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By 9:14 p.m., someone had already pissed on the floor in triage.
Not metaphorically.
Actual human urine.
Whitaker stood in the middle of the hallway holding a wet-floor sign like he was reconsidering every life decision that had brought him here.
“I have a bachelor’s degree,” he said hollowly as I walked past.
“And now you have hepatitis exposure,” I replied.
“Cool.”
“Welcome to the night shift.”
The automatic doors burst open behind me hard enough to rattle the glass.
EMS rolled in with a homeless guy screaming about government surveillance through his teeth while one paramedic mouthed sorry at me over the stretcher.
I pointed toward room six without breaking stride.
“Psych’s full,” Sue called from the nurses’ station.
“I know psych’s full.”
“He bit a paramedic.”
“Then he can sit in the hallway and think about what he’s done.”
“That feels medically unethical.”
“That sounds like a tomorrow problem.”
Night shift at the Pitt was ten straight hours of organized psychological warfare interrupted occasionally by medicine.
And I ran it.
Which probably said deeply troubling things about my personality.
“Charge!” Mateo shouted from the medication room. “Where the hell are the central line kits?”
“No idea.”
“You’re the charge nurse!”
“And yet somehow still not God.”
“Dana knew exactly where everything was.”
I looked up immediately. “Careful. Don’t compare me to my aunt unless you want your next assignment to include rectal irrigation.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“That’s how she trained me.”
It wasn’t entirely a joke.
Dana had spent twenty years terrorizing this emergency department into functionality before stepping into administration. Eight months ago, after the old night-shift charge nurse retired, she’d cornered me in the parking garage and informed me I was taking over nights.
Not asked.
Informed.
“You’re good under pressure,” she’d said.
“I also drink too much caffeine and have unresolved anger issues.”
“Exactly.”
And somehow that counted as a recommendation.
Now I spent most shifts trying to keep the department from actively catching fire while simultaneously preventing nurses, residents, patients, and occasionally doctors from killing each other.
Speaking of.
“Y/N.”
God.
That voice.
Low. Dry. Amused.
I looked up from the board already annoyed with myself for noticing him immediately.
Dr. Jack Abbot stood near the physician workstation shrugging out of a rain-darkened jacket, dark scrubs clinging slightly from the weather outside. He looked exhausted in the way only ER attendings could: expensive divorce energy mixed with caffeine dependency and untreated insomnia.
Unfortunately for me, it worked.
Really worked.
“Tell me you have good news,” he said.
“You’re employed.”
“I was hoping for better.”
“You’re getting a septic GI bleed and psych’s trying to elope again.”
“There it is.”
He grabbed the chart from my hand, fingers brushing mine briefly.
Not accidental.
Never accidental.
That was the problem with Abbot.
Everything with him felt deliberate.
The eye contact. The grin. The way he leaned too close at the desk like personal space was a suggestion instead of a rule.
At first I’d ignored it because Abbot flirted recreationally. It was practically a medical condition with him.
Then one night Sue had looked up from charting and said, completely deadpan:
“He wants to fuck you, by the way.”
I’d nearly aspirated cold brew.
Abbot, meanwhile, had looked delighted.
Now the entire night crew treated our unresolved sexual tension like department entertainment.
“You eat today?” Abbot asked casually.
“Oh my God,” Sue muttered from nearby. “Here we fucking go.”
I shot her a look.
She pretended innocence badly.
“I had a protein bar,” I answered.
“When?”
I checked my watch theatrically. “Yesterday?”
Abbot sighed through his nose.
It shouldn’t have done things to me.
It absolutely did.
“You’re impossible.”
“And yet you’re obsessed with me.”
“That’s not the word I’d use.”
“Interesting you didn’t deny it.”
Sue gagged loudly into her coffee.
“You two are disgusting.”
“You listen on purpose,” I pointed out.
“Correct. Because eventually HR’s gonna need witnesses.”
Abbot smiled then.
Not his usual easy smirk.
Something smaller. More private.
And there it fucking was again—that annoying pull low in my stomach that had become increasingly difficult to ignore over the last few months.
Which was inconvenient timing considering he was:
A) my attending
B) emotionally unavailable in a way that screamed expensive therapist
and
C) old enough to know better.
Unfortunately, so was I.
“Hey, charge?” Whitaker appeared beside me looking haunted. “Room twelve’s asking if we can charge her crystals at the nurses’ station.”
“No.”
“She says they help with inflammation.”
“Tell her so does ibuprofen.”
“She says pharmaceuticals are poison.”
“Then she can heal naturally in the parking lot.”
Whitaker nodded solemnly. “Understood.”
Abbot laughed quietly beside me.
I hated how much I liked making him laugh.
Hated it.
—
By midnight the department had descended fully into chaos.
The air smelled like antiseptic, sweat, and impending litigation.
A toddler with croup screamed in room four.
Someone overdosed in the bathroom.
Lab lost blood cultures again.
Dana called down from upstairs just to ask why our hold times were bad as if I personally controlled the collapse of modern healthcare.
“I swear to God,” I muttered after hanging up.
“You inherited her personality, you know,” Sue said.
“That’s deeply hurtful.”
“You both have the same face when irritated.”
“I’m always irritated.”
“Exactly.”
A trauma alert sounded overhead before I could continue the argument.
Everybody moved instantly.
That was the thing about emergency medicine. No matter how burned out you got, your body still answered adrenaline automatically.
EMS burst through the ambulance doors with a motorcycle accident.
Young guy.
No helmet.
Blood everywhere.
“Twenty-seven-year-old male,” paramedic rattled off. “High-speed collision. Lost pressure twice en route.”
Abbot was already gloving up beside the bed.
“Let’s move.”
The trauma bay erupted into motion.
Clothes cut away.
Blood hung.
FAST positive.
The patient’s chest rose unevenly beneath my hands as I helped stabilize him for a chest tube.
“Pressure’s crashing,” Mateo warned.
“Push more blood,” Abbot replied calmly.
That was the thing about him.
He never got louder when things went bad.
Quieter, if anything.
Controlled.
It pulled people toward him automatically.
“Need intubation meds,” he said.
“Ketamine ready.”
“Tube.”
Respiratory moved.
Monitors screamed.
The patient coded six minutes later.
The next fifteen minutes blurred into organized violence.
Chest compressions.
Epinephrine.
Blood splattering across gloves and gowns.
Sweat running down my spine beneath layers of PPE.
Finally Abbot looked at the monitor for a long moment before stepping back.
“That’s enough.”
Silence hit the room hard afterward.
Nobody ever talked about that part of emergency medicine. How loud death was right until the second it wasn’t.
I stripped bloody gloves off slowly.
Across the bed, Abbot removed his face shield, exhaustion carving deeper lines around his mouth.
His eyes landed on me immediately.
Not the resident.
Not the monitor.
Me.
“You okay?”
It irritated me instantly.
Not the question.
The fact he asked it like he actually cared about the answer.
“I’m fine.”
“You look tired.”
“We just lost a twenty-seven-year-old.”
“You still look tired.”
“Are you flirting with me at a corpse?”
His mouth twitched. “Little bit.”
“Jesus Christ,” Sue muttered behind us.
“We’re coping,” Abbot replied.
“With sexual harassment?” she asked.
“With chemistry,” he corrected.
I rolled my eyes so hard it physically hurt.
Which unfortunately did not stop the warmth crawling up my neck.
—
At 2:17 a.m., everything went to hell.
Not gradually.
Immediately.
Room nine was a meth intoxication brought in by police. Mid-thirties. Huge. Sweating through restraints and screaming like he was possessed.
“I hate this already,” Sue announced.
“That’s because you have survival instincts,” I answered.
Security stood near the doorway while Abbot attempted the impossible task of reasoning with a man actively fighting invisible demons.
“Sir,” Abbot said evenly, “you need to stay on the stretcher.”
“Fuck you!”
“Fair enough.”
The patient thrashed violently sideways.
One wrist restraint snapped loose.
“Goddammit,” Whitaker breathed.
Everything accelerated.
Security lunged forward.
The patient grabbed the metal oxygen bracket attached to the wall.
I moved automatically to help control his arm—
And then something cracked hard against the side of my skull.
Pain exploded instantly.
White-hot.
Sharp enough to blank my vision for half a second.
The room tilted strangely sideways.
“Oh FUCK,” Sue yelled.
Warm blood spilled down my temple.
I remember blinking once in confusion before my knees gave out.
Then hands caught me hard around the waist before I hit the floor.
Abbot.
“Y/N.”
Not teasing now.
Not flirtatious.
Terrified.
Actually terrified.
“You with me?”
“I’m fine,” I slurred automatically.
“You’re bleeding all over my shoes.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
His hand slid carefully against the back of my head checking the injury. The second his fingers came away bloody, something in his expression changed violently.
Not panic exactly.
Worse.
Fury.
“Get security in here now,” he snapped without looking away from me.
The room erupted around us.
The patient still screaming.
Security wrestling him back onto the bed.
Sue shouting for gauze.
But Abbot stayed crouched in front of me, one hand firm against my jaw keeping my attention on him.
“Look at me.”
“I am looking at you.”
“You’re concussed.”
“You diagnosed that fast.”
“You forgot how eyes work for a second.”
“Fair.”
Blood kept sliding warm down my neck.
Abbot looked ready to kill someone.
Honestly, it was a little hot.
Probably the concussion.
