Chapter Text
By three in the morning, the ED had gone quiet in the way it only did when everyone knew better than to trust it.
Jack Abbott stood in the ambulance bay with one hand braced on his hip, the other loose at his side, trying not to shift too much weight onto his prosthetic. His stump had started to ache sometime after midnight, a deep, mean pinch that worked its way up his leg when he ignored it.
He ignored it.
That was what Jack did.
Pain was not always useful, but it was familiar. Familiar was manageable.
Across from him, John Shen leaned against the wall with a Dunkin cup in his hand, looking like he had been born in an emergency department and raised by fluorescent lights.
“Eighty-two-year-old male, airway established in the field,” Shen said, reading from the update Dana had passed along. “Not breathing on EMS arrival. Assisted ventilation en route.”
Jack watched the entrance to the bay. “I heard.”
“Airway established in the field,” Shen repeated. “That sounds either very good or very illegal.”
Jack gave him a look.
Shen took a calm sip of coffee. “I’m emotionally prepared for both.”
Dana had come in for Lena tonight after Lena lost a patient badly enough that Dana had taken one look at her and sent her home. Mateo was on nights too, already setting up Trauma Two. The new intern, Nazley Toomerian, had been following orders with wide eyes and terrified efficiency.
It should have been an ordinary bad night.
Then the ambulance turned in.
The siren cut. Red light spilled across the concrete. The back doors opened.
And Dr. Samira Mohan stepped out.
Jack forgot, for one dangerous second, that he was waiting for a dying patient.
She was not in scrubs.
She was in little pink shorts printed with red hearts, a beige tank top, and a long black coat thrown over her like she had run out of her apartment without thinking about weather, modesty, or anything except the man on the stretcher behind her.
Her curls were wild around her face. Her brown skin glowed under the ambulance lights. One strap of her tank top had slipped too close to the edge of her shoulder, and her coat, instead of hiding her, framed her in a way that made Jack’s mouth go dry.
No.
Absolutely not.
Resident, he reminded himself.
Final-year resident, but still a resident.
Not his resident most days, but still close enough. Young enough. Hurt enough tonight that even noticing her like this felt like crossing a line.
And yet his eyes betrayed him for half a heartbeat.
Soft legs. Thin tank top. Curves under cotton. The kind of body a man remembered before he gave himself permission to.
Beside him, Shen gave a low whistle.
Samira did not react. Her focus was fixed on Jack.
“Male, eighty-two,” she said, voice fast and shaking at the edges. “Found unresponsive at home. Agonal respirations initially, then apneic. Pulse present. Possible fall with expanding neck hematoma. Airway obstruction. Couldn’t ventilate effectively. I performed an emergency cric before EMS arrived.”
Jack’s attention snapped fully to the stretcher.
Then he saw it.
A hollow pen barrel was taped into Tom Wimberly’s throat.
For a moment, the entire bay seemed to pause around it.
“What the hell?” Jack said.
Samira swallowed. “I had to keep him breathing.”
Shen raised his hand toward her.
Samira stared at him.
“High five,” Shen said. “Because that is insane.”
She did not lift her hand.
Her fingers were trembling.
Jack stepped forward. “Inside. Trauma Two. Now.”
The team moved.
Samira climbed down from the ambulance, but her knees wobbled when her feet hit the ground. Jack reached out without thinking and caught her by the elbow.
It was meant to steady her.
That was all.
But the second his hand closed around her arm, he felt the warmth of her skin through the open sleeve of her coat. Felt how small the bone of her elbow was beneath his fingers. Felt how hard she was shaking.
Samira looked down at his hand.
Then up at him.
Jack released her immediately.
“Can you walk?” he asked, too gruffly.
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
She was not fine.
She looked like she was holding herself together with shock and pride.
Inside Trauma Two, everything became motion.
Mateo was already at the bedside, efficient and focused, setting up lines.
Dana called out orders with her usual steel. “Nazley, airway cart. Mateo, two large-bore IVs. Jack, Shen, you’ve got airway.”
Nazley froze for half a second at the sight of the pen.
Jack’s voice cut through the room. “Toomerian.”
She startled. “Yes, Dr. Abbott?”
“Move.”
“Yes, sir.”
She moved.
Jack leaned over Tom and assessed the makeshift airway. Crude, desperate, but positioned well enough that air had been moving. He had seen ugly saves before. Battlefield saves. Back-room saves. The kind of medicine done when there was nothing clean, nothing ideal, nothing fair.
