Chapter Text
Samira sprawls on the park bench. She could still see the entrance to the Emergency Room, but it’s not, exactly, a deliberate choice. Her eyes are closed anyway.
Her actual shift ended five hours ago, but she’s only been sitting on the bench for an hour. Forty-five minutes, maybe. She could have been home by now. Should have been, even. But her heart rate’s just returned to normal, the adrenaline and cortisol just broken down and reabsorbed. It feels a little like she’s floating. Walking home now will just ruin the liminal feeling right between the flood of chemicals and real bodily needs like sleep, or food, or… whatever it is that causes her skin to feel like it’s pressing outwards, off her body, trying to get to… something.
Also, it’s two a.m. She should uber. Walking home isn’t an unsafe choice. But it’s not exactly a safe one, either. Still, it’s cheaper than the ride would be, and unfortunately, it’s a consideration. She doesn’t pull out her phone, but she doesn’t get up, either. If she sits here long enough, she’ll disassociate and that sounds infinitely easier than any of the other options. It actually sounds almost nice.
This time of night, this park is always quiet. On the other side, on the bench set up that mirrors hers, is a couple sitting and talking. They’re far enough away she can’t hear them at all. Has no idea if they’re having a good night or if they’re having the kind of night she’s having, just with someone instead of alone.
She can go home, get some rest. She works a swing shift tomorrow, so there’s plenty of time. Still, out here she can hear the late-night traffic, the sirens. It’s like the sounds of ED, just arranged differently, for a wider audience.
Footfalls approach from her left. It’s not the first time someone’s approached since she’s been sitting here, and she’s long since learned that the best thing she can do is ignore any passersby. She’s still in her scrubs. Most people give the obvious medical professionals a wide berth. She doesn’t even open her eyes. She doesn’t have a bag on her, and she’s got nothing worth taking.
When the footsteps stop, though, the air around her settles differently around a second body in the same small area.
“Dr. Mohan.”
She takes a deep breath. She knows the voice. Has listened to it teach, lecture, advise, question, even compliment and tease. The expected rush of bay, something in his cologne or deodorant, bathes her lungs. She tilts her head in his direction and opens her eyes, “Dr. Abbot.”
He’s holding two Styrofoam cups, steam puffing and immediately dissipating in the humid early summer air. He sits next to her, half a body away, and holds the cup in his right hand out for her to take. It’s the breakroom coffee. Folgers Black Silk. It’s terrible, but not as bad as some of the other stuff that rotates through. She takes it from him.
“Slow night?” she sips, looks past him, knowing she can predict exactly what the waiting room looks like.
“Calm before the storm,” he says, taking a long pull from his cup.
That sounds about right, actually, considering the time. She waits for him to say something else. Something about why he’s out here with her, maybe. But he doesn’t. He just sits, quietly. Drinking his coffee. Once, he reaches down to adjust his prosthesis. When he sits back up, he settles back, seemingly content to sit out here for however long whatever he wants to happen takes. She lets it go on long enough that eventually, she starts to count, to see exactly how long he’ll leave it. She gets to two-hundred-sixty before her palms start to itch with it.
“Did you need something, Dr. Abbot?”
He shifts his eyes in her direction, but not his head. She can tell, because her body has rotated around to watch him, her left thigh pressed up against the back of the bench, the toe of her sneaker wedged in between the back and seat slats. “No. You?”
She opens her mouth to tell him no, of course not, but finds that she can’t quite force her tongue to shape the words.
She needs so much she isn’t even sure where to start.
But there’s nothing this man, an attending physician at her job, can give her that would make any real difference to how she’s feeling. Besides, the worst of it is over. Right now, what she really needs is to go home. Her eyes glide in that direction before moving back to him, only to find that his eyes had followed hers, and now he’s gazing across the park, a set to his mouth similar to the one he gets when he’s shifting from getting labs to making a treatment plan.
In the end, he saves her from answering because a silver sedan with the z-trip logo pulls up on the street behind him. “I called a taxi to take you home.”
He did? She raises an eyebrow at him. “A taxi?”
He shrugs. “If I ordered you an uber from my account, your destination would be in my history.”
Shit. That’s really considerate. It makes her eyes water.
He stands and holds a hand out to her. “Go home, Dr. Mohan. You’re working tomorrow.”
She takes his hand, lets him pull her up from the bench. Her ass is numb from how long she’s been sitting there, but it’s the warmth of his hand wrapped around hers that makes the impression. She’s touched forty-odd people today, doing exams, shaking hands with family… but still, it occurs to her that this is the first time she’s touched someone who wasn’t a patient — or patient adjacent — in weeks, maybe. That’s the only reason, she’s sure, that the rasp of his palm against hers even registers.
The weight of his hand in hers snakes its way up her arm, something heavy and soothing, dampening. A buzzing in her chest settles. It must have been a constant feeling for a while, because now that it’s gone she feels clawed open. She stares at his hand, long enough that it’s conspicuous. Long enough that now it’s weird that she’s still holding it. Long enough that she feels embarrassment flush her cheeks. She chances a look at his face, and it’s placid and open, the same as usual. He doesn’t pull his hand back.
“Jack Abbot?” a voice calls, the taxi driver.
“You ready?” he asks her, voice low.
She nods and, finally, disengages their hands.
He doesn’t look away from her, just tilts his chin a little to direct his voice away from her. “Yeah,” he calls, “need a minute.”
“Meter’s running,” the guy reminds him, but doesn’t continue the exchange.
She doesn’t know what to say to him. She’s never spent this much time alone with him. She’s never spent this much time alone with a man she wasn’t dating, related to, or treating, come to think of it, and that seems like a pretty sad state of affairs because this whole interlude has lasted all of seven minutes and they’ve exchanged, what?, a half a dozen sentences?
“I should go home,” she finally says, as if it had been her idea all along. She takes one step, then another, and another until she’s actually, finally, leaving. He walks her all the way to the taxi. “Thanks for this,” she says, as he pulls the door open for her.
“See you tomorrow.” He closes her in and then bends down at the taxi window, passing a folded bill to the driver. “Card’s on file,” he tells the guy.
He carries cash?
She still considering that when the cab pulls away and she recites her address. She looks over her shoulder, out the back window, watches him saunter across the street and disappear back into the hospital. A moment later her phone vibrates in her pocket.
PTMC Dr Abbot
If you don’t text me in twenty minutes to tell me you’re home, I’m calling the police.
She laughs. She can’t remember the last time anybody cared where she was, or if she got home safe. That also means she isn’t quite sure how to reply. She sends him a thumbs-up emoji in return.
It’s an eight minute ride to her apartment, and she stares at her phone the entire time, the text thread with him open on the screen. Before tonight there was a phone number for an Ortho consult and a link to a journal article. And she’d been working with him for three years. She has no idea what sort of bubble tonight exists in, except that it feels like one.
She can still feel his hand closing around hers, pulling. Still has the calm sensation knitting her chest closed, so foreign.
She waits to text him until she’s in her living room, door deadbolted. She’s not sure why, but it feels like an important distinction than texting him while standing on the sidewalk in front of her building.
Home. Thanks. Again.
His response is immediate enough that she wonders if all hell hasn’t broken loose yet. Wonders what it means if it has.
PTMC Dr Abbot
You’re welcome, Dr. Mohan.
She’ll see him again in less than nineteen hours, something she’s literally never calculated before. Maybe between now and then she can figure out how he made the buzzing anxiety go quiet.