Chapter Text
Her head thunks heavily against her front door. She’s sweaty, and there’s something in her hair, and her nerves have frayed so much that she’s pretty sure if you took a scan of her brain, it would look like a tumbleweed. She lets out a frustrated groan, drops her keys on the table in her foyer, and toes off her shoes. She’s not sure the last time she left the hospital at her scheduled end of shift, and today was no different. 7:00 AM - 7:00 PM is scrawled on her calendar for today, but the glowing clock on her stove reads 9:36.
They just couldn’t get ahead today, no matter how hard they tried. She spent 20 minutes coding a nineteen-year-old college student after an overdose while her roommate stood outside, pleading with Dana to let her in the room. When they first wheeled her in, the girl had glitter dusted across her collarbones and a small butterfly tattoo behind her ear. By the time Robby finally called the time of death, the glitter was everywhere, smeared on their gloves and the defibrillator paddles. Samira stared at the butterfly, stark against her pulseless skin, for a good five minutes after they lost her. Robby let out a sigh so deep that Samira almost thought he was going to walk out the doors to the ambulance bay and never come back. That was at 4:00 PM. It was a long shift.
It’s been a week of long shifts, and she’s finally staring down the barrel of 48 hours off. For most people, this would be a respite, but for Samira, it’s almost suffocating. The silence of her sparsely decorated studio apartment multiplies the longer she spends away from the hospital. She’s used to working for as long as she can stand, coming home and immediately collapsing onto her mattress just to do it all again in the morning. It’s a good system, for the most part.
Her stomach rumbles, but she already knows there’s nothing but salad dressing and Greek yogurt in her fridge, so she trudges to the bathroom to shower off her double shift. She’ll scavenge for dinner when she’s done, if she doesn’t immediately fall asleep.
She steps into her small bathroom, turns the dial on the shower, and lets the room fill with steam as she peels off her clothes and releases her hair from its claw clip. She hums as she runs her fingers through her curls, the tension headache brewing behind her eyes finally dissipating. Her fingers snag on something gooey, and she grimaces as she steps under the spray, warm water loosening the knots in her back.
Her coworkers all seem to think she’s crazy for working so many double shifts, but she loves the challenge. She knows there’s a running joke about her taking 2 shifts to see as many patients as the rest of them get in one. She lets it roll off her back because she likes working nights, being the anchor through the changeover. She always gets first dibs on the cases that come in right before 7:00 PM, and gets to be with someone for their entire ED experience, from triage to discharge. She works on her research when it’s slow, which never happens during the day, and she genuinely enjoys talking to Ellis and Shen. and Abbot. He may be the only one in the ED who works more than her.
The vibe is different on night shift– it feels like the cool kids’ club or the back of the bus. Samira was never a cool kid– the closest she ever got was being co-captain of her high school field hockey team, which doesn’t really count for anything. She’s quietly excited just to be associated with them. The night shift team is smart and steadfast, and there’s less powder-keg energy than on the day shift. She’s able to take a breath every once in a while, eat a sandwich at midnight while she pores over the case studies that make their way into her locker, always with a neat, slanting scrawl filling the margins.
The way Dr. Abbot looks at her has no part in why she works so much, by the way. She’s a professional. She knows he’s handsome. She knows she’s attracted to him, maybe more than a little bit. Samira’s always been proud of her self-awareness and ability to compartmentalize her feelings, which she does a lot around him. She has a firm handle on her crush, thank you very much.
Besides, he’s married. Not like she had a chance, anyway.
On her fifth day of emergency rotation as an R1, she was frantically triaging a 19-year-old boy after a gnarly MVC when Jack Abbot shouldered into trauma one with his quiet bravado and quick mind, sucking all the air out of the room. The butterfly effect always interested her– the concept that at any moment, any decision she made, no matter how small, could impact the rest of her life. She wonders if the doctors who worked on her father had ever considered this; considered that if they had listened to him, run the right tests, made one small decision differently, Samira’s dad would still be alive. Maybe it’s why she’s so thorough.