This had that same look.
Improvised.
Terrifying.
Brilliant.
“Samira,” he said without looking back. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
She stood near the doorway, coat clutched around herself now, eyes locked on Tom.
“I heard his cat,” she said.
Jack glanced at her.
Her voice sounded far away, like she was still in the apartment and not the hospital. “Tom lives below me. Usually I can hear him moving around at night. TV, kettle, his cat knocking things over. But tonight it was quiet. Too quiet. Then the cat was outside my door. Screaming. Scratching. I went downstairs.”
Her breathing quickened.
Jack saw it. The way her chest rose too fast. The way one hand clenched into the fabric of her coat.
“He was on the floor. He had blood near his mouth. His neck was swelling. I called 911, but then he stopped breathing. I tried to reposition. Jaw thrust. Nothing. I couldn’t get air in. I didn’t know how long he’d been without oxygen, and I—”
The monitor shrieked.
“Lost pulse,” Dana said.
The room exploded into a code.
Jack stepped into command mode because command mode was easier than feeling anything.
“Start compressions. Shen, take airway. Mateo, epi. Nazley, call Walsh. Tell her we need surgical airway management and possible evacuation of expanding neck hematoma.”
Samira moved forward. “I can help.”
Dana caught her before Jack could. “No. You are sitting down.”
“I’m a doctor.”
“You are also barefoot in heart shorts and about to pass out.”
“I’m not—”
“Samira.” Dana’s voice softened but did not bend. “You already saved him. Let them work.”
The sentence hit Samira harder than it should have.
You already saved him.
But what if she had not? What if she had been too late? What if the pen was stupid? What if Walsh walked in and said she had made everything worse? What if Tom died because Samira had panicked and done something reckless and Robby had been right all along?
Liability.
Mommy issues.
Slow-mo.
The words crawled under her skin.
Dana guided her out to the hub and pushed her gently into a chair.
Samira sat because her legs had become unreliable.
Through the trauma room window, she saw Jack working.
He did not panic. He did not waste motion. He moved like someone who understood chaos intimately and had made an agreement with it. His shoulders were broad under his scrub top. His salt-and-pepper hair was messy from the night. His hands were steady. Strong. Veined. Capable.
Those hands had caught her elbow.
She hated that she remembered.
She hated even more that she wanted him to come back and do it again.
Not now, she told herself.
Not here.
Not him.
He was an attending. He was Robby’s friend. He was older. He was her superior in a hundred invisible ways even if he was not her direct boss on day shift. And she was sitting outside a trauma room in pajamas after nearly falling apart in public for the second time that day.
She pressed both hands to her mouth and tried to breathe.
The elevator opened.
Dr. Emery Walsh stepped out like a storm in surgical clogs.
She vanished into Trauma Two.
Seconds later, her voice rose.
“Is that a pen?”
Samira closed her eyes.
Of course.
Of course that would be the thing.
The great Dr. Thomas Wimberly, retired cardiothoracic legend of this hospital, saved by his tenant in a tank top with a pen she had found in her coat pocket.
Maybe saved.
Maybe ruined.
Maybe both.
Minutes blurred.
At some point, Dana gave her water. Samira held it but did not drink.
Then Trauma Two opened.
Walsh came out with the stretcher, moving fast.
“He’s got a pulse,” Walsh said. “We’re taking him up. OR now.”
Samira stood too quickly.
The hub tilted.
This time, Jack caught her by the wrist.
His hand closed around her gently but firmly, his thumb settling just over her pulse.
For one suspended moment, they both looked down.
Her pulse was racing beneath his fingers.
Jack felt it.
Samira knew he felt it.
His grip changed, not releasing exactly, but becoming softer. More careful.
“You need to sit,” he said.
“I need to know if he’ll live.”
“Walsh is taking him to the OR. That means he has a chance.”
“A chance is not an answer.”
“No,” Jack said quietly. “It’s medicine.”
She looked at him then, really looked.
His eyes were tired. Bluer than she remembered. Not gentle exactly, but steady in a way that made her want to lean toward him and rest there.
That thought terrified her.
So she pulled her wrist away first.
Jack let her.
Shen appeared beside them, coffee in hand as if it had survived the code through sheer loyalty.
“What the hell happened?” he asked.
Samira rubbed her forehead. “He’s my landlord. Dr. Thomas Wimberly. He lives alone. His son is in Atlanta. I forgot to call him. I need to call him.”
