bella! @abbotcodyyy - Tumblr Blog

favorite flower

Pairing: Jack Abbot x reader

Summary: Six years after losing your daughter, a patient reminds you and Jack that grief doesn't disappear. Sometimes it just waits for you to stop running.

Word count: 11k+

Warnings: grief/mourning, child loss, angst with comfort, suicidal thoughts

A/N:

Please mind the warnings. This fic deals with infant loss, grief, depression, and past suicidal thoughts.

Take care of yourselves.♥️

English is not my first language, so I apologize if I made any (grammar) mistakes. Feedback, requests, talks, vents, recommendations or just simple questions are always welcome.

Happy reading xxx

I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site.

The shift had been busy from the moment you walked through the ambulance bay doors that morning, which wasn't unusual for the PTMC.

By seven-thirty the waiting room was already overflowing. By eight there were stretchers parked in sections of the hallway that weren't technically supposed to hold stretchers, nurses negotiating impossible patient assignments, and enough monitor alarms going off at once to create their own kind of soundtrack. Someone was calling for respiratory over the intercom. A paramedic crew rolled through the department with a chest pain. A patient in triage was loudly insisting that his sprained ankle constituted a medical emergency while another complained about the wait time despite having arrived less than fifteen minutes ago.

In other words, it was a normal day.

The department ran on organized chaos, and after enough years working in emergency medicine, you'd stopped noticing most of it. The noise became background. The constant movement became routine. Even the stress settled into something familiar.

You preferred it that way.

Busy meant there wasn't time to think.

It wasn't something you admitted out loud, not even to Jack, but somewhere along the way you'd realized that exhaustion was easier to manage than silence. Silence left room for thoughts. Silence left room for memories. There were parts of your life you had spent years carefully learning how to carry, grief you had folded into neat little boxes and stacked somewhere deep inside yourself where it couldn't interfere with your ability to function. Most days you were successful. Most days you could go entire shifts without thinking about any of it.

The trick was to keep moving.

As long as there was another chart waiting to be reviewed, another patient asking for help, another crisis demanding your attention, your mind stayed where it needed to be. Focus became its own form of self-preservation.

"God, if I have to take care of one more frat boy today, I'm quitting."

Santos practically dropped into one of the empty chairs near the nurses' station, dragging a hand down her face like she'd aged ten years in the last hour.

You didn't bother looking up from your charting.

"I thought you liked that demographic."

"I like making fun of them. That's different."

You could hear the offense in her voice.

"There is nothing I like about boys. Trust me."

A laugh escaped through your nose as you continued scrolling through lab results.

"That's a strong statement."

"It's an informed statement."

Now you looked up.

"Oh?"

Santos pointed dramatically toward the waiting room.

"One more twenty-year-old with alcohol poisoning tells me he's 'built different' and I'm personally escorting him back onto the sidewalk."

"You can't do that."

"A girl can dream."

The conversation settled around you as comfortably as an old habit. One of the things nobody told you when you started working in emergency medicine was how attached you became to the people beside you. You saw each other at your worst. At three in the morning. During trauma activations. During mass casualty incidents. During the moments that broke people and the moments that saved them. Eventually your coworkers stopped feeling like coworkers and started feeling like family.

A deeply dysfunctional family, but family nonetheless.

Santos suddenly straightened in her chair.

"Oh, hey, Huckleberry."

You glanced up just in time to see Whitaker speed-walking through the department, clutching a tablet against his chest. He looked exactly like someone who knew he was already behind schedule and was desperately trying to convince everyone else otherwise.

Santos immediately lifted a chart.

"Could you take this case off me? I'd owe you a big one."

Whitaker stopped so abruptly it was almost impressive. His eyes moved from Santos to the chart and back again, his expression shifting into the same look most people reserved for unexploded explosives.

"Uh..."

"I'm hearing hesitation."

"You should be."

Santos held the chart out farther.

Whitaker actually took a step backward.

"I'm sorry, I can't. Robby's waiting for me in Trauma One."

Santos groaned.

A loud, suffering sort of groan.

"And besides," Whitaker added, already retreating down the hallway, "you already owe me. A lot."

"I'm a generous debtor."

"You're a terrible debtor."

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

Whitaker disappeared around the corner before she could trap him in another conversation.

You turned back to your workstation and worked your way through a handful of charts, signed off on imaging results, answered a question from a nurse about discharge instructions, and approved a medication order without really needing to think about it. The rhythm was familiar enough that your hands often seemed to move ahead of your brain. Years in emergency medicine had a way of doing that. Eventually, after enough shifts, the workflow became muscle memory.

You were halfway through finishing a note when Dana appeared beside your workstation.

You noticed her immediately, not because she said anything, but because Dana had a way of making people notice her. Unlike most of the department, she never seemed rushed. The ER could be falling apart around her, stretchers lining the hallways, nurses getting pulled in six directions at once, residents asking questions over each other, and somehow she'd still move with the same steady confidence. You weren't entirely sure how she did it. Maybe nobody was. But there was a reason everyone looked for Dana when things got bad.

"Need you in Central Fourteen, hun."

You finished typing the sentence you'd been working on before glancing up.

"Sure. What've we got? Anything exciting?"

Dana checked the chart in her hand and snorted.

"Not unless you're excited by paperwork."

"Then definitely not."

"That's what I thought." She glanced back at the chart. "Six-year-old female. Poor thing took a tumble off the monkey bars. Forehead laceration."

You nodded automatically.

"Sounds good."

You pushed back from the workstation and stood, grabbing a pair of gloves from the dispenser mounted on the wall before heading toward Central Fourteen. Cases like this were usually straightforward. A worried parent. A frightened child trying very hard not to look frightened. Maybe a few stitches. Maybe some glue if you got lucky. A quick neurological assessment, discharge instructions, and home before dinner. The kind of patient you saw every day and rarely thought about again once the shift was over. As you made your way down the hallway toward the room, you didn't give the chart another thought. It sounded routine. Ordinary. The sort of case that blended into all the others by the end of the day.

At least, that's what you thought as you pushed open the door to Central Fourteen.

The room smelled faintly of antiseptic, alcohol wipes, and the unmistakable sweetness of grape popsicles.

