my tears ricochet @forever--darling - Tumblr Blog

I am sorry I left, but it was for the best - jack abbot

summary: you thought surgery would give you distance. distance from the chaos of the emergency department. distance from the memories. distance from jack abbot, your old attending, your mentor--the man who had silently in all those years working together became the keeper of your heart. the man who you left behind with no explanation, but a surgical fellowship application slipped into his locker one day after shift. ten months later, when a fourth of july trauma brings you back to the pitt, one devastating shift forces you to face the truth: you never really left either of them behind and jack abbot still held your heart in the palm of his hand.

pairings: jack abbot x f!surgeonreader

word count: 8.4k (feel like this could be shit)

warnings/notes: angst, mention of unrequited feelings?, age!gap, power dynamics, canon-typical medical trauma, graphic medical procedures (possibly inaccurate), mention of depression & grief, blood, gore, patient death, mass casualty incident, mention of burnout, slow burn, mentor/colleague to lovers (although never quite specified), cursing, reader being in love with her boss (sigh alas here we go again), more medical procedure and stolen glances than anything, no use of yn

It was the Fourth of July—and once again you were where you always were during the holiday. Working. The PTMC's surgical floor was dim, the lights flickering at the nurse’s station as the heat from outside sucked at the backup generators. The board outside the operating rooms still glowed with names and procedure times, names cycling and recycling, getting bumped, moved and pushed back as the chaos of the holiday took over the floor’s typical steadiness. Somewhere behind the double doors, a pulse lavage hummed. An overhead page crackled through the speakers, muffled enough that no one at the nurses’ station bothered looking up.

You commandeered the broken swivel chair tucked into the corner, the monitor blinking every few seconds. An earbud tucked loosely in one ear, quiet enough to not overtake the sound of your pager, but loud enough to drown out the constant drone of ventilation and printers.

The exhaustion was clinging to the back of your eyes, in a way you hadn’t felt during a double shift since you were a resident and still working down in the ED—but something about this one was relentless. A bottle rocket costing a twelve-year-old two of his fingers. A SWAT member leaving a trail of blood from the hallway to the OR, barely having made it in the field. A misdiagnosed ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm that had you tied up in the OR for almost three hours only to leave you with a dead patient, a medical student on the verge of tears, and a splash of blood sunken into your sneakers.

Fifteen hours in, and you still had the whole night shift to go—not knowing yet if the worst had come or passed, especially considering Garcia hadn’t clocked out yet to leave you with the rest of the ED’s stragglers.

“You going to eat that or just stare at it all night?”

You glanced up, turning down the meditation music in your ear by one notch, as Linda the head nurse on the floor for the night shift appeared, rounding the station, a stack of printed transfer packets and downtime charting forms balanced against her hip. Evidence that the computers and tablet charts were still struggling to get caught up. The risk of a cyberattack and the redistribution of Westbridges patients was the cherry on top of an already hellish shift—creating a string of miscommunciation and lost charts when it came from transferring patients between the floors, only adding to the already irritable and annoyed staff.

“Still deciding. Anything show up in the break room in the last…” your voice trailed off as you glanced at the time on the bottom of the monitor. “Three hours.”

She chuckled, lips curling near the edges softly, similar to how your mother used to, and shook her head. “Afraid that’s your best bet. Unless you want that takeout container that beens in there a few weeks. No one’s claimed it.”

“The one with peas in it?” you asked, nose already wrinkling as you thought about the slime forming near the edges of the container. “Hasn’t anyone tested whether it’s become radioactive?”

“Not volunteering.” Linda shot back, one eyebrow lifting.

“Me either. But if I need a free out at some point, I guess food poisoning isn’t a horrible way to go.”

She was shaking her head again as you peeled back the wrapper of the protein bar you’d convinced yourself was going to be good when you bought the box the week before.

“It’s not even been sixteen hours,” Garcia said, appearing from the hall, scrub cap still tied in place and a pair of gloves stuffed into the pocket of her scrub jacket. The fatigue around her eyes mirrored your own after a day that refused to end. “Already looking for an excuse to tap out? You’re getting soft.”

“I am not,” you argued around a bite of the granola bar.

Garcia hummed, glancing at the OR board. “I’ve seen interns last longer.”

“Wow, never a dull moment with you huh, Garcia?”

“And yet, you chose me over Robinavitch and GI Joe—”

You stiffened and shot her an unamused look over the computer monitor as Linda tried to act like she wasn’t eavesdropping.

“That has nothing to do…” your voice softened and trailed off. “I chose surgery over the ED.”

She hummed, not looking up from the paper labs in front of her. “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

Rolling your eyes, you broke the bar in half, finally surrendering to not only Garcia’s dry attitude, but the hunger that was pulling at your insides. It was either this or another cup of burnt coffee. But as the second bite barely made it past your teeth—the desk phone rang, peeling through the silent air loud enough that all three of you froze.

Linda sighed and reached across the counter to grab it. “OR floor.”

Chewing softly, you shared a look with Garcia as Linda listened, trying to gauge the look on her face.

“Mhm… How far out?... Alright, I’ll send someone down.”

Garcia’s expression shifted before Linda even spoke, having heard that tone enough times today alone. Linda pulled the phone from her ear then, covering the receiver with her hand.

“Trauma’s asking for an surgery consult.” She looked between the two of you. “MVC. High-speed rollover. One dead at the scene. Driver’s hypotensive despite blood. FAST positive in the field.”

