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After all, what was I really looking for?
And I wonder when will I learn
Maybe my wish knew better than I did
– Tori Amos, Strange
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Samira Mohan doesn’t think she’ll ever be marked. Her parents weren’t and they are happy enough. It all seems silly to her anyway, Prince Charming running after Cinderella because he saw a mark on her foot that matched his or Snow White’s prince thinking it was alright to kiss her unconsenting, sleeping mouth because the apple on her collarbone matched the one on his hip.
Besides, she feels better when she works for things. It’s always been clear to her that for something to be worth having it should be earned; grades, her parents' attention, a place on the soccer team. She doesn’t mind. Nothing comes easy, nor should it.
But then her father dies and she doesn’t know how she earned that or how to un-earn it.
At first she dreams of revenge, killing the doctors who made the mistake, but she doesn’t know how. She’d like a gun, but she’s only thirteen and has no idea how to get one.
She quickly moves on to vengeance, she could sue the hospital and the doctors and win so much money that no doctor anywhere would ever want to rush a patient through treatment again. She learns the phrase wrongful death and emailed as many lawyers as she could. None took her seriously, except one who wanted to meet and stared at her in a creepy and weird way..
She writes an essay for school on her plans for the future and she details it all – murder, lawsuits, her anger at the world. Her teacher takes her aside, the first and only adult she can recall who takes her seriously. He points out that murder and lawsuits might give her a moment’s peace, but that they wouldn’t bring her father back. That the planning was what she really liked because it kept the idea of her father close.
She sees his point even though she refuses to concede it to him. He gently suggests studying medicine, becoming a better doctor than those assholes (and he had said assholes, which made her feel like he took the whole thing seriously) would be a way to honor her father, stick it to bad doctors, and make sure no one ever suffered the same fate.
It’s a good idea. She likes the symmetry, the hard work ahead of her.
But the morning after she decides the mark is just there: A heart. An anatomical heart, rendered in thin black lines on her left side, over her ribs; simple, but clear and correct. She looked it up on the internet to be sure.
She hates it.
******************************************
It feels like a regular day. The chaos at Ibn Sina feels normal now. And it’s not so different from his first two years of residency so far at WBAMC in Texas.
Shit, shower, shave. Same routine, different day. The mark could’ve been there for weeks and he wouldn't have known. It’s only when, standing at a sink in the gym, towel around his hips, shaving, Hernandez walks by and points out that he has any idea.
“Cool tat, Abby,” Hernandez says. “Very on brand. Where’d you get it.”
“What?”
He points to his own back and Jack is still confused. He tries to look over his shoulder and Hernandez laughs.
“Other side. Dude, did your mark come in? That’s fucking adorable. We should check with Dunton to see if you match,” he teases, name checking Jack's favorite nurse to work with.
“Fuck you, Hernandez”
“Not now that you have a soulmate, asshole, I’m no home wrecker,” and Hernandez snaps his towel at him.
Jack contorts in the mirror to see it and there it is plain as day: an anatomical heart, external view, drawn in thin perfect black lines, about the size of a quarter on his shoulder.
He had given up on being marked. Sure, there are no hard and fast rules for when the marks will show, most people get them in their mid-to-late teens, but the marks have a sense of humor – some people get them as young as seven, others as senior citizens.
At first not having one had hurt and made him feel lonely. His parents were marked, both his sisters, his whole family it seemed like, but then it was helpful. It made him focus on what would give the rest of his days meaning. It came easily then – how the doctors had cured his older sister’s leukemia. If he didn’t have a soulmate that was fine, he’d keep other people’s soulmates alive.
Now he looks in the mirror and wonders a little at the mark.
Well, look at that.
******************************************
Seventh graders are mean. The girls in the locker room see her mark when she’s changing for gym and lock on it like rabid dogs.
She’s young for a mark and she’s the first person in school to get one, so according to everyone she’s a slut, a whore, a bimbo; she loves cock. She takes it everywhere (and at 13 she has an idea what that means, but she’s not 100% sure).
The mark is maybe the worst thing to ever happen to her. The graffiti on her locker is bad enough, not to mention the names that follow her down the hall, but it’s a fucking heart. A heart.
A heart attack killed her father and now the mark on her ribs mocks her. Every day a reminder on her skin.
******************************************
He’s home for New Years and he’s tired; he feels so old. He knows that 31 isn’t really that old, but for some reason being around his family and everyone who hasn’t seen what he’s seen makes him feel ancient.
That’s why he tries to beg off going to a party with his younger sister, but April blackmails him – tells him she’ll make up an excuse to leave him alone with their parents for the next four days if he doesn’t come. So he goes.
April disappears almost immediately, vanishing into a knot of people he’s never met and doesn’t want to know. He spends an endless 45 minutes nursing a beer, pretending to listen to conversations he finds himself in, completely miserable, but then he sees her. Pretty, dark hair, apple cheeks, looking at him with an interested expression. He’s heard about love at first sight, but he never believed it until now. He knows he’s going to marry this woman, spend the rest of his life with her, and he walks towards her — ready for the rest of his life to start.
As he moves, she moves too and they meet just at the entrance of the kitchen.
“I swear to God this isn’t a line,” she says just as they are only a few feet from each other. “But do I know you from somewhere?”
He’s happy to play along, but they can’t find it. Her name is Caroline. Carrie. They went to different schools, different colleges, she didn’t go to med school. She’s never been to Iraq or Afghanistan.
“Let’s put a pin in that because I want to hear about it, but we’ve got to figure this out first.” She says when he tells her he was overseas. She’s April's age, but doesn’t know her. Is only at the party because she was dragged by a friend.
“Could you know my brother? Rick Tulley?”
“The name is so familiar, but I can’t place it.”
She snaps her fingers. “Cub Scouts! You were in cub scouts together.”
As soon as she says it, he knows she’s right. He can picture Rick, serious and quiet; Jack is pretty sure he went all the way to Eagle Scout, and he can maybe remember Rick’s little sister. A spitfire who ran around the auditorium during badge ceremonies, pretending to be an airplane. He smiles at the memory.
“It’s your smile that’s familiar” she tells him, with an answering smile of her own. He has never seen a prettier woman in his life. He wants to kiss her, touch her, undress her not just because he’s interested in her body, but because he wants to see the mark he is sure is there. “I remember your teeth.”
He laughs. “I’m not sure if that’s really a compliment.”
She looks at him over her beer. “It is.”
They talk for another hour or maybe it’s two or maybe it’s 10 minutes, but soon enough they sneak off to kiss like idiots in an upstairs bathroom.
He gets his hands under her shirt, not trying to cop a feel really, just desperate to touch her skin. He holds her at the divot of her waist, hands sliding up just a little to her ribs.
“I’m marked,” she says breathless and hot in his ear. And it’s the biggest rush and biggest relief of his existence. He knew she was. He knows they are going to match.
“So am I,” he tells her, moving in to kiss her neck. “What is it?”
“It’s a heart,” she says barely a whisper.
He knew what she was going to say, but it still stops him. A shudder of pure joy runs down his spine. How strange. How wonderful. Something rings inside his chest like a bell. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. He pulls back, looks at her in shock. “Really?”
“I know, it’s so cliche, but—.”
“—No, no, no, my mark is a heart, too.”
She laughs, it’s a high, disbelieving joyful little thing. “Let me see.”
It’s ridiculous, but he’s so happy and excited and it’s so weird. This is how he meets his soulmate? At a stupid party he had to be blackmailed into attending? He turns and lifts up the back of shirt so she can see.
She touches it. Kisses it. His whole body feels warm and at peace. So this is what it’s like. But when he turns to face her, her smile is sad. She pushes up her right sleeve and shows him her forearm. He touches it. Leans down to kiss it, like she had. It’s a love heart; oddly imperfect, like the kind hand drawn on Valentine’s Day cards, or traced into a fogged up mirror.
He takes her hands and pulls her flush against him. “Fucking close enough if you ask me.”
She laughs again and it’s magic. He would do anything for the rest of his life if it meant he could make her laugh like that again.