When Abbot entered the room, she felt a ripple. A butterfly wing. Deep in her mind, she felt her world shift. They saved the kid, sent him up to surgery. She heaved out a breath of relief, unable to keep the smile off of her face as the nurses lifted the side rails of the gurney back up. She didn’t let herself look directly at Dr. Abbot until they wheeled the kid out of the room, but when she finally looked up, took in his greying curls, his sturdy frame, the silver chain that peeks out from his scrubs, she knew something had changed.
The day kept moving, but the buzz of something still coursed through her. She wrote it off as adrenaline, still not used to the intensity of emergency medicine.
Robby introduced them, in his Robby way, leading them across the department with a “Dr. Mohan, Dr. Abbot. Dr. Abbot, Dr. Mohan. Trauma one,” Abbot offered her a curt nod as they entered the room, already in the thick of a new resuscitation.
She watched him the whole shift, bouncing between rooms with graceful momentum. His eyes cut to her every once in a while, pinning her to the spot, but somehow she didn’t falter. It was different than when Dr. Robby would ask her a question– she didn’t stumble or stutter or hesitate. When Dr. Abbot asks, she knows. She is sure, and quick, and steady. It’s almost unnerving.
She’s about to say something to him after their last patient of the shift, shucking off bloody gloves and stuffing her trauma gown into the bin. She watches the flex of his forearms, the veins prominent and muscles defined. She traces the movement down, down, down to his hands, and then–
A ring. Her feet are suddenly full of lead, anchoring her to the ground and drying up the words on her tongue. She may throw up. He meets her eyes, casually, and she does her best not to flinch. She’s a professional. Of course, he’s married. He probably has kids, even. She swallows, pastes on a toothless smile, and chokes down the bile in her throat. He’s an attending, and she’s an R1. She’s been reading too many romance books.
“Nice work today, Dr. Mohan,” he says with a quirk of his lips so small, she could have missed it. Before she can answer, he’s out the door, leaving her standing alone with the beeping machines and sinking feeling of hope, interrupted.
He was there today, the same stoic yet encouraging presence she’s come to know intimately. She lathers up her shampoo and her eyes flutter shut as she massages her scalp, mind wandering to their most recent interaction.
Around 2:00, she was making her way to South 4 when he stopped her abruptly with a hand on her wrist. She raised a questioning brow at him, standing at his workstation with a chart open.
“Dr. Abbot?” she said, but before she could ask why he stopped her, he was kneeling low at her feet, gently grabbing for her ankle. Her shoe was untied. Oh.
“I didn’t even notice,” she breathed out. He deftly tied a double knot before sitting back on his heels to look up at her. She ignored the heat pooling in her belly at the sight of him on his knees before her.
“Can’t have our smartest resident tripping and concussing herself on my watch.” He stood up, his lip quirking into a wry smile. “So much paperwork. Gotta slow down sometimes, Mohan,” She laughed nervously. He’s always refused to use the Slo-Mo nickname, but she knows he’s heard it thrown around.
“I don’t know if I’d say the sma–”
“Good thing it’s not up for discussion, then.” She clamps her jaw shut, cheeks heating at the compliment.
“Well then, um, thank you. For the shoe. And I guess I’ll slow down, even though no one else has ever told me to.” She searched his gaze for some hint that he was joking, but his hazel eyes were clear. It was suddenly warmer than she remembered.
“Off you go, Dr. Mohan,” he said, pressing a hand between her shoulder blades. She turned back towards her consult, momentarily forgetting which room she was going to. She could still feel the warmth of his fingers around her wrist, her ankle, the feeling of his palm against her spine. She spent the rest of the shift painfully aware of her shoelaces.