The little girl sitting on the exam bed looked entirely unimpressed by her circumstances. Dried blood streaked down the side of her forehead, disappearing into blonde hair where a jagged laceration hid just beyond her hairline. Judging by the amount of blood staining her shirt and cheeks, the injury had probably looked much worse when it happened. Head wounds usually did. They bled dramatically, terrified parents, and then ended up requiring little more than a few stitches and a cartoon bandage.

Her mother, however, clearly hadn't gotten that memo.

She sat rigidly beside her daughter, one hand wrapped around the girl's ankle as if letting go might somehow make things worse. Her eyes kept darting to the cut, then to the monitor, then back to the cut again. Every few seconds she opened her mouth as though she wanted to ask another question before deciding against it. The little girl seemed significantly less concerned. If anything, she looked bored, which was usually how these visits went. Parents came into the emergency department imagining worst-case scenarios. Kids came in wondering how quickly they could leave.

You stepped into the room and offered a smile.

"Hi there."

Both of them looked up.

The mother immediately straightened.

The little girl barely moved.

"I'm Dr. Abbot, one of the attendings here. Mind if I take a look?"

The girl's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Am I getting stitches?"

The question came so quickly that you almost laughed.

Straight to business.

You crouched slightly so you were more at her eye level before answering.

"I'm afraid so, sweetie." You gave her an apologetic look.

She groaned dramatically and let her head fall back against the bed.

"Oh, come on."

Her mother sighed. "Honey."

"What?" the girl complained. "Nobody likes stitches."

"That's true."

She immediately pointed at you.

"See? She gets it."

You bit back a smile while her mother shook her head.

"I'm sorry. She's been talking nonstop since we got here."

"I'm not talking right now."

The look her mother gave her was enough to make the girl grin, and that finally earned a genuine laugh from you. The tension that had been hanging over the room since you walked in eased almost immediately. The mother's shoulders relaxed a little, and the little girl looked entirely too pleased with herself for successfully making a doctor laugh. Kids had a way of doing that. No matter how frightened the adults around them were, they somehow found a way to make things lighter.

You stepped closer to the bed and gently parted her hair, getting a better look at the laceration. It was a decent cut and definitely deep enough to need sutures, but otherwise she looked good. No active bleeding. No obvious skull deformity. She was alert, interactive, answering questions appropriately, and arguing with her mother, which was usually one of the most reassuring neurological signs you could ask for in a six-year-old.

"Okay," you said as you examined the wound. "Tell me what happened."

"I fell."

You nodded seriously.

"Excellent explanation."

The little girl beamed.

"I fell off the monkey bars."

"That makes a little more sense."

"I told her not to climb up the outside," her mother added.

"I didn't climb."

"You absolutely climbed."

The girl considered this carefully.

"Okay. Technically I climbed."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

You shook your head, smiling despite yourself as you continued the exam.

"Were you knocked out at all?"

The girl's eyes widened.

"No."

"Any vomiting?"

"Ew. No."

"Headache?"

"A little."

Her mother immediately leaned forward.

"She said it was worse in the waiting room."

The little girl rolled her eyes so dramatically it was almost impressive.

"Moooom."

"What?"

"It's because I hit my head."

"I know, sweetheart."

You couldn't help noticing the way her mother's hand automatically moved to smooth her hair back from her face. The gesture was completely instinctive, the sort of thing parents did without thinking about it. Protective. Familiar. A physical expression of love so ingrained it barely required thought.

"Everything you're telling me sounds reassuring," you said gently. "I don't see any signs that make me worried about a serious head injury. We'll clean the wound, numb the area, put in a few stitches, and make sure you're feeling okay before you head home."

The relief on her mother's face was immediate.

"Oh, thank God."

"Told you," the little girl said proudly.

Her mother laughed weakly and shook her head.

For a moment, the room felt warm. Normal. Familiar. Just another worried parent and another child who was far more concerned about missing recess than getting stitches. It was the sort of interaction you saw every day in emergency medicine, and standing there beside the bed, listening to the little girl chatter while her mother worried enough for both of them, everything felt reassuringly ordinary.

Satisfied, you stepped over to the computer to update the chart. Your fingers moved automatically across the keyboard while your mind stayed focused on the next steps. The wound would need irrigation, local anesthetic, a handful of simple interrupted sutures, and discharge instructions. Routine. The sort of case you saw several times a week and usually forgot before your shift was over.

Then your eyes landed on the demographic information.

Lily Allison.

Age: 6 years.

You stared at the screen.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

As if the words might rearrange themselves if you looked long enough.

Your throat tightened.

The cursor blinked patiently in the corner of the chart while the rest of the emergency department moved around you, utterly unaware that the ground had just shifted beneath your feet.

Lily.

Six years old.

You hadn't heard that name spoken outside your own head in years. Not really. Not beyond the quiet conversations you and Jack occasionally had in the dark when neither of you could sleep. Not beyond birthdays that nobody else remembered and anniversaries that existed only for the two of you. The grief had become private over the years. Carefully folded. Carefully contained. Most people probably assumed it was gone.

Most people were wrong.

The daughter you never brought home still existed in every corner of your life.

She existed in the way you automatically calculated her age every year without meaning to. She existed in the nursery that had sat untouched for months because neither of you could bear to dismantle it. She existed in the tiny hospital bracelet tucked inside a drawer that you had never once considered throwing away. She existed in the silence that settled between you and Jack every year on her birthday. She existed in every version of the future you had imagined and every version that never happened.

And now her name was staring back at you from a patient chart.

Lily.

Six years old.

For a moment, all you could do was stare at the screen. The realization didn't hit like a sudden blow. It settled into you slowly, heavily, the way a storm settles over a landscape, until suddenly there was no part of the sky untouched by it. You'd wondered what she might have looked like at six. Wondered what kind of laugh she would've had. Whether she would've inherited Jack's eyes or your smile. Whether she would've liked soccer or dance lessons or dinosaurs or books.

But six had never felt real before.

Now it did.

Because six wasn't an idea anymore. Six was sitting ten feet away from you on an exam bed with dried blood in her hair and grass stains on her sneakers. Six was arguing with her mother about monkey bars and insisting she didn't need stitches. Six had a teacher she apparently disagreed with on a daily basis. Six had favorite games and best friends and stories about recess.

Six had become a person.

And all at once, the future you and Jack had lost stopped feeling abstract too.

Your daughter should have been six years old.