******************************************
The woman isn’t pretty, but she is cool looking. Short, with shoulder length blue hair, a shock of white near the front and a full sleeve of flowers, with some blooms peeking out under her shirt, across her collar bone.
“I called about a cover up.” Samira says, trying to play it cool. She’s been dreaming of a tattoo to cover her mark for five years now. Finally 18 she doesn’t want to fuck it up. Tattoo artists don’t like to cover soulmarks.
“Yeah,” the woman stands on her tip toes, leans over the counter a bit, ready to look at whatever is on Samira’s skin. “Let's see.”
Samira lifts up her shirt, turns sideways a bit so the woman can see.
She puts her hands on the counter and leans over even more, peers at the heart on Samira’s side, makes a face and then settles back on her feet. “That looks like a soulmark.”
“It’s not.”
The woman nods, but still seems like she doesn’t believe Samira’s lie. “Here,” she says and grabs a binder of photos and pushes it across the counter to Samira and opens it. The pictures are of soulmarks asserting themselves from underneath all kinds of tattoos – dark ones, large ones, full color, black and white. “If I give you a tattoo that’s what’s going to look like. You can’t hide a soulmark.”
“Ok, fine.” Samira steels herself, tries to sound resolute, but like an annoyed customer. “But it’s not a mark.”
The woman’s face softens. “You’re so young. Is it a bad match? Are they trying to get you to do something you don’t want to?”
“No! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There are programs that will help you. You know, if you’re worried about your soulmate.”
“It’s not a mark.” Now she is annoyed, angry even.
The woman laughs at her and shakes her head. “Didn’t you see Jurassic Park, kid? Nature finds a way.”
“It’s not a mark.” Samira knows she should just walk out, but now it feels very important to best this woman; to not back down.
The woman takes the book and closes it. Even though she’s smaller than Samira, it feels like she’s looking down on her. “I’ve been doing this a long time. And I think you’re lying to me and yourself. I’m not giving you a tattoo. And I don’t think anyone else will either.”
Samira tries three more tattoo parlours before she gives up. She is more powerful than whatever this is. Fuck nature, she will find a way.
******************************************
Before he heads out to work, he goes back into the bedroom as quietly as he can. He wants to check on her, but he doesn’t want to wake her. She hasn’t been sleeping well even though she’s been exhausted.
She lets out a sleepy, “Hey” when he peeks in, so he comes and sits on the bed next to her.
“How you feeling, sweetness?” He can’t help it, he lays the back of his hand on her forehead to check her temp. It’s fine.
She stretches. “Lousy,” she answers, voice still heavy with sleep. Pale and green around the gills, she’s still beautiful even if she is a little disgusting.
“Did you talk to Doc Fields?”
“Yeah,” she says, sitting up a bit.
He slouches half next to her, half on top of her, thumb tracing the heart on her forearm. “And?”
She imitates the doctor, “You’re tired, you're nauseated? Congrats, you’re pregnant.” She rolls her eyes.
He knows her OB is right. At 14 weeks, if she came into the ED there are some tests they’d do, but mostly to make sure she’s not dehydrated or that her BP isn’t high. He takes her pulse, just to do something. It’s fine. “Helpful,” he says, rolling his eyes back at her. “That’s it?”
“If I have any other symptoms: dizziness, headache, sweating, pain in my chest, back, jaw, shortness of breath —”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah” he says, talking over her. He would say the same thing.
“-- To call or go to the ER.”
“You could come in with me now if you want. I don’t like that you haven’t been able to keep much down. Some IV fluids wouldn’t hurt.”
“I feel silly.” she says and he can see the embarrassment on her face. She’s not usually the type of person who gets laid out by not feeling well.
“Don’t, you know your body.”
She rolls over a little. “Ugh! If I go in with you everyone will know and I’m not ready for that.”
“So, go to Presby.”
She thinks for a long second and rolls back onto her back. “No, Rachel is going to come over later with rice krispie treats and chicken soup – her grandmother’s secret recipe.”
He knows his eyes must get big even without his permission; he fucking loves rice krispie treats. She laughs and some color comes back to her face. “Yes, we will save you some. But look, if I can’t keep the magic soup down, I’ll call you. I’ll come in. You can poke me with whatever you want.”
“That's how we got into this mess,” he says, waggling her eyebrows.
“Oh god,” she groans. “Don’t make stupid jokes when I already want to vomit.”
Something settles in his heart, calming him just enough. There’s his girl. He wants to crawl into bed with her, he’s about to when he catches the time on the bedside clock. He’s going to be so late and he tells her so. He gives her a quick kiss. “Text me later,” he calls out as he runs through the door.
She texts him around 1pm. The magic soup made her feel much better. And then there’s nothing.
Nothing until he finds her at home, cold on the bathroom floor.
What hurts isn’t that he missed it, spontaneous coronary artery dissection is not unheard of in pregnant women, but it’s much more of a concern for women post-partum. Not a zebra then, but a really fucking rare horse. No, what he hates is that he didn’t tell her he loved her as he was running out the door; that she didn’t tell him the same. They always did that. It was just that he was running late. If he hadn’t jerked off in the shower. If he hadn’t taken the towels to the laundry room, if he hadn’t played that one game on his phone waiting for the coffee to brew then maybe he wouldn’t have been running late and he would’ve said it.
It’s time he can’t get back now.
******************************************
She gets the germ of an idea during a unit on burns: there’s a before and after picture showing a person who had a soulmark before he got full thickness burns on his left calf. The mark is gone after healing and skin grafts.
She doesn’t want to give herself a painful and dangerous burn, but it opens an avenue she’d hadn’t thought of; she begins to research.
It’s hard for anyone to do much research on the marks. They have a sense of humor – one large German study was meant to follow marked and unmarked couples for several years and gauge happiness and longevity of marked vs unmarked marriages and it was ruined when every single member of the unmarked cohort woke up one morning marked and matched to their spouse.
The marks don’t like to be studied, but luckily for Samira she’s not so interested in their behavior as much as she is their pathology – what happens to them after physical trauma. And even though they can’t be covered by tattoos for some reason, it seems they do behave mostly like skin – they don’t stretch during pregnancy or weight gain, but they can be burned, excised.
She sits with the knowledge until she nears the end of her 4th year of med school. She picks up an extra clerkship in an emergency room where it’s not easy, but not hard, to steal some lidocaine, gauze, a scalpel and everything else she needs.
She sits alone in her bathroom one Tuesday and cuts off her mark; she takes her future into her own two hands.
******************************************
During their regular check-ins about the R2s Robby repeatedly expresses concerns about Dr. Mohan – she spends too much time on overly detailed histories, orders unnecessary tests, gets too close.
Jack looks for it when she’s on the night shift and he sees what Robby's talking about, but it’s clear to him she knows what she’s doing. Her thinking is solid and grounded in data; she’s very focused on patient care and experience. She does need to work faster, but unlike Robby, he thinks she can get there by picking up her feet a bit more – not changing everything about her practice.
She presents a case where the patient has a stiff neck and photophobia and is rightly worried about meningitis, but she’s never done a lumbar puncture.
“Glove up, Dr. Mohan,” he tells her.
She introduces him to the patient – a 45-year-old woman named Jill Perry – and explains his presence.
“I thought you were a doctor,” Jill says.
“She is,” he tells her. “Don’t worry, but Residents are still learning. That’s why I’m here.”
“Do you mind that I’m doing the procedure?” Mohan asks. He flinches a bit, it’s not something he’d ever do, but it sets the patient completely and totally at ease.
“No, I guess not. I feel like you’ll be way more careful than someone who has done this 100 times before.”
“That is very true.” Mohan tells her with a smile.
“And I’m sure he won’t let you screw it up.”
“She won’t screw it up,” he promises.
Olive helps them get Ms. Perry ready, on her side, numbed up, draped, and he walks Samira through the spinal tap. She’s perfect, does exactly what he tells her to do when tells her to do it. She’s even able to answer his questions as she moves the needle into the subarachnoid space and collects fluid from the tap.