For three years, she’s worked alongside him. She’s accepted her fate. Is willing to live with the fact that all they can be, all they will ever be, are colleagues. Mentor and mentee. She takes what she can get– his intense gaze over an open body cavity, the brush of his fingers as he passes her a tablet. A whispered “excellent work,” and a nudge on the shoulder as they leave a trauma bay.
If this is all she can have, she will savor it. She keeps these moments, fragments of a life she’ll never get to live, nestled between her ribs. She writes them down in her journal, evidence of things not seen, even if it’s just to prove to herself she lived them.
He handed me an eleven-blade today, and his thumb covered mine for a full second. He told me he would trust me to do facial sutures on him in a pitch-black room.
She’s fully aware she sounds pathetic. She’s had crushes her whole life– the girl she kissed on the dock at summer camp when she was twelve, the boy who borrowed pencils from her in geometry class, the pretty barista at the coffee shop she went to every week in medical school. A crush isn’t a new feeling to her, but they’ve never been this all consuming. She knows she can’t spend her life waiting for someone she’ll never have. So she’s trying. Really.
She’s on Hinge (barely).
She lets Dana set her up with one of her friend’s sons (he asks her two questions about herself on their two-hour date, then tries to stick his tongue down her throat.)
She’s started taking regular yoga classes (this is actually just a healthy habit she’s picked up; her back was beginning to bother her).
There’s a brief moment where she considers telling Santos or Mel about her feelings, but she’s too smart to ask Santos her opinion. Even if this is all just in her head, the rumor will spread to the entire ED before their shift ends. And if it isn’t in her head, Santos is sure to bring it up as much as possible, dropping hints in front of Dr. Abbot until the end of time.
Eventually, she does tell Mel, sitting side by side on the curb of the ambulance bay, knees touching as they huddle for warmth during one of the worst snowstorms of the year. The ED is flooded with people who should be discharged, but the roads are so bad that everyone has to stay put.
“I think I have a crush on Dr. Abbot,” she says, putting the words into the universe for the very first time. Mel stills beside her, taken aback by the sudden admission. “Don’t tell anyone,” Samira says, “I just needed to say it out loud.” Mel softens, drops her head onto Samira’s shoulder, gently. A sad smile tugs at Samira’s lips, grateful for her kindness, knowing Mel isn’t the touchiest person.
“I had a dream about Dr. Langdon last night,” Mel admits. It’s a quiet confession. An I see you. Samira's heart throbs in her chest. She covers Mel’s hand with her own.
“Married attendings.” Samira’s eyes prick with tears. She tilts her chin up to blink them away.
“Married attendings,” Mel repeats, softer. They stay like that, leaning on each other, until they hear the whoop of a siren, untangling themselves and mentally preparing for a new patient.
Samira is putting so much effort into not thinking about Jack Abbot, or his arms, or his eyes that feel like hands when they’re focused on her, but he’s always fucking there . He’s tossing granola bars at her and making an extra cup of coffee in the breakroom ( two sugars, splash of oat milk), and no amount of cleansing breaths or clever Hinge prompts could compete with the way her heartbeat stutters when he meets her eyes across a crowded room.
She wants him so badly her teeth ache. She’ll never say it out loud. It will eat her alive. One day, when she dies and a pathologist cracks her chest (nipples to navel is no man’s land), they’ll see a heart calcified with the weight of these fatal fantasies. It would make an excellent case study, she thinks, ruefully. They’ll write articles about her– 29-year-old female, South Asian, presented as healthy but upon further examination, was deeply ill. Poor, poor Samira Mohan, besotted with her handsome, brooding, married attending. She died how she lived– desperate, wanting, and alone.
When the steam has become too much, and she’s scrubbed her skin raw, she finally steps out of the shower and wraps herself in a towel.
She slathers herself in lotion before raking curl cream through her hair and diffusing. She normally wouldn’t fully style her hair before bed, but she’s going to brunch tomorrow with Mel and Santos, so she wants to look at least 10% more alive than she does on a shift.
