synopsisyou and Robby have always had an un-spoken understanding, that if you were two different people you'd fall in love. but he was a mess and refused to bring you down. so instead, fate threatens to take you away forever
warningsANGST. so much angst. stabbing. blood. near death. operations. typical hospital stuff but a happy ending
authornotethis is just completely ripped from that episode of ER when John Carter gets stabbed, like the medical talk is all from that. I also feel like this may be slight ooc robby cause I have struggle with how this man would be affectionate. i had a hell of a lot of fun writing this, angst is by far my favourite, i hope you like too
Pitt masterlist. Other Robby fic!
You weren't sure if it was the thumping in your head or the drum in your heart but you watched Robby closely. It could have been the injury to your head or the closeness of him that had your heart reacting in such a way.
You blamed it on the injury.
“Give it to me straight, Doc,” you joked. One of his gloved hands cupped your chin, nudging your gaze up. The other dabbed gently at the cut to your forehead. “Am I gonna make it?”
There was a line of displeasure in his lips. “Not funny,” he mumbled.
“Sure it is.”
“No, it's not.”
You rolled your eyes before going back to focusing on him.
It was rare you got to watch him in his concentration. Usually you were in the middle of a trauma when he pulled out the serious face and things were moving too fast for you to even catch a glimpse. Now- his focus was all on you. You could study the creases at his brows and the flecks of grey in his beard.
“You ever notice you have these deep lines between your eyebrows when you're concentrating?”
“It's called age,” he said but there was the smallest hint of a smile there.
“Aren't you twenty-seven?”
This time he couldn't stop the smirk of amusement and finally you won.
Robby dabbed away the blood at your cut, changing the gauze. “Don't think you're distracting me.”
You hummed as he tilted your head into the light. “Distracting you from what?”
“Reporting him.”
You grew silent and looked away.
It was Robby's turn to stare at you, eyes without warmth, stern in ways he was with patients that didn't want to listen to good advice. You may be sitting on a bed in exam room four and you may have a chart written up but you were not a patient. “He was scared and confused-”
“ - he pushed you.”
“And I was the one that tripped and bashed my head.”
“He threw you down!”
You winced at his snap and then winced at the pain your wincing brought you.
Robby sighed with some sort of regret. His fingertips brushed your skin as he finished cleaning the cut and you couldn't help but think it was a deliberate move. He'd been so careful not to touch or apply pressure but suddenly the callous of his fingers were there.. “If we don't take care of ourselves nobody else will do it.”
It was the same thing Dana had said to you when she saw the patient push you down and run out the room in distress, hospital gown slipping on his shoulders. She'd taken you under her arm, stirred you to a chair. She was firm in both checking you were okay and that you were going to report him for hurting you.
You look past Robby, trying to see through the glass door. The Pitt carried on it's usual bustle but Dana kept a close eye out on you in the room. “Where is he now?”
“None of your concern,” he said. “The cut's clean, looks like you won't need stitches.”
“You've restrained him haven't you?”
Robby frowned. His head shook slightly in disbelief- like he couldn't believe you. “He hurt you. Jesus- you think I was gonna just tuck him back in bed- you think Dana was!”
You were used to the rise in Robby's voice, as attending it was his job to command everyone. You just didn't like to hear it risen at you. “He woke up, confused and startled.”
The patient was brought in un-conscious at the side of the road, a gash in his arm. Nobody knew his name but you'd admitted him and ran some tests while he was semi-conscious. He'd woken up as you were checking his IV and the next thing you knew hard hands were pushing you away. You'd taken the tray down with you and smacked your head in the process. Then he'd ran and then Robby had you in his arms, willing to pick you up and carry you off if it weren't for your insistence to walk to an exam room.
Robby's body heaved in a sigh as he put his hands on his thighs. “He hurt you,” he repeated, looking up at you through his eyelashes.
You slowly met his gaze as he got closer on the stall in front of you. “I've had worse.”
It wasn't supposed to be a dig but as his eyes met yours in a haze of dark anxiety you figured it came off that way.
Really what happened between you and Robby was ancient history. A whole six months since you'd stopped seeing each other; if that's what it could be called. It was really only one stupid kiss and several flirts that created the thick tension between you two. Nothing had ever been done to encourage it further, yet nothing had also been done to squash it.
Whilst his gaze remained on you, Robby got out his penlight and checked your pupil reaction.
“Any pain?”
“Well, the light's a bit bright.”
He put it down and with his gloved hands he slowly pressed around the small cut on your forehead, hands cupping your face tenderly. “Any pain?”
“No, you've done all this twice now.”
“It's procedure for any patient.”
“It's special treatment,” you grumbled.
Robby grabbed a bandage from the tray. “You're a special patient.”
The heat crept up your cheeks before you stared at the bandage.
“Robby-”
In one hand he held a bandage, in the other a small spider-man plaster that he so obviously got from pedes.
You stared at him. “Really?”
His cheeks tilted in a small teasing grin. “All we have, I'm afraid.”
You seriously doubted it but tapped the spider-man plaster nonetheless. “I'm sure I could have done this myself, you know,” you said as he peeled away the plaster. “Or at least got one of the nurses to do it. I'm sure you're needed somewhere more important.”
He frowned again. “More important?”
“There's a guy that came in with a GSW to the chest ten minutes ago and you're saying you don't need to be there?”
Robby's hands fell to either side of your face, gently taking your cheeks. His thumb brushed the curve of your cheek bone. He could feign he was checking your pupils but you both knew better. “There's nowhere else I need to be.”
Six months ago you'd kissed in a bar ten minutes away from the Pitt. Every day since- you'd been fighting the urge to kiss him again.
At that moment, with his gentle touch and soft gaze, you wondered if he'd been fighting to.
“Look up,” Robby said with a clear of his throat.
You weren't sure what he was trying to check for anymore. Maybe he was just looking for an easy way out.
“I still want you to get a CT scan.”
“Now that's dramatic, I didn't expect that from you.”
“Any nasuea?”
You shook your head as Robby steadied you, sliding the plaster in place.
“Have you been drinking enough today?”
“Two cups of coffee count?”
Robby gave you a plain look as he yanked off the latex gloves, throwing them into a corner of the room. “Ten minutes rest, I'll bring you some food and water.”
You sighed dramatically. “Robby!”
He pushed himself up from his stool. “As you're attending I'm not asking, I'm-”
“Telling?” you guessed.
Robby hovered as you pushed yourself up back on the bed. You wouldn't say it but your head was hurting from the fall. Nothing more than a headache that some painkillers couldn't stop. If you told Robby that yes, you were in pain, you were sure he'd pull the curtain, change you into a gown and play doctor all day.
You lied back on the pillow as Robby plumped it and smoothed out the sheets under you. He was lingering and for a moment you thought of asking him to stay.
Your mouth had opened to ask when the door was nudged open.
“Robby, we got a car crash coming in five,” said Dana. She looked at you then, eyes crinkled in worry. “How you feeling, hun?”
“I'm fine, thanks Dana.”
She nodded once, offering you a small smile before leaving.
You looked up at Robby as his body lingered over yours, one arm stretched high above your head, the other lower. Your gaze flickered up and you could feel the warmth of his breath fan over you. “Ten minutes?” you asked.
“On the clock.”
“Then I'm free to go?”
His head tilted, a sly smirk playing around his thin beard. “I'm not keeping you a prisoner.”
You folded your arms over your chest, glancing away. “Feels like it.”
He chuckled lightly. For a moment his breath lingered over your forehead, closer than before.
When you glanced up he froze, hands clenched on the bed, his jaw taunt. It was as if you'd caught him in the act.
Suddenly you wished you hadn't looked up. You wished you'd let him do whatever he was going to do. Because once he'd been caught he straightened up and threw you an awkward thumbs up. “Ten minutes.”
You trace your finger over the plaster as you slowly left your room, creeping out like you were a teenager sneaking out of your parents to meet a guy. Except you were trying to avoid the guy.
“That was eight minutes!”
You looked up and found Robby at the nurses station, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. “Were you timing me?”
Robby held up his phone, showing you the timer he had counting down as next to him, Dana snorted. “Have you had something to drink? Or eat?” he asked as you leant over the counter. He was still watching you eagerly, waiting for any sign you were in more pain then you let on so he could send you back to bed.
“Thought you were getting me a drink?”
He rolled his eyes before obliging, sliding away to get you a drink. He turned back only once. “Don't go near him!” he called, the both of you knowing who the he was.
You saluted him, watching him go before turning to Dana. “How is he?”
She peered at you over her glasses. “Terrible. He's been worried sick, was practically watching you through those windows. Didn't blink for a minute!”
“Not Robby, my patient. The John Doe.”
“Well that ain't your concern anymore," she said.
“I want to treat him.”
“He's awake now, we've restrained him in twelve but Robby wants you nowhere near him.”
“Robby is over-reacting,” you sighed.
Dana lifted her shoulders. “Of course he is, it's you. You think he's gonna react rationally?”
Nobody was supposed to know about you and Robby and the thing that lingered in the middle. But somehow, Dana always ended up knowing everything.
You backed away from the counter, assuring Robby was nowhere to be seen. “Twelve, you said right?”
Dana huffed but lucky for you there were a dozen more things she needed to do. “Fine! Go! But take security with you!”
You saluted and headed that way. Outside the door, Ahmed was already there.
“Hey, doc,” he greeted. “He's been asking about you, said he wants to apologise.”
You weren't scared like you thought you'd be, stepping into the room while Ahmed promised to stay outside, just a shout away of you needed him. Your heart wasn't pounding as you slowly moved the curtain, finding the patient lying on the bed, restraints around his wrists and tied down. He wasn't thrashing about. He was calm, clocking you as you walked in.
“You're the nurse?” he said.
“Doctor, actually,” you said, introducing yourself.
He smiled but it didn't reach his eyes or add colour to his face. There was nothing in his eyes anyhow. He was pale and the thin bandaging that had been done for his arm while he struggled was bleeding through. “I-I pushed you, I am so sorry.”
You were about to say it was fine, but it wasn't you shouldn't tell him it was. You could accept the apology but still acknowledge that whatever state he was in, you shouldn't have been hurt. “Do you know where you are?”
“The hospital?”
“That's right, PTMC. Can you tell me your name?”
He nodded, gulping. There was a thin layer of sweat over his skin. “David Brown.”
“And do you know what month it is?”
“M-March.”
“Okay, good,” you said, making a quick note of his name in his chart. You sat down on the stool, shuffling to the side of his bed. “Mr Brown-”
“David,” he corrected you.
“David,” you said. “You were brought in just under an hour ago with a pretty bad laceration to your lower right arm. You were found un-conscious. Do you remember anything?”
You watched the sweat bead at his forehead, his eyes scrunched as he tried to think. His breathing grew heavier, face morphed into pain as he tried to think. “It's okay if you don't.”
“I-I don't,” a stray tear fell down his cheek.
“That's okay,” you assured him. “I'm gonna order you a CT and a toxic screening just to rule out any drugs or alcohol in your system. Is that okay?”
David's head jerked in something like a nod before you door swung open, clattering on the other side of the wall.
Robby stood at the end of the bed, face red, hands at his hips. “What are you doing in here?” he snapped.
“Doctor Robby-”
He gave you no time to explain, jutting his head back. “Step outside please, doctor.”
You stood, slowly and walked out slower.
David called out after you. “I really am sorry!”
Robby looked back like he didn't believe him.
The two of you stepped out and you spoke before he could, beating him by a second. “I'm ordering him a CT and toxicity test. That gash on his arms needs to be cleaned and stitched up, it's bleeding out.”
Robby didn't care to hear it. He pulled the curtains over and closed the door as he followed you out. “What did you think you were doing in there?”
“Tending to my patient.”
“I told you to leave him.”
“He wanted to say sorry. Ahmed, didn't he want to apologise?” you said, looking to security for some help.
Ahmed held up his hands. “Oh- I want nothing in this!”
“If he wanted to apologise he could've wrote a letter. Told me to apologise to you,” he said, still holding onto his anger. “I told you to leave it, the guy attacked you!”
“Lightly shoved me from shock!”
“Have you seen what he did to your head?”
“Yeah, a small cut, doesn't even need stitches- that's what you said!”
“It's a wound! There was blood!” he yelled. “You are not to go anywhere near him from now on, do you understand?”
There was a new anger in Robby then, something you saw rarely in him. Dana had said he was worried about you but you saw none of that concern in him now, only anger. Anger because you hadn't listened to him not because of well fair.
“I'm a doctor, I'm supposed to be helping people,” you defended, your own anger not rising to his.
His hands balled into fists. “Help someone who's asking for it. I see you in with that guy again and you're on triage for a week, you understand?”
Where was that softness in his eyes? Where was that care he tended to you in the room all alone?
“You understand?” he snapped again when you didn't answer.
You knew if you turned there'd be several pairs of eyes on the pair of you. Watching, assessing, see how you reacted. Nobody had ever heard Robby speak to you like that because he'd never shouted at you before. “I understand, Doctor Robinavitch.”
“So you yelled at her.”
Robby thought he'd find solace on the roof, that with only him and the night sky he stood a chance at thinking things through logically, for once on the right side of the rail.
Then Jack's voice sounded behind him and the peace he was searching for fell further out of reach.
“Who told you?” he asked, head falling.
“Oh, you know,” he mumbled, shoes shuffling over the roof as he got closer to him. “Just everybody that was in attendance to your little show.”
Jack leant next to him on the rail, staring at him.
Robby could feel his eyes but looked out on the skyline that was more favourable to him. Jacks eyes felt like everybody else that watched him yell at you. He could call it worry- it didn't change the way your face dropped the louder his voice rose.
“You wanna talk about it?” asked Jack.
“No.”
“I heard she got attacked.”
“Or lightly pushed as she'd put it.”
“She's a soldier.”
Robby shook his head. “No, she's a doctor. Today she could have been neither if that man-” the words chocked in his throat. What if he had hurt you even more? Punched you? Strangled you? He'd seen it all in the ER and yes, you'd been hurt before but that didn't mean he needed to have you hurt again.
“I saw her when I was coming up, she seemed fine,” said Jack. “About to clock off, you sure you want to end the day on such a bad note.”
“She doesn't want to talk to me.”
“Come on, she always wants to talk to you,” said Jack. “And I only know that cause you always want to talk to her.”
Robby wished he could say that telling Jack about the kiss so many months ago was a mistake but he couldn't because that would mean kissing you was a mistake. The only mistake made with that kiss is that he hadn't pulled you back in, kissed you every day since. But he'd told Jack on one of those lonely nights when they'd each had one too many beers how much he missed you even if he saw you every day.
“I was so fucking scared, brother,” he admitted with a long exhale of breath. Robby slumped over the rail, catching himself. “Code hula-hoop was called and her name and I- I didn't know...”
Jack's hand was firm on his back. “I know.”
Robby nodded, head tucked down. He wouldn't cry, he wasn't sure how these days but he sure as hell felt like it. It had been a hell of day, worse when he couldn't join your side without you walking off.
“You were worried, you don't know what to do with that,” said Jack.
He could admit that much.
“You go home now, she goes home, you're carrying this weight to the next day and it'll continue,” he said, therapizing him. “You were scared you might have lost her?”
Robby glanced Jack's way. There was never any judgment, only a keen understanding he sometimes didn't like.
“You might lose her if you don't do something about it.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
Jack shrugged. “Apologise.”
Robby hesitated, the words 'I'm sorry' foreign on his tongue.
Jack chuckled low in his throat. “Is that really so hard for you?”
He nodded and Jack carried on laughing. By the end, even Robby was chuckling through watery eyes.
“Okay, okay, let's try,” said Jack, straightening up, encouraging him to do the same. “Repeat after me, I'm sorry.”
“Jesus-”
“Jesus, you can't even say it-listen we'll go slow, I'm-”
Robby's phone rung in his pocket, thankfully saving him from the embarrassment. “Dana-” he answered as he spotted Jack's phone going too.
“Get down here, now!”
“What's going on?” he asked, though his feet were already moving.
He didn't see the way Jack looked at him, he hardly heard how Dana said your name because when she did Robby dropped his phone and ran.
“Robby!” Jack called but he was off the roof and furiously pressing the elevator button. He managed to slide past the doors before they closed on him. “What did Dana say?”
But Robby couldn't speak. He heard Dana's voice re-play in his head again and again. That you had been attacked, that they needed him. He couldn't think beyond that. Beyond you and attacked there was nothing.
Jack was watching him closely. “Okay-” he must've known it was bad too. “Okay, Robby, we don't know what's going on down there but you gotta stay cool, okay? You gotta stay cool or leave us to it.”
He should've kept a closer eye on you, should've sent you home.
“Robby if you get in our way I'm taking you out of there, understand?”
The doors slid open and Robby ran out, Jack quick on his heels.
“Where?” he barked out. There were no faces around him he could figure out, no Dana, no Langdon- so everyone must have been in with you-
“Trauma one!”
Robby burst through the doors.
The chaos was everywhere and he paused. There were more bodies in the trauma room then he'd ever seen. In between them all a body that he could vaguely re-call as yours. Your trainers- usually white- were seeping in blood.
“Can you open your eyes?”
“No respond to command!”
“Two stab wounds to the left flank! First one L-two, second L-five.”
“Is it the spinal chord?” asked Whitaker.
“Can't tell it depends on the angle!” said Langdon. “Jesus- there's too much blood, I can't see a thing!”
You lied on the bed, blood splattered around your clothes, un-responsive to everyone around you. You were letting them prod, push and pull when you'd hardly let him asses your cut just hours ago.
Hours when you were teasing him and he was thinking about kissing you again.
What had happened.
If it was a papercut you'd be feigning death.
This was the closest you'd ever looked to dying and Robby couldn't feel his legs.
"Doctor Robby?" someone called in the room but it wasn't you. You weren't responding to anyone. “Doctor Robby!”
Jack moved past him, body knocking his. “I'm here!”
“BP seventy over fifty, pulse one-twenty.”
Jack moved around you, pressing the chest piece of the stethoscope to your chest. “Push in two litres of O-neg. Good breath sounds bilaterally.”
Robby's ears were ringing but he could feel himself shake his head. “She's not-she's not O-neg, she's B-positive,” he heard himself mumble.
There was a sharp beeping through the room and Robby thought it was a strange sound for his heart breaking.
“Pulse ox ninety-three!”
“Do we intubate?” asked Mohan.
Your body jerked and as if you were the puppet master tugging on his strings, Robby found his feet and moved to your side.
He moved around until he was the closest to you, replacing anyone else at your side. Others watched, un-sure if they should've told him to wait outside like he was family.
Jack gave them the nod and the room moved again.
“Give me ten by mask, no intubation. Send a trauma panel!” ordered Robby.
“We need X-ray for a chest!” yelled Jack.
“X-ray can come to us! I am not moving her!” he shouted. “Help me roll, let me see!”
The blood on the front of your scrubs was splashed but as they turned you, leaning you on your side Robby's body slumped, something like a chocked sob wracking through his body.
He couldn't see the puncture wounds through the blood that soaked you. Just as Langdon had said it was a mess. “Jesus chr- oh god.”
“Pressure's up to ninety palp!”
“Who did this?” he yelled out as they gently set you back.
“The guy who came in un-conscious earlier!”
Jack looked over at Robby.
Robby felt the muscles in his jaws work and he grunted. “I'll kill him,” he grumbled.
“Robby!” lectured Jack.
But he wasn't going to take back his words. “He's fucking dead.”
“He fled the hospital,” Langdon told him. “Left his knife in the room though, they'll find him.”
It couldn't have been a scalpel, it couldn't have been scissors. The guy came in, found a knife- or brought one from home- to harm you. If Robby ever saw him again he'd kill the guy and deal with the consequences that came.
“Toes are down going, no spinal injury,” said someone else in the room but he was losing all focus that wasn't you.
Garcia walked through the doors, joining the crowd of people around you.
“Tell me you've got an OR booked!” said Jack.
“With her name on it! How we doing in here?”
Santos pushed her way ahead, a small and un-characteristic tremble to her hands. There was another unit of blood pushed into your bloodstream and Robby was seconds away from hooking himself up and giving you his very blood. “Pressure's up!” she reported, lingering over you with a light. “Right pupil five millimetres and reactive -”
Suddenly your body jerked at the light. Your head thrashed side to side as you slowly returned to consciousness.
“Huh... I-wha-”
“Hey! Hey!” Robby pushed his way to you, looming over you and catching your eyes.
They were wild, looking around before settling on him.
“Robby?” you uttered, lips dry, dried blood at your neck. Your eyes were looking around like you couldn't quite see.
“Yeah- yeah it's me.” His hand flew to your hair, brushing it back as your eyes were going from him to around you, panic rising in your eyes. “Look at me, focus on me.”
“What-what?”
“You were stabbed,” he uttered.
Your eyes widened and he brushed back your hair again, doctors moving around the two of you. They could've been right on his back or a thousand miles away. All he focused on was you. Your hands waved around, getting in the way of tubes and the doctors.
Robby grabbed your hand, squeezing.
You focused on him and he tried to smile, tried to make himself convinced everything would be alright. He knew it was a grimace.
He'd never hated his medical training more. Because he knew this amount of blood loss was bad, he knew stabbing so close to the spinal chords was dangerous. He knew you were strong and hated staying still for too long and now you'd be forced to recover.
“My pressure?”
“It's up.” He watched as your eyes teared up, looking away from him again. “Good, that's good.”
Your hair sprawled out as you shook your head. “Am I gonna.... will I walk again?”
Robby hesitated. “Yeah- yeah we think it missed your spinal chord.”
Robby knew that but he couldn't help the tears that fell, couldn't help the small sob that ripped through his throat. You'd been calm at the cut with your head, damn right comedic. Now- you were quiet, whimpering and crying in pain and there wasn't anything he could do.
He was a doctor, he could help and check vitals and squeeze the bag of blood slow.
But he couldn't move from your side.
You nod before your back arched in pain and you yelled out.
“BP eighty palp!”
Robby got up, ignoring the ache in his knees as he loomed over you, trying to calm the pain. “Do something!”
“Robby!”
He looked.
You'd drained the blood dry.
“What?” you uttered, voice trembled in terror.
“Okay she needs to go up, now!” Jack called out.
“Let's get her moving!” yelled Garcia.
You groaned in pain. “What's going on?”
Robby didn't know what to do. It wasn't a conversation of telling a patient what was going on or what wasn't. It was telling you. He stuttered lamely, lost as another tear slid down his cheek. You hadn't even cried yet and he was close to blubbering.
His head bowed to you. He was mumbling, he thinks he was praying.
“Robby-” your hand waved out in front of him and he grabbed it, squeezing. “It hurts.”
“Okay, okay, we're gonna-” what was he gonna do? He pressed your hand to his lips, holding it there.
“Hey, honey,” Jack appeared at your other side and your eyes moved to see him but Robby didn't let go. “Hell of a way to get into the night shift.”
“Jack-” you winced.
Jack looked from you to Robby, the same way he looked at the family of unfortunate patients. “We're taking her up to the OR now.”
Your fingers wiggled in Robby's grasp and he looked back to you. “It's bad huh?”
“No, no,” said Robby smoothing back your hair again.
“Your losing a lot of blood, and your foley output is bright red,” said Jack. “But we're gonna sort it and you'll be fine. You trust me?”
Your breathing was shallow, hard breaths hardly coming out. Still, you tried to smile. “Do I- do I have a choice?” your voice came out through seethes of breath.
Robby closed his eyes tight, as if he could feel the own stabbing in his heart.
“Robb-Robby?”
He glanced at you, your eyes fluttering shut. The little hold you had on his hand weakening. He fumbled up, hands holding your cheeks. “Woah-woah- open your eyes! Look at me- look at me!”
You mumbled, head lulling.
“Going up!”
“Look at me, open your eyes!” he all but shouted at you as your eyes were still rolling to the back of his head, wavering between waking and whatever else was on the other side.
“Robby!”
Robby held onto the side of your bed as the team around you wheeled you away and through. There was a stutter of shock waving through the crowd, fear chocking them, shock eating at them. There was police around, all trying to get a look.
“Talk to her, Robinavitch!” said Garcia.
He didn't talk to patients, he evaluated them, stitched them up when he could.
Robby looked up at Jack, hoping for help. He looked grave, watching Robby un-sure but people came back from worse. You'd come back. “Hey, hey look at me,” he uttered and squeezed your hand. When that didn't work he pulled at your eyelids and finally you responded with a grumble.
The elevator doors slid open and you were hauled in, Robby squeezed in too.
“Wh-what?”
He got a flash of your eyes before they closed again.
Your lips were dry and chapped but Robby kissed you anyway, pressing his lips to yours soft, not pushing afraid he'd hurt you but he wanted you to know he was there.
He smiled. He'd never seen you first thing in the morning, he imagined this is what it was. Groggy eyes, words hardly there but with less pain and blood. Robby pulled back and ignored the blood drying in splatters on your neck. “Are you with me, honey?”
You blinked and groaned in pain. “I don't-I don't know.”
“You're with me, yeah you are, you're with me,” Robby mumbled. “You look very pretty, even covered in blood, you know that?” he mumbled, trying to say it so only you could hear.
There was a huff of a smile followed by pain.
“You can't flirt with me while I'm dying, Robinavitch.”
Your eyes fluttered shut.
Robby grabbed your face, smooching your cheek maybe a bit too harsh. “You're not going anywhere.”
“You've pushed four bags,” you whispered. “You're gonna push a five.”
There was a huff of laugh from Jack.
Robby sniffed. You were too good at your job sometimes, ignoring the ache in his back as he leant over you. “You shouldn't be counting.”
“What can I say I'm over-qualified,” your eyes shut again but your lips moved in mumbles.
“What is it? What are you saying?” he asked, a crack in his voice. “What? Tell me.... tell me.”
But you weren't really there anymore. You were incoherent, eyes not really there. None of you was really there. “Robby.... Rob.... please, Robby.”
“What? I'm here, I'm right here, okay? Okay, honey?” Robby felt his chest cave in. “What's taking this elevator so long?” he snapped.
“It's bad, I know,” you said, fingers drifting soft over his arm before it dropped. “I can't- I can't-”
The doors slid open, a team waited on the other side.
Garcia pushed you ahead into the team, spouting who she wanted to scrub in, telling them all who she wanted out front watching. Your condition was a perfect teaching sort.
You weren't for teaching. You were for saving!
Robby wanted to tell as much as the team wheeled you away and Jack's arm came out to stop him.
“You can't go in there man,” he said.
“Like hell I can't!”
“No, you can't!” said Jack.
Any other time Robby would have argued more but he had nothing to say. He needed to be there, he wanted to be there but as soon as they cut you open he'd break. As soon as he saw inside your body he'd tie himself to you.
He'd seen over a hundred bodies cut open in his time but yours might break him.
Robby nodded, hands going to the back of his head.
Someone in the room cried and it took him a moment to realise it was him.
“Hey-hey-” Jack embraced him and Robby couldn't reach to hug him back but he could let himself down. “I will go in, I will be there, you know I will do everything to save her. We will save her.”
To save your life, Robby let him go and stood alone. He looked down at his hand as if he could feel the ghost hold of you still there. When he looked down, all he saw was the hair on the back and the tremble of his fingers.
Robby- for the first time since he was a boy- learnt how to cry.
He tried- boy did he try- to get back into the swing of things. Robby walked into the Pitt with red, blotchy eyes and a waver in his voice. He looked at the board, picked up a sixty year old patient with migraines.
“Hello I'm Doctor Robinavitch, everyone calls me Robby. What seems to be the problem today?”
That was as far as he got before Dana walked in.
“No, no, no, no!” she said, putting the chart down and dragging him out. “I am so sorry Mrs Klepton, we'll get Doctor Shen with you in just a moment. Come with me.”
He was dragged out like a scolded child and shoved into the lounge.
“What do you think you're doing?” she'd snapped.
Robby had put himself in the corner, crowding himself in, arms over his head. What was he doing? Trying to be useful. You'd be up in the OR lord knew how long. If he sat and waited he'd go mad.
Dana leant on the counter. “What'd you think you're doing here, Robinavitch? Get outta here, go home! Better yet go wait for her.”
“I-I can't.”
“Robby.”
He could feel the tears start again. Didn't the human run out of tears eventually? They didn't teach that in med school. “I- I can't. I'm useful in-in here, I'm not- I'm not-”
“Right now there's only one person you can be useful to, so go to her.”
That's how he ended up in the OR waiting room, alone, not flicking through the magazines provided, not even watching the fish in the tank. He was just sitting.
Waiting.
At some point he'd taken the clock down to not watch the hands turn but eventually the sun rose and he was terrified like no other day.
It was going on 05:00 am when the door slowly pushed open. It wasn't with a rattle of relief or with a cheer, it was a slow push.
Robby thought his heart was broken before.
He was hunched over himself, elbows balanced on his knees as he hid his face in his hands and slowly rocked himself. “No... no... no...”
“Robby,” Jack said quietly. His steps were slow but he felt his hand on his back.
Robby flinched, shrinking into himself.
Where was the knife so he could stab himself?
“Robby- she's okay.”
There was a crack in his neck from how quick he looked up. It wasn't enough to convince him, his clinical trained mind wondering all the what would comes? Had it got into your spine? How much blood had you lost.
But Jack listed it off like he knew what Robby needed to hear first. It hadn't hit an aorta, it got an artery hence the bleeding but they'd stabilised it with more blood than they would have liked. But you were alive, though sleeping and they had no worries for you at the moment.
Robby nodded when Jack finished. He must have come right from the OR to tell him because he was still in scrubs and covered in blood. Your blood. “Can I see her?”
You didn't look peaceful. Robby had never thought how uncomfortable the hospital gowns must have been until he saw you lying in one. There was oxygen tube in your nose and an IV in your hand. There was some bruising he hadn't noticed before on your arms from the fall you took.
“What do I do now?” Robby mumbled. He was good at the saving lives part, he just wasn't sure what to do when they hung in limbo.
Jack patted his back, leading the way in the room. “For a doctor you're pretty clueless. You sit with her.”
Robby followed in, un-sure what to do with himself so he held onto either end of his stethoscope.
There was a chair already pulled up to your side as Jack busied himself on the other, checking your IV and BP- all looked good.
Robby had caught you napping at your desk once, fallen asleep while charting. He'd admired you for a moment before slowly waking you with a pen poked in your head. You'd looked so peaceful then- nothing like it now.
“Is she cold?”
“No- I don't think so.”
Robby slowly sank down in the chair and picked up your hand again. It stopped the trembling in his at once.
“I gotta get off, I'll cover the day, do something about the nights. Stay with her, call me if there's any changes,” said Jack.
“Thank you, brother,” said Robby.
There was a dull drumming in your head. Your back was aching and even moving your eyes hurt. Beyond all of that there was something else, something heavier.
Your eyes opened slowly and you found the lights ahead. They burned brighter than the sun, like every morning when you walked into PCMT. You tried to hide, to shield yourself with your hand but you couldn't move it.
Panic coursed through you. Why couldn't you move it? Why could you hardly feel your hand? Dear god-
“Hey,” a gentle voice greeted and you searched for them.
Jack stood over you, leaning at you bed.
Your mouth was parched as you tried to speak.
“You're okay,” said Jack in a whisper. “You remember what happened?”
Step by step you thought back. You were leaving, only checking on David once more before sharp pain hit you in the back and you were shoved. When you came too again faces blurred together and pain blinded you to them all.
There was Robby. Somewhere in all of that.
“I was... stabbed?”
Jack nodded, a small trembled in his chin. “Yeah you were. But you're gonna be okay, there was no injury to your spine.”
“I'll walk?”
“Twelve hours time we'll get you up.”
When you focused you could feel the ache in your arm as if someone was pulling it. There was something heavy at the end like someone was holding it, tight.
Robby was at your other side, lying on your arm and holding you down. His body was curved over, head turned away as his back moved in soft breaths.
“Thought I'd let him sleep. He's been up watching you since you came out the OR,” said Jack.
Robby. He'd stayed.
Had you asked him to? You'd wanted him to. Maybe he understood that.
“Thank you, Jack.”
Jack shook his head. There was no need to thank him, you knew that, but you were thanking him for the life you'd put in his hands and that he'd let Robby be at your side. “You want some time?”
You nodded stiff, feeling the ache in your back more and more. You knew you had months ahead of you of pain but you didn't want to dull it with drugs just yet.
Jack petted down your hair once before taking his hoodie off the back of the chair and leaving, closing the door gently.
In the silence you watched Robby a moment longer, matching your new breaths with his. The weight of him on your hand made you tingle as you slowly worked your fingertips back to life.
You tried to move your hand out from his weight but he stirred.
Groggily he turned and looked around the room, waking up more confused then you were.
“Robby?”
His eyes widened.
Robby moved up at once, looming over your bed as you tried to push yourself up. “Hey, hey, take it easy,” he fretted, eyes raking over your body like he was checking all of you were there. “Are you okay? Are you in pain?”
“Robby-” you tried to protest.
“BP is hundred over eighty.”
You tried to entertain him, just as you had with the cut on your head. If you let him go through the motions just might just end up holding his hand again. So you let him try your nerves, let him ask if you were in pain. You let him ask you to wiggle your fingers and toes. You let him lift one leg and the other as high as he could before you winced in pain.
“Can you stop being my doctor for a second and sit back down?”
Robby seemed startled but hid it quickly. He realised Jack was out the room. “He should've woke me, checked you over.”
“You were resting, he said you'd stayed.”
He looked at you, astonished you'd think he'd go anywhere else.
You watched him sink into his chair, clasping his hands together and wedging them between his knees. Your fingers ached to hold him but your body was weak even talking. “You look tired.”
He chuckled low and smiled. His face was pale, eyes red, hair a mess. His entire body was slumped. “I look tired?”
“A nice tired, a handsome tired.”
You focused on your hand, lifting it enough. You watched as Robby looked down and took it without hesitation, he held it tight, grasping it between his big hands and bringing it to his lips.
You felt him kiss your palm.
“I was stabbed?”
Robby nodded, slowly. “Two puncture wounds, missed the spinal chords, nicked an aorta, bled out. That was our biggest worry but-”
“But I'm okay now?”
Slowly, he nodded.
You groaned, shifting your head aside. You'd have rolled over to show your protest but you had a feeling you'd be putting as little pressure on your back for a while. “Is Mr Brown?”
“The police are looking for him,” said Robby, without letting you even work out just what it is you were trying to ask about.
You nodded slowly, looking down to where your hand disappeared in his. “I'll report him this time, I promise.”
Robby stared at you, eyes wide with something you couldn't name. “I just want you to focus on getting better. On coming back... coming back to me.”
You didn't think, even coming out of an op and the haze of pain, that you could ever be where he wasn't. You think, no matter how terrible it seemed, that it was meant to happen this way. The stabbing and scarring that would no doubt end up on your back might have been the best thing to ever happen to you.
“Robby,” you whispered.
He must have heard something in your voice as he slowly stood and hunched over you, a hand lying on the top of your head.
His eyes were watering with tears.
You could remember faint images of this happening before, as you were slowly lulled to sleep by drugs. His hand combing back your hair felt like it had always been doing it. Like you'd always woken to him.
“Did you kiss me?” You didn't know where the memory came from, or even if it was a memory. It could've been a dream.
To his credit Robby didn't startle or flinch. He slowly nodded, leaving room for objection. He leaned over close to you, another hand cradling your cheek. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
Robby inhaled sharply. “I wanted to. I wanted to kiss you months before I did. I wanted to kiss you last week and two minutes ago when you woke. I wanted to kiss you covered in blood and... I want to kiss you now.”
You smiled and it brought you no pain. “If my back wasn't in pain I'd be kissing you right now,” you chuckled and then the pain came.