“You’re not staying out here,” he said.
“I’m literally charge nurse.”
“And right now you’re literally bleeding.”
“I’ve worked worse.”
“You almost passed out.”
“I absolutely did not.”
“You collapsed directly into my chest.”
Sue appeared beside us holding gauze against my head wound. “For the record, you super collapsed.”
Traitor.
Abbot stood, still holding onto my arm like he didn’t trust gravity around me anymore.
Which, rude.
“I’m fine,” I insisted again.
He looked down at me with exhausted disbelief.
“Y/N. Honey.”
The word hit harder than the head injury.
Because Abbot flirted constantly.
But he never slipped like that. Never let genuine feeling leak through.
The entire room seemed to notice it too.
Sue’s eyebrows shot upward.
Whitaker went completely still.
Even Mateo looked uncomfortable, like he’d accidentally walked in on something private.
Abbot realized it a second later.
Too late.
His jaw tightened slightly.
Then he looked back at me, blood on his hands, anger and fear still raw across his face, and said quietly:
“Trauma one. Now.”
____
Trauma one was empty except for fluorescent lighting and the lingering smell of chlorhexidine.
Which meant it was the cleanest room in the department and somehow still felt vaguely cursed.
Abbot steered me through the doorway with one hand firm at my back while Sue followed carrying supplies and the expression of someone trying very hard not to enjoy this situation.
“I just want it formally documented,” she said as the doors swung shut behind us, “that I knew you two would eventually become a workplace incident.”
“Shut up, Sue.”
“She literally got injured falling for you.”
“I hate you both.”
Abbot pulled gloves on with sharp, irritated movements. “Can everyone stop talking for thirty seconds?”
Sue blinked innocently. “Someone’s stressed.”
“You think?”
I sat on the edge of the stretcher with gauze pressed against my head while the room tilted subtly enough to be deeply annoying.
Not enough to pass out.
Enough to make me nauseous.
Great.
Abbot stepped between my knees automatically while examining the wound, attention entirely fixed on the blood matting my hair.
“You dizzy?”
“Little bit.”
“Nauseous?”
“Little bit.”
“Headache?”
I looked at him flatly. “I got hit in the skull with hospital equipment, Jack. What do you think?”
“Hm.” His fingers parted my hair carefully. “Laceration’s decent.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all week.”
Sue snorted.
Abbot ignored both of us.
His touch was gentle in a way that felt almost invasive. Not physically. Emotionally. Like every careful movement gave away more than he intended.
He was angry.
Not attending-physician irritated.
Personal angry.
I watched him open the suture kit with clipped efficiency.
“You’re getting stitches.”
“I gathered.”
“You might have a concussion.”
“I definitely have a concussion. You called me honey.”
That got him.
A brief pause.
Barely noticeable unless you knew him.
Sue immediately made a strangled noise and turned away to hide a grin.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “I’m witnessing history.”
Abbot’s shot her a look. “Don’t you have patients?”
“I absolutely do. But this is better.”
“You’re the worst.”
“Thank you.”
She slipped out of the room still laughing under her breath.
Coward.
The second the doors shut, silence settled differently.
He stayed standing close enough that I could smell antiseptic and coffee on him beneath the sweat from the trauma earlier. His forearm brushed my knee accidentally.
Neither of us moved away.
Outside the room, monitors continued beeping. Overhead paging droned through another incoming ambulance report. Somewhere down the hall, a patient screamed at security.
But inside trauma one, it suddenly felt strangely quiet.
Abbot cleaned blood away from my temple with slow concentration.
“You scared the shit out of me,” he said finally.
There it was.
No joke.
No flirtation.
Just truth.
I swallowed once before answering. “I’m okay.”
“You dropped.”
“I slipped.”
“You collapsed into me like a Victorian woman.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“You were bleeding.”
“Still dramatic.”
His eyes lifted to mine then.
Tired. Frustrated. Too honest.
“You have any idea what it’s like watching someone get hit in the head?”
The question landed heavier than it should have.
Because suddenly I understood this wasn’t entirely about tonight.
ER doctors carried ghosts around with them. Everybody did down here. Patients they lost. Mistakes they replayed at 3 a.m. The ones they almost lost.
I softened despite myself.
“You see worse every shift.”
“Not you.”
Fuck.
There it was again.
That thing between us that had stopped feeling casual weeks ago and neither of us had been stupid enough to name.
Until now maybe.
My pulse jumped painfully.
“That sounds dangerously close to a feeling,” I muttered.
“It probably is.”
“Well. Gross.”
His mouth twitched slightly.
Then he leaned closer to inspect the laceration and I had the deeply unfortunate realization that Jack Abbot this close smelled incredible.
Which felt unfair considering I currently had dried blood in my hair.
“Hold still,” he murmured.
The stitching started.
I hissed slightly as the needle passed through skin.
“Sorry.”
“You say that like you personally assaulted me.”
“I’m considering it. You scared ten years off my life tonight.”
“Good. Maybe now you’ll stop pretending you’re thirty-five.”
“I am thirty-five.”
“What thirty-five year old man has that many grays?”
“Okay maybe forty-five.”
“Exactly.”
That actually made him laugh.
Low and brief and exhausted.
God, I liked making him laugh.
Which was becoming a serious fucking problem.
“You know,” I said carefully, “most attendings don’t look one mild workplace injury away from committing homicide.”
“I wasn’t going to commit homicide.”
“You absolutely were.”
“I was considering felony assault.”
“That’s sweeter somehow.”
His hand settled briefly against my jaw while he tied another stitch off.
Not medical this time.
Just instinct.
We both noticed it immediately.
Neither of us spoke.
The air shifted.
Dangerous territory.
The kind where one bad decision turned into several excellent bad decisions.
Abbot cleared his throat first and stepped back half an inch.
Coward.
“You need a CT.”
“I absolutely do not.”
“You got hit in the head with metal.”
“I’m conscious. Mostly coherent. Pupils equal and reactive.”
“You forgot how standing worked.”
“I’m tired.”
“You almost vomited five minutes ago.”
“That was emotional.”
He stared at me flatly.
I smiled innocently.
“You’re impossible.”
“You keep saying that like it’ll stop you wanting to fuck me.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
Silence.
Oh no.
Oh, that was bad.
Abbot went very still.
Not offended.
Worse.
Interested.
Heat crawled immediately up my throat.
“Well,” I said weakly. “Concussion honesty.”
His gaze dropped slowly to my mouth.
“You really wanna blame that on the head injury?”
My stomach tightened hard enough to hurt.
Outside the room someone shouted for respiratory.
Neither of us moved.
The tension had stopped being funny approximately thirty seconds ago.
Now it felt sharp.
Adult.
Dangerous in a very real way.
Abbot stepped closer again slowly enough that I could’ve moved if I wanted to.
I didn’t.
“Y/N,” he said quietly, “you’re bleeding through gauze and flirting with your attending.”
“You started it.”
“Probably.”
“You call all your nurses honey?”
“No.”
There it was again.
Honesty.
No teasing.
No easy escape route.
Just him standing between my knees in a trauma bay at three in the morning looking at me like he’d already crossed lines in his head and was trying to decide whether to regret it.
The doors burst open before either of us could make the situation catastrophically worse.
Sue leaned inside holding a chart.
“Hey, Romeo and Juliet, your meth guy ripped out his IV and pissed on security.”
Abbot closed his eyes briefly.
I burst out laughing immediately and regretted it because my head throbbed.
Sue pointed at us both.
“Oh, this is absolutely happening.”
“Get out,” Abbot muttered.
“You’re in love during a mass staffing shortage. That’s embarrassing.”
“We’re not in love,” I said automatically.
Sue gave me a look.
Then Abbot.
Then back to me.
“Mmhm.”
And the worst part?
Neither of us answered her.
_____
Dana arrived in the emergency department like an approaching natural disaster.
No one warned her.
They didn’t have time.
One minute I was sitting on a stretcher in the staff observation room with an ice pack against my temple while Abbot argued with radiology about getting my head CT read faster. The next minute the automatic doors slammed open and Dana stalked through the department wearing business-casual slacks and the expression of a woman fully prepared to kill with her bare hands.
The entire nurses’ station visibly tensed.
Whitaker actually whispered, “Oh no.”
Dana pointed immediately at Sue.
“What happened.”
Not a question.
An interrogation.
Sue straightened instinctively. “Combative meth patient in room nine. Broke restraint. Grabbed the oxygen bracket.”
Dana’s jaw tightened so hard I heard her teeth click.
“Where is he?”
“In four-point restraints with security.”
“Good,” Dana snapped. “Keep him there until I decide whether or not I’m committing a felony.”
“Dana,” I called tiredly from down the hall.
Her head whipped toward me instantly.
And there it was.
The anger cracked open just enough for fear to show underneath it.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
God. That almost made me emotional enough to throw up.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“You are absolutely not okay.”
She crossed the room in seconds and grabbed my face gently, inspecting the stitches near my hairline with the same sharp efficiency she used on trauma patients.
“How dizzy?”
“Manageable.”
“Nausea?”
“Little.”
“Any loss of consciousness?”
“Not really.”
Abbot appeared beside her holding my chart. “Brief disorientation. No LOC confirmed.”
Dana turned on him immediately.
“How the fuck did this happen?”
And there it was.
