Chapter Text
*****************
To love me
is to love a haunted house.
It’s fun to visit once a year,
But no one wants to live there.
–Brenna Twohy
*****************
Here is a true story. It’s one she'd like to tell him, but she is afraid. It is the thing that makes her who she is and it is also the thing about herself she likes the least; that everyone else likes the least, too.
She went to the emergency room with her father on Thanksgiving. He brought a deck of cards and they played gin rummy, crazy eights, and go fish before his name was finally called.
He explained everything to one doctor and then another and they did tests. She can guess now what they were, but at the time the words and letter combinations were strange to her like a secret language she longed to decode.
Before the doctors came back to explain the results, she and father heard them laughing on the other side of the curtain. They were making jokes about his perfect English and Indians and spicy food and what they probably ate for Thanksgiving dinner and being too stupid to recognize an upset stomach vs a heart attack.
Samira seethed and waited for her father to pull the curtain back and tell the doctors to be respectful the same way he reprimanded her when she was rude to her mother.
But he didn’t.
When the doctors came in they told him it was probably nothing, just indigestion, but to come back if he experienced other symptoms like shortness of breath or lightheadedness.
They went home and she could tell her father was embarrassed. When he did feel worse later that evening, he was too ashamed to go back to the ED. Samira woke in the middle of the night when the EMTs came into the house, but by then it was too late.
This is her origin story, but when she tells people her father died when she was a teenager they assume that it’s grief and loss at the center of her. Those things are there. She misses her father in ways she can’t even explain, but she never grieved in the way brown girls are supposed to – quietly, prettily, turned inside, with a single perfect tear rolling down her cheek.
No, this is a story about anger; it is a story about distrust.
She learned that day that the people who are supposed to know better often don’t. People who are supposed to take care of you often won’t. Empirical evidence can be misleading. Teachers, doctors, parents – all the people who Samira was taught to respect, believe, and trust could be wrong or even cruel.
And the more she looked, the more she noticed that many people were afraid to contradict or push back or call out these revered figures and she found it hurt to be silent and to accept.
That day was the day Samira Mohan learned to shout.
*****************
Heather is babbling. She’s leaving in a few days for a new life in Portland and she’s unafraid, spitting truths right and left. “Be careful with Abbot. Or, you know, don’t. Even if you went for it, I don’t think you’d make the same mistakes I did. Please don’t make the same mistakes I did.”
Collins’ words turn over sour in her stomach. “You and Abbot?” Her heart skips a beat and then picks up in double time. She’s angry. Jealous. What the… Something is wrong with her.
“No, you and Abbot. He likes you.”
“What?” The word slips out of her high and thready.
Heather looks at her fond and bewildered. “You haven’t noticed?”
She had noticed something. That he was supportive in a way no one else was. That he seemed to think she was a good doctor and he told her so even when almost no one else did. He was helpful and funny and challenged her in a way that didn’t feel like he was asking to change her very molecular structure. He didn’t seem at all put off or annoyed by what her mother and several performance evaluations called her “prickliness.”
Older guys have never really been her thing, but she likes his smile, his composure, and his competency. There is a calm in him that you could fall into. He has nice eyes – she’s noticed that they can change color – the crows feet don’t bother her. Actually the crows feet are maybe even a little bit sexy especially when he smiles and –
“What?” she says again as much to herself as to Heather.
*****************
It’s the third week in July and she still has trouble sleeping. Every time she closes her eyes she’s back in the trauma room and even if she can push back the memory of Orlando Diaz, there’s more: Austin Greene, the elephant on her own chest, Robby. Robby over and over again. And if she can free herself from the loop of July 4th, there’s plenty more failure to drown in: Her father dying and the days after when her mother forbid her from crying anymore; years worth of school and the kids who were mean to her; the kids she was mean to back.
She casts about for anything to clear her mind. She does math, goes over each step in the Krebs cycle, tries to remember the lyrics for Bad Romance. She even considers masturbating, but she is just so tired. The idea of turning over to get her vibrator from the nightstand is too much.
It’s then that her mind serves up Abbot, shirtless in central six. At the time she had not been paying attention to his strong looking arms, the sparse hair on his chest, his farmer tan which is somehow endearing. She remembers now, not just the things he had said, but the way he said them. She hadn’t really been listening at first, but here in the dark of her bedroom the low timbre of his voice makes a dam that blocks everything else out. Before she can stress over what it means, sleep finally takes her.
Over the next few days she tries to go back over every interaction she’s ever had with him and search for clues as to what he had really been saying; how he felt, how she felt. He has snuck deeper into her life than she realized.