Garcia didn’t even pretend to consider it as she stepped back from the nurses station, jerking her thumb toward the double doors behind her. “Don’t look at me.”

“Seriously?” you asked.

“I’ve got a bowel that’s been waiting forty fucking minutes for me to finish sewing it back together.”

She pointed at you then. “All you, Fellow. Try not to fuck it up and bring me back more work.”

You scoffed lightly, throwing the protein bar down onto the counter with a soft thunk. Linda relayed that you’d be down in a few minutes before hanging up. Pulling the earbud free, you stuffed your phone in your pocket and pushed away from the nurses’s station.

“Not like I am going to be taking care of the whole floor when she decides to finally clock out,” you grumbled, meeting Linda’s sheepish smile. One that meant good luck.

The elevator was taking too long, just long enough to send you barrelling down the stairs, the smell of damp cement and cigarette smoke sticking to the inside of your nose as you shoved a few pairs of gloves into your scrub pockets. A bead of sweat trailed down the side of your face, the metal railing sliding through your hand merely as you rounded each floor, soft pants falling from your dry lips.

As you made it to the ground floor, the noise of the ED only got closer, finally coming to a full blast when you pushed through the door and crossed the linoleum boundary that separated your current job with past one. On the OR floor, it always felt insulated, contained behind locked doors and badge readers. Every moment up there was deliberate. Planned. Down here, the hospital spilled over itself.

A paramedic was shouting a report over the squeal of stretcher wheels. Someone laughed too loudly at the charge desk while an overhead page competed with three monitors alarming at once. Patients lined the hallways in beds, some asleep, others trying to catch your eye, desparate to be seen and moved along within the system. The whiteboard with room assignments still stood in the middle of the room with doctors and medical students analoging all the paper charts into the updated system.

Down here, it was louder. Messier. Less controllable.

Smelled more like blood than antiseptic.

But familiar.

Drifting through the room, sneakers squeaking, you managed to catch Dana’s eye as she stood behind the charge station, red phone pressed to her ear—the fifteen hour day wearing in the circles under her eyes and the lack of spark she had after so much time dealing with everyone else’s shit.

Still getting used to you in the dark scrubs, she did a double take. “Trauma room 1.”

As you stepped into the room, the fluorescent lights were almost blinding, washing everything in that sterile white that somehow made blood look even darker than it was. The room was already full. Respiratory stood at the head of the bed squeezing the bag valve mask while Langdon checked the endotracheal tube. A nurse primed blood tubing at the left rail as another cut through denim with trauma sheers. Mel stood opposite of Langdon, already checking for bruising, scrapes, silently analoging what meds might need to be pushed.

Robby waited near the foot of the bed, hands lifted just enough to organize the movement around him rather than add to it. He barely even looked up as you stepped through.

“Ah, our fellow’s back. Garcia finally get tired of looking at us?”

Your mouth twitched into a soft smile as you snapped on a pair of gloves, automatically drifting towards the right side of the bed to take in the rest of the patient. Facial trauma. Deep bruising across the chest where the seatbelt had caught him. Abdomen already swelling beneath the torn remains of his shirt.

“Sends her regrets. Had a date with a perforated bowel.”

“Figured,” he said, meeting your stare for only a second before focusing back onto the patient.

“Don’t act lke you don’t prefer me anyway,” you teased and that was enough to get the corner of his mouth to raise. Not a full smile but it was the closest thing to it out of Robby these days.

Then he was moving. “Alright. Transfer on my count.”

Settling in next to Langdon, you found a section of the board near the patient’s head, feeling the heat of shoulders pressed against your own on either side.

“One…two…three.”

Everyone lifted in tandom and the backboard scraped as it slid the patient onto the trauam stretcher.

“Roll.”

“One… two…three.”

The room shifted again as hands moved without a second thought. C-spine stabilized. The board disappeared, hands replacing it almost instantly—checking the back for penetrating wounds, palpating the spine, changing soaked linens before anyone had to ask.

“Surprised you’re still here,” you said, glancing back over at Robby.

You’d heard from Dana earlier that morning when you came down for a consultation that he was leaving for a three-month sabbatical. It was the kind of thing you would’ve known sooner if you still worked in the ED, but the whispers and gossip got to you on the surgery floor eventually.

The ones from the shift alone that day were a lot.

Robby riding in on his motorcycle without a helmet.

Robby yelling at Mohan in the hallway over personal issues and picking fights with Dana. The man even edged the line of punching an ICE officer.

You weren’t sure what you were expecting when you saw him again all these hours later, but playful banter and jokes was not one of them.

He shrugged. “Been trying to leave.”

“You’ve been trying to leave for twenty years.”

Langdon chuckled under his breath but didn’t look up. The two of them in the same room together working on the same patient didn’t feel real—enough that you were tempted to ask Princess or Perlah to twist your arm. But Langdon being able to laugh without Robby glaring at him from across the room was just the cherry on top.

“Monitor,” Mel called out, shifting slightly to make room for you.

You reached for the leads, falling into the rhythm before you even realized you were doing it. It had been ten months, where you were no longer a resident in the ED. Ten months of only fleeting moments of you falling back into old habits whenever you were plucked from the comfortability of the OR floor.

But standing there, shoulder pressed into Langdon’s, listening to Robby spout out orders and vitals, things almost felt normal again. “Pressure?”