“He may be trying to distract me,” she tells Jill. “But I am completely focused on you.”
“It’s ok. That all sounds like teaching, not flirting.”
“I only flirt with patients.” He puts in while he looks over Mohan’s shoulder to watch the fluid drip into the tube.
Mohan snorts. He has done enough of these that he can tell that Jill is about to laugh, or look over her shoulder, but Samira reaches out, touches her, tells her, “Stay still.” It surprises him a little. She really is completely focused on her patient.
“Well,” Jill drawls. “Let’s speed up this tap so you and I can be alone, Dr. Abbot.”
Samira looks up at him with a sly smile. “The hunter becomes the hunted.” He can’t help but bark out a laugh and he can tell that she’s happy she made him laugh, which makes him happy. She’s pretty like this, hair up, determined twist of her lips, and the devious cut of her eyes. She’s making fun of him and he likes it.
“You can take a picture, If you want” the patient says, breaking his reverie. “I don’t mind.”
“A picture?”
“You know, since this is your first. If you want to put it on Instagram or something.”
“I can’t do that, but thank you.”
“Are you sure? You can sign my back and everything.”
He knows patient patter, he knows making scared people feel comfortable, but this woman seems to be having a good time while getting a spinal tap. He understands Dr. Mohan’s Press Gainey scores better now. Respects them more. He’s met her, he doesn’t know her well, but he knows her well enough. She’s not warm and fuzzy, but she is certainly making her patient feel that way. He realizes she works at it and for some reason that makes her prettier still.
“You did great,” Samira tells the patient once the tap is done.
He checks the fluid before he hands it off to Olive to send to pathology. It’s clear.
“Do you drink, Dr. Mohan?” he asks and just after it’s left his mouth, he realizes how it sounds – like he’s going to ask her out for a drink and he also realizes in the moment that he’d like to, honestly, he’d really like to, but it’s ridiculous; not only is she a resident, she’s a second year, which is only a year better than being an intern, which is practically a child – if a child could rent a car.
“What?” She says, but with a glint in her eye and it’s like she’s not completely grossed out by the idea and then it’s on the tip of his tongue. We could get one sometime, a drink, if you do drink.
And it’s ridiculous and he won’t say it and he doesn’t say it. What he says instead is the perfectly reasonable, “That is a zero RBC lumbar tap – a champagne tap. In my day the supervising attending treated the resident to a bottle of good champagne for their first perfectly clear tap. What do you say?”
“I like champagne.” She smiles at him, big and wide, sparkling eyes, a sweet dimple he’d like to drown in.
“Ok, good.” His face almost hurts from smiling back at her so hard. Maybe he’s not working those muscles as much as he thought.
******************************************
She’s really in a state about Orlando Diaz and when he tells her he’ll pay to courier meds to him like it’s no big deal, like it’s an obvious solution, it’s like a camera flash right in her eyes; when bright spots disappear she feels like she sees him for the first time. Well, that’s not really true. She’s noticed him before – his smile, his eyes, his stupid jokes, but she didn’t really know he was like this.
She likes working nights, mostly because the doubles keep her busy, but also because she sees different types of things at night and that’s interesting. She doesn’t love his Army, hooha, rally cheer bullshit, even though it’s probably why no one on nights had ever dared call her Slo-Mo, Abbot’s attempts to pull them all into one MASH unit or something leave her cold.
But this? Ubering meds to a patient’s house? She can hear Robby in her head - it’s a terrible idea with huge medicological and safety risks, but she desperately wants to do it, and here he is helping her make it happen. She feels seen and it makes her see him.
She gloves up and disinfects the wound on his back. They make small talk about their mutual lack of hobbies and distaste for things like golf and bird watching. She’s preparing the bandage for his back when he finally asks her a question that shocks her.
“Is my mark still there?” His voice is hesitant and soft. More vulnerable than being without his shirt. “I couldn’t tell.”
It’s not and she can see no evidence that it was ever there. Of course he and his wife were marked and matched: he still wears the ring. He must miss her so much. “I’m sorry, it looks gone.” She presses against sides of the angry wound on his back. The bullet didn’t have to kill him to take something dear from him. She pulls her phone from her pocket, takes a picture and shows him. He looks at the picture for a long moment before he hands her phone back to her.
“If you’re registered, I’m sure you can get it tattooed on.”
He gives a mirthless laugh.
“No, really,” she says. She’s counseled several burn patients about this. “It might be comforting.”
“We didn’t match,” he tells her in that voice that’s all gravel and stone again. That’s rare, she thinks, for a married couple not to match, but doesn’t say anything. “She never met her match, so after she died, I thought about cutting it off. If she didn’t have her soulmate, maybe I should never have mine, right? But I couldn’t go through with it. That’s why it's funny.”
She thinks about whether she should tell him or not. She hates the looks people give her if they find out. Like if she’d had a voluntary clitorectomy or purposefully cut off a limb. But something tells her he won't react like that.
“I cut mine off,” she says quickly; it’s just a fact and he can take it however he wants to. She takes the bandage she prepared and tapes it to his back.
“Really?” He asks and, bless him, he sounds curious, like she visited a country he’s heard about and always wanted to visit.
“Mmhhmm.”
“Why’d you do it?” He turns to her a little, so she moves to stand in front of him.
“My mark came right after my dad died, I was pretty young. I guess I dealt with it by deciding I’d become a doctor and I didn’t want the distraction. I wanted to do this.”
He nods a little. “Mine came late. By the time it showed up I had already decided I was ok with not being marked because being a doctor seemed more important.”
“So you get it,” she knows she shouldn’t sound as happy as she does. He’s talking about his dead wife and it’s not like he chose to lose his mark, but he looks different to her again. His offer to pay for the uber, his encouragement of her makes more sense. They are not the same, but she feels like it’s close enough.
“But then I met my wife,” he says, voice wistful and poignant. “Do you think about them? Aren’t you curious?”
She shakes her head, confused. “Who?”
He gestures vaguely at her with his chin. “Whoever is on the other side of the match. Do you wonder what you’d say to them when or if you meet?”
She’s thunderstruck for the second time in one conversation. She has never ever thought about him. Not even once. Everything she’s done has been for the life she wants; she never considered how he might feel. She feels suddenly horrible about that. “No, I…” she can’t go on, so she deflects. “What about you?”
She can actually see the gears in his head turning. “I guess I hope she’d forgive me for not waiting for her; for marrying someone else and not looking for her.”
“She’s your soulmate. I’m sure she wouldn’t hold it against you. Anyway, they say you’re not supposed to try and find your match. The marks don’t like it. They’ll make it harder.” She doesn’t want to believe any of the hokum and superstition, but she’s heard too many stories to completely ignore it.
He smiles at her, gives her a soft nod. “Then you should get looking for them, shouldn’t you?”
She doesn’t mean to smile back at him, but she feels herself doing it anyway. “I guess I should.”
******************************************
Both Baran and Robby tried to give him some version of, “It’s not my holiday, I don’t mind working,” but he likes working the infamous Christmas Double – 7pm Christmas Eve to 7pm Christmas Day -- prefers it in fact. On Thanksgiving it’s easier to wrangle him and his sisters together, while Christmas is often a lot of trading off with their husband’s families and wanting to create their own traditions, New Years, the anniversary of when he and Carrie met, is a toss up – some years he wants to work it, some years he wants to hide .
Anyway if he works the double, Robby can go with Janey and Jake to her cabin on Lake Erie and Baran can enjoy lots more time with her kid Christmas or no Christmas. Shen is overly grateful to have it off as are Joe and Dr. Deranjian; he likes to bank the favors. Plus, there’s always money in the budget for a locum and between him, the locum, and the skeleton crew of residents, nurses, and PAs they’ll be plenty staffed for the the over-served Santas, the kids falling off their new bikes, the holiday suicide attempts, and the chronically ill who think there will be less of wait if they come in on Christmas – like his sister going to Home Depot during the Super Bowl.
Day shift is about to start doing their sign outs when he sees Cassie go over to Samira and give her a huge hug.