Renee Eidler and how he’d yelled at her and then said such nice and strange things. She did her first ever crike under his guidance and then he’d taught her to parallel park. That same morning he’d given her probably the best reassurance she’s gotten in her residency so far. Solid work the night of PittFest. He said the toilet paper she’d bought for him in the holiday gift exchange had given him the best laugh he’d had in months. It had mattered to her so very, very much to figure out a present he’d like and she’s still not entirely willing to admit why.
None of it had felt like flirting at the time, but maybe he was. Maybe she was.
It leads her down a data rabbit hole, like when she was obsessed with plate tectonics or the timelines of drug development. She would like there to be an external source where she can get a definitive answer: Was this flirting? Check a box yes or no. What even is flirting with a guy his age. Do they have different methods based on growing up without social media? Without cell phones? She searches for scholarly articles on generational shifts in flirting and courtship behaviour especially concerning Gen X vs Millennials and Gen Z, but doesn’t find much.
She supposes if she wants data, she could talk to someone who’s closer to his age, but who? Not Robby. The thought alone makes her snort out loud. McKay maybe? She gets as far as unlocking her phone before she realizes she must be losing her mind. What are you even thinking – talking about this with someone at work?
The answer ends up being quite easy.
Samira’s mother is the youngest of six and her father was the youngest of three. Samira has 20 cousins between the ages of 47 and 28. Keerthi, on her mother’s side, is one of the oldest and Samira had idolized her as a young girl. They text sporadically and Keerthi always seems to heart Samira’s few and far between Instagram stories.
Without a preamble or even a hello she texts her cousin.
[9:31 PM] Samira Mohan:
Remind me how you and Aditya met
[9:39 PM] Keerthi:
Hi! How are you? At a party in school.
[9:39 PM] Samira Mohan:
Did he woo you
[9:41 PM] Keerthi:
Woo me? Aditya?!!
[9:41 PM] Samira Mohan:
Yeah like flirt with you or something?
I’m trying to figure out how different generational cohorts express romantic interest.
[9:41 PM] Keerthi:
Lol. Is this for science?
[9:46 PM] Keerthi:
Samira?
[9:51 PM] Samira Mohan:
Not really?
[9:51 PM] Keerthi:
Are you ok?
[9:51 PM] Samira Mohan:
Not really?
[9:51 PM] Keerthi:
Can you call me?
It’s good to talk to Keerthi. They hadn’t been close for a long time and Samira hadn’t realized how much she missed talking to another woman. To anyone outside the hospital really.
They talk about their mothers, the trip to Disney Keerthi and her family had just taken, Samira’s work, some TV show Keerthi thought Samira should watch. Yes, they talk about Abbot, but Keerthi has no real insight or advice, she only cautions Samira about getting involved with someone at work.
“You’ve heard the phrase ‘don’t shit where you eat, right?” She asks.
“Yes, of course.” Samira says, pacing her small apartment.
“So?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it would be a problem.”
And she doesn’t. Even her deepest and most passionate relationships just sort of tapered off. Died with a whimper. She wasn’t friends with any of her exes, but she didn’t hate any of them either and she didn’t think any of them hated her. There always just came a time when they would both start to pull away and slowly ghost each other. Very evolved and grown up.
She thinks she needs a distraction and if he already likes her it will be easy. She doesn’t even need to download an app. She decides to text him after she takes a shower. It takes her approximately 27 minutes to lose her nerve.
*****************
In the middle of a long string of nights she’s working at the tail end of summer, Dr. Ellis slides over to her on a stool while she’s charting; trying to wrap up for the morning.
“Do you play tennis?” Ellis asks.
“Not really.” She feels the heat at the back of neck. She knows she’s taking a tone.
Ellis ignores it. “Not even enough to fake it? My doubles partner canceled on me and I just don’t want to forfeit.” Samira looks at her and Ellis shrugs her shoulders. “Come on; I’ve got a racket you can use.” she says like it’s a dare. And Samira is just so sick of everyone and everything. No matter what, she feels like she’s letting everyone down, so why not.
“Ok.” Samira tells her. “Get ready to lose huge.”
To say they lose huge is an understatement. At one point Ellis gives up and starts trying to return shots between her legs, behind her back, she sits down on the court and coaches Samira so her serve gets over the net more often than not. It’s embarrassing, but it's fun.
“Mohan,” Ellis says after they lose in straight sets. “You may be the worst doubles partner I’ve ever had.”
“I warned you.” She says out of breath. “It feels unfair to have done so badly for how wrecked I feel.”
“It’s good though, right?” Ellis stretches her quads.
“Yeah,” And it is. She feels completely in her body and out of her head. “I never get runner’s high, but this is great.”
