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“SAMIRA!”
She was halfway to her car, tear tracks already etching their way down her cheeks as she slowed to a halt.
“Samira.” Abbot moved to stand in front of her, a vibrating alertness coursing through him. She kept her gaze locked on the asphalt beside his shoes while she waited for the attending to start his barrage of inquiries. Silence engulfed them instead.
There’s a strange thing that happens when rejection hits the soul. A wave of gossamer haze settles onto the body, clear enough to see through but too rigid to move past. She had tried, all shift, to move past it, to contort the steel threads to her whim so she could just get past the worst of it, but the waves kept coming… and coming… and coming.
One can only be strong for so long.
The hissing fireworks in the distance slammed her back into the present, her chest heavy with the weight of something she wouldn’t name as she kept her eyes trained downwards. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the moment she met his gaze, she would crumble.
Jack Abbot had become her rock over the past few years: always welcoming her to the night shift, passing journals to her when the pace started to slow, learning her coffee order, and placing a piping hot cup at the hub when she clocked out. Jack encouraged her endlessly, and on the shifts they shared, they found an easy rhythm between the two of them in traumas, making decisions through quick glances and flicks of wrists.
“You should just switch to nights. We’d love to have you.” Lena had told her one double. “Nah, I should stay on days for now,” she had answered back, tapping the bottom edge of her empty cup on the countertop, “I want to make a good impression with Robby. He still seems convinced that I should head up to the ICU or psych or something.” Lena had tsk’d at that, shaking her head as she grabbed a hospital cell phone, “That’s because he hasn’t seen you lead a resuscitative thoracotomy like you did tonight. Just ask Dr. Abbot, you belong here plenty.”
She had after PittFest, when the echoing silence of her apartment rattled her enough to take up countless doubles whenever she could. She’d lost two patients around mid-afternoon—a heart attack and a stroke, one right after the other—and had been met with belittling comment after belittling comment from Robby about both cases before Heather could step in. It’d become easier to let death slide off her like streams of water cascading down from a rusty old shower head after a long shift, but these two clung to her like oil. Her request to work a double had been quickly approved, and around 2 AM she had made a beeline towards Abbot. She’d asked him simply, expecting the normal platitudes like the ones Lena and Heather had given her before, expecting him to give her the same “you’re great, what are you talking about” line he always had for her.
Instead, he had guided the two of them towards the elevator, waving off Shen as they stepped in. As they ascended, she’d taken in the man beside her: deep wrinkles that jumped when he laughed, sharp eyes that zeroed in on her whenever she spoke, a body broken by war but pulled back together through modern medicine and, apparently, a shit ton of therapy. His arms had wrapped around her once to pull her out of the way of a rambunctious ten-year-old speeding across the floor on a pair of rollerskates, warmth radiating through the sturdy embrace that haunted her in ways she would take to her grave for weeks. His smile, his laugh, the crease by his eyes when they filled with joy; sometimes she thinks she’d be stupid enough to stop the world for that look.
She remembered regretting not chucking on a jacket when they left for the roof, a deep chill seeped into her bones as they reached the railing, but stilled immediately as Jack wrapped the hoodie he had been carrying around her shoulders.
The roof had shifted below them as his fingertips grazed her arm.
She stood frozen as he spoke slow and low, making sure she was taking in every syllable that slid from his lips.
“Samira Mohan, I have watched you the past few years hold hearts in your hands. I’ve seen you jump into the fray covered in blood without blinking an eye. I have witnessed the pride explode from your chest when you pull life back from the edge. I have seen real, true, tangible evidence that your students are better physicians because of your mentorship. Samira Mohan, not only are you cut out for the ED, you are the future of medicine.”
She remembered them feeling like vows.
She remembered the clink of the hoodie’s zipper colliding with the railing beside them as it slipped off her shoulders.
She remembered the warmth coursing through her veins as he deepened the kiss.
She would give anything to be back there now.
Please forgive me.
“Jack I’m tired. I want to go home.” Her voice barely audible underneath the roar of the fireworks around them. Jack’s hands hovered in her peripheral, too afraid to touch her in case she might jump.
“Samira what happened? Baran said Robby screamed at—”
I love you. Thank you. I forgive you… Please forgive me.