Since her admission to Mel, they’ve spent a lot more time together. They never discuss what they said in the ambulance bay, but there’s a layer of understanding that pulses between them. They go to the farmer’s market, or watch movies with Becca (her eyes lit up when Samira told her she had never seen Elf. She’s seen it six times, now.) Sometimes Whittaker tags along or even Javadi, who they’ve discovered has a surprising affinity for money-based games.
“It’s the doe eyes!” Santos yells, dropping her cards on the coffee table and throwing her arms in the air as Victoria wins another hand. They’ve started having monthly game night in Santos and Whittaker’s apartment. It typically devolves into Santos threatening to evict Whittaker if he doesn’t fold, while Javadi robs them all blind. Victoria rakes the chips in, small smile blooming on her face. Samira’s not great at the game, but she shows up every time, sits back and listens to the bickering, so different than her quiet apartment. She basks in the noise.
When she returns home, the silence rings louder in her ears. She considers adopting a cat, but then decides she’ll just work more doubles.
The oversized blue T-shirt she pulls over her head is soft to the touch and smells like the lavender essential oil her mom gave her for her birthday, claiming Samira needed to “unwind” and “decompress after her stressful job.” Her mother means well, but Samira’s not sold on the little roller ball solving her medical trauma. She uses it anyways since it smells nice.
Now that she’s clean, the persistent rumble in her stomach takes precedence. She pads back into the kitchen, and much to her relief, finds a half-empty box of cereal. She eats it dry, sitting cross-legged on her couch with Gilmore Girls playing softly on the TV. She’s nodded off three times before she finally corrals herself towards the kitchen, rinsing out the cereal bowl and filling up her water bottle.
She’s brushing her teeth when she hears her phone chime on her bed. Who’s emailing her at 11:42 PM? She rinses out her mouth and flicks off her bathroom light, making her way to her bed at last. The bedside lamp bathes her nightstand in gentle golden light as she slides under the covers. She plugs her phone in, then unlocks it to check her email. She sighs when she opens the message. Of course.
Let me know if we should invest in some Velcro.
-JA
There’s an attachment.
Refractory_Autonomic_Instability_in_MildTBI.pdf
Her thumb hovers over the reply icon. It must have slowed down tonight. She presses it, fires off a response before she can think too hard about it.
Well, as long as I have a shoelace monitor following me around, I think we’ll be fine.
-SM
She locks her phone and drops it onto her nightstand. Does he do this with all the residents? Or just the ones with debilitating crushes and workaholic tendencies? Her phone dings.
Hmmm I think I’d rather be called the concussion coordinator. Or de-coordinator. Concussion prevention director.
-JA
She purses her lips. He gets chatty when he’s bored. That’s something she’s learned on night shift, listening him wax poetic about nothing just to watch the crinkle of his eyes when he smiles. She needs a lobotomy. She needs his hands on her. She types a response.
Whatever feeds your ego the most, I guess.
-SM
She turns away from her nightstand, willing that to be the end of the conversation. Her phone dings twice. She rolls over.
If it’s backed by evidence, it’s not ego, it’s proven talent.
-JA
And if that wasn’t enough, he followed up.
Sleep well, Dr. Mohan. See you Tuesday.
She screws her eyes shut and wishes in vain for sleep. Her mind races.
He’s married. She sees him toy with his ring every day, spinning it idly as he reads the board, twisting it as he delivers tough news to family members. She sees the outline of it beneath his gloves when he holds his left hand over hers to find a bleeder. She’s felt the cool titanium against her arm when he redirects her for a consult– a physical reminder that life is a cruel joke, a flashing sign that reads “NOT YOURS.”
Maybe he’s oblivious to her pain. Maybe he emails Dr. Langdon late at night, too. Maybe she’s built this all in her head, a mental institution of a mind palace.