The terrifying thing about Dana: she did not care if you were an attending physician, administrator, cop, or God himself. If someone under her watch got hurt, she came for blood.
Abbot didn’t flinch.
“Patient became violent during restraint failure.”
“You were understaffed.”
“We’re always understaffed.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he agreed evenly. “It’s the truth.”
The department buzzed around us in controlled chaos. Phones ringing. Monitors alarming. EMS radio chatter overhead.
Dana looked ready to personally fistfight the healthcare system.
“I want incident reports,” she said. “I want security footage saved. I want charges filed against that asshole before he sobers up enough to forget his own name.”
“Dana—”
“No.” She rounded on me instantly. “Absolutely not. I am so fucking tired of women in healthcare getting assaulted and everybody acting like it’s just part of the job.”
Nobody spoke.
Because she was right.
The silence said so.
Dana gestured sharply around the department. “She’s a charge nurse, not a goddamn punching bag.”
“She’s okay,” Abbot said quietly.
Dana looked at him with murder in her eyes. “And if she wasn’t?”
That landed.
Hard.
I watched something shift briefly across Abbot’s face before he masked it again.
Guilt maybe.
Or fear.
Same thing sometimes.
“She should go home,” he said finally.
“No,” I answered immediately.
Dana and Abbot both looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“I’m not going home.”
“You got hit in the head,” Abbot replied.
“And?”
“And you’re concussed.”
“I’m functional.”
“You almost passed out.”
“Allegedly.”
“You forgot where you were for a second.”
“I forget where I am emotionally every day.”
Dana pinched the bridge of her nose. “Jesus Christ, you sound exactly like me at your age.”
“That explains the hypertension.”
Abbot ignored both of us. “You’re done for the night.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t make me leave.”
He looked at me for a long second.
“You really wanna test that theory right now?”
…Unfortunately, a tiny part of me did.
Which was deeply inappropriate considering I currently had seven stitches in my head.
Dana sighed heavily. “Compromise.”
We both looked at her.
“She rests for an hour. No patient care. No codes. No psych rooms. Then she comes back on light duty and I stay downstairs to help run the department.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I protested.
“So is getting your skull cracked open on a Wednesday.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding through gauze.”
“Only a little.”
Dana crossed her arms. “You inherited your pain tolerance from the wrong side of the family.”
“That feels targeted.”
“It is.”
Abbot still looked unconvinced.
“She needs observation.”
“I’m literally right here,” I muttered.
He finally exhaled sharply through his nose. “One hour. Then you sit your ass at the desk and do charge only. No direct patient care.”
“I can still work.”
“You can answer phones.”
“How erotic.”
“That concussion’s making you worse.”
Dana pointed toward the staff sleep room. “Go lie down before I sedate you myself.”
“You can’t sedate employees.”
“Watch me.”
I glared at both of them on principle before finally pushing off the stretcher.
The second I stood, dizziness rolled through me hard enough that Abbot’s hand immediately caught my elbow.
Annoying.
Useful.
Annoying again.
“You see?” he said quietly.
“I hate when you’re right.”
“I know.”
His hand lingered slightly too long before he let go.
Dana noticed.
Of course she noticed.
Nothing escaped Dana.
Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
Oh no.
No no no.
Not that.
Not now.
I immediately pointed at her. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a face.”
“I absolutely made a face.”
“Dana.”
Abbot looked between us cautiously like he sensed incoming danger.
Smart man.
Dana turned slowly toward him with terrifying calm.
“How long has this been going on?”
Abbot blinked once. “What?”
“The eye contact. The emotional constipation. The mutual fixation. Pick one.”
“Jesus Christ,” I groaned.
Sue nearly fell over laughing at the nurses’ station.
Abbot actually looked caught off guard for once in his life.
Which was fascinating.
Dana folded her arms. “I trained emergency nurses for twenty years. I can identify unresolved sexual tension from across state lines.”
“Nobody’s unresolved,” I muttered.
Three people looked at me skeptically.
Traitors.
Dana sighed dramatically. “Fine. We’ll revisit whatever this is later. Right now my niece has a concussion because hospital administration thinks panic attacks count as staffing models.”
“There she is,” Sue whispered proudly.
Dana pointed at Abbot before heading toward the desk. “You. Keep an eye on her.”
His eyes flicked toward me automatically.
Already there.
“I am,” he said.
And fuck.
That did something to me.
Something deeply inconvenient.
—
The staff sleep room was dark except for the glow leaking under the doorway from the hallway outside.
I lay on the narrow cot with an ice pack against my temple listening to the muffled sounds of the department beyond the walls.
Monitors.
Overhead pages.
Distant yelling.
Normal night shift soundtrack.
My head hurt.
Not horribly. Just enough to make thinking unpleasant.
Which unfortunately did not stop me from thinking about Jack Abbot.
That was the real medical emergency.
I stared at the ceiling.
The problem wasn’t that he flirted.
Plenty of men flirted.
The problem was that somewhere along the line, it stopped feeling harmless.
Maybe it was the way he always noticed when I was overwhelmed before anyone else did.
Or how he brought me coffee without asking what I drank because he already knew.
Or the fact he trusted me completely in trauma rooms without ever second-guessing me in front of staff.
Or maybe it was tonight.
The look on his face when I got hurt.
I’d seen that expression before from family members in waiting rooms. From husbands during codes. From people realizing very suddenly that someone they loved was fragile.
That was the dangerous part.
Not the flirting.
The fear.
Because nobody looks at someone like that unless they care.
And if Jack Abbot cared about me—
I rolled onto my side with a groan.
Bad idea.
Very bad idea.
ER relationships were disasters waiting to happen. Everyone knew it.
Too much stress. Too much trauma. Too many emotionally damaged people working impossible hours and mistaking adrenaline for intimacy.
But this didn’t feel temporary anymore.
That was the issue.
I thought about the way he’d called me honey without meaning to.
The way his hands shook slightly while stitching my head.
The way he’d looked ready to murder somebody for touching me.
My stomach flipped annoyingly.
“Fuck,” I muttered into the pillow.
The door cracked open a minute later.
Abbot peeked inside quietly.
“There she is.”
I looked up.
And there it was again.
That immediate physical awareness every time he entered a room now.
Absolutely fucking irritating.
“You stalking me, doctor?”
“Checking neuro status.”
“Mm.”
He stepped inside carrying coffee and a turkey sandwich from the vending machine.
Romantic.
“You need food.”
“I need workers’ comp.”
“You also need food.”
I sat up slowly as he handed me the coffee.
Our fingers brushed again.
Still deliberate.
Still impossible to ignore.
“You should be resting,” he said.
“You should be working pretending not to have feelings for me.”
That stopped him cold.
God.
Concussions really did remove self-preservation instincts.
___
By four-thirty in the morning, the emergency department smelled like stale coffee, antiseptic, sweat, and the unmistakable warning scent of somebody about to have a mental breakdown.
Potentially me.
Potentially everyone.
The Pitt after midnight became its own ecosystem. Time stopped behaving normally. People either got weirdly honest or actively delusional.
Sometimes both.
I sat at the charge desk with an ice pack against my temple, trying to ignore the dull pulse behind my stitches while updating the tracking board.
Three psych holds.
Two hallway admits.
One drunk guy loudly insisting he “technically knew karate.”
And Dr. Jack Abbot standing twenty feet away arguing with radiology while looking unfairly attractive for a man who’d been awake for sixteen hours.
Which felt personally offensive.
“You’re staring again,” Sue said.
“I’m literally working.”
“You haven’t updated that tracker in three minutes.”
I looked down.
She was right.
“Mind your business.”
“My business is workplace entertainment.”
“You need hobbies.”
“I have hobbies.” Sue took a sip of cold coffee. “This is one of them.”
Across the department, Abbot finally hung up the phone and rubbed a tired hand over his face. His scrub top sleeves were shoved to his elbows, exposing strong forearms and smeared streaks of dried blood from the trauma earlier.
His eyes lifted automatically.
Found me instantly.
Every fucking time.
It happened so naturally now it almost scared me.
Like he tracked me unconsciously.
His expression shifted slightly when he saw the ice pack still pressed to my head.
Concern.
Immediate.
Personal.
There it was again.
That annoying thing in my chest.
“You are so screwed,” Sue muttered.
“I’m concussed.”
“You’re horny.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I’m serious. You look at him like you wanna climb him in a supply closet.”
“That is an insane thing to say out loud.”
“And yet not inaccurate.”
Before I could threaten her with bodily harm, another voice cut in smoothly from behind us.
“Oh thank God. I thought I was the only one seeing this.”
I groaned immediately.
Dr. Parker Ellis leaned against the counter holding a chart against one hip, dark curls pulled back messily, trauma shears clipped to her scrub pants. She looked irritatingly awake for someone nearing the end of night shift.
And worse—she looked delighted.
“You,” I pointed accusingly, “stay out of this.”
“Absolutely not.” Parker grinned. “This is the most interesting thing to happen all week.”
Sue nodded immediately. “Right?”
Traitors.
Parker looked across the department toward Abbot, who was now reviewing imaging with Whitaker.
“You know he asked where you were three separate times while you were resting?”
“That feels exaggerated.”
“It isn’t,” Parker replied. “At one point he interrupted me mid-sentence to ask if your nausea got worse.”
Heat crawled up my neck immediately.
Sue slapped the desk triumphantly. “THANK you.”
“I was concussed,” I defended weakly.