“Sometimes it’s just more fun with other people.” Samira knows Ellis played basketball in college and that’s probably where the statement is coming from, but she also feels like the universe is trying to hit over the head.
Ellis won't let her be her doubles partner again, but they agree to do a class together every week – either when Samira is working nights or when one or both of them is off when she goes back to days – the more ridiculous the class the better. They laugh through KB Strength and Flow, #powerful, and CardioJAM. After much cajoling Ellis teaches Samira racket ball and that becomes a regular thing for them too. Samira never gets good, but she gets good enough that Ellis eventually has to play with her eyes open.
Once she invites McKay to a class when Ellis gets stuck, but Cassie has her son that night and turns her down. On their way out, though, McKay invites her to come over.
“It’ll just be tacos and video games, but you should join us. It’ll be good to have some adult conversation.”
She’s not not sure why she says yes, but she does and it’s fun too. It’s different, yes, but there’s something about seeing how McKay is with Harrison that hurts her heart in a good way. Samira thinks of her own mother – so distant and cool and somehow needy at the same time. McKay is a single mom, too, and she’s just so…Samira can’t finish the thought and still make her weekly call to the ship. It makes her respect Cassie more.
Samira is terrible at MarioKart - maybe worse even than tennis - and after losing a few races Harrison starts to let her win.
Samira calls him out on it, tells him she can take it, but he shrugs. “It’ll be more fun to beat you when you get better.”
She starts to fill up her weeks like this. Laughing and sweating with Ellis and occasionally dinner and video games again with Cassie and Harrison.
The maternal girl cousins start a virtual book club reading things they loved as young people. It’s great for Samira - for all of them, really. They are all busy and the books tend to be short and easy to get through. They talk about the books over zoom and remember their childhoods, all so different but also the same. They complain about work and their husbands, boyfriends, and their children and it doesn’t make Samira, the only single one, as sad as she thought it might.
Keerthi makes her tell everyone about Robby and they gasp in shock at some of what she tells him and cluck and roll their eyes at him during some of the more mundane stories. They are completely, unabashedly on her side in a way she hadn’t known she was craving. Abbot’s advice has probably done her the most good, but the exclamations of fuck him and asshole give her new strength to go in day after day.
Something in her loosens, opens, not wide, but enough to let a beam of sunlight through.
*****************
There are the remains of a cake in the lounge. She can make out the bottom portion of a Y maybe and a B and an R. ABBOT(T) is entirely clear. And so is about a quarter of his face which has been somehow printed on the cake from his badge photo.
She didn’t know it was his birthday. She uses a plastic fork to get just a little bit of his ear to taste. It’s almost too sweet.
“Happy birthday,” she tells him when she sees him later.
“It’s not my birthday.” His tone is flat, but there is a glimmer in his eye. There is some joke he wants to tell and she’s inadvertently set him up perfectly to tell it. All she can do is barrel forward.
“I saw a cake?”
“It was a joke. Shen likes cake. Ellis likes to torment me.”
“Everyone likes cake.”
“Not me. I don’t like cake.”
She snorts.
“You don’t like gifts and holidays, you don’t like cake. How do you feel about…” she casts about for something good “puppies?”
He looks over his shoulder as if to make sure no one is listening, leans into her space, and then whispers conspiratorially, “I think we’ve all been under the thumb of Big Puppy for too long and it’s time someone says it.”
Oh, she thinks. He’s a dork. “And that someone is you?”
“Fucking-a-right.”
She shouldn’t laugh. It’s stupid. But she does.
*****************
She thinks about Abbot more than she should. Inside the hospital she can forget that he’s handsome and his charm rolls off her like water. Robby told her to make the hospital walls a force field and she tries. She tries. But sometimes on the way home she’s seized by the memory of Abbot’s face at handover or some joke he made and her mouth waters for him.
She can’t think of him when she masturbates; sure that she won’t be able to face him in real life if she lets him invade her fantasies like that. Instead she kisses the soft flesh of her upper arm, the back of her hand; something she hasn’t done since middle school dreaming of boys and imagining her first kiss.
She’d like to see him outside of the hospital again. Not a spur of the moment driving lesson, but something else that will have them together someplace away from gossip and patients who will always be more important.
She knows they both have off on Sunday and she resolves to make something happen. She thinks about it for days ahead of time - the week unspooling slowly until all of the sudden it’s Saturday and she has no idea what to do. She has chickened out of asking him to coffee, lunch, a movie, an unneeded remedial parking lesson.
She has no idea how to achieve the chill date-but-not-a-date vibe she craves. She would like to randomly run into him the way it was possible with guys in college or med school, togetherness by accident without the expectations from intent. She’s in the shower after a run on Sunday morning when an idea pops into her head. Maybe it’s too transparent? But she’s reminded that everyone always says men are stupid about this sort of thing.