She’d held countless human hearts, jumped into the endless chaos, bent life to her will. She did it all and it wasn’t enough. It simply…was not…enough.
She sniffled as she watched his hands fall back to his sides, taking as deep a breath as possible through the aching in her chest as she looked up at him finally, the tears coasting back towards the hinge of her jaw.
“Samira you’re scaring me.”
She could see the fear in his eyes, the tension in his jaw, and the internal battle he was fighting against reaching out and hauling her towards him. They’d never talked about the moment on the roof, had instead opted to let the memory linger between stolen glances and heavy small talk, but its presence was impossible to ignore. She thought of the veil that clung to her body at the present, and how the warmth from his skin when she had bandaged his shoulder earlier that day had frayed some of the fibers. She thought of the ripple of adoration that shimmered at the pit of her stomach while she had watched him carry the bag of supplies for Orlando out to the ambulance bay. She thinks about how easy it would be to lean down and pull at the threads that had woven their way into where she was rooted now and let him slip underneath the wave with her.
But there’s a quiet solace in giving up.
She took a breath and steeled her heart.
“I don’t want to be here anymore.”
A deafening quiet filled the parking garage as she watched him process her answer. She knew the risk in saying it, especially to someone like him, who seemed to see directly into her soul, but the crippling exhaustion had stolen her last will to protect him from the darker parts of herself.
His voice was quiet but direct when it finally came. “Here, how?”
“At the hospital, in Pittsburgh, I don’t know.” The blanket of grief constricted her limbs as she choked through a steady stream of tears, “I just feel like every single day I walk in here and I try hard and I just lose patient after patient after—” a hiccup stutters out of her, “And I just, I look around and everyone has someone to lean on and I-I don’t—”
His chest muffles the wrenching sob that screams out of her as he grasps her shoulders and yanks her towards him. All at once, the weight of the day comes crashing down on her: her mother, Orlando, Mr. Green, her fellowship. Everything she had tried to outrun, tried to escape, now surrounded her like crows.
Langdon had told her about it on her EM rotation as an MS3 all those years ago. “Dr. Adamson had this saying that he told Robby once. It’s this Hawaiian prayer that helps families get through saying goodbye to their loved ones sometimes. Ho’o-something. It’s basically ‘I love you, thank you, I forgive you, please forgive me.’ It gives them a sense of closure.” The memory had echoed through her head as she’d walked through the hallway this evening, catching Adamson’s photo on the wall. The world dimmed as her feet had carried her into an empty Trauma 2, watching the memories of countless procedures dance across the walls like ghosts. She’d felt her hand twitch involuntarily as her eyes paused on the ultrasound machine.
I love you.
She’d turned in a haze, a distant “Dr. Mohan?” calling out to her from behind, but not compelling enough to break her mind’s mission. In her next breath, Dr. Al-Hashimi had rounded the corner, her mess of curls flying freely around her face as she tugged on her black scrub top. Samira had slipped to the side out of her way, narrowly avoiding a collision as Baran’s quick apology bounced off the corner behind her. “Thank you,” she had answered back instead, taking in the harried woman in front of her. Did she know how much she meant to her? How her calm presence this morning had felt like a life raft in the middle of the ocean? How much she had been looking forward to working with her instead of Robby, the promise of someone other than Jack guiding her through the chaos.
She’d moved on towards the back corridor towards the back of the hospital, leaving a confused Dr. Al behind her as she had caught sight of Robby stomping out of a family room. He needed help; real, true, serious help. She’d watched him spiral in the months since PittFest—how he’d failed to let Heather take more of a leadership role in the ED, how he had leaned on Whitaker until his very last day as an MS4, how the light had slowly started to drain from his eyes. She’d watch him walk out to his bike at the end of his shift, a shell of a human, completely bereft of any energy to maintain the facade whatsoever. She’d known it well, she knew she looked the exact same way at the end of her days. The two of them could be riding the high of back-to-back wins in Trauma 1 one hour, then shoved deep into this unending void of depression. It made them tense, it made them bite, and without a doubt it made them uncomfortably aware of their similarities. He was as lost as she was, but the difference was that he refused to reach out and pull her out of the depths with him, opting instead to push her further down and down and down. Samira had watched as he stumbled towards the rest of the ED, just out of earshot, back into the hub.