Parker stared at me.
Then deadpanned: “And he looked one inconvenience away from murdering somebody.”
…Okay. Fair.
Unfortunately fair.
Before I could respond, Abbot started walking toward us carrying two coffees.
Sue physically straightened in her seat like she was preparing for live entertainment.
Parker looked equally invested.
I hated this department.
Abbot stopped beside me and handed over a cup without asking my order because of course he already knew it.
“You eat anything yet?”
Parker made a strangled noise.
Sue looked seconds from cardiac arrest.
“What?” Abbot asked flatly.
“You’re insane,” Parker informed him.
“I bought coffee.”
“Only for her.”
Abbot rolled his eyes and looked back at me. “Headache?”
“Manageable.”
“Vision changes?”
“Only when Parker speaks.”
Abbot’s mouth twitched despite himself.
And there it fucking was again.
That look.
Not amusement exactly.
Affection.
Soft enough most people probably wouldn’t notice it.
Unfortunately I noticed everything now.
Which was becoming a serious problem.
“You should still go home,” Abbot said quietly.
“No.”
“Y/N.”
“I said no.”
“You got hit in the head with a metal bracket.”
“And now I’m building character.”
“You already have enough character.”
“That sounded vaguely insulting.”
“It was.”
Parker watched us both for a long moment before slowly smiling to herself.
“Oh, this is bad.”
“What is?” I asked suspiciously.
She pointed casually between us. “You two stopped flirting recreationally.”
Silence.
Sue immediately turned toward Parker. “THANK YOU.”
Abbot looked annoyed now. “Can everybody in this department stop psychoanalyzing me?”
“No,” Parker replied. “You’re making longing eye contact in a Level One trauma center. We deserve answers.”
“I’m transferring hospitals,” I muttered.
Abbot answered instantly. “No you’re not.”
Again.
Immediate.
Automatic.
The room went quiet for half a second.
Because there it was.
That thing underneath all the jokes.
The thing neither of us had actually admitted yet.
Parker saw it immediately.
Her expression shifted subtly—not teasing now. Observing.
“Oh,” she said softly.
Abbot realized it too late.
His jaw tightened slightly as he looked away first.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Sue looked like she was about to explode from gossip deprivation.
Unfortunately the overhead trauma pager interrupted before she could.
“Trauma team to bay three.”
Everybody moved instantly.
Parker pushed off the desk first. “Playtime’s over.”
Abbot started after her, then paused beside my chair.
“You stay here.”
“I hate when you say that.”
“I know.”
He hesitated for one brief second before reaching down and adjusting the slipping ice pack against my temple.
Such a small thing.
Barely anything.
But his fingers brushed slowly against my hairline near the bandage and suddenly the air felt too tight in my lungs.
His eyes flicked to mine.
Held.
Way too long.
The sexual tension had stopped being subtle hours ago.
Now it sat between us openly. Heavy. Adult. Sharp enough to cut yourself on.
Parker caught the look over Abbot’s shoulder and immediately gagged.
“Oh my God,” she groaned. “If you two start making out in a trauma bay I’m reporting both of you to HR.”
Abbot finally stepped back without taking his eyes off me.
“Rest,” he said quietly.
Then he disappeared toward trauma.
I watched him go.
Again.
Sue stared at me for a long beat before speaking.
“You know he’s in love with you, right?”
I laughed immediately because the alternative was having a fucking crisis.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Mmhm.”
“He flirts with everybody.”
“Not like that.”
___
By six in the morning, the emergency department had crossed from chaos into exhaustion.
That strange final hour before day shift arrived always felt vaguely haunted.
The adrenaline wore off. The fluorescent lights became harsher somehow. Everybody moved slower, spoke quieter, looked older.
Even the patients seemed tired.
I finished updating the last of the overnight holds and handed off a trauma admit to the incoming charge nurse with the kind of numb efficiency that only happened after twelve hours in the ER.
My head still hurt.
Not sharply anymore. Just a deep ache behind the stitches that pulsed every time somebody raised their voice.
Dana had finally gone upstairs twenty minutes ago after threatening three administrators, two security officers, and “possibly the concept of staffing ratios themselves.”
Classic.
The break room was blessedly empty when I pushed inside.
Well.
Almost empty.
Abbot stood near the coffee machine pouring what looked like his sixth cup of the night into a Pitt-branded mug someone had definitely stolen from another department.
He looked up immediately when the door opened.
Of course he did.
“There she is,” he said quietly.
God.
That voice this late in the shift did things to me that probably violated hospital policy.
“You hiding?” I asked.
“Briefly.”
“Smart.”
“You?”
“I’m considering faking my own death before day shift arrives.”
“That’ll just create paperwork.”
“Good point.”
The room settled into comfortable silence for a moment while I leaned against the counter beside him. Close enough that our shoulders brushed lightly.
Neither of us moved away.
Outside the room, the muffled sounds of the department carried through the walls—phones ringing, overhead pages, stretchers rolling over tile.
Inside, it felt strangely still.
Abbot glanced sideways at me. “How’s the head?”
“Still attached.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I’m okay.”
He hummed softly like he didn’t believe me for a second.
Which, fair.
I reached for the coffee pot at the same time he did.
Our hands bumped.
Then stayed there a second too long.
His fingers were warm.
Mine curled slightly before I could stop myself.
Abbot looked down at our hands briefly.
Then at me.
That familiar tension tightened instantly between us again. Low and heavy and impossible to joke away now.
“Careful,” he murmured.
“With coffee?”
“With whatever the hell this is.”
The honesty of it caught me off guard.
No teasing.
No smirk.
Just exhaustion making him less guarded than usual.
I leaned back against the counter slowly. “You mean the thing where you stare at me like I’m your last surviving brain cell?”
His mouth twitched.
“You’re very smug for someone with a concussion.”
“I’m charming under pressure.”
“You’re impossible under pressure.”
“That too.”
He stepped closer without seeming to realize he was doing it.
Or maybe he realized exactly what he was doing.
Hard to tell with him anymore.
The break room suddenly felt much smaller.
I could smell coffee and antiseptic and the faint scent of his cologne underneath the exhaustion. His scrub collar loose at the throat, sleeves pushed up his forearms.
He looked tired.
Human.
Too close.
“You scared me tonight,” he said finally.
My chest tightened unexpectedly.
“I said I was okay.”
“I know.” His eyes held mine. “Didn’t make it easier.”
For one dangerous second neither of us spoke.
The tension had stopped being hypothetical hours ago.
Now it sat openly between us—adult and messy and painfully restrained.
I became abruptly aware of his hand resting beside mine on the counter.
How close he was standing.
How his eyes kept dropping briefly to my mouth before lifting again.
Jesus Christ.
“You know,” I said softly, “most attendings are less emotionally weird with their charge nurses.”
A quiet laugh escaped him.
“Most charge nurses don’t flirt with me while actively bleeding.”
“That’s fair.”
“You called me honey in front of the entire department,” I reminded him.
“That was an accident.”
“Mm.”
“It was.”
“You looked ready to kill somebody.”
“That part wasn’t an accident.”
The air shifted again.
Sharper this time.
My pulse jumped painfully.
Abbot looked at me for a long moment like he was actively arguing with himself internally.
Then his hand lifted slowly toward my temple.
“Can I?”
I nodded before thinking better of it.
His fingers brushed carefully near the edge of the bandage, unbelievably gentle against my skin. The touch sent heat skittering all the way down my spine.
Not sexual exactly.
Worse.
Tender.
That was the dangerous part.
I looked up at him and immediately realized he was too close now.
Close enough I could feel the warmth coming off him.
Close enough that if either of us moved an inch—
His gaze dropped to my mouth again.
Stayed there.
The room went very quiet.
My breath caught before I could stop it.
“Jack,” I said softly.
Something shifted visibly in his expression then. Restraint thinning. Exhaustion making honesty easier than caution.
He leaned in slightly.
Slow enough to stop.
Slow enough that I could’ve stepped back.
I didn’t.
Every nerve ending in my body felt awake suddenly.
The moment stretched tight enough to snap—
The break room door slammed open.
“Oh, good, caffeine—”
Mateo stopped dead.
Abbot jerked backward so fast he nearly hit the counter behind him.
I straightened immediately, grabbing my coffee like it had personally done something wrong.
Silence.
Mateo looked between us once.
Then again.
“…Did I just interrupt some deeply inappropriate workplace tension?”
“No,” Abbot and I answered simultaneously.
Mateo blinked slowly.
“Wow. That was incredibly convincing.”
Abbot cleared his throat roughly and stepped away, suddenly very focused on his coffee cup.
The tips of his ears had gone slightly red.
Which somehow made the situation worse.
“I was checking her bandage,” he said flatly.
Mateo stared.
Then at me.
Then back at Abbot.
“Mmhm.”
Nobody spoke.
The silence became catastrophic immediately.
Finally Mateo sighed heavily. “I’m too tired for whatever the hell this is.”
“Smart,” I muttered.
Abbot rubbed a hand over his face once, visibly irritated with himself now.
Not with me.
With himself.
That felt worse somehow.
He set his untouched coffee down abruptly.
“I should get back out there.”
Mateo made a tiny choking sound trying not to laugh.
Abbot ignored him completely.
His eyes flicked toward me one last time.
Briefly.
Apologetically.
“Y/N,” he said quietly.
I knew immediately what he meant.