Robby leant down to you, his eyes searching yours. Close enough you could see what was in his eyes, what he'd been hiding. Warmth. Admiration.
His large nose brushed yours as he kissed you slow with no rush of need. His hand was soft as he angled you so he could explore every line and curve if your lip.
Your own hand slowly wound up, around his head, stroking the back of his hair and resting there. He didn't mind the oxygen tube or that she couldn't reach up to meet him. In fact he kissed her like he'd planned it like this a hundred times.
When there was an alarming beep from the machines Robby pulled away quick, studdying them.
“It's just my heartrate,” you said. “Might have been beating a little faster there.”
He agreed but seemed solemn to do so.
You watched the crease between his brows appear again. “You know, if I knew I just needed to be stabbed to have you kiss me again I'd have-”
“Don't even think about finishing that sentence.”
For the sake of his nerves, you didn't.
“You know if I'd have known that it was just gonna take me getting stabbed for you to sell that motorbike, I'd have got stabbed a lot sooner,” you said teasingly as Robby pulled into his new designated parking space outside the ED.
It had been a month since the incident but you were still reaping the small benefits that came with it. Like Robby insisting you stay with him to get the best care, like him getting rid of his motorbike to get a better car that was more comfortable on your back.
Like having so much time with him.
Mornings where he dedicated time in messaging the sore spots of your back and spreading an oil that was going to help the scaring. Like the dinner times when you read him a recipe that he never followed to the t. Like the kisses you stole in the night when he'd watch you and kiss you without straining to go forward.
Robby parked the car and turned off the engine. “If I had a dollar every time you said that,” he grumbled, picking up his bag and exiting.
You were still moving slower, still kept a crutch with you to keep weight off your back. You were coming back to work with a much lighter work load and you were sure Robby would be glued to your side all day like he practically had the month you'd took to recover.
Even before you could open the door Robby was there doing it for you, your own bag in his hand.
“You think anyone's gonna want to see the cool scars I've got, they kind of look like stars,” you said as Robby stayed close by your side, walking in with you.
“You sent them all pictures,” he said, mildly irritated. You and everyone around you seemed to try to crack jokes about the thing. He felt sometimes he was the only one who saw the near death wound for what it was.
“Excuse me- most of them asked for pictures.”
“Completely inappropriate.”
A few ambulance workers saw you, greeting you with smiles you returned while Robby waited next to you, holding up a polite hand in greeting.
It dropped, grazed yours and picked it up, holding on as the two of you walked in.
Usually Robby liked to walk in through triage, get a feel of what was happening but he wasn't risking that many foreign bodies next to you even though they caught David Brown and he was being charged.
Robby had something to live for, had something to protect. Nothing was happening to it. To you.
“It's good to have you back,” said Lupe as the two of you passed her at the door.
“Do you think that was a pun?” you uttered to him, rewarded with the smallest tint of his lips as he pushed open the door.
Loud clapping greeted you with some cheap, paper, party poppers when you walked in. Thee was cheering to and a large banner was hooked up, saying 'welcome home!'.
A place that could have held such terrible memories was brightened up as you jumped from one smiling face, to another.
Next to you, Robby stepped back, blending into the admiring crowd and started to clap too with something more than fondness in his smile. Love. A word that had woven its way into your vocab since moving in with him to get help for your wounds.
A word that summed up so much of what you had.
“You did this for me?” you asked.
“It was all Robby's idea,” said Jack, leading the cheering.
You didn't have to even move. Like he knew what you wanted Robby stepped over to you and kissed you. He always kept his lips irritatingly light, encouraging you to stretch out muscles in your back to join meet him.
You grinned against his lips. “I should be stabbed more often.”
Pairing: Jack Abbot x Reader
Reader: She/her pronouns, no given name
Warnings: Heavy angst, emotional neglect, marital conflict, pregnancy, divorce discussion, loneliness, hurt/no comfort, Jack missing an important event, a painful marriage breakdown, emotional abandonment, public humiliation, pregnancy reveal, divorce papers, and unresolved ending.
Author’s Note: Inspired by the kind of heartbreak that does not end just because someone leaves. Loosely inspired by Janine Berdin’s What If I Miss You For The Rest Of My Life?
This will be one of the few works I’ve decided to allow reblogs on, mostly because I want to see how I feel about it before deciding whether I’ll allow reblogs on future fics. I haven’t been the biggest fan of reblogs in the past, so please be respectful of that.
Summary: Jack promised he would be there. For once, on the most important night of your career, you believed him. But when the hospital takes him away again, you are left to stand alone beneath the lights, accept an award with his chair sitting empty beside you, and carry the secret you had planned to share with him. By the time he finally comes home, the marriage has already broken in a place apologies cannot reach.
I have built a house where I wait for your return
The dress had been hanging on the back of the bedroom door for almost two weeks before Jack finally noticed it.
You had left it there on purpose, though you told yourself you hadn’t. You told yourself it was there because the closet was too full, because the garment bag was too long, because the silk would crease if you shoved it between winter coats and blazers. You told yourself a lot of things because admitting the truth felt too humiliating, and the truth was that part of you wanted him to see it. You wanted him to remember without being reminded. You wanted him to walk past it after a long shift, pause with his hand still on the doorknob, and say, “That’s for the gala, right?” like the date lived somewhere in his head that wasn’t overcrowded by trauma charts, shift changes, hospital pages, and everyone else’s emergencies.
It was a black silk gown, simple in the way expensive things were simple. Off the shoulder, fitted through the waist, smooth over the hips, with a slit that opened only when you walked. It wasn’t flashy. It didn’t need to be. The fabric caught the bedroom light softly, almost like water, and every time you passed it, you imagined wearing it beside him.
That was the part that embarrassed you now. You had imagined it.
Jack in a dark suit. You in the black dress. His hand at the small of your back while people congratulated you. Maybe he would be tired, because he was always tired, but he would be there. You pictured him standing slightly behind you when people asked questions about the hospital contracts, his expression quiet but proud, his thumb brushing your hip like he needed to remind himself you were real. You pictured him leaning down and saying something low near your ear, something dry and teasing, something only meant for you. You pictured walking into a room and not feeling like you had to be impressive alone.
Three weeks earlier, he had stood in the kitchen with the invitation in his hand, wearing sweatpants and an old Pitt hoodie, his hair still damp from the shower. His eyes had looked bruised underneath from exhaustion, but when he read your name embossed in gold, he smiled.
“Dr. Y/N Abbot,” he said, running his thumb over the raised lettering. “Founder and Chief Systems Architect. This is fancy.”
You had been sitting at the island with your laptop open, pretending not to watch him too closely. There was a half-empty mug of tea beside your hand that had gone cold while you answered emails, and Jack had been barefoot on the kitchen tile, still carrying the warmth of the shower and the fatigue of the hospital with him.
“It’s a major industry gala, Jack. It’s supposed to be fancy.”
He looked up, amused. “I know. I’m just saying. This is real fancy.”
“You’re acting like I invited you to prom.”
“Kind of feels like it,” he said, setting the invitation down. “Except I don’t think anyone at my prom was casually entering billion-dollar valuation territory.”
You laughed despite yourself, and he came around the island, slipping his arms around your waist from behind. For a moment, you let yourself lean back into him. He smelled like soap, coffee, and hospital laundry detergent, that clean, sterile scent that had somehow become part of your marriage. His mouth brushed the side of your neck, and for a second, the kitchen felt like a place where both of your lives still fit.
“Don’t say it like that,” you murmured.
“Like what?”
“Like it’s ridiculous.”
“It is ridiculous,” Jack said, his voice low against your skin. “In a good way. My wife builds technology hospitals are fighting to buy, and I’m over here trying to remember where I left my badge.”
You turned in his arms and looked up at him. His hands stayed at your waist, warm and familiar. You could feel the small tremor of exhaustion in him, the way he was never fully still after a hard shift, like some part of his body was always bracing for the next alarm.
“So you’re coming?”
His smile softened. “Of course I’m coming.”
“You asked Harper to switch?”
“Already done.”
“You’re not on call?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
Jack’s expression changed then, the teasing fading into something more careful. He touched your cheek with his thumb, and you hated how quickly your heart wanted to believe him. It was always like that with Jack. One gentle touch, one serious look, one promise said in that tired, sincere voice, and all the loneliness you had been trying to gather into evidence loosened in your hands.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m coming.”
You searched his face. “This one matters to me.”
“I know.”
“It’s not just dinner. We’re announcing the hospital network implementation contracts. The rollout plan. Market entry. The valuation estimate. This is the kind of night people remember.”
Jack nodded and kissed your forehead. “I’ll be there. I promise.”
That was the version of him you kept loving. The version that meant it. The problem was, Jack almost always meant it. If he had been careless, maybe you could have hated him properly. If he had forgotten because you did not matter, maybe the grief would have sharpened into something cleaner, something you could hold without blaming yourself. But Jack remembered in fragments. He loved in fragments. He showed up in small, exhausted pieces and looked at you like he wanted to give you everything, right before the world asked him for more than he had left.
And you kept living on those pieces.
A hand on your waist in the kitchen. His mouth against your temple before a shift. The rare mornings where he woke before his alarm and pulled you back against him like sleep had made him honest. The way he still looked at your face sometimes, quietly, almost helplessly, like he was surprised life had ever given him something soft. You had survived on that for longer than you wanted to admit, and that was the humiliating part. Not that he hurt you. Not even that he missed things. It was that one good look from him could still make you forgive a loneliness he had not yet apologized for.
On the night of the gala, he called you at 5:18 p.m.
You were standing in the bathroom in a silk robe while your makeup artist packed up her kit. Your hair was pinned into a low twist at the back of your neck, with a few pieces left soft around your face. Your earrings were already on, small diamond drops that caught the light whenever you moved. Your face looked finished in the mirror — warm skin, dark lashes, softly lined lips — polished enough that no one would know how nervous you were.
The bathroom smelled like hairspray, powder, perfume, and the faint steam from the shower you had taken an hour earlier. On the counter, your lipstick lay uncapped beside a little dish holding your wedding rings, which you had cleaned that afternoon because you thought there would be photographs of the two of you. The whole apartment felt too quiet, too prepared, like a stage waiting for someone who had not arrived yet.
Your phone lit up on the counter.
Jack.
Your stomach dropped before you even answered.
“Please don’t,” you said immediately.
There was a pause on the other end. Then Jack sighed, and the sound told you everything before he did.
“Y/N.”
You closed your eyes. “You said you weren’t on call.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You said you switched.”
“I did.”
“Then why are you calling me like this?”
He sounded tired already. Not physically tired exactly, but braced, like he knew he was about to hurt you and hated that knowing. “Harper’s kid got sick, and they’re short. It’s bad. I wouldn’t go in if they had coverage.”
You stared at yourself in the mirror. Your eyeliner was perfect. Your lips were perfect. Your whole face looked calm in a way that made you feel almost detached from it.
“Did they ask you, or did you offer?”
Jack didn’t answer quickly enough.
You let out a small, humourless laugh. “Oh.”
“They were drowning,” he said.
“So you offered.”
“I said I could come in for a few hours. I’m going to try to get out as soon as I can.”
You pressed your fingertips into the cool marble counter. The makeup artist moved quietly in your peripheral vision, pretending very hard not to listen.
“Jack, the reception starts at seven. Dinner is at eight. Speeches are at nine-thirty.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“That’s not fair.”
You looked down at your wedding band in the dish. The diamond caught the bathroom light, clean and bright and cruel.
“I can’t do this right now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.”
The silence stretched. You could hear hospital noise in the background already: a distant page, someone calling for transport, the low hum of a place that never cared what anyone had planned.
“I’ll make it,” Jack said, but his voice had changed.
You heard the lie before it fully left his mouth.
“Don’t,” you said softly.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t give me a second promise to cover the first one.”
He exhaled. “Y/N.”
“I have to finish getting dressed.”
“I love you.”
Your throat tightened. “I know.”
He waited, but you did not say it back. After a few seconds, he said he would text you when he knew more, and you ended the call before he could apologize again.
The makeup artist stood very still, her brush bag in one hand, pretending she had not heard enough to understand. You looked at her through the mirror and smiled with the exact expression you used in investor meetings.
“Sorry about that.”
Her face softened. “No, don’t apologize.”
You picked up your lipstick and opened it even though your lips were already done. “I’m fine.”
She did not believe you, which was kind of her. At least she did you the courtesy of not saying so.
You waited until she left before you put your rings back on. For a moment, you stood in the quiet bathroom and looked at yourself in the mirror. The woman looking back at you was composed, elegant, expensive. She looked like someone who knew exactly where she was going. She did not look like someone trying to decide whether it was more pathetic to cry before the biggest night of her career or to still hope her husband might walk through the door in time.
You got dressed carefully. You stepped into the gown and pulled it up over your body, smoothing the silk over your hips with both hands. The dress fit perfectly. That almost made you cry. You had wanted Jack to see it. You had wanted the private little intake of breath he sometimes gave when he forgot to pretend he wasn’t stunned by you. You had wanted him to look at you like he remembered you were not just the person waiting at home with leftovers and patience.
Instead, you zipped yourself up alone.
The first news segment aired from the lobby of The Pitt just after 7:00 p.m.
It wasn’t unusual for the televisions in the emergency department to run local news with the volume low. Most of the time, no one paid attention unless there was a weather alert, a mass casualty incident, or something affecting hospital funding. It was background noise beneath sharper sounds: monitors beeping, wheels rattling, phones ringing, curtain rings scraping open and shut.
Jack was at the desk reviewing imaging when one of the nurses looked up at the television.
“Wait,” she said. “Is that your wife?”
Jack’s head lifted.
The screen showed the front of the Meridian Grand, a luxury hotel downtown with a glass canopy and warm lights spilling onto the rain-dark sidewalk. A reporter stood outside in a wool coat, holding a microphone while guests moved behind her in formalwear.
The lower-third banner read:
L/N POWER SYSTEMS CELEBRATES MAJOR HOSPITAL GRID CONTRACTS
Company valuation expected to climb as implementation phase begins
Jack’s hand tightened around the tablet.
The reporter smiled into the camera. “Tonight, L/N Power Systems is hosting a private gala following a major round of hospital infrastructure contracts that could place the company among the most valuable emerging players in emergency energy systems. Founded by electrical engineer Dr. Y/N Abbot, L/N Power Systems has developed adaptive microgrid technology designed to keep critical hospital units powered during grid failures, natural disasters, and rolling outages.”
A resident standing nearby glanced between the television and Jack. “Dr. Abbot, that’s your wife, right?”
Jack nodded once. “Yeah.”
“Damn,” the resident said, clearly trying to sound impressed rather than awkward. “That’s huge.”
Jack did not respond. The broadcast cut to a graphic showing projected contract values, implementation timelines, and valuation estimates. The numbers were careful, couched in analyst language, but the implication was obvious. If your company hit its implementation targets and the contracts expanded the way people expected, you were on track to enter billion-dollar territory.
A nurse whistled quietly. “Billion with a B?”
Another nurse said, “And she designed the actual system?”
Jack looked at the screen. “Yeah.”
The nurse shook her head. “That’s wild.”
The camera returned to the hotel entrance just as your car pulled up. Jack knew it was you before the door opened. He recognized the way Mara, your assistant, stepped out first and turned back toward the car, one hand hovering near the open door.
Then you appeared.
For a second, the desk around him faded out. The dress looked different on you than it had on the hanger. It followed your body with quiet confidence, the black silk catching silver from the camera flashes and gold from the hotel lights. Your shoulders were bare. Your hair was pinned low, elegant but not severe, and the diamonds at your ears glittered whenever you turned your head. You stepped under the canopy and smiled for the cameras.
It was a beautiful smile. It was also the smile you wore when you were trying not to feel something.
The reporter turned as photographers called your name. “And there she is now, Dr. Y/N Abbot, founder and chief systems architect of L/N Power Systems. Dr. Abbot has been described by analysts as one of the most closely watched engineers in the hospital infrastructure space, especially now that her company’s adaptive grid platform is moving from pilot installations into large-scale implementation.”
Someone at the desk said, “Jack, aren’t you supposed to be there?”
Nobody meant it cruelly. That almost made it worse.
Jack swallowed, still watching as you paused beside the step-and-repeat, your clutch held neatly in both hands.
“I was.”
The answer made the area around him go quiet.
On-screen, a reporter asked you, “Dr. Abbot, tonight is being described as a turning point for your company. What does it mean to have hospital systems moving forward with implementation?”
You smiled, and Jack noticed your fingers tighten slightly around your clutch.
“It means the work is becoming real,” you said. “Designing the system was one part of it. Proving it under stress testing was another. Implementation is where it starts to matter for patients, doctors, nurses, and everyone relying on those seconds when the grid becomes unstable.”
The reporter asked, “There’s already discussion of a possible billion-dollar valuation. Are you thinking about that tonight?”
You gave a small laugh, polite and controlled. “I think my CFO is probably thinking about it more than I am. The valuation matters because it affects growth and deployment, but for me, the focus is still the technology. If a trauma bay stays powered during an outage because of something my team built, that means more to me than a headline.”
The reporter thanked you. You nodded, smiled again, and moved inside.
Jack stood very still until the charge nurse beside him looked over. “You okay?”
He dragged his eyes from the screen. “Yeah.”
She held his gaze long enough to make it clear she did not believe him. Then a trauma page came through, and the whole department lurched back into motion. Jack handed off the tablet, shoved his phone into his pocket, and went where he was needed.
Again.
At the gala, people kept asking where your husband was.
You answered the first few times with patience. “He got called into the hospital.”
Most people responded kindly. Some even looked impressed, as if Jack’s absence made the two of you nobler somehow.
“Oh, of course. Emergency medicine.”
“That must be so difficult.”
“You both do such meaningful work.”
“Power couple, even when you’re in different places.”
You smiled through all of it. “Yes. He’s very dedicated.”
The ballroom was beautiful, but after a while its beauty started to feel almost cruel. The ceiling was high and painted cream and gold, with chandeliers throwing soft light over round tables covered in white linen. Each place setting had a black menu card with gold foil, a small arrangement of white orchids, and a tiny glass votive candle. Along one wall, a projection displayed animated renderings of your adaptive grid system: hospital wings lighting in sequence, power rerouting through alternate pathways, emergency loads stabilizing under simulated failures.
Your company’s leadership team sat near the stage. Your engineers were at the tables closest to you, dressed in suits and gowns that looked slightly unfamiliar on them. You loved seeing the people who had built the system with you getting treated like they belonged in rooms where money moved. Some of them kept taking discreet pictures of the menus and the floral arrangements. One of your junior engineers had shown up in a suit that still had a faint fold line in the sleeve from being fresh out of the garment bag. Another kept touching the stem of his wineglass like he was afraid of breaking it.
You should have been happy. Part of you was happy. That was what made the grief feel so unfair. The night was not ruined. The contracts were real. The applause was real. Your team’s pride was real. Your name on that screen was real. All of it was real.
So was the empty chair beside you.
By the tenth time someone asked where your husband was, you stopped hearing the question as a question. It became part of the room.
Where is he?
In the clink of champagne glasses.
Where is he?
In the scrape of chairs being pulled out for other wives, other husbands, other people with someone’s hand resting warmly against the backs of their seats.
Where is he?
In the empty space beside your plate, where his name sat in elegant black ink on heavy cream cardstock.
Dr. Jack Abbot
You stared at it for too long once, long enough that Mara touched your elbow beneath the table.
“You okay?”
You smiled before you answered, because that had become its own kind of muscle memory. “Yes.”
But your chest ached with something so childish and raw that it embarrassed you. You wanted him to think of you. Not the company. Not the press segment. Not the award. You. The woman in the dress he had promised to stand beside. The woman who had cleaned her wedding rings because she thought there would be photographs. The woman who kept glancing at the doors like wanting him hard enough might make him appear.
You hated yourself a little for that.
You hated that even surrounded by applause, even with your name glowing behind you, some stupid, tender part of you was still waiting to be someone’s favorite thing in the room.
Mara stayed close, fielding conversations when she sensed you needed a breath. She wore a deep green dress and carried a tablet even though you had told her not to work tonight.
“You’re doing great,” she murmured when a hospital executive walked away after asking too many questions about rollout costs.
You looked at the champagne flute in your hand. You had not taken a single sip.
“I’m doing rich-woman cosplay.”
“You are a rich woman.”
“Not emotionally.”
Mara almost laughed, then looked at your face and didn’t.
Your hand went to your clutch, where the white envelope from the doctor’s office was tucked beneath your phone. You had not told anyone. Not Mara. Not your mother. Not Jack.
Especially not Jack.
The result had come through that morning after bloodwork confirmed what the home tests had already said. Five weeks. Early enough that it still felt secret and unreal, but real enough that the nurse had told you to start prenatal vitamins and book a follow-up appointment. You had sat in your car outside the clinic with both hands on the steering wheel, staring at the printed result until the words stopped looking like English.
Pregnant.
At first, you cried because you were happy. Then you cried because you were scared. Then, worst of all, you cried because the first person you wanted was Jack, and you had already known there was a chance he would not be there when you told him.
During dinner, your phone buzzed once. You checked it under the table.
Jack:
I’m still here. I’m so sorry. I watched your interview. You looked beautiful. I’m proud of you.
You stared at it for a long moment. For a second, you felt nothing. Then the hurt arrived slowly, settling into the parts of you that had already made room for it.
Mara leaned closer. “Is it him?”
You put the phone face down on the table. “Yeah.”
“Is he coming?”
You smoothed the edge of your napkin in your lap. “No.”
Mara went quiet. Across the room, your CFO was laughing with two investors. Someone from the hospital network raised a glass toward you, and you smiled back automatically.
“I don’t want to cry in this dress,” you said.
Mara’s voice softened. “Then don’t. Be mad instead.”
You looked at her, and something in your chest tightened. “I’m so tired of being mad.”
That was the truth you never said out loud. Anger took energy. Anger required the belief that something could still change if you made enough noise. You were so far past that now. You were tired in a way sleep could not fix, tired of dressing up disappointment until it looked like understanding, tired of giving Jack the best parts of your compassion while keeping none of it for yourself.
The first time the lights flickered at The Pitt that night, nobody really reacted.
Hospitals had a way of making disaster feel routine at first. A monitor blinked. A ceiling light hummed. Somewhere behind the desk, a printer stopped halfway through a page and then coughed itself back to life. The nurses looked up, annoyed but not afraid, because annoyance was easier to wear than fear.
Jack was in trauma two with both hands pressed around a patient’s bleeding thigh when the second flicker came.
This time, the room noticed.
“Power?” someone asked.
“Backup should catch,” a nurse said, but her voice had gone thin.
Then the overheads steadied. The monitors held. The ventilator kept its rhythm. The trauma bay stayed bright.
A few seconds later, someone from facilities came over the radio, breathless and stunned.
Only for a second, but long enough for the words to land somewhere beneath his ribs.
Adaptive reroute.
Your system.
Your work.
Your sleepless nights, your marked-up schematics, your laptop glowing blue at two in the morning while he came home too tired to ask what you were building. Your hands, your mind, your stubbornness, your company, your impossible little gap between failure and recovery.
The trauma bay lights stayed on because of you.
And he was not beside you when the world clapped for it.
“Dr. Abbot?”
Jack blinked and looked down. His gloves were slick. The patient was still bleeding. The room still needed him.
“Clamp,” he said, voice rough. “Now.”
He kept working because that was what he did. He kept people alive. He kept rooms from falling apart. He kept going until the crisis passed and everyone around him could breathe again.
But after, when the patient was taken upstairs and Jack stepped into the hall, the television over the nurses’ station was still showing the gala.
Your gala.
The reporter’s voice filled the space between ringing phones and rolling carts.
“Moments ago, L/N Power Systems’ adaptive grid platform stabilized a critical load interruption at an emergency department participating in one of its pilot programs. Company officials have not yet confirmed which hospital experienced the event, but analysts are already calling tonight a live demonstration of the technology’s value.”
A resident looked from the screen to Jack.
No one had to say it.
Jack already knew.
The hospital had needed you tonight too. The difference was, the hospital had gotten you.
He had not shown up for you at all.
Jack saw your acceptance speech from the staff lounge.
He had missed the start because a patient had crashed, and by the time he made it to the lounge, his scrub top was damp at the collar and his hands still smelled faintly of antiseptic even after washing them twice. Someone had turned the television volume up because your gala was now the top local business story of the evening.
You were on stage behind a podium, your award resting beside the microphone. The lights made your skin glow and turned the black silk of your gown almost blue at the edges. Behind you, the screen showed a slow animation of your company’s system keeping a surgical wing powered during a simulated outage.
Jack stayed in the doorway.
On the screen, you took a breath and looked out at the room.
“When I started this company, a lot of people told me the idea was too difficult to scale,” you said. “Some were polite about it. Some were not. I was told hospitals already had backup systems, that emergency power was a solved problem, and that the failure gap we were focused on was too small to justify the investment.”
You smiled slightly, and the audience laughed when you added, “The thing about engineers is that if you tell us the gap is small, we tend to ask what happens inside it.”
Jack’s throat tightened. He had heard you practice versions of this speech in the shower, in the kitchen, in the car. He had teased you once for rewriting one paragraph eleven times. You had thrown a pillow at him and told him the paragraph was weak.
Now you were saying it without him in the room.
“We built this system because seconds matter,” you continued. “A few seconds without stable power can change what happens in an operating room, in a trauma bay, in a NICU, in an elevator carrying a patient between floors. The goal was never to make hospitals perfect. The goal was to give them a better chance when everything else is failing.”
The staff lounge was quiet. Jack noticed one of the nurses standing near the coffee machine, arms folded, watching with damp eyes.
You glanced down briefly, then back up.
“I’m grateful for my team. I’m grateful to the hospital partners who believed in the technology early. I’m grateful to the people who asked hard questions, because they made the system better.”
You paused.
Jack knew that pause. He knew it because he had lived with you long enough to hear the breath you took before saying something that cost you.
“Tonight is a professional milestone, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t feel personal too. Building something this demanding changes your life. It changes your relationships. It tests who shows up, who wants to, and who actually does.”
Jack’s face went still.
On-screen, your expression remained calm, but your voice softened.
“I’ve learned that success does not make loneliness disappear. It can fill a ballroom. It can put your name on a screen. It can bring applause, contracts, and congratulations. But at the end of the night, you still know which chair beside you stayed empty.”
Nobody in the lounge moved.
Jack looked at the floor. He did not have to see the screen to know the camera would have found his empty chair. A place card with his name. A dinner plate cleared untouched. A visible absence.
But the camera did find it.
Not for long.
Just long enough.
There it was on the television: the chair beside you, empty beneath warm ballroom light. A white place card sat above the untouched dinner setting.
Dr. Jack Abbot
Someone in the lounge inhaled quietly.
Jack stared at his name on the screen.
It was different seeing it like that. Not as a missed text. Not as a fight waiting to happen. Not as something he could explain with patients and short staffing and impossible nights.
It was a space with his name on it.
A promise that had a shape.
An absence everyone could see.
You continued, steadier now. “I am proud of this company. I am proud of the team who built it. And tonight, I am proud of myself for believing that the things I needed were worth building, even when I had to build them alone.”
The applause started slowly, then grew.
Jack stood there, unable to move.
One of the residents near the table said quietly, “I’m sorry, man.”
Jack nodded, because there was nothing else to do. A minute later, his pager went off again.
You left the gala after midnight with your award in one hand and your clutch in the other.
People tried to stop you on the way out. A board member wanted to introduce you to someone from a national health system. Your CFO wanted five minutes about a follow-up call. A journalist asked for one more quote. You gave polite answers, promised emails, and let Mara run interference until you made it to the lobby.
Outside, the rain had slowed to a mist. The hotel’s front drive shone under the lights, slick and dark like spilled ink. Your heels clicked against the polished stone as you waited for the car. The night air was cold against your bare shoulders, and Mara draped your coat over you before you could pretend you were fine without it.
“You don’t have to go home,” she said.
You looked at the road. “I know.”
“I can book you a suite upstairs.”
“I already did.”
Mara turned to you.
You kept your eyes forward. “I booked it this afternoon. Just in case.”
Her expression changed, but she did not make it worse by reacting too much. “Okay.”
The car pulled up. The driver took your award and placed it carefully in the back seat. When you slid into the car, the dress gathered around your legs in a pool of black silk. Mara got in beside you.
For a while, neither of you spoke. The city moved past in blurred lights and wet windows. Billboards, traffic signals, restaurants closing for the night, people standing under awnings with cigarettes and phones. The world looked ordinary, which felt insulting. Something inside you had cracked open, and outside, people were still ordering late-night fries.
Mara broke the silence gently. “Do you want me to stay with you for a bit?”
You looked down at your clutch. “I’m pregnant.”
The words came out flat, almost too calm.
Mara’s head turned slowly. “Oh, sweetheart.”
Your eyes burned immediately. “I found out this morning.”
“Does Jack know?”
You shook your head. “I was going to tell him tonight.”
Mara covered her mouth for a second, then lowered her hand. “I’m so sorry.”
That was what undid you. Not the empty chair. Not the text. Not the speech. Just someone being sorry for you without making you explain why you had the right to be hurt.
You bent forward slightly, one hand pressed over your stomach, the other over your mouth, trying not to sob too loudly in the back of the car. Mara moved close and put an arm around your shoulders, careful of your hair, careful of the dress, careful of all the pieces of you that were barely holding.
“I wanted him there,” you said, voice muffled through your fingers. “I wanted one night where I didn’t have to understand.”
Mara rubbed your back. “I know.”
“I hate that I still wanted him.”
“That’s love,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t always leave when it should.”
You cried harder at that, because she was right. You thought you had moved past needing him like that. You thought if you got busy enough, successful enough, full enough, maybe you would not notice the missing parts so much. But then something happened, something beautiful or terrifying or important, and he was still the first person you wanted to tell.
You looked out the window, watching the city smear itself into streaks of white and red through the rain. Pittsburgh looked softer from inside the car, almost forgiving. Like it did not know what had happened to you tonight. Like somewhere behind all those lit windows, people were still coming home to each other.
“I’m sitting here with an award, a company people are saying might be worth a billion dollars, a baby I don’t even know how to feel brave enough for yet, and all I can think is that I wanted my husband to call me his girl one more time and mean it like nothing else in the world mattered.”
Mara reached for your hand.
You let her take it.
“I don’t know where to put all of this love,” you whispered. “That’s the worst part. I can leave the apartment. I can sign papers. I can sleep somewhere else. But what am I supposed to do with all the years I spent loving him?”
Mara squeezed your hand.
You looked down at your wedding ring.
“What if I spend the rest of my life missing him?”
The question was so quiet it barely felt spoken, but once it was out, there was no taking it back.
Jack came home at 2:38 a.m.
He opened the apartment door quietly, like quietness could make his absence smaller. The living room lamp was on. Your award sat on the coffee table, still gleaming, still heavy, still proof that the night had happened whether he had attended or not. Beside it were two envelopes. One cream, one white.
You were sitting on the couch in your gown. You had taken your earrings off. Your hair had loosened, soft pieces falling near your cheeks. Your lipstick had faded, and there were faint marks under your eyes where you had cried and carefully wiped the evidence away. Your heels were lined up beside the couch. Your bare feet were tucked beneath you.
Jack stopped near the door. “Hey.”
You looked up. “Hey.”
He closed the door and set his keys in the bowl by the entryway. The sound was small and domestic, so painfully normal that you almost laughed. How many times had you heard that exact sound? Keys in the bowl. Shoes by the door. His tired sigh. Your voice asking if he had eaten. Marriage had so many tiny rituals that survived even when the people inside them were falling apart.
“You’re still dressed,” he said.
“I know.”
“I thought you might be asleep.”
“I thought a lot of things tonight.”
Jack looked down. He was still in his scrubs under a dark jacket. His hair was messy from running his hands through it, and there was a line across his cheek from where a mask had pressed into his skin. He looked exhausted. He looked guilty. He looked like the man you loved.
That was inconvenient.
That was devastating.
He stepped farther into the room. “I watched your speech.”
You nodded.
“You were incredible.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it. The way you talked about the system, the contracts, all of it. You were…” He stopped, searching for the right word. “You were exactly who you are.”
Your eyes filled, but you blinked the tears back. “That would have been nice to hear in person.”
Jack flinched. “I know.”
You looked down at your hands. Your rings caught the lamplight.
He came closer, stopping at the end of the coffee table. “I’m sorry.”
You smiled a little, but there was no warmth in it. “You say that so much.”
“I know.”
“I think that’s part of the problem.”
Jack sat in the armchair across from you instead of beside you. You appreciated that. At least he could still read a room.
“I didn’t want to miss it,” he said.
You looked at him. “I believe you.”
He seemed thrown by that. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you sound like that?”
“Because wanting to be there and being there are different things.”
Jack rubbed both hands over his face. When he lowered them, his eyes were red. “Harper called. They were short. I thought if I went in early, I could help stabilize things and leave before dinner.”
“You thought.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t call me before deciding.”
“I didn’t want to stress you out while you were getting ready.”
You stared at him, and he heard it as soon as he said it.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said quickly.
“You didn’t want to stress me out, so you made the decision alone and told me after.”
Jack leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I made the wrong call.”
“You made the familiar call.”
He swallowed.
The room settled around those words. Rain tapped softly at the windows. Somewhere outside, tires hissed against wet pavement. The apartment smelled faintly like his hospital jacket and your perfume, like two lives still pretending they knew how to touch without hurting each other.
“You don’t understand what it’s like there,” Jack said quietly.
The words came out tired. Not cruel. Not even angry at first. Just exhausted enough to be careless.
You went still.
Jack looked at you and immediately seemed to regret it. “Y/N, I didn’t mean—”
“No,” you said softly. “Say it.”
He closed his eyes. “I just mean, when someone is dying in front of you, when there aren’t enough hands, when people are looking at you like you’re the last thing standing between them and the worst day of their life, it’s not easy to walk away.”
You nodded slowly. “I know.”
“I don’t think you do.”
That one hurt.
You stared at him for a second, and something in your face changed. Not anger. Not even shock.
Exhaustion.
The kind that comes when someone you love finally says the thing you always knew they believed underneath all the apologies.
“You’re right,” you said.
Jack opened his eyes. “What?”
“You’re right. I don’t know exactly what it’s like to be you.”
His mouth tightened. “That’s not what I—”
“But I know what it’s like to keep the lights on when a hospital can’t afford for them to go out. I know what it’s like to have people depend on something I built, something I signed my name to, something that could fail in ways that would haunt me. I know what pressure is, Jack. I know what responsibility is.”
His face softened, shame creeping in.
You looked at the award on the table. “And I know what it’s like to be surrounded by people congratulating me while my husband is on a television screen’s other side, using my work to save people, and still somehow unable to show up for me.”
Jack’s eyes shone. “That’s not fair.”
The words came out before he could stop them.
You laughed once, small and wounded. “There it is.”
“Y/N—”
“No, it’s okay. It’s not fair. Someone was dying. The hospital was short. Harper’s kid was sick. There was a trauma. There was a power issue. There’s always a reason, Jack. There is always a reason good enough to make me feel awful for being hurt.”
His jaw worked, but no words came.
You leaned forward slightly, your voice low. “You know what the worst part is? I believe all your reasons. I believe they’re real. I believe they matter. I believe you’re a good doctor and a good man and that people are alive because of you.”
Your eyes filled.
“But I also believe I have been lonely in this marriage. And you keep asking one truth to erase the other.”
Jack looked down.
You reached for the cream envelope on the table. Your fingers brushed over the thick paper, and Jack’s gaze followed the movement.
“What is that?” he asked.