She reached into one coat pocket, then the other.
Nothing.
“My phone. I don’t have my phone. I think it’s upstairs. Or in Tom’s apartment. Or maybe the ambulance. I don’t—”
Her coat slipped open again while she searched.
Jack looked away so fast Shen noticed.
Unfortunately, Shen noticed everything.
“We can get the emergency contact from his chart,” Jack said, keeping his eyes on the nurses’ station like it was suddenly fascinating. “Dana?”
“Already pulling it,” Dana called back.
Samira nodded, but her hands were still moving, still searching empty pockets.
Jack saw the beginning of another spiral.
He also saw Dana watching him.
Dana’s eyes flicked from Samira to Jack, then back again.
“Jack,” she said.
He looked at her.
“Break room. Take her before she collapses in my hub.”
Samira stiffened. “I’m not collapsing.”
Dana gave her a look. “Baby, you are one strong feeling away from becoming a floor patient.”
Shen lifted his coffee in agreement. “Scientifically accurate.”
Samira glared weakly at him.
Jack stepped slightly aside, gesturing toward the hallway. “Come on.”
“I don’t need—”
“Water,” he said. “Chair. Five minutes.”
The attending voice.
The voice people obeyed.
Samira hated that it worked on her.
She also hated that part of her was relieved someone else was making the decision.
She pulled her coat tighter and walked ahead of him.
Jack followed at a careful distance.
Not too close.
Not because he did not want to be close.
Because he did.
And that was the problem.
The break room was dim, lit by the vending machine and one tired overhead light. Someone had left an untouched cup of instant noodles on the counter. The coffee pot was empty, which meant Shen had either not found it yet or had declared it beneath him.
Samira sat at the table.
Jack filled a paper cup with water and set it in front of her.
“Drink.”
She did, this time without arguing.
He stood across from her, arms folded, then unfolded them. Crossed arms felt too much like interrogation. Sitting beside her felt too much like intimacy.
He chose the chair opposite her.
Safer.
Not safe.
Just safer.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Samira stared at the cup. Her lashes were lowered. Her curls fell forward, hiding part of her face. The black coat had slipped from one shoulder, exposing the thin strap of her tank top again.
Jack looked at her face.
Only her face.
He had been a widower for ten years. He was not dead. He knew attraction. He knew what it was to want. But wanting had become theoretical after his wife died. Something that happened to other men. Men who went on dates and slept through the night and did not wake up reaching across an empty bed.
Then Samira had arrived in an ambulance wearing heart shorts and terror and courage, and some sleeping part of him had opened one eye.
He resented it.
He wanted it.
He did not know what to do with either.
Samira broke the silence.
“I could have used you today.”
Jack’s attention sharpened.
She looked up suddenly, as if realizing what she had said. “I mean—not like that. I mean, professionally. In the ED. During the shift. You’re calmer than Robby.”
Jack’s jaw tightened at the name.
“What happened?”
She laughed once, brittle and embarrassed. “I really shouldn’t talk about this with you.”
“Because Robby is my friend?”
“Yes.”
“He is my friend,” Jack said. “He is also capable of being a complete ass.”
Samira blinked.
The laugh that came out of her this time was surprised and watery. “That is not a very loyal thing to say.”
“It’s true. Loyalty and truth are not enemies.”
She looked down again.
For a moment, she seemed smaller. Not physically. Emotionally. Like the day had finally caught up and taken pieces of her with it.
“Two of my patients died today,” she said.
Jack’s expression changed.
“The systems were down. Everything was backed up. Everyone needed everything. My mother called in the middle of it and told me she’s selling her house in New Jersey.”
Jack waited.
“And going on a year-long cruise.”
His brow moved.
“With her boyfriend,” Samira added. “Fiancé, apparently. Soon-to-be husband. This man I barely know is now becoming my mother’s great romantic adventure.”
Despite himself, Jack’s mouth twitched.
Samira pointed at him. “Do not.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You wanted to.”
“I wanted to ask what kind of cruise lasts a year.”
“That is exactly the wrong question, and also the only question I have been asking.”
He did smile then.
She looked at him, and for one ridiculous second, the room warmed.
Then her face fell.
“I was supposed to move closer to her next year,” she said. “That was my plan. Finish residency. Maybe fellowship. Maybe New Jersey. Be there for her. She was alone after my father. I thought she needed me.”
“And now?”