“Eight-four systolic,” respiratory replied. “Heart rate one-forty. Sat ninety-two.”

Mel moved towards the top of the stretcher, fingers already pulling back one of the patient’s eyelids. “Left pupil sluggish. Should we order a CT?”

“Assess the rest of the patient first. Sluggish. Not blown,” you explained, shifting towards the ET tube at the same time as Langdon.

Your hands overtook his as you adjusted the tube slightly. “Tube’s still good.”

“Careful. You don’t work down here anymore.”

At the sound of Langdon’s voice, of that familiar quip to him that you hadn’t seen at all since he left, not once in all the times you had been down in the ED over the course of the day, you almost smiled. You had been close with Langdon before he left and you decided to switch—the banter and competitiveness always natural between the two of you, both on and off shift.

“Wow,” you mumbled out as you checked the patient’s abdomen while Princess secured another IV. “When did I miss golden boy getting his spark back? Or is that just the exhaustion finally settling in? Weren’t quite this chipper earlier.”

His mouth pulled into a grin. “Baby, I am just getting started. Better watch yourself down here. Not playing on the same team anymore.”

You shook your head, palpating the patient’s pelvis. Stable.

“Just like that, huh? After working all of residency together?”

Langdon scoffed. “Yeah, just like that. You should know that after you decided to ditch us to go hack it with Edwina Scissorhands.”

“Sounds like someone’s jealous,” you chuckled, leaning closer as you both meticulously worked. “You miss me, Langdon?”

He didn’t get to reply though as the room changed, altering in a way that it felt like all the air was sucked out just from the split sound of the monitor. Loud enough to squash the banter and replace it with anxiety simultaneously.

Langdon shifted next to you, leaning over the tube. “He’s not moving air.”

Mel grabbed the bag and squeezed.

But there was nothing.

“Check the tube,” Robby ordered.

Respiratory disconnected and looked. “Tube’s still in.”

Palpating the abdomen again, just over the bruising, it was rigid, more so than it was before. Bleeding internally. You swore under your breath as you glanced up at the monitor. “Pressure’s seventy systolic.”

Robby stepped closer, his shoulder pressing into your back to get a better look. It felt scalding to you then. “What’s his airway?”

Everyone looked up at once, and for a moment it felt like time slowed as the white sterile lights illuminated the tube, the facial trauma was far worse than it looked. Red bloomed all at once in sticky streaks as blood quickly filled the mouth.

“Fuck,” Langdon cursed, taking the suction from another nurse. “Suctioning.”

Everyone else shifted into damage control. Mel squeezed the bag, trying to get the lungs to inflate. Robby slipped in, trying to adjust the ET tube past the blockage.

“If we pull that tube, there’s no getting it back in with all that blood,” you said, meeting Robby’s eyes through the speckles of blood that coated his glasses.

“I know. I know. Shit,” he mumbled, catching the eye of an ER tech near the edge of the bed. “Get Abbot, going to need a second pair of hands here.”

Abbot. Fuck.

The name alone had your senses blurring—the sound of it dropping like a pin—a disruption to you for a second, maybe more, enough that your hands stalled. The gurgling of the suction was the only thing that still registered in your ears. The only thing other than his name.

Robby was looking at you as he said it, and from the pull of his eyes, it felt like you sunk back into your body—your thoughts, how the patient felt under a blue latex touch. You blinked, suddenly away from that you that used to be. The doe-eyed ED resident who once thought she’d commit herself to this place and to the messiness of it all for the rest of her career, just because of the man who owned that name.

Outside a pop followed by a sizzle overshadowed the beeping, enough to get a jump out of a few people. The fireworks began, sounding too close for comfort as it softened the sound of your heart in your ears.

“Can’t visualize,” Langdon yelled, words landing heavier amongst all the noise.

Mel squeezed the bag once more, but there was still nothing. No rise. No chest movement.

“Sat’s sixty eight.”

You moved before you could stop yourself, slipping behind Robby toward the head of the bed. “Langdon.”

“I know.”

“No, move,” you argued, stepping in as he continued to suction.

His eyes flickered to you, and for half a second, those old ways settled between the two of you. But then the patient’s stats dropped again. Langdon sighed and moved in defeat and you quickly replaced him.

“Blown airway,” you announced, adjusting the suction as you tried to clear it.

Robby looked at the monitor. “Obstruction?”

You were quiet then, chewing on your bottom lip, suctioning until you could see the chords but as quickly as they were there, they were gone, swallowed by the swelling and the blood.

“Fuck! Can’t clear it.”

The sound of the door opening was hollow—the air in the room shifting with it—the air in you shifting. You couldn’t look up. You wouldn’t. But it didn’t matter. Not when you could still feel him, hovering and circling with a second nature that only came from working in this place for so long.

You stiffened, your pulse quickening in your ears as your senses recognized him before your eyes ever would.

And as Jack Abbot stepped inot the threshold of chaos he would always prefer over the kind that filled his own mind, he took it all in—the spiraling doctors, the thick silence that was overshadowed by the sounds of a trauma room on a typical day at any typical hour. He didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to, instead favoring a quiet composure that he had when assessing any situation.

It was the same composure he had earlier in the day as he stepped through those ED doors, SWAT vest stuck to his body a welt bruised along his shoulder from a bullet graze. That’s what separated him from everyone else. The looking, the composure, and yet he’d felt it unravel as quickly as he had reeled it in.