You held it in your lap for a moment. Jack looked at you like he wanted to memorize you and beg forgiveness at the same time. You wondered if he knew how often you had done that to him.
Memorized him, you meant.
The slope of his shoulders when he came home defeated. The faint scar near his eyebrow. The way his hands looked too capable around a coffee mug, too gentle when they touched you, too absent when you needed them and they were somewhere else holding someone else together. You had loved his face through every version of your own disappointment. You had loved him in doorways, waiting for him to take off his shoes. You had loved him across dinner tables where his phone kept lighting up. You had loved him in bed while he slept beside you, too exhausted to notice you were crying.
You had loved him so thoroughly that leaving him felt less like choosing yourself and more like cutting your own heart out before it could beg you to stay.
“I don’t want you to be a lesson,” you said suddenly.
Jack’s brows pulled together. “What?”
You looked down at your hands. “I don’t want to look back one day and tell people you taught me what I deserved. I don’t want you to become some sad, useful story about growth. I wanted you to be my husband.”
His face broke.
You swallowed hard. “I wanted you to be the person I came home to. Not the reason I had to learn how to stop waiting.”
Jack stared at you, and for a moment, you saw the words land somewhere deep enough to hurt him. You almost hated yourself for noticing. You almost hated that even now, a part of you wanted to soften the blow.
“When you asked me to marry you, I thought I understood what you were asking,” you said.
Jack’s face shifted. “What does that mean?”
You looked at him, and the ache in your chest sharpened. “I thought you were asking me to share your life. I thought it meant we would make room for each other, even when it was hard. I knew your job would be demanding. I knew there would be nights you couldn’t leave. I knew I would have to be patient sometimes.”
Your voice stayed even, but Jack’s expression was already changing.
“I didn’t know I was signing up to become the easiest thing to cancel.”
He closed his eyes. “Y/N.”
“I didn’t know I would have to feel guilty for needing you.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty.”
“But I do. Every time. Because there’s always a patient, or a shift, or someone sicker, or something worse. And I know those things matter. I’m not pretending they don’t.”
You set the cream envelope on the table and slid it toward him.
“I just can’t keep living like my pain only counts if it’s an emergency.”
Jack stared at the envelope. For a few seconds, he did not touch it. Then he picked it up.
You watched him open it. You watched him read the first page. You watched the colour leave his face.
“Divorce,” he said quietly.
You folded your hands together so he would not see them shake. “Yes.”
He looked up at you, stunned. “You want a divorce?”
“I don’t want this version of marriage anymore.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
You breathed in slowly. “I know.”
Jack stood, then seemed to realize he did not know where to go, so he sat back down hard. “When did you decide this?”
You looked toward the window. The city lights reflected faintly in the glass.
“I think part of me has been deciding for a long time.”
He shook his head. “No. We’ve had hard months. I know that. But divorce?”
“You keep saying it like I’m being dramatic.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“No,” you said. “You’re trying to find the part where I did this wrong, so you don’t have to look at how long you were doing it to me.”
Jack’s mouth tightened. “That’s not fair.”
The words left him fast.
Too fast.
You looked at him, and he looked like he wanted to reach across the room and take them back.
“Stop saying that to me,” you whispered.
His face cracked. “I’m sorry.”
“I am so tired of being told my pain has to be fair to yours.”
Jack covered his mouth with one hand and looked away.
You wiped your thumb over your ring. “I sat at that table tonight with your name card beside me. People kept asking where you were, and I kept making you sound noble because I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
Jack looked crushed. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know. But I did. Because I’m used to protecting you from how it feels to be married to you.”
His mouth opened, then closed again. That was the first time he really had no defense.
You continued, softer now. “I don’t think you’re a bad man, Jack. That would be easier. You’re kind. You care about people. You work yourself into the ground because you can’t stand leaving anyone unsupported.”
Your eyes met his.
“But somehow, I became the person you could leave unsupported because I was good at surviving it.”
Jack’s eyes shone. “That’s not how I see you.”
“I know. But it’s how you treat me.”
He pressed his palms together, his hands shaking slightly. “I can change.”
You looked at him with so much sadness that he almost looked away.
“I needed you to change before I had to beg myself to stop hoping.”
The room was quiet after that.
Then Jack noticed the second envelope. The white one. It sat beside the award, small and plain, with the doctor’s office logo in the corner.
His eyes stayed on it too long.
“What’s that?”
You felt your throat close. This was the part you had dreaded most. The part that made everything feel impossible.
You picked up the white envelope. Jack watched you like his body already knew what his mind did not.
“This is what I was going to give you tonight after the gala.”
His face went still.
You held it out.
He did not take it right away.
“Y/N,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.
“Please just open it.”
He took the envelope. His fingers were careful, almost gentle, as if the paper might bruise. He pulled out the test results, unfolded them, and read.
You watched the exact second he understood.
His lips parted. His eyes moved over the page again. Then again. When he looked at you, his face had fallen apart so completely that you had to look down.
“You’re pregnant,” he said.
“Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since this morning.”
“This morning?”
You nodded.
Jack looked back at the paper, then at you. “You went alone?”
“I didn’t know if it was real yet. I took tests at home. Then I booked bloodwork.”
“You didn’t tell me?”
You laughed once, and it came out more like a sob. “You weren’t even there when I tried to tell you after.”
He took that quietly.
He deserved it, and he knew he did.
You pressed a hand to your stomach, more for comfort than anything else. “I had this whole plan. It feels stupid now.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“It was.” You wiped under your eye carefully. “I thought we’d get through the gala, and then maybe we’d go somewhere quiet. Maybe the balcony or the car. I thought I’d hand it to you and you’d look confused for a second, and then you’d understand. And I thought, for once, the night would feel like ours.”
Jack’s eyes filled. “I should have been there.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
He put the divorce papers and the test results down on the table with shaking hands, keeping them separate, like mixing them together would make the whole thing more unbearable.
“I want this baby,” he said.
Your face crumpled. “I know.”
“I want you.”
You shook your head slowly. “Jack.”
“I do.”
“I know you want me.”
“Then don’t leave.”
“That’s not how this works.”
He stood again, and this time he came around the coffee table but stopped a few feet away from you.
“I’ll do better,” he said.
You looked tired suddenly. Tired in a way he had never really let himself see.
“You’ve said that before.”
“I mean it differently now.”
“You always mean it.”
He swallowed hard. That hurt him because it was true.
You stood too, the black silk falling around you as you rose. Without the heels, you looked more vulnerable. Less like the woman from the news. More like his wife, barefoot in the living room, exhausted from being brave in public.
“I don’t want to punish you,” you said. “I need you to understand that. I’m not doing this because I want you to suffer.”
“It feels like suffering.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Your voice broke. “Because staying feels like disappearing.”
Jack’s face tightened as if he had been hit.
You looked down, trying to keep your breathing steady. “I don’t recognize myself anymore sometimes. I used to tell you everything. I used to get excited to share things with you. Then I started editing myself because I didn’t want to add pressure to your life. I stopped telling you when I was upset because you already looked crushed when you came home. I stopped asking for dates because it was humiliating to watch you check your phone the whole time.”
Jack closed his eyes. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“You didn’t ask.”
The words came out quietly, but they landed hard.
He opened his eyes again. “You’re right.”
That made you cry harder, because you had wanted him to argue. You had wanted him to give you something to push against. Instead, he looked at you with tears in his eyes and finally saw the damage.
“You’re right,” he said again, his voice rough. “I should have asked. I should have noticed. I should have made room for you without you having to keep proving you needed it.”
You covered your mouth for a second.
Jack looked at your hand, then your stomach. His voice softened. “Are you okay? Physically?”
That question broke something small inside you.
“I think so.”
“Any pain?”
“No.”
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
“Are you nauseous?”
“A little.”
He nodded, doctor mode flickering in, then dying immediately because he seemed to realize how badly timed it was.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I’m doing the thing.”
You let out a tiny, sad laugh. “Yeah. You are.”
Jack wiped his face with the heel of his hand. “I want to come to the appointments.”
“I know.”
“Will you let me?”
You looked at him for a long moment. “I don’t know yet.”
He nodded quickly, even though it hurt. “Okay.”
“I’m not saying no forever.”
“I understand.”
“I just can’t make promises tonight to make you feel better.”
He breathed in shakily. “Okay.”
You moved toward the chair near the hallway and picked up a small overnight bag.
Jack saw it, and panic crossed his face before he could hide it.
“You packed a bag?”
“Yes.”
“You’re leaving tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“A hotel.”
“Which one?”
You looked at him.
He nodded once, backing off. “Right. Sorry.”
“I’m safe.”
“Okay.”
You slipped the bag over your shoulder. The movement was ordinary, almost boring, and somehow that made it worse. This was what leaving looked like. No screaming. No slammed drawers. Just a woman in a black gown picking up a small bag because she had reached the end of what she could carry.
Jack followed you to the entryway but kept a careful distance.
“Can I drive you?” he asked.
“No.”
“Can I at least walk you down?”
“No.”
He pressed his lips together, trying not to fall apart completely.
You put your hand on the doorknob. For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Then Jack said, “Do you still love me?”
You closed your eyes.
Of course he would ask the one question that did not save anything.
“Yes,” you said.
His breath caught behind you.
You turned back to face him, and there he was: wrinkled scrubs, red eyes, hands half-raised like he wanted to reach for you but had finally learned that wanting did not give him the right.
“I love you,” you said, and the truth of it nearly ruined you. “I love you so much that I stayed long after I started feeling alone. I love you so much that I kept making excuses for you because I knew you were tired, because I knew your work mattered, because I knew you were good.”
Jack’s eyes filled again.
“But I can’t keep giving you access to me just because you’re sorry after,” you whispered. “I can’t keep building a home out of promises you only remember once I’m already hurt.”
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he said.
“I know.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
You looked at him for a long moment. You thought of the gala. The black dress. The empty chair. The envelope. The baby. All the nights you had waited and waited, feeding yourself on old versions of him, surviving on memories like they were meals.
“Be someone our child can count on,” you said. “Start there.”
Jack nodded, crying silently now. “I will.”
You wanted to believe him.
God, you wanted to believe him so badly that for one dangerous second, your hand almost left the doorknob.
But then you remembered the chair.
You remembered your name being called in a room full of people while the place beside you stayed empty.
You remembered that love had not been enough to bring him there.
So you opened the door.
The hallway outside was quiet and softly lit. Somewhere down the hall, a neighbour’s television murmured behind a closed door. Life was still going on in all the ordinary ways.
Jack said your name once more.
You looked back.
He stood in the entryway with your award visible behind him on the coffee table and the two envelopes lying open beside it.
“I’m proud of you,” he said.
You gave him a small, broken smile. “I know.”
And that was what made it worse.
Because you knew.
You knew he loved you. You knew he was proud of you. You knew he would miss you when the apartment went quiet and the hospital could no longer give him somewhere else to run.
But knowing had never been the same as being held.
So you stepped into the hallway. This time, when you walked away, you did not wait for him to follow. You heard the door close gently behind you, and the softness of it hurt more than a slam would have.
After you left, Jack did not move for a long time.
The apartment stayed quiet around him. The lamp hummed softly. Rain touched the windows. Your heels were still by the couch, lined up neatly, as if even your heartbreak had manners.
On the coffee table, the divorce papers sat beside the pregnancy results.
The ending and the beginning.
Both addressed to him.
Jack picked up the remote with a hand that did not feel like his and opened the news replay. He did not know why. Maybe because grief made people stupid. Maybe because some part of him thought if he watched the night properly, he could punish himself into becoming the man who should have been there.
The video loaded.
There you were again.
Black dress. Soft hair. Bare shoulders. That careful, beautiful smile.
He watched you enter alone. He watched you answer questions alone. He watched you sit at the table alone. Then the camera panned, briefly, almost accidentally, to the empty chair beside you.
His name card was clear.
Dr. Jack Abbot
Jack paused the screen.
The room went silent.
There it was.
Not a feeling. Not an argument. Not your sensitivity. Not his schedule. Not bad timing.
Proof.
A chair with his name on it.
A space he had promised to fill.
Jack sat on the couch slowly, still staring at the frozen image. His face crumpled, but no sound came out at first. He had cried before. He had cried after losing patients. He had cried in stairwells, in supply closets, in the shower with one hand braced against the tile.
This was different.
This was not the grief of failing to save someone he had only just met.
This was the grief of realizing he had been losing you slowly while calling it survival.
His eyes moved from the frozen screen to the divorce papers.
Then to the pregnancy result.
Then back to your face.
“How do I forget you?” he whispered, but there was no one there to answer.
The apartment seemed to hold the question for him.
Your perfume still lived faintly in the room. Your mug was still in the sink. Your cardigan was still folded over the back of the chair. The book you had been reading was still open on the side table, a receipt tucked between the pages because you hated using proper bookmarks. There was a sticky note on the fridge in your handwriting reminding both of you to buy more oat milk. There was a pair of your socks half-hidden under the coffee table because you always kicked them off when you were working late. There was a framed photo from your courthouse wedding on the console, both of you laughing because Jack had been unable to get the ring onto your finger at first.
You were everywhere.
That was the cruelty of it. You had left, but the life you had built with him remained behind like a house still waiting for its owner to come home.
Jack covered his mouth with one hand and bent forward, shoulders shaking.
For once, no one was paging him. No one was asking him for help. No one was bleeding, crashing, coding, crying out, reaching for him from the other side of a curtain.
For once, there was no emergency left to run toward.
Only the life he had kept meaning to choose.
Only the wife he had loved too late.
Only the baby he had learned about on the same night he learned she was leaving.
Only the empty chair beside you, waiting on a screen for a man who never came.
And the worst part, the part that finally broke him open, was that Jack knew this would not be a clean grief. He would not miss you once. He would miss you in places. In the kitchen when the coffee brewed too strong. In the car when he passed the hotel downtown and remembered black silk under gold lights. In the emergency department when the power held steady because of the system you built. In every waiting room, every hallway, every quiet elevator ride where he would think of you standing somewhere else, living a life he was no longer trusted to enter.
He would miss you when the baby came.
He would miss you when your child had your eyes.
He would miss you when people asked about his wife and he had to learn how to say your name without saying mine.
Jack stared at the empty chair until the screen blurred.
For the first time all night, he understood that you had not left because you stopped loving him. You left because you were terrified you would spend the rest of your life loving him from a room he never came home to.
And Jack, too late, finally knew what it meant to wait. Not for a patient. Not for a shift to end. Not for the next crisis to pass. But for a woman who might never come back.
The television stayed paused on his name.
The apartment stayed still around him.
And Jack sat there in the home you had built together, finally surrounded by all the love he had assumed would wait forever.
Request - First of all can I just say your writing is STUNNING. I could read it a million times over. formally requesting a story about reader x Robby during Covid when he's paranoid about being close and getting you sick, but he needs you more than ever it would rip my heart out (pretty pretty please)😩😩
The first time Robby told you not to come over, he sounded calm enough that you almost believed him.
“Just for a couple weeks,” he’d said over the phone one rainy March night while you sat cross-legged on your couch with your laptop balanced against your thighs and three separate COVID dashboards glowing across your television screen. “Until we know what the hell this thing actually is.”
You remembered staring at the graphs while he spoke, watching the lines climb higher and steeper with every update from Italy and New York and Seattle. Infection rates. Hospitalization curves. Mortality projections. Your entire job as a healthcare data analyst had become one endless cycle of numbers feeding into larger numbers until human lives started feeling dangerously easy to reduce into percentages. But Robby never sounded afraid. Tired, yes. Irritated sometimes. Cynical almost constantly. But afraid? Never.
Which was why the strain in his voice that night had lodged beneath your ribs hard enough to hurt.
“Robby,” you said quietly, rubbing at your forehead as another email notification appeared across your screen. “You’ve already worked six shifts in a row.”
“I’m aware.”
“You sound exhausted.”
“I am exhausted.”
“You should let me come by.”
“No.”
The answer came instantly. Firm. Immediate. You leaned back into the couch cushions, staring at the ceiling of your apartment while rain tapped softly against the windows.
“You realize I already barely leave my apartment, right? I work from home. I get groceries delivered. I sanitize literally everything because you’ve terrified me into doing it.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t want you around me right now.”
“You’re not radioactive.”
“No,” he replied flatly. “Just surrounded by a highly contagious virus every day.”
You closed your eyes. Outside, the city had gone strangely silent over the last week. Restaurants closing. Streets emptying. Businesses shutting down one by one. The entire world narrowing into fear and uncertainty and the constant sound of ambulance sirens echoing somewhere in the distance. You could hear those sirens through his apartment windows too whenever you stayed over.
Only now you weren’t staying over anymore. You hadn’t seen him in eleven days. At first, you told yourself it made sense. You were both adults. Rational adults. Careful adults. He worked in an emergency department during the beginning of a global pandemic. Of course he was being cautious.
Then the days kept passing. And Robby kept sounding more tired.
“Today sucked,” he muttered suddenly.
Your attention sharpened immediately. “What happened?”
There was a pause. Too long.
Then quietly, “We ran out of rooms.”
Your stomach dropped. You looked back toward your television screen where red circles bloomed across a national map like spreading wildfire.
“Jesus,” you whispered.
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
Another pause.
“No.”
The honesty in it cracked something open inside your chest. Not because he admitted weakness. Robby was human enough for that sometimes. But because of how empty he sounded saying it. Like someone speaking from the bottom of a well.
You sat up straighter. “I’m coming over.”
“No.”
“Robby—”
“No.” Sharper now. Frayed. “Do not come over here.”
“You just said you’re not okay.”
“And you being physically near me won’t magically fix that.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“You coming here risks you getting sick.”
“I know the risks.”
“No, you understand them academically,” he snapped. “I’m the one watching people drown in their own lungs.”
Silence slammed down between you. You swallowed hard. The words weren’t cruel exactly. Just brutal. Honest in the worst possible way. When he spoke again, his voice sounded lower. Exhausted.
“I can’t be responsible for you getting this.”
“You wouldn’t be.”
“Yes,” he said immediately. “I would.”
You pressed your lips together hard enough to hurt. Because this was Robby. This was how he loved people. By carrying impossible responsibility until it hollowed him out from the inside.
And God, you already knew he was hollowing. You could hear it happening.nYou glanced toward the clock glowing from your microwave.
11:47 PM.
He still had to be back at the hospital in less than seven hours.
“Have you eaten?” you asked quietly.
“I don’t know.”
That nearly broke you.
“You don’t know?”
“I had half a protein bar at some point. Maybe.”
“Robby—”
“I’m too tired to fight with you tonight.”
The exhaustion in his voice softened your own immediately.
You leaned your head back against the couch cushions and closed your eyes. “I’m not trying to fight with you.”
“I know.”
“You sound awful.”
“I probably look worse.”
Despite yourself, your mouth twitched faintly.
“Impossible,” you murmured.
That earned you the smallest sound. Not quite a laugh. More like the memory of one.
God, you missed him. You missed his weight beside you on the couch. His dry sarcasm. His hand resting absentmindedly against your thigh while he read charts. You even missed the way he stole your coffee every morning despite insisting he didn’t want any.
The loneliness of quarantine had become something physical lately. A pressure against your ribs. Endless hours alone inside your apartment with only data and news alerts and death tolls for company. But his loneliness had to be worse. Because at least you were safe. Robby was walking directly into the fire every single day.
“You should try to sleep,” you said softly.
“I’m about to shower.”
“Then sleep.”
“Mm.”
You hesitated.
Then finally, quietly, “I miss you.”
The silence on the other end nearly hurt more than if he’d answered immediately. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded rough.
“I know.”
Not I miss you too. Because he couldn’t let himself say it right now. Couldn’t let himself want things he thought were dangerous. Your throat tightened anyway.
After you hung up, you sat alone in your apartment staring at the television while another row of numbers updated across the bottom of your spreadsheet. Cases climbing. Hospitalizations climbing. Deaths climbing. And somewhere across the city, Robby was standing alone under scalding water trying to scrub an invisible virus off his skin before collapsing into bed for a few hours and doing it all over again tomorrow.
You lasted another forty-three minutes before grabbing your keys. By the time you parked outside his apartment building, rain was falling hard enough to blur the windshield. You stayed inside the car at first, fingers tightening around the steering wheel while you stared up toward the familiar third-floor windows glowing dimly against the dark.
This was stupid. He told you not to come. But then your phone buzzed in the cupholder. A text from Robby.
You asleep yet?
Your chest physically ached. You looked back up toward his apartment. Then down at the small paper bag sitting in your passenger seat containing soup, fresh bread, electrolyte drinks, and the chocolate chip cookies he always claimed he didn’t like before eating half the box. Finally, you typed back.
No. Look outside.
Three dots appeared almost instantly. Then vanished. Then reappeared.
What?
You looked up just in time to see movement behind the rain-streaked third-floor window. A tall figure stepping closer to the glass. Even from the parking lot, even through rain and distance and darkness, you knew the exact moment Robby realized it was your car. His silhouette went completely still. Your phone rang seconds later.
You answered immediately. “Before you yell at me—”
“What are you doing?”
His voice came sharp with disbelief.
“I brought food.”
“You drove here in the middle of a pandemic to bring me soup?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“You said you hadn’t eaten.”
“That does not mean you should be outside my apartment at midnight.”
“I’m not asking to come inside.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
You smiled faintly despite yourself, eyes still fixed on the shadow standing in the window above you.nFor a second neither of you spoke.
Then more quietly, Robby said, “You shouldn’t be here.”
“But I am.”
Rain hammered against the windshield. You watched his silhouette lean tiredly against the window frame. And when he spoke again, his voice sounded devastatingly worn.
“You’re making this very hard for me.”
Your breath caught softly in your throat. Because suddenly you understood. It wasn’t anger. It was temptation. He wanted you there. That was the problem.
******
Robby did not come downstairs. That became painfully obvious after the first ten minutes. You stayed parked beneath the flickering streetlamp with the windshield wipers dragging rhythmically across the glass while rain flooded the empty streets around you and the paper bag of food slowly cooled in the passenger seat. Every few minutes you glanced back up toward his apartment window, half expecting him to appear again, but the curtains remained still. Your phone buzzed once.
Go home.
You stared at the message for several long seconds before typing back.
No.
Three dots appeared instantly.
Jesus Christ.
You smiled faintly despite yourself.
Then typed: Eat the soup and I’ll think about it.
Another long pause. You imagined him inside his apartment rubbing both hands over his face in frustration. Exhausted. Damp-haired from his shower. Wearing those old gray sweatpants that hung low on his hips and the faded Pitt sweatshirt you kept accidentally stealing whenever you stayed over.
The image hurt more than it should have. You missed him so much it had started becoming anger. Not clean anger either. Not rational anger. Just this ugly mixture of loneliness and fear and helplessness that had nowhere to go because every single person in the world seemed frightened all the time now. Finally, your phone rang. You answered immediately.
“You are unbelievably stubborn,” Robby muttered without preamble.
“And you haven’t eaten.”
“You don’t get to emotionally manipulate me with soup.”
“It’s homemade.”
“You can hear how that’s worse, right?”
His voice sounded rougher tonight. Not just tired. Hoarse. Overused. You could practically hear the strain of twelve straight hours yelling through masks and alarms and overcrowded hallways. Your irritation softened despite yourself.
“Robby,” you said quietly, “please tell me you’re okay.”
Silence. Then finally, “We intubated three people in under an hour.”
Your chest tightened. Outside, thunder rolled somewhere far across the city. You looked up toward his apartment again, imagining him alone inside those walls carrying things no human being was supposed to carry alone.
“How bad is it?” you asked softly.
He exhaled hard through his nose.
“The ICU’s full. PACU’s full. We’re converting recovery rooms into critical care spaces now. Half the staff looks like they haven’t slept in a week.” His voice turned flat in that dangerous way it sometimes did when he was emotionally overextended. “I watched Dana cry in a supply closet today because she couldn’t get a fifty-year-old man’s oxygen saturation above seventy-eight.”
You closed your eyes. You worked with numbers all day. Predictive models. Regional spikes. Resource allocation projections. Mortality analyses. But Robby worked with the actual people inside those numbers.
“You should let someone take care of you too,” you said quietly.
“I am not having this conversation again.”
“Why?”
“Because it changes nothing.”
“It changes everything.”
“No,” he snapped suddenly. “It doesn’t.”
The sharpness of it made you sit up straighter.
“You think you sitting on my couch while I fall asleep for three hours before another shift somehow fixes this?” he continued, voice rising with exhaustion. “You think that changes what’s happening in that hospital right now?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you mean.”
“No,” you shot back immediately. “What I mean is you don’t get to completely self-destruct because you’ve decided you’re the only person allowed to suffer through this.”
“That’s not fair.”
“And this is?”
You heard him inhale sharply. Good. Because you were angry now too.
“You don’t get to push me away every time something hurts,” you continued, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “You don’t get to decide for both of us that this relationship only matters when things are easy.”
“I am trying to keep you safe.”
“And I am trying to love you.”
Silence crashed down between you. Heavy. Breathing. Rain. When Robby finally spoke again, his voice sounded low and frayed around the edges.
“You have no idea what I walk into every day.”
The words landed like a slap. Not because they were cruel. Because they were true. You swallowed hard, staring blindly through the rain-streaked windshield.
“No,” you admitted quietly. “I don’t.”
You heard him exhale shakily. For a second neither of you spoke.
Then more softly, “I had a patient today younger than you.”
Your stomach dropped.
“He kept asking for his wife,” Robby said hoarsely. “Couldn’t breathe. Terrified. We had to hold a phone to his face so she could say goodbye because she wasn’t allowed inside.”
You pressed your hand against your mouth.
“Oh my God.”
“He died twenty minutes later.”
The raw devastation in his voice nearly split you open. And suddenly the entire argument shifted shape. Because this wasn’t really about you coming over. This was about Robby drowning beneath the weight of witnessing tragedy after tragedy after tragedy while convincing himself attachment was now dangerous. Love was dangerous. Wanting people close was dangerous.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered.
He laughed once under his breath, hollow and exhausted. “Yeah. Me too.”
The fight drained out of you all at once.
You leaned your forehead against the steering wheel and closed your eyes. “I hate this.”
“So do I.”
“I hate not being able to touch you.”
That one slipped out before you could stop it. Silence answered you.
Then quietly, devastatingly, Robby said, “Don’t.”
Your eyes opened immediately. “Don’t what?”
“Say things like that right now.”
“Why?”
Because you already knew the answer. You just needed to hear him say it. Another pause.
Then finally, very softly, “Because I miss you enough already.”
Your chest physically ached. Outside, rain poured harder against the roof of the car while somewhere far away another ambulance siren wailed through the city. You stared up toward his apartment window again.
“I could stay out here all night,” you murmured.
“I know you could.”
“You think I’m kidding?”
“No,” he said tiredly. “That’s the problem.”
You heard movement on the other end of the line. Fabric shifting. Floorboards creaking. Then suddenly his voice sounded closer to the phone.
“Open your trunk.”
You blinked. “What?”
“Your trunk.”
Confused, you popped it remotely. Thirty seconds later the apartment building’s side door opened. And there he was. Your breath caught instantly.
God. Even from a distance he looked exhausted beyond belief. Dark circles carved beneath his eyes. Damp hair curling slightly at the edges from his shower. Gray sweatpants hanging low on narrow hips. Black long-sleeve thermal stretched across his shoulders. A surgical mask covered the lower half of his face, but it did nothing to hide how worn down he looked.
For one dangerous second instinct screamed at you to get out of the car and run to him. Robby stopped several feet away immediately. Like muscle memory. Like fear. The distance between you suddenly felt unbearable. He grabbed the paper bag from your trunk and shut it carefully before stepping back again. Rain soaked through his sweatshirt almost immediately.
“Go inside,” you said softly through the cracked phone connection.
“You first.”
“Robby—”
“I’m serious.”
You stared at him through the windshield. And God, his eyes. Even exhausted, they stayed fixed on you with that same impossible intensity that had ruined you months ago. Like looking away required effort.
“You look terrible,” you whispered before you could stop yourself.
A tired huff of laughter escaped him.
“Thank you.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
You swallowed hard.
“You also came downstairs in the rain just to get soup from me.”
“That was tactical.”
“You’re full of shit.”
That actually made him laugh a little. Small. Brief. Real. It wrecked you instantly. Because suddenly you realized how long it had been since you’d heard genuine amusement in his voice.
The sound faded quickly though. Then he looked at you for another long moment before speaking quietly.
“You shouldn’t keep waiting around for me like this.”
Something inside you tightened painfully.
“Too bad,” you replied softly. “I’m going to anyway.”
His eyes closed briefly. Like the words physically hurt him.
Then finally, almost too quietly to hear through the rain, “That’s what scares me.”
******
By the second week of April, the city no longer sounded alive. The constant hum of traffic outside your apartment had vanished almost completely, replaced instead by ambulance sirens and the distant howl of helicopters overhead at odd hours of the night. Every day blended into the next beneath the glow of laptop screens and breaking news banners and endless data updates that somehow grew worse every single morning.
You tracked hospitalization rates across the state by county now. ICU capacity. Ventilator allocation. Mortality trends. You spent entire days buried inside spreadsheets full of numbers that represented real human beings while Robby spent his days trying to keep those human beings alive long enough to become statistics later.
The divide between your worlds felt impossible sometimes. Especially because he kept disappearing further into his.
The calls became shorter. Texts delayed by hours. Sometimes entire shifts passed without hearing from him at all. And every time your phone stayed silent too long, panic began curling beneath your ribs before you could stop it.
You understood why he pulled away. You truly did. Rationally, scientifically, medically, you understood every single reason behind it.
Emotionally, though? Emotionally you were beginning to come apart. Because loving someone during a pandemic turned every silence into terror.
One Thursday night, after fourteen straight hours spent analyzing ICU overflow projections for three different hospital systems, you realized you hadn’t heard from Robby in almost nineteen hours. Your last text sat unanswered.
You alive?
Read. No reply. You tried not to overreact at first. He was working. The ED was drowning. You knew that. But then midnight came. Then one in the morning. Then two.
And suddenly you found yourself pacing barefoot across your apartment while your television muttered grim updates in the background and your untouched dinner sat cold on the kitchen counter.
Finally, at 2:17 AM, your phone rang. You answered so quickly you nearly dropped it.
“Robby?”
Static crackled briefly through the line before his exhausted voice answered.
“Hey.”
The single word nearly collapsed your knees with relief.
“Oh my God,” you breathed, sinking onto the edge of your couch. “Jesus Christ, I thought—”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He sounded horrific. Not just tired anymore. Destroyed.
You sat up straighter immediately. “What happened?”
A long silence stretched across the line.
Then quietly, “Bad shift.”
Something about the understatement made your stomach twist.
You stood again immediately, already reaching for your shoes. “I’m coming over.”
“No.”
“You sound awful.”
“I am awful.”
“Robby—”
“No.”
His voice cracked sharply through the phone before dissolving into rough exhaustion again. You stopped moving. Then softer, he muttered, “Please don’t fight me tonight.”
Your chest tightened painfully. Because suddenly you realized he wasn’t angry. He was barely holding himself together.
You lowered yourself slowly back onto the couch. “Talk to me.”
Silence.
Then finally, “We lost four people in two hours.”
You closed your eyes.
“Oh God.”
“One of them was a nurse from another hospital.”
The devastation in his voice hollowed you out instantly.
“She was forty-two,” he continued hoarsely. “Perfectly healthy before this. Two kids.”
You pressed trembling fingers against your forehead. Through the phone, you could hear movement around him. Distant voices. Monitor alarms. The muffled chaos of the emergency department still roaring behind him even at two in the morning.
“You still there?” he asked quietly after a moment.
“Yeah.”
“She coded while her husband was on FaceTime.”
Your breath caught sharply. And suddenly you understood. This wasn’t just exhaustion anymore. This was trauma accumulating faster than the human brain could process it.
“Robby…”
He laughed once under his breath. The sound held absolutely no humor.
“I can still hear him screaming.”
Tears burned hot behind your eyes immediately.
“Come home,” you whispered.
“I can’t yet.”
“You’ve been there almost twenty hours.”
“I know.”
“You need sleep.”
“I need another six doctors and thirty more nurses and an ICU that isn’t collapsing.”
Frustration flared hot and immediate beneath your grief. “You are one person.”
“Tell the virus that.”
The bitterness in his voice stunned you silent. Robby rarely sounded bitter. Exhausted. Sarcastic. Angry sometimes. But bitterness implied hopelessness, and hopelessness scared you more than anything else.
“Hey,” you said softly.
No answer.
“Robby.”
Finally, very quietly, “What?”
“You don’t have to save everyone.”
The silence that followed felt dangerous. Then suddenly he snapped.
“Yes. I fucking do.”
The raw fury in his voice made you freeze.
“I am the doctor standing in front of them when they can’t breathe,” he continued harshly. “I am the one telling families they can’t come inside. I am the one holding phones while people say goodbye to each other. So no, I actually do not have the luxury of deciding I’ve done enough.”
Your throat tightened hard. Because beneath the anger was grief. Overwhelming, suffocating grief. And underneath even that was guilt. The kind healthcare workers carried like chains.
“You think I don’t know I can’t save everyone?” he continued, voice cracking now around the edges. “You think I don’t know that every single time I walk out of a room there’s a chance I’m choosing who gets attention next because there aren’t enough of us?”
“Robby—”
“No, listen to me.” His breathing sounded uneven suddenly. “I had a resident cry in the medication room tonight because he’s twenty-seven years old and already trying to decide which patient gets the last ICU bed. Do you understand how fucked that is?”
You swallowed hard against the tears threatening your voice.
“Yes.”
“No, you understand the numbers,” he corrected roughly. “I understand what those numbers sound like.”
The words hit with brutal honesty. And for one awful second, neither of you spoke.
Then quietly, you asked, “When’s the last time you slept more than four hours?”
He didn’t answer.
“Robby.”
Another silence.
Then finally, “Tuesday maybe.”
“Tuesday?” Your voice cracked sharply. “It’s Friday.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are absolutely not fine.”
“I don’t have time not to be.”
You stood again suddenly, overwhelmed by helplessness. “This is exactly why you need somebody with you.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” he repeated more sharply. “Because if I let myself need you right now, I won’t be able to function when I have to walk back into that hospital tomorrow.”
The honesty in the statement stole the breath from your lungs. You stopped pacing entirely. Because there it was. The real reason. Not contamination. Not distancing. Not caution.
Need.
Robby was terrified that if he allowed himself comfort, he would finally collapse beneath everything he’d been carrying.
Your voice softened immediately. “You already need me.”
Silence.
Then quietly, almost angry now, “That’s the problem.”
Your eyes burned. Outside your apartment window, another ambulance siren screamed through the sleeping city.
“Come home,” you whispered again.
Nothing.
Then finally, tired enough to sound ancient, “I don’t know how to turn this off.”
Your heart cracked wide open. The anger disappeared instantly.
“Hey,” you said softly. “Look at me for a second.”
“I’m on the phone.”
Despite everything, you smiled through tears. “You know what I mean.”
A long pause. Then finally you heard him exhale shakily.
“You are allowed to be tired,” you told him gently. “You are allowed to be devastated by this. You are allowed to come home and let somebody love you through it.”
His breathing hitched almost imperceptibly.
“You don’t have to earn care by surviving the worst possible thing.”
Then suddenly you heard a muffled voice in the background calling his name. Robby cursed softly under his breath.
“I have to go.”
“Robby—”
“I’ll call you later.”
“You said that six hours ago.”
“I know.”
Fear spiked again immediately. “Promise me you’ll call.”
Silence.
Then more softly than anything he’d said all night, “I’ll try.”
The line went dead. You stared at your phone in horror.