Sorry.
For almost crossing the line.
For wanting to.
For not trusting himself to stay in the room another minute.
Something uncomfortable twisted low in my chest.
Before I could answer, he shook his head once like he was chastising himself internally and walked out of the break room without another word.
The door swung shut behind him.
Mateo looked at me.
I looked at Mateo.
He pointed toward the hallway Abbot disappeared down.
“So,” he said carefully, “that man is absolutely in love with you.”
I stared into my coffee for a long moment.
Then muttered:
“Yeah. That’s becoming a problem.”
____
Day shift arrived like a second wave of reality hitting the same broken system.
Doors swung open. New voices filled the halls. Different energy—still tired, but cleaner somehow, less scorched by the night.
It always felt like handing over a war zone to reinforcements who hadn’t yet seen the bodies.
I was still at the charge desk when the first of them walked in.
“Oh wow,” Mel said immediately, eyes locking on my head. “How are you feeling?”
I adjusted the ice pack against my temple with a sigh. “Like I was in an operational disagreement with hospital equipment.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting. I’m beat.”
Behind her, Langdon appeared carrying a chart stack and immediately squinted at me like he was trying to diagnose me on sight.
“Is that sutures?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“On your head?”
“No, Langdon, I’m trying out avant-garde fashion.”
Mel snorted. “She got hit during a restraint situation. Mateo told me.”
“Mateo talks too much,” I said.
Langdon leaned on the counter, still studying me. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“Clinical observation.”
“Still thanks.”
Mel reached out lightly to tilt my chin, inspecting the bandage more closely. “You concussed?”
“Lightly,” I admitted.
“Lightly concussed is still concussed,” she said, already in full doctor mode. “Did you get imaging?”
“Abbot wants a CT. I refused.”
Langdon gave a low whistle. “You told Abbot no?”
“I contain multitudes.”
“That’s terrifying,” Mel muttered.
From down the hall, Robby’s voice cut through the noise before he even fully arrived. “Why does my department look like it went ten rounds with a blender?”
He stepped into view a second later, coffee in hand, scanning the board and immediately locking onto me.
His expression shifted instantly.
“Y/N. What happened?”
“It’s cosmetic,” I said.
“That is not cosmetic.”
Santos followed behind him, already looking mildly entertained. “Let me guess. Psych patient with delusions of being a WWE champion?”
“Close,” I said. “Meth. Oxygen bracket. Bad decisions.”
Mohan walked in last, quieter as usual, eyes flicking over the room taking stock before landing on my head injury. “You okay to run charge?”
“I am literally still running charge,” I said.
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m functional.”
Robby exhaled through his nose, clearly not thrilled but accepting there wasn’t an immediate collapse happening. “Fine. Give me the night.”
“Day,” I corrected automatically.
“Feels like night,” Santos muttered.
“Always does,” Mel said.
We shifted into handoff without ceremony, because that was how it always went. No grand speeches, no clean transitions. Just one exhausted crew handing problems to another exhausted crew and hoping the building stayed upright in between.
I started running them through patients, tapping the board as I spoke.
“Room three, GI bleed. Stabilized overnight, two units, needs repeat CBC in an hour. Room four, COPD exacerbation, BiPAP all night, do not let him convince you he’s ‘fine now,’ he is lying. Room six psych hold, aggressive but contained, no med changes yet.”
Langdon was already writing. Mel was already frowning at staffing gaps. Mohan was already looking three steps ahead like she was mentally rearranging the entire department.
Robby listened quietly, which somehow made it feel heavier.
“Room eight is the MVC from overnight,” I continued. “Extubated in ICU this morning, stable. Room nine is still our meth-induced chaos gremlin. Security’s been warned.”
Santos grinned. “Love a recurring villain.”
“Don’t romanticize it,” I said.
“Too late.”
As I moved down the list, Langdon glanced sideways at me again. “So what actually hit you? Mateo just said ‘metal thing’ like that’s a normal sentence.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Still concerned.”
“It was an oxygen bracket.”
Mel’s face tightened slightly. “Jesus.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve said that like six times,” Mohan noted calmly.
“Because I am.”
Robby’s eyes stayed on me a beat longer than the others. Not dramatic. Just assessing. The kind of look you got from someone who had seen too many “I’m fine”s turn into codes.
“You should’ve gone home,” he said.
“No, I wanted to finish my shift,” I replied.
“Abbot vetoed it,” I added casually.
Langdon looked up from his charting. “Abbot?”
Mel paused mid-note. “Of course he did.”
Santos perked up immediately. “Oh?”
I kept my face neutral. “He made me rest instead.”
Robby gave a small exhale through his nose. “That’s… surprisingly reasonable for him.”
“Don’t compliment him,” I said automatically.
“Why?”
“Because then he’ll start thinking he’s right.”
Langdon leaned back slightly, watching me now with mild curiosity. “He usually is right.”
“Annoyingly,” Mel agreed.
I rolled my eyes. “I hate all of you.”
“Lies,” Santos said. “You thrive on us.”
___
The ambulance bay sat in that weird in-between state after shift change—too quiet to still feel like chaos, too ugly to feel peaceful.
Day shift was inside pretending they hadn’t inherited a mess. Night shift was dissolving into the parking lot like survivors of something they didn’t want to name out loud.
I leaned against the cold brick wall just outside the doors, letting the air hit my face for the first time in twelve hours. My head still ached in that dull, insistent way that made every sound feel slightly too loud.
Dana was still inside wrapping up with administration—translation: threatening someone politely while still managing to sound like she was doing them a favor.
So I had five minutes.
Five sacred, uninterrupted minutes.
I lifted the vape pen absently, more out of habit than anything else, staring out at the half-empty ambulance bay where the world looked normal in a way the ED never did. No alarms. No screaming. No blood. Just wet pavement and a sky that looked like it hadn’t decided what kind of day it wanted to be yet.
“Of course I find you here,” a voice said behind me.
I didn’t turn right away.
“Of course you do.”
Dr. Frank Langdon stepped into view with a coffee in one hand and that familiar expression of mild arrogance mixed with exhaustion that somehow survived every shift in the Pitt. He looked like he’d lost an argument with reality and was still annoyed about it.
His eyes dropped immediately to my head.
“Oh wow,” he said. “They actually let you keep that?”
“It’s fashion,” I said.
“Very post-apocalyptic chic.”
“I aim for a theme.”
He leaned against the opposite wall, studying me. “That’s what happens when you try to fight hospital equipment and lose.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Sure.”
I pointed the vape pen at him. “I was assaulted.”
“By oxygen infrastructure?”
“Violently.”
He snorted. “That’s the most Pitt sentence I’ve heard all week.”
A beat passed.
Then his gaze flicked toward the pen again. “You smoking or just holding it like emotional support?”
“Depends who’s asking.”
“Your attending would probably have an aneurysm.”
“That’s a bold assumption given he almost had one last night anyway.”
That earned me a real laugh out of him.
Langdon shook his head slowly. “Abbott looked like he wanted to skin someone alive when I walked past trauma.”
“That’s his baseline.”
“No,” he said, more thoughtfully. “That was different.”
I glanced at him then.
He was still watching me, but not teasing now.
Observing.
Which was worse.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically.
“Didn’t ask.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
He pushed off the wall and stepped closer, nodding at the pen again. “You gonna hit that or are we just doing symbolic coping today?”
I held it out to him without thinking. “Want it?”
He looked at it.
Then immediately shook his head. “Nope.”
“Wow.”
“I’m a year clean,” he said simply.
That shut me up for half a second.
He didn’t say it dramatically. No performance. No weight to it beyond fact. Just a line in the sand he didn’t feel like stepping over again.
“Shit,” I said after a beat. “Sorry.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be. Just don’t offer me drugs like I’m still the version of me who makes bad decisions on autopilot.”
“Noted.”
A pause.
Then, because he was Langdon, he immediately ruined the seriousness with: “Also Abbot would actually die if he knew you were out here getting high.”
I groaned. “Why is everyone obsessed with what Abbot would do?”
“Because he looks at you like you’re a liability he’s emotionally invested in.”
“That is a deeply unprofessional sentence.”
“And yet,” Langdon said, “accurate.”
I exhaled through my nose, leaning my head back against the brick. “He’s just intense because I got hit in the head.”
“Mmhm.”
“That’s literally it.”
“Sure.”
I shot him a look. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I’m in pain all the time,” he said. “Let me have this.”
That made me laugh despite myself.
He nodded toward the pen again. “So what’s the deal with you and Abbot, anyway?”
“There is no deal.”
“Lies.”
“There is paperwork. And suffering. And mutual annoyance.”
“That’s foreplay in this hospital.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Langdon took a sip of his coffee, then tilted his head slightly. “It’s said he was hovering over you all night.”
“I was concussed.”
“He was hovering before that.”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Unfortunately, I had no immediate defense for that.
Langdon’s expression turned smug in the way only someone who had just watched a pattern click into place could manage. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
Before I could respond, I flicked the vape pen lightly in his direction. “You’re one to talk, by the way.”
His brows lifted. “Oh?”
“Don’t act like I haven’t seen you and Mel.”
That landed.
Perfectly.
He froze for half a second.
Just long enough.
Then recovered fast. “Seen what?”
“Oh my God,” I said. “You’re worse than Abbot.”
“I’m not—”
“You literally change your tone when she walks into a room.”