She shaves her legs, diffuses her hair, moisturizes her whole body. She tries to paint her toe nails, but her hands keep shaking so she gives up. She wanders around her apartment in her robe for far too long considering what to wear; how to accessorize it. Wondering how he’d like to see her.
She’s not sure she’s gotten the carelessly pretty thing she was aiming for, but she forces herself out the door anyway and drives to his neighborhood.
She texts him. Lies about being stood up. Let’s him buy her overpriced gelato.
By the time they go back for their second scoop (sesame for her, lemon for him) she’s more relaxed and she thinks he is too.
He asks her if she always wanted to be a doctor and she tells him the truth – not the canned answer from her residency interviews and what she told her alumnae magazine when they did a blurb on her.
“Yes and no. When I was young there were only 2 or 3 acceptable careers and I wanted to be a doctor. For a while in high school I thought I wanted to be an investigative reporter, but…” She trails off.
He nods to himself, adding it up in his head. “I can see it. You ask good questions; you’re a good listener. Your charting is narrative and well written.” The compliments light up in her chest like a solar flare.
“Yeah,” she starts shyly. “I learned about Watergate and Upton Sinclair and there’s just so much unfairness in the world. I wanted to shine a light on it. Change it. Fix it.”
“And you changed your mind?”
She shakes her head. “No. But I decided I wanted to do it one to one. With my own two hands.” The moment feels heavy and she shakes it off. Takes a big spoonful of gelato. “You?”
“Me? God no.” he scoffs. “No, when I was a kid I wanted to be a large animal vet.”
He says it with no sly undertone which makes her think he’s definitely kidding her. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Isn’t that a little ableist, Samira?” She can’t even stutter through a response; she is completely frozen, but he just laughs at her and plows on. “Seriously, I was in 4H and everything.”
“I still think you’re teasing me. I think… let me guess… you played sports. More than one.”
He nods slowly; digs back into his gelato. “I did that too: Football and wrestling.”
She has a sudden flash of his broad shoulders and strong looking arms from that day she patched his graze before everything went to shit. “And I bet you were really good at it too.”
He shrugs. His ears go a little pink and she thinks it’s charming. “It was a very small town.”
She can’t resist picking at him. “Not basketball though?”
“You’re trying to flatter me. I’m 5’9’’ on a bad hair day.”
“You said it was a small town.”
“Not that small.” He quips.
They joke around some more about the curse of curly hair and bad nicknames they had in school and the Army. He won’t tell her all of them but seems shocked she doesn’t know who Howdy Doody is which he thinks is the obvious one (she nearly pees herself when she looks it up later that night). It hits her that they are definitely flirting. She’s not sure if it means anything. Since she’s started paying attention she’s realized that he’s a flirt. She’s seen him flirt with everyone at the hospital, he’d probably flirt with an IV stand if he were bored enough. But she’s not like that. And this does feel different somehow. He met her outside. He smells good.
It’s what she wanted when duped him into this, but now it feels too close, too real. This has happened to her before with men. She wants what she wants until she almost gets it and then it curdles in her gut.
Suddenly she’s overwhelmed by all of it. It’s not panic like she felt in the ED waiting room, but something shaky rises in her. She can’t take his kind face and fuck me eyes. His stupid jokes that make her feel warmer than they should. She looks at his hands and that’s just as bad. She’d like to hold them. She’d like to feel them on her back, the curve of her waist.
“I should go.” she tells him.
He cocks his head at her, smiles a smile she swears is a little sad. “Ok,” he says simply, picking at the remains of his gelato with a spoon. “See you later.”
*****************
He goes away for a few days. He doesn’t say goodbye. Doesn’t tell her where he’s going. There's no reason either of those things should’ve happened, but it stings all the same. When they play racket ball Ellis mentions he’s in Los Angeles visiting a sister. She tries to imagine him there, in a convertible, wearing sunglasses, or something equally stereotypical.
She doesn’t know what to think when out of nowhere he texts her a picture. It’s a beach, beautiful, the sun low against the water painting mountains and sand and everything else pink and gold.
She grew up going to the shore with her dad; her mom hated the sand and the sun and the junk food, but she and her father had loved it. To beat traffic, sometimes they’d leave the house so early that if they were lucky they caught the sunrise over the water. The picture Jack sent is beautiful, but when she considers the time and when he probably took it, something about it feels wrong.
[10:50 PM] Samira Mohan:
Is that sunset?
It’s weird that the sun is on the wrong side of the water, right?