I’ll try. Not I will. Not I promise. Just try. Something cold settled heavily in your stomach. Then suddenly you were moving. Grabbing your keys. Shoes. Mask. Hoodie. Your brain screamed at you the entire drive across the city. This was irrational. Dangerous. Emotional. Robby would be furious. You didn’t care anymore. Because somewhere between the mortality graphs and the unanswered texts and the sound of absolute defeat in his voice, terror had overtaken caution.
By the time you reached his apartment building, dawn had begun bleeding gray across the horizon. His parking spot was empty. Which meant he was still at the hospital. You stared at the building for a long moment from behind the steering wheel.
Then quietly said to yourself, “Fine.”
If Robby wouldn’t let you come to him. Then you would wait for him to come home.
******
By seven-thirty that morning, your back hurt, your coffee had gone cold twice, and the sun had fully risen over a city that still somehow felt abandoned. You sat curled in the passenger seat of your car beneath Robby’s apartment building with your laptop open against your knees, half-working off your phone hotspot while news anchors on the radio discussed ventilator shortages in grim, exhausted voices. Every so often another resident emerged from the building wearing a mask and gloves, moving quickly toward cars or grocery bags or dogs needing walked before immediately retreating back inside again.
Nobody lingered anymore. Human beings had started treating each other like loaded weapons. You hated it.
Around nine, your phone buzzed with a calendar reminder for a virtual hospital systems briefing you were supposed to attend in twenty minutes. You almost ignored it outright before guilt forced you to log in from the car, camera off, headphones in, while a dozen exhausted administrators and analysts discussed regional overflow capacity projections in detached clinical language.
“Based on current transmission rates, we estimate peak ICU strain within the next two weeks.”
“We need alternative triage planning finalized by Friday.”
“Mortality percentages remain difficult to accurately model due to underreporting—”
You muted the meeting entirely after that. Because suddenly all you could picture was Robby standing somewhere inside PTMC trying to hold phones up for dying people while administrators discussed percentages. Your stomach turned.
At 10:14 AM, his car finally pulled into the parking lot. Relief hit you so hard it nearly hurt. Then you got a proper look at him. And every ounce of relief transformed into alarm.
Robby climbed slowly out of the driver’s seat like his body physically ached. His shoulders sagged beneath a dark jacket you knew he’d thrown on over scrubs, and even from across the parking lot you could see the exhaustion written across every line of him. He looked pale. Not tired pale. Wrong pale. You shoved your laptop aside immediately and pushed out of the car before he could disappear into the building.
“Robby.”
He stopped dead. For one long second he simply stared at you across the parking lot like he genuinely thought he might be hallucinating. Then his entire face tightened beneath the mask.
“What are you doing here?”
You ignored the irritation in his voice instantly because now that he was closer, you could see his hands trembling. Your heart dropped.
“Have you slept at all?”
“That is not an answer to my question.”
“You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” His voice sharpened suddenly. “What are you doing here?”
You folded your arms tightly against the cold morning air. “Waiting for you.”
“Why?”
The fact that he sounded genuinely confused nearly shattered you.
“Because you sounded like you were falling apart last night.”
“I was having a bad shift.”
“You sounded traumatized.”
Something flickered briefly across his face at that. Not anger. Recognition. Then it vanished behind exhaustion.
“You can’t just sit outside my apartment building all night,” he muttered, dragging a hand tiredly across his forehead.
“And yet I did.”
“That’s insane.”
“You haven’t answered half my texts in a week.”
“I’m working.”
“You are self-destructing.”
His jaw tightened immediately.
“Do not do this right now.”
“Do not what? Care that you look like you’re about to collapse?”
His eyes closed briefly. The movement looked less like frustration and more like pain. When he opened them again, they looked bloodshot.
God. You’d never seen him this worn down before. Not even after the worst shifts.
“I need you to go home,” he said quietly.
“No.”
“Please.”
That stopped you cold. Because Robby rarely said please when he was emotionally overwhelmed. Usually he got sharper. More sarcastic. Harder around the edges. But now he just sounded tired.
You softened immediately. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Tough.”
A tired breath escaped him that almost sounded like a laugh before dying halfway out. Then suddenly he swayed slightly where he stood. Your stomach dropped instantly.
“Jesus Christ.”
You moved toward him automatically before he stepped back so fast it physically startled you both. The movement sliced through the parking lot like a knife. You froze. Robby froze too. The horror on his face hit a split second later. Not horror at you. At himself. At the instinctive recoil. Your chest tightened painfully.
“Robby…”
He looked away immediately, jaw clenched hard enough to twitch.
“I had two exposures yesterday,” he muttered roughly. “One PPE breach.”
Fear flashed through you despite yourself.
“Were you tested?”
“They don’t have enough tests for asymptomatic staff yet.”
“Oh my God.”
“Exactly.”
Silence crashed down between you. Wind tugged sharply at your hoodie while somewhere nearby a siren screamed through morning traffic. You looked at him standing there several feet away from you like distance itself had become instinct. Like touch had become dangerous in his mind. And suddenly the loneliness of the last several weeks hit you all over again. Not seeing him was awful. But seeing him like this was worse.
“You flinched away from me,” you said quietly before you could stop yourself.
His eyes shut immediately.
“Don’t.”
“You did.”
“I know.”
The raw self-loathing in his voice hurt almost more than the actual movement had. You swallowed hard.
“You think I don’t understand why?” you asked softly.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“You’re trying to protect me.”
“I am trying not to infect you.”
“You are not a disease.”
His eyes snapped back to yours immediately. Something sharp and wounded crossed his face.
“You have any idea how many times I’ve thought about that sentence this month?” he asked hoarsely. “Every time I walk into a room. Every time I touch somebody. Every time I come home and scrub my skin until it burns because I can’t stop thinking about what I might be carrying.”
Your throat tightened.
“You are not dirty, Robby.”
A humorless laugh escaped him.
“You know what one of our nurses said yesterday?” His voice sounded hollow now. “She said she’s started sleeping in the guest room because her kid cries every time she tries to hug him after work.”
Your chest physically ached.
“She cried while she was telling me,” he continued quietly. “Because he’s six.”
You blinked rapidly against tears. Robby looked exhausted enough to crumble where he stood. And suddenly you understood something terrifying. He wasn’t just afraid of getting you sick. He was beginning to associate himself with danger entirely.
“You need sleep,” you said gently.
“I need another month off and a functioning healthcare system.”
“You need sleep first.”
He rubbed both hands over his face tiredly. “I can’t do this conversation today.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yes.”
Suspicion immediately flickered across his face. “You agreeing that fast is concerning.”
Despite everything, you almost smiled. Almost.
You stepped back slowly toward your car instead. “Go upstairs.”
He frowned faintly. “That’s it?”
“No fight.”
“You drove here at dawn after sitting outside all night and now there’s suddenly no fight?”
“I’m adapting.”
“That’s somehow more threatening.”
This time you did smile a little. Small. Tired. Robby stared at you for a long moment. And God, now that daylight fully illuminated him, you could see how wrecked he truly was.
The deep shadows beneath his eyes. The faint red marks along his cheeks from masks worn too long. The exhaustion pulling at the corners of his mouth. He looked older suddenly. Not physically. Like the pandemic had aged him from the inside out.
“Go shower,” you said softly. “Try to sleep.”
His expression shifted slightly at your tone. Softer now. More vulnerable.
Then quietly, “You stayed all night?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question sounded genuine. You stared at him in disbelief for half a second before answering.
“Because I love you.”
The words landed hard between you. Robby went completely still. And for one awful moment you thought maybe you’d broken something. Because neither of you had actually said it before. Not out loud. Not directly. You saw the realization hit him in real time. Saw the exhaustion and fear and grief on his face suddenly fracture around something painfully human.
His mouth opened slightly. Then closed again. Your own pulse thundered embarrassingly hard beneath your skin.
Finally, very quietly, Robby asked, “Why would you say that now?”
Emotion surged hot through your chest instantly. “Because apparently one of us has to.”
“Don’t.”
“No, actually, yes.” Your voice cracked sharply. “You do not get to keep acting like loving you during this is some terrible burden I’m too naïve to understand.”
“You don’t understand what this does to people.”
“Then explain it to me!”
His composure finally shattered.
“It makes everything feel contaminated!” he snapped suddenly, voice echoing harshly across the empty parking lot. “Every surface. Every person. Every breath. I spend all day watching people suffocate and die and then I come home terrified I’m bringing that home with me, too.”
Your eyes burned immediately. Robby looked horrified at his own volume the second the words left his mouth. But now he couldn’t stop.
“You think I don’t want to touch you?” he continued roughly. “You think I don’t miss you every second of every day? I haven’t slept beside another human being in over a month because every time I close my eyes I see patients dying alone and then I think about you getting sick because of me and I cannot survive that.”
The confession ripped straight through you. Silence followed.
Then finally, quietly, you said, “You don’t have to survive it alone.”
Robby looked at you like that possibility scared him more than anything else.
Robby did not ask you upstairs. But he also did not tell you to leave again. Which somehow felt more significant. You stood beside your car beneath the gray morning sky while exhaustion and emotion crackled painfully between the two of you, and for a long moment neither of you seemed entirely sure what came next.
Then his shoulders sagged. Not dramatically. Just enough for you to notice. Enough to tell you the fight had drained whatever energy he had left.
“I’m too tired for this,” he admitted quietly.
Something about the honesty in that nearly undid you. Not because he sounded weak. Because Robby almost never allowed himself to sound weak.
You softened immediately. “Then stop fighting me.”
A tired huff escaped him as he glanced away toward the apartment building. “You make that sound very easy.”
“It is easy.”
“No,” he said quietly, eyes flicking back toward you. “It isn’t.”
The look on his face hit you like a bruise. He looked terrified. Not of you. Of wanting you close badly enough to give in. Your chest tightened painfully.
“You don’t have to decide everything right now,” you said gently. “I’m not asking you to pretend this isn’t dangerous.”
“It is dangerous.”
“I know, Robby.”
“You shouldn’t be standing this close to me.”
“You’re outside. You’re masked. I’m masked.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Then what is?”
His jaw flexed hard.
Finally, after a long silence, he admitted quietly, “The point is that the second I stop keeping distance from you, I don’t know if I’ll be able to start again.”
The confession stole your breath. Because suddenly you could hear the truth underneath all of it. Robby wasn’t protecting himself from attachment. He was protecting himself from comfort. From relief. From the unbearable human need to be held after witnessing too much death.
And maybe, somewhere deep down, he feared that if he finally let himself have that, he would completely fall apart. You stepped closer instinctively before stopping yourself. The hesitation did not go unnoticed. His eyes dropped briefly toward your feet. Then back to your face.
“I hate this,” you whispered.
“Yeah.”
“I hate watching you suffer through this alone.”
His expression shifted faintly at that. Then he looked away again, exhaustion etched deep into every line of him. “You should go home.”
“You already said that.”
“I mean it this time.”
“You meant it the first six times too.”
That earned you the faintest flicker of something at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. But close enough to hurt. Then his face hardened again almost immediately as a coughing fit suddenly erupted from somewhere across the parking lot.
Both of you instinctively turned. An older man exited the neighboring building wearing a mask and clutching grocery bags while coughing harshly into his elbow. The sound echoed through the morning air.
Robby physically stiffened beside you. Not subtly either. You watched the immediate hypervigilance take over his body in real time. Shoulders tightening. Eyes sharpening. Distance calculations happening automatically inside his head.
The man kept walking without noticing either of you. But Robby had already taken half a step farther away from you. Your heart sank. Because there it was again. Fear conditioning itself into his nervous system. Every cough becoming threat. Every person becoming exposure risk. Every moment of closeness immediately followed by panic.
“You can’t keep living like this forever,” you said softly once the man disappeared around the corner.
His laugh came low and humorless. “Pretty optimistic assumption there.”
“Robby.”
“What?” His voice sharpened tiredly. “You think any of us know when this ends?”
“No. But I know this version of you isn’t sustainable.”
“That’s not really my choice right now.”
Frustration flared hot in your chest again. “You keep saying that like you’re some kind of machine.”
“I’m a doctor in a pandemic.”
“You’re also a person.”
“Not lately.”
The quietness of the answer hollowed you out instantly. You stared at him for several long seconds.
Then finally asked softly, “When’s the last time somebody hugged you?”
His eyes closed briefly. And that alone gave you the answer.
“Oh, Robby.”
“Don’t.”
“Come here.”
His eyes snapped open immediately. “Absolutely not.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’m contaminated.”
“You are not contaminated.”
“I walked out of a COVID ward six hours ago.”
“And then showered.”
“That’s not how viral transmission works and you know it.”
“I also know you’re standing outside spiraling because somebody coughed fifty feet away from us.”
His jaw tightened.
“You think I’m overreacting?”
“I think you’re traumatized.”
Silence. Raw and immediate. You watched the words hit him hard enough to physically still him. Because nobody had said it out loud before. Not him. Not his coworkers. Not the endless parade of exhausted healthcare workers dragging themselves through impossible shifts every day while the world applauded them from balconies instead of protecting them properly.
Traumatized.
The word hung heavily in the cold morning air. Robby looked away first.
“I don’t have the energy to unpack that today.”
“You don’t have to unpack anything.” Your voice softened carefully. “You just have to stop pretending you’re fine.”
He laughed quietly under his breath.
“Pretty sure that ship sailed weeks ago.”
You swallowed hard.
Then more gently, “Come upstairs.”
His head turned back toward you immediately. “What?”
“Your apartment. Come upstairs.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I am.”
“No.”
“You said yourself you haven’t slept.”
“That does not mean you should be in my apartment.”
“Why? Because you might suddenly enjoy having somebody there?”
His expression twisted sharply with exhaustion. “You think this is funny?”
“No,” you replied instantly. “I think you’re lonely and scared and trying to turn yourself into some kind of martyr because feeling needed at the hospital is easier than feeling loved somewhere else.”
The words landed hard. Too hard. You saw it immediately in his face. Robby stared at you like you’d struck him. And for one horrible second you regretted saying it. Then his eyes suddenly filled with something devastatingly close to grief.
“You don’t know what it’s like in there,” he said quietly.
Not defensive this time. Broken. You felt your own anger dissolve immediately.
“No,” you whispered. “I don’t.”
He looked exhausted beyond language now. Like every emotion he’d spent weeks suppressing sat barely contained beneath his skin.
Finally he rubbed both hands over his face and muttered hoarsely, “Yesterday we ran out of body bags.”
Your breath caught sharply.
“We used plastic transport covers instead.” His voice sounded distant now, hollowed out by memory. “There were patients lining the hallways because every room was full. One of the nurses started vomiting from stress halfway through shift and then apologized for slowing everyone down.”
Tears stung instantly behind your eyes.
“Oh my God.”
“And I still have to go back tomorrow.”
The devastation in that sentence physically hurt to hear. Because suddenly he didn’t sound like Robby anymore. Not fully. He sounded like a man trapped inside an endless nightmare without enough time to process any of it before the next tragedy arrived.
Your voice softened carefully. “Then let somebody hold onto you before you drown.”
Silence.
Then quietly, almost inaudibly, Robby admitted, “I don’t know how to come home from that hospital anymore.”
Your heart cracked wide open. Without thinking, you stepped toward him again. This time he didn’t step back. The realization hit both of you immediately. You stopped only a few feet away now close enough to see the exhaustion trembling through him beneath the surface. Close enough to see how badly he wanted comfort despite every instinct screaming against it. His breathing looked uneven suddenly.
“Robby,” you whispered.
He stared at you like he was losing a war with himself. Then finally, exhausted beyond resistance, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his apartment keys. The movement felt enormous. Sacred somehow.
“You cannot touch me until I shower again,” he said roughly.
Relief crashed through you so fast it nearly made your knees weak.
“Okay.”
“And you stay on the opposite side of the apartment.”
“Okay.”
“And if I say you need to leave, you leave.”
You nodded immediately. “Okay.”
He looked at you for another long second.
Then quietly, with all the fear and longing in the world tangled together behind his eyes, he admitted, “I really missed you.”
******
Robby’s apartment smelled faintly like bleach and exhaustion. The second the door closed behind both of you, he slipped immediately into routine like muscle memory had taken over entirely. Shoes left outside the door. Jacket peeled off carefully without touching the exterior fabric. Wallet and keys disinfected on the kitchen counter. Scrubs shoved directly into a garbage bag near the washer.
You stood quietly near the living room exactly where he told you to stay while watching him move through the apartment with the detached efficiency of someone who had repeated the same ritual every day for weeks. Maybe months now. His hands shook slightly while he worked.
That scared you more than anything else had. Not the shouting. Not the distancing. Not even the fear in his eyes downstairs. The trembling. Because Robby’s hands were normally steady through everything. Trauma surgeon steady. ER physician steady. Life-or-death steady. But now exhaustion vibrated visibly beneath his skin like he’d been holding himself upright through sheer force of will alone.
“You need water,” you said softly.
“I need chlorine and eight months unconscious.”
Despite everything, your mouth twitched faintly. He noticed. The sight stopped him for half a second. Like he’d forgotten what it looked like when you smiled at him. Then the exhaustion settled back over him immediately.
“I’m showering again,” he muttered tiredly, gathering clean clothes from the hallway linen closet. “Do not touch anything in the bathroom until I disinfect it afterward.”
“Okay.”
“And if you need coffee there’s fresh grounds in the freezer.”
“Okay.”
“And there’s food in the fridge if you haven’t eaten.”
You blinked at him. Even now. Even barely standing upright. Still taking care of you. Your chest tightened painfully.
“Robby.”
His eyes lifted toward yours immediately.
“You don’t have to keep performing competence every second you’re awake.”
Something flickered across his face. Vulnerability maybe. Then he looked away first.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
The bathroom door closed softly behind him. Then the shower started. You stood motionless in the middle of the apartment for several long seconds after that, simply listening. Water pounding against tile. Cabinet doors opening and closing. Silence otherwise.
The apartment looked exactly like him and absolutely nothing like him at the same time. Medical journals stacked on the coffee table beside unopened mail. A half-drunk cup of coffee abandoned near the couch. Blankets twisted carelessly where he’d probably collapsed between shifts. Takeout containers overflowing from the trash because he was too exhausted to cook properly anymore. The television sat muted on a news channel displaying rising national case numbers beneath a bright red banner. Everywhere you looked, you could see evidence of survival mode.
Not living. Just enduring. Your eyes burned unexpectedly. Because suddenly you understood how alone he’d really been in here. How many nights he’d come home from hell and sat in this apartment convincing himself isolation was safer than comfort. How many mornings he’d dragged himself back out the door before dawn without anyone there to tell him to rest.
You moved slowly toward the kitchen, washed your hands thoroughly, then quietly started making coffee. The normalcy of it felt strange. Sacred somehow. When the bathroom door finally opened nearly forty minutes later, you looked up immediately. And your heart broke all over again.
Robby emerged wearing gray sweatpants and an old black T-shirt with damp hair curling slightly against his forehead. Steam followed him out into the hallway while exhaustion practically radiated off his body in waves.
He looked cleaner. But not rested. Never rested. You could tell from the slight slump of his shoulders that even the effort of showering had drained what little energy remained.
His eyes found you standing beside the coffee maker. And for one quiet second something inside his expression softened so completely it nearly stole your breath.
Home. That was the look. Like after weeks of chaos and death and isolation, seeing you standing in his kitchen looked enough like home to hurt him.
“You made coffee,” he said quietly.
“You looked like you were about to die.” You shrugged. “And I’ve slept in a car.”
“Fair.”
His voice sounded rougher now. Sleepier. He moved carefully toward the kitchen island before stopping short again automatically when he realized how close he’d gotten to you.
The hesitation gutted you. You saw it hit him too. That instinctive fear. That constant mental calculation. Distance. Contamination. Exposure.
You set the coffee mug down gently before speaking softly. “Come sit.”
His jaw flexed slightly. Then finally, too tired to argue anymore, he obeyed. The couch dipped beneath his weight with a long exhale from both the cushions and the man collapsing into them. He leaned forward immediately, elbows braced against his knees while dragging both hands down his face hard enough to redden the skin.
You stayed standing for a moment. Giving him space. Giving him choice. The apartment remained quiet except for the distant sound of city sirens somewhere beyond the windows.
Finally, without lifting his head, Robby asked quietly, “How are you not angry with me?”
Your chest tightened.
“I was angry.”
“You should still be.”
“Why?”
He laughed faintly into his hands. The sound held absolutely no humor.
“Because I’ve spent weeks acting like being near you is dangerous.”
You swallowed hard.
“No,” you corrected softly. “You spent weeks terrified.”
His hands slowly lowered. His eyes looked unbearably tired.
“I am terrified.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
Something fragile crossed his face then. Like relief tangled painfully together with guilt. You moved slowly toward the couch. Robby watched every step. Not stopping you. Not breathing normally either.
When you sat down on the opposite end exactly like he’d asked earlier, his shoulders loosened slightly before immediately tightening again. Because now the distance was real. You looked at him quietly for a long moment.
Then finally said, “Come here.”
His eyes closed instantly.
“Don’t make this harder.”
“You already made it hard.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
He shook his head immediately, exhaustion and fear flashing together across his face. “You do not understand how badly I want to.”
Your breath caught softly.
“Then stop fighting yourself.”
Silence stretched painfully between you. You could practically see the war happening behind his eyes. Every instinct he’d built over months of crisis screaming at him to maintain distance. Every exhausted human part of him desperate for comfort.
Finally, so quietly you almost missed it, he whispered, “I don’t know if I can stop once I touch you.”
The confession shattered whatever restraint remained inside your chest.
“Robby.”
His eyes lifted to yours slowly. And God, he looked devastated. Not dramatic. Not theatrical. Just deeply, profoundly exhausted in a way that reached all the way into his bones.
“You came home,” you said gently. “You showered. You did everything you needed to do.” Your voice softened further. “Now let somebody take care of you for five fucking minutes.”
Something inside him finally broke. You saw it happen in real time. His composure cracked silently around the edges before collapsing altogether.
Robby stood abruptly from the couch and crossed the space between you in three exhausted steps before sinking heavily beside you again, and then suddenly his arms were around you with desperate, shaking force like he physically could not hold himself together anymore.
The breath left your lungs instantly. Not from fear. From grief. Because the sound he made against your shoulder was not a sob exactly. It was worse. It sounded like relief finally becoming too heavy to carry.
Your arms wrapped around him immediately. One hand sliding into his damp hair. The other rubbing slowly along his back beneath the thin fabric of his shirt while he buried his face against your neck and held onto you like a drowning man. Neither of you spoke at first. There were no good words for this. His entire body felt exhausted against yours. Heavy and warm and tense all at once like he’d forgotten how to rest without bracing for impact. You kept your fingers moving gently through his hair.
And after a long time, Robby finally whispered hoarsely against your skin, “I watched a man die alone yesterday.”
Your throat tightened instantly.
“He kept apologizing for being scared.” His voice cracked badly now. “Like he thought he was making our jobs harder.”
Tears burned behind your eyes.
“Oh, babe.”
Robby’s grip tightened painfully around you.
“I couldn’t save him.”
The devastation in the confession hollowed the room out around both of you. You held him tighter immediately.
“You were never supposed to carry all of this alone.”
For a long moment he said nothing. Then finally, exhausted beyond pride or fear or restraint, Robby pressed his face deeper into your neck and whispered the truth he’d been fighting for months.
“I didn’t know how to survive this without you.”
******
Robby fell asleep against you sometime around noon. Not fully at first. You could feel him fighting it. Every few minutes his body would tense suddenly beneath your hands like his nervous system no longer trusted rest, and each time your fingers moved gently through his hair or down the center of his back until the tension slowly melted again. The television murmured quietly in the background with muted pandemic updates neither of you were actually listening to anymore while gray afternoon light filtered weakly through the apartment windows.
At some point the two of you had shifted together naturally across the couch without really discussing it. Now your back rested against the armrest while Robby lay stretched along the cushions beside you, one arm wrapped tightly around your waist and his head resting against your chest. Even asleep he held onto you carefully at first, like some part of him still feared closeness enough to stay restrained.
That lasted maybe twenty minutes. Then exhaustion finally won. His grip tightened unconsciously.
His breathing deepened. And suddenly the full weight of him settled against you in a way that made your chest ache. You could not remember the last time he had truly relaxed. Even now there were lines of tension still lingering around his eyes. His hands occasionally twitched against your side like he was dreaming himself back into chaos again.
You kept touching him anyway. Soft strokes through his damp hair. Fingertips along his shoulders. Gentle scratches at the nape of his neck. Little reminders that he was home now. Safe now. Human now. At one point he stirred slightly against you, blinking blearily upward before immediately tightening his arms around your waist harder like he thought you might disappear.
“Hey,” you whispered softly.
His eyes looked heavy with sleep and emotional exhaustion all at once.
“You still here?”
Your heart nearly broke at the question.
“Yeah,” you murmured, brushing your fingers gently through his hair again. “I’m still here.”
Robby stared at you silently for several long seconds. God, he looked wrecked. Not just tired anymore. Emotionally stripped raw. You could practically see how deeply he needed this despite all the fear he’d built around himself for months.
His hand slid slowly beneath the hem of your hoodie then, rough fingertips brushing absentmindedly against the skin of your waist like he could not stop touching you now that he’d finally allowed himself to start. The contact sent warmth blooming low through your chest instantly.
You looked down at him softly. “You okay?”
A tired breath escaped him.
“No.”
The honesty didn’t surprise you anymore.
“What do you need?”
His eyes closed briefly.
Then quietly, “This.”
Emotion tightened painfully in your throat. So you held him closer. Hours seemed to blur after that. Sleep tugged at him on and off while you stayed curled together beneath the blankets, your fingers roaming lazily through his hair or along his back while he slowly relearned what comfort felt like. Every now and then his lips brushed your throat or jaw absentmindedly before he’d suddenly stop himself and tense again.
Each time you felt the internal war restart. Want versus fear. Need versus guilt. By late afternoon, you finally coaxed him off the couch long enough to eat something.
“I’m not hungry,” he mumbled sleepily while following you into the kitchen anyway.
“You haven’t had real food in days.”
“I had cafeteria fries yesterday.”
“That sentence just offended me personally.”
The corner of his mouth twitched faintly. Victory. You moved around his kitchen barefoot in leggings and one of his old sweatshirts while making scrambled eggs, toast, potatoes, and bacon because comfort food suddenly felt necessary in ways you could not fully explain. Behind you, Robby leaned tiredly against the counter watching silently. The domesticity of it felt almost painfully intimate after weeks apart. Especially because he kept staring at you.
Not subtly either. Every time you turned around, his eyes were already on you.
“You’re hovering,” you teased softly while flipping potatoes in the skillet.
“I’m supervising.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’m supervising exhausted.”
You smiled despite yourself.
Then finally glanced back over your shoulder at him. “When’s the last time someone cooked for you?”
He went quiet immediately. Your chest tightened.
Robby looked away toward the window with a tired exhale. “One of the residents brought protein bars for everybody last week.”
“That is not cooking.”
“No,” he admitted quietly. “It isn’t.”
Something emotional flickered low across his face then vanished again before he could fully let you see it. By the time you slid plates onto the kitchen island, the apartment smelled warm and comforting instead of sterile and lonely. Robby stared down at the food like he genuinely didn’t know what to do with it at first.
Then finally he sat. And ate.
You watched the exact moment realization hit him. Real food. Fresh food. Home. His eyes closed briefly after the first few bites.
“That good?” you asked softly.
He laughed quietly under his breath. “I might cry over toast.”
“You better not. I worked hard on that toast.”
Another faint smile. God, you missed that. The two of you ate slowly together at the counter while late afternoon sunlight spilled across the apartment in soft gold streaks. Conversation came easier now. Gentler. The tension that had lived between you for weeks slowly dissolving beneath exhaustion and closeness and shared space.
At some point your foot brushed his beneath the counter. Robby froze instinctively. Then slowly relaxed when you didn’t pull away. Your chest warmed immediately. After another few minutes, you reached for your coffee mug at the exact same moment he reached for his water glass.
Your fingers brushed. He inhaled sharply. You watched him carefully. The hesitation returned instantly. Fear. Always fear. And suddenly you realized you were tired of letting it win.
So quietly, you said, “We just shared food.”
His eyes lifted slowly toward yours.
“What?”
“We ate together.” You held his gaze steadily. “Shared utensils. Shared air. Shared space.”
His jaw tightened immediately because he already knew where this was going.
“You’re making a point.”
“Yes.”
“We should not have shared utensils either.”
“But we did.”
“That doesn’t make it smart.”
“No,” you agreed softly. “It makes it human.”
Silence stretched between you. Robby’s eyes looked darker suddenly.
“You should stop,” he said quietly.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No,” you whispered, slowly standing from the counter stool. “You really don’t.”
His breathing changed immediately as you stepped closer. Not fear now. Want. Raw and aching and impossible to hide anymore.
“Don’t,” he said again, but the word sounded wrecked this time instead of firm.
You stopped directly in front of him. Close enough to feel warmth radiating from his body. Close enough to see his pulse beating hard in his throat. Robby looked up at you sitting there between your legs at the kitchen counter, exhaustion and longing and fear all tangled together behind his eyes.
Your hands lifted slowly to his face. He sucked in a sharp breath the second your palms cupped his jaw. His skin felt warm beneath your touch. Real. Finally yours again.
“Let me take care of you,” you whispered softly.
His eyes closed instantly.
“You can’t keep fighting me forever.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“You’re trying not to need me.”
His hands gripped the edge of the counter hard enough for his knuckles to pale.
You brushed your thumb gently beneath his eye. “I love you.”
The second confession shattered him. You saw it happen. Robby’s composure cracked apart silently before he suddenly grabbed your waist hard enough to pull you flush against him, and then his forehead dropped against yours with a broken exhale.
“God,” he whispered roughly. “You make me so weak.”
“No,” you murmured softly against his mouth. “I make you human.”
That did it. His restraint snapped completely. Robby kissed you like a man starving. Messy and desperate and devastatingly deep all at once, like he’d spent months suppressing every ounce of want inside himself only for it to erupt the second he finally allowed it space to breathe. The sound he made against your mouth was wrecked beyond words as his hands slid fiercely up your back beneath the sweatshirt while your fingers tangled tightly into his damp hair.
You missed him. You missed this. His mouth moved against yours hungrily, almost angry with need, kissing you over and over like he could not decide where to start after so long without you. Teeth scraping softly against your lower lip. Breathless curses whispered against your mouth. His forehead pressing hard to yours between kisses like he physically needed grounding.
“You have any idea,” he murmured roughly between kisses, “how many times I thought about this?”
Your heart pounded wildly beneath your ribs. “Then stop holding back.”
Robby groaned softly against your mouth at that. And then suddenly his hands gripped your hips hard before lifting you effortlessly onto the kitchen counter. You gasped softly as he stepped between your knees immediately, kissing you deeper now with months worth of restrained affection and fear and loneliness pouring out all at once. His hands slid beneath your sweatshirt fully this time, rough palms dragging across your bare skin while his lips left your mouth long enough to kiss along your jaw instead.
His mouth on your neck nearly undid you. Slow at first. Then deeper. Needier. He kissed beneath your ear while your fingers pushed shakily into his hair, and the sound that escaped him when you tugged lightly at the strands made heat flood straight through your chest.
“I missed you so fucking much,” you whispered breathlessly.
Robby answered by kissing you harder. His lips moved across your throat while his hands roamed your waist and ribs beneath your shirt almost reverently now, like after weeks of deprivation he needed to relearn every inch of you through touch alone. His fingers felt rough against your skin from endless sanitizer and glove changes. You loved it anyway. Loved every exhausted, imperfect part of him.
“Robby,” you breathed softly as his mouth returned to yours again.
His forehead pressed briefly against yours, breathing uneven now. “We should slow down.”
But the words sounded weak. Already losing.
You touched his face gently again. “Do you want to?”
His eyes searched yours. Then his hands tightened against your waist.
“No.”
Emotion crashed through you instantly.
You tugged lightly at the hem of his shirt. “Then let me love you.”
The look that crossed his face nearly broke your heart. Not lust first. Relief. Robby let you pull the shirt over his head slowly before your hands moved immediately to his bare skin, fingertips tracing exhausted muscle and warm scars and tension still lingering beneath everything. His eyes closed the second your mouth brushed softly along his collarbone.
The breath he exhaled sounded almost painful. Your lips moved slowly across his skin while your hands smoothed up his chest and shoulders, and for the first time in months, Robby stopped fighting the comfort completely. Stopped pulling away. Stopped treating touch like danger.
Instead he held onto you tighter while your mouth kissed every exhausted piece of him you could reach, and somewhere between your hands in his hair and his heartbeat against your palms and the way he whispered your name like something sacred, the terrible distance of the last few months finally began to disappear.
******
The kitchen floor felt strangely soft beneath you afterward. Maybe because exhaustion had finally replaced adrenaline. Maybe because Robby’s arms were around you again. Maybe because for the first time in months neither of you was pretending you did not desperately need the other one to survive this.
The afternoon sunlight had shifted warmer now, stretching gold across the apartment while the remains of your abandoned breakfast still sat forgotten on the kitchen counter above you. Somewhere during the second round of slow, desperate kisses and wandering hands and whispered confessions against flushed skin, the two of you had ended up tangled together on the rug beside the island instead. Robby lay flat on his back beneath you now with one arm wrapped securely around your waist while your bare leg rested tangled between his. His other hand drifted lazily across your spine in slow absentminded patterns that made your entire body feel heavy and boneless against him.
You had missed this. Not just sex. Not just want. Him. The warmth of him beneath you. The steady rise and fall of his chest. The quiet sounds he made whenever your fingertips traced lightly across his skin. The feeling of his rough hands holding you like something precious after weeks of treating himself like danger. You rested your chin against his chest while his fingers slid slowly along your bare back again.
“You’re gonna throw your back out doing kitchen floor activities at your age,” you murmured sleepily.
For one second there was silence. Then Robby laughed. Actually laughed. Not the exhausted little huffs you’d managed to coax out of him earlier. A full laugh. Warm and rough and real. The sound startled both of you. Your head lifted immediately as his laughter continued softly beneath you, one hand sliding over his eyes while his chest shook hard enough to jostle you with it.
“There he is,” you whispered with a grin.
Robby looked down at you through tired eyes still bright with amusement. “You’re impossible.”
“You literally hauled me onto a kitchen counter thirty minutes ago and somehow I’m the reckless one?”
“You are absolutely the reckless one.”
You giggled softly as his fingers resumed tracing slow circles against your back. The sound of laughter inside this apartment again felt almost sacred. Like something resurrected.
The humor faded gradually though, replaced by quieter intimacy as the two of you settled together more comfortably against the rug. Robby’s fingertips drifted lower along your spine. Your own hand moved lazily through the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. Neither of you spoke for a while. You simply existed together.
Finally, softly, you murmured, “You feel better.”
His mouth twitched faintly. “That an ego thing for you?”
“A little.”
“You should be careful. I’m emotionally compromised right now.”
“You’ve been emotionally compromised since March.”
That earned another quieter laugh. Then silence settled again. This one heavier. More thoughtful. You felt it in the way Robby’s fingers slowed against your skin. In the way his eyes drifted over your face like he was memorizing something.
Your voice softened instinctively. “What?”
He hesitated.
Then quietly, “You told me you loved me twice today.”
Your chest tightened immediately.
“Oh.”
Robby’s hand slid gently upward until his palm rested against the back of your neck. “And I haven’t said it back.”
You studied him quietly for a moment before shrugging softly. “You don’t have to yet.”
His expression shifted at that. Almost painful.