The thought came quietly, but it cut deeper than anything else.

She should have been talking too much. She should have been asking impossible questions from the back seat of the car and leaving crayons in places crayons had no business being. She should have been bringing home drawings that looked nothing like what they were supposed to be and insisting they belonged on the refrigerator. She should have been losing teeth and scraping knees and complaining about homework. She should have been doing all the ordinary things that parents spent years taking for granted.

Instead, all you had were guesses.

You would never know what her laugh sounded like.

You would never know if she was shy or stubborn or fearless.

You would never know whether she would've loved animals or hated vegetables or driven both you and Jack absolutely insane.

That was the part grief never warned you about.

People talked about losing birthdays and holidays and milestones. They talked about anniversaries and empty nurseries and all the obvious things. Nobody talked about the smaller losses. The ordinary Tuesdays. The school pickup lines. The forgotten lunchboxes. The soccer games you complained about attending while secretly loving every second of them.

Nobody talked about how grief stole an entire lifetime of tiny moments.

And somehow those were the things that hurt the most.

Without realizing it, your gaze drifted back toward the bed. Lily was still talking, still smiling, completely unaware that she'd just cracked open a part of you that had spent years trying to heal. Her mother reached over and smoothed her hair back again, that same unconscious gesture you'd noticed earlier, and the sight nearly undid you.

Because suddenly you weren't jealous of the milestones.

You were jealous of that.

Of the hand automatically reaching out.

Of knowing how your child liked her sandwiches cut.

Of helping with homework.

Of arguing about bedtime.

Of all the thousands of small moments that added up to a life together.

Lily was in the middle of explaining some elaborate disagreement she'd had with a teacher over whether "speed walking aggressively" counted as running. Her mother looked exhausted. You almost smiled.

Almost.

Then reality reasserted itself.

You weren't standing in a nursery six years ago. You weren't sitting at home imagining what might have been. You were standing in an emergency department with a patient who needed you. There was a frightened mother depending on your reassurance and a little girl waiting for her doctor to stop staring at a computer screen.

So you inhaled slowly, forced the grief back behind the walls you'd spent years building, and reminded yourself of the role you had to play.

A patient didn't need a grieving mother.

She needed a doctor.

You returned to the bedside and slipped back into the familiar rhythm of medicine. Lily launched immediately into another story, this one involving recess, and soccer. You nodded at the appropriate moments while reassessing her neurological status, checking her pupils once more and asking follow-up questions. From the outside, nothing had changed. You were still the same attending physician you'd been fifteen minutes ago. Calm. Attentive. Focused.

Inside, it felt as though you were trying to hold back a flood with your bare hands.

Every word out of Lily's mouth seemed to catch on something raw. Not because she was doing anything wrong, but because she was doing everything right. She was exactly what six years old was supposed to look like. Curious. Talkative. Dramatic. Entirely convinced that whatever happened at recess constituted breaking news. She had stories and opinions and little frustrations that would be forgotten by next week but felt enormous today.

She had a life.

You focused on the medicine because medicine made sense. Medicine had steps. Logic. Structure. The laceration was straightforward. No loss of consciousness. No vomiting. No concerning neurological findings. A simple forehead wound that would need irrigation and a few sutures before she went home. You explained the procedure to her mother, reviewed the risks, answered questions, and prepared the supplies while Lily watched with the suspicious concentration of a child trying very hard to pretend she wasn't nervous.

"Will I have a scar?"

You glanced up from the suture tray.

"Maybe a small one."

Instead of looking upset, she seemed delighted.

"My friend Tyler has one."

"Oh yeah?"

"He says it makes him look dangerous."

Despite everything, a smile tugged at your mouth.

The girl grinned back.

For one terrible moment, your mind filled in the blanks it had spent six years trying not to imagine. A little girl with Jack's eyes. Dark curls that refused to behave. A gap-toothed grin. Tiny sneakers kicked off in the hallway. Construction-paper artwork hanging crookedly on the refrigerator because neither of you could bear to throw it away.

The image felt so real it hurt.

Your hand faltered slightly while positioning the needle driver.

Only a fraction of a second.

Years of practice corrected the movement immediately, and nobody noticed. Lily certainly didn't. She was too busy informing her mother about her friend Sally.

But your chest ached.

With every stitch you placed, the grief seemed to sink a little deeper. Not because it was growing, but because it was being disturbed. Like sediment at the bottom of a river, untouched for years until something came along and stirred it up again, clouding everything around it.

By the time you tied the final knot and applied the dressing, you felt hollowed out.

"All done."

Lily blinked. "That's it?"

You smiled despite yourself. "That's it."

Her eyes widened. "I didn't even cry."

"No sweetie," you said softly. "You didn't."

You removed your gloves and turned toward Lily's mother. The rest came automatically. Wound care instructions. Concussion precautions. Watch for worsening headaches, vomiting, confusion, unusual sleepiness, or anything that seemed different from her normal behavior. Her mother listened carefully, nodding along as relief slowly replaced the fear she'd walked into the department carrying.

"So she should be okay?"

You glanced toward Lily, who was already proudly inspecting her bandage. "She should be just fine."

The woman let out a breath that sounded like she'd been holding it for hours. "Oh, thank God."

"Told you," Lily said immediately.

A small laugh escaped her mother before she shook her head and gathered their things. When she looked back at you, her eyes were shining with gratitude.

"Thank you, Dr. Abbot. Really."

"Of course."

The woman thanked you once more before guiding Lily toward the door. Just before leaving, the little girl turned around and waved enthusiastically.

"Bye, Dr. Abbot."

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

You forced yourself to smile.

"Bye, Lily."

The door clicked shut behind them.

For a long moment, you simply stood there staring at it.

The room wasn't silent. Hospitals were never silent.

Life continued exactly as it always did. And yet, the absence left behind by one little girl felt deafening.

You weren't sure how long you stood there staring at the closed door before Dana appeared in the room.

"Hey, hun."

The sound of her voice startled you enough that you turned too quickly. It felt almost guilty, as though she'd caught you doing something you weren't supposed to be doing, even though all you'd done was stand there long after your patient had left. Dana's eyes immediately moved over your face. Not in an obvious way. Not the way most people looked when they were trying to figure out what was wrong. It was quicker than that. More practiced. Years of running an emergency department had taught her how to assess people almost as efficiently as she assessed patients.