The bubbles appear almost immediately. They flicker and pulse and then stop. Nothing for a long moment before then they start again.
[10:52 PM] Abbot:
I was thinking the exact same thing.
*****************
When she opens the portal on match day she feels relieved; better than she thought she would. It’s here at PTMC and she finds it gives her a warm feeling. She’s started to make a community here and for some reason that feels more precious than getting her first choice.
Parker has another year on her fellowship, Cassie will be in R4 next year, and there’s Mel who asked Samira to roleplay with her to help her get better at speaking plain English to patients and now is a little bit of a mentee. No one has ever wanted help from Slow-Mo; prickly and bitchy Samira Mohan. The opposite of teacher’s pet. It touches her more than she’ll ever say to anyone. She tries to be firm, but more encouraging than Robby. More carrot. Less disdain. And yes, there’s also Robby, who she is convinced hates her which only makes her more hungry for his approval and more sure she’ll never earn it.
She tries to tell herself that it has nothing to do with Abbot. Jack. She is not the sort of woman who makes decisions around a man – especially one with whom she doesn’t even have a relationship, just a stupid crush – but she still feels a little desperate to fuck him and she thinks it won’t happen if she leaves PTMC before they manage to find their way each other.
He texts her at 1:30, knowing she must know by now, but she doesn’t know what to say. If she tells him now, he’ll text back “Congratulations!” with punctuation and everything and that will be it. Or she’ll be brave and offer to buy him a drink for all the help putting her applications together and the letter he wrote. And he’ll demur or he’ll say yes, and they’ll go and it will be just like when they got gelato. He’ll be charming like he is with everyone and she’ll sabotage it because she can’t get out of her own way and she just wants –
That’s the problem – she wants. She wants like she’s a bottomless pit. She feels her ambition, her thirst for approval, her desire for him, all the stupid things big and small that she’s not sure she’ll ever get, that she’s not sure she even deserves: a better apartment, a new car, a cat, a vacation, a really good massage, a meal that doesn’t come from a microwave, a fucking break.
She texts him that she’ll tell him when she sees him.
“So?” he asks, hours later when he finds her at the hub, eyebrows raised, obviously tense.
She gives him a smile and tells him that she’s staying at PTMC.
“Congratulations,” he’s quiet, but seems happy for her. He knows it’s her second choice, but something unfurls in face. His mouth relaxes and he finally smiles; just his familiar half smile, but it makes her smile brighter, bigger. “How do you feel?”
“Really happy actually. I think it will be good.”
“I know it will be,” he says. “I’m glad you’re sticking around.”
It’s an opening, but not much of one. There is something behind his eyes that she chases. It’s not so much like when a patient lies or is evasive, but she recognizes it all the same. There is something else there.
“Really?” she pushes, inching closer.
“I wrote you a recommendation. I thought I was pretty clear.” She wants to yell that nothing about whatever it is that they’ve been doing has been clear and it’s driving her crazy.
“I guess I mean I don’t know what you want.” She would like him to be brave so she does not have to be.
“It’s your future, what do you want?”
She can’t take it anymore. And it hits her that they can’t do this at the hub in the middle of the ED. She motions with her chin for him to follow her, but she doesn’t really know where to take him. There is nowhere private in this hospital unless they duck into one of the bathrooms which is not going to happen. They end up in one of the stairwells.
She checks the stairs and stands in front of him. Dares him with her eyes to kiss her. He doesn’t.
“Ask me again.” She orders.
“What do you want?”
She could punch him in the face, but instead she closes the distance between them and kisses him. To his credit he doesn’t seem too shocked and he kisses her back immediately, with far more intensity.
He presses her against the wall and just for a second she thinks he’s going to lift her, encourage her to wrap her legs around him, and then fuck her in the west stairwell in the middle of handover.
That is not what happens, but the kiss is full of heat and possibility. In the past a passionate kiss could make her feel consumed, burned alive, but this is different. It’s more they are creating something new together, a bridge to a new place. Here, the press of his mouth on hers says, take this hunger and build on it, then give it back to me. And she does.
*****************
He texts her later, as promised, suggesting a tapas place in his neighborhood for their dinner. It looks good and she tells him so.
She stays up too late that night thinking about what she wants to wear and still ends up changing her mind at the last minute, requiring her to rush home after work before she’s supposed to meet him. She settles on the wide-ish leg trousers she bought to go on interviews in and the concert t-shirt she sleeps in. She’s cut the neck out of shirt and she thinks it hangs off one shoulder just enough to be sexy. With her hair out, her lips red and her eyes lined in black, she hopes the effect is cooler and more appealing than she feels.