“You should probably demand better than that from the guy fucking you on his kitchen floor.”
You smiled faintly. “I know you love me.”
His eyes closed briefly. The reaction alone told you enough. His arms tightened around you.
Still, after a moment he admitted quietly, “It’s been a long time since I’ve said those words to someone.”
Your hand moved slowly across his chest. “You don’t have to explain.”
“No,” he murmured tiredly. “I think maybe I do.”
You stayed quiet then. Letting him speak at his own pace.
Robby stared up at the ceiling for several seconds before continuing softly, “Before all this…before the pandemic…I already wasn’t exactly good at letting people close.”
A humorless little smile tugged briefly at his mouth. “Turns out watching people die for a living doesn’t really make you emotionally available.”
Your chest ached softly.
“But now?” His jaw tightened faintly. “After the last couple months…” He swallowed hard once before finally admitting, “I don’t know if I’m still capable of feeling things normally.”
The honesty in it hollowed you out. You lifted yourself slightly then until your mouth brushed softly against his. Nothing desperate this time.
“It’s okay,” you whispered against his lips.
Robby’s eyes opened slowly beneath you.
“You don’t have to force yourself through grief faster than your brain can handle it.”
His hand slid carefully along your jaw.
“You make that sound very reasonable.”
“I am a data analyst. Reasonable is literally my brand.”
That earned the faintest smile. You kissed him again anyway. Slow enough this time for tenderness to settle into the spaces where desperation had lived earlier. When you pulled back slightly, your forehead rested against his.
“I’m still gonna say it,” you mumbled softly against his mouth.
Robby’s eyes searched yours. Then his hand tightened gently against the back of your neck before he kissed you again like he could not help himself.
******
Later that evening, the apartment finally began looking lived in again instead of merely survived in. The washer hummed steadily down the hallway while fresh sheets dried in the bedroom. You had scrubbed down the bathroom while Robby protested weakly from the couch before eventually giving up and letting you help him. Somewhere along the way you’d found yourself folding clean laundry while he half-watched an action movie neither of you were remotely paying attention to.
It felt domestic in the quietest, most healing way imaginable. Normal. You carried a basket of towels back into the living room just as Robby glanced up from the television. His hair still looked damp from another shower. Gray sweatpants hung low on his hips while he lounged sideways against the couch cushions looking more rested now than he had all morning.
Not healed. But softer. More present. His eyes followed you immediately as you crossed the room.
“I’m thinking pasta for dinner,” you announced casually while dropping onto the couch beside him. “Something with carbs because apparently your entire diet lately has been caffeine and self-destruction.”
Robby snorted quietly under his breath. “Aggressive assessment.”
“Accurate assessment.”
You tucked your legs beneath yourself against the couch while he stretched one arm automatically behind your shoulders. The ease of it warmed your chest instantly.
Outside the apartment windows, evening had begun settling slowly across the city. For a while neither of you spoke. The television murmured quietly in the background while your fingers absentmindedly traced patterns against Robby’s forearm. Then finally, softly, you asked the question sitting heavily inside your chest for hours now.
“Can I stay here with you?”
Robby went still beside you. Not tense exactly. You watched his eyes drift toward the television without really seeing it anymore. The silence stretched long enough that nervousness began creeping beneath your ribs.
Finally he exhaled slowly. “I don’t know.”
You nodded once. Fair. Honest. But not no.
So you shifted closer against the couch cushions before speaking carefully. “What if there’s a system?”
His eyes flicked toward you again.
“You work there,” you continued softly. “I work here. Every time you come home there’s protocol. Shoes off. Scrubs immediately in the washer. Shower before anything else.” Your fingers brushed lightly along his arm. “You disinfect whatever you need to disinfect until you feel safe.”
Robby listened silently. You could practically see the gears turning behind his exhausted eyes.
“We don’t have to be reckless,” you whispered. “We just don’t have to be alone anymore either.”
Something emotional crossed his face then. Fear still lingered there. But exhaustion had finally started outweighing it.
“This morning I would’ve said no,” he admitted quietly.
Your chest tightened.
“But then today happened.”
The words landed softly between you. Today happened. Him finally breaking. Finally reaching for you instead of away. Finally admitting he needed someone to hold onto him through the horror. Robby looked down at your intertwined hands resting against his stomach.
Then quietly, almost like the truth surprised even him, he admitted, “I think I need you here.”
Emotion rose hot and immediate into your throat. You leaned closer carefully, brushing your mouth softly against his shoulder.
“I know.”
His arm tightened around you immediately. And for the first time since the world had started falling apart, home no longer felt like a place either of you had to survive alone.
a/n: I wrote this because my writing brain is broken 😔 please enjoy ily dearly 😔❤️
Masterlist
~~
The day was awful. For everyone.
The air conditioning in the lower levels of the hospital gave out, slowly wheezing to a tragic end that made way for grouchy patients and overheating staff. The ambulance bay doors were propped open to allow some airflow, which then also allowed a flock of birds to terrorize the Pitt and crack the glass door in south 15. And then Gloria came by with wonderful news that there was still no resolution for the nurse’s strike at Presby, and many of their patients were being rerouted to PTMC to alleviate the burden there.
It was great. Everything was great. Your shift was almost over, and your underscrubs were clinging to the back of your neck, and everything was great. You wished—silently and greedily—that Jack would call out for the night so you could bask in your woes as he held you and spoon-fed you ice cream, but the Pitt needed Jack tonight, desperately, so you couldn’t ask him to baby you.
Well, you could ask, but he would probably say yes, and you liked the night shift staff too much to do that to them.
“What the hell happened in here?” you heard Ellis ask, her backpack slung over her shoulder with casual air. You envied her rested face. “Why’s it so damn hot?”
You grimaced, the expression making your head hurt. “What didn’t happen here?”
“That bad, huh?”
“I mean, I’m sure there’s been worse days. Not sure when those would have happened. Maybe before electricity and the discovery of germ theory.”
Ellis leaned her forearms on the counter by your computer, raising a brow. “Germ theory bad? Damn.”
You finished your blessed last note and slammed the key to lock your account. “Just—maybe screen some patients for bird flu if they’ve been here all day. All I’ll say.”
Ellis blew out a breath as you leaned back in your chair and pressed a hand to your forehead. You needed to drink about a gallon of water to abate the headache permeating along your temples—or maybe three. Jack liked to keep those gross electrolyte packets at your place for days like these, and while you usually had to choke them down and beg him to leave you alone, the sour peach flavor was calling your name.
And so was about 14 hours of sleep wrapped in that hoodie Jack got from some national park you couldn’t remember the name of.
“Let me know when you’re ready to do handoffs,” you called as residents and trickled in, your face in your hand and your eyes barely open. “I’ll be here.”
“And don’t you just look so excited?”
Jack’s voice sent a tiny jolt of energy through you—a really tiny, almost neuron-firing-level of energy. You cracked an eye wider and saw your boyfriend standing where Ellis once was, his expression far fonder and far less filled with disgruntled trepidation.
“I’m thrilled,” you droned out, fighting off the smile working onto your face.
“Yeah, I can tell.” Jack rounded the nurse’s station and leaned over your shoulder, pressing his lips to your temple in a chaste kiss that jostled you around. “Are you good to drive home, or do you need me to have Shen take over for the first half hour?”
“I can drive home,” you scoffed. “I’m tired, not incapacitated.”
Jack hummed by your ear, spinning your chair and touching your forehead with the back of his fingers. “We should get an ice pack on the back of your neck before you head out.”
You swatted at his hand with a breathy laugh, rolling away from his assessment. “You should go get ready for report. Sooner you do that, the sooner I can leave.”
“You told me the AC went out nine hours ago. When’s the last time you drank water?”
“Will you leave me alone?” you exasperated, still laughing, still the happiest you’d been all shift. “Go find Robby. He’s in an awful mood, and if he’s distracted, I can slip out and take care of myself, Dr. Overbearing.”
Jack knocked his head to the side as he looked at you, the fondness still open on his face. He reached into the side pocket of his bag and tossed you his water bottle, giving you a pointed look as he backed away and headed to the lockers.
The day was awful, but as you took a large sip of that damn electrolyte water and thought about the way Jack always looked at you, it felt a little less awful.
Until Robby burst through the elevators with a vendetta.
His ambush started on an uneven playing field. You had a clipboard in hand as you rattled off the vitals of a woman presenting with a kidney infection, the eager intern beside you nodding intently. The air had kicked on about five minutes into your rounds, and you silently cursed it for working just as you were leaving.
“Another hour of observation and she should be good to go. Needs a ride due to the morphine dose,” you rattled off.
“Got it,” the resident relayed back. “For the fracture in north 12, did you say—”
Robby’s voice interrupted the flow of your rounds.
Your name was a harsh strike through the air, and you jumped at his curt shout, your clipboard rattling. The intern stared at you with wide eyes as you waited for the telltale signs of Robby’s approach, but they never came. He wanted you to go to him. That wasn’t great. You’d also never heard him say your name with so much vitriol before, and you couldn’t pinpoint anything throughout the day that would have warranted such a call.
“Um,” you paused. You shot your gaze to the side and considered pretending that you hadn’t heard him, but the entire room had paused when he shouted, so there was really no pretending. “Why don’t you catch up with Dr. King’s handoffs? I only had a few left.”
The intern looked like she wanted to say more, maybe offer encouragement as you went off on your final mission in life, but she only nodded and scurried away, leaving you to parade yourself awkwardly into the hall.
Robby did not look patient or kind or understanding when you got there. He had his hands on top of his head and was staring at the ceiling, his weight bouncing on his toes until the door to the Pitt closed, and you were alone with his frustration. He took in a large breath and looked at you, brows raised.
The silence dragged.
“You know I don’t treat you differently just because of your relationship with Jack,” Robby started, kissing his teeth. “I told you that when you started dating.”
You blinked, unsure where the conversation was heading. You weren’t even sure if half the staff at PTMC knew you were dating Jack; special treatment was not an expectation nor a perk, and you had only recently become more lax in keeping your relationship private.
“What? Robby, I know that. I would never—”
He was already shaking his head, the quickness of his words overpowering your rebuttal. “You fucked up. You fucked up, and I can’t make concessions for you just because of your relationship with an attending. I told Jack that if you were going to make your relationship public, you had to be perfect. If you weren’t perfect, it would—”
“Wait—you told Jack? Why are you talking to him about my career? And you never told me that I needed to be perfect. I didn’t realize my relationship suddenly gave me unreachable contingencies.”
Robby shrugged. “It makes sense. If you make mistakes, it looks bad on him. If you aren’t disciplined properly, it looks like favoritism.”
“Disciplined? What have I done to warrant being disciplined?”
Your body was heating up despite the air feeling cooler than it had all day. Your hands clenched into fists as you ran through the decisions you made throughout the shift, all the patients you’d treated and discharged. Nothing was alarming. It had been the environment, not the caseload, that made this day so chaotic.
“You tell me,” Robby posed, and his nonchalance was starting to piss you off.
An entire day of everything going wrong, and you kept a positive attitude. You had led the interns and taken the grunt work, and you had only eaten about half of a granola bar throughout your shift because of it. You could only recall one major trauma from the day, and you’d been pulled from the hall to assist with it. You hadn’t been part of the intake or the transfer. Everything else had been run-of-the-mill injuries and angry, sweaty patients.
You opened your mouth and closed it a few times. “I—I have absolutely no idea.”
Robby nodded, and you could tell from the redness working up his neck that he was about to blow. He’d been a ticking time bomb all day, something—maybe the heat or the multiple shifts—eating away at him. And you, alone in the hall, were about to be the victim of that repression.
It all blew up at once. Robby was jutting his hands out as he yelled about improperly ordered labs and a missed CT. Then there was something about an incident in the hall with the same patient and letting a med student perform a procedure you shouldn’t have. He paused for a moment when your eyes became glassy, but started up again with a shake of his head because you were a doctor. You needed to know when to take criticism.
He threw his hands up when he shouted about legal action and pressed his tongue into his cheek when you couldn’t answer a question about charting. He didn’t let you get a word in to answer him, but there was also the issue that the case wasn’t yours. You distinctly remembered Santos complaining about the situation earlier in the shift, med student intervention and all, but apparently, Robby was just getting word about it. And you had been incorrectly tied to each mistake.
Silent tears were running down your cheeks as he made the final blow.
“You know, maybe this isn’t where you should be. You’re sloppy now—distracted by your personal life. That’s not what a doctor is. Figure. It. out. Or I’m recommending a transfer because I can’t run my ED with an incompetent—”
“Hey, whoa!” Jack was quickly jogging down the hall, and you blinked at the ground to steady yourself. More tears fell. He stepped in front of you, fingers tenting against Robby’s chest and pushing slightly. You hadn’t realized how close he had gotten while he yelled. “Wanna tell me why the hell you’re talking to her like that?”
Robby laughed—a mean laugh. “Fuck, how ironic. You come to her rescue when she can’t handle it? She messed up, Jack. Multiple times. She deserves to hear it.”
You saw Jack’s shoulders tense through your blurry gaze.
“What the fuck are you talking about? We don’t talk to any of our doctors like that. Calling her incompetent—what’s going on with you?”
“She missed basic signs. Didn’t run the tests she was supposed to and couldn’t figure out how to teach the med students the fundamentals. She’s been too busy cozying up at your apartment to—”
“Watch yourself,” Jack snapped in a low tone. “This is about the medicine, but it could pretty quickly be about something else.”
You let out a shaky breath, begging the tears to stop, but it was like a dam had cracked from the stress of the day, and being yelled at for several minutes was not something your nervous system could regulate. You clutched your scrub top in your fists and counted your breaths, feeling pathetic and angry in each of your movements.
“Can’t seem to separate them with her,” Robby accused. “Even now. I can’t teach my senior resident without her boyfriend getting in the way.”
“That wasn’t teaching. You were berating her in the hallway. She never cries, and she hasn’t stopped since I got here, so, Robby, you need to back the hell up and reassess.”
There was more silence, the two men staring each other down, and then Robby slapped his hands against his thighs and shot out a quick “find me when she’s ready to take accountability,” before harshly pushing his way back into the Pitt. Your tears had finally begun to slow as the heat in the hallway dissipated, but you felt them well up again when Jack turned to you and hushed out a gentle sound.
“C’mere, it’s alright,” he muttered, yanking you against his chest. You pressed your face into his shirt and tried again to calm your breath, latching onto the soap and detergent and the feel of his body against yours. He held you for a moment and then spoke close to your ear. “The hell was that about?”
You gripped the material along his back. “Wasn’t even my case,” you hiccuped, words uneven. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“Probably because you had the shift from hell and then got screamed at.”
You felt Jack tuck your hair back from the stickiness of your face and kiss you where his touch lingered. Your eyes fluttered shut. “Maybe I deserved it.”
Jack pulled away, a frown etched on his face. “You just said it wasn’t yours.”
“It wasn’t.” You bit into your lip and looked down at his sure hands along your waist. “But maybe he was right, and I’m distracted by our relationship—being a bad doctor and not working how I’m supposed to. I mean, you’re here, comforting me, and anyone else would have had to take what Robby said and get over it.”
“Robby wouldn’t have had that argument to use against anyone else,” Jack countered, palms running flat along your head until they cradled the back of your neck. “He’s pissed about something else, not you. You’re a damn good doctor. If workplace relationships jeopardized that, he would be an issue too.” Jack’s jaw flexed, and he muttered a quiet, “Hypocrite,” to the air beside him.
You were vaguely aware that Robby hooked up with a nurse from admin. Some of your anger flickered back to life at the reminder of his distracting relationships, but your head was pounding, and Jack kept scanning your face for any sign of happiness, his brows furrowed and his face wincing, so you sighed and tried to play along. When the twitch of your smile was mirrored on Jack’s face, it felt worth it to try and forget.
“Are you comparing me to Robby’s late-night hookups?”
“Never,” Jack whispered, pulling you closer and slotting his mouth against yours. “You’re my whole world, baby.”
You huffed, clutching his wrists. “Yeah, well, your whole world has a puffy face and just got reamed out by your best friend, so I need a couple of minutes before I can finish my handoff report.”
“Want to sit in my truck for a while?”
“Do you still have the gushers I left in there?”
“Why do you think I offered?”
You sat in Jack’s truck for approximately ten minutes, eating every last one of the gushers in the oversized bag Jack bought you on a road trip a couple of weeks ago. The air conditioning blasted the heat from your face, and you downed an entire water bottle he had left for you in the door. And while you recalibrated, Jack found Robby.
“Got a sec?” Jack barely asked, sweeping past Robby to meet back up in the hall. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited for his friend to let the door swing behind him.
“Look—” Robby started. “I get that she’s your girl, and it can be difficult to—”
“Wasn’t her case,” Jack interrupted, expression as neutral as he could get it. “It was Santos’. She wasn’t going to tell you that, but I will.”
Robby paused, nodding jerkily. “Okay. Okay, my bad. I’ll talk to her.”
“You will.”
Robby eyed Jack. “But my point still stands. She needs to be able to take whatever this ED throws at her. She can’t have you swooping in to protect her.”
Jack pursed his lips, nodding back at Robby to make the space feel equal. “Robby, I respect you. A lot. You’re one of the few people left that I’ve cared about for most of my life.” He took a step closer. “But I’ll protect her from what she needs protecting from.”
The air between them was heavy and uncomfortable, and Jack couldn’t remember a time it had ever felt like that. Maybe a few months after his wife died and he lashed out. Maybe when Robby wouldn’t ask for help and Jack forced it a little too hard. Or maybe it had never felt like this—with Jack on the offensive, unwilling to let anything slide.
Robby must have felt it too. “Heard,” he affirmed.
“Good.” Jack went to leave the hall, patting Robby’s shoulder as he went. But he felt there was more to say, so Jack paused, looking at the wall behind Robby’s head. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “And if you ever make her cry like that again, I will beat the shit out of you.”
Robby’s head turned to look at his friend fully, and Jack met him there. He lifted the side of his mouth in a fleeting smile, patted him on the shoulder once more, and then left Robby in the hall.
summary: you never knew what love was until Jack showed you its true meaning. and when he asks for your hand in marriage, you have a mission to fulfill.
characters: jack abbot x reader
contents: age gap, just fluff because this is soft and sweet! also, mentions of childhood trauma and parental neglect.
word count: 3.7k
The metallic tang of adrenaline coats your tongue, sharp and cold. One second, a chill creeps up your legs, the next, your heart is a frantic percussion against your ribs. It’s a physical rebellion, a body reacting to a scenario it was never wired to expect.
First of all, you never imagined yourself in this situation, because everything in your life pointed to the opposite. And if we’re being honest, you have a long and lasting history with the word “marriage.”
You grew up in a house where love sounded like raised voices and doors closing too hard. Where you learned to turn Hannah Montana up loud enough to drown out the arguments downstairs. You didn’t need anyone to explain what was wrong, you could see it in the way your parents spoke to each other, like they were always keeping score, like winning mattered more than understanding.
When they separated, people said it would be better. It was supposed to be simple, one weekend here, one weekend there, a rhythm you could get used to. Something stable.
Supposed to be.
Your mother treated new relationships like life rafts, clinging to anyone who could drown out her own silence. Your father took to the open road, chasing the ghosts of a college dream he claimed the marriage had stolen from him.
By fourteen, you had mastered the art of self-sufficiency. By sixteen, you had learned to mourn your first heartbreak in a vacuum, crying until dawn without expecting a hand on your shoulder.
Independence wasn’t something you chose. It was something that grew around you, like a shell.
Your mother was growing increasingly distant, living the life she had perhaps always longed for. You were just a pawn in her game, one she’d left on the sidelines. You saw your father cry alone in his car after a weekend with him, knowing his life was forever ruined.
And it took many years of therapy and self-care to grow up and break free from the chains that trauma of that magnitude can impose on a human being.
It’s confusing, actually. Even later, in college, when things were supposed to feel different, you carried it with you. Relationships never quite settled. You were there, but never fully. Close, but never close enough. People noticed, like they always do.
For a long time, you wondered if something in you had been built wrong.
It took years—real ones, slow ones—to understand that it wasn’t a flaw. It was a defense. Something that had once kept you safe, even if it kept everything else out too.
That rift only began to heal when you joined the PTMC. A few years of residency were all it took to meet the person who would change your life in irreversible ways.
Everything you believed about love—the idea that it was temporary, something people held onto to soften whatever was missing inside them—started to lose its shape when Abbot came into your life. Sneaky and deliberate, he did exactly what you feared most: reached your heart.
With a tenderness and ease you never imagined possible.
Jack didn’t try to break down the walls, he simply sat outside them until you were ready to open the door. He offered a quiet, steady presence that didn't demand you perform or "fix" yourself.
He noticed things, but he didn’t make a spectacle of them. The way you hesitated before trusting something good. The way you sometimes pulled back without explaining why. He never chased you for answers, you think that’s why you started offering them.
With him, it wasn’t about intensity, it was about consistency. About the quiet, almost unfamiliar feeling of being understood without having to explain everything.
And somehow, without you realizing exactly when it changed, being with him stopped feeling like something you had to manage. It just felt… easy.
That’s why, a year and a half into something you kept mostly to yourselves—built in quiet hours, in late-night walks and coffee left untouched on his kitchen counter—Jack knew.
It wasn’t a realization that arrived all at once. It settled in gradually, until one day it simply felt certain.
It happened on a cold morning in December. The kind of cold that seeps into the windows and lingers. You were in his kitchen, moving around each other with an ease that had become second nature, the sound of something simmering low on the stove, the light outside dimmed by steady snowfall.
You asked him to pass the salt.
Something slid across the marble. You reached for it without looking, already half-turned back to the stove, but what you felt wasn’t glass or metal. It was smaller and smooth. Closed in your hand.
When you looked up, Jack was already watching you.
He stood there in a worn sweatshirt, grey hair slightly out of place, like he hadn’t bothered to fix it after running his hands through it one too many times. There was no performance in him, no buildup. Just that quiet, almost careful expression he got when something mattered.
The box in your hand felt heavier once you understood what it was.
For a second, you didn’t move. And it's not because you didn’t know the answer, but because some part of you was still catching up, trying to reconcile this moment with the version of your life where this never happened.
And yet, there you were.
He didn’t make a speech. He didn’t need to. The question was simple when it came, steady in the same way he had always been with you. You said yes with the stove still on, with the wind pressing faintly against the windows, with everything around you continuing as if nothing had changed.
But it had.
It was so ordinary it almost felt unreal. No grand gesture, no perfect timing—just the two of you, in a space that had slowly become shared, choosing each other out loud.
When he slid the ring onto your finger, his hands were warm, grounding. You noticed, distantly, the way his breath caught, nothing dramatic, but enough to give him away. As if this meant more to him than he had expected it to.
And it did.
Your vision blurred before you could stop it. Not from shock, not from fear, just from the weight of the moment, from the quiet certainty of being there, of being chosen, of choosing back.
And what an irony to find the love of your life where you were least expecting it.
A kind of love that doesn’t try to convince you it exists.
Because that’s what Jack was like—loving him was easy and unquestioning. After a lifetime of wondering if love really exists, if that word, “love,” is actually something that exists, and not just a term rooted in the depths of the human soul to fill the gaps of emotions and paradoxes, you were certain you had found the answer. But there isn’t one. Not a single, clear answer.
What exists are the ways people show up. The small, consistent choices. The things they do without thinking, because it comes naturally to them. And with Jack, the answer revealed itself like that, quietly, without asking for your attention.
In the way he looks at you, soft and focused, like he’s still a little surprised by you. In the offhand “great job” that started as nothing and somehow became everything. In the coffee cups he leaves by your charts, marked with uneven smiley faces that shouldn’t matter as much as they do.
It’s there when his hand finds yours without hesitation, fingers fitting together like they’ve learned the shape by memory. In the way he pulls you close, firm and grounding, like he doesn’t intend to let go anytime soon. Or how his eyes search for you wherever you are. In the kisses that carry more feeling than urgency, in the quiet confession of I love you that never sounds rehearsed, never sounds uncertain.
Those lazy, golden mornings where he’d pull you back into the covers, his arms a protective circle around you, squeezing just enough to let you know he wasn't letting go. The passionate frenzy that followed when he buried himself inside you, all sweat and lust. It was the ultimate dismantling of your walls. Skin against skin. For the first time, you didn't feel the need to remain distant.
So yes, it was easy to love him and even easier, somehow, to believe that he loved you too.
Jack didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. He didn’t try to be more than he was.
He was just there. And for you, that was everything.
So, life in the ER was still hectic, and you were trying to find the right moment to approach Robby. You focused on your screen, typing up charts with more force than necessary, pretending your attention was fully there. It wasn’t. Every few seconds, your gaze drifted, tracking Robby as he danced through the room, stopping, answering, adjusting, always in motion.
“If you press any harder, that keyboard might give up on you.” Dana slid into place beside you, already flipping through her own paperwork, glasses perched low on her nose.
You blinked, only now noticing the tension in your hands. You eased your fingers, exhaling quietly, then glanced back toward Robby, who was deep in conversation with Whitaker.
“Is everything alright, dear?” Dana asked, peering at you over the rim of her glasses.
“No. Actually, yes. Maybe.”
She gave you a look. “That sounds promising.”
You hesitated, then let it out before you could overthink it. “I need to talk to Robby. I just—don’t know how to start.”
“Sweetheart, just rip the band-aid off already, whatever it is. That old man likes things straight and clear as day. You might want to do it soon, though. Before his sabbatical.”
You turned to her fully. “His what?”
“Oh.” She shrugged lightly. “He’ll be gone for a while. Didn’t you hear? So it’ll just be us holding things together.”
Something in your chest tightened, not panic, not quite urgency, but close enough.
You pushed your chair back. “Okay. I’ll do it now.”
“Good for you,” Dana murmured, already back to her charts.
The noise of the ER swallowed you again as you stepped away from the hub. You spotted Robby a few feet ahead, catching him just as Javadi stood frozen in front of him, her expression unreadable. Then she turned abruptly, walking off with Whitaker without a word.
Robby exhaled, and only then did you notice it, the flush creeping up the back of his neck, sharp against his skin.
“Um, Robby?”
“Yes?” he replied, the word edged with fatigue as he shifted his attention to you.
“Can we talk for a minute?”
He checked his watch, then reached for a clipboard a nurse handed him mid-sentence, signing it quickly before looking back up. “Did something happen?”
“No, but… could we talk somewhere private?”
This time, he really looked at you. The tiredness in his features was more apparent up close, his white hair only making it harder to ignore. You swallowed, steadying yourself.
After a brief pause, he nodded toward the break room. You moved first, not giving yourself time to reconsider, trusting that he’d follow.
The door clicked shut, and just like that, the noise of the ER dulled into something distant.
Robby crossed his arms, then motioned for you to sit.
Up close, the nerves were harder to ignore. This wasn’t just any conversation. The man in front of you had been there at the beginning, when everything felt uncertain, when you were still learning how to stand your ground. He had steadied you more times than you could count, sometimes without even realizing it.
There was a kind of respect there that went beyond hierarchy. Something quieter and lasting.
“Should I be worried?” he asked.
“No—no,” you said quickly, shaking your head. “It’s just… something else.”
He nodded once. “Alright. I’m listening.”
You drew in a breath, holding onto it for a second before letting it go. “You know that Jack and I… we’re together.”
Robby’s brows lifted slightly, a flicker of confusion passing through his expression.
“I promise this is going somewhere,” you added, almost smiling. “I just—I wanted to say that I’m really grateful. For everything. Since my first day here. You’ve… you’ve done more than you had to, and I don’t think I ever said that properly.”
He watched you quietly, not interrupting.
“And with Jack,” you continued, “I know it hasn’t exactly been… simple. So thank you for letting us have that space. For not making it harder than it already was.”
Robby exhaled through his nose, something softer settling in his features. “You’re a good doctor,” he said. “I did what anyone in my position should do.” A brief pause. “Is everything alright between you two?”
“Yes,” you said, and this time it came easier. “It is. That’s actually… why I’m here.”
You let the next words come without overthinking them.
“We’re getting married.”
For a moment, he didn’t react. Not in any obvious way. Then it caught up to him slowly. A small smile, a quiet breath that turned into something close to a laugh as he ran a hand over his face.
“Well,” he said, looking back at you, “congratulations. I’m glad to hear it.” His expression softened further. “I hope you both are happy.”
“I am. We are!” you answered, and meant it. “But there’s… one more thing.”
That made him pause.
“I’ve never really talked about my parents,” you began, your voice steady but quieter now. “It’s… complicated. They’re not… involved. And they won’t be there.” You let out a short breath, something between a laugh and an exhale. “I think I always knew that would be the case.”
Robby didn’t interrupt. He just listened.
“So,” you went on, the words coming a little faster now, before you could second-guess them, “I was wondering—only if you’d be comfortable with it, and it’s completely okay if not, but it would mean a lot to me if…”
You faltered, then shook your head, a small, nervous laugh slipping out.
“If you walked me down the aisle.”
Your heart pounds in your chest. Robby stands frozen. He just looked at you, like he was trying to understand if he’d heard you correctly.
“It’s really okay if you don’t want to,” you added quickly. “I just thought—”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
You blinked. “What?”
“Do you want me to do that?”
There was something in his voice now. Something closer to disbelief.
“Yes,” you said, more firmly this time. “I do.”
“Me?”
And then it settled.
“Robby,” you said gently, “you’re very important to me. There isn’t anyone else I would ask.” You hesitated for only a second. “When I picture it… you’re there.”
That did it.
His expression shifted, slowly at first, then all at once. His eyes glossed over, not dramatically, but enough to give him away. For a man who carried so much without showing it, the reaction was quiet and unmistakable.
It took him a moment.
Then he stood, closing the distance between you, hands coming to your shoulders before pulling you into an embrace.
“Of course,” he said, his voice lower now. “Of course I will.”
You nodded against him, blinking back the sudden sting in your eyes. When you stepped back, you both took a second, like you needed it.
“Thank you,” you said, softer this time.
He gave a small nod, still collecting himself.
You turned toward the door, your hand already on the handle, ready to step back into everything waiting outside.
“Oh—” you added, glancing back, “you’ll be back in time, right?”
“For what?” he asked, a trace of confusion returning.
“Your sabbatical. Dana mentioned it.” You shrugged lightly. “You’ll be back for the wedding?”
There was a flicker of something in his expression, brief, almost imperceptible.
“Yes,” he said. “I will.”
You smiled, something lighter settling in your chest now.
“Good,” you murmured. “Thank you, Robby.”
“Look at you,” Robby said, reaching up to straighten Jack’s bow tie. “All sharp and polished, didn’t think I’d see the day.”
Jack didn’t laugh. He was too aware of everything, his hands, slightly damp, the tightness in his chest, the way his heartbeat refused to settle into anything steady.
“Fuck off,” he muttered, eyes fixed ahead as he adjusted the tie again, even though it was already straight.
Especially Jack, who’s a bundle of nerves with his heart practically in his throat. Outside, the scene is set: rows of white wooden chairs occupied by a handful of friends and Jack’s few relatives. All gathered for a small, intimate celebration at a house in the countryside, a place you found at the last minute when Whitaker—who freaked out when he discovered the whole thing—let you know it was available and not too far from the city.
“Damn! Looking good, Dr. Abbot!” Santos practically shouted as she entered the house, where you were getting ready.
Jack let out a low, disapproving sound under his breath, which only made Robby chuckle.
“They don’t know when to stop,” Jack said.
“No,” Robby replied, glancing over with a faint smile, “they really don’t.”
Then they looked at each other, an exchange that said so much—a partnership of years, a recognition that only two people who’ve been through hell on earth can share. There was history there. Years of it. The kind that didn’t need to be explained, only recognized. It passed between them in a glance—everything they had seen, everything they had carried, side by side.
Jack had been trying to hold back the tears in his eyes all morning, besides having his nerves on edge, he wanted to stay composed and save all his tears for when you walked down the aisle.
“I’m happy for you, brother,” Robby said, pulling him into a firm embrace, his hand coming up to pat his back twice.
Jack nodded against him, swallowing hard before stepping back.
“Yeah,” he managed, a small smile breaking through. “Thanks for coming back.”
Robby hesitated for just a second as he let go. And when he did, it was devastating. With a heavy heart, he gave Jack’s shoulder a light squeeze, acknowledging the gratitude and sincerity behind it.
“You look…” Javadi paused behind you, her eyes widening at your reflection. “You look amazing.”
You smiled, a little shy under the weight of it. “Thank you.”
“Good thing you didn’t go with the other dress,” Santos added from across the room, adjusting her suit. “You would’ve looked like a wedding cake.”
You laughed, smoothing your hands over the fabric. The dress was simple, no excess, no effort to impress. It fit you the way something chosen carefully does. It felt like you.
“Shen’s about to lose it, saying everyone’s freezing their butts off out there.” Ellis rolled her eyes and took a deep breath. “We’ll go when you’re ready, bride-to-be.”
You turned to the mirror one last time. Everything seems to come crashing down like an avalanche—all the fear, all the insecurity, all those beliefs and doubts that seemed to terrify you your whole life—they’ve vanished.
What remained was something steadier. A version of yourself you hadn’t always known how to reach.
“I’m ready,” you said.
“I’ll get Robby,” Javadi replied, already heading for the door.
Your bridesmaids followed, leaving only Dana behind.
She stepped closer, her hand resting gently on your shoulder. “Can I say something?”
“Of course.”
“I’m really happy for you,” she said, her voice warm, certain. “Truly.”
You nodded, your throat tightening just slightly. “Thank you.”
She held your gaze for a second longer. “You chose well.”
Yes, you did.
Outside, the air was colder, sharper against your skin. The sun had begun to dip, casting everything in that soft, fleeting light that makes things feel suspended in time.
Robby was waiting near the entrance.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready.”
The music started as you stepped forward.
People stood. You registered it in fragments—Santos lacing her fingers with Garcia’s, Javadi beside Samira and Mateo, Dana already dabbing at her eyes. It all blurred together, because your attention found him almost immediately.
Jack.
Jack's at the small makeshift altar, surrounded by white and yellow flowers. You catch his expression, his eyes welling up, and how his lips curl into a small pout, trying to hold back the tears. Those gentle eyes are all on you. He paces, almost restless, counting down the seconds until he can finally hold you in his arms and call you his wife.
He was looking only at you.
And just like that, everything else fell away.
Step by step, the distance between you closed. You felt Robby beside you, steady and grounding, until you reached the end.
When he placed your hand in Jack’s, the gesture was quiet but full of meaning. Jack nodded to him, something unspoken passing between them, before his attention returned to you.
Your hands meet and everything else ceases to exist except him.
His hands are on yours the whole time, caressing, stroking, making sure that this moment is real and that you are there. From that point on, the ceremony moved forward, but it felt distant, almost secondary. His eyes smiling with the small wrinkles around them, his pupils dancing as a way of saying he loves you, without verbalizing.
It’s a devastating love, the one you feel.
By the time the final words were spoken, there was a quiet shift in the air, like something had settled into place.
“You may kiss the bride.”
Jack touches your face as if it were the first time, a gentle touch, but this time he isn’t hesitant like the first time he kissed you in the car at your front door. No, this touch is certain, firm. His eyes wander over your face, committing every detail and feature to memory for the thousandth time, because he wants to remember this moment—even fifty years from now—when he took you in his arms and kissed you for the first time as his wife.
And you feel deep in your heart, in your very core, the most bittersweet and gentle feeling a person could ever feel.
Jack is yours. You are his. Just as it should be.