“I owe you so big, Goose. I can’t even tell you. I know you’ll never want me to cover you, but if you ever need to move? Move a body? I am so there for you. You are the best.”
He remembers Cassie had drawn the short straw and was supposed to work tonight and tomorrow, he realizes Samira must have switched with her. She looks a little uncomfortable with McKay’s effusive praise. She awkwardly punches McKay in the shoulder. “No problem, Mav.” Cassie hugs her again and stalks off towards the Hub.
He gets that same flutter he always gets when he first sees Mohan. They worked the Christmas Double last year and it had been fine. Of course Heather Collins had been there too and Samira had spent most of the time she wasn’t working or picking away at her research data with the other woman. Collins had tried to teach her to knit and when Samira proved hopeless at it, she had helped her open a brokerage account so Samira could invest in an EFT. But whatever. This will be fine.
“Why are you Goose?” he asks Mohan.
“Tom Cruise is Maverick in the movie, right?”
It’s a ridiculous question and it makes him feel about a million years old. He nods. “Uh, yeah. He sure is.”
“Cassie is shorter,” Samira shrugs like it’s a solid and obvious reason. “And the only line I know is something about ‘the need for speed?’ C’mon.”
He hasn’t heard anyone call her Slo-Mo in a while, but he wonders if making the joke at her own expense hurts a little. “Do you know what happens to Goose in the movie?”
“No?”
He clicks his tongue.
She slumps then, her whole posture dejected. “He dies doesn’t he?” when he doesn’t answer her, she tries again even more emphatically. “Does he die?!” She’s so adorable. It’s inappropriate, but he can’t help but think it. He wants to put his arms around her sad little shoulders, kiss her disappointed mouth.
“Take me to bed or lose me forever,” He quotes and her eyes go wide. Why the fuck did he say that? She had just told him she never saw the movie. And now he’s Meg Ryan? “It’s just a line from the movie,” he tells her with hands up like he’s under arrest. It’s going to be a very long 24 hours.
******************************************
Samira isn’t sure if Toomarian is having an off night because it’s Christmas or if they are all off nights; she hasn’t worked with her much before. Every time Abbot asks her a question, the younger doctor whiffs. It’s not bad – she’s in the right neighborhood, but keeps ending up at the wrong address.
Dr. Abbot tries to coach her through it. He’s endlessly reassuring.
“You got this,” he tells her when she gives wrong answer after wrong answer over the unconscious patient. Samira is about to jump in, give her a little help and get Perlah moving onto what she also knows the right thing is, but Abbot gives her an almost imperceptible shake of his head, waving her off.
Nazely clenches her whole body and utters a tense, “Fucking shit.”
Abbot is so calm that even Samira feels like he’s slowed down time. “Deep breath, Dr. Toomarian,” he tells her and demonstrates, taking a big inhale through his nose. She copies him. Breathes in and then out. “Now try.”
Toomarian shakes her head, completely lost, and Dr. Abbot gives the correct order and Perlah starts administering the drugs she already had on hand.
“I’m sorry,” Nazely tells him, obviously embarrassed.
“It’s ok,”he says gently. “You’re here to learn. The only thing that worries me is you giving up, ok?” she nods. “Take a lap and then go take a look at chairs.”
“Roger that.” She gives them both a tight smile and wanders off.
Samira watches as he takes off his gloves, and does the same without even thinking. So much is muscle memory at this point. “I’m sorry,” he says as he tosses the gloves into a trash can; they walk out of the room, get hand sanitizer. “I know you wanted to jump in, but she was in a bit of a spiral. You get like that and any more voices, even if they are trying to help; it just feels like you’re getting ganged up on.”
He says it like it's so obvious that that would be a bad thing. As though that wasn’t what nearly a quarter of her residency has been like so far. She stops in her tracks; in complete awe of him. “Yeah,” she nods her head. “That’s exactly what it’s like.”
They are standing just a little too close. If he wore aftershave or used something in his hair with a strong scent she’d be able to smell it. She wishes there was something, something she could find in a drug store and just have, to remind herself of him, of this moment.
She’s thought he was handsome for a long time now. She’s been wanting him in an abstract way; a crush, lowkey heat, but now something splits open in her body revealing a volcano; a mountain of ache that had been hidden until now. Her desire for him turns like a cat on its back, belly up, daring her to touch and not get bit.
She doesn’t know what to say – what can she say? Hold me? Kiss me? Fuck me? – so she asks about Toomarian instead. “Do you think she’ll get it?”
He shifts his balance a bit. “I don’t know. Ellis is going to spend some more time with her in the new year. If she doesn’t get it, it will be our fault. We’re supposed to teach her.”
She nods at him as though it wasn’t one of the single most amazing things she’s ever heard. It changes her. That one simple sentence and she doesn’t want to be Robby, knows like a defibrillator shock to the heart that there’s no there there. She’d rather be like Jack.
Inspired, she finds Toomarian at The Hub. “Nazely,” Samira starts, willing her voice to be friendly and reassuring. She hopes it doesn’t sound like she’s talking to a toddler or a dog. “I noticed you haven’t been using mnemonic devices as a memory aid. Have you not found them useful for your practice?”
Toomarian lets out a long sigh. “No, they’re great. I’m just bad at writing good ones.”
Writing them? Samira is shocked again, this time for this poor kid. How did she get through school? Didn’t she have anyone to study with, anyone to help share the classics? She tries not to let her absolute terror for the other woman show. Samira takes out her phone and opens her google docs. “What’s your email address?”
Nazely tells her. “Why?”
“I’m sending you access to my mnemonics folder. I have so many good ones. It may help.”
Nazely gives a sardonic laugh. “It certainly can’t hurt!”
******************************************
He refuses to be embarrassed when she catches him reading in the breakroom at 4 am.
“Isn’t that book about incest?” She asks and it’s worth it, the terrible book, all the terrible books he’s read for Maddy just to hear the shock in Samira’s voice. He doesn’t always get to surprise people anymore.
“It is!” he answers brightly, holding up the cover higher, Flowers in the Attic.
“Why on Earth—?”
“My niece doesn’t like to read,” he says and by her face he can tell it’s not enough of an explanation. “She says she doesn’t have time with her class work, and band, and field hockey, but my sister wants her to read more than what’s assigned in school so she volunteered me to read with her: If Uncle Jack, the doctor who’s always working has time —”
“--then she has time too, ok I get it.” She finishes for him and nods; she gets a yogurt out of the fridge and opens it.
“Plus there’s the joy of making me read all kinds of truly embarrassing shit. She found this in the garage at my Mom’s, both my sisters deny it was theirs.” They smile at each other for just longer than is necessary. This whole impossibly long night has been a game of chicken, seeing who smiles longer and pulls away first. They have so many more hours to go.
“How is it?” She asks around a spoonful as though she doesn’t know the answer.
“It’s so bad!” And she laughs like he hoped she would.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” she says, turning to leave.
“No!” he calls after her. “Please don’t.” He can’t read the look she gives him, but he feels like maybe he sounds too desperate, he tries again. “Save me from this book.” She lingers in the doorway eating her yogurt. “Have you heard back about any of those fellowships yet?”
She slouches and looks dejected again. “I got a no on the toxicology one.”
“Did you really want to do that?” It doesn’t seem like her. Never did. But he wrote the recommendation anyway.
She comes back into the room and sort of wanders aimlessly for a moment before she sits down across from him. “No, not really. I don’t know.” She shrugs and eats her yogurt aggressively.
“Do you want to do any of them?”
She laughs, a brittle bitter thing. “I don’t know what I want. Just that I don’t want to go back home and I don’t want to start over somewhere else. I want to stay here.”
“So, get a job.”
“Just get a job.” she says imitating his tone and cadence. “It’s so easy, huh?”
“Sure.” He crosses his arms, leans back. He doesn’t know why she’s so intent on selling herself short. Well, he has an idea, but he’d rather not examine it too closely.
“Sure.” She repeats, imitating him again.
“Westbridge is looking for a sr. attending to work night shifts. They’ve been trying to recruit me for months.”