She held up the chart in her hand.

"Need you in Trauma Two."

The words were completely ordinary. A normal request on a normal shift. You'd heard her say it dozens of times a day. You nodded immediately, grateful for the excuse to move.

"Okay. Sure. Yeah."

You stepped toward the door and reached for the chart.

Dana didn't hand it over.

That was what made you stop.

When you finally looked up, she was still watching you.

Dana had worked beside you for years. Long enough to know the difference between tired and exhausted, between stressed and overwhelmed. She knew what you looked like after a bad trauma, after a difficult death notification, after one of those shifts that seemed determined to break everyone involved. Whatever she was seeing now clearly didn't fit into any of those categories.

"Everything okay, hun?"

The answer arrived automatically.

"Fine."

You barely thought about it. The word had become instinctive over the years. Fine was easier than explaining. Easier than trying to describe how a six-year-old girl with a playground injury had somehow managed to drag you backward through six years of grief. Easier than admitting that for the last hour it had felt like somebody had reached into your chest and reopened a wound you'd spent years learning how to live around.

Dana didn't look convinced.

Her gaze drifted past you toward the computer still glowing beside the bed. You watched her eyes move across the chart, toward the patient's information at the top of the screen, and saw the exact moment understanding settled over her face.

"Oh."

The single syllable landed harder than it should have.

You hated that word because it meant she understood. It meant someone else could see the connection. It meant this wasn't something you could dismiss as a bad moment or an overreaction. It was real.

For a few seconds neither of you spoke. When Dana looked back at you, there was so much sympathy in her expression that you immediately had to look away. "I didn't even notice that, sweetie," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."

And somehow that was worse than seeing Lily's name on the chart.

It wasn't the memories that threatened to undo you.

It was the kindness.

The quiet understanding in Dana's voice. The fact that she wasn't asking questions or demanding explanations. She simply knew. And kindness had always been dangerous when you were barely holding yourself together, because it made it harder to hide. Harder to keep all the broken pieces contained behind professionalism and routine.

"You need five minutes?"

You shook your head before she even finished speaking.

"No."

The answer came too quickly, too sharp.

Because five minutes meant stopping, and stopping meant thinking. It meant sitting still long enough for everything you'd been holding back all afternoon to finally catch up with you. You knew exactly what would happen if you gave yourself permission to breathe. The carefully constructed walls you'd spent years building would crack, and there were still patients waiting to be seen.

Dana studied you for another moment. You could practically see the argument forming behind her eyes, the concern, the temptation to push a little harder. But Dana understood emergency medicine. She understood the stubbornness of people who spent their lives taking care of everyone except themselves.

Eventually she nodded.

"Okay. Whatever you want."

The words weren't dismissive. They were an offer. A reminder that if you changed your mind, she'd still be there.

Then she handed you the chart and let you go.

So you went to Trauma Two.

And then another room.

And then another.

For the next three hours, you became exactly what the job required you to be. You reviewed labs, returned pages, started IVs, called consultants, explained treatment plans, and helped Robby intubate a patient. You taught a medical student how to work through a differential diagnosis. You reassured nervous family members. You cracked the occasional joke when someone looked frightened enough to need one.

Twice your phone buzzed in your pocket.

You already knew who it was before checking.

Jack.

Both times you silenced it without opening the messages.

Not because you didn't want to talk to him. The truth was exactly the opposite. You wanted to hear his voice so badly it hurt. You wanted him to tell you it was okay. Wanted him to wrap his arms around you and somehow make sense of a day that refused to make sense.

But you knew yourself too well.

The second you heard his voice, everything you were holding together would finally fall apart.

From the outside, you were functioning perfectly.

Inside, every spare second was spent fighting against memories that kept trying to surface. The delivery room. The silence afterward. The impossibly small blanket. Jack's hand wrapped around yours so tightly it hurt. The unbearable weight of walking out of a hospital carrying flowers and paperwork instead of your daughter.

Nobody would have guessed that every quiet moment felt dangerous. Santos certainly wouldn't have spent the afternoon making inappropriate jokes if she'd known what was happening inside your head, and Javadi probably would've stopped peppering you with questions every time she spotted you in the hallway. To everyone else, you looked exactly the same. Competent. Calm. Busy. Just another attending making it through another shift.

The problem was that every time the department gave you even a second to breathe, your mind drifted right back to Central Fourteen.

Back to Lily.

Back to the missing front tooth and the dried blood in her hair. Back to the way she'd smiled after the stitches were done, proud of herself for not crying. Back to her mother's hand automatically reaching out to smooth her hair away from her face.

And beneath those memories waited older ones.

Every time one of those memories surfaced, you shoved it away and focused on the next task in front of you. Review the labs. Call the consultant. Reassess the patient in South Seven. Answer the page. Sign the orders. Do something. Anything. As long as you kept moving, you could stay ahead of it.

For a while, the strategy worked.

Emergency medicine had always rewarded motion. There was always another patient waiting, another problem demanding your attention. Grief struggled to compete with a department that never stopped moving.

But eventually the shift slowed. The waiting room was still full. Patients were still arriving. Nurses were still moving through the hallways with armfuls of supplies and half-finished conversations. The emergency department was still alive.

There was just a little more space between crises.

A little more room to think.

And that was the problem.

Because the moment there was space to think, there was space to feel.

You found yourself walking before you consciously decided where you were going. One minute you were standing at a workstation reviewing a chart, and the next you were moving through the department on instinct. Past the nurses' station.

You didn't stop to question it.

Some part of you had already made the decision.

By the time you pushed open the rooftop door, your chest physically ached from holding everything in. The cool evening air hit your face immediately, carrying the distant sounds of traffic from the streets below.

Normally the roof helped.

Normally it gave you enough distance from the chaos downstairs to breathe again. A few minutes alone, a little fresh air, and then you could go back down and finish the shift.

Not tonight.

Tonight there was nothing left to distract you.

No patients waiting for answers.

No charts demanding signatures.

No monitors alarming.

No pages interrupting your thoughts.

Just silence.

And grief.

For six years, you'd learned how to live around it. You'd learned how to carry it to work, how to laugh despite it, how to build an entire life around an absence that never really left. Most days you were successful. Most days the grief stayed where you'd put it.