He’s beaten her to the restaurant and she finds him at the bar nursing a drink. He’s wearing a henley, it has long sleeves, but still shows off his arms. She’s a little desperate to have them around her again.
They sit and make small talk. Neither of them has to been to Spain, but both would like to go. He remembers having tapas for the first time in D.C. when he was at Walter Reed. The chef from that restaurant has become famous since then and they both admire his work feeding people after natural disasters and in the middle of wars.
She tells him she loves the simplicity of it. People need food so the chef feeds them. That that kind of simplicity is one of the things that drew her to emergency medicine – everyone gets treated no matter what. But that she’s feeling disillusioned and maybe that’s why it was so hard to pick a path for a fellowship. She says that she knows the way to actually fix it is to become a politician or an administrator and maybe what she needs to do is get her MPH but she loves the work of medicine so much – the adrenaline and more mundane moments. She likes to listen to her patients and hear what their bodies tell her too. Why is taking the time to listen such a problem, she asks.
She keeps talking and talking and he listens and she feels ridiculous, but he listens like she does: wide open and completely present. She hasn’t said any of this out loud before, not to her mother, or a guidance counselor, not to Robby, or Ellis, or her cousins. She feels drunk and she’s barely had any of the pitcher of sangria they ordered.
He takes her hand from across the table and brings it to his mouth. He kisses her palm and then threads their fingers together. She doesn’t know what the look he gives her means, she only knows how it makes her feel, which is seen and respected. He doesn’t say it’s silly or impossible or that no matter what she does, it will only be a drop in an ocean of need. If anyone were to ask her later she’d tell them that this is the moment she first knew she loved him, or that she could.
He tells her that emergency medicine wasn’t that simple during his first deployment; when Iraqis turned up at the combat support hospital looking for treatment some had to be turned away because there were rules about who they could treat and who they couldn’t. Many of the doctors were frustrated and angry. He still thinks about a child with burns he wasn’t allowed to see.
They linger far too long over coffee; the caffeine doesn’t touch her growing exhaustion, but she doesn’t want the night to end. He walks her to her car and crowds her up against the driver’s side door kissing her deep and slow and completely unbothered by the cars driving by or the people walking past them on the side street where she’s parked. Her hands slide under his coat and she explores his back. She wonders if he has a scar from the wound she treated.
Someone hoots at them. Someone else calls out, “Get it girl.” They break apart, laughing.
“Can I give you a ride home?” She asks, bringing her hands to his chest.
“It’s not even five blocks.”
“Can I walk you?” She’s teasing, but also serious. She should go home and sleep, but this seems important.
“You worried about me on these mean Pittsburgh streets?” he teases.
“You never know.” He laughs again and she can feel it in her chest where they are pressed together.
They hold hands, swinging them like kids as he takes her deeper into the neighborhood. They don’t talk and she’s glad, she has no idea what else to say. He whistles a tune she recognizes, but can’t place.
“This is me,” he says in front of an unremarkable rowhouse.
So many stairs, isn’t that hard? She thinks, but doesn’t say anything, she’s not his mother or his doctor. Instead she leans in to kiss him and finds he’s already leaning in to meet her; she meant it to be goodbye for the night, but instead, they make out on his front stoop like teenagers.
No teenager kisses like this, though. It is as though everything is suddenly easy and everything complicated makes sense. This is not a good-bye kiss or a kiss hello. It is not foreplay. It is simply a kiss that exists only here in this moment, he pins her in it, doesn’t give space for her mind to wander or be afraid. She kisses his neck and nips at his ear and he gives a small moan. He turns his head to reclaim her mouth and tugs her lower lip with his teeth.
“How about you come inside?” he says. She’s noticing that he has a way of asking a question and telling her what to do at the same time. Schrodinger's invitation. She can pick whichever lane she wants and she wants. She wants.
Instead she chooses to ruin the moment. ”I’m not going to have sex with you tonight,” she tells him flatly as much for him as for herself.
But he’s not fazed at all. He just gives her a wolfish smirk, shrugs, and says, “Ok” before he unlocks the door.
“You want something to drink?” he asks, leading her deeper in the house and into the kitchen. She barely has time to see the living room (large leather couch, bookshelves, TV mounted on the wall) and a dining room that’s obviously more of an office (laptop on the table and a good chair mixed in with dining chairs, the infamous police scanner).
She hears music, but it’s so faint that she thinks it must be neighbors until he turns up the volume on a speaker in the kitchen and the music gets louder, but not distractingly so. She wonders if he’s one of those people who can’t stand silence. He opens the fridge and looks inside. “I’ve got coffee, water, beer, bourbon, OJ, disgusting protein shake?”