She shakes her head like he’s crazy. “I’m not qualified to be a sr. attending,”
“No, but I’m happy to suggest they promote one of their current jrs and hire you.”
She plays with her yogurt. He knows she likes the idea, but is afraid to hope for it. “And they’ll listen to you?”
“I have no idea, but I’m happy to try.” And he is. Even if he didn’t like her too much, he’d do it. She deserves it. She’s a good doctor and he thinks she’s earned a little help. It feels good to help her, soothing, like when sometimes he lies in bed, tracing the edge he can reach of the scar left when his soulmark got shot off. The wound on his shoulder she treated for him.
He takes out his phone and she reaches out to him, “God, you don’t have to do it now.”
“I’m not,” he says and shows her the screen. “Just making a note.”
******************************************
He lets her run the trauma, a Santa who got stuck in a chimney, which he should – she’s a R4 – but instead of standing back like Robby often does, judging, asking questions, and giving her unasked for advice, he jumps in. Doing what she says, taking his cues from her, acting like he’s her resident.
It’s hot.
She doesn’t want to think about it. She wants to focus – and she mostly can, but she’s just so aware of him all of the sudden, like he’s sand in clothes, a pebble in her shoe, an itch.
Garcia comes down and takes the Santa upstairs. They both take off their gowns and gloves and the nurses go back to their jobs and they’re just there in the trauma room together, circling each other, neither of them able to stand still.
He looks at her and shakes his head and she suddenly realizes that whatever is going on with her is going on with him too. This whole shift has been a slow torture of being close and not close enough.
And then they’re kissing. It’s somehow the easiest thing she’s ever done in her life and also probably the dumbest. They are in a trauma room. Anyone could see them, but she has no intention of stopping. Being stupid feels wonderful. His tongue traces the backs of her teeth and it tickles a little. She pulls back to smile against his mouth. His hands cradle her face and he kisses her again, teeth tugging her lower lip and then soothing with his tongue. He tips her head back a bit to deepen the kiss and she is just fizzy soda and champagne that has been shaken too much in the bottle. Her head is the cork, about to fly across the room.
They break apart to breathe and she can’t open her eyes.
“I’ll go write the procedure note,” he says and squeezes her shoulders.
“Ok thanks,” she can’t look at him, but his thumb is under her chin tilting it just a little and that makes her open her eyes, take him in. He’s smiling, big and dumb, like the grin she is sure on her face.
“Keep your head up,” he says and winks at her before he wanders off toward the hub.
She means for that to be it. An itch scratched. A little misbehavior in the middle of a slow shift, but an hour later and they are doing it again – something more than a peck in the break room. They see some patients and then it gets slow again which leads to another deep and lingering kiss in pedes; his hands on her ass. Later they full on make out in the ambulance bay, slow and hot; her right leg twisting around his left desperate now to have him inside her. She’s nearly overcome at the low grasping clench in her cunt, a physical loneliness inside her body at once familiar and totally new.
“What are we doing?” he asks, hands on her face again, voice full of wonder.
“I don’t know,” she answers plainly, laughing a little. This is beyond ridiculous. She doesn’t recognize herself and she loves it. “I really want you, is that weird?” She’s not sure why she says it except that it’s true and she wants to and they are in the middle of the Christmas Double. There are no rules.
“I mean, I don’t think it’s weird.” He’s all serious at first, but then he breaks and starts to laugh too. “Now?”
She nods. “Yes, but can we?”
He nods back and holds up a finger. “I have an idea.”
She follows him inside and he turns to her, whispers for her to meet him at the elevators. She walks past the hub, where the locum is sitting, feet up, doing something on his phone. She doesn’t go all the way to the elevators; she wants to hear what Abbot is going to say.
He looks up at the board and then at the locum. “Hey,” he says and she's sure he’s forgotten the guy’s name. “I was about to go take a nap, but Dr. Mohan went to get something to eat. Do you want me to wait until she gets back?”
“Nah, it’s fine,” he doesn’t even look up from his phone. “Keep your ringer on. I’ll call you if something interesting comes in.”
“Deal,” Abbot says, walking off towards the elevators. He catches her, raises both eyebrows, gives her a look like, ‘go, don’t get caught.”
“Should I be worried that you’re such a good liar?”
“I cut class a lot in high school.”
In the elevator she stares at their reflections in the metal doors. She looks so strange: an out-of-focus brown woman with cloudy hair and a half smile. She takes her hair down, keeping the elastic on her wrist. He turns to her almost immediately and holds her, hands in hair, kisses her like he’d like to steal the oxygen from her lungs. It’s thrilling and dangerous.
When they reach the 4th floor, he takes her to a door she recognizes. “Robby’s office?”
“I have a key,” he tells her as he produces it and unlocks the door. She follows him inside.
It’s not the best idea, but not the worst one either. It’s a small windowless room with a door that locks, but there’s no bed, no couch; meaning they’ll have to do it on the floor or on Robby’s desk. The desk where she and Robby sometimes sit across from each other and discuss everything that’s wrong with her.
She takes the chair she sits in during those meetings and pushes it against the door, angles it under the knob so it will be hard to open.
Jack watches her from Robby’s side of the desk. He opens and closes a few drawers, looking for something. “He’s in Ohio with Janey and Jake.”
“Are you 100% positive? What if he gave a key to someone else.” The last thing either one of them wants is for someone to walk in. She sees him playing out all the ways this could go wrong and watches them land on his face.
“Ok. Good call.” He holds up what he found in the drawers: A condom.
She can feel herself make a face. Why does Robby have condoms in his office (putting aside the fact that she’s about to have sex in this office)? Why does Robby even need condoms? People have sex with Robby? “Robby’s condoms? Gross.”
He seems to consider it. “It’s not like I’m gonna fuck you with Robby’s dick.”
She cringes. It’s too much. She laughs half in disgust and half at the absolute insanity of the situation. “Oh god. I can’t. I can’t. That’s too much, I can’t.”
He comes back around to the other side of the desk and kisses her.
That’s all it takes, really, and everything is right with the world again. He knows just how to kiss her, she couldn’t have described it before which is so frustrating, but it’s true. The slide of their tongues; soft and insistent at once. They are both looking for some secret in each other's mouths; an answer to some question she doesn’t know how to ask yet, a clue as to why they are alive.
All thoughts of Robby now vanquished, she’s back in it with him.
“Better?” he asks and she nods. “Good.”
They kiss some more, hands wandering, braver than they had been in the ED, but they don’t have much time and she’s already incredibly turned on.
She cups him through his cargo pants. He’s hard and she can feel the heat of him even through the thick fabric.
“Why don’t you ever wear scrub pants?”
“This is what you want to talk about?”
“I’m curious,” she tells him, unzipping his pants, reaching in to grasp him.
“Jesus,” he moans and grabs her wrist to remove her hand from his dick. “Not enough pockets.” He turns her so her back is pressed against him. She reaches up to hold his head, feel her fingers in his hair, encourage him to kiss her neck. He does and she pushes her ass back against him; his hands come up to cup her breasts and it feels shockingly good, something about having her arms up or her back arched, she doesn’t know except she likes it too much. His thumbs find her nipples even through her bra and two shirts; she turns to kiss his mouth and it’s sloppy.
He makes short work of untying her scrubs pants, his right hand reaching in, snaking under the waistband of panties too. Just for a moment she’s self-conscious – it’s winter and she’s not seeing anyone, who is she kidding, she’s never seeing anyone; she hasn’t gotten waxed in months – but he doesn’t seem to care.
It’s good, his fat and clever fingers moving through her folds where she’s profoundly, uncomfortably wet. He finds her clit and she gasps loudly, nearly jumps like she’s been touched by a live wire. His other arm tightens around her and he whispers, “shhhh, shhhh” in her ear. She leans back against him, head lolling on his shoulder as he works her, not even bothering to get his fingers inside her. She wants to feel them, but she also thinks it’s ok, he’ll be inside her soon enough. She comes and comes and comes for what feels like long minutes, but most likely isn’t. He still holds her against him and she’s glad because she’s not sure her legs work at this moment. He kisses her face, mumbles encouraging nonsense.