He’d only left for a few hours to sleep, trying to prepare his body for a night of hell as the holiday continued to spiral further into firework accidents and drunk barbecue fights. But he didn’t think anything could ever prepare him for seeing you in his trauma room in those dark navy scrubs.

Clearing his throat, he glanced up towards the monitor. “Talk to me!”

Robby didn’t waste a second. “High-speed rollover. Difficult airway in the field. Tube placed, now losing ventilation. Saturations dropping despite bagging. Unable to clear obstruction.”

Abbot stepped closer, seeing where he could slip in to help. “Attempts?”

“Two suction attempts. Blood keeps coming back. Can’t get a good seal. Tube confirmed,” Langdon continued after a moment where you refused to.

The monitor alarmed again.

“Stat’s sixty four,” Mel called.

“Pressure?” Abbot asked.

“Fifty-eight systolic.”

Abbot’s eyes moved back over the patient, where everyone stood, but then his eyes found yours. It was the first time you looked at him since he stepped into the room—the first time you had looked at him in weeks, fuck maybe even months.

And damn did your chest feel tight as hell. It somehow cleaving its way under your skin and into your veins. They looked hazel under the flourescents, piercing and wide as he stared expectantly at you. It was no different than before—when you were his resident, before you took the fellowship.

And for a brief moment, he had you in a standstill because both of you were there and it felt normal for the first time in nearly a year. Like nothing had changed, like you never left, and it was just another night in the PTMC ED. Another night where he looked at you and you knew exactly what he was thinking during a case—where you moved and breathed in sync, falling into a tandem that took three years to forge.

Three years of Jack Abbot knowing you better than you even knew yourself.

“You thinking cric?” he asked.

You nodded, letting yourself sink inot his stare, his attention, everything that was Jack Abbot filling your chest and your blood as he stood just across the table. “Yes.”

“No.” Langdon voiced.

Your eyes snapped away from Abbot to glare back at Langdon. “No?”

“It’s my patient and this is ED territory.”

“And?” You challenged, feeling heat rise up in your chest at the fact that this was no longer playful banter but him actively questioning you.

You? As if he hadn’t been the one gone for ten months.

“I’m an attending, Langdon. Which means I outrank you.”

A laugh almost escaped someone, but they pulled it back in.

“Fellow,” he corrected. “And a surgical one. You gave up your spot in ED the first chance you got.”

You stepped closer. “Surgery or not, I’ve done six crics in the last year. How many have you done?”

Langdon stared and then blinked, something about that comment hitting him right where it hurts as if he wasn’t asking for it. “Of course you have.”

“You asked.”

“I didn’t ask—”

You interrupted him, “Then stop underestimating me.”

“How long since you lost the airway?” Abbot cut through the both of you, chewing on his bottom lip to withhold the smirk he so badly wanted to slip out. It seemed in your time up with surgery, you’d gotten more bite to you—no doubt Garcia’s doing.

“Two minutes,” Robby answered.

Abbot nodded, eyes flickering down to the bruising on the chest. Then he was looking back up at the resident standing to the left of you. “Dr. King.”

Her eyes snapped up.

“Chest.”

She shifted then, moving her stethoscope. First the right side and then the left, her brows furrowing. “Not bilateral anymore.”

Robby looked over. “Which side?”

“Left.”

“Pressure’s now forty systolic.” Princess’s voice broke through the chorus of the rest and suddenly, time was becoming of the essence.

Things were quickly spiraling with the patient, with Jack being in the same room as you, and you needed to get it back under control.

You were already asking another nurse for a scalpel as Abbot migrated towards the left side of the chest, your body more aware of him than you thought it would be.

“Alright, we gotta move. He’s losing both,” he announced.

Robby nodded, falling into step next to Jack, naturally like a dance they’d been doing for over two decades. “I’ll take chest.”

Abbot winked and pointed. “You and me, brother.”

Then he was looking back at you and Langdon, the airway, and the scalpel pinched between yours fingers. He wasn't your attending anymore, hadn’t been for almost a year and yet you were still waiting for his go-ahead as if you needed it. Falling back into old habits was easier than you realized.

“You two,” he said.

“Seriously?” Langdon asked, blinking.

Abbot raised an eyebrow. “You want to debate while he’s dying? Or should I page a grown up to step in?”

He commanded the room similarly to how he did in the field, in his time in the service, those nights that he fought with you when he found that fellow application slipped into his locker.

Silence fell then, the tone rippling across your nerves.

“No? Good.”

Everything else became numb to you then, the exhaustion out weighing the adrenaline despite having eight hours to go in your shift—despite having Jack Abbot stood next to you and looking at you the way that he was. A haze fell over you, the scalpel the only thing you could register under your pointer finger.

The room quickly fell back into the rhythm that Robby and Abbot led; gathering bags of blood, filling the cooler, having gauze at the ready, while someone else called the OR to see when and if you could bring him up. With Abbot and Robby in position, Jack grabbed a scalpel ready to make the cut but he stopped when he looked up to find you still standing there, hesitating in a way you never had in all the years he’d worked with you.

Then he was saying your name, firmly but also with a softness to it at the same time, and your eyes were flickering back to his, holding them. His lips twitched, like no one else was in the room, and he settled into the feeling of it.

That smirk of his wasn’t anything new to you. It was a look that was too familiar and too comfortable and too satiable.

“Alright, Fellow. Let’s see if surgery was worth stealing you from us.”

