Chapter Text
Your first morning in your brand new apartment (the one that was supposed to make everything feel better and bearable again) began with no sleep, bad coffee, and a stranger collapsing in front of you.
Technically, you supposed the coffee wasn’t that bad.
It was probably perfectly fine when the barista handed it over—iced, freshly brewed, and sweetened with the embarrassing amount of caramel syrup you requested after staring at the menu for nearly five minutes without absorbing any of the words.
But that was three blocks ago.
Now, all the ice had melted, and the plastic cup was dripping wet with condensation.
You kept drinking it anyway.
It gave you something to do while you walked.
The rest of Pittsburgh was slowly waking up. Delivery trucks idled along the curb. Somewhere nearby, metal shutters rattled open over the front of a convenience store. The sidewalks were slowly filling. You passed a man being dragged along by an impatient terrier and a woman in running clothes, moving with a sense of purpose you couldn’t possibly imagine possessing.
You’d officially moved into your new apartment the day before.
The keys had been handed over. The paperwork had been signed. Every box you owned had been carried up four flights of stairs and abandoned wherever there happened to be enough space to set it down.
By every technical definition, you lived there now.
It just didn’t feel like it yet.
The place was beautiful—far nicer than anywhere you had lived before. It sat on the fourth floor of a carefully restored brick building, with polished hardwood floors, high ceilings, and tall windows that filled the rooms with more sunlight than you knew what to do with. The kitchen had new appliances and deep green cabinets, the bathroom still smelled faintly of fresh tile and clean grout, and the bedroom overlooked a quiet stretch of the street instead of another building’s stained brick wall. It was exactly the kind of place that was supposed to make you feel like you were starting over.
It was the kind of apartment you should have been excited about.
The kind you should have taken photographs of before the boxes arrived, sending them to everyone you knew with some cheerful caption about new beginnings. You should have spent your first night arranging bookshelves and deciding where to hang pictures. You should have stood at the living room windows with a glass of wine, admiring the city lights and feeling proud of yourself for making it there.
Instead, nearly every box remained sealed.
Your mattress had been thrown on the floor, the frame sat surrounded by stacks of clothing and half-emptied bags. Your couch faced a blank wall because you hadn’t decided where anything belonged. The wide windows were still bare, leaving you exposed to the pale morning light and the neighboring buildings beyond them.
It simply wasn’t home.
You also hadn’t started your new job yet, which left you with too much time and nowhere to put it. In truth, you’d chosen the apartment quickly, less because it was perfect and more because you had been desperate to get away from the place you’d lived before.
You had convinced yourself that enough distance would make it easier. That unfamiliar streets and a new set of keys might dull the memories attached to every room you’d left behind.
Instead, the silence had followed you.
It waited in the unopened boxes, in the empty space beside your bed, and in the hours stretching between now and your first day of work. Without a schedule to cling to, there was nothing to stop your mind from circling back to the same places.
You had seven more days before you started.
Seven days that were supposed to be spent settling in, learning the neighborhood, and getting ready for whatever came next. You had made a list on your phone sometime after midnight—unpack the kitchen, buy curtains, find the nearest grocery store—but even looking at it had left you exhausted.
The coffee run had been the only thing that felt manageable.
Get dressed. Walk three blocks. Order something sweet to mask how bitter you felt. Walk back. Simple.
Or, rather, it was supposed to be.
You were almost back when the front door of the building just beside yours swung open and a man stepped outside. He was balancing a travel mug in one hand and a worn leather briefcase in the other. He looked dressed for work, his tie already knotted neatly despite the early hour.
You barely paid him any attention at first.
Then he stopped.
His briefcase slipped lower in his grip as his free hand pressed against the center of his chest. He stood there for a second, rubbing at the spot as though trying to work out a cramp, his face tightening with discomfort.
The man took one uneven step toward the sidewalk before his travel mug fell from his hand, striking the concrete with a hollow clang and spilling coffee across the steps.
Then his knees buckled.
He went down hard, his briefcase landing beside him as his body crumpled onto the pavement.
For one awful second, you only stood there.
Somewhere behind you, a car rolled through the intersection. The whole street kept moving as though a man hadn’t just collapsed ten feet away.
Your body seemed to forget what it was supposed to do.
Then something snapped into place.
You dropped your own coffee and hurried toward him, your shoes striking hard against the pavement as you fell to your knees beside his body.
“Shit… Sir?”
Your voice came out thin and breathless.
You reached for his shoulder, hesitated, then touched him anyway.
“Can you hear me?”
He didn’t answer. Up close, his face had gone frighteningly pale, a sheen of sweat collecting along his forehead. One hand remained curled near his chest, fingers twitching weakly against the fabric of his shirt.
Your own hands had already started shaking.
“Sir,” you tried again, louder this time. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing. A familiar panic rose so quickly it stole the air from your lungs. For half a second, the sidewalk blurred beneath you, replaced by another place, another body, another morning you had spent begging someone to open their eyes.
You forced the memory back down and pressed two fingers against the side of his neck. You couldn’t feel anything. Your stomach dropped.