He turns to her and she can’t help herself. She goes for his mouth again, kissing him hard. Like in the stairwell, he walks her backwards a bit until she’s sandwiched between his body and his kitchen island.
She bends back and grabs at the front of his shirt until he lifts her up onto the counter. He settles into the space between her knees and brings her face to his with a firm hand on the back of her neck. He kisses her and it is not at all like the kisses on the street or his stoop. The hunger in the stairwell was just a hint at what is contained in this kiss. She relishes it; curls one of her legs around him. When he kisses her neck she digs her heel into the back of his thigh and she lets out a sharp ‘oh’ that is entirely too wanton and wrecked for the kitchen and probably better belongs in bed with both of them naked and him inside her.
She pulls away and laughs, a little embarrassed. He looks at her, his eyes dark and intent.
“When you said we weren’t going to have sex tonight…” He trails off a little.
“Yeah?”
He kisses her cheeks, pecks at her lips, one hand fists loosely in her hair. “Can you give me some clarity on your definition of sex, here?” He pulls away just a bit to look at her and say the next bit looking into her eyes. “I really want to make you come right now.”
It’s like getting the wind knocked out of her, but in the best, hottest way possible. She’d like nothing more than to have him take her apart right here in the kitchen, but…
“I didn’t mean it like because of a some rule or that I’m prude –”
“--No, I didn’t –”
“--It’s just that I’m so tired. I didn’t want to wait to see you outside the hospital and it’s been such a long week and this is really nice, better than nice, but if I get even a little bit more horizontal, I’m going to fall asleep.”
His whole manner changes, she sees him tuck the hunger back inside himself. He relaxes a bit; tension released from a string.
He runs his hands up and down her thighs. “Then let’s get some sleep.”
“Isn't it the middle of the day for you?” She thinks she should leave, but doesn’t hop down from the counter. She wants to keep looking at him.
“Don’t worry about me.” He says waving away her concern with his hand. As though he senses her hesitation he offers her something to sleep in and then his hand to help her down.
“Ok.” she tells him. “Please.”
It’s awkward, but not terribly so as they go upstairs and he digs out boxers for her to wear, a toothbrush to use. They take turns in the bathroom. When she comes out he’s on the bed already, leg off, crutches near the bed. She goes around to the other side and joins him, lets him wrap his arms around her, and pull her against his chest. It’s only her profound exhaustion that lets her fall asleep in a strange bed in a strange room with a man who is not a stranger, but who honestly, she barely knows. She falls asleep all the same.
She doesn’t have to look at a clock or her phone to know what time it is when she wakes up the first time. It’s 5:20 a.m. - or 5:30am according to the beside clock at her apartment which she’s set 10 minutes fast. She knows the dark quiet of 5:20 a.m. like she knows her childhood bedroom.
Abbot is out like a light, snoring softly. She could sneak out now and probably not even wake him. She considers it. She didn’t intend to come back to his place and she definitely didn’t plan on spending the night, but the way her mind turned off when he kissed her -- there was nothing better.
His arm tightens around her. Positive myoclonus, she wonders or –
“Go back to sleep,” he says. She doesn’t mean to, but she does.
When she wakes up again the sun is dim outside and she has to pee. She thinks he’s still asleep, but she was wrong earlier, so she’s not really sure. Maybe he’s a really light sleeper. Nothing to be done about it, she thinks and tries to extricate herself from him as quietly and gently as she can. She hears him move in the bed as she slips into his bathroom.
Washing her hands after, she catches herself in the mirror. It’s strange to see her face in a different mirror, in a different context. Her hair is a little wild, but hasn’t reached rat’s nest levels. In fact, she thinks she looks really good. What’s that about? In the mirror she sees her trousers hanging on the hook behind the door, her bra hidden in a pocket.
She thinks she should get dressed, head home. Get going on her day off. She has laundry to do, grocery shopping, there is reading she’s been meaning to catch up on. She needs to email her mom. But the truth of it is she doesn’t want to do any of those things. She wants to go back to his bed.
She brushes her teeth with the toothbrush he found for her last night and takes off the borrowed boxers and her underwear and hangs them behind the door with her trousers.
When she comes out of the bathroom he’s sitting up in bed looking at his phone. He sets it aside and she bites her lip when she sees him notice her bare legs; she’s excited for him to discover she’s not wearing underwear either. She climbs back into bed, straddling his hips.
“Good morning,” he says as his hands find her waist and he kisses her neck.
“Hi,” she answers, fingers in his hair, encouraging him away from her neck and towards her mouth instead. His breath is minty, too. Had he gotten up before her and she missed it? She pulls away to look at him askance and he laughs.
“You sleep like the dead,” he tells her.