Then there was that nod, one that said so many things all at once—I see you, I trust you—even though you left because I was the one who taught you.

And you felt it. That pull. The way it itched under your skin, tugging at every fiber of your being now that he was here. And it was the same fucking pull that sent you running—away from the ED, the adrenaline, the quick easy fixes that filled you with so much delight when it actually worked to save a patient—away from Jack Abbot and his strong biceps that strained under every scrub top he owned.

Yet, you can’t help the way a soft smile flickered, or how you reeled it back in, looking away as you did. Turning to the airway, you reached forward, and with the sound of Jack’s breathing filling your ears, you made the cut.

Even after almost a year of being on the surgical floor, spending more hours inside of an OR than your own apartment, there was one thing you still hadn’t gotten used to. How dark it was. The space was dim, far dimmer than the ED, except for the blinding LED beams of the overhead surgical lights. Casting deep shadows along the crevices of faces, it illuminated the glistening reds and pinks of the open body cavity, operating much like a spotlight on a stage. Where the surgeons are the performers and the gleaming stainless steel instruments their props.

There were rules up here.

Protocols that carved surgeons into gods—made them believe that their handiwork because it was far more meticulous it was superior than all the rest. You weren’t quite sure if you believed that yet, but what you did come to know is that surgery was an art in a way.

Like a cacophonous gallery in the beeping heart monitors, breathing ventilators, and the quiet hum of music playing in the background.

A kind of quiet you never got in the ED and one you had never experienced in all of your life. And because of that, it was beautiful.

But where it was beautiful, it was also cold.

And ruthless.

And unforgiving.

Up here, there was the illusion of control. The lights stayed fixed. The field stayed sterile. The room moved only when you told it to. Unlike the ED, you felt like you had all the time in the world up.

But time wasn’t what saved lives.

“Clamp.”

The curved Kelly landed in your waiting hand before you finished asking for it. Your gloves are slick enough that the metal nearly slipped from your grasp. Warm blood creeped beneath the cuff of your gown each time you went deeper into the open abdomen.

“Gotta find that bleeder. Suctioning won’t mean shit if we don’t,” Garcia said, voice straining with exhaustion, suction in hand.

“I know, I got it.”

The light from your overhead lamp created a tunnel of light into the abdomen, the patient's blood now taking on a dark and watery form.

You were nearly elbow deep at this point, bent over the table, hands visibly trembling from the fatigue of operating for over four hours as the smell of acrid, barbecue-like vaporized tissue filled your nose. The sterile air left your sweat dry and cold along your skin and your back felt permanently locked as your hands meticulously searched inside the abdomen.

It was then the monitor chirped, descending into a low warning tone.

“Blood pressure is dropping. Sixty over thirty,” the anesthesiologist announced.

“What about epinephrine and norepinehprhine?” Garcia asked, leaning in further to suction, trying to find the root of the mesentary.

“Maxed out. Core temp is thirty-onedegrees Celsius. pH is six-point-eight.”

“Fuck,” Garcia yelled out, “He’s not clotting anymore. Give another round of platelets and cryo.”

Then her attention shifted to you, your name falling from her lips low and serious. “I need that fucking clamp on the infrapancreatic aora.”

It was at that moment you felt it. The hole—no larger than a quarter. You followed it with the long steel clamp, and within seconds the metal jaws locked onto tissue. For a second, the heavy gush of blood slowed.

“I think I got it,” you exhaled, voice ragged.

But then—

“No. No, no. Pressure’s gone,” the anesthesiologist yelled. “Thirty over sixteen…twenty…”

The rhythmic beep…beep…beep of the monitor suddenly fractured into a chaotic erratic sputtering, followed by a flat, continuous, electronic whine.

PEA. Or in other words the body is dead, and the heart is just twitching.

“The clamp slipped,” you explained. “Let me readjust, I can get a better bite—”

“Stop,” Garcia raised her voice. “Just stop. Look at the tissue.”

The edges of the patient’s liver and bowel were no longer pink or a dark red.

“Internal massage?” you asked.

Garcia said your name again and this time you went still.

“Look at the fucking monitor. Look at his pupils. He’s gone. There’s nothing left to transfuse when he’s a corpse.”

You stop then. Suddenly frozen with your hands buried, the heart between your fingers—it was cold and wet. The piercing alarm was still ringing.

The anesthesiologist sighed, pressing the button to turn it off.

“You want me to run another code panel?” he asked.

“No.” Garcia sighed. Her eyes found yours. “Call it, Fellow.”

You swallowed, looking up at the clock on the wall just below the gallery.

“Time of death: three fourteen,” you announced, voice hollow.

And just like that the final act came to a close. The performance was over, and the room quickly turned to clean up.

Garcia stepped back from the table. The rubber soles of her shoes make a sticky, wet, suction sound against the floor tiles. Snapping her gloves off with a sharp pop, she dropped them into a red biohazard bin.

“Patient have any family?” she asked, reaching for her bloody gown next.

“I don’t know.”

Around you, the rest of the room fell into a new rhythm. The circulating nurse immediately pulled a rolling computer closer, the harsh clicking of her keyboard fractured through the silence as she manually entered the time of death. The sharp, rhytmic clink-clink of metal forceps and clamps hitting the stainless-steel tray sounded agonizingly indifferent.

“I’ll find out and take care of it before I leave,” Garcia said, trying to get you to look at her.

But you couldn’t.