And this time, there was no reason to look for answers...
summary: you're a highly strung lawyer, he's an emergency doctor trying to find his feet again. theoretically, your worlds should never collide. that theory holds true until a paralegal takes a tumble and you end up at the ER.
pairing: lawyer!reader (fem) x frank langdon
warnings/tags: frank being a cutie, reader being a legal badass, reader and frank lowkey have some vices in common (read between the lines here so i do not have to spoil things!), abby and kids do not exist in this universe, the pitt crew lowkey being thirsty af for the reader, ogilvie kinda being a creep, everyone lowkey just wants you ok!!! flirting, fluff, swearing, usual medical descriptions that you’d expect from the pitt!
notes: i lowkey ran away with this fic but I'm not mad about it. also...me not using a gif for a fic for the first time ever... i'm getting with the times!
likes, reblogs, comments are very much appreciated!
Enjoy my work? Tip me! 🤍
masterlist
"That went better than expected."
"Don't jinx it."
You pressed the pedestrian crossing button, impatiently glancing left and right before you stepped out onto the road.
"I'm not jinxing anything! I'm just saying I think the judge might actually-"
You turned at the sound of a sharp yelp from behind you.
"Oh my god - Amy!"
She was sprawled out on the road, her stiletto lodged in between the cracks of a grate. Her ankle was twisted at an odd angle, her face contorted in pain.
"I'm fine, I'm fine-" She insisted, already trying to push herself up.
You crouched beside her, dropping your bag without a second thought. “Don’t move, you might make it worse.”
Passersby began to slow down, a few drifting closer as if to ascertain if they were going to be obligated by their conscious to offer to assist.
“I’m fine.” She repeated.
You stared at her, then at her ankle, which was already starting to swell.
“You are very much not fine.”
“Look, I can get up just- fuck!” She cursed loudly as she tried to put weight on her twisted ankle to hoist herself up.
You gripped her arm firmly, stopping her from toppling down again.
She looked up at you sheepishly.
You merely raised a brow.
“Ok." She admitted, wincing. "Maybe I’m not fine.”
“Yeah no shit.”
You glanced around, spotting a taxi rank only about a hundred metres away. You straightened, already pulling up your phone to google the nearest hospital.
“We’re taking you to the ER.”
“Wait no but what about-“
“-I’ll deal with it.”
The emergency room of PTMC was exactly how you remembered it - too bright, too busy and full of people who all seemed to be having worse days than you.
You stayed close to Amy, guiding her to a waiting chair and helping her fill out her admittance forms as her pain worsened.
“There's so much work to do, you shouldn’t be wasting your time here with me.” She muttered guiltily.
“You’re being ridiculous.” You reprimanded, although your tone was gentle. “I’ve got it sorted.”
You tried to ignore the constant buzzing of your phone in your pocket.
“Although, I think you’re banned from stilettos for a little bit.”
“But they’re Jimmy Choo.” She pouted.
You huffed a laugh despite yourself.
“Amy Saint-Clair?” A nurse called.
You glanced down at her ankle. It had nearly doubled in size since you first walked in.
“We might need a wheelchair.”
-
You followed closely as the nurse wheeled Amy through the swinging doors.
If you thought the waiting room was chaotic, the actual ER was something else entirely.
A hive of activity that somehow seemed to function as one organism - a single stream of consciousness, doctors and nurses weaving through the chaos with practiced fluidity.
“What have we got here-“ Another nurse stops, eyes dropping to Amy’s ankle.
You didn’t miss the way the nurse’s eyes widened ever so slightly as they looked up at their colleague.
“Dana, is there a room open?” The nurse called out as a blonde woman swept past them.
“Room 8’s free.” She replied without looking back.
“Great.”
In one fluid motion, the first nurse handed the wheelchair over, disappearing back to the admittance area before you could blink.
Finally, the nurse turned to you both.
“Sorry about that, today has been chaotic. I’m Perlah.”
“That’s ok, I’m Amy.”
You introduced yourself when Perlah turned to you before tacking on "concerned co-worker."
Perlah smiled. “Alright Amy let’s see what we can do for your ankle.”
Your heels hit the polished floor loudly as you hurried to keep up with Perlah, who was moving the wheelchair at an impressive pace given her size.
The sound carried.
Unbeknownst to you, heads turned. Subtle at first, then less so.
Santos let out a low whistle.
Whitaker cut her a look out of his peripheral. “Nice. Very professional.”
“What? She's hot...in my professional opinion.”
He shook his head, forcing himself to stare back at his computer.
“Who’s the hottie in room 8?” They both glanced up to see Javadi peering around her monitor.
“Who the hell says hottie?”
"What's this about a hottie?" McKay's ears piqued, causing her to divert from her route immediately.
"Pretty friend of a patient in Room 8." Jesse piped up from his desk.
"You lot are worse than teenagers." Dana roused, looking at them over the rims of her glasses.
She glanced up at the electronic board.
"We do actually need someone to go check-"
"-I'll go." Santos volunteered, already moving to jump up from her stool.
"Sit back down missy." Dana snapped. "You're way too behind on your charting."
Dana's gaze swept over the pitt, then paused.
She did a double take when she saw a flash of dark hair accompanied by a familiar slouch and forlorn expression.
"Doctor Langdon."
Frank looked up, mildly startled at the sound of his name being called.
"Just the person I wanted to see." Dana smiled as she inclining her head. "Patient for you in Room 8, looks like a nasty ankle trauma."
Frank swallowed a very obvious sigh. He'd been hoping for even just a ten minute respite from what had been an incredibly shitty shift so far.
"On it."
Everyone watched him leave. Then almost in unison, their attention snapped back to Dana.
"Dana, what the hell-" Santos began to protest.
"Save it." Dana continued typing, sliding her glasses back up the bridge of her nose.
"He's moody today." She added as she glanced over her shoulder to Room 8 as Frank pulled the curtain aside.
"So?"
A small smirk twitched up onto her lips as she shrugged innocently.
"Thought it might cheer him up a bit."
-
"A doctor should be with you shortly." Perlah reassured Amy as she helped settle her onto the hospital bed.
You thanked her, your hand coming up to pat Amy's shoulder, thumb brushing absentmindedly in a soothing rhythm when you caught her grimace.
"Jake's still coming, right?" You asked, trying to pull her focus somewhere other than the pain.
"Yeah." Amy nodded, exhaling shakily. "Said he'll get here as soon as he can but traffic's a nightmare. Said something about a six car pile up on the motorway."
You both looked up as the curtain slid open.
He was tall.
That was your first thought.
Dark hair, slightly tousled like he’d run a hand through it one too many times. A stethoscope hung loose around his neck, like it belonged there rather than being placed there. And his eyes - a striking shade of blue.
Those piercing eyes flicked from you to Amy and then back to you again.
"Hopefully none of them need a trip to the ER."
His voice was warm. Grounded and steady in a way that immediately made you feel like everything was a little more under control.
"No I don’t think so, my boyfriend said it didn't look too serious." Amy chuckled awkwardly.
“Well that’s a relief. I’m Doctor Langdon by the way.” He introduced himself as he squeezed a pump of sanitizer into his hands.
“Amy.”
“Nice to meet you Amy.”
His eyes met yours again, this time holding your gaze just a touch longer.
You offered your name, hoping it sounded more casual than you felt, as you resisted the urge to stare longer than was appropriate.
Then he smiled, just slightly.
Ok, he was hot.
He took the tablet from Perlah, glancing through the intake notes.
“Now, I’ve heard we had a nasty fall on your ankle, is that right?”
“I wouldn’t say it was nasty-“
You shot her a silencing glare. “It was nasty. Her shoe got caught in a grid at a crosswalk and she practically faceplanted."
Frank nodded, attention sharpening on Amy’s ankle.
“That sounds painful.”
“Very.” Amy admitted.
“Alright, let’s take a look Amy.” He slid on a pair of gloves and crouched beside the bed.
He had barely even brushed a finger over the area when Amy let out a hiss of pain.
Frank glanced over his shoulder to Perlah.
“Push four of morphine.”
You didn’t mean to watch him so closely.
The way he moved - careful, deliberate. The way his brow pulled together just slightly as he focused. The quiet, almost automatic gentleness in the way he handled her ankle.
Your phone buzzed in your pocket again.
You ignored it.
You told yourself it was because Amy needed you, and definitely not because you were suddenly, acutely aware of the attractive doctor in front of you.
"Does this hurt?"
His voice softened as he gently rolled her ankle forward.
Amy flinched, "yeah that really hurts."
“Alright. That’s helpful. Not fun, but helpful.”
There was something about the way he said it - dry, but kind - that made Amy visibly relax despite herself.
After a moment he stood, unfolding back to his full height.
"Well Amy, we're going to need to do a CT of your ankle to see if there are any fractures."
"Do you think it's broken?" She asked anxiously.
"Unfortunately it's hard to say right now given the amount of swelling. It might just be a really bad sprain."
He turned slightly, murmuring something to Perlah, pointing at the tablet.
You watched the folds of Amy's face crease into an anxious frown. You crossed your arms as an unexpected bubble of irritation burst in you.
"You know, it’s ridiculous that there’s even a grid there. That’s where you’re supposed to walk.” You huffed to Amy. “And it’s right in the middle of the city where thousands of women in high heels walk every single day.”
Frank’s mouth twitched faintly.
He and Perlah exchanged a look.
“It is kind of silly.” Amy agreed half heartedly.
“It’s not just silly, it’s negligent." You insisted, the familiar rhythm of advocacy settling within you. “I should write to the council you know. Threaten to sue or something, because otherwise nothing will actually get done about it like usual because they're-“
You stopped yourself abruptly when you remembered where you were.
You were not at your desk angrily typing out a letter to an opposing party, you were in a hospital.
You cleared your throat.
"Sorry." You glanced sheepishly between Doctor Langdon and Perlah. "I can get...worked up sometimes."
"More like highly strung." Amy grumbled, causing you to shoot her a glare.
"What are you, a lawyer or something?" Frank asked as he slid his gloves off, a quiet thread of amusement in his voice.
You winced.
"Just a little bit, yeah."
He looked up at you again, his eyes wide. "Wait seriously?"
"She's not just a lawyer, she's a great lawyer." Amy boasted proudly.
Langdon glanced between the two of you.
"So you're-"
"-a concerned colleague." You jumped in.
"She's my boss." Amy corrected. "I'm her paralegal."
"Ok firstly, you're not my paralegal, you're a paralegal at the firm I work at. And secondly, I am not your boss - you're making me sound old."
Frank huffed a laugh at that. It slipped out of him easier than it had all day - maybe even all week.
Amy rolled her eyes fondly at you in a way that only someone in a great working relationship could.
"We were coming back from court when I tripped." She explained.
Frank nodded, but his eyes still hadn't quite left you.
"Well...boss or not, it's very nice of you to come and wait here with her. Not a lot of coworkers would do that."
"Oh." You glanced at Amy and then back at him. "Well... she always uses the correct font type and size, so I'm a little attached."
Amy snorted. "And who says romance is dead?"
That loosened another quiet chuckle out of Frank, and for a second his eyes lingered on you just a little longer than necessary.
You felt it. That small shift, like the air had changed pressure. A flicker of something as your heart skipped a beat.
Perlah smirked as she slipped out of the room.
"Ok well-" Then Frank's attention was on Amy again, as if that moment had never happened, like flipping a well worn switch. "it might take a while before your CT, so just try to relax and if your pain gets worse let a nurse know and we can increase your morphine dose."
“What’s a while mean in doctor speak?”
“Could be half an hour, could be a couple of hours. It really depends on if we get anything urgent come in. But we’ll try and get you through as fast as we can.” He reassured her.
Amy shot you a panicked look.
"Ok, thanks doc.” You answered for her as you grasped her hand and squeezed.
"No problem."
His eyes flickered to you once more before he disappeared through the curtain.
Frank pulled the curtain shut. Unable to help himself, he hovered outside as your muffled voices pierced through the thin fabric.
"You should go, seriously. I can't ask you to stay here for hours."
"I'm not leaving you here on your own."
"But there is so much work to do- ok wait pass me my laptop and I can start-"
"Amy, you're not working, you're in the hospital for christs sake. Nothing we do is that important."
Frank knew he should walk away, but he couldn't bring himself too.
"But-"
"-no buts." Your voice was gentle, but had a firm edge, one that made it clear you weren't budging. "I can do it all tonight."
"But you already have so much to do." Amy's voice grew softer as her resolve waivered.
"Exactly, so what's a couple more things to add to a never ending list?"
Frank heard Amy let out a defeated sigh. "Well at least there's one positive to all this."
"Oh yeah? what's that?"
A beat, and then-
"Doctor Langdon is hot."
He didn’t let himself hear your response.
Frank moved fast. Down the hall, around the corner, going anywhere but there.
His jaw tightened, heat creeping up the back of his neck despite himself.
Perlah made her way back to the desks clustered in the middle of the ER, the hum of monitors and overlapping conversations swelling around her again.
Princess pounced immediately.
“Javadi says there’s a gorgeous woman in Room 8.”
“There is. She’s a lawyer.”
“Oh." Princess' brows lifted. "Beauty and brains.”
“I like her, seems fiery.”
They both looked up, falling silent as Langdon walked past.
“And Langdon’s treating her?” Princess murmured in Tagalog, their eyes tracking his every movement.
“Yep, and he’s smitten.”
Frank stopped at one of the computers and swiped his ID.
He glanced over at Princess and Perlah to see them giggling. They fell silent when they noticed his gaze, before sharing a glance and bursting into another fit of involuntary laughter.
He shook his head, jaw tightening as he turned back to the screen, willing the faint heat creeping up his ears to disappear as he began typing.
"Heard you've got a stunner in Room 8."
Frank didn't bother to look up from his screen as McKay leaned across the desk, her tone far too casual to be innocent.
"Really? I can't say that I noticed."
McKay scoffed. "Sure you didn't."
She paused for a moment and then, "so... is she single?"
Frank finally looked up at her over his monitor. "I don't know." He said flatly. "I was busy treating my patient, you know - doing my job."
McKay rolled her eyes. "Why is everyone so boring today?"
He shook his head and cursed quietly under his breath.
Frank Langdon had handled a lot in this ER. He'd intubated critical patients, manually pumped hearts, stood knee-deep in chaos during mass casualty incidents without flinching.
And yet, the truth was, he was more rattled by you then anything else he'd stumbled upon in the pitt.
He'd nearly tripped over his own feet when he pulled back that curtain and saw you sitting in that chair.
You were a blur of long and graceful limbs, legs crossed neatly, posture perfect despite the chaos around you. Those sky-high heels tapping faintly against the floor, like you carried your own rhythm into the room.
Then, your eyes met his.
Your hair fell in soft, deliberate curls, framing a face that was too gorgeous to be sitting under harsh fluorescent lighting in the middle of an emergency department.
It had taken everything in him not to stare.
He was a professional, he had to remind himself. One who was lucky to even still be practicing.
Then, you'd started speaking. And that had somehow made it even worse.
You were fiery, well-articulated, confident - something that no doubt came as a result of your profession.
But there was a softness to you too, a kindness that made him slightly weak in the knees.
The way your hand had settled on Amy’s shoulder. The way your voice shifted when you spoke to her.
It had caught him off guard.
After a few minutes, he glanced out of the corner of his eye to see Dana a few feet from him, writing something out onto a chart.
"You knew."
Dana didn't even look up at first.
"Knew what?" She asked innocently.
Frank pursed his lips and kept his eyes glued to his charts as he muttered his next words. "You knew that she was gorgeous when you sent me in there."
"Really? I can't say that I noticed."
His eyes narrowed as she echoed his words back at him, a knowing smile on her lips as she shot him a wink.
He shook his head, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him.
Now that you were satisfied Amy was comfortable, you finally dared to look at your phone.
Three missed calls, thirty unread emails, seven teams messages and a voicemail from a very unimpressed partner.
"Go." Amy insisted, nudging your arm when she saw the look on your face. "Call whoever you have to call.”
“It’s fine-“
“You’re doing that thing where you pretend you’re not stressed but you’re actually two minutes away from having a meltdown.”
“I am not-“
“-you are.”
You sighed, your shoulders dropping just slightly as you glanced back down at your screen.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m morphined up and have endless tiktoks to scroll through. I’ll be fine.” Amy insisted.
You hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“Ok…just try not to injure any other part of your body.”
“No promises.” She beamed back.
You shot her one last glare as you yanked the curtain back - and stepped straight back into the chaos.
It hit you all at once.
Voices overlapping. Monitors beeping. The constant movement like a fast flowing tidal wave.
You paused for half a second, scanning for someone who looked even remotely interruptible.
“Excuse me.” You hurried over to a young doctor with a mop of curly brown hair who was typing away frantically.
He swivelled around in his chair at the sound of your voice.
His eyes widened as he looked up at you.
“Sorry- is there somewhere I can take a phone call?” You asked as you held up your buzzing phone.
"Um-" His cheeks grew red. "Uh well you could maybe uh-"
"Ignore Ogilvie. He's new." You looked up to see the older blonde nurse from earlier.
"Work call?"
"Unfortunately."
She flashed you a sympathetic call as she jerked her thumb behind her. "Go use the ambulance bay sweetheart, just make sure you stay out of their way if one of them rolls in."
"I will, thank you." You flashed her and Ogilvie a smile before hurrying in the direction she pointed you in.
Ogilvie watched as you walked away, his mouth slightly ajar as your hips swayed in your tight skirt.
"Sweet lord have mercy." He breathed out.
You moved quickly, heels clicking sharply against the floor, cutting a clean line through the chaos.
You passed an older doctor, offering a polite, automatic smile as your eyes met his.
Robby slowed slightly, turning around to watch you as you walked past.
He blinked slowly, then glanced toward Dana, who was flipping through a stack of folders like nothing unusual had just walked past.
"Is there a lawsuit going on that I don't know about?"
"More like Ogilvie's about to get served with a restraining order if he doesn't stop gaping." Santos remarked dryly as she walked past.
Robby's stare hardened. Dana slid off her glasses, using them to point vaguely in your direction.
"She's the co-worker of the patient in Room 8, Langdon's looking after her."
"I bet he is." Ogilvie muttered.
Robby shook his head slightly as he raised his hands up in defeat.
"On second thoughts, I don't want to know."
You groaned softly, rubbing at your temples as you leaned back against the cool brick wall just outside the ER doors.
You'd successfully calmed down two partners, delegated three tasks and promised to 'circle back' and 'touch base' on something that you absolutely did not want to circle back or touch base on ever again.
And in the process, created an impossibly large to-do list for yourself.
A familiar tension headache was starting to creep up the right side of your neck, settling stubbornly at the base of your skull.
You closed your eyes briefly, exhaling through your nose.
Frank had come out to take a breather.
Robby had been on his ass the entire shift, Santos was still giving him the evil eye and his back had started that low, persistent ache that never really went away - like it was just waiting for the worst possible moment to remind him it was there.
He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw you.
You, in his usual hiding spot, tucked just out of sight from everyone unless they actively came looking.
Now that you were standing, he could take you in properly. You'd abandoned your matching suit jacket at some point, but the rest of your outfit was still immaculate - leaving you in a tight skirt that fell just below your knee and a structured top with capped sleeves.
You looked like you'd just stepped out of an episode of Suits.
Completely out of place, and yet somehow not at all.
He cleared his throat, causing you to startle slightly as your eyes snapped open.
"Hi." You blurted out.
"Hi." He echoed.
There was a small beat where you just looked at each other.
"Sorry I um- one of the nurses said I could take a call out here. I hope that's ok."
He smiled softly. "Yeah of course." Then he nodded towards the phone still clutched in your hand.
"Everything ok?"
"Oh, yeah." You said automatically. Then, after a second - "I mean no, but it will be."
He nodded like he understood.
"Work stuff?"
You let out a dry chuckle. "Always."
His eyes moved over your face more carefully this time, catching the faint shadows beneath your eyes - half-hidden by makeup, but not invisible.
"We're in the middle of a big trial." You explained. "So it's a little hectic at the moment, client's stressed, partner's stressed, so naturally... everyone's stressed."
Frank nodded again. "Sounds..."
"Stressful?" You offered, pulling a chuckle from him.
"Yeah, stressful."
"It is." You admitted, chewing the inside of your cheek. "But I mean-" You waved towards the ER. "it's nothing like what you guys deal with in there."
Frank frowned slightly at your deflection. "Stress is still stress."
"Yeah but when I'm stressed over a typo in a court document I have to remind myself that I'm not performing heart surgery to calm myself down." You tilted your head, looking up at him. "While you guys are literally performing heart surgery."
"Alright touche." Frank raised his hands in mock surrender. "But still, sounds like you've had a big week."
"More like a big year." You huffed, the honesty slipping out before you could catch it. "But yeah, big week."
"Lot of late nights?"
Your eyes narrowed slightly. "Is that your polite way of saying I look haggard?"
Frank let out a huff of disbelief, "trust me, you are far from looking haggard."
You tried to ignore the annoying way your stomach flipped at that.
He seemed to realise what he’d said a fraction too late.
He straightened slightly, clearing his throat, one hand lifting in a vague, corrective gesture.
"I just mean-" he motioned toward you, "you look like you’re running on about three hours of sleep."
You folded your arms across your chest, leaning more into the wall. "Is that your professional medical opinion?"
"It's a guess." He shrugged his shoulders. "But I'm usually right."
Your eyes narrowed further at the slight humour in his expression. There was no chance in hell you were going to admit he was practically right on the mark.
Before you could answer, your phone buzzed again.
Langdon watched as your eyes darted down, a grimace flashing across your features as you read whatever email had just come through. Your grimace only deepened as your phone began ringing.
“I’ll let you get that.” He made to go back inside.
“No it’s fine, I’m very intentionally ignoring it.” You shoved the phone back into your pocket, as if to emphasise your point.
“He’s a partner on the other side of this matter.” You explained, shaking your head. “He thinks ringing me is somehow going to make him get his way.”
"I'm guessing that happens a lot." Frank leant his shoulder against the brick, angling his body towards you.
"People underestimating you."
You studied him for a moment, searching for any sign of insincerity or expectation of praise for acknowledging something that was quite literally the bare minimum.
You were pleasantly surprised when your fine tuned bullshit detector didn't sound alarm bells.
"It does." You acknowledged after a moment. "But it makes it more fun when I inevitably run rings around them."
Your accompanied smirk made Frank let out a genuine laugh. "I have no doubt about that."
As his laughter faded, your eyes stayed locked. You felt it again - the shift. Something you couldn't quite name, or maybe were too afraid to just yet.
Your phone buzzed entitledly again.
"Sorry-" You glanced down at the caller ID. "I do actually have to take this one."
“Partner?”
“Oh- no I’m single.”
Frank blinked. Then a smirk broke through, unguarded.
“I uh- I meant law firm partner.”
“Oh.” Your phone was still buzzing in your hand, now completely forgotten.
“But that’s very good to know.” Or something of that ilk is what Frank wanted to say.
"Amy should be next in line for her CT, so it shouldn't be too much longer of a wait."
Is what he said instead as he pushed off the wall.
Professional, safe, controlled.
"Thank you doctor."
"Frank." He corrected you automatically. "What I mean is- just Frank is fine, you don't have to call me doctor." He added hastily as he began to slowly back away.
Smooth.
A smirk tugged at your mouth. "Ok." You said lightly.
"Well thank you... just Frank." You teased before finally placing your phone to your ear.
The way you said his name - low, deliberate, just teasing enough - landed in his chest, in his throat, somewhere inconveniently deeper than either.
He shook his head as the sound played over and over in his head as he slipped back inside the ER.
Frank exhaled sharply, dragging a hand down his face.
He was, to put it professionally, completely and utterly fucked.
Half an hour later, Amy was no closer to getting her CT scan.
You were back in your waiting chair beside her, posture far less composed than before, one leg bouncing slightly, still frantically glued to your phone.
And while you were trying your best to work, annoyingly all it seemed you could think about was Frank Langdon.
You exhaled sharply, dragging your focus back to the email in front of you.
The two of you looked up from your phones as the curtain slid across the railing.
And as if you'd manifested him with your thoughts, your eyes locked with Frank's blue ones.
Frank stepped inside, a coffee cup clutched in one hand, his other already reaching to pull the curtain closed behind him.
"Hey Amy, sorry for the wait. I just wanted to check to see how you were doing?"
"Oh I'm fine, just keep the morphine coming." Amy grinned.
"We can definitely do that." Frank chuckled.
He shifted his weight slightly, glancing between the two of you.
"You were next in line for CT but a trauma came in, I don't think it'll be too much longer now though."
"No problem, thanks for letting me know." Assuming the interaction was over, Amy glanced back down at her phone.
Suddenly, Frank's eyes were on you. There was the slightest pause, like he was debating something.
His tongue darted out to wet his lower lip as he extended his hand holding the coffee out towards you.
"I got you this-"
"oh-"
"-figured you might need it if you're going to have a late one."
Amy’s head snapped up so fast it was almost comical.
"You really didn't have to do that Frank." Despite your words, your mouth was already salivating at the prospect of caffeine. Your hand already reaching, your focus locked on the cup like it might disappear if you hesitated.
"Thank you."
Your fingers brushed against his as the cup changed hands.
"You're feeding my addiction you know."
Frank’s mouth lifted as he adjusted his grip on his stethoscope, buying himself a second.
"Luckily you're not my patient then."
As if suddenly remembering Amy - his patient and whole reason for being here - was in the room, his attention snapped back her.
"Sorry Amy, no liquids other than water before a CT."
Amy's eyes darted between the two of you, a knowing grin forming on her face. "Oh that's ok, don't worry about me Frank."
You shot her a warning look behind his back.
If Frank noticed, he didn't say anything. Instead he just shot you another smile.
"Alright." He said, glancing back at you one more time - quicker now, but no less intentional. "I'll check back in after your scan is done."
You pressed the cup to your lips, using it as a shield to avoid Amy's stare as he left.
"Ok. What the fuck was that?"
"What was what?" You answered innocently as you busied yourself with your phone.
"You really didn't have to do that Frank." She mocked in a low, sultry tone.
"I do not sound like that." You snapped, your eyes finally meeting hers.
"You were practically eye fucking him."
"I was not!"
A heartbeat later you added quietier, "we talked for a bit when I was outside making work calls. He told me to call him Frank."
"Oh my fucking god." She let out a cackle of disbelief. "You want him."
"No I don't."
"Yes you do. Admit it! You want to fuck the hot doctor-"
"-would you keep your voice down!" You hissed, glancing over your shoulder.
"Yes, obviously he is attractive ok?" You muttered reluctantly.
"And-" She sat up straighter in her bed. "He clearly wants you too."
"Ok no-"
"- he just bought you a coffee." She interrupted, ticking it off like evidence, "which was clearly an excuse to come and talk to you by the way, and he couldn't keep his eyes off you. What kind of doctor does that unless they're into you?"
"Really nice ones?" You meekly suggested.
She shot you a deadpan stare. "You're too smart to be saying such dumb things."
Your brow furrowed. "I don't like your tone missy."
"What are you going to do about it? I'm not your paralegal, remember? Besides why is any of this a bad thing? Honestly when was the last time you actually got laid because-"
"Alright Amy-" Perlah barged in before you could retort back. "Finally time for your CT."
"Saved by the bell." You muttered.
Perlah tried her best to fight the grin threatening to spill onto her cheeks. Neither of you had to know that she'd heard every word.
As time wore on, your stomach started to grumble, promptly reminding you that you had not eaten anything since stuffing down a muesli bar this morning on your way to court.
The idea of hospital cafeteria food was enough to turn you off the idea of eating all together.
You could hear two staff chatting outside.
"Thank god this shift is nearly over."
"I know, I'm starving."
"I really could go for an unethical donut right now, but don't tell Dana I said that."
An idea started to take shape.
You googled the number of a local pizza place that you knew was half decent and open. You pressed the phone to your ear, tapping the well worn arm of the chair impatiently as it rung.
"Hello? Hi yes- look I was just wondering- would you by any chance deliver to a hospital?"
-
Frank glanced at the clock.
Only an hour left of this seemingly never ending shift.
Despite how busy they had been, it seemed the entire emergency department had found the time to learn about your existence and more annoyingly, his apparent thing for you.
Every time he walked past someone he was greeted with a shit-eating grin and a snarky remark.
"I didn't know you liked Legally Blonde, Langdon."
"Permission to approach the bench?"
"Is your girlfriend going to sue me if I stuff this intubation up?"
He slowed as he watched his co-workers flocking towards the break room.
"What's all this?" He asked Mel.
"Oh um- someone got us pizza."
"Upstairs send another gift?"
"Nope.” Mel shook her head. "An anonymous delivery apparently."
"Anyway." She shrugged after a moment. "I'm getting a slice. I just hope they ordered Hawaiian."
Frank frowned slightly, watching as Mel joined the feeding frenzy.
Dana stopped beside him, silently handing him a receipt.
"What am I looking at?"
"The online order receipt." She smirked up at him. "You might want to cross check it with Room 8’s emergency contact."
While still waiting for Amy to come back from her scan, you had finally relented and pulled out your work laptop.
You'd kicked off your heels at some point, abandoning them beneath the chair, and were now perched awkwardly with one leg tucked under you, using Amy’s side table as a makeshift desk.
You peeked over the top of your monitor at the sound of a throat being cleared.
Frank stood tentatively at the threshold, as if he was mindful not to intrude.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"I thought you might be hungry."
You glanced down to see he was holding a slice of pizza on a paper plate, a napkin folded neatly underneath.
The way the napkin was folded so deliberately made something unfurl beneath your ribs.
"First a coffee and now pizza?" You teased as you closed your laptop halfway. "I didn't realise food delivery was in the job description of an emergency doctor."
"It's an unwritten but vital part of the job." He answered smoothly, handing it over to you.
Your fingers brushed again as you took it.
Except this time, neither of you pulled away particularly quickly.
You glanced down at the plate to see two pills placed neatly beside your pizza.
“Pain killers."
He motioned to his own neck. "You keep bunching your shoulders up around your ears, probably because your neck’s tight from sitting at a desk all day."
You tilted your head slightly.
"Which means, you more than likely have a tension headache right now.”
You stared at him for a moment.
“What are you, a doctor or something?” You teased, repeating his question to you hours earlier.
“Just a little bit, yeah.” He echoed your words right back.
You huffed out a quiet laugh, your head pounding a little too hard for you to bother to try and deny its existence.
"Well, thank you." You shot him a smile as you placed the pills on your tongue, reaching for the water beside you. As you tilted your head back you were very aware of his attentive gaze.
He took a seat on the edge of Amy's bed, leaving just enough space between you to be appropriate.
"You know." He cleared his throat again, glancing down at his hands. "Dana forced the delivery driver to give her the contact number for the order. Said she needed to make sure it wasn't a poisoning attempt or something."
You let out a real laugh at that. "A mass poisoning event? Sounds like the perfect opportunity for a class action, my firm's great at defending those."
Frank hummed, observing you take your first bite.
"You know you put your phone number down as Amy's emergency contact right? So it shows up in the system."
"I’m innocent until proven guilty."
"You didn't have to do that." Frank was unable to hide the affection in his voice.
"Do what?"
You held his gaze for a second and then broke, a smile tugging at your mouth as you finally relented and offered up an innocent shrug.
"I wanted to. You guys work hard."
You glanced back at your laptop. "I was going to come and grab some but I got stuck."
"Ignoring misogynistic partners?"
You snorted. "I wish. Putting out fires instead."
"Another late night?"
"Looks like it."
Frank hummed again, his teeth catching briefly on his lower lip as he watched you.
"I know you're worried about work and Amy." He said slowly. "But it's important to take care of yourself too."
You looked up. There it was again. The sincerity, the kindness, the softness in his voice that made your stomach flutter.
"Should I take that as official medical advice?"
"I'm just saying-" Frank emphasised. "I've seen a lot of hardworkers end up in here, I wouldn't want that to happen to you."
"Well it's a little too late for that." You remarked dryly.
You glanced up when silence followed. Your eyes widened as you realised you'd said those words out loud.
"I um- what I meant was-"
"You don't have to explain." Frank cut you off, but you were already shaking your head.
"No it's fine, I um-" You hesitated, then exhaled. "I got admitted here once during law school." You admitted quietly.
Frank stiffened.
"I was so stressed and studying so hard and getting no sleep obviously, and then next thing I know a friend of a friend is suggesting I try these pills that apparently made you focus for like twelve hours straight."
You let out a small, humourless breath as the words continued to pour out of your mouth. The weeks of sleep deprivation weakening your usual posterity.
"Of course I told myself it was safe because everyone at law school was using them so why couldn't I? And I was smart so I could control it and-"
You cut yourself off when you realised how much you had been rambling.
"Sorry." You pinched the bridge of your nose between your thumb and pointer finger as your headache pulsed, too soon for the painkillers to take effect. "I don't know why I'm telling you this." You confessed.
"I've been clean for years, so no need to report me or anything."
Your attempt at lightening the mood flatlined.
You inwardly cursed yourself, glancing down at your lap. Why did you have to open your mouth? Any chance of him being interested was going to completely fly out the window-
"Benzos." Frank murmured.
You looked up with a start. "What?"
"Benzos." He repeated, this time a little louder, his eyes meeting yours. "That was my vice."
Your face faltered. You closed your laptop lid fully, slowly, as if you might spook him if you made any sudden movements.
"Dexies."
Something deeper formed between the two of you. Recognition, understanding.
You both saw the irony then too. You were two sides of the same coin, two professionals albeit in vastly different fields - one chasing a high, the other a low.
You saw the pain in Frank’s face, unable to be concealed by a weak attempt at a smile.
Your struggle had been years ago.
His… wasn’t.
“You know-“ You began gently. “-addiction doesn’t define us.”
Frank let out a sharp chuckle, more terse then he’d intended.
You winced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like an Alcoholics Anonymous brochure.”
That got a genuine but short lived smile out of him. “You don’t need to apologise. The last few months have just been…” he paused, like he was trying to choose between words.
“Shit.” Was what he finally settled on.
You nodded slowly in understanding.
“It's hard not to feel like it defines you." He continued. "Working here."
"I know that feeling." You said quietly. "Like you've failed at something. Like you were supposed to have control over this innocuous thing and couldn't handle it."
He looked at you intently.
"That you should have been able to fix it yourself, without anyone else knowing. That everyone else is judging you for it."
His eyes stayed on you.
"How do you not feel like that?" His voice was smaller this time.
"I try and remember that everyone has shit going on, even if they're good at hiding it."
You smoothed your skirt as you shifted your weight.
"I have clients - CEOs, executives - the type of people you think would have everything under control, who royally fuck up and I mean royally. It usually starts with something small. Something they think they’ve got handled. And then it spirals."
You gestured outside. "You see people at their worst here everyday. People who ignore your advice, who try to convince themselves they can take care of themselves just fine without help."
Your gaze softened. "And you save them."
You offered him a small shrug. "So yeah, addiction sucks. But it isn't going to be what people remember. Not unless you give them a reason too."
You reached out instinctively to take his hand, to offer another layer of comfort. You stopped just shy, remembering yourself in time. Instead, you patted the edge of the hospital bed awkwardly.
Frank studied you for a moment. He barely knew you, and yet, you were one of first people since coming back to make him feel like he wasn't just a problem to be fixed. Like he was wanted, seen.
Frank ran a hand through his hair, letting a few strands of hair flop forward. His eyes flickered down to see that you still hadn't moved your hand from the bed.
"You know." He began, his voice lighter this time. "You're quite persuasive when you want to be." He placed his hands by his side, fingers curling over the iron frame of the bed.
"Oh yeah?"
The edge of his pinky brushed yours.
"Yeah. You should think of making a career out of it."
Your lips curved, "I'll keep that in mind."