When she can control her lower body, she walks forward out of his arms and right up to the desk and looks back at him over her shoulder, “Like this, ok?” she says. It’s a good position for her and she assumes for him too. Most guys she’s been with come pretty quickly like this which is a positive in this instance – they don’t have a lot of time.
He looks at her like she just asked him if he wants to win the lottery. “Yes, please.”
She feels him behind her almost instantly, his hand on the back of her neck, a firm pressure, bending her over. She helps him push her scrubs and underwear down and then settles on her forearms.
She feels his hand on her flank, He presses against her, still clothed; he moves her hair off her neck and plants a kiss in the vicinity of C5. He straightens up and she hears the foil rip on the condom, she vibrates with anticipation; she’s desperate for him.
And then he’s pushing inside her and to say that she feels him is somehow inadequate; he is so deep inside her it’s like he’s in her marrow or burrowing into her cells. She wants to keen and cry out, but she doesn’t want the whole hospital to hear her so she bites her own arm.
He starts off slowly, but before too long he’s driving into her in earnest. She wants the leverage so she lowers herself, chest lying flat, head one arm, the other holding the side of the desk. She arches her back a little more, feels the stretch in hamstrings, thinks briefly about trying yoga again.
The slight change in the angle does something for him even as it makes things even better for her. He swears and his hands tighten convulsively on hips. She’d like to laugh, but she can’t, not with the way he keeps hitting all the places inside her that make her see stars. He pulls her hair and she gasps.
It’s too much and not enough. She wants him to unzip her spine and crawl inside her like a sleeping bag, but she wants to lose herself inside him too – for the two of them to be like one of those Escher drawings where everything is going in all the directions at once.
She’s so close. She just needs another minute, but she’s not sure he has it in him, not with the way his thrusts are getting deliciously harder and just a bit sloppy. She goes to move her hand so she can work her clit to push herself over, when his hand moves instead. Fingers finding her quickly, doing all the things that worked a few minutes ago.
It’s good, so good. She feels her orgasm in her body like the pop pop pop of string lights exploding quickly and in sequence, then it consumes her like the dry tinder of a Christmas tree going up in flame all at once. She thinks the fire will never stop burning.
He comes too, going all rigid and stiff behind her before collapsing forward on top of her. It takes just a few moments before he tries to move off of her, and she stops him whispering, “No, no, no. Just stay like this for a minute.”
She feels him nod, but he doesn’t say anything. She knows that they have to get back, that they will be missed soon, but she wants this to go on forever.
They clean up as best they can and Jack disposes of the condom in Robby’s trash can.
A silly, giddy feeling comes over her; over both of them. They kiss and poke at each other. Playing. She wipes imaginary lipstick off his face just to have an excuse to touch him. He holds her hand and won’t let go.
They peek out of the door even though hardly anyone is working and it really wouldn’t be all that odd to see them both come out of a room on the fourth floor. He tries to send her out first.
“You go,” he tells her, kissing her shoulder.
“No, you,” she says, and tries to push him, but he is sturdy.
He shakes his head, mouth quirking and adorable. “No, you,” he repeats.
“I’m serious,” she groans. “I’m gonna stop to pee first. You go.”
That seems to convince him. He slips into the hallway and she watches him walk away, slight spring in his step, he looks like an idiot. Her idiot.
******************************************
He steals another condom from Robby’s desk and they fuck again in his car after the Christmas Double is over, both of them exhausted, but unwilling to waste this moment when both of them are not working. His leg is positively screaming with pain, but he’s able to get hard again and come; a Christmas miracle.
He’s not sure what he expects to come next with her, only that he doesn’t want it to be over and it’s not; instead they steal time to have sex in his car at shift change.
“Oh fuck,” she says one morning weeks after Christmas and pats his cheek absently as she comes back to herself. “Good job, kiddo,” she tells him as though he wasn’t 15 years older.
It makes him smile bigger than he already is. He agrees with the sentiment. “High five,” he tells her and holds out his hand palm up. “We’re really good at this.”
She shakes her head at him, but does high five him, so he feels like all is well with the world. They are really good at this.
These not quite quickies in his car are fun and hot and oddly intimate. He hasn’t had sex in a car since he was in high school, but none of those awkward encounters were like this. Hell, whatever it is they are doing probably tops all the sex he’s had since Carrie died and he’s never even seen her tits; they haven’t had a chance to really take their time with each other. He’d like to, but he also thinks that if all they ever did was fuck in his Bronco, he’d be satisfied.
But he can’t help pushing it just a little.
While they are both straightening up, he asks her, “Do you like that we could get caught? Is that part of it for you?”
She thinks about it for a moment while she puts her scrub pants back on. He appreciates that she seems to be taking his questions seriously. “Not really. It’s fun and I do like that, but no, it’s not a huge part of it for me.”
He nods, glad. “Cool, because, you know, I do have a bed.”
“How nice for you. I hear they are great for sleeping.”
He’s not sure if this is just teasing and banter or she really doesn’t want to have sex in a bed or at his house. He decides to keep going. “C’mon. We’re been doing this for a while now and I still haven’t seen you naked.”
She pushes her hair back from her face and he can see she is looking at him fondly. She doesn’t seem scared or annoyed and his heart is just so big in his chest. “You’re such a guy.”
“Fine. What I really want is to go down on you until you can’t remember your name.”
She blushes. This close to her he can really see it – the rosy flush on her neck, high on her cheeks. If he was any farther away he might have missed it. “OK,” she says. “When?”
“I’m not working on Tuesday.”
She nods. “That could work.”
“Good,” he says and kisses her quickly. “7:30ish? Or whenever you’re done?”
“Yes. Text me your address.”
******************************************
Cassie notices something is going on, but guesses wrong about what it is.
“Did you win one of those MacArthur Genius things?” Cassie asks her while they are both at the hub.
She laughs, but also looks at her like ‘what the fuck?’ But all she says is, “No.” And she heads off to the break room.
Cassie follows her and guesses again. “Some research grant or something? Find a new and exciting use for the EZ-IO? A pigtail catheter?”
“No, no, and no.” Samira stops outside North Two to check on a patient and Cassie waits for her. “Why?” Samira asks her warily. “What’s up?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just goes into the break room.
“You seem so happy,” Cassie says, arms crossed as Samira gets out a mug and offers another to Cassie who waves her off. “No, it’s not just that. It’s like you have the best secret and THAT’S what’s making you happy.”
And she’s not too terribly surprised. Cassie can be scary good about picking up on stuff and they have been spending more time together. And she is happy; something in her is lighter, but more sure, more grounded. She feels unbothered by some of the things that used to drive her crazy. It’s nice. She just wishes it wasn’t so obvious, hopes it’s not for everyone else, but she finds she doesn’t mind if Cassie knows. Standing here in the breakroom she’s actually a little excited to tell her.
Samira looks around to make sure no one is close enough to be listening, focuses on pouring coffee so she won’t have to look at Cassie. “I’m sort of seeing someone.”
“Samira Elizabeth Mohan!” she exclaims.
Samira arches an eyebrow. “That isn’t my middle name.”
“No, it’s mine. I don’t know yours.” Cassie crosses the room to whisper in her ear excitedly. “Tell me everything. How did you meet?” Samira was expecting surprise and excitement, but not this much surprise and excitement. Though it’s hard to be insulted. Cassie is obviously also proud of her, happy for her.
She looks into her coffee as if it contains all the answers. She stirs it with one of the little wooden sticks by the machine even though the coffee is black. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Cassie allows the feint, seems to understand that there is only so much Samira will tell her and is ready to accept whatever that is. “What would I believe then?!”
“I don’t know. It’s just so…” She trails off, not sure exactly how to describe the feeling of their whatever it is. “We both want the same thing with the relationship – like how much, how fast, how intense. That’s never happened to me before.”
Cassie gives her a knowing smile. “Trust you to get excited about compatibility and not the sex.”