But grief was patient.

It didn't disappear just because you got better at avoiding it.

It waited.

And the moment you finally stopped running, it caught up.

By the time Jack walked through the ambulance bay entrance for his night shift, he already felt exhausted.

Not the kind of exhaustion that came from long hours or too many patients. He could handle that. This was older than that. Deeper. Sleep had been a problem for years now, long before the Pitt.

Afghanistan had taken care of whatever normal relationship he might have had with sleep.

The nightmares had changed over the years, but they had never disappeared completely. Some nights, he woke up convinced he could still hear explosions. Other nights, he reached for a leg that wasn't there anymore. Therapy had helped. Time had helped. Experience had helped. But some things never fully leave you.

Losing Lily had added an entirely different category of nightmare.

For a long time, he thought he'd experienced every kind of pain a man could endure. He'd survived a war. Lost friends. Lost his wife. Lost part of himself. Watched relationships fall apart. Spent months rebuilding a life he hadn't been sure he wanted anymore.

None of it came close.

There was something uniquely cruel about losing a child because there was nowhere for the grief to go. It settled inside you and stayed there. It changed the shape of everything around it.

The hardest part hadn't even been his own grief.

It had been watching yours.

Jack still remembered those first months with painful clarity. He remembered waking up in the middle of the night to find your side of the bed empty. Sometimes he'd discover you standing in the nursery doorway, staring into the darkness. Sometimes you were sitting on the floor beside the crib, crying so quietly he almost couldn't hear it.

Other nights were worse.

There were nights when you'd wake up screaming. Nights when he had to shake you awake because you were trapped somewhere inside a dream. Nights when you'd cling to him afterward so tightly it felt like you were afraid he'd disappear too.

Even now, years later, those memories stayed with him.

In fact, they had become their own kind of nightmare.

Because every time he thought about Lily, he thought about you.

About the way your smile had disappeared for months.

About how laughter had become something you had to relearn.

About how every pregnancy announcement from a friend became a battle neither of you discussed afterward.

Therapy had helped eventually. More than either of you wanted to admit at the time.

When your therapist first suggested switching to day shifts so the two of you weren't constantly orbiting the same grief twenty-four hours a day, Jack had thought it was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard.

"You want us to spend less time together?" he'd asked.

"No," she'd replied patiently. "I want you to learn how to exist outside of this loss."

At the time, he'd hated her for saying it.

Looking back, she had probably saved both of you.

The automatic doors slid shut behind him as he entered the department. The familiar sounds of the ER immediately surrounded him.

"Hey."

Dana looked up from the nurses' station.

"Hey."

Jack dropped his bag beside a workstation and glanced around.

"Is Robby gone already?"

"No. He's talking with a patient's family."

Jack nodded absently, but his eyes kept moving through the department.

It wasn't even conscious anymore. After all these years, one of the first things he always did when he came in was look for you. Sometimes he'd catch a glimpse of you halfway down a hallway. Sometimes you'd already be buried in a patient room. Occasionally, you'd be sitting at a computer pretending to chart while actually scrolling through your phone.

Tonight, though, you weren't anywhere.

Dana noticed immediately.

Of course she did.

"Your wife's upstairs."

Jack's gaze snapped back to her.

Something in her voice made his stomach tighten.

It was subtle. Most people probably wouldn't have noticed it. But he'd worked with Dana for too long. He knew her rhythms. Knew the difference between casual information and information she was carefully choosing how to deliver.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

Jack had worked with Dana long enough to know when she was choosing her words carefully, and the hesitation alone was enough to make something tighten in his chest. Dana wasn't someone who danced around bad news. She didn't soften things unless she thought the person standing in front of her genuinely needed it.

"Everything okay?" he asked quietly.

Dana looked down at the chart in her hands before answering. "There was a kid today. Playground fall. Nothing serious."

Jack waited.

Something in her expression told him that wasn't the important part.

"The kid's name was Lily."

The air seemed to leave his lungs.

Dana didn't need to explain why that mattered. She didn't need to remind him of a little girl neither of them had ever gotten to watch grow up. She didn't need to explain why his wife had disappeared to the roof instead of heading home after her shift. Still, after a moment, she added softly, "She was six, Jack."

His jaw tightened immediately.

Six.

His daughter would have been six years old.

The thought arrived with the same brutal certainty it always did, the same way it showed up every birthday, every Christmas, every first day of school season when parents filled social media with photographs of backpacks and oversized smiles. Six years old. Old enough to lose baby teeth. Old enough to read simple books. Old enough to come home from school excited about friends and teachers and playground drama. Old enough to be a person. Not just a memory. Not just a name. A child. A little girl who should have existed.

Jack looked away and rubbed a hand across his jaw, trying to push down the familiar ache rising in his chest. He wasn't thinking about the patient. He wasn't picturing some random six-year-old who had fallen off playground equipment. He was picturing you standing in that room, looking down at that chart, seeing the name, seeing the age, and feeling six years of carefully buried grief suddenly crack open beneath your feet. Because he knew exactly how your mind worked. He knew you would've smiled at the patient, reassured the mother, repaired the laceration, and done everything right. You would've been calm and professional because that's what you always were. And all the while, you would've been imagining the life your daughter never got to have.

"How bad?" he finally asked.

Dana's expression softened immediately. Not because of the patient. Because she knew exactly who he was asking about.

"She made it through the shift, which is honestly a miracle. Poor thing was like a walking ghost."

The answer hurt more than Jack expected because he understood exactly what it meant. It meant you'd spent hours pretending to be okay. You'd smiled at patients, answered pages, reviewed charts, taught students, and handled emergencies while carrying around a grief that had probably been tearing you apart from the inside. You'd done what doctors always did. You'd put everyone else first. You'd survived the shift.

But surviving and being okay had never been the same thing.

Without another word, he turned and headed straight upstairs.

The rooftop door creaked shut behind him.

Jack didn't move immediately. He stood near the entrance for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the fading evening light as he searched the rooftop. It didn't take long to find you.

You were standing at the far end, facing the city.

The skyline stretched endlessly before you, washed in gold and blue from the setting sun. Traffic crawled through the streets below, headlights beginning to flicker on as evening settled over Pittsburgh. The city was alive, moving forward the way it always did.

You weren't.