You dragged your phone from your pocket, nearly losing your grip on it as you tried to unlock the screen.
You managed to dial 911 and put the call on speaker, setting the phone on the pavement beside you before your attention shifted back to the man.
You had taken a Red Cross course years ago. Your mind scrambled, trying to drag the steps out from wherever they had been buried. Then a much less helpful thought surfaced. Were you even legally allowed to do this? Your certification had expired. Possibly years ago. You couldn’t remember if that mattered, which felt like information someone really should have emphasized between practicing compressions on a plastic torso and yelling at someone to get the AED.
“Fuck it,” you muttered.
You placed one hand over the other in the center of his chest and pushed down hard.
Then, the dispatcher’s voice crackled through your phone. “911, what’s your emergency?”
“A man collapsed,” you said, breathless. “He came out on the street and just—he went down. He isn’t breathing.”
The dispatcher fired off a series of questions—your location, the man’s approximate age, whether he had responded at all, whether you could see his chest rising. You answered as best you could between compressions, stumbling over the address you barely remembered.
“An ambulance is on the way,” the dispatcher assured you. “Keep doing compressions.”
So you did.
You counted under your breath, trying to keep the rhythm steady. By the time you reached thirty, your arms were already beginning to burn. By sixty, sweat had gathered at the back of your neck despite the cool morning air.
No one talked enough about how exhausting this really was. Or maybe this was a sign that you needed a gym membership. Your shoulders screamed. Your wrists ached. You weren’t sure your compressions were deep enough anymore, but stopping felt unthinkable.
“What the hell?”
The voice came from behind you—sharp, startled, and suddenly very close.
Before you could turn, someone dropped to his knees on the pavement beside you.
“What happened?”
You looked in the direction of the man, confused and more than a little alarmed by the stranger who had appeared out of nowhere and was now giving orders like he was running the show.
“He came out of the building and grabbed his chest,” you rushed out. “Then he fell, and he wasn’t breathing, so I called 911, and they told me to keep doing compressions—”
“Move.”
You shook your head.
“Move,” he repeated, firmer this time. “I’ll take over.”
You shook your head, still pressing down. “No, I can keep going.”
Your trembling arms suggested otherwise.
The man shifted closer, his voice calm but leaving no room for argument. “You’re not going deep enough. If you don't go deep enough, the blood won't go where you need it to. You're basically just sloshing it around his chest.”
The criticism stung, even though you knew he was right.
You hesitated just long enough for him to shift closer. “Let me take over.”
This time, you moved.
The man immediately placed his hands where yours had been. His first compression drove the man’s chest down noticeably farther than yours had, and you winced at the difference.
“Watch for the ambulance,” the stranger said, falling into a steady rhythm. “You might need to wave them over.”
You stuffed your phone back into your pocket with shaking fingers, trying to catch your breath while studying him properly for the first time. He looked exhausted—hair mussed, jacket sliding off his shoulder, faint shadows beneath his eyes—but there was nothing tired or uncertain about the way he moved.
The sirens grew louder a few seconds later.
You pushed yourself to your feet and stumbled toward the curb, waving both arms as the ambulance turned onto the street.
“Here!”
The vehicle pulled in hard beside the building. Two EMTs jumped out, dragging their bags toward you while a third opened the rear doors and pulled out the stretcher.
The stranger didn’t stop compressions.
One of the EMTs dropped beside him, then did a quick double take.
“Abbot?” he said. “You ever actually get off the clock?”
“Found unresponsive after a witnessed collapse,” the stranger replied, ignoring the comment. “Pulseless and apneic when I took over. Bystander CPR started prior to that.”
You realized, a little belatedly, that he meant you.
The EMT nodded and moved into position. “We’ve got it.”
The stranger shifted back as they took over, one continuing compressions while the other cut open the man’s shirt and began attaching pads to his chest.
You stayed where you were, rooted to the pavement as equipment appeared around the body with startling speed. Someone squeezed a mask over the man’s face. Another EMT called out numbers you didn’t understand.
Then they lifted him onto the stretcher.
The stranger stood, breathing hard, and dragged his jacket back over his shoulder.
“You need me to ride in?” he asked.
“We’re good, we got this,” the EMT said, already pushing the stretcher toward the ambulance.
The doors slammed shut moments later.
Then the ambulance pulled away, taking the noise and urgency with it.
You remained on the sidewalk, staring after it, your pulse still hammering in your ears.
The man turned toward you, flexing his hands once before letting them fall to his sides.
“Hey,” he said, his voice gentler now. “Sorry if I was blunt with you. Earlier.”
You shook your head quickly. “No, don’t apologize. I was doing a shitty job. Thank you for taking over.”
“You weren’t.”
You finally tore your eyes away from the road and looked at the stranger. His expression softened slightly.
He was older than you, his hair streaked faintly with gray and pushed into disarray from what looked like a very long night. Light stubble shadowed his jaw, and exhaustion sat plainly beneath his eyes.