“Now she needs sunscreen and a passport.”
Jack was quiet.
Samira’s fingers tightened around the cup.
“I got distracted. I lost focus. I had a panic attack.”
“In the ED?”
She nodded.
Jack did not like the cold anger that moved through him. “And Robby?”
Samira’s mouth twisted. “Asked if I was pregnant.”
Jack went still.
“With the number of doubles I do, when exactly would I find the time to find a partner, have sex, and produce a child?” She laughed, but her eyes were bright. “Honestly, I should have asked if he was pregnant. His mood swings are worse than mine.”
Jack almost laughed.
Almost.
“What else did he say?”
Samira shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Samira.”
The way he said her name made her stop.
Not Dr. Mohan.
Samira.
She looked at him.
“He told me to keep my mommy issues at home,” she said quietly. “Then he called me a liability.”
Jack’s hands curled into fists under the table.
For a second, all he could see was Robby saying it. Robby with his impatience. Robby with that sharp, careless mouth. Robby, who was brilliant and loyal and sometimes so brutally dismissive that he did not notice the damage until people were bleeding from the inside.
Jack wanted to find him.
Jack wanted to shake him.
Jack wanted, absurdly and fiercely, to go back in time and stand between Samira and every person who had made her feel small.
Which was dangerous.
Protectiveness was not neutral.
Not with her.
Samira read his face and sat up. “Please don’t make this a thing.”
“It already is a thing.”
“I don’t want drama.”
“I don’t care about drama.”
“I do,” she said. “I still have to work here. He is my boss. You are an attending. Everyone talks. If you say something, it becomes bigger.”
There it was.
The thing in the room neither of them had named.
Jack leaned back slowly.
Attending.
Resident.
Robby’s friend.
Her workplace.
His authority.
Her vulnerability.
His attraction.
All of it sat between them like another person at the table.
“You’re right,” Jack said.
Samira looked surprised.
He hated that she looked surprised.
“You’re right,” he repeated. “I have to be careful. I can’t storm around this hospital acting like I have some claim over your hurt.”
Her breath caught slightly.
Claim.
The word hung there for a moment too long.
Jack heard it too and looked away.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” she said softly.
But she did not look away.
That was worse.
He cleared his throat. “What I mean is, professionally, there are ways to handle what happened. But you decide that. Not me.”
Samira studied him.
No one had said that to her today.
Not Robby. Not her mother. Not the voice in her own head.
You decide.
It made something inside her loosen.
“I thought about leaving,” she admitted. “Not just the shift. The hospital.”
Jack’s face hardened with something like alarm before he controlled it.
“Don’t.”
The word came out too fast.
Too personal.
Samira noticed.
Jack looked down at his hands.
His hands were rougher than most doctors’. Army hands, she had thought once. Hands that had carried men, fought death, held pressure on wounds, lifted weights, opened doors, and maybe, once, held a wife.
She knew he had been married.
Everyone knew, in the way hospital people knew things without anyone ever saying them properly. His wife had died ten years ago. He did not talk about her. He did not date. He did not linger at parties. He worked nights and kept his routines and let people mistake control for peace.
Now he looked anything but peaceful.
“Don’t leave because Robby was cruel,” he said more evenly. “Leave if it is right for you. Leave if you want a different life. But don’t let one bad day and one bad attending decide for you.”
Samira swallowed.
“You think I belong here?”
Jack looked up.
“I know you do.”
Her lips parted slightly.
He continued, quieter. “You saved Tom tonight with no equipment, no backup, and no time. You noticed something was wrong because you knew the sound of his life. You followed a cat to a dying man and kept him breathing with a pen.”
“That sounds insane.”
“It was insane.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
She looked horrified by it.
Jack saw her try to wipe it away quickly, like crying was a professional failure.
He reached across the table without thinking.
Then stopped.
His hand hovered between them.
Samira looked at it.
So did he.
The air changed.
He should pull back.
He was an attending. She was a resident. She was upset. It was three in the morning. She was in a tank top and shorts and coming down from adrenaline. Every rule of decency said distance was the kindest thing he could give her.
But her hand was still trembling around the cup.
Slowly, carefully, giving her every chance to move away, Jack set his fingers over hers.
Not possessive.
Not intimate enough to be indefensible.
Just steady.
Samira inhaled.
Her skin was warm. Her fingers were cold.
Jack felt both.