Not as the anesthesiologist began systematically ripping open plastic disposal bags, collecting the glass drug vials with ease as if the last four hours had never happened. As if another surgery wouldn’t take its place as soon as the room was sterile and cleared.

Garcia said your name again, this one softer than you had ever heard from her.

“We gave him every chance he was ever going to have. More of a chance then even the ED could give him, alright? Sometimes that’s the job.”

You chuckled dryly. “It’s always the job.”

She nodded sadly.

“Yeah. Look, you're going to have more patients before the shift is over. Just try not to lose anyone else before I’m back in a few hours. That’s all you can do.”

Sending you one more look, Garcia walked out of the OR, the heavy door swinging shut behind her.

And as the world slipped back into the confines of that room, time no longer being a factor of manipulation, you stood frozen in the center of it all. Still in the blood-soaked gown, arms hovering at chest height out of sheer muscle memory, you finally took in the rest of the room. Suddenly it no longer looked like a stage, but a slaughterhouse in disguise.

The Level 1 rapid infuser was pushed back into the corner like a skeletal tree, draped with forty empty, crushed plastic bags that once held it all—blood, platelets, and plasma.

The floor is completely ruined. Yellow plastic wrappers from sterile kits, discarded paper backing from sutures, and blood lap sponges are trampled into a sticky slippery paste.

The patient’s open abdomen stared back at you, packed with heavy, sponges that were soaked through and through from the watery fluid that had lost all ability to clot.

The body itself was cold—deflated, grey, and hollow.

Just as the nurse was leaving, she stepped towards the head of the gurney and unceremoniously pulled back the plastic drapes, exposing the patient’s face to the room for the first time in hours.

And there embedded in distorted, miscolored flesh was the cricothyroidotomy tube buried deep and biting into the purple skin, and a small pool of cold, dark blood was collected in the clear plastic curve of the tube.

It was perfectly stagnant, no longer anything like it had been when you placed it yourself hours before, the warmth of the ED air clinging to your skin. Now, it was just a useless piece of plastic jutting out of a ruined body.

A body surgery couldn’t ever save.

Four-thirty. The fifth of July. The acrid smell of metallic. Stuck to your clothes. Your skin. Your soul. You were sure that it wouldn’t matter how many showers you took or if you even scrubbed yourself raw to the point of your own blood appearing—it would stay with you forever. This shift would stay with you forever. Or at least until one worse settled in its place.

You felt numb already. The only thing you were able to feel was the cold wall against your back, through your scrubs, surgical gown half falling off your balled up form—latex gloves stained and gunky and hot. The hallway was dark, the shadows of your face illuminated merely by the steady crack of blue and red hues of lingering fireworks. They sizzled, erupting in the sky, far in the distance, creating a beautiful array of burning ash in the distance.

As you sat there away from the monitors, the screaming, the intricate sound of surgical instruments on tissue, you wished you could find yourself on one of those rockets—promised to explode into a mist of fleshy hues, mixing with the horrors of this holiday, this shift, this hollow feeling that was dragging you down.

Surgery.

It was a joke—you were the ones who were supposed to do the impossible. The ones who could give those with no chances at all the best one, a winning one. But it was a fucking lie. You were a fucking lie. Evident in the two additional deaths you had witnessed, maybe even played a role in, since the MVC died on your table hours ago.

One of the two was a pregnant woman whose water broke eight weeks too early, leaving her with a breached baby, eclampsia, and too much blood to try to replenish in her weakening body. She died, your arms drenched in her blood, shoved into her uterus, feeling the last bit of life slip from her body. Felt the moment a baby survived, being left without a mother to care for and love him.

You chose surgery because you thought you could do it. You chose surgery to rid yourself of the distractions of the ED. The distraction that was Jack Abbot. You chose surgery because Garcia was the attending who could give you the best chance. Or so you thought.

But now you weren’t so sure. Maybe the PTMC wasn’t a place for you at all.

“What the hell is this?” You could still hear it. So clearly. “An application for the surgical fellowship. Are you fucking kidding?”

The way he ran out of the ED, a camo backpack hanging off one shoulder, the lines around his eyes deepened from a long shift and appeared gold in the soft morning sun. Jack Abbot, who you’d never heard speak to you like this, your application fisted in his hand, brows furrowed in disbelief.

Jack Abbot, who at that moment ten months ago, no longer just felt like your boss to you.

How you talked about your decision over and over, it shifted into an argument where neither of you could understand what the other was saying—so much under the surface, so much confined, and destined to not leave either of your lips.

“You think I am making a mistake?”

“Maybe.”

“So you’re not going to write me a letter then?” you asked him, leaning against your car, hurt twinging deep in your chest as he stared at you.

Fuck, the way he said your name. Your first name.

“You’re an emergency physician.”

The silence that threaded between the two of you, confining you to that moment, that parking lot, that feeling you still hadn’t been able to squash all these months later. Jack Abbot, who made you feel too much all at once, all of the time, that it sent you running to surgery, sent you out of the ED for good.

How you said, “Except that maybe I’m not.”

Instead of, “I like the ED, too much. I like you too much, Jack.”

A large pop filled the sky again. This time, shimmers of gold and silver filled your pupils, but all you could see was Jack’s face ten months ago—the way he chewed on his lower lip, a furrow between his eyebrows as he decided to do what was best for you.

“Do you want the letter?”

“Only if you mean it,” you clarified, heart beating out of your chest.