She tosses and turns. She punches her pillows, flips them each over to the cool side. She puts on a 12-hour white noise podcast. Nothing helps. Sleep evades her. All she can see when she shuts her eyes is hazel eyes and a crooked grin. Proven talent. Arousal blooms in her chest and she’s too tired to fight it– she lets her mind wander.
She rests her hands lightly on her abdomen- one toying with the edge of her t-shirt, one lying flat against her belly button. She inhales deeply as one palm traces up, up, up to her collarbone, dancing along the neckline of her shirt. Her eyes flutter shut, and she imagines her hands are broader, stronger, leading up to vascular forearms and a solid chest.
In her fantasy, there is no ring on his finger. He’s solid, warm, and staring down at her with what she can only describe as unbridled hunger. He looks rumpled, but gorgeous, a thin white T-shirt stretching taut against his chest.
“Baby,” he rasps, sliding his hand over her shirt to rest on her sternum. He can feel the steady thump of her heart through her ribcage. He moves his palm over to her breast, weighing the heft of it. She lets out a soundless moan, threading her hands through his curls.
The heat of his body against hers is profound, stoking the embers of a fire she’s kept alive for years. He groans, mouths at her nipple through her shirt. The friction of the wet fabric and his tongue is euphoric.
“Please, Jack,” her voice is reedy and thick. She grabs for his jaw, pulling them up to be face to face. He lowers himself until their noses brush, one arm resting by her head. His other arm traces up her calf, winding it around his hip. Her heel brushes the back of his knee, threading their bodies together. She cants her hips up, watches his eyes roll back in his head as she rolls against him.
“What do you want, Samira? Tell me,” his breath puffs over her lips.
“Kiss me,” she pleads, pressing her chest up his.
“All you had to do was ask,” he murmurs, finally pressing their lips together. She could cry at the relief, the sweet pressure of his mouth against her own. He bites at her bottom lip, drawing a gasp from her. She feels him smile against her mouth. He tastes like mint and ice water as she runs her tongue along his teeth, slips it into his mouth. She memorizes the ridges of his hard palate, drinks up the harsh exhales and little moans he pours into her.
He mouths down her jaw, sucking hard at the juncture of her jaw and neck. She gasps. He’s going to leave a bruise. The primordial thrill of having him mark her floods her body, makes her roll her hips to his with a new enthusiasm. He bites down, then soothes the spot with his tongue. Her hands slide down the ridges of his spine, finding the hem of his shirt. He lifts off of her neck to help her remove it, reaching behind his neck and pulling it over his head. She revels in the sight of his broad chest, the wiry hair creeping between his pectorals and lower, lower past his belly button and below the band of his dark boxers.
“Your turn,” he says, voice rough. He lowers himself down, lifting the hem of her shirt, mapping the skin he reveals in his wake. She didn’t expect the reverence– he draws every moment out like he’s trying to memorize her. He noses at her hip bone, presses a kiss to the space right below her belly button. She shivers as he traces the small scar over her right hip, from an appendectomy when she was eleven. He bites the underside of her breast, stops to breathe in the valley of her ribcage. He inhales deeply, her orange blossom and vanilla perfume clinging to her skin.
“I smell you everywhere,” he says.
“It’s like you’re haunting me, in the breakroom, at the nurse’s station, everywhere I go.” he presses a deep kiss to her solar plexus. Her heart lurches. He sits up, eyes raking over her.
“Knew you’d be perfect,” he says, leaning back on his knees between her spread legs. She whimpers, squirms under him. Her underwear clings to where she’s wet and wanting, her movement causing her labia to peek out from under the cotton.
“I need to taste you,” he whispers, fixated on the wet spot on her underwear. It’s almost like he didn’t mean to say it out loud. “Please, Samira.” He snaps his eyes to her face.
Her breath leaves her in a whoosh as she nods– pupils blown wide, just a sliver of green surrounding black. She licks her lips.