“That’s called professionalism.”
“No,” I said. “That’s called longing with a license.”
He scoffed, but it came out weaker than intended. “Dr. Melissa King and I have a normal working relationship.”
“Sure.”
“Normal.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I do not—” he paused, visibly recalibrating, “—have whatever weird narrative you’re trying to assign me.”
I smiled sweetly. “You absolutely do.”
He stared at me for a second longer.
Then muttered, “Shut up.”
I grinned. “There it is.”
Silence stretched for a moment, but it wasn’t awkward. Just tired.
The kind of quiet that only existed after too many hours of blood, noise, and adrenaline finally burned itself out.
Langdon glanced back toward the glass doors leading into the ED. “You going back in?”
“I’m waiting on Dana.”
“Ah,” he said. “Your aunt who scares grown men into better documentation practices.”
“She’s a gift.”
“She tried to get security to arrest a vending machine once.”
“That tracks.”
He finished his coffee and tossed the empty cup toward a bin with questionable accuracy.
Then, quieter, he added, “Abbot’ll come find you if you’re out here too long.”
I didn’t look at him. “He already did that once.”
Langdon hummed. “Yeah.”
A pause.
Then he added, almost casually, “Just saying… he doesn’t usually do that for people.”
Something in my chest tightened in a way I didn’t want to examine too closely.
I shrugged like it meant nothing.
____
I was halfway through another hit from the pen when my phone buzzed in my scrub pocket.
DANA.
I sighed before answering. “Please tell me you’re downstairs.”
“Absolutely not,” Dana replied immediately. I could hear papers shuffling and at least one administrator sounding frightened in the background. “I’m still in a meeting.”
“That should be illegal after shift change.”
“It should be illegal for staffing coordinators to have decision-making power, but here we are.”
I snorted quietly.
“How long?”
“Maybe another hour.”
“Dana.”
“I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” A pause. “Can you wait around a little longer?”
I looked out across the gray morning settling over the ambulance bay. My body had officially crossed from tired into shaky. Everything hurt. My head especially.
“Yeah,” I said finally. “I’ll wait.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Dana’s voice softened slightly. “Go sit down somewhere. You look terrible.”
“That’s hereditary.”
“Smartass.”
The line clicked dead.
I shoved the phone back into my pocket and stared at the pen for a second before slipping it away too. Suddenly I felt weirdly guilty about it.
About Langdon.
About the whole conversation.
Jesus Christ.
The doors behind me slid open again.
I turned expecting another nurse.
Instead Abbot walked out adjusting the strap of his bag over one shoulder.
He stopped immediately when he saw me still standing there.
For one second he just looked confused.
Then annoyed.
“What are you still doing here?”
“Hello to you too.”
“Y/N.”
“Dana’s stuck upstairs,” I said. “We carpooled.”
His expression flattened instantly. “And you’re waiting another hour?”
“I don’t really have a choice.”
“You absolutely do.”
“I’m not Ubering home with a concussion.”
“You’re also not standing around outside after a twelve-hour shift bleeding through a bandage.”
“I stopped bleeding hours ago.”
“You know that’s not the point.”
I crossed my arms. “You’re weirdly bossy off shift.”
“I’m normal levels of bossy. You’re just harder to intimidate than residents.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
Abbot stared at me for a long moment before exhaling sharply through his nose.
“I’m taking you home.”
“That’s unnecessary.”
“You need sleep.”
“I can survive an hour.”
“Yeah,” he said dryly. “You can survive almost anything apparently. That doesn’t mean you should.”
There was no teasing in his voice now. Just that same low, tired concern that had been following me around all night.
And God help me, it did something stupid to my chest every single time.
“I don’t wanna inconvenience you,” I muttered.
Abbot actually laughed at that.
A real laugh.
“Y/N, I spent half the night trying not to commit aggravated assault because somebody hit you with hospital equipment. I think we’re past inconvenience.”
Heat crawled immediately up my neck.
“That’s dramatic.”
“You met me. I’m dramatic.”
I hesitated anyway.
Mostly because getting into Jack Abbot’s car felt weirdly intimate in a way I wasn’t emotionally prepared for.
Apparently he noticed.
His expression softened slightly. “Come on.”
And fucking hell.
The way he said it.
Gentle.
Patient.
Like he already knew I was going to say yes.
I sighed heavily. “Fine. But if you murder me, Dana will absolutely find the body.”
“Noted.”
___
Abbot’s car was exactly what I expected somehow.
Clean but lived-in. Faint smell of coffee. Jazz playing quietly through the speakers. A jacket tossed into the backseat beside old charts and medical journals.
There was something unsettling about seeing him outside the hospital.
Not because he looked different.
Because he didn’t.
Still tired. Still sharp-eyed. Still carrying himself like somebody perpetually braced for impact.
But here, in the soft gray light of early morning, he felt less like Dr. Abbot and more like Jack.
Which was significantly more dangerous.
“You always listen to old man music?” I asked as he pulled out of the parking garage.
He glanced sideways at me. “You got hit in the head and suddenly became rude.”
“Suddenly?”
A small smile tugged briefly at his mouth before his attention returned to the road.
The silence that settled after wasn’t awkward.
Just tired.
Comfortable in a way that caught me off guard.
Most people exhausted me after shift. I usually wanted silence. Distance. A shower hot enough to erase the entire night.
But sitting beside Abbot felt strangely easy.
Which was probably the biggest red flag of all.
I leaned my head carefully against the window. “I ran into Langdon outside.”
Abbot hummed softly. “How many inappropriate things did he say?”
“Several.” I hesitated. “He mentioned he’s sober.”
Abbot’s hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel.
“Yeah.”
“I offered him my pen before I knew.” Guilt twisted low in my stomach. “I feel like an asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
“I literally waved weed in a recovering addict’s face.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Still.”
Abbot was quiet for a moment.
The city slid past outside in blurred streaks of wet pavement and early morning traffic.
Finally he spoke.
“Langdon had a rough year.”
Something in his tone made me look over.
Not gossip.
Not judgment.
Protectiveness.
“He told you?”
“Not much.” Abbot shrugged slightly. “Rehab last year. Pills mostly. Some drinking.” A pause. “He’s doing better now.”
I stayed quiet.
Abbot glanced briefly toward me before continuing.
“He’s also a grown man who knows how to say no.”
“Still feels shitty.”
“That means you’re a decent person.”
“I’m annoying, actually.”
“That too.”
I snorted softly.
For a minute only the music filled the car.
Then Abbot spoke again, quieter this time.
“You know the first year I worked emergency medicine, I started drinking too much.”
I turned toward him immediately.
That surprised me.
Abbot kept his eyes on the road, jaw slightly tense like he already regretted saying it aloud.
“It sneaks up on people in this job,” he said. “You work nights long enough, see enough bad shit… eventually your brain stops shutting off correctly.”
The honesty of it hit me hard.
Because Abbot almost never talked about himself.
He listened. Deflected. Flirted. Took care of everyone else.
But he rarely let anyone look directly at him.
“You stopped?” I asked softly.
“Had to.”
The corner of his mouth lifted faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“My ex-wife told me one night I’d started looking through people instead of at them.”
Something tightened painfully in my chest.
He laughed quietly under his breath, like he couldn’t believe he was telling me this.
“I missed our anniversary because I was covering an extra shift,” he continued. “Didn’t even realize until two days later.”
“Jack…”
“She left six months after that.”
The car went quiet again.
Not uncomfortable.
Heavy.
I looked at him differently suddenly.
Not just as the attending everyone respected. Not just the sarcastic flirt who drove me insane.
A man.
A tired, lonely man who had given too much of himself to this job for too long and knew it.
And somehow that made me want him more.
Which felt unfair.
“You know what the worst part is?” he said finally.
“What?”
“I still would’ve picked the shift.”
The raw honesty of it landed somewhere deep inside me.
Because I understood it.
Every ER nurse understood it.
The department became part addiction, part trauma bond, part identity until you couldn’t separate yourself from it anymore.
“You’re not a bad person for that,” I said quietly.
“No?”
“No.” I looked down at my hands. “Just kind of fucked up.”
That finally made him laugh again.
Soft.
Real.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “That sounds about right.”
By the time we pulled up outside my apartment complex, neither of us moved immediately.
The engine idled softly.
Morning light spilled pale across the dashboard.
I should’ve gotten out.
Instead I stayed exactly where I was.
Jack leaned back against the seat, one hand loose on the steering wheel, looking more exhausted now that the shift adrenaline had fully worn off.
There were dark circles beneath his eyes.
Stubble along his jaw.
A tiny scar near his chin I’d never noticed before.
God.
This was bad.
“You should sleep,” he said quietly.
“You too.”
“Probably.”
Neither of us reached for the door.
The tension inside the car felt different now.
Less sharp than before.
More intimate.
Which somehow made it even harder to breathe around.
Abbot looked over at me slowly.
His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth.
There it was again.
That pull.
Heavy enough now neither of us could pretend it didn’t exist.
“You know,” I said softly, “we’re getting dangerously close to having a real conversation.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. It’s upsetting.”
His mouth twitched slightly.
Then his hand lifted toward my face before he seemed to fully think better of it.
But not fast enough.
His fingertips brushed lightly against the edge of the bandage near my temple.
The touch was gentle.
Careful.
And so fucking tender it almost hurt.
“You scared me tonight,” he admitted quietly.