Jack Abbot, who tilted his head, a smile refusing to surface, but his voice more genuine than you had ever heard it in all the years you had worked night shift, worked as his resident, envisioned yourself being so much more.

“I wouldn’t write it if I didn’t.”

Jack Abbot, who let you go that night and didn’t ask you about it again. You who chose surgery because of him, and perhaps didn’t only cost all these patients a surgeon and a doctor worth saving them, but cost yourself a career as an emergency physician.

You felt like you killed that woman. Felt like you failed her child—even though you weren’t the primary surgeon, only brought on when they needed to divert half the hands to the baby, only because they couldn’t get the bleeding under control.

Swearing, your head fell back, banging softly against the brick wall behind you—the shift, the deaths, all racking up that you wished it would just all finally kill you. Or worse, they’d fire you.

So caught up in your thoughts, the fireworks, the sound of the HVAC system, you didn’t hear the footsteps or how the person paused at the end of the hallway. How, after a moment, they approached, slowly, almost afraid of scaring you away—but then they stopped just across from you, leaned on the wall opposite you.

And although the silence permeated, stretching between the length of the hall, you could feel him. Jack Abbot.

There in the flesh, still dressed in his dark scrubs, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, watching you watch the fireworks. Watching you. Curled into yourself at the end of the hallway, looking smaller than he’d ever seen you.

Then—

“You always did have the best hiding places.” His voice was deep. Tired. Raw.

Undoubtedly, him.

You didn’t look away from the window. You couldn’t.

The lump in your throat tightened, feeling so thick that you were sure you were about to cry.

“Well you found me.” A beat. “Congratulations.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see him—that he was still staring at you—taking you in. He rubbed his hand over his chin and crouched down, hands balancing along his knees. But when you still didn’t look at him, he was saying your name. Softly. Gently. Like he had all those months ago when he held your application in his hand.

Sighing, you turned away from the window, back to the hospital, to the hallway, to the man sitting across from you, his hazel eyes finding yours like it was the easiest thing in the world.

But you could see it all in them—the sadness, the guilt, how he pitily looked from your blood-soaked gown, to your hands, to the way you chewed on your bottom lip, trying to stop the tears from ever coming.

“You hear about…”

Your voice trailed off, that lump getting so thick, you felt yourself choke on the words, the thought, that mother’s face appearing at the forefront of your mind.

He nodded carefully. “Yeah, I heard.”

“Which one?” you asked.

“Both,” he clarified, still not looking away.

You turned away first, back to the sky, to the sounds that still couldn’t mask the way you felt sitting there across from him or the pit that was sinking more and more each day you spent in this place. Feeling your left eye go first, it welling and reflecting with the subtle shimmers from outside.

Then, before you could say anything or wipe it away, Jack was standing again, crossing the hallway, and then crouching again. But this time he was closer, so close you could feel the heat of his skin, the way his breath tickled the side of your face.

“Hey,” he whispered, searching for your gaze—only getting it as he said your name again.

You sniffled, finally looking back at him, and your breath stuttered—chest stalling altogether as the colors from outside illuminated the side of his face, revealing the sharpness of his jaw and cheek. But also the softness in his eyes and the way his grey curls stuck up, ruly from the sweat and his hands running through them.

He frowned. “You’re still wearing these.”

Your gloves. The right one had rolled halfway beneath the cuff of your gown, dried blood cracking where the latex bent across your knuckles.

Slowly—as though giving you every opportunity to pull away—he hooked two fingers beneath the cuff.

“Can I?”

Unable to speak, you bit down on your lower lip, grinding into it, suddenly desperate for that metallic taste that you could still smell. But you didn’t have to answer. His fingers brushed the inside of your wrist, and he eased the glove free, peeling it back before doing the same with the other.

Balling them up, he laid them to the side, his hands hovering again only for a moment before he was reaching forward through the dark, fingers finding the tie of your scrub cap. He traced the cloth material, his fingers pausing as a tiny smile formed. He loosened it all at once before slipping it off your head.

Baby hairs stuck to your forehead, with a few speckles of blood glistening in the dark like freckles. He brushed the pieces back and behind your ear, and you sighed, eyes fluttering to a close because his touch was warm and real and alive.

As light as the touch was, it disappeared a moment later, replaced instead by the feeling of his shoulder pressed into yours as he moved to sit next to you—the sound of his prosthetic grinding against itself as he shifted.

He still held your scrub cap in his hand. It was light blue with sailboats scattered across it.

“You still have it,” Jack said, breaking the silence as he stared down at it, fingers brushing softly along the seams.

A second and then you were finding the words. Or rather the words found you.

“You gave it to me. Of course, I still have it.”

He pressed further into you, the heat of him unbearable as the hallway filled with the steady sounds of beeping monitors and overhead pages—the sounds of the fireworks becoming further and far in between.

You inhaled, his name falling a second later, breaking on your tongue. “Jack?”

Not Abbot. Not Doctor.

Jack.

He turned to look at you, but you kept your eyes fixed on the wall ahead.

“I think I made a mistake,” you admitted, the words breaking apart as they left you.

Jack didn’t interrupt.

You swallowed hard, your throat aching.

“Leaving. I shouldn’t have…” A shaky breath caught in your chest. “Fuck. I can’t do this.”

Leaving. But you didn’t specify what. The ED. Your future as an emergency physician. Him. But it seemed like you didn’t need to.

“Hey…” he murmured, the word barely louder than the distant hum of the air vents. “Hey.”