“Oh!” Samira says before she can stop herself. “The sex is amazing too. Insane.”
Cassie absolutely melts. “Oh god. Give me some crumbs?” She leans into her space; looks up at her – all bangs and pleading eyes. “Just a few hot, sticky crumbs.”
And it’s weird. She wants to tell Cassie everything: the sex in Robby’s office, the orgasm that lit up her whole spine; all the car sex, quick and mostly clothed and intensely satisfying, but she’s so sure that any detail about the sex itself and the other woman will immediately know she’s talking about Abbot and then some spell will be broken. “It’s been going on for weeks and we still haven’t done it in an actual bed yet. He’s very…. Creative.”
And he is. The window screen had been a very good idea, as had been the small vibrator he brought a couple of times, she had done some googling on best positions for sex in a car and he had some ideas even the Internet didn’t seem to know. Still, she’s really looking forward to Tuesday and his bed.
Cassie pretends to almost faint. It’s over exaggerated and silly and so her. She fans herself with a hand. “I gotta get back out there,” Cassie says.
“Yeah, you really do.”
******************************************
Nervous isn’t the right word for how he feels with Samira due at his place soon. Excited doesn’t quite get it either. He’s happy. But if happy didn’t sound trite and lame.
He did laundry, changed the sheets, but that’s always a day off thing. He’s not sure if she’ll want to stay over. He checked the schedule and she’s not working tomorrow, so they could conceivably have nearly 24 hours together. It would be nice. If nice didn’t sound stupid. He moves the extra towels and one of the unused travel toothbrushes from the guest bath to his ensuite just in case.
She’s not in scrubs when she appears at his door. Her hair is down; the first time he’s seen it that way since Christmas when he had his fist in it and pulled, dragging the absolute sexiest noise from her. He feels blood rushing to his cock and he takes a deep breath. Tries to calm himself down.
“Hi,” he says like an idiot, he can feel the smile splitting apart his face. It would be embarrassing except she has a similar smile on her face too.
“Hi,” she answers. He moves back a little and she accepts his silent invitation to come inside.
The door is barely closed before they reach for each other and start kissing.
When they kiss she is a different Samira. It’s like she lowers her guard or something and he loves it. She becomes more herself; she is sweeter, meaner, more clever, more everything. It awakens something in him the way she unfolds in his arms, burns brighter under the pressure of his mouth.
“Are you hungry?” he asks her. “Do you want to eat?”
She nuzzles his jaw, plants small kisses there. “Maybe later.” She pulls away to look at him. “You mentioned you had this thing, what was it called?” She snaps her fingers like she’s trying to remember. “Oh right, a bed! I want to see this bed.”
He tries not to laugh, but he wants to. She so rarely plays along with his jokes and he enjoys it as much as he’s sure he’ll enjoy the sex they are about to have. “Yes! Yes, come with me.” He offers her a hand and she takes it. “I think you may find you like it, it certainly offers more flexibility in terms of positions than my car.”
He’s gone just a hair too far because she rolls her eyes at him, but she still follows him into the bedroom. He tries to imagine it through her eyes. He’d replaced his and Carrie’s bed, which was the one piece of furniture he couldn’t bear to keep, everything else was from the set they’d gotten when they bought the house on Gatetree Circle; it didn’t match, but the man in the store had assured him it all went together.
He doesn’t think she notices or cares.
She turns to him from where she stands at the end of his bed and she pulls her sweater over her head, revealing a sort of yellow-green bra. The color isn’t something he would’ve picked as favorite, but on her it’s really beautiful. She’s beautiful. He’s ready to re-learn all the colors in the crayola box and re-evaluate them based on how they look against her smooth, luminous, brown skin.
“Jesus,” he breathes, moving to join her.
“No, Samira,” she says and points to herself.
This time he’s the one rolling his eyes, holding her lightly; his hands on her ribs; he’s intends to kiss her and then slide his hands around her to take her bra off when feels it – a bit of scar tissue under his fingers.
The sensation of it is oddly familiar. He tilts his head to look. It’s darker than the rest of her skin with a slight purple tinge; it’s raised, but not as dramatically as a keloid scar though; the edges, where the scar comes to a small point, look like a contracture scar, but somehow more pronounced.
It doesn’t look like a normal injury, or burn, or surgery scar, but he feels like he’s seen something similar before; felt something similar before. It takes him a moment to put it all together and when he does time stops, everything in the universe stops except the rabbit fast beating of his heart.
It’s the same shape and feeling of the scar on his back. Where his soulmark had been shot off.
“What’s this,” he asks, leaning down to kiss the scar. He thinks he knows what she’ll tell him, but he needs to hear her say it.
She puts her hands on his head. Runs her fingers through his hair and encourages him to move up, to kiss her mouth. He obliges her.
“I told you, I cut it off,” she says against his mouth. She kisses his neck, her palms warm on his chest and she leans up to drop more kisses on jaw again, to nibble at his ear. She had told him, but at the time it didn’t occur to him that they could match. With his mark gone he thought he could never match with anyone. But of course it was her. Of course. He’d always liked her more than he should, been charmed by her mind, and then there was Christmas and the siren song of her body.
And it had just been easy. Her hands, and her mouth, and the way she rolled her eyes at him all calming his restlessness in a way he hadn’t felt since Carrie. He thought he was sleeping better because of the regular sex, but, no, it had been the rightness of them, he’d finally been feeding his soul what it had hungered for for longer than he could reckon.
He moves back from her; his hands on hips. And he doesn’t know how to say it except to say it. “It was a heart, wasn’t it? A simple anatomical heart. External view.”
It lands in her body first, he feels her tense even as he sees it. Her face falls and hardens. “How do you know that?”
He tries to be gentle, to sound steadier and calmer than he feels. He wants to grab her and spin her around, like they’ve won something big but he expects her to need a minute. He’s been in love before, but he doesn’t think she has. “Because that’s what mine was,” he tells her. “Before it got shot off.”
He reaches behind his neck to pull off his shirt and gives a half turn, so she can see his shoulder, his scar. “Touch it.” She does, fingers soft at first and then more doctor-like. She gently palpates the scar and surrounding area. He’s sure she’s having the same mind blowing experience he just did. “They match. The shape, the feel.”
“The color is different,” she says, a clinical observation. “Yours is pinker.”
“Because my skin is lighter. They’re the same. Our marks matched and now we have matching scars.”
“I should go.” Of all the things she could’ve said in this moment, this is the one of the last he would’ve predicted. Yes, he thought she’d need time to catch up, that it would take her a beat to get excited, but he thought she’d be relieved at least, maybe even be happy it was him.
“Wait,” he tells her. “Sit for a second. We should talk about this.” He maneuvers her to the edge of the bed and sits next to her. She puts her sweater back on. He is both sad to see her breasts disappear under her clothes and glad not to be distracted by them anymore. He misses the scar too; didn’t get to look at it, touch it nearly long enough.
“I cut my mark off because I didn’t want this – whatever this is.”
“How can you not want this?” He just doesn’t understand. He’d been so lonely. He knows she must have been lonely too. These past few weeks have been everything. “We’re good together.”
She lets out a mirthless laugh, stands up. He stands up too. “You’re just rationalizing some good sex and these marks.”
He holds her lightly, two hands running up and down her arms. “I’m not rationalizing anything. I’m like nine kinds of in love with you, you have to know that.”
“It’s the marks making you think that –” She shakes her head and he can’t let her go on.
“--How can I not be in love with you? You laugh at my jokes and even when you roll your eyes I can tell you’re laughing inside. And you’re so funny - sneaky secret funny. You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met and you’re so mean sometimes; you hate idiots so much. It makes me so happy.”
He touches her cheek and for a moment her eyes soften and he thinks he’s convinced her or at least given her time to get out of her head and let her heart lead.
She kisses him and it’s everything; warm and real, all the tension in his body unwinds. He brings his hands up to hold her face and she lets him. Covers his hands with her own and then slips out of his embrace.
She walks out of the room. He doesn’t follow her. He’s forgotten how to move. His heart has forgotten how to beat.