I swallowed hard.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for getting hurt.”
“I’m trying to apologize less in general.”
“Good.”
His hand lingered for one dangerous second longer before dropping away.
The silence stretched.
Charged now.
Adult.
The kind built from exhaustion and mutual restraint and wanting something you probably shouldn’t touch.
My pulse hammered painfully.
Abbot looked at me like he was trying very hard not to make a mistake.
Which unfortunately made me want him to make one even more.
“Y/N,” he said quietly.
Just my name.
But the way he said it—
Jesus Christ.
I think if one of us had moved an inch closer, that would’ve been it.
The word still hung between us.
“Y/N.”
Not a warning. Not a question.
Just my name, like he was trying to keep it from turning into something else.
My chest felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with my concussion.
I should’ve said something smart. Something sarcastic. Something that put the distance back where it belonged.
Instead, I just looked at Abbot.
Really looked at him.
Tired eyes. Stubble he hadn’t bothered shaving. The kind of exhaustion that didn’t come from one shift but from a life built entirely around them. The ER clung to him even out here—like he didn’t know how to exist without it.
Jack.
That thought hit me so hard it almost made me flinch.
“This is a bad idea,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” I whispered back.
Neither of us moved.
That should’ve been the end of it.
It wasn’t.
His gaze dropped to my mouth again. Slower this time. Like he wasn’t even pretending not to anymore.
“You’re concussed,” he said, like he could use it as an anchor.
“I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that like it’s going to make it true.”
A breath left me that sounded too much like a laugh.
“Are you always this annoying when you’re about to make a mistake?” I asked.
That finally broke something in him—just a crack. His mouth twitched, but it didn’t turn into humor. Not really.
“No,” he said. “Usually I have better self-control.”
“Liar.”
That did it.
Whatever restraint he’d been holding onto snapped—not violently, not suddenly, but like something that had been stretched too thin for too long finally gave up.
His hand came up to my face again, slower this time. Not clinical. Not careful in a medical way.
Careful in a different way.
Like I mattered too much for him to get wrong.
“Tell me to stop,” he said.
I didn’t.
My hand grabbed the front of his scrub top instead.
Pulled him in.
And the second our mouths met, everything else disappeared.
The kiss wasn’t gentle.
It wasn’t tentative.
It was twelve hours of tension and too many almost-moments and every look we’d ever pretended didn’t mean anything collapsing all at once.
Abbot made a low sound in his throat and pulled me closer, like he’d been waiting for permission he didn’t trust himself to take.
My back hit the inside of the car door behind me for a second before he shifted us, hand braced near my jaw, kissing me like he was trying not to think too hard about it and failing completely.
I should’ve stopped.
I didn’t.
Instead, I said it against his mouth—quiet, broken, like it slipped out before I could stop it.
“Jack…”
That did something to him.
I felt it immediately—the way he went still for half a second like my voice had rewired something in his brain.
He pulled back just enough to look at me.
Just enough.
“What?” he murmured.
My pulse was loud in my ears.
“I—” I started, then stopped because there wasn’t a smart version of this sentence. There wasn’t a safe one either.
So I didn’t use either.
I pulled him back in again.
Kissed him like I’d already decided I was done pretending.
His hand tightened at my waist immediately, like he’d been waiting for that exact moment to stop holding back entirely.
This time it wasn’t rushed.
It deepened.
Slower.
Heavier.
Like we both suddenly understood this wasn’t just adrenaline or exhaustion or the aftershock of a bad night.
This was something that had been building for a long time and we were just finally admitting it existed.
When we broke apart this time, it wasn’t far.
Not really.
Foreheads nearly touching. Breathing uneven. His hand still at my side like he didn’t trust distance anymore.
“Y/N,” he said again, quieter now.
But it didn’t sound like my name anymore.
It sounded like a problem he didn’t know how to solve.
I swallowed.
“Don’t,” I said softly.
A beat.
His thumb brushed once at my hip—slow, grounding.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Don’t.”
We stayed like that for a second longer, trapped in the space between what we’d just done and what it meant.
Then reality started creeping back in.
The ER.
Dana.
My concussion.
His job.
The consequences neither of us had wanted to think about while it was happening.
He exhaled slowly, like he was forcing himself back into his body.
“This is still a bad idea,” he said again—but it sounded weaker now.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Get inside,” he demanded.
____
The door clicked shut behind us, and the deadbolt slid home with a sound that seemed to echo through the dark apartment.
I barely had time to reach for the light switch.
Jack's hands found mine first.
One palm pressed flat against the door beside my head—the uninjured side, carefully, deliberately—and the other caught my hip, pulling me into him with a force that knocked the air from my lungs.
The keys slipped from my fingers and hit the floor with a clatter neither of us acknowledged.
His mouth found mine.
Hard. Hungry. Like he'd been holding his breath for hours and I was the only thing that could make him remember how to breathe properly again.
I gasped against his lips, and he swallowed the sound like it belonged to him.
"Jack—"
"I know," he muttered, already working his way down my jaw, teeth grazing the sensitive skin just below my ear. "I know, I know."
I should say something. Should push him back, ask what the hell we were doing, remind him we worked together, that I still smelled like antiseptic and exhaustion.
Instead, my fingers curled into the front of his scrub top and pulled him closer.
He made a low sound in his throat—approval, relief, desperation, I couldn't tell—and his thigh pressed between mine, pinning me against the door.
"This is a bad idea," I breathed.
Jack pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes were dark, pupils blown, lips kiss-swollen and parted. He looked wrecked in the dim light filtering through the blinds.
"Yeah," he agreed, voice rough. “Probably."
Then he kissed me again, slower this time. Like he meant it.
His hand came up to cradle the back of my head. The tenderness of it against the desperation made my chest ache.
"Careful," he murmured against my mouth. "Head."
I almost laughed. Almost cried. Instead I kissed him harder, and he groaned, letting me take control for exactly three seconds before his hands slid down to my thighs and hoisted me up.
I wrapped my legs around his waist automatically, my back pressing against the door as he held me there, breathing ragged, forehead resting against mine.
"We should stop," he said quietly.
I could feel his heartbeat through his chest. Fast. Unsteady.
"We should," I agreed.
Neither of us moved.
Jack's thumb traced a slow, deliberate arc along my jaw, tilting my face up toward his. The streetlight filtering through my blinds caught the exhaustion etched into his features—the shadows under his eyes, the tension in his jaw that never quite went away.
But there was something else there too. Something raw and unguarded.
"Shift was hell," he said, almost to himself.
My fingers combed through the hair at the nape of his neck. "It always is."
"Yeah. But tonight..." He trailed off, jaw tightening. "When that guy went after you—"
"Jack."
"When I saw you on the floor—"
"I'm okay." I pressed her palm flat against his cheek, forcing him to meet my eyes. "I'm right here."
He closed his eyes. Breathed. Then he kissed me again, and this time there was nothing careful about it.
His tongue swept into my mouth, hot and demanding, and I moaned against him, nails digging into his shoulders through the fabric of his scrub top. He carried me away from the door, navigating the dark apartment.
The kitchen counter caught my ass as he set me down, his hands already working at the hem of my scrub top, pulling it up and over her head in one smooth motion. The cool air hit my skin and I shivered, but his mouth was on my collarbone a second later, hot and wet, trailing down to the swell of my breasts.
"We're really doing this," I said, voice thin.
Jack looked up at me, lips still against my sternum. "We can stop."
"Will we?"
A pause.
"No.”
The word hung between us, heavy and honest.
I pulled him up by the collar of his shirt and kissed him hard. "Good."
Something in his expression shifted—relief, maybe, or surrender—and then his hands were on my waist, lifting me off the counter, guiding me backward toward the bedroom.
We stumbled through the doorway, a tangle of limbs and fabric and breathless half-laughs that died into moans as his teeth found my lower lip. The back of my knees hit the bed and I fell backward onto the mattress, pulling him down with me.
Jack caught himself on his forearms, bracketing my head carefully, deliberately, his thumbs brushing the hair from my temples as he looked down at me.
"You're sure?"
I reached up and traced the line of his jaw, the slight stubble that had grown in over the course of their twelve-hour shift. "I've never been more sure of anything."
He kissed my forehead. My temple. The spot behind my ear that made ms shiver.
And then he kissed my mouth again, soft and deep and full of all the things we never said out loud, and I let myself sink into it.
Let myself forget about the chaos of the ER, the patients we lost, the long nights that bled into longer days. Let myself exist in the space where it was just us—just Jack's weight above me, his hands sliding down my ribs, his breath hitching when I arched up into him.
"We should stop," he said again, but his voice was wrecked now, and his fingers were already unfastening my bra.
"Probably."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
I sat up just enough to pull his scrub top over his head, tossing it somewhere into the dark. His skin was warm beneath my palms, the muscles in his shoulders tensing as I traced my hands down his chest.
"Jack."
He looked at me.
"I don't want to stop."
His jaw worked. His hands found my hips, thumbs pressing into the sharp jut of bone.
"Me neither."
And when he leaned down to kiss me again—slow, deep, inevitable—neither of us said another word about stopping.
The apartment had gone quiet in that strange way it only does a couple hours after sunrise.
The city outside was starting to wake up—distant traffic, muffled voices somewhere below the window—but inside my bedroom everything felt warm and still and unreal.