His shoulder pressed a little firmly against yours—not enough to trap you, just enough that you knew he was there.

“Breathe.”

You tried. But failed.

Tried again.

“I-I can't,” you admitted, sounding more broken than he had ever seen you.

As long as Jack had known you, watched you, been pressed into your side during some of the hardest cases over the years, he had never seen you like this. So pliable, so unconsolable, so unlike yourself—those bright eyes of yours having dimmed to the point of almost lacking life

“I watched you today,” he said quietly, admitting it in a way as if it was the wrong thing to say.

“I know,” you admitted, staring down at where his thigh pressed against yours.

“I don’t think you do.”

You weren't sure how he meant it, but hated yourself for how it made you feel a little breathless because it would never mean the way you wanted it to. Jack Abbot was not the kind of man who let himself have things he wanted—not that he wanted you—you knew that. Knew it so religiously that you had cried yourself to sleep more times than you wished to ever admit. Because want or not, he would never let himself have you.

Another firework bloomed outside the window, washing the hallway in a brief flicker of gold before fading just as quickly. Jack waited. Stared at the wall across from both of you as he tried to rememorize this feeling—the feeling of you so close to him that this distance felt cruel.

He sighed, his next words leaving him with far too much ease. “I watched you in that trauma room today. And it was like you’d never left.”

You turned to him then, body angling further into his, head leaning back against the wall.

“Except,” he paused. “You weren’t acting like a resident. You were better.”

You were shaking your head, not realizing you were doing it, lost for words as Jack’s eyes found yours, a small smile lifting in the dark of the early morning.

“You took control when it mattered. You fought Langdon for that airway because you knew it needed to be done. And when Robby asked who’d done a cric most recently…” his smile deepened. “...you had the answer.”

“It still wasn’t enough,” you admitted after a moment.

“No,” Jack agreed, his voice staying even, matter-of-fact. “It wasn’t. But it was the best goddamn chance anyone could have given him.”

You closed your eyes, the honesty catching you off guard. You finally looked at him again when you felt his hand on your arm, his thumb rubbing once through the fabric of your gown.

The movement was not absentminded. But entirely familiar. It was the same quiet reassurance he’d offered countless residents after impossible shifts. Except it was never like this…

And this time, you weren’t his resident leaning against him. You were an attending on a different floor with a different department, and he was still there, still touching you like you were his resident. Or rather more than that.

It made your head spin.

Even worse when he said your name again, so effortlessly.

“I knew I was right to write you that recommendation.”

“No.” You shook your head.

“Yes,” he said back, tone taking on a deeper assurance you had never heard from him. “You are an exceptional doctor, and I am sure an even more astounding surgeon. You don't need me anymore.”

Your eyes flickered up to his. He held your gaze.

You wanted to tell him that he was wrong. That you did need him. That he was all you needed and that it ran so much deeper than the fact that he calmed you every time you stepped into this soul-sucking place. His presence was a cathartic to your nervous system, to your body, to you.

You wanted to tell him that more than anything—

“I couldn’t ask you to stay somewhere you no longer belonged.”

—but then he went and said something like that.

The lump in your throat tightened, your stomach folding over itself as your feelings spun around and around, all screaming the same thing they had been for months, for nearly a year—that it’s Jack. That Jack Abbot had captured you without you ever noticing, and all you had ever wanted was to be his.

Not his resident.

No. His.

But it was clearer now more than ever. Clearer than the morning he found your application in his locker, that you never could be. That he didn't want you to be. Because if there was anywhere you belonged, it was in the pitt.

There was a beat of silence, and then it deepened with his voice softening all at once to finally break it.

“When you told me,” he sighed. “I was angry.”

“I know,” you whispered back, barely able to register your own voice.

“I was hurt.”

“I know.”

His gaze softened and it felt like death would be better than this.

“But I get it now,” he said, thumb stroking your wrist once more, the warmth slipping into your veins from the outside in. “Get why you chose surgery.”

You don't.

He felt your pulse under his touch—the way it spiked in anticipation.

“It wasn’t because you couldn’t do emergency medicine.”

You looked away again, suddenly too overwhelmed, too over your head to stare at him while he recited what was the truth back to you—a truth that was nothing but your own carefully woven lie.

“You chose it because you knew you’d be so fucking good at it. Because you could do it. And do it well.”

I don't want to do it.

The hallway was quiet. Outside, the fireworks were becoming fewer now, each burst farther apart than the last. And it was just as clear as that day when he cornered you outside, waving that application around in your face that would separate the two of you once and for all.

You loved Jack Abbot.

But you could never have him.

You stared at where his hand circled your wrist, pushing up the cuff of your sleeve. Then slowly, almost cautiously, your head found his shoulder, the truth biting down on the inside of your cheeks.

I chose surgery because it didn’t have you.

A tear slipped down the side of your face as you felt him, with zero hesitation, rest his cheek lightly against the top of your head. And at the feeling, you swore your chest broke in two—splitting so far apart, you were sure your blood and your sadness would drown the two of you completely.

Neither of you spoke. Nothing left to say behind gritted teeth and chapped lips.

Outside, the final firework of the Fourth of July disappeared into the summer sky, leaving the two of you silent inside the hospital. And with the feeling of Jack pressed into your side, easing more of himself into your heart and your being, you realized then that it didn't matter what floor you were on; the distance would never be large enough if you stayed in this hospital.

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