She did not pull away.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Samira looked at his hand over hers and felt an ache open in her chest that had nothing to do with panic. She wanted to turn her hand over. Wanted to lace her fingers through his. Wanted to rest her forehead against his shoulder and let him be solid for her.
She did none of those things.
Because she was not stupid.
Because she knew what people would say.
Because wanting comfort from Jack Abbott was already dangerous, and wanting more was impossible.
Still, she let his hand stay.
Just for one breath.
Then another.
Jack’s thumb moved once, almost by accident, over her knuckle.
The touch was so small it should not have mattered.
It mattered.
Samira looked up.
Jack’s eyes were on her hand. His expression was controlled, but not enough. Not for her. Not anymore.
He wanted more too.
The realization was quiet and devastating.
Then he pulled his hand back.
Samira missed the warmth immediately.
Jack stood, needing distance, needing the counter, needing anything that was not the softness in her eyes.
“Where did you learn to use a pen to provide an airway?” he asked, voice rougher than before.
Samira blinked, returning to herself with effort.
“I read it in a medical journal,” she said. “It was about emergency airway management in non-standard settings. Flights, remote areas, places without proper equipment. I didn’t think I would ever actually—” She shook her head. “I didn’t know how long Tom had not been breathing, and I got scared. So I did it.”
Jack stared at her.
“What?” she asked.
“That was bad ass.”
A surprised laugh escaped her.
He allowed himself half a smile. “Walsh was pretty upset.”
Samira groaned and covered her face. “Oh God.”
“She said, and I quote, ‘Is that a pen?’ with the exact tone surgeons use when they discover emergency medicine exists.”
Samira laughed harder, breath shaking.
Jack watched her, helpless against the warmth that moved through him.
There she was.
Not fixed. Not fine.
But there.
Samira lowered her hands. “She’s going to lecture me.”
“Absolutely.”
“She’s going to say it was reckless.”
“Probably.”
“Was it?”
Jack did not answer immediately.
Then he said, “It was desperate medicine. Desperate medicine is ugly. Sometimes it is also the reason someone survives long enough for pretty medicine to take over.”
Samira’s eyes softened.
He should not have liked being looked at that way.
He did.
“Thank you,” she said.
Jack nodded once.
Silence settled again, but it was different now. Not empty. Charged.
Samira became suddenly aware of the thinness of her tank top, the bare skin of her legs, the way Jack was very deliberately not looking. That restraint should have made her feel embarrassed.
Instead, it made her feel seen in a way that was almost worse.
He desired her.
And he was trying very hard to respect her.
The combination made her throat tighten.
Jack saw the shift in her expression and misunderstood it.
He turned toward the lockers and pulled out his hoodie he had dropped on the chair at the breakroom when he came in for his shift.
“Here,” he said.
She looked at it.
“It’s clean,” he added.
Samira took it. Their fingers brushed.
Another tiny touch.
Another unreasonable spark.
She slipped the hoodie on under her coat. It swallowed her, hanging past her shorts.
Jack smiled before he could stop himself.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“You look…” He stopped.
Cute.
Beautiful.
Mine, some primitive, entirely unacceptable part of his mind supplied.
He shut that down immediately.
“You look warmer,” he finished.
Samira narrowed her eyes. “Very smooth.”
“I’m known for that.”
“You absolutely are.”
The smile that passed between them was small, private, and dangerous.
Then the break room door opened.
Shen leaned in, coffee in hand. His eyes moved from Samira in Jack’s hoodie to Jack standing too far from her with the posture of a man trying to prove a point to himself.
Shen’s face brightened with silent, merciless understanding.
Jack glared at him.
Shen ignored it.
“Walsh called from upstairs,” Shen said. “Wimberly is alive. They secured the airway. Hematoma evacuation underway. Still critical, but she used the phrase ‘not dead yet,’ which, for Walsh, is practically optimism.”
Samira exhaled so hard her shoulders folded.
Jack stepped forward instinctively, then stopped himself.
Samira noticed.
So did Shen.
Of course Shen did.
“Thank God,” Samira whispered.
Shen lifted his cup toward her. “Also, Walsh said to tell ‘the pen jabber’ that she wants to see her after surgery.”
Samira closed her eyes. “I’m dead.”
“Maybe,” Shen said. “But Tom isn’t.”
That made her laugh again, softer this time.
Jack looked at Shen. “Thank you.”
Shen’s expression flicked over him, amused but not unkind.