Your arms were wrapped tightly around yourself, shoulders hunched slightly against the wind. From where he stood, you looked small. Not physically. There was just something about grief that shrank people, made them curl inward around pain that nobody else could see. Jack felt his chest tighten because he knew that posture. He'd seen it before.

For a second, he wasn't standing on a hospital roof. He was standing in the doorway of the nursery six years ago, watching you stare into a crib neither of you could bear to dismantle. You hadn't been crying then either. That was the thing most people never understood. The moments that scared him most weren't the ones when you cried. They were the quiet ones. The moments when you became so still, it was like all the life had drained out of you.

Before Lily, you'd never been quiet.

You'd been loud laughter in grocery store aisles. Terrible singing in the car. Endless conversations that jumped from one subject to another so quickly he could barely keep up. You'd always been moving, always talking, always filling every room you entered with energy. Then one day, that woman disappeared, and Jack spent months wondering if she'd ever come back.

She had, eventually.

Mostly.

But there were still days like this.

You must have heard the rooftop door because your head tilted slightly, acknowledging his presence without actually turning around. You already knew it was him.

Jack shoved his hands into the pockets of his scrub pants and started walking toward you. He didn't rush. After everything you'd survived together, he'd learned that grief couldn't be rushed. Sometimes the best thing he could do was simply show up and wait for you to let him in.

When he was close enough, he looked out at the city beside you and said, "You know, there are easier ways to avoid answering my texts."

The joke was weak, but intentional.

For a few seconds, you didn't respond. Then he heard you let out a small breath.

"I wasn't answering anyone's texts."

The roughness in your voice immediately told him what he needed to know. You'd been crying for a while.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Dana filled me in."

That was all he said. That was all he needed to say.

Jack stopped beside the railing, leaving just enough space between you that it didn't feel suffocating. One of the things grief had taught both of you was that comfort wasn't always touch. Sometimes comfort was simply presence. Knowing somebody was willing to stand beside you in the dark without demanding you come out of it immediately.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

The silence wasn't awkward. It had never been between the two of you. Jack had always loved that about your relationship. He never needed to perform around you. Never needed to fill every quiet moment with conversation. The two of you could stand together without speaking and still understand exactly what the other was feeling.

Eventually, he glanced sideways.

Your eyes were fixed on the horizon, red and swollen from crying. It wasn't the tears that hurt to see. He'd seen you cry before. What hurt was the exhaustion. The defeated look on your face. The expression of someone who had spent hours fighting a battle they couldn't win.

"You should've called me."

The words came out before he could stop them.

You laughed softly, but there wasn't any humor in it.

"Why?"

Jack frowned.

"Because."

You looked at him for the first time.

"Because what?"

"Because I would've come."

The answer was immediate. No hesitation. No uncertainty. As if there had never been any other possible outcome.

Something in your expression cracked at that.

When you finally broke the silence, your voice was so quiet he almost missed it.

"She smiled."

Jack looked over at you.

You laughed softly, shaking your head.

"That's the stupid part. The name hurt. Seeing her age hurt. But I could handle that. I thought I could handle that." Your fingers tightened around your arms. "Then she smiled and I just kept thinking..." You stopped, swallowing hard. "God, our daughter could've smiled like that."

Jack looked away toward the city.

The pain in your voice was familiar. Not because he'd heard those exact words before, but because he'd lived with that same thought for years. There were moments when the grief was manageable, when it sat quietly in the background and let you both function. Then there were moments when something completely ordinary would rip it open again.

A little girl in a grocery store.

A first day of school picture.

A family at a restaurant.

You wiped at your face, frustrated by the tears that refused to stop.

"I just kept looking at her. Every time she talked, every time she rolled her eyes at her mom, every time she laughed, I kept wondering what Lily would've been like."

Your voice cracked around your daughter's name.

"I know she wasn't our daughter. I know that. But I couldn't stop comparing them."

"You don't have to explain that to me."

The answer came immediately.

You looked over at him.

Jack was still staring out at the city, jaw tight, hands shoved into his pockets.

"I've done the same thing."

You blinked.

"What?"

He let out a humorless laugh.

"You think you're the only one?"

For a moment he shook his head, almost embarrassed by the admission.

"There are times I'll see a kid somewhere and immediately start doing the math. Every birthday. Every Christmas. Every school year." He rubbed a hand across his face. "Hell, sometimes I don't even realize I'm doing it."

You stared at him.

Because Jack didn't talk about this.

Not often.

Not unless you dragged it out of him.

The silence stretched between you before he continued.

"I still wonder what she'd look like."

The confession sounded strange coming from him. Vulnerable in a way that felt almost rare.

"I still wonder if she'd have your smile." A small smile appeared briefly at the corner of his mouth. "Or your attitude."

You snorted despite yourself.

"My attitude?"

"Absolutely your attitude."

The smile disappeared as quickly as it came.

"I wonder if she'd like soccer. Or music. Or if she'd hate school." His eyes remained fixed on the horizon. "I wonder if she'd be smart enough to get into trouble and talk her way out of it."

A lump formed in your throat.

Because those weren't hypothetical thoughts.

They were thoughts he'd clearly had before.

Many times.

Thoughts he'd carried by himself.

"I thought I was doing better," you admitted quietly.

Jack finally turned toward you.

"You are."

"It doesn't feel like it."

"No." His voice softened. "It feels like today hurt."

You looked down.

"I spent six years trying not to think about what we missed."

Jack nodded slowly.

"I know."

"And then she walked into that room and suddenly all I could think about was everything our daughter never got."

The words spilled out before you could stop them.

"First grade. Birthday parties. Soccer games. School pictures. Stupid arguments about bedtime. All those little things everyone complains about." Your voice trembled. "We would've loved those things."

Jack's eyes burned.

Because you were right.

You would've.

You would've complained and laughed and argued over homework and worried about report cards. You would've picked her up from school, taken hundreds of pictures, and embarrassed her in front of her friends.

You would've had a daughter.

Instead, all either of you had were imagined versions of a little girl who never got the chance to grow up.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke.

The wind tugged gently at your hair as you stared out at the city below. You closed your eyes for a moment and let the cool air wash over your face. Your chest still hurt. It felt like it had been hurting all day. Maybe longer than that.

Eventually, Jack stepped closer.