You could have asked further questions - you had every right to want to know. But you didn't pry further, as if you knew the wounds were still so fresh they had barely begun to scab. Like you knew he wasn't ready to rip the temporary band aid off just yet.
That restraint said more than anything else could have.
It made something in his chest tighten.
It only made him want you more.
Like always, Jack Abbott had arrived early for his shift.
He strolled through the ER, taking stock of patients and preparing himself for whatever mess the day shift had left for him to mop up.
He glanced briefly through the slightly ajar curtains of Room 8.
He came to a stop as his brain caught up with his eyes. Then slowly he took a step backwards.
He blinked a few times, letting himself process what he was seeing before turning around and walking back towards the epicentre of the chaos.
"Someone want to tell me what's going on in Room 8?"
A few heads lifted as he glanced around at his colleagues.
"Is Langdon getting sued or something?"
Javadi snorted. "He's getting something alright."
Jack looked around for someone to promptly resolve his bewilderment.
"She's the co-worker of one of his patients." Whitaker supplied.
"Yes." Robby cut in, not bothering to look up from what he was doing. "So like everyone who walks in here, she should be treated with dignity and respect."
Jack raised a brow.
"Well, whatever's going on in there-" He said, glancing back towards Room 8. "I volunteer to be next in line."
Laughter erupted. Mohan shot him a glare from across the room.
"Oh for the love of god." Robby buried his head in his hands. "Would you please stop encouraging them."
"Robby!" Dana called out. "Trauma incoming, two minutes tops."
The laughter stopped just as quickly as it had started.
-
You peaked out from behind the curtain, watching as the doctors and nurses sprung into action.
Frank had bolted the second he'd heard the word trauma.
You watched as he kitted up for the trauma room, pulling on gloves, movements quick and efficient.
He slid his glasses on, those annoyingly attractive strands of his fringe still flopping over his forehead.
It was like the Frank who had been sitting beside you minutes ago, quiet and open and real had ceased to exist. He was replaced by something precise, calm, unmoveable.
You watched him step into the trauma room without hesitation.
And something about that - the competence, the confidence, the way the chaos seemed to bend around him instead of swallowing him - it did something to you.
Looks were one thing. But this? It was enough to make you weak in the knees.
-
"Don't worry kids, the adult has arrived."
Frank stepped back as Garcia sauntered into the trauma room, Robby immediately jumping in to explain the patient's symptoms.
"I'm going to need to make an incision."
Wordlessly a scalpel was placed into her outstretched hand.
"So Langdon-" She started casually. "I've heard you've got a hot lawyer down here." She said it so nonchalantly it was like she was running a knife through butter, not a person's chest cavity.
"Jesus- OR knows about this?"
"Everyone knows about this." She corrected him.
"Must be a slow news day." He grumbled as he went to check the patient's vitals.
"She bought us all pizza." Mohan unhelpfully added.
Garcia glanced up. "Really?"
"Really." Mohan confirmed.
Garcia's brow lifted slightly as she worked.
"So this woman is hot, smart and buys your co-workers food seemingly out of the goodness of her own heart?"
McKay let out a snort.
"Better find a way not to screw this one up Langdon."
"Trust me, I'm working on it." He mumbled under his breath.
Across the room, Robby noticed it.
There was something different in Langdon. He moved like he was more sure of himself, less in his head.
That dark, heavy layer that he'd been carrying since he'd returned was not gone completely, but it was like something had finally cut through it, even just a little.
Robby’s expression didn’t change, but he watched him for a second longer than necessary.
He was still so angry at him, the sting of the betrayal of his adopted prodigy still fresh. But he couldn't ignore the flicker of something in him. It was brief, gone as quickly as it came, but still identifiable.
Relief.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Amy and Perlah trundled back into the room from her journey upstairs.
Frank wasn’t far behind.
"It’s just a bad sprain." He confirmed. "Painful - but nothing we can’t manage."
Amy let out a dramatic sigh of relief.
“We’ll put you in a moon boot and give you some crutches." He added before crouching down at the foot of her bed.
You tried to focus back on your phone, but your attention kept drifting.
To the way he worked. The quiet focus. The gentle way he handled her ankle, explaining everything as he went.
And occasionally, to the way his eyes flicked up to you.
From somewhere just outside the curtain, voices filtered through.
"Have you seen the lawyer yet?"
"Yeah she's really pretty."
"I know. Langdon's whipped. He's doing that thing."
"What thing?"
"The soft voice."
"He always has a soft voice."
"No - this is softer."
Your cheeks burned.
Frank very intentionally ignored them.
"This is amazing." Amy whispered.
"Please stop." You whispered back.
"Ok!" Frank jumped up with just a touch too much enthusiasm to be natural.
"You should be all good to go. You’ll have to keep weight off it for at least a week.”
“So no Jimmy Choos?”
“Definitely no Jimmy Choos.”
Amy pouted out her lower lip.
“I’d be happy to look after them for you.”
Amy cut you a side eye. “You have enough pairs of shoes to supply a small village.”
Frank smirked to himself at your bickering. Your eyes met briefly, training on one another long enough for Amy and Perlah to exchange a look.
"Um actually I think I need to go to the bathroom before I go." Amy announced loudly. "Perlah, do you think you could help me?"
"Of course."
"It might take a while." Amy held up one of her crutches. "You know, being impaired and everything."
"So plenty of time to talk." Perlah piped up.
You watched them go, both of them barely containing their giggles as they slipped out through the curtain.
Silence fell, thicker this time.
"Well, that was subtle." Frank remarked once the two of you were alone.
You let out a breathless laugh.
"Very."
Another pause.
It felt different now. Quieter. Like something was waiting to be said.
The two of you eyed eachother for a moment, as if daring to see who would break the silence first.
"So-" Frank relented first. "I um- I finish my shift in about ten minutes and I know you're busy but-" He paused, his cheeks tinging pink as he tried to phrase his words eloquently.
"I was wondering if maybe you'd like to go have dinner? There's a decent Japanese place just around the corner."
You couldn't fight the way your mouth instantly curved upwards.
"I thought doctors couldn't date their patients."
"We can't." He said quickly. "But you're not my patient. I even checked the hospital's guidelines just to be sure."
Your brow quirked up. "Did you now?"
"I did. Section 14, paragraph 5 provides the definition of patient - in case you wanted to do your own due diligence."
You laughed as if he might not be serious.
You didn't need to know that ten minutes ago he had been frantically flicking through the guidelines on his phone. Checking once, twice and then a third time just to be safe.
He was still on shaky ground here, he didn't want to do anything to rock the boat further. But there'd been a part of him that would have been willing to risk it regardless, to listen to the voice shouting at him that you were worth it.
"So technically ok but maybe just morally grey then?" You teased.
Langdon shrugged. "Maybe, but isn't that the area where you lawyers love to operate in?"
You snorted. "Wow. You know, if you ever decide you need a career change, you should consider the law Doctor Langdon."
"Something tells me the law is better off in your hands."
Your smile widened.
"So-" He said after a heartbeat, a little softer this time. "Is that a-"
"-it's a yes."
You surprised yourself at how quickly you answered.
There was a time not that long ago where you would have hesitated.
You hadn't dated in a long time, you were too busy with work, telling yourself that you weren't going to waste your limited spare time with mediocre men - which Pittsburgh seemed to supply in abundance.
But now, standing in front of Frank, you felt all of those worries fade away into the background.
Relief flickered across his face, quick but unmistakable.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Frank smiled - warm, a little shy, genuine.
"Ok, cool."
"I'll wait outside with Amy, her boyfriend should be here soon - finally."
"Sounds good, I won't be too long."
You moved to gather your things, slipping your laptop away, but paused as you reached for your bag.
"Everyone's going to be staring at me out there, aren't they?"
"...probably."
"And it's not because they want free legal advice?"
Frank chuckled. "I'm afraid not."
You nodded slowly as you digested that information.
Then, your mouth curved into a small smile.
“Well-“ You slipped your heels back on, straightening to your full height.
"Better give them something worth looking at then."
Frank let out a quiet huff of laughter, shaking his head, not even bothering trying to look away as you walked past him.
As the faint click of your heels echoed once more down the hallway, something settled in his chest. He felt more grounded, more sure of his place here.
And for the first time since walking back in through the doors to the pitt, Frank Langdon felt truly glad to be back.
As always always always, feedback is always appreciated because I thrive off praise. Please give it back here and consider tipping me! 🤍
Summary: Robby’s always kept his five daughters close to his chest, but a serious accident sends them all out of orbit. An exploration of family dynamics, forgiveness, gratitude, and connection.
Tags/Notes: kidfic, aged down robby (early 40s), wife!mom!reader, girl dad robby, angst/whump, hurt/comfort, siblings fighting and making up
Content: descriptions of various injuries, car accident, also a couple rated M scenes
A/N: after the absolute numbers my last fic did (thank you!!) i know this one’s gonna flop but I LOVE HER she is very beautiful TO ME. and i’m proud of myself for finishing a wip i started literally months ago regardless. and also i forgot langdons son is called tanner bc im dumb <3
Word Count: 8.7k
Part One: I’m Sorry
You wake up to the feeling of your husband kissing your shoulder and neck softly, no urgency or pressure on his lips. He’s whispering sweet nothings into your skin – I love you, you’re beautiful, you’re everything to me – and the soft scratch of his overgrown beard tickles your skin. He hasn’t been trying to wake you, but you don’t mind. It’s perfect compared to the alarm that’s going to blare within the next hour, based on the sunrise beginning to threaten the winter horizon.
“Mmm. Morning, baby.” You stretch your arms above your head and Robby responds by wrapping his arms around your waist, holding you tight against his body. Realizing you’ve actually gotten a full night’s sleep, you lace your voice with gratitude, roll your ass against his morning wood, and purr, “You did the overnight all by yourself? That’s hot.”
“Ain’t my first rodeo,” he teases against your ear. Robby tugs down your sleep shorts and massages his way over your hips and ass, his hand greedy but still lazy and sweet. He slips his fingers between your thighs, toying with your pubic hair, and murmurs, “I know there’s no better way to earn morning sex than to take care of the baby while you get your beauty sleep.”
“You’re a very smart man, Dr. Robinavitch,” you praise as you shift your hips back to give him better access. Your eyes flutter closed as he slowly circles your clit, knowing just how to touch you after so long together. It’s not long before your body warms up and you let out a breathy moan, keeping your volume low.
Robby feels your pussy getting slick and coos, “Fuck, I’ve missed this pussy so goddamn much.”
“Since when?” You roll your eyes even as you encourage his every touch. “We had sex before bed.”
He kisses the curve of your shoulder and murmurs as he pushes his first two fingers slowly inside of you, “I can’t miss my favorite girl overnight? She’s so wet for me. Clearly missed me, too.”
You start to melt as he curls his fingers against your walls, methodical and steady. “Can’t argue with you there.”
Then the sound of your two older daughters hissing at each other down the hall interrupts your happy floaty thoughts.
You groan in defeat, “Why are they up so early?”
“It’s already six,” Robby whispers back, not wanting to alert the girls that the two of you are awake lest they try to involve you in their fight. He reluctantly removes his fingers from your pussy, licks them clean, and tentatively begins, “Should we go and…?”
“It doesn’t sound too bad yet,” you reply, flipping over to snuggle into his chest, where he immediately wraps you up in a familiar embrace. “I wanna be with you a few more minutes before your double.”
He kisses the top of your head and sighs contentedly, “You’re such a sap.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
You manage to steal away three full, blissful minutes of cuddling with your husband before the teenage tornado in the hall picks up to lethal speed, threatening all structures in close proximity. Two high-pitched screeches pierce the relative quiet in tandem, both wielding the one word they think can rain terror on their opponent: “Mom!”
You lean your head back and sigh heavily, “Do I have to go out there?”
“On the plus side, we made it to-” Robby checks the alarm clock “-6:07 before the start of today’s war.”
“Better than last week.” Groggily sitting up and grabbing your discarded pajamas off the floor while the girls’ argument grows in volume, you gripe, “Do you think it’s too late to put them up for adoption?”
Robby sighs and laughs as he tugs on his sweats. “I’m sure there are orphanages that take 16-year-olds somewhere. Might even give us a tax benefit or something if we throw in the 14-year-old, too.”
“But then who would we embarrass in public? Each other?”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “I couldn’t bear it.”
“Me neither. I’ll take the baby, you take the teens?”
Faux-exasperated, he pouts, “I have to take the teens just because you have the breastmilk?”
You pat his chest affectionately and give him a quick kiss, perching on your tiptoes. “That’s just how the cookie crumbles, daddy. We can ask our lactation consultant about switching roles if you want; you’d be amazed how far science has come.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Robby heads through the bedroom doors in his sweats and you follow just behind him, ducking into the nursery instead of down the hall to the teens’ shared bathroom where the first front of WWIII is playing out.
Seeing their dad instead of you, the girls shut their mouths and look at their feet.
Robby speaks low and gently, “I’m not gonna suggest peace, but can we at least keep it down out here when we fight? Your little sisters don’t have to be up for school for another hour and your mom pushed out a human person twelve weeks ago, so she should get to sleep in, but now the baby’s up because of the yelling.” They both mutter something close to an apology to him, still glaring at each other. Arms crossed over his chest, Robby puts on his best Serious Doctor Robinavitch face and asks, “So what’s going on here?”
Tanner clenches her jaw and gestures dramatically to Maggie. “Kind of obvious, isn’t it?”
He looks at her flatly. “Humor me.”
“Her clothes.”
Robby inspects them carefully and realizes both teenagers are wearing jeans, a white tee, and a black silky camisole layered over it. He remembers you wearing similar outfits back in the naughty aughties. He’s not crazy about the inch of midriff exposed on Tanner, but you’ve put in a lot of time convincing him that it’s developmentally appropriate clothing and it’s not her fault she had to inherit his height, so he bites his tongue on that front. Slowly, after a minute of consideration, he offers, “You…match.”
“Exactly!” Tanner groans, “She saw me in this and immediately put on that.”
“And?”
“Dad, seriously? I know you’re fashion blind, but I can’t go to school wearing the exact same thing as my freshman baby sister.”
Robby sighs, “So go change.”
Tanner scoffs again; Robby’s wondering when her sounds of exasperation started sounding so much like his. “Why should I change? She’s the one who copied me in the first place.”
“How about you both change?”
Maggie crosses her arms over her chest and bites back, “I’m not changing. I like this outfit. I look better in it than you anyway.”
Before Tanner can freak out at that one, Robby raises his voice and both his sands slights. “Woah, there, let’s not launch the nukes at this hour.”
You emerge from the nursery with Daisy sleeping against your chest, her mouth open and her expression totally content. Both the teens love the baby, so they soften slightly. Relief washes over Robby; this isn’t really his area.
Unable to resist and seeing a clear path to resolution, you smile at your eldest daughters and say, “You two look adorable. I remember when we used to put you in matching outfits all the time. Aw, maybe we should pick something like that out for Daisy and take pictures before school!”
Maggie shrieks defiantly, shoves into her bedroom, and slams the door.
Tanner crosses her arms over her chest, glares, shakes her head, and then ducks back into the bathroom.
Robby loops his arm around your lower back, plants a kiss on the top of Daisy’s head, and chuckles, “That was a diabolical move, hon.”
“They’ll both change,” you reason with a shrug.
The closest bedroom to you creaks open slowly, a tiny figure emerging from the dark that’s interrupted only by her nightlight. Rubbing sleep from her eyes as she clutches her tattered baby blanket, seven-year-old Susanna pushes open her door and asks, soft and sleepy, “Why are they mad today?”
Robby sighs and tells her, “They’re teenagers. They’re made of being mad.”
She nods her head and reaches up for her dad’s arms. Robby’s getting too old for it, but he still pulls her up onto his hip. She leans on his shoulder and mutters, “I’m never gonna be a teenager.”
Robby kisses the top of her head. “Good plan, mouse.”
You give him a look and then tell Susanna, “Yeah, you will be. You’ll fight with Evie over stupid stuff the same way Maggie and Tanner fight, but then you’ll hug and make up and be best friends again by the end of the day because we’re family. And what does that mean to us?”
She yawns and mumbles, “Hope-oh-no-no.”
Robby laughs but smiles tenderly, correcting, “Ho’oponopono. What’s that mean, princess?”
She snuggles into his chest, props her thumb in her mouth (a habit you’ve been unsuccessfully trying to get her to kick for the better part of five years), and mutters around it, “I’m sowwy. I wove you.”
After another yawn, her voice drifts off into nothing and her breathing gets heavy again. Robby’s always had a magical ability to get anyone to fall asleep in his arms. He takes a deep breath of her feathery dark hair, cherishing the few remaining moments he’ll have of picking her up, and then takes her back into her bedroom, tucking her in for another hour of sleep.
Tanner emerges from the bathroom with her hair sleekly parted, sharp eyeliner and glossy lip applied. She’s always been much cooler and more stylish than you ever were at her age; Robby worries about her becoming conceited, but you see the artistry and skill behind her interest in fashion and makeup. As she stuffs her backpack right in the entryway to her bedroom, you walk up behind her and muse, “Maggie just thinks you look cool, T.”
“Because I do,” she huffs back. “But that doesn’t mean she can copy me; she should grow her own personality.”
“She’s trying to. Right now, she’s looking around at everyone else trying on little pieces of their personalities to see what fits. Remember when you were her age and you wanted to wear my perfume and my shoes all the time?”
“Well, yeah, I thought you were the prettiest woman in the world.”
You narrow your eyes teasingly. “Thought?”
Tanner snorts. “I think you’re the prettiest woman in the world, mom, and I wanted to be like you.”
“So what do you think that means about your sister copying you?”
Tanner purses her lips rolls her eyes — but then she crosses the call, knocks on Maggie’s door, and calls gently, “Hey, Mags, I’m sorry, alright? You looked really cute. You want me to help you pick out something to wear? You can borrow one of my shirts.”
After a minute of shuffling around, Maggie reappears with shiny eyes and red cheeks. Swallowing hard as she pretends to still be mad, she offers, “Fine.”
An hour later, with the older girls ready to go out the door and the younger two just waking up, you’re a whirlwind. You set the table for the whole family, make lunches, and half-supervise Susanna and Evie’s morning routine. They’re generally speaking old enough now to pick out their own clothes, but you still check in to make sure they don’t grab anything that would lead to a call from a teacher. Robby has the baby strapped to his chest, looking far too hunky in his black scrubs as he scrambles eggs for seven, while you make sure all the girls have what they need for the day in their backpacks. It’s routine now, practiced, but you’re still methodical about each step.
As the girls pile into the kitchen, Robby plates up eggs and hasbrowns and fruit for each of them, handing over your plate first. One thing he’s always insisted on is eating breakfast as a family since it’s the only time of day you’re all reliably at home. Once everyone’s sitting down and relatively quiet, you give the day’s marching orders: “Dad’s working a double, so I’m on chauffeur duty tonight. Tanner has yearbook club after school, so Maggie, you’ll have to find some way to entertain yourself before I can pick you up after.”
Maggie grumbles some sort of annoyed approval; they all know the drill when Robby has long, unavoidable shifts.
You go on, “Evie’s school has a half day today, so-”
“What?!” Susanna’s mouth falls open from the injustice of it all. She’s adorable and cute when she’s all sleepy, but once she’s had a hit of orange juice, her personality is the size of a semi truck. “How is that fair? I have to go to school all day and then still go to my soccer game? That’s bullshit!”
Robby chokes on his juice, trying not to laugh. “I told you to stop saying that, kiddo.”
“Uncle Jack says it all the time!”
“Uncle Jack is a grown-up.”
“Uncle Jack says that-”
You clear you throat and say, “Uncle Jack isn’t your father. You’ll get in trouble at school if you talk like that, and if you get in trouble you can’t do soccer.”
She pouts but nods. You haven’t yet explained to her that Evie goes to a different school because she’d been bullied at the public school for being autistic. It’s not an easy thing to explain to a bubbly, protective seven-year-old who thinks her nine-year-old sister is the coolest person alive because she can name every type of bug native to Pennsylvania.
You take a deep breath and continue with morning announcements, “Like she said, Susanna has a soccer game tonight and we will all be going, so we’re-”
Tanner scoffs and protests, “I have plans with Luke and-”
“And you should’ve checked the family calendar before you decided on that,” you interrupt, pointing to the whiteboard covered in sticky notes that rules everyone’s lives. “We’re all going to your photography showcase this weekend, so you’re going to Susanna’s soccer game. We show up for each other here. I’m even gonna take everyone to dinner beforehand, so it’s not the end of the world.”
Mischief flickers in Tanner’s eyes. A bargaining chip. She asks, “If I have to flake on my friends, can I at least drive us to the game?”
You glance over at Robby; he’s the one who’s always hesitant to let her log practice hours now that she has her permit. He gives a reluctant, tight-lipped grimace with his nod. “Sure, it’s not far.”
“Hell yeah.”
Robby narrows his eyes. “Tanner.”
“Heck yeah,” she amends with a cheeky smile.
Susanna gives her oldest sister a punch on the arm and a gap-toothed smile. “I’ll even score a goal for you.”
Maggie snickers, “Your team’s actually gonna score a goal for once?”
Susanna’s next punch to her other sister’s arm is much less friendly. She furrows her brows, looking way too much like Robby, and screams, “That’s such bullshit!”
You pinch the bridge of your nose as Daisy starts to squirm against Robby’s chest. He just looks at you and smiles softly while they start arguing back and forth. Next to you, Evie tugs on your tee’s sleeve and asks quietly, “Can I take my breakfast and go watch Bluey?”
Knowing she just needs some peace and quiet, you brush some butter from her cheek and sigh gently, “Yeah, sweetheart, go ahead.”
The other three don’t even notice her making a silent escape to the living room, too wrapped up in complaining at one another. It’s amazing how Susanna can match wits and volume with the girls who are twice her age. It only ends when Robby’s watch beeps. He starts collecting empty plates as he announces, “Alright, Team High School, get your butts in the Audi. I won’t be participating in any arguments about who gets shotgun. You have two minutes before I drive to the hospital without you.”
Tanner and Maggie both launch out of their chairs and toward the door, already definitely arguing about who gets the heated seat, which comes with control of the radio. The ability to turn off Robby’s favorite station that mainly plays Rush and Eagles is a huge privilege.
As their voices receded into the garage, Robby places the dishes in the washer and then turns to you. He touches the top of Susanna’s head and offers, “Wanna hold your sister for a minute, Suz?”
Susanna wrinkles her nose. “So you can kiss Mommy?”
Robby raises up his hands like he’s been caught. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, buy only because she’s being cute right now.”
“Same rules I follow,” you chuckle while Robby relocates Daisy from his chest to her big sister’s arms. He’s careful to remind Susanna how to support her head and neck, always protective and anxious as a dad even when they’re sitting perfectly still. When he stands up straight, you lean up on your toes and link your arms behind the back of his neck. “My turn?”
“Your turn,” he laughs, bending down to kiss you fondly. “Love you. Be safe today.”
“Yeah, sure,” you reply with an eye roll, “I’ll be safe on the couch with my baby while you deal with gunshot wounds and scalpels for twelve hours straight.” You cut off his response with another kiss and then poke him sternly in the chest. “Eat a full lunch and a full dinner. Snacks every other hour. Actually take bathroom breaks and your fifteens.”
He sighs at your sweetness, brushing your cheek with his thumb. “I know, I know, gotta take care of myself so I can take care of everyone else.”
“That’s right. See you tomorrow, Dr. Robby.”
Part Two: Please Forgive Me
Jack Abbot shoves into the Pitt an hour before he’s scheduled with panicky eyes that expertly scan the entire area. He jogs up to the nurse’s station where Dana’s about to question him when he demands, “Is Robby here? Did he leave early or something?”
Dana touches his forearm and searches his face. “Dr. Abbot, are you alright?”
Jack rambles out, still looking over her shoulders in case his best friend walks by, “I couldn’t sleep and I had the scanner on and I heard about a multi-vehicle with a light blue Lexus TX.”
“Yeah, EMS called it in. Sounds like it’s gonna be gnarly. Multiple casualties in the field. A handful of ambulances are a couple minutes out, but we’re fully staffed and- What? What’s that face about? What’s going on?”
“That’s just- that’s what Robby drives.” Jack lets out a deep breath as he sees Robby’s lumbering form cresting around a corner, snapping off exam gloves and beelining for the closest vending machine. “Just a coincidence, I guess.”
Dana snorts as she goes back to charting. “Robby drives a Lexus?”
“Yeah, and I thought- I was worried that- You know how I get.” He shakes his head dismissively and Robby walks toward him with a curious look in his eyes. Jack pulls him into an unexpected hug, clapping him on the back and muttering, “Jesus, brother. Anxiety had me thinking you got in a car crash; sorry about the hug.”
“I’ll never say no to a free Jack Abbot hug,” Robby jokes. Pulling back, he offers Jack a cup of coffee and presses, “I heard there’s a crash coming in; why’d you think I’d be out driving when you know I’m scheduled today?”
Jack shrugs, takes the cup, and tells him, “Crash has a light blue TX in it; I know yours is a custom wrap, so I figured the odds there’s more than one here are-”
Deathly quiet, Robby interrupts, “I didn’t drive the TX today; I took the pickup. Tanner has the Lexus. Tanner has the Lexus.” As that settles hard on Jack’s shoulders, Robby grips him by the arms, fingers digging in, and asks, “Did they say the plate on the scanner?”
Jack’s stomach turns as he whispers back, “JKA-”
The blood drains from Robby’s face as he turns around, jogging out of earshot before Abbot can even finish. Dana looks curiously at Jack and clarifies, “Someone’s borrowing Robby’s car and crashed it? Who’s Tanner?”
“Tanner’s his oldest daughter,” Jack explains, barely able to move himself. His first goddaughter, who he helped deliver in the middle of a snowstorm during med school. “Robby’s wife always- She makes all of them go to Susanna’s soccer games and sometimes they let Tanner drive. I should- I should go out there and get ready. He’ll want me to take care of them if he can’t.”
Dana’s mind reels as two of her senior attendings run off.
Robby has always been incredibly private. Says it makes it easier for him to be the boss if nobody knows what’s going on at home or in his head. But, like everyone else at the hospital, she’d assumed he was a single hermit from the…everything about him. No wedding ring, no leaving early for parent-teacher conferences, nothing to make anyone believe he has a very, very full life at home. It’s surprisingly easy to keep things incredibly vague in an environment full of chaos and constant teaching, brushing off questions and never revealing anything. He wasn’t legally required to explain that his vacation time is for anniversaries, that his sabbaticals are paternity leave, that his strict adherence to leaving on time is to make it home for family dinners and helping the girls with math homework. So he didn’t. The one time he’d made a comment about kids – saying Jake was the son he never had – it made everyone think he didn’t have a family instead of the reality that, in fact, he was just drowning in daughters.
The transponder crackles again on her deck, repeating the message for the entire ED to prepare.
Multiple casualties in the field. Ambulances en route.
Dana yanks Shen to the nurse’s station as he’s strolling by, sipping his third coffee of the night. “John, you’re going to have to run point tonight, okay?”
“Is Robby-”
“His wife and daughters were in the crash, apparently. Don’t know if he’ll be working.” She takes a long breath and scans the shift board, mentally filling in gaps and making decisions. “We’re going to have to keep our shit together no matter what.”
Robby’s been in the ambulance bay with Jack for a count of 78 when the first two ambulances wail to a stop at the far end of the concrete, leaving plenty of room for the coming onslaught. He tries to process the scene in front of him. His brain seems to have shifted out of doctor mode. None of it makes sense. The EMTs are moving fast, too fast, for him to follow. The sirens and noises take over his mind. His heart slams over and over and it’s louder than anything else.
Seeing her dad before she sees him, Tanner launches out of the first ambulance. As the EMT tries and fails to grab her, she sprints toward the Pitt’s doors and tumbles into Robby’s arms, practically knocking the wind out of him with the force of her body. She's already babbling as he blinks hard to recognize her presence, “I’m so sorry, dad, I- I don’t know what happened and- and now the car is totally wrecked. I swear I used my blinker and checked my blind spot and-”
“Honey, hey, it’s alright.” He kisses the top of her head over and over, clutching her hair like he’s waiting for her to slip through his fingers. She’s the first thing that’s felt real since he heard about the incoming crash. Unable to release her, he assures, “None of that matters right now. We’ve got insurance; it’s just a hunk of metal. Now where are your sisters? Where’s your mom?”
She collapses into tears again and Robby holds her tight, heart slamming against his ribs as he scans the incoming ambulances while they stop and unload. The EMT gives Robby a pointed look and he nods, pulling back from Tanner and meeting her eyes. “You need to go back to the ambulance so they can check you out some more and decide what the hospital needs to do, okay?”
“What? No!” She clutches Robby’s sleeve in a stubborn hand and says, “I’m fine; I need to help you find everyone and make sure they’re okay.”
Robby’s stomach drops to his feet when she confirms what he’d feared; the accident had been on the way back from Susanna’s soccer game, all the Robinavitch girls in the stands cheering her on.
Which means you were in the car.
You were all in the car.
His whole world in that $90,000 pile of crumpled metal he’d bought for you because it was the safest SUV on the market last year.
Robby takes one slow, deep breath. It’s time for him to be brave for his girls, no matter how impossible that feels. He cups Tanner’s cheek and insists again, “Sweetheart, you need to go with the EMT now. So many invisible things can happen during accidents and- and I need to know you’re safe. I need to know where you are. Everyone else is going to be coming right here, okay? You don’t have to look for them; you just have to listen to the doctors and do what they say.” He presses a soft kiss to her forehead and urges, “Please, T. I promise I’ll come find you as soon as I know anything. I love you.”
Tanner nods slowly and sniffles back her unending tears. “I love you, too, Dad.”
She hasn’t said that in a long time – too ‘grown up’ and easily embarrassed – and Robby’s heart splinters even more. His brave girl, his first baby, who’s always tackled the world head-on, is scared and small and searching for his strength. He gives her one more hug before sending her away while another set of ambulances arrives.
Then pieces of his world start to roll by on gurneys. Everything moves in slow motion while Robby stands there in the bay, useless, not a doctor right now. Evie goes by first, her eyes open and frantic but her head held down with a strap across her bloody forehead. Suspected concussion. She makes eye contact with Robby but doesn’t speak, rolled by too fast for either of them to process. Then it’s three strangers in various states of distress and injury. And then Susanna, tiny and frail in her green soccer uniform when she’s usually larger than life. She’s not conscious as far as Robby can tell and that’s what brings him back to the present.
Robby unfreezes and follows the gurneys even though his legs feel like lead. Suddenly Jack’s by his side again and he’s talking rapid-fire and Robby isn’t hearing anything as the EMTs start telling him what’s going on. All he can see is the unnatural angle of Susanna’s shin, cracked and bleeding, and something sharp sticking out of her abdomen. The lack of expression on her face. He can’t stop picturing Daisy, so small despite being overdue, and her ‘baby on board’ sticker on the back bumper that wouldn’t do anything but let them find her body faster than-
No.
No, don’t go there.
He hasn’t even realized he’s stopped moving, Evie’s gurney going through the floppy doors toward the imaging wing. He’s still floating in space, lost and out of orbit with his family flung on different paths. Where’s Maggie? She probably would’ve been in the front seat, always fighting over getting to sit there. Multiple casualties in the field. Robby can’t breathe. Where are you? Where’s Daisy? Multiple casualties in the field. There are too many people here and it’s too loud and too bright. And he sees Susanna on the other side of the ED, conscious now but wailing in pain and covered in blood and surrounded by Robby’s students. The sound of her pain alone is enough to strangle him.
Jack’s hand crashes across Robby’s face.
Hard.
Ears ringing, skin burning.
Jack’s eyes are serious and dark and urgent. “Stay with me, brother. We need you right now. Your girls need you.”
Robby can barely form a coherent sentence and he feels his knees starting to give. He’s only seen half his family alive so far. And he can’t think about anything else. His voice sounds foreign, far away, aching. “Where’s Maggie and where’s- where’s-”
Jack guides him to the ground instead of trying to keep him on his feet. “Breathe, Michael. Breathe.” His pager is going off non-stop; he’s needed for another trauma, another body, another family falling apart. He shoves his water bottle into Robby’s arms and says, “We’ll send someone with an update about everyone as soon as we can. I know this is a fucking nightmare right now, but I swear I’ll-”
“Dr. Robinavitch?”
It’s Mohan, who looks even more scared and unsure than Robby, holding six clipboards stacked on top of each other.
Six.
Six charts.
Six people.
Robby’s chest finally begins to loosen. Six charts means six living patients. No matter what, you’re all here. You’re all in his hospital being cared for by his people.
Mohan goes on, “I’m so sorry, but we need you to sign some consents so that we can-”
Robby takes the clipboards and pen from her hand. He swallows hard and manages to find Dr. Robinavitch somewhere inside the shrapnel of his gut. “Walk me through it, kid.”
Jack gives one more squeeze to Robby’s bicep and then jogs back across the ED to wherever he’s needed next as Mohan joins Robby on the floor instead of asking him to stand up. She could use the moment of rest, too. “I’m really sorry it’s me talking to you instead of someone more senior, but they’re all busy with-”
“Walk me through it,” he repeats, “like any other family member, alright?”
She whispers, “You’re not any other family member.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll critique your bedside manner after.”
“That might help,” she admits with a nervous laugh. “Okay. We’ll go from most to least urgent.”
“Good. Take the consents from me as you get them; never waste time.”
Mohan swallows and nods. “The car was hit squarely on the passenger side. Margaret-”
“Maggie.”
“Her, ah, her school ID says Margaret. Maggie was sitting in the area of highest impact, and her injuries correspond with that. She’ll need multiple casts, but, ah, but the big thing is that we need to start a craniotomy right away. She has a brain bleed known as an intracerebral hemorrhage; we need to drain the bleed and repair the vessels.”
Robby goes white and sweaty. His brain switches into autopilot because he can’t dare process how serious that is. What it could mean. How, in a few hours, he may not have five daughters anymore. “We can’t do a stereotactic aspiration?”
“Unfortunately, the size and location of the bleed rule out less invasive treatment methods. We need to be aggressive in treating this.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Your delivery. Good.” He scribbles his signature across five pages on Maggie’s chart. Samira runs it to central and the machine of the hospital takes over. “Next.”
Mohan continues on, fatigue thick in her voice, “When it comes to Evelyn-”
“Evie.”
Mohan gives a sad sort of smile. “Right. Evie. She was sitting directly behind Maggie, so she got the next most impact. There’s still lots of imaging to do, but we’re looking at a myriad of fractures, mostly minor, but she does have a break in one of her forearm growth plates that could impact long-term development of the limb.”
“A little stiff, Samira,” Robby tells her. “Try again.”
“One of Evie’s breaks could lead to her arm growing abnormally, so we’ll need to monitor that closely over the next year. Most growth plate fractures do heal normally, though.”
“Better. Other breaks?”
“On the right side of her body, she has different levels of fractures from her shoulder down to her hip, essentially. We’ve located four fractured ribs, a break in her collarbone, and several through her wrist and forearm. One of the consents is for an ortho specialist to come down and fit her for a custom cast; she’s going to have to be out of school for a while.”
Robby sighs and rubs his hands over his face. Exhaustion weighs his features down, but there’s nothing he can do except go through. He signs.
It feels never-ending as Mohan continues, “Susanna is conscious, responsive, and generally in good condition, but she’s going to need surgery to remove multiple foreign bodies and to set the bones in a complex tibial fracture.”
The part of his brain that wants to teach is keeping him occupied from the horror of it all, stabilizing his voice and increasing his focus. Dr. Robby asks absently, scratching away at each form, “What are the foreign bodies? You should usually just say the object if it isn’t privileged or, y’know, embarrassing.”