“Sure,” he said. “Dana also found Tom’s son. She’s calling him now.”
Samira nodded. “Okay.”
Shen lingered for half a second too long.
Jack’s eyes narrowed.
“Leave,” Jack said.
Shen smiled. “Such warmth. Such leadership.”
“Shen.”
“I’m leaving.”
He disappeared.
The door swung shut behind him.
Samira looked down at the hoodie sleeves covering half her hands.
“I should go home,” she said.
Jack did not want her to.
He knew that immediately, and because he knew it, he forced himself to nod.
“I’ll have Dana get someone to take you.”
“I can walk.”
“At three in the morning after a panic attack and a field cric with a pen?”
She gave him a tired look. “When you say it like that, I sound unstable.”
“You sound like someone who needs a ride home.”
“My apartment is close.”
“Samira.”
There it was again.
Her name in his voice.
She should not like it so much.
She looked at him, and the exhaustion in her face softened into something more vulnerable.
“I don’t want to be alone in my apartment right now,” she admitted.
Jack’s chest tightened.
It was the wrong thing to say to him.
Not because it was manipulative. It was not.
Because every protective instinct he had, every lonely part of him, every piece of the man who had once known how to love someone daily and completely, rose toward her at once.
He wanted to say, You don’t have to be.
He wanted to say, I’ll stay.
He said none of it.
Because he was an attending.
Because she was a resident.
Because she was vulnerable.
Because wanting to protect her did not give him permission to become the place she hid.
So he chose the careful thing.
“I can ask Dana to sit with you until your ride comes,” he said. “Or Shen. Though he may narrate your trauma like a podcast.”
Samira smiled faintly.
Jack continued, softer. “You don’t have to be alone. But I need to be careful about how I help you.”
Her eyes searched his face.
There it was again.
The power dynamic.
Named without being named.
She understood.
Somehow, that made her want him more.
Not because he was withholding himself. Because he was choosing not to take advantage of a moment that would have made it easy.
“Okay,” she said.
Jack nodded.
They stood there, a few feet apart, wanting visible in the space between them and restraint holding it back like glass.
Then Samira took one step toward him.
Not enough to be reckless.
Enough to be honest.
“Jack?”
His name sounded different in her mouth at three in the morning.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for not making me feel crazy.”
His expression shifted.
For a moment, he looked older. Sadder. Like grief had stepped out from behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“You’re not crazy,” he said. “You’re tired. And hurt. And very brave.”
Samira’s eyes filled again, but this time she let them.
Jack lifted his hand.
Stopped.
Then, with visible care, he touched two fingers lightly to the sleeve of the hoodie near her wrist.
Not skin.
Not quite.
Still, she felt it everywhere.
“You belong here,” he said.
Her breath trembled.
“So do you,” she whispered.
Jack froze.
Samira realized, too late, what she had said.
She had not meant the hospital.
Not only the hospital.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then Jack stepped back.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he had to.
“I’ll check on Walsh,” he said.
Samira nodded.
“And Dana will help with your ride.”
“Okay.”
He reached the door, then paused.
Behind him, she stood in his hoodie and her black coat, hair wild, face tired, alive with feeling. She looked nothing like the composed Dr. Mohan from day shift.
She looked like the woman who had saved a man with a pen.
The woman who had cried in front of him and still somehow made him feel like he was the one exposed.
The woman who, without trying, had made him aware of the ten empty years behind him.
Jack opened the door.
In the hall, Shen was waiting.
Jack sighed. “Do not.”
Shen took a sip of coffee. “I said nothing.”
“You are thinking loudly.”
“I’m thinking she saved a cardiothoracic surgeon with a pen, you gave her your hoodie, and you look like someone just restarted your heart with paddles.”
Jack stared at him.
Shen smiled. “Medically speaking.”
Jack walked past him.
Shen fell into step beside him.
“You know this is complicated,” Shen said, quieter now.
Jack’s jaw tightened. “I know.”
“She’s a resident.”
“I know.”
“She had a bad day.”
“I know.”
“You’re Robby’s friend.”
Jack stopped walking.
Shen stopped too.
For once, his face was serious.
Jack looked back toward the break room door.
Through the small window, he could see Samira sitting down again, wrapped in his hoodie, both hands around the water cup.
“I know,” Jack said.
His voice was low.
Heavy.
Honest.
That was the worst part.
He knew everything.
And still, for the first time in ten years, something inside him had begun to wake and spread in this chest.