******************************************
It’s not weird at work. She thinks that’s mostly due to him, he’s great at pretending everything is ok and she almost wonders if she imagined all of it, the sex, the kissing, her ending it in his bedroom. Cassie teases her about not coming in early or leaving late quite so often and she’s proud that that’s all the other woman seems to have noticed.
He gives her two full weeks before he texts her wanting to talk. He gives her his schedule for the next few days and asks if she’ll meet him; lets her pick the time and place.
She tells him she’ll meet him at Blue and Gold; the most expensive and upscale of the dive bars near the medical school. She wants a drink for this conversation and she thinks it’ll be quiet this time of day and that it’s highly unlikely that they’ll run into anyone they know.
She’s right. The place is mostly empty; just a few occupied tables, a bored-looking bartender, and Jack alone at the bar with a beer and shot.
She sits down next to him.
“I’m glad you came,” he says, shoulders tight, voice tighter.
“I’m not so sure I am.”
The bartender comes over and asks what she wants. She looks behind the bar. “Do you have any wine? Red, maybe? The darker the better.”
He turns and looks behind himself as though to remind himself what they carry. “We have a Malbec that doesn’t suck,” he says with a shrug.
“Perfect,” she tells him and then turns to Jack as he pours it. “Just the thing in case I need to throw it in your face.”
The bartender pauses before passing the glass to her.
Jack looks at him, reaches his hand out slightly, as if to say, it’s ok. “She’s not going to do that.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Are you ok, Miss?” the bartender asks, putting down a coaster and the wine glass.
She thinks about how this must look, how it must sound. The bartender doesn’t know she’s not really mad at Jack. She’s mad at the universe and whatever force is behind the soulmarks. “I’m fine,” she tells him. “It’s ok. We’re ok.” He retreats to the other end of the bar and picks up his phone.
She turns to Jack just in time to watch him knock back his shot. The sight of his throat exposed as he tilts his head back, his Adam's apple working while he swallows is enough to ignite a spark low in her gut. She can’t believe that Saturday morning in his car was their last time. She’d like to take his face in her hands and taste whatever whiskey it was that he just drank. She’d like to do a lot of things.
“Why am I here?” she asks when he puts the shot glass on the bar with a careful thud.
He looks pained. “I just think you –” he stops, seemingly understanding that way lies madness. “I’d just like to understand why the marks upset you so much.”
“I told you,” she sighs. “I don’t take orders from some mystical bodypaint.”
“Isn’t not doing something because of the marks the same as doing it because of them?”
She shakes her head at his attempt at a gotcha question. “No, because I have things I want to do and I’m not going to let some soulmate bullshit sidetrack me. The universe doesn’t get to have plans! I have plans!” And then she stops, laughs for a second because she hears herself and she knows how she sounds. But he’s just looking at her. He doesn’t look like she’s crazy, or shrill, or out of line, or like he’s waiting for her to stop so he can speak. He’s just watching her; listening.
She takes a sip of her wine and starts again, quieter, calmer. She wants to really explain it so he understands it’s not about him. “You know, I feel like being a doctor is the only thing I ever actually got to choose in my life. My dad wanted me to be an astronaut and my mom was really happy with medicine, but she pushed for engineering – something with computers where I could get a lot of stock.”
He twists his mouth into a half smile. .
“And being a doctor is the only thing that really made me happy until…” She trails off, unsure of whether she should finish her thought. She thinks she knows how he’ll react, but she plows on anyway; feeling like it’s best to say all of it in the hopes he’ll actually understand. “Until, well, being with you made me really happy. I felt like I got to choose you too.” She looks at him then and sees the light come into his eyes, she can actually see the hazel of them shift greener. “You were just this hot guy, who told stupid jokes, and was a great kisser, and such a good doctor, and was the only person ever in my life who made me feel like there’s nothing wrong with me.”
She looks into her wine and she can feel looking at her, begging her to look back at him.
“I hope you still feel that way because it’s true.”
She looks down at the bar, at the lines of bottles behind it, at her hands, anything to avoid his face. “But now that I know the mark is about us, it’s like, did I really choose to be a doctor? Was all of it just to line us up so we could meet? I can see it now: step, step, step, and the universe patting me on the head for following its lead so completely, like a dog on a leash. I hate that. I wanted to be a doctor because of how my father died. Stupid mistakes from a racist, ED resident in New Jersey who missed his heart issues. If it was all part of some plan for us?” She can’t keep the anguish out of her voice and finally turns to him again. “God, did I buy this,” she motions between them, “with his death?”
“Of course you didn’t. You chose being a doctor because it’s what you wanted. And you had to keep choosing it, MCATs, med school, residency, you could’ve changed your mind whenever. You could’ve been a lawyer and sued someone, you could’ve become a chemist at a pharma company and worked on some new heart drug, you could’ve done some shit with computers and invented a better algorithm for cardiac diagnoses. But you didn’t do any of those things.”
She shakes her head. She knows what he’s trying to do and it won’t work. “What you and your wife had was real. You absolutely chose each other and I feel like I killed her, too, that she died so –”
He won’t let her finish the thought. “-- Carrie died because a tear formed inside her coronary artery and some blood clotted between the sections of the damaged arterial wall. That led to a massive MI. No one knows what causes SCAD, you know that. It had nothing to do with you or me or anything else.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“But how?”
He stops for a long moment. Takes a pull from his beer. “I don't think being soulmates is the universe making choices for and pushing together. I think it’s about putting us in each other’s lives no matter what choices we make. If you had been a lawyer, I would’ve been an expert witness, maybe I would’ve worked with you on human trials for your drug, maybe I would’ve contributed data for your algorithm. In some other world maybe we’re spies, or cowboys, or met on a reality TV show and it wouldn’t matter because I would still love you and hope you love me.”
She has the strangest realization. There is no winning this argument. He doesn’t need to convince her; she can just decide to believe him. Even if nothing else was a choice, this certainly is. This is her life – messy, improbable, disappointing sometimes and wonderful sometimes. Whether she’s in control or not, it’s just where she is. She can enjoy it, take happiness where it presents itself, or not. The decision is actually easy, even if the path it sets her on is not.
“I probably would.” she tells him with a half smile. “I do now.”
And then they are kissing. It’s like that first kiss on Christmas. She doesn’t know how it happens; only that she’s glad it does.
There’s a sound and for a moment she thinks it’s a gunshot, she thinks he does too with the way he turns his body, putting himself between her and the sound, but when she opens her eyes she realizes the bartender has just opened some champagne.
“Oh my God, you guys. That was a RIDE you took me on.” He pours the champagne into three coupe glasses, real glasses that seem just a touch too fancy for the bar.
She looks at Jack and he’s got tears in his eyes, but he’s laughing too.
The bartender picks up a glass and takes a long drink, nearly draining it. He motions to the other two still on the bar. “On the house of course.”
******************************************
She gets the job at Westbridge (thank God) and she buys a car thanks to her new attending salary plus the savings from them living together. She insists that they christen it – for luck, she says, suddenly superstitious. Her sensible Toyota is so much smaller than his Bronco that the sex is terrible, it’s hilarious until it suddenly isn’t. She rests her head against his shoulder, breathes in his neck, finds a rhythm that licks at the base of his spine; their pants and gasps loud in the tight space of her car in the garage.
After she holds out her fist for him to bump.
They don’t always work the same nights, but their sleeping schedules are synced. They eat at least one meal together most days and ever since she moved in they sleep in the same bed at the same time. It’s a magic thing; his dreams aren’t always untroubled, but everything is much easier to bear when he has her heat and heartbeat in the bed.
He notices it on her one night just before dropping off. It’s hard to look at his own scar, he can’t really reach to touch all of it, but Samira’s scar is right there, in the shower, in his arms, fingers tracing it slowly before he drifts off to sleep.
Her scar – their matching scar – resembles nothing so much as a heart. A clumsily drawn love heart, like the kind sketched on Valentine’s Day cards or traced into a fogged up mirror.
It’s nice when things work out exactly as they are supposed to.
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