“I forgive you.”
For what you did to me. For how you hurt me. For how you couldn’t find the courage to fix yourself so you took it out on me instead. Because I looked too much like you.
She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, let alone loud enough to stop him in his tracks just as she started to turn away, darkness slipping further and further into her periphery, hugging her sides like a vice as she moved forward.
It was supposed to give people closure.
Jack’s hold on her tightened as her sobs began to ease, the gentle press of his lips on the crown of her head coupled with the shaky exhale of a breath he must have been holding for a while, slowly pulling her back to earth. Samira squeezed her eyes shut, burrowing her head further into his chest.
“Don’t tell me I’m the future, Jack. It won’t change the fact that I can’t be in here any longer. That I have to go, I have to leave.”
“You don’t have to leave.”
“Yes I—”
“Samira,” he carefully tilted her head away from his chest, her cheek resting in the palm of his hand. He was always so goddamn gentle with her, as if she were the most precious thing in the world that he was duty-bound to protect. There were nights when she wondered what it would be like to be loved by him, to be the one thing he cherished more than anything. If she allowed herself, she could see flashes of it through the weave of the veil surrounding her. “You had a bad day. A fucking terrible day. It happens, but it’s not an indication that you do not belong here.”
Her heart jerked beneath her ribcage as his hand dropped from her face and took her hand in his. Slowly, he unraveled her fist, placing her palm flat against his chest, where his own pulse stuttered erratically below.
“You don’t want me to tell you that you’re the future, fine. But I need you to know that no matter what anyone else says—Robby, Dana, whoever—that you are built for this. It’s in your bones. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. You’re not slow, you’re careful. You catch things no one else in this ED would’ve thought to investigate. You’re allowed to have bad days—god knows Robby has his fair share—but don’t let one monstrously bad one defeat you.”
Her breath hitched a bit as he finished. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
A cautious smile tugged at his full lips, “Because I lo—” Jack reached up with his opposite hand and gingerly tucked a loose curl behind her ear, “Because I care about you Samira, and I don’t want to see you in pain.”
He loved her.
The tornado of emotions rattled around in her chest, scaling her ribs and pressing down on her lungs. Jack Abbot, whether she wanted to admit it or not, was one of the few things keeping her here. A crush that evolved into downright need the moment she sat down on that bench after PittFest and now here they were.
“Jack, I need a break.”
“Then take one. We’ll go to Jersey or New York. Or I have a cabin in the mountains that—”
“Jack.”
“Samira, we’ll get you through this.” She felt herself sway impossibly closer to him as he spoke, a light pressure on her waist propelling her forward as his hand slipped around her, buoying her as she felt like collapsing into the space between them, “Whether it’s a day off or a year off or whatever. If you need time away, you’ll take it. Just tell me so I know you’ll be safe.”
The steadiness in his voice caught on the lone tear at the corner of the haze and pulled, warm light seeping out onto her skin. It spread like an iridescent film, coating her with something that felt like safety.
He was determined to pull her out of the void and help her through this, and while it might’ve been easier to just sink further into the abyss… she let him tug.
Samira took a deep breath. “Can you come home with me?”
Her boldness hit him square in the chest judging by the sudden rigidness beneath her palms. “I just don’t want to be alone tonight. While I figure things out.”
His nod came quickly, a squeeze of his hands around her reassuring her, “Yeah. Yeah let me text Shen.” His chin dipped as he leaned down to kiss the top of her head once more as his rustled in his scrub pocket for his phone, refusing to let her go.
For the first time all day, maybe all residency, she felt safe and secure there in his arms.
She would take a few days off, let him take care of her, then they would make a decision about PTMC together. Maybe they’d call Dr. Al for her input, maybe he’d text Robby, but for right now she would just focus on taking the time and letting someone else lead for once.
The last thread dissolved into the asphalt beside her as he pulled her towards his truck, muttering something about Robby dropping his bag off later as he turned the key to unlock the door. Samira caught Jack’s eye as he loaded her into the passenger seat, carefully maneuvering the belt around her, and lifted her hand to his cheek. He tilted his head into it, then turned and kissed her palm. Closure settled into the chambers of her heart.
“Thank you, Jack.”