.