There was nothing polished about him. No carefully styled hair or easy, practiced smile. He looked worn down, a little rough around the edges, and entirely too comfortable taking control of a crisis.
“You weren’t doing a shitty job. You called 911 and started CPR,” he said. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”
You had to admit, his reassurance was doing something deeply inconvenient to your ability to think clearly.
Still unconvinced, after a moment you nodded. “Is he going to be okay?”
His eyes followed the ambulance until it disappeared around the corner.
“I don’t know. But he’s heading to the right place,” he said. “They’ll have everything they need to give him the best shot.”
It wasn’t quite the confident yes, of course you had been hoping for, but it was enough to make some of the tightness in your own chest ease.
“Are you a doctor?” you asked.
He nodded once but didn’t elaborate, as though that was all the answer you were going to get.
Then his attention shifted fully to you. His eyes moved over your face, your shaking hands, the way you were still holding yourself entirely too tightly.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Me? Oh, I’m fine,” you said too quickly, rubbing your palms against your pants as though that might hide the shaking.
“You’ve got adrenaline dumping through your system,” he said. “The shaking, the nausea, feeling like you can’t quite catch your breath—it’s normal.”
“I’m not nauseous.”
The lie barely made it out before your stomach rolled.
He raised an eyebrow but mercifully didn’t comment.
“Sit down before you fall down,” he said, gesturing towards the steps in front of your apartment building.
“I’m fine,” you insisted. Even still, you did as he said, lowering yourself onto the steps before your legs could make the decision for you. The stone was cool beneath you, and you leaned forward with your elbows braced on your knees, trying to slow your breathing.
You expected him to leave.
Instead, a second later, he sat down beside you.
That surprised you enough to make you glance over.
“Just give it a minute,” he said. “Your body hasn’t figured out yet that it’s over quite yet.”
You tried to do what he said, dragging in a slow breath, but it caught halfway down. Your chest still felt too tight, your breathing coming a little too fast no matter how hard you tried to steady it.
“Do you deal with this kind of thing a lot?” you asked, noticing how completely unfazed he seemed by the whole thing.
He looked over at you. “What? People collapsing, or adrenaline fades?”
You let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Either.”
“Both I suppose,” he said.
“What kind of doctor are you?” you asked.
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, gaze drifting toward the street.
“Emergency medicine.”
That explained the calm. The quick assessment. The way the EMTs had known him on sight.
“And you just got off work?”
He gave a tired nod. “About twenty minutes ago.”
You looked at him, then at the empty stretch of road where the ambulance had disappeared.
“Rough commute.”
That earned the faintest hint of a smile.
“You don’t have to stay,” you said. “Really, I’m okay.”
He looked over at you, clearly unconvinced.
“People who are okay usually don’t have to insist on it that hard.”
You opened your mouth to argue, but another shallow breath caught in your chest and ruined the effect.
“I’m just a little shaken,” you admitted.
“Exactly.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “So sit for another minute. Let your breathing slow down. Then you can decide how okay you are.”
You glanced at him. “I just didn’t expect to perform CPR on my first morning in Pittsburgh, that's all.”
His gaze shifted toward you. “Oh yeah? Where are you from?”
Your fingers curled against your knees, nails pressing into your palms as an image flashed through your mind—your old street, your old apartment, the life you had packed away in a matter of days.
“Boston,” you said finally, keeping your eyes fixed on the pavement. “I just moved into my new place last night.”
He seemed to catch the shift in you but didn’t press.
“Well, just consider all this chaos as just the official Pittsburgh welcome,” he said.
That pulled a reluctant smile from you.
“Honestly, a brochure or something would’ve sufficed.”
A quiet laugh escaped him, brief but genuine. For a moment, neither of you said anything. The street had settled again around you, as though the ambulance had never been there at all.
Then he glanced at your hands, checking for the tremor that had been there before.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked.
You took stock of yourself—the steadier breathing, the way your hands had finally stopped trembling quite so badly.
“Better,” you admitted. “A lot better, actually. Thanks…” Your voice trailed off in place of his name. You’d heard the EMT call him Abbot earlier, but using what was almost certainly his last name felt strange.
“Jack,” he supplied.
“Jack,” you repeated. Then you gave him yours.
He nodded, then pushed himself to his feet. For a second, you assumed that was it.
Instead, he turned and held out a hand to you.
You took it without thinking.
His grip was warm and firm as he pulled you up, and once you were standing, you found yourself lingering there for half a second too long. Before he pulled his hand away, you tried to make sense of the strange flutter of feeling this exhausted, slightly bossy stranger had managed to stir up after what had objectively been one of the most chaotic mornings of your life.
“Here, let me walk you home,” he said.
For one ridiculous second, you considered lying.
You could point vaguely down the street. Invent an address. Let Jack walk you several blocks in the wrong direction just to stretch out another few minutes with him.
Instead, you gestured over your shoulder toward the building behind you.
“Thanks, but no need,” you said. “I live here.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Here?”
“Yeah. Fourth floor.”
A tired, amused look crossed his face.
“Well,” he said, glancing toward the entrance, “nice to meet you neighbor.”