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At the end of her residency, Samira Mohan leaves Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center at the invitation of an old professor to join the Research Office at the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Added to the faculty, she is tenure tracked, collaborating on a study dedicated to investigating how intersectionality between a broad range of social determinants of health is associated with disparities in pain management among ED patients throughout Pennsylvania. Trauma psychology—pain-related disparities in emergency department patients. With her, she brings her five-year chart review at PTMC, and a cohort paper that has been accepted pending revisions by the Journal of Emergency Medicine.
What she leaves behind is a quandary.
If she is no longer employed at PTMC, what happens to the betting pool? There's over a thousand dollars in green American money locked away in a drawer, waiting for the day Abbot and Mohan finally put them all out of their misery and fuck out the tension. Do they cash it out, issue refunds? Do they hold onto it, and hope she returns after the two-year project ends? She’s staying in Pittsburgh, just going to the other side of the river. Barely fifteen minutes away, even during rush hour. In the end the rubber-banded stack of tens and twenties, and the piece of loose-leaf paper enveloped around it, taped shut and initialed across the seam to make it official, stays put in the back of a secure filing cabinet.
They still see her, much to the relief of the participants in the bet.
Six months in, Samira starts to appear on the occasional shift as a locum, a necessity of short staffing. She’s given preference on the PRN service immediately, and any shift she wants, she gets. Still, she badges in at the Pitt once or twice a month before disappearing again entirely when her schedule at UPMC gets busier and she’s invited to present her study at a symposium at Harvard. On rare occasions, she drops in for drinks at Donovan’s or Lefty’s, wherever people have migrated at the end of a long shift. She gets the annual invitation to Robby’s backyard party at the end of summer, to Dana’s house for the holiday party she hosts at the end of January.
Outwardly, Abbot does not seem to change.
When pressed, he says they still talk. He admits to seeing her socially on occasion. At some point, the black tungsten ring he’s worn for two decades on his left hand gets shifted over to his right, and then gets moved to the chain that hangs around his neck that already holds his dog tags. Samira badges in for a shift, looking tired and haggard, sipping on a latte that cannot save her. They nod at each other, standing side-by-side at the board with collegial silence.
Even the residents who started at PTMC after Samira finished her residency add money to the pool.
The study finishes. The grant funding ends. Samira’s position isn’t entirely dependent on the NIH grant bankrolling the PRIME study, but it does make the status of her employment far less secure. At the same time across town, PTMC decides to end a twelve month hiring freeze, posting a sixth senior attending position in the emergency department. It has been three years since she belonged to the Pitt.
“Samira applied,” Robby says, all but bragging as he prints out her CV at the hub. The printer does not cooperate, spitting out multiple sheets of paper with magenta stripes. “And I didn’t have to beg.”
Jack’s face does nothing in response. “You didn’t deserve her the first time around.”
“Sure,” Robby replies, nearly bouncing on his heels. “But I know about begging now.”
Nodding, Jack’s lips curve into a frown.
“Sure, boss.”
Proximity, people say. Timing, people argue. It’s too late. They’re right on time. She’s probably moved on. He never will. They’re equals, finally. No one will get reprimanded by HR. If it hasn’t happened by now, it’s never going to happen. Some people panic, withdrawing their cash. Others add more money in, doubling down. Three years later, and neither Abbot nor Mohan seem to be seeing anyone. There’s no way either of them is seeing anyone. It’s a small emergency department. The city isn’t that big. People talk, people gossip. They would know.
Somehow, they would find out.
The morning of her panel interview, Samira Mohan walks into the Pitt through the civilian doors, a 3.5 carat diamond on her left ring finger, and a visible baby bump hanging from her slim frame..
“Five months,” Perlah says in Tagalog. “Maybe six.”
Jack Abbot wakes to no fewer than twelve missed calls, eighteen text messages, and four desperate emails. He ignores them all, swiping away the notifications without reading, let alone processing them at all. Then he dresses, and stops by his favorite coffee shop between the townhouse and the hospital. Caramel hazelnut quad latte, medium, hot. Matcha rose latte, medium, iced, oat milk. The barista knows the names for the cups.
His phone buzzes in his pocket; he’s right on time.
It’s another four minutes to pull into an attending spot at the PTMC garage, two minutes to walk from the gangway to the emergency department entrance. Samira’s interview is finished, or at least close to being done. He knows from the emails she forwarded to his inbox that it started at eleven. It’s close to 1:30 PM now.
He can feel the looks of desperation as he walks in through the automatic doors. It’s his night off, there is absolutely no logical reason for him to be here in the middle of the afternoon, and he hasn’t even bothered with the pretense of scrubs. There was a basket of clean laundry at the end of the bed; he picked through it for a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Threw on the leather jacket hanging next to zip-up hoodies and parkas next to the back door.
“Hey,” Dana says, sidling up next to him. “Just uh—just wanted to touch base.”
“Since when do you touch base about anything?”
“Well, you know—”
“Do I?” he asks, smirking.
Eyes narrowing, she squints down at the band of gold on his left ring finger. Gold, a precious metal, cannot be sanitized like tungsten can. It is better to leave a gold band at home when you work in a profession like theirs. “You absolute bastard. You’re a son of a bitch, you know that?”
“I’ve been told a time or two. Even by my own mother.”
The elevator dings, three minutes after the interview’s scheduled end time. As if she knows her exact role here, as if she never left at all, Samira lets herself be guided with Robby’s hand on the small of her back. She’s not waddling quite yet, but it’s close. With her first pregnancy, she fought it up until she couldn’t. This time, she’s less anxious about perception. About being seen as weak. Natural childbirth, Jack supposes one could argue, would disabuse you of that notion. He’s keen to observe that she’s wearing a pair of compression tights, and flat shoes.
She’s radiant, dressed in a plum-colored wrap dress that isn’t strictly maternity wear but as a garment has adapted well. In her hand is a PTMC folder, one of the thick glossy ones that come with official job offers inside. Eyes scanning the room, she finds him immediately, squints, and shakes her head.
“You’re trouble,” she murmurs, leaning on the hub, her hip pressing into his.
“How are my girls?” he responds, sliding her latte towards her.
He twisted off the bottom half of the paper on the straw before shoving it down into her drink. She plucks off the top half, crinkling it up in her fingers.
“Ready to incite a riot, I guess.” Humming happily, she sucks down a third of her latte in one go. “So, should we tell them the truth or should we tell increasingly outrageous lies until they call us on it? Because I’ll have fun either way.”
“Oh,” he says, catching Robby’s eye over her shoulder. Robby shakes his head, laughing silently. “I think we could get pretty far with the lies. People are going to be irate either way. They’re still waiting to hear if I was courting you or not. If I might have feelings for you.”
Feelings, a mortgage, a marriage license, one daughter and another kid on the way.
“Courting me?” Samira asks, watching Princess narrowly avoid walking into a cart. McKay steadies her, but just barely. “You were courting me? When? Someone should have told me. I never would have guessed.”
Sighing almost imperceptibly, Jack reaches out to rest a hand on the curve of her belly. The baby kicks against his palm. She’s more active than her older sister ever was; they’ve both seen enough late term fetal demises in their practice of medicine to be thankful for it.
“I know,” he replies, eyes crinkling. “Just ask anyone here. I’m really bad at it.”
There is an exchange of money.
But still, no one can quite figure exactly who won.