Not because he thought he could fix any of it. The two of you had learned that lesson years ago. There were some wounds love couldn't heal and some losses that never became smaller no matter how much time passed. After everything you'd survived together, Jack understood that sometimes the only thing you could offer another person was your presence. A reminder that they weren't carrying the weight alone.

His hand found yours automatically.

The gesture was so familiar neither of you seemed to think about it anymore. Your fingers slipped between his without hesitation, settling into a place they'd been finding for years. There was something painfully comforting about it. Six years later and your body still reached for him whenever things got bad. Six years later and his hand still closed around yours as though it belonged there.

"I miss her too," he said quietly.

The words nearly undid you.

Not because they were profound. They weren't.

There was no attempt to make things better. No reassurance. No careful speech about healing or moving forward. Just the truth. Simple and devastating in a way only truth could be.

I miss her too.

For a moment, neither of you looked at each other. You simply stood there holding hands while tears burned behind your eyes. Jack squeezed your fingers once, and somehow that hurt almost as much as the words.

You stared out at the city for so long that he was beginning to think the conversation was over when a quiet laugh escaped you.

It wasn't really a laugh.

More like a breath that got lost on its way out.

Jack immediately glanced over.

"What?"

You shook your head.

"Nothing."

His eyebrow lifted.

"That's never reassuring."

Despite yourself, the corner of your mouth twitched.

"Why?"

"Because every time somebody says 'nothing,' it's followed by something that's definitely not nothing."

For a second, you almost smiled.

Then the feeling disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.

Your gaze dropped to your joined hands. Jack's thumb was moving absentmindedly across your knuckles, tracing the same small pattern he'd been tracing for years without ever seeming to realize it. The familiarity of it made your chest ache.

Because this was the part nobody saw.

The years afterward.

The thousands of tiny ways the two of you had kept each other alive.

You swallowed hard.

"I never told you something."

The change in your voice was immediate.

Jack straightened slightly.

"What is it?"

The question was gentle, but you could already see concern settling into his expression.

You looked away.

Suddenly the words felt impossible.

They had lived inside you for six years. Six years of therapy, sleepless nights, anniversaries, birthdays, and somehow you'd never said them out loud. Maybe because saying them would make them real. Maybe because part of you still felt ashamed of them.

But after today, after Lily and the missing front tooth and the smile you couldn't stop thinking about, you weren't sure you could keep carrying it by yourself anymore.

"After we lost Lily..." Your voice caught. "Those first few months were bad."

The moment the words left your mouth, Jack's expression changed.

Not because he disagreed.

Because he remembered.

God, he remembered.

There were entire stretches of those months that had blurred together over time, but some memories never faded. The nursery. The sleepless nights. The endless silence that seemed to fill every room of the apartment. The way both of you kept pretending you were okay because the other person looked worse. The way grief had transformed your home into a place neither of you wanted to be but couldn't bear to leave.

You laughed weakly and wiped at your eyes.

"I was sitting in her room one night."

The memory felt painfully clear.

You could still see the moonlight coming through the window. Still remember sitting in the rocking chair staring at a crib that would never be used.

"And I remember thinking..." Your throat tightened. "God, I remember thinking it wasn't fair that she was gone and I was still here."

A tear slipped down your cheek.

You didn't wipe it away.

For a second neither of you moved.

Jack was looking at you now.

Really looking at you.

The way he did when he knew something important was coming and was almost afraid to hear it.

Your voice dropped to a whisper.

"I thought about joining her."

For a moment, Jack didn't react at all.

The silence stretched between you.

You could actually see the impact of the confession settling over him, could see the exact second it landed. It was like watching the air leave his lungs. His face didn't change immediately. He didn't interrupt. Didn't argue. Didn't rush to reassure you.

He just looked at you.

Heartbroken.

As though six years later he'd discovered there was still a piece of your pain he'd never known existed.

"I never had a plan," you said quickly. "I wasn't going to do anything. It wasn't like that. Or maybe it was, I don't know."

Your voice cracked and you looked away, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

"I was just so tired, Jack."

The words felt inadequate. Ridiculous, even. How were you supposed to explain that kind of exhaustion to someone who had lived through it beside you? Every morning began the same way. For a few brief seconds after waking up, there would be peace. Then reality would return. Lily was gone. She was still gone. She was going to stay gone. And you would have to survive another day knowing it.

"I'd wake up and have to remember all over again," you said quietly. "Every single day. There were mornings when I genuinely didn't know how to keep doing it."

Jack didn't respond. He closed his eyes instead, and you knew exactly where he'd gone. Back to that apartment. Back to those months neither of you ever talked about anymore. Months that felt blurred together now except for the parts that didn't. The nursery. The sleepless nights. The sound of the shower running because it was the only place you could cry without feeling watched. The way grief settled over everything until even breathing felt like work.

Neither of you had survived those months gracefully. There was nothing noble about it. The two of you had stumbled through them half-broken, taking turns falling apart and pretending you weren't. Looking back, it felt less like surviving and more like refusing to die.

When Jack finally opened his eyes again, there was so much pain in them that it made your throat tighten.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

The question wasn't angry. If he'd been angry, you would've known what to do with it. Anger could be defended against. Anger had somewhere to go. This sounded heartbroken, and somehow that hurt more.

A shaky laugh escaped you.

"Look at you."

Jack frowned immediately.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you were barely holding yourself together too."

Your eyes dropped to your joined hands.

"I remember those months, Jack. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and checking if you'd slept at all. I remember finding you sitting in the garage for hours because you thought I didn't notice."

His mouth twitched.

"I was being subtle."

"You were absolutely not being subtle."

For a second, something almost resembling a smile passed between you before disappearing again. The memories were already there, crowding the space. The apartment that had become too quiet. The nursery neither of you could bear to touch. The endless cycle of pretending you were okay because the other person looked worse. You trying to protect him from your grief while he tried to protect you from his. Both of you failing. Both of you loving each other enough to keep trying anyway.

"You stopped eating," you continued softly. "You'd sit at the table and push food around your plate for twenty minutes and call it dinner. I'd wake up at three in the morning and find you staring at the ceiling or sitting on the couch in the dark."

Jack looked away.

"You looked at me like I was going to disappear."

The confession slipped out before you could stop it.