Jack lay beside me on top of the blankets, one arm tucked beneath his head, breathing finally slow for the first time since I’d met him.
I don’t think I’d ever seen him relaxed before.
Not really.
Even asleep in trauma rooms between disasters, he always looked braced for impact. Like some part of him expected the next alarm to go off at any second.
Now he just looked tired.
Human.
And dangerously soft around the edges.
I shifted carefully onto my side and immediately winced as my head reminded me I still had a concussion.
Jack’s eyes opened instantly.
“There she is,” he murmured, voice rough with exhaustion.
“You sleep like an ER attending.”
“That sounds insulting.”
“It is.”
A quiet laugh escaped him.
God. I liked that sound way too much.
For a minute neither of us spoke. We just looked at each other in the dim gray light filtering through the curtains, both of us probably realizing this felt bigger than either of us intended it to.
Finally Jack rubbed a hand over his face and sighed.
“I should probably head out in a few hours,” he muttered. “Day shift’s probably drowning already. They’re short staffed.”
“Of course they are.”
“Robby texted me three times already.”
“That man communicates exclusively through stress.”
“True.”
I smiled faintly and pulled the blanket higher around myself.
Jack looked over at me carefully then, some of the humor fading.
“Can I stay?” he asked quietly. “Just for a few hours.”
The question hit me strangely hard.
Not because he asked.
Because he sounded like he genuinely wasn’t sure what the answer would be.
I tried to lighten it before it got too emotional.
“Only if I’m the little spoon.”
Jack blinked once.
Then barked out a tired laugh that made me grin despite myself.
“That’s your condition?”
“Non-negotiable.”
“You’re concussed and difficult.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain attitude.”
“Same thing.”
He shook his head, still smiling faintly, before shifting closer beside me beneath the blankets.
Warmth settled immediately along my back as his arm wrapped loosely around my waist.
And fuck.
That felt dangerously domestic.
“This feels illegal,” I muttered.
“Probably is.”
“You’re an attending.”
“You’re a menace.”
“Fucked me anyways.”
I felt him laugh softly against the back of my shoulder.
The room went quiet again after that, but easier now.
Comfortable.
I could feel exhaustion pulling at both of us finally now that the adrenaline was gone.
Jack’s fingers traced absentmindedly against my arm for a second before he spoke again, quieter this time.
“You scared the hell out of me tonight.”
“You keep saying that.”
I looked down at his hand resting against my stomach.
“Maybe cause I was scared shitless of losing you”
“I know.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
A pause.
Then I added softly, “I didn’t know you cared that much.”
His arm tightened slightly around me.
“Yeah,” he said after a second. “Neither did I.”
That one landed directly in my chest.
I swallowed hard, suddenly very glad he couldn’t fully see my face from behind me.
The silence stretched again, warm and intimate and frighteningly real.
Then, gently, Jack leaned forward and pressed a kiss near my temple—careful of the bandage, careful of me.
The tenderness of it almost hurt worse than the stitches.
“This,” he murmured quietly against my skin, “definitely wasn’t a mistake.”
My heart did something deeply embarrassing.
I covered by muttering, “That’s unfortunate for both of us.”
Jack laughed softly into my hair.
And for the first time in a very long time, I fell asleep feeling safe.
___
By the time I pulled into the employee parking garage that night, my body still felt pleasantly wrecked in ways that had absolutely nothing to do with getting hit in the head.
Which was deeply inconvenient.
I sat in my car for a second staring at the glowing hospital sign through the windshield while trying very hard not to replay the entire morning in my head.
Jack half-asleep behind me in my bed.
His arm around my waist.
The way he’d kissed my temple before leaving for another fucking shift because apparently the man had a pathological inability to stop working even after emotionally compromising himself in my apartment.
My phone buzzed.
DANA:
Don’t die tonight.
Also don’t flirt with attendings at work. People are talking.
I stared at the message.
Then immediately texted back:
YOU CREATED THIS ENVIRONMENT.
Her typing bubble appeared instantly.
DANA:
Fair.
I laughed despite myself and shoved the phone back into my scrub pocket before heading inside through the ambulance bay.
The second the doors opened, I nearly collided with someone coming out.
“Jesus—”
“Fuck—”
Mel grabbed my forearms before either of us dropped our coffees.
We both burst out laughing immediately.
“Strong start,” she muttered.
“Excellent coordination.”
She shook her head, still grinning, then paused suddenly.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
Mel pointed directly at my neck.
And fuck.
I’d forgotten.
My hand flew automatically to the side of my throat where Jack had apparently decided self-control was optional.
Mel’s grin turned absolutely vicious.
“No way.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“That sentence has literally never once been true in human history.”
Heat climbed all the way up my face.
Which unfortunately only confirmed everything.
Mel slapped a hand over her mouth dramatically. “Oh my God. You finally resolved the workplace sexual tension.”
“I hate you.”
“You slept with Abbot.”
“Keep your voice down!”
She laughed harder.
I pointed accusingly at her. “You are enjoying this way too much.”
“Because this is incredible. The entire department has been watching you two stare at each other like emotionally constipated divorcees for months.”
“That feels targeted.”
“It is.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself.
Then stopped.
Because now that we were standing this close under the fluorescent ambulance bay lights, I noticed something.
A mark low on her neck partially hidden beneath her scrub collar.
My eyes narrowed immediately.
“Oh, absolutely the fuck not.”
Mel’s grin vanished.
Too late.
I pointed at her neck triumphantly. “What is THAT?”
Her hand slapped over it instantly. “Nothing.”
“That is a hickey, Melissa.”
“It is not.”
“It absolutely is.”
Now it was my turn to look delighted.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “YOU slept with somebody.”
Mel looked deeply annoyed at being caught.
“Technically,” she muttered, “it was more yelling than sleeping.”
My jaw dropped.
“No fucking way.”
She sighed heavily. “Okay in my defense, it started as an argument.”
“That somehow makes it worse.”
“Does it?”
“Yes!”
I stared at her for another second.
Then realization hit me so hard I almost dropped my coffee.
“…Langdon.”
Mel looked away immediately.
I lost my fucking mind laughing.
“Oh my God. LANGDON?”
“Shut up.”
“You and Frank fucking Langdon?”
Her expression somehow became both defensive and embarrassed simultaneously. “It was a high-stress situation.”
“You made out during a mass casualty?”
“We did not—” she paused. “Okay technically not during.”
“When then?”
Mel looked genuinely offended now. “Do you think I’m incompetent?”
“Yes.”
“Hurtful.”
I crossed my arms. “Where?”
She hesitated.
That told me everything already.
“No,” I said immediately.
Mel groaned. “It wasn’t planned.”
“WHERE?”
“…Supply closet three.”
I physically doubled over laughing.
“The orthopedic one?”
“It was empty!”
“That is somehow less romantic!”
“We were arguing!”
“About what?”
“Honestly?” Mel sighed. “I don’t even remember.”
I wiped tears from my eyes. “Jesus Christ. This hospital is a lawsuit.”
“Tell me about it.”
We stood there for another minute trying to regain composure while ambulances rolled in and out behind us like the universe personally refused to allow healthcare workers normal emotional development.
Finally Mel pointed toward the ambulance bay doors.
“You going in?”
“Unfortunately.”
She looked at me for a second longer, softer now. “You happy?”
The question caught me off guard.
And embarrassingly enough, the answer came easy.
“Yeah,” I admitted quietly.
Mel smiled immediately like she’d been expecting it.
“Good.”
Then she hugged me quickly before stepping backward toward the parking lot.
“Try not to flirt too aggressively in trauma tonight.”
“No promises.”
“Disgusting.”
“Hypocrite.”
“Fair.”
I grinned as she disappeared toward the garage.
Then I took one breath, adjusted my bag over my shoulder, and walked back into the ER.
Chaos hit immediately.
Phones ringing.
Monitors screaming.
Someone yelling for respiratory.
A psych patient threatening divine vengeance near triage.
Normal.
Perfect.
Home.
Sue spotted me first from the nurses’ station. “Look who survived her work-sponsored concussion booty call.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered.
Mateo nearly choked on his coffee laughing.
“Dana tell you he gave me a ride home? Cause nothing happened!” I hissed.
“Dana told nobody anything,” Sue replied proudly. “Your face told everybody everything.”
I covered my eyes briefly with one hand.
Then overhead paging cut through the department.
“Trauma team to room one.”
Everybody moved automatically.
And as I looked toward Trauma One through the glass doors, I saw him.
Jack.
Gloves covered in blood already. Focused. Sharp. Barking orders while a terrified teenage boy cried on the gurney.
Controlled chaos wrapped around him like a second skin.
For a second he didn’t see me.
Then he looked up.
Straight through the noise and movement and fluorescent madness.
Found me instantly.
His expression shifted just slightly beneath the exhaustion.
And then—
That fucking wink.
Small.
Quick.
Completely inappropriate.
My stomach flipped like an idiot.
“Jesus Christ,” Sue muttered beside me. “You two are unbearable.”
Probably.
But as I watched Jack turn immediately back toward the trauma patient, steady and capable and alive in the middle of absolute disaster, I realized something that settled deep in my chest before I could stop it.
I loved this place.
Not because it was healthy.
God knows it wasn’t.
Not because it was easy, because it never would be.
But because somehow, inside all the blood and exhaustion and chaos and terrible fluorescent lighting, people still found each other anyway.
And maybe that was the whole point.