He tries again to kiss her neck and she realizes he’s looking for the spot that made her cry out last night in his kitchen, but she pulls him back towards her mouth. It’s like the kisses on the street last night, warm, slow, meandering. It’s lovely, but she’s ready for more. She turns up the heat in the kiss, pulls his hair just a little, grinds down on him.
He takes the hint, meeting her intensity. His hands fist in her T-shirt, but don’t go exploring underneath. He is passionate, but still polite, trying to respect the boundaries she didn’t really define.
She takes off her T-shirt and she can hear his breath actually catch when he sees her naked. She wonders just how long it’s been since he’s had a naked woman in his bed; she’s not ashamed of her body – she knows she looks good – but come on.
He looks at her for long moments; just smiling like she’s given him a much better present than 36 rolls of toilet paper. He doesn’t touch her, just rubs at the back of his own neck.
“I sense there’s been a change in the rules of engagement here?”
“Yeah, well,” she shrugs, leans forward to nip at his lips and wrap her arms around his neck. “It's morning now and I just want you so bad.”
He finally touches her, both hands running lightly up and down her spine.
“You’re sure?”
“Oh yeah,” she says nodding, leaning in to kiss him again and again.
It’s been years since she stopped rating encounters in the notes app on her phone, recording positions and how she liked them, whether she came, and if so, what did it for her. She doesn’t need to look back at those ratings to know that sex that morning is good. Very good. Maybe not the best sex of her life, but definitely the best first time with someone – which is usually not the greatest. She’s a little giddy thinking about how good it could get between them. Laying in his bed, after, she wonders if it was due to him or her or her long simmering crush or what. She decides it doesn’t matter.
They spend the morning dozing, fooling around, and having more sex. They engage in dopey sweet conversations with lots of pauses for kisses, laughter and touching. She admits that there was no date the day they had gelato and that Lena told her about his wife right after he walked away the day she diagnosed Renee Eidler. She didn’t do any wrangling to get him in the gift exchange. That had been dumb luck.
She teases him about her having to make the first move and he tells her that he had been worried about things that don’t really bother that much at all, though she knows they should: his age, his place in the hierarchy of the hospital, his fucked up brain. He had been so out of sorts that he had asked his sister for advice on what to do. She tells him Heather Collins clued her in on his crush, but he won’t tell her how long he’s liked her. It makes her think it’s probably embarrassing. She resolves to get it out of him sooner or later.
By 1:30 p.m. she’s pleasantly sore, starving, and well on her way to developing an obsession with his freckles.
Eventually, she comes out of a visit to the bathroom dressed in her clothes again and he makes a sad little noise. She goes to the bed and leans down to kiss him gently.
“I should go.”
“Says who?” He holds her hips in both his hands, leans in to kiss her belly. Wraps his arms around her middle.
She cards her fingers through his hair. “Says me.”
She takes his head in her hands and tilts his face up so she can lean down to kiss him some more. “You’re strung out on sex hormones.”
“Absolutely,” he says, hands going into her hair, to the back of her neck to steal more kisses. Then he has an idea. “Are you starving? I’m starving. Stay. We could order something or I could cook.”
“You cook?”
“You don’t?”
She shakes her head no.
He pulls her into his lap and punctuates his words with kisses to her eyelids, her cheeks, her forehead, her jaw. “Why don’t you take a shower and I’ll make us some lunch. I have amazing water pressure.”
She pulls away, but not far. She traces the planes of his face with her face, with her nose. “Next time.”
“Yeah?” He asks, smiling and pleased. She realizes he must have been scared that she’d say this was a mistake, or nice but that it can never happen again. Silly Abbot.
“Yeah,” she answers, nodding.
He goes for her neck, finding and kissing that place that's too sensitive for words. She moans and reflexively grinds down on him.
“God,” he says more to himself than to her. “You really like that. It’s so fucking hot.” The next thing she knows, they are kissing again. She’s not sure if she reached for him or him for her, but it’s hungry and eager and she feels the temperature in the room rise.
He starts to tip her back into bed and she stops him. “Jack, I have to go.”
“Ok, ok.” He says, removing his hands from her body and holding them aloft like it’s a stick up.
She gets off his lap, but stays next to the bed, nudges his hip with her knee. “I work tomorrow. I just have so much to do.”
He runs his hand up and down the top of her leg, but it’s just friendly, not trying to get her back into bed. “I’ll see you at handover.”
“No more kissing in the hospital.”
“Yeah,” he says, sounding resigned. “I know.” There’s a lot they should talk about, but right now everything feels light and happy; magical. They can talk about rules and expectations later.
It’s hard to leave him, but that’s when it’s right to go, she tells herself. Before she overstays her welcome.
*****************