His jaw tightened immediately because he knew it was true. There had been mornings when he'd wake up and panic before he even opened his eyes. Mornings when he'd reach across the bed just to make sure you were still there. Times when he'd come home and find you sitting in the nursery and feel overwhelming relief that you were still breathing.

"You were all I had left."

His voice was so quiet it almost disappeared into the wind.

The words stole the air from your lungs.

Jack kept his gaze fixed on the city.

"I lost Lily," he said, his voice cracking around her name. He swallowed hard before continuing. "I lost Lily, and then I watched you disappear too."

The tears came back immediately.

"There were days I didn't recognize you," he admitted. "And I hated myself for thinking that."

You closed your eyes.

Because you remembered her too. The woman who couldn't walk through the baby aisle without crying. The woman who heard a newborn crying in public and immediately had to leave. Sometimes that version of yourself still scared you.

"I didn't know how to help you," Jack said quietly. "Which was a problem, because helping people is kind of the only thing I know how to do."

That finally pulled the smallest smile from you.

"That's your whole personality?"

"Pretty much."

"You couldn't even fix Robby’s dishwasher."

A faint laugh escaped him.

"I still maintain that wasn't my fault."

For a second the heaviness eased, just enough to breathe.

Then Jack looked back at you, and the humor disappeared.

"If you had told me..."

His voice softened.

"If you had told me you were thinking about something like that, I would've stayed."

The tears slipped down your cheeks.

"I know."

"No."

He shook his head immediately.

"I don't think you do."

There was no anger in his voice. Only grief. Regret. Love. The kind of love that had spent six years carrying the same loss and still hadn't learned how to put it down.

"I would've sat on that nursery floor with you every night if I had to. I would've stayed awake. I would've listened. I would've done anything."

And that was what hurt.

Because you believed him.

You always had.

The problem wasn't that you didn't trust him.

It had never been about trust. If anything, that was the problem. You trusted him completely. You trusted him enough to know exactly what losing Lily had done to him, even when he tried to hide it. You remembered the weight he lost, the sleepless nights, the way he stopped laughing for a while. You remembered the way he looked at you during those first months, as though he was constantly checking to make sure you were still there.

"I couldn't do that to you."

Jack frowned.

"What?"

"I couldn't give you one more thing to carry." Your voice broke. "You were already drowning."

The words seemed to surprise him. For a moment he just stared at you, and then a quiet laugh escaped him. There wasn't any humor in it. If anything, it sounded exhausted. Like the truth hurt too much to do anything else.

"That's exactly what I thought about you."

The words settled heavily between you.

For a second neither of you spoke, because suddenly so many memories looked different. All those nights spent lying awake beside each other pretending to be asleep. All the conversations that stopped just short of what you were really feeling. All the moments one of you had walked into a room and found the other crying, only for both of you to immediately insist you were fine. You had spent years believing you were protecting him. He had spent years believing he was protecting you. Somehow, despite loving each other more than anyone else in the world, you'd both ended up carrying parts of your grief alone.

Jack looked away first, out toward the city lights glittering beneath the darkening sky. His jaw tightened and for a moment you thought he wasn't going to say anything else.

Instead he swallowed hard and asked quietly, "You know what kept me here?"

You blinked.

"What?"

A humorless laugh escaped him as he rubbed a hand across his jaw.

"You."

The answer hit so hard you almost thought you'd misheard him.

Jack kept staring at the city.

"I wasn't staying alive for me back then."

His voice sounded different now. Raw. Stripped of all the things he usually hid behind. You had known Jack through some of the worst moments of his life. You had seen him after Afghanistan. Seen him after surgeries and physical therapy and nightmares that woke him in the middle of the night. You had watched him survive things that would've broken most people.

You couldn't remember the last time he sounded this vulnerable.

"There were days I didn't want to get out of bed," he admitted quietly. "Days when I couldn't think past the next hour. I wasn't doing any of it because I wanted to. I wasn't doing it because I thought things would get better."

He paused, staring out at the skyline.

"I was doing it because of you."

Your throat tightened painfully.

Jack shook his head, almost like he was embarrassed by the admission.

"I knew what losing her was doing to you. I saw it every day. I saw you stop sleeping. I saw you walk around our apartment looking like a ghost." His voice cracked. "And every time I thought about giving up, every time things got bad enough that I just wanted everything to stop, all I could think was that if I left too..."

He stopped.

For a second he couldn't finish.

"...you'd be alone."

The words nearly shattered you.

Jack looked down, blinking hard.

"And that scared me more than anything."

The confession settled between you with a weight that seemed to press against your chest. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't some grand declaration. If anything, it was devastating because of how simple it was. After everything that had happened, after all the pain and anger and grief, the thing that had kept him here was the same thing that had kept you here.

Each other.

You stared at him as memories rearranged themselves inside your head. Every meal he'd forced himself to eat. Every morning he'd gotten out of bed when neither of you wanted to. Every phone call. Every silent drive. Every night he'd sat beside you without saying a word because there weren't any words that could make it better. You had always thought he was being strong for you. It had never occurred to you that he was hanging on just as desperately.

Jack finally turned toward you.

His eyes were red.

There were tears sitting there now, and for once he wasn't trying to hide them.

"Lily is gone."

The words hurt.

They would always hurt.

Nothing was ever going to change that. Not time. Not therapy. Not surviving. There would always be a part of both of you that ached when her name came up. There would always be birthdays and anniversaries and random moments in grocery stores that knocked the air out of your lungs.

But Jack looked at you anyway.

"But you aren't."

A tear slid down his cheek.

He didn't wipe it away.

"And I'm really damn grateful for that."

That was what finally broke you.

Not because you suddenly missed Lily more than you had five minutes ago. Not because the grief was any worse. But because after six years, you finally understood something neither of you had ever said out loud. You had spent all this time believing you survived for him. Believing every impossible day had been endured because you couldn't leave him behind.

And all along, he'd been doing exactly the same thing.

The sob escaped before you could stop it.

Jack didn't try to say anything else. There wasn't anything left to say. Instead, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around you, and you went immediately. His arms tightened around you the second you buried your face against his shoulder, holding you so tightly it almost hurt. For a long time neither of you moved.

Up here on the roof, there was only the two of you.

Two people who had spent six years carrying the same loss.

Two people who had spent six years keeping each other alive.

And the daughter you would spend the rest of your lives missing.

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