“Since you asked so nicely,” she says, trying to be coy but her breathy voice betrays her. He smiles, wolfishly, moving himself back down the bed. He presses a kiss over the front of her underwear– simple, white bikini-cut. Her hips stutter. He pulls one thigh to rest over his shoulder, wrapping his hand around the meat of it. She hopes she wakes up with his fingerprints pressed into her, a physical souvenir of this. He gently pulls the gusset of her panties to the side. Samira sucks in a breath as he blows cool air over her hot flesh.
“All for me, Samira?” his hand that isn’t wrapped around her thigh parts her folds, holding her open as he presses a kiss to her clit. She winds one hand into his hair, the other scrabbling into a fist into the sheets. He looks her dead in the eye as he presses the flat of his tongue against her. He’s going to ruin her for other men.
Her eyes flutter shut, but not for long. “Eyes on me, baby,” he says. She exhales shakily, but obliges.
“I want to watch your face when you fall apart,” he says, fingers drawing idle patterns on her thigh. He builds a rhythm, alternating sucking kisses and broad strokes of his tongue until she’s a shaking, babbling mess.
“More, please Jack, inside me,”
“You want my fingers, Samira?” She grits her teeth together and nods. “Words, baby.” She’s gonna kill him. She squirms against him, trying to find some relief against his nose, but he pulls back, pressing a kiss to her thigh. His stubble has left angry red marks on her inner thighs that she’ll definitely feel tomorrow.
“Ask nicely, Samira.” She can see her slick on his chin, the redness of his mouth. He kisses her other thigh.
“Your fingers, Jack, please I need your fingers inside me,”
“Good girl.” Heat lances through her body at the praise. He slides a hand up to her face, tapping two fingers against her mouth.
“Get these wet for me,” he says. She parts her lips, wraps her tongue around both digits, eager to feel them against her inner walls. She pulls off with a pop, not missing the groan he lets out at the sight. If he can tease her, she can tease right back. He slides his hand back down, circling her entrance with the fingers he just had in her mouth. He slides one in experimentally, curling upwards. Her hips buck up off of the bed.
“Easy, baby.” he says, unwinding his arm from her thigh and pressing down on her abdomen. He slicks in another finger and she relishes in the stretch. She knew it would be like this– she’s memorized every vein in his hands, knew they would feel amazing inside of her. He suctions his mouth back on her clit, and she moans, wantonly.
“I’m so close,” she says, pulling at his hair. He hums something back, and it vibrates through her. She rocks her hips forward against his hand, whining as he presses into her, relentless in search of her orgasm.
“You got this, Samira,” he says, thumb coming up to rub at her clit harshly. “Let me see you come, you’re so beautiful, I need to see you fall apart,” She feels the orgasm crawl up her spine, deep in her bones. It takes a few more strokes, a few sucking kisses and then she’s coming, imploding like a collapsing star. He helps her ride out the feeling on his tongue, fingers curling slower through the aftershocks. And then he’s surging up, pressing her into the mattress, whispering affirmations into her sweat-beaded temple.
“You did so well, you’re so brilliant, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,”
She comes with a sharp cry, his name echoing off the walls and tears brewing in her eyes. Her breath heaves out of her, laborious but sated. As the ringing in her ears subsides, she comes back into her body, back into the moment. Sweat cools on her chest as she withdraws her fingers from herself, her come tacky on her inner thighs. Her heart pounds. It felt so real. For a minute or so, she basks in it, tries to regulate her breathing.
She swings her legs over the bed, walks to the bathroom to clean herself up. Afterwards, she stares into the mirror, knuckles turning white on the tiled countertop. That was the last time she’ll let herself fantasize about him, she thinks. Tomorrow, she’ll channel this energy into something productive, she thinks. One day, she will laugh when she remembers how badly she wanted her attending that was just trying to be a mentor. She shakes her head, walks out of the bathroom and flops onto her mattress. She’ll think about it more tomorrow. Soon, her breathing grows shallow, and she falls into a dreamless sleep.