“It’s mainly glass pieces. The largest is a few inches, but there are a lot of smaller shards. It’s going to be an intricate debridement.”
“Which means?”
“It’s going to be a lengthy, very precise surgical process to ensure we successfully remove all pieces,” she corrects, letting out a relieved breath when Robby nods his approval. “We’re very lucky that there don’t seem to be punctures to any of her organs, but we won’t know for sure about some of the larger pieces until we have a sterile field.”
Robby looks up at Mohan for the first time since she started. “How’d she get punctured by so much glass from the backseat?”
“The sunroof fell inward under the weight of another vehicle,” she explains quietly. Mohan stills Robby’s shaking hand and tells him, gentle and human, “The EMT told me that she was in the lowest impact part of the car. Her injuries were sustained after the crash.”
Robby’s brow furrows. For the first time, he actually doesn’t follow. “What does that mean?”
Mohan touches his shoulder, comforting and sure, as she explains, “Susanna maneuvered herself however she could over the baby’s car seat when she saw part of the car about to collapse. She knew her leg would get crushed and that she was going to get covered in glass. But she moved to save the baby’s life.” Wiping a quick, unexpected tear from her cheek, Mohan murmurs, “You should get her an ice cream or something for that.”
Robby gets choked up. When did he start crying? The sob is aching. How could he have raised someone so brave she would do that? So brave she would put her life on the line? Scared and hurt and seven years old and already saving lives. When Mohan gives the next chart to Robby, he steadies himself with a few deep breaths.
“For the other three, I just need some basic forms signed.”
“Thank god,” Robby mutters, flipping through the pages and signing haphazardly. He always cringes when family members don’t take the time to look at their consents, but now all he cares about is getting this done. Getting to his family.
“Tanner mainly has soft tissue injuries – bruises, some sprains – and she needed stitches on a few cuts. Otherwise, she was incredibly lucky. My main concern for her is psychological; it’s incredibly difficult for such a new driver to feel safe again after something like this. She’s going to be dealing with a lot of guilt. Make sure she gets the help she needs as soon as possible.”
“That’s a good thing to say, kid. Really good. A lot of doctors would skip that.” Robby makes a mental note to ask his therapist for recommendations for an adolescent specialist. Then he asks, softer than Samira’s ever heard her boss, “My wife? The baby?”
“Daisy was in the low-impact zone as well, thankfully, and clearly your wife’s a pro mom because she was properly secured to protect her head and neck. We only suspect a concussion, which is really the best possible outcome for an infant so young in an accident this serious. We have her in a private room for observation.” At last, Samira smiles, just happy to have a little good news to share. “And your wife is over there with her. We took some imaging and bloodwork to be safe, but for now the worst seems to be a few minor lacerations from helping the girls.”
Robby sighs, gratitude and grief in equal measure through his body. “Can I head up there and see them now?”
“Of course, Dr. Robby. Room six,” she tells him, trying to seem sure. “Keep your pager on; we’ll keep you updated on everyone’s treatment.”
“Thanks, Samira. Good job.”
Before she can say anything else, he’s jogging across the ED floor, dodging gurneys and triage stations and questions. The pediatric rooms have never felt so far away, but his legs manage to keep carrying him even as every step shakes.
The hospital is quieter with each foot away from the chaos of the emergency room. The moment he pulls open the door to pediatric six, that eerie quiet is replaced by the most wonderful sound he’s ever heard. Singing.
It’s you.
It’s you and you’re holding his kicking and screaming and beautifully alive baby in your tired arms.
Sitting on the loveseat that overlooks the infant-sized vitals setup Daisy's been removed from to nurse, you gaze up at him with so much emotion in your expression. Relief, he realizes. Relief that he’s here with you. You’ve been crying and so has he, all your eyes red-rimmed and puffy. He surges forward as you whimper, “Michael.”
Your breathless voice is a mitzvah in and of itself. Robby falls to his knees in front of you and presses his head into your thighs and feels the realness and the life of you. Daisy is screaming her little head off and it’s pure music, the melody of her lungs working and her heart beating. Robby envelops you both on the loveseat, taking the baby’s weight from you, and weeps.
And weeps.
Late that night, you try to sleep with your head on Michael’s shoulder on the couch in Maggie’s and Evie’s shared hospital room. Susanna’s fast asleep, her head in your lap, neon green leg cast propped up, mouth lolling open. Daisy is in a hospital bassinet with Jack watching over her. Visiting hours are over, but it turns out some people are willing to look the other way for the chief attending and his family.
Tanner hasn’t left Maggie’s side since she came out of surgery. The doctor had spoken too fast to you and Robby out in the hallway, leaving Tanner straining to hear even snippets. Brain bleed. Surgery as successful as possible given the extent and severity. No timeline on when she’ll wake up. If she’ll wake up.
If.
It’s the worst word Tanner’s ever heard.
You’re the only one awake to hear what Tanner’s whispering, over and over, to her little sister: “I’m sorry, Mags. I’m so sorry. Please wake up. Please, please forgive me.”
Part Three: Thank You
You’ve been home for five days now with Daisy and Susanna, doing almost nothing but sleeping, eating, pumping, and crying. Jack’s been staying over, too, helping out with making the house accessible for Susanna and for Evie when she’s able to come home.
In the evening, you hear the garage open and close.
You look up at Robby with broken hope in your eyes. Did Maggie wake up?
He shakes his head.
You tilt your head to the side. Is Tanner with you?
He shakes his head again and crawls onto the couch next to you, taking Daisy onto his chest and breathing slowly until he can speak. His fingers twine with yours as he tells you, “Evie can come home tomorrow if we’re ready.”
“We’re ready,” you reply, somehow still sounding eager in your constant exhaustion. “Jack and I finished with her new bedroom setup downstairs today.”
“Good. That’s good.” Robby kisses the side of your head and murmurs, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For everything and then some,” he replies softly. Daisy grips his beard with her grabby hands and he lets her, smiling sleepily at her wide eyes. He brushes some of her wispy dark curls and adds, “Thank you for this perfect baby. Thank you for our family. Thank you for-”
“I already spent the whole day crying, Michael,” you cut him off, wiping your wet cheeks. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“Never doubted it for a second.” His warm brown eyes flick over to you before returning to Daisy’s, a mirror of his own. “I love you so much. All of you.”
Jack appears in the living room archway, silhouetted by the hall light. “Susanna’s out after four grueling rounds of Slow Mo The Soccer Sloth. Now give me that baby and go to bed.”
Robby frowns. “I just got her. Wait your turn.”
“Nuh uh,” Jack protests, stretching out his arms for his tiny niece. “You have access to cute baby time whenever you want; this is my vacation. You need to rest with your wife. The kid and I will enjoy Goodnight Moon on our own, thank you very much.”
Robby nods and hands off Daisy, who immediately yanks Jack’s earlobe. Bless him for not minding or complaining.
As Robby helps you to your feet, you start to tell Jack for the hundredth time, “There’s fresh breastmilk in-”
But Jack raises his hand to cut you off. “I’m a pro, mama, don’t worry. You two get as much sleep as you can; I’ve got breakfast set, too.”
“You’re an angel,” you sigh sweetly, giving both Daisy and Jack a kiss on the cheek. “You should think about switching careers.”
He smiles as Daisy gives him a wide-eyed, wondrous giggle. “If I could make six figures entertaining this munchkin, I’d consider it.”
Robby clasps his shoulder and says, voice deep and true, “Thank you, Jack. You know how grateful I am for you?”
Jack nods slowly and then gives Robby a one-armed hug. “Yeah, I do. Get some sleep, brother.”
As Jack takes the baby to the kitchen to warm up her next bottle, Robby walks just behind you up the stairs. Even though you’ve felt totally fine since day three, Robby continues to be protective, keeping a hand low on your back to stabilize you. He helps you get ready for bed and you let him dote and spoil, savoring his adoration and tenderness.
While Robby works lotion into your back, sitting behind you in bed, you ask him, “Did Tanner say anything today?”
“Not to me,” he replies softly. “Dana told me that she took a shower and ate all the food the nurses brought her, so that’s good.”
“Still talking Maggie’s ear off?”
“About everything and anything,” he confirms. “If I were in a coma, listening to Tanner talk about Luke’s cute butt when he plays lacrosse would definitely wake me up so I could puke.”
You let out a barking laugh and slap his thigh hard. “Michael!”
Pressing his forehead to the curve of your shoulder, he mutters, “If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.”
“I know,” you sigh. “Me too. How long do we let her stay at the hospital?”
“Until Maggie wakes up.”
“What if-”
He shakes his head and snakes his arms around your stomach, insisting, “Until she wakes up.”
“Okay. Until she wakes up.” You turn around, adjusting so you’re in his lap instead of between his legs, and time your breaths with his. “She’s a good sister.”
“Yeah, she is. They’re all so good. Like their mother.” He kisses your forehead and then holds your chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You ready to go to bed?”
With a slightly pained look, you sigh and nod.
Robby sees right through you, of course. Twenty years together will do that. “What is it?”
You sigh and admit, “My boobs are swollen and my haakaa is downstairs and my baby is having a bottle in her nursery.”
Robby chews on that for a second and then smirks a bit. His cheeks going red, he rubs your back and says, “It’s funny; I feel like it would be weird to offer to suck on your nipples like I haven’t done it a million times before.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m not sure,” he replies. As you lift your tee up and toss it to the side, baring your naked breasts to him for the first time since the accident, he mutters, “Something about it being wrong to think about your boobs while our kids are-”
You shut him up with a kiss, warm and firm and begging. “My therapist told me this morning that it’s more important than ever to focus on our relationship.” As Robby groans, throwing his head back so you can kiss up his neck, you breathe out, “She said that couples who prioritize intimacy during stress and tragedy have significantly reduced rates of divorce.”
He almost laughs. “Were you worried about us getting divorced?”
“No, obviously,” you huff as Robby tugs his own shirt off and begins kissing across your chest, staying a few inches away from where you need most. “I just missed you. I need you. We need each other.”
Gripping your hips and grinding up against your ass, he teases, “So this ‘swollen breasts’ thing was just a ruse to get me to pay attention to you?”
You give him a conspiratorial smile and suggest, “How about you start sucking and find out?”
Amid your teasing and gasping and knowing, Robby finds a perfect escape in worshipping every healing inch of your body. The intimacy is a lifeline, an anchor, a need. It lets him sleep. Lets him rest.
You wake with a start to the sound of Robby’s phone. His hand shoots out to stop the piercing sound as you groggily flip to your side. He mutters, speech thick and slurred with sleep, “It’s the hospital.”
He turns on speaker phone and a woman’s clear voice comes through: “Dr. Robby?”
With the phone on his chest, Robby rubs his hands over his face and sighs as you snuggle up against his arm, “Mohan? What is it?”
“Maggie’s awake.” Without saying a word, Robby launches out of bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and starts snatching clothes for both of you from the closet. While he’s shimmying on sweats and brushing his teeth, Samira asks, “Robby? You still there?”
You pick up the phone with teary eyes as Robby pelts a cozy sweatshirt at you. “Yeah, he’s- he’s getting ready to go. We’ll be there soon. Is she scared?”
“No, actually.” You hear the tentative smile in her voice. “I think Tanner’s got that covered.”
That makes your heart so warm it might burst. “Thank you, Dr. Mohan.”
While tugging on shoes, Robby asks, “Is there anything we need to know about her condition before we get there?”
“She wants to see her sisters,” Samira replies tenderly. Then, she adds, “And she’s asking for pancakes.”
Dressed now, you ask her, “Can we have those ordered to the hospital?
“I think we can make that happen, Mrs. Robinavitch.”
An hour later, you’re all hugged and cried out while Maggie examines herself in the handheld mirror Samira offered her. Robby’s next to her, unable to stop touching her arm or her back to prove to himself she’s awake and alert. You’re at the end of the bed with Daisy knocked out on your chest and Susanna’s between Maggie’s legs, half-asleep but smiling. They even helped Evie transfer to her new transport chair so she could hold Maggie’s hand.
With a teary pout, Maggie observes, “They shaved half my head.”
“You had a pretty serious surgery,” Robby sighs, rubbing her back and once again checking over the intense line of staples holding her scalp together. “You’ve got battle scars now.”
“It looks badass,” Tanner tells her, expression serious and full of a kind of agony Robby had hoped he could protect her from forever. Then she pulls her dark hair up and reveals the undercut she’d given herself in the hospital bathroom four days earlier, claiming she knew it would help. It’s choppy and you know you’re going to have to clean it up with her dad’s electric clippers, but the way Maggie stares at it does wonders. “Look, I did mine, too.”
Maggie breaks into a small smile as she reexamines her hair in a new light, this time envisioning herself being the girl with the undercut and survival story. “Badass.”
After a few moments of silence, she sets the mirror down, chews on her words for a second, and then tells Tanner, “One of the last things I remember is fighting with you. I don’t ever wanna fight like that again. Not if- not if it’s the last thing we might get to talk about.”
Tanner shakes her head vehemently and replies, “I’ve been thinking about that too, Mags. And I- I wanted to say thank you for being so annoying. Thank you for fighting with me.” Tanner laughs through tears, brushing Maggie’s hair out with careful fingers to avoid tugging her scalp staples, absently braiding it just to be with her sister. “I get now that you bug me because you want my attention and that you want my attention because you think I’m-” her voice breaks but she keeps smiling through it “-you think I’m worth something. So thank you.”
Maggie winces as she pulls Tanner into a tight hug. “Let’s keep fighting forever, then, okay?” Then she turns to Susanna and Evie and points to them like a Disney villain. “And don’t think the two of you are getting out of that, either.”
You and Robby make knowing eye contact over your daughters’ heads. Ten thousand more quiet mornings interrupted with screaming matches.
You can’t imagine anything better.
Part Four: I Love You
The next morning, Robby’s going over a mountain of discharge paperwork with Dana as she finally scoffs and shakes her head. “Five daughters, huh, cap?”
He just smiles and shakes his head, expression fond. “Yup.”
“A 16-year-old and a three-month-old?” She looks down the bridge over her nose, over her glasses. “At the same time?”
“Yup.”
“How many of them did you plan?”
Robby cuts her an amused, almost conspiratorial glance. “Two.”
“So did you need someone to explain how condoms work? We’ve got that sexual health presentation series coming up for the local middle schoolers; it’s a popular show, but I bet I could swing you a ticket.”
“Alright, alright.” Robby crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the nurse’s station. “Look, we had Tanner way too young. I wasn’t even out of med school, but we decided to figure it out. Thought we were done after Maggie, but sometimes you take your wife on a trip for your ten-year anniversary and the timezones make her forget the pill and, y’know, Evie happened. We thought she should have a sibling closer to her own age.”
“And the new baby almost a decade later at, what, 45? Another accident?”
Robby shrugs and tells her, “I thought we were way too old for another baby, too, but…Well, look at her. Look at them.” He gestures affectionately at you across in the waiting room, nursing Daisy while Susanna sleeps with her head on your shoulder. Tanner’s pushing Evie around until she laughs and Maggie’s giving the directions. All his girls getting antsy, ready to go home. You catch his gaze and give him a wink. Robby squeezes Dana’s shoulder and explains, “You find a woman like that and there’s no such thing as an accident. There’s only love that keeps growing.”
Summary: When you fall during a shift, you're desperate to prove that you can still be a doctor, even if you're in tremendous pain. Jack Abbot is the only one who understands.
Pairing: Jack Abbot x AFAB!resident!reader
Word count: 3.1k
Warnings/tags: reader with chronic pain and a subsequent fall/injury. reader is described as younger than robby, dana, and jack. mentions of period and weight and dumbass doctors (not in the pitt). robby being tough. discussions of losing use of legs, walking, movement. reader and abbot commiserating over their movement problems and jack losing his leg. jack being a sweetheart <3
sooo this is based on my experience of pain and so obviously it won't apply to everyone, but i tried to keep it somewhat vague.
You honestly don't expect the fall.
You are in so much pain, more pain than you've been in in a while. You save your body for work; you don't hike, don't stand at concerts, don't dance at clubs. If you do, your body will scream at you, punish you for wanting to live like everyone else.
And being a doctor is more important than anything else you can do with your body. It's the only thing that matters right now because you've invested so much time into it. It was your dream, even when your friend quietly asked, all those years ago, if you'd be up for standing and being on your feet twelve to fourteen hours a day. Sometimes sixteen.
You were so unfairly angry at her for asking the question. For forcing you to stop and think about your body's limits, how present they were even then, when you were freshly drinking age and should've, by all accounts, been able to take advantage of how quickly a young body can bounce back.
But you've never been able to bounce back. You suffer regardless of what you're doing. But you wanted to be a doctor. You'll hurt no matter what.
But you can concede now, thirteen hours into your shift, that it's probably scary to see someone your age fall over nothing. You truly don't mean to fall—no one ever does. You have your compression socks on, and you'd tied your sneakers extra tight, and maybe that's what did it, you don't know. Usually, after three hours, the pain evens out and becomes a sharp, constant pinch in your legs and shoulders. The ER moves so fast and the pain doesn't go away, no, but you get distracted. And some days, the pain turns numb, and the numbness is worse, because you can't rely on what you can't feel.
That is what happened now, you realize, as you stare at the white and blue speckled floor. The ER floor always reminded you of an Easter egg. This close, you can see the crust of dirt that won't come off no matter how many times the custodians clean. You'd hate to find out what else sticks to the floor.
Your palms burn, your arms ache from the impact, and your knees are indignant about moving. Someone picks you up from the floor, hands under your arms.
"I'm fine," you say, even though the pain has wrung your personality out of your body. You're not yourself when you're in this much pain; you're just a body, a pile of limbs, desperately trying to figure out how to keep moving them in a way that won't tip anyone off to how much pain you live in.
"Hey, hey. You alright?" Dana asks as she hoists you up, stronger than she looks. You've seen her throw a punch; you'd hate to face her in a dark alley.
"I tripped," you say automatically. "I'm fine." You laugh because it really is stupid that you fell from nothing. But Dana won't find it funny, so you have to lie a little.
It's not working. You can see that in the way her brows pinch as she reads your face, finds things you didn't know you were revealing.
And then Robby appears next to her, and it all really goes to shit from there.
"What happened?" he asks, sharp brown eyes taking in your body language and Dana's.
"She fell," Dana says before you can lie again.
The problem with people caring about you is that it can be used against you. Robby knows exactly what it means that you fell. He'd wrestled it out of you one night months ago when you'd almost collapsed from dehydration. Robby had all the grace of a steamroller when he interrogated you about your pain. The truth had come out in a desperate attempt to stop the humiliation of someone witnessing how broken your body is.
"I didn't—"
"Staff room, now." Robby's shaking his head and waving his hands before you can speak. "You're done. Sit the rest of the shift out."
"That's not fair!" you say, even though your body rejoices at the prospect of sitting for an hour. You would've killed a man six hours ago to be able to sit for a minute.
Robby's face clouds over, just a little. He's been sharper lately, less gentle and more efficient. He doesn’t have it in him to temper his thorny kindness; he acts on instinct, gives orders he knows to be right, and moves on.
"I can finish my shift," you say, fear climbing your throat like acid at what the other staff will think. An hour is a long time for a doctor to be off during their shift. If anyone else close to your age had fallen—Whitaker, Mohan, Santos—Robby would give them ten minutes max, and only to check them for a head injury.
Robby closes his eyes, clearly already tired of this conversation, which makes you feel worse. "I am not having this argument with you. Sit out or I'll ask Ahmad to escort you."
The idea of having to be dragged to the staff room is mortifying, and you know Robby knows that. He links his hands behind his neck, stretching. And yet, you know that Robby's not nearly in as much pain as you. Isn't that a kick in the shins?
"Robby, please," you say, and you try to step closer to him to meet his eyes, but it hurts to do even that. Bruises are forming, and the pain has tripled from your fall. You fail to hide your wince. Robby notices. Of course he does.
"No," he says, cold and final. "You're done. You think I'm gonna risk you falling again?"
"I tripped," you say again, and Robby inhales, furious and tense, so Dana steps in.
"Alright, alright." She easily steps between you two, putting a hand on Robby's chest and another on your shoulder. "Take a breath. C'mon, honey, let's get you some heat for the muscles. I got her, chief."
Dana tries to take your arm so you can lean your weight on her, but you jerk away.
"Please let me walk by myself," you say lowly, your eyes burning hot. "Please, Dana."
"You're the boss," she says quietly, and it nearly cracks you open. You're not the boss. You haven't been the boss of your own body in a long time.
You just manage to push yourself enough to get to the staff room without additional incidents. You sit on the couch and prop your legs up so your blood circulates back up your body. Dana had grabbed a couple heat packs from the nurses' station and she activates them now and places them on your thighs, where the pain stretches your skin tight and throbs.
The circulation is necessary, but the sudden shift in position is almost as bad as being on your feet. You dig your fingers into the back of the couch. You won't cry. Won't burden anybody more than you already have.
"And here's a Gatorade," Dana says, handing you a bottle. Light blue, your favorite. "Gotta get those electrolytes up."
"I could've finished the shift," you say.
Dana doesn't reply to that, which is probably for the best. If it were Robby, he'd argue, and that'd be miserable. But Dana's always been good at giving you dignity. She may not know pain in the same way you do, but she understands enough to realize that sometimes an argument is all the power you have.
"I'll check on you in a bit," she says, patting your neck. "Recline, so you don't strain your neck more."
And you know she'll stay until you do it, so you lean back, granting your shoulders relief. It's in this position that you finally feel the full strain of today's shift, and all the shifts before it. The pain isn't just in your legs, but your neck, your shoulders, your abs. All of your body's energy goes into keeping you upright. How did you make it through thirteen hours?
Dana leaves, turning off the lights as she goes. The door opens and the noise and chaos of the ER enters just for a moment, reminding you of what you're missing, before the door shuts. Your senses are dulled when you're in this much pain. Lights are aggravating, as is noise, but when it counts—like with a patient—you can miss stuff. You have missed stuff.
That's really why Robby got so angry. You know it. You're a liability. It's bad enough you can't function the way someone your age should. Now you're falling during shifts.
You were terrified of this happening. You haven't fallen during a shift until now, and although you don't know for sure, you have a sneaking suspicion that it'll keep happening. No amount of rest will allow you to heal and catch up. This job doesn't let you do that. You're in your fourth year of your residency, and your body is failing you.
You close your eyes and lean your head against your arm. As your adrenaline falls, and the pain intensifies and makes your muscles spasm, you start to cry. How are you going to do this?
The pain will never improve. Maybe it can be managed, but eventually, your body will break down. You can't even imagine doing this job when you're Robby or Dana's age.
The door opens. There's no clock, so you have no idea how much time has passed, but when you see Jack, you can guess that it's been at least forty-five minutes. He always comes in a little early for the night shift.
You rub your salt-tracked cheeks, hoping he won't notice. Maybe Jack won't see you at all.
He almost never comes into the staff room. Always brings coffee from home instead of drinking the sludge the hospital provides. He's here for you.
"He called you?" you ask, angry all over again. How fucking dare Robby.
"I actually work here, believe it or not," Jack says mildly. "You may have seen me putting bandaids on kids' knees. Real low-stakes stuff."
You aren't in the mood to joke, to let Jack's easy companionship engulf you. You haven't worked the night shift in a year, but that doesn't stop you from feeling pleased when you see him during the handoff and he takes a minute to talk to you, ask how you're doing. You like Jack a lot.
It's just now occurring to you that maybe he's noticed your pain too. Maybe that's why he takes time to talk to you.
You know either Dana or Robby told him you’re in here. You detest it. Jack is easily fifteen years older, if not more, and it's absolutely humiliating that the three most senior staff in the ER have to look out for you and your stupid broken body.
Jack comes to the couch. He pats your leg. "Scoot."
It startles you that he makes you move so he can sit on the couch with you. Anyone else would politely sit at the table and not make you move an inch.
But Jack sits and brings your legs down on his like you're in your living room. He props them so they're still higher than your heart. It's unfamiliar but not unwelcome.
He sips coffee from his thermos. He's warm. You watch him, waiting. Jack has never spoken to you about your pain. You assumed it was because you never worked enough night shifts for it to be a conversation. Even so, you would've hidden it for as long as you could.
Deep down, you know Jack would've spotted it faster than Robby had.
You let your head loll to one side. Jack seems content to let you hang in the silence. He's always struck you as the kind of guy who simply doesn't speak if he has nothing to say. It makes others uncomfortable, but you welcome it. When you're always in pain, being around someone who doesn't expect you to speak is a different kind of relief.
You suspect that's why he and Robby have been friends for so long.
"These are nice," Jack says, patting your exposed compression sock on your right leg. You wore the ones with koi fish.
"There was a sale online. Five for thirty-two."
He whistles. "A steal. These are the good kind."
You tilt your head. "You wear compression socks?"
He nods. "Just one. Not always, but it helps my other leg stay warm and keep the blood flowing when I'm wearing the prosthetic. It's not necessary but it makes me more comfortable."
He pulls his scrub leg up to show you a plain black compression sock.
"No prints?" you ask.
He laughs. "Wasn't really thinking about it when I bought them, no."
"The website I buy mine from has ones with German Shepherds on them. I think you'd like those."
"I do love a good Shepherd."
More silence. Then:
"Did you take anything? Tylenol?"
You shrug.
"That means no," he says.
"I'll be fine. I'll take some at home."
Jack looks at you like he can see down to your soul. You squirm.
"No one will judge you for it," he says.
"I can't take just one for it to do anything," you mumble. "I have to take four or five."
You're careful not to take any medication at work, even Tylenol. You don't want people thinking you need it to function.
You don't even like taking it at home. You might tonight because the pain is worse than usual, and it's compounded with bruises from your fall. But normally, you don't. You fear that if you start, you'll never be able to go without.
"So take four or five," he says. "Do you need it every day? You probably shouldn't take Tylenol every day, but there's other stuff."
You hesitate. "The pain isn't that bad every day."
"But you're in pain daily?"
"It's manageable."
"People your age are not in daily pain."
You look away. Your eyes sting. "I know."
Jack rubs and squeezes your shin. "I'm not saying it to make you feel bad. I think sometimes you forget."
"I don't," you say, voice cracking. "I know my body shouldn't feel this way. But I can keep going. I will."
"I don't think you can keep going like this," Jack says gently, and it doesn't hurt less to hear, but you're grateful that he's not yelling it.
"Robby told me off," you say, stomach spasming at the memory.
"I heard."
You look at Jack, tears in your eyes. "It was humiliating, Jack. Doesn't he know I don't want to be this way? I would be in pain for an hour longer if it meant he didn't tell me off in front of the whole fucking hospital."
"I know," he says. "I'll talk to him. He handled it poorly."
You sob. It's an accident. You didn't feel it coming, but it came out because it had to. Jack's eyebrows dip. His frown deepens.
"I don't want to live like this," you say, and he nods. He knows. You know he does. "I don't want to be young and in pain. It's not fair."
"I know," he says, and he carefully moves your legs aside so he can pull you against his shoulder. You cry into his neck. He smells like Old Spice. Jack rubs your back. "I know, I know. It's not fair."
"D-do you know how embarrassing it is that someone almost twice my age has to tell me to sit and rest? Or help me up because I fell?"
You feel Jack's hum in his chest. "I do. Felt it many times after the amputation."
You scowl into his scrubs. "That's different. You needed help."
Jack pulls you away so he can look at you. "How is it different? You need help too."
"You lost your leg. People understand."
He shakes his head. "Not everybody. And it doesn't make people's pity any easier to swallow, even if they mean well. It was the hardest after I got discharged. I wanted to do so much more, and I had to find a way to slow down, 'cause my body was revolting against me."
He's got you tucked against him, arm around your back, hand on your opposite arm.
"I'm trying," you say, desperate for someone to see. "I'm trying so hard, Jack."
"You are," he says, so tender, so much like a good doctor. "But maybe you need to find a different way to try. 'Cause this isn't working. And it's not sustainable."
You know what that means. You saw a doctor only once, hoping maybe they'd find some reason for why you're like this. Why you just can't seem to be your age the way everyone else is. But the doctor had simply told you that you'd probably need some kind of mobility aid. That even if you could push through the pain now, it wouldn't always be that way.
You'd never gone back after that appointment.
"Has anybody talked to you about aids?"
"You mean how I need them? Yes. One doctor. The others told me I needed to lose weight or it was my period. Like somehow getting pregnant will cure me."
"The fuck? Who's the joker that told you that? Gimme their name, I'll report 'em to the board."
You smile. It's nice to be cared for in this way. To have your pain acknowledged but for it not to be the only thing that defines you.
"I'll look them up later." You sigh, cheek against Jack's scrub top. "Do you think Robby would notice if I went back out? I have an elderly woman waiting on a CT."
"I'd notice."
"So? I could outrun you."
"Oh, really?" Jack moves you away a little so he can meet your eye. His eyes glitter with amusement. "You haven't even touched your Gatorade. I'll take my chances."
You let yourself think too long about Jack Abbot tackling you. If you weren't already bruised, you'd seriously consider it.
"I want to be a doctor," you say, suddenly sad all over again.
"You are a doctor."
You look at him. He looks right back. He's not lying, but you still find his words ridiculous.
"You know what I mean," you say.
"Do I? People practice medicine in all sorts of ways. If there's anything you should've learned in all your years here, it's that there isn't one way to heal yourself or your patients."
You've never told anyone your deepest fear, but you think Jack can handle it.
"What if I stop being able to walk or stand?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, but I feel like I should remind you that you're talking to the one-legged guy. So I'm a little biased."
It's easier to confess in the dark, to let Jack hold you for a little longer. "I don't want to be useless."
Jack pulls you back into his chest, patting your koi fish socks. "You aren't. Now take a little nap, and then I'll call you an Uber. My treat."
"Jack, c'mon. The Ubers are always your treat."
He's already slid his glasses onto his face. They rest at the tip of his nose as he taps at his phone with his index finger, the screen an unreasonable distance away. You hate how endearing you find it.
"So buy me some socks in return. Want some Uber Eats too?"
— three times jack abbot flirted with you without you realizing, and the one time you realized !!
jack abbot x fem!resident!reader 5k+ word count warnings: medical inaccuracies (i researched the best i could), age gap (not specified), reader may come across as “dumb”, but she’s just overwhelmed!! note: first jack writing!! he’s my dream man btw. also, i refer to the characters as i think of them in my head😭 some are first name basis, others are strictly last name because i cannot remember their first names for the life of me.
{ ONE }
the emergency department at two in the evening feels like a beehive someone kicked. monitors chirp in uneven rhythms, stretchers rattle past with loose wheels that squeal against the tile, santos and langdon argue for the tenth time in an hour, and you stand right in the middle of it with a big smile.
you’ve always loved your job. even when it meant eight straight years of school. nights spent bent over anatomy textbooks while your roommates got dressed for the bars. even when med school felt like someone had taken your brain out of your skull and wrung it dry. you loved it. you loved the moment something finally clicked. the way a diagnosis stopped being a puzzle and started making sense.
now you’re a second-year resident and technically a doctor, even though sometimes the word still catches in your throat when someone says it out loud. the emergency department is exhausting and overwhelming and perfect.
“no, look,” you insist, tapping the chart with the end of your pen. “if his potassium was actually that high, he’d look way worse than this. always check for hemolysis before you panic.”
ogilvie blinks from across you. he runs a hand through his tousled hair and nods curtly. “oh,” he says faintly, internally freaking out because he was the top of his class at whatever school he went to and he wasn’t supposed to mess up.
you grin, knowing that feeling all too well. “hey, don’t get down on yourself. with time comes wisdom. you’ll get used to it.” you promise, giving him a comforting pat on the shoulder. you scribble something quick on the chart and hand it back to him before he scurries off.
you’re already turning back to the computer when you pat the counter beside you automatically, searching for something that isn’t there. your hand lands on the cold desk and you frown. “…damn.”
dana glances over. “what’s up, kid?” she tilts her head, looking above the top of her glasses.
“forgot my coffee this morning,” you sigh, already pulling up another chart. “i was already here before i realized.”
“rookie mistake.” she tsks, already looking up at the patient board again.
“i know,” you mutter, pinching the bridge of your nose. “this shift might kill me.” you say casually, fingers clicking against the keyboard again.
three feet to your left, jack abbott hears every word. he’s leaning against the far counter pretending to review a chart he finished five minutes ago. his eyes lift the second you say forgot my coffee. he continues watching you—like always. you’re talking again now, explaining something to a student doctor javadi, gesturing with your pen, hair slightly messy from the start of a long shift. you laugh at something perlah says and the sound carries toward him.
jack used to feel guilty for observing you. it would curl up the nape of his neck and plant itself there every time he realized he’d been watching you for longer than necessary. you were one of the best residents he’d ever seen, so naturally, like any other attending, he kept an eye on you (even though you technically were under dr. robby). still, the first few times he caught himself leaning against a counter across the department, eyes following the way you moved from patient to patient, he’d look away immediately. like he’d been caught doing something he couldn’t quite justify.
now it’s just routine. jack walks into the department and his eyes find you automatically. across the room, down the hall, wherever you’ve planted yourself in the middle of the noise. he tells himself it’s habit. just keeping track of a resident. but the truth is simpler than that.
“abbott.” he looks over, snapping out of whatever trance overtook him. robby, his longtime friend and coworker, raises an eyebrow. “you’ve been staring at her for like…three minutes. blink, brother.”
jack glances back at you. you’re still talking, still smiling, still completely unaware. “…was reading the chart,” he grumbles, scratching the back of his neck.
robby snorts, fingers drumming against the tabletop. they’ve known each other long enough to call bullshit. “whatever keeps you going.”
jack sets the chart down with a huff and pushes off the counter. he taps his pocket, feeling the cold weight of his phone, and murmurs, “gonna make a call.”
robby stifles a laugh, shaking his head briefly before assisting dr. mckay with her patient.
~
about twenty minutes later, you’re halfway through typing a note when a paper coffee cup slides quietly into your line of sight. you pause, blinking like it’s a figment of your imagination, before looking up.
dr. jack abbott stands on the other side of the station, one hand braced on the counter, the other nudging the coffee toward you. he’s wearing a black scrub top that squeezes his juicy biceps, and acting pretty casually for someone who’s not supposed to be working yet.
your eyes flick between the cup and him. “did someone get this for me?” you ask, fluttering your lashes at him subconsciously.
jack stares at you. his mind runs blank. behind you, princess slowly swivels her chair to watch. jack drags a hand down his face. “yeah,” he says flatly. “somebody did.”
you nod thoughtfully. you should ask who or where it came from, but you’re running on fumes. “okay.” you pick up the coffee, pressing your lips against the lid and taking a generous sip. jack watches you drink it like a man waiting for a verdict, his finger tapping against his thigh. your shoulders relax instantly. you hum quietly. “this is really good.”
jack exhales through his nose. “glad you approve,” he murmurs, biting back a smirk. call him a creep, but he’s the only person in the department that can get your coffee order correct down to a T.
you finally glance up again, eyebrows lifting like you’ve only just remembered he exists. “wait,” you say. “you’re here early.”
jack tilts his head slightly, pursing his lips. “that bother you?” his voice is lower than before, causing butterflies to erupt in your stomach.
“no,” you say quickly, ignoring the tingly sensation in your stomach. truth be told, you’re never bothered to see him. “you just usually come in later.”
he shrugs, crossing his arms over his broad chest. it’s a losing battle to keep your eyes on his. “couldn’t sleep.”
dana snorts from behind you, shaking her head while dialing a number on the phone. she bites her tongue, choosing peace for once. jack doesn’t take his eyes off of you, ignoring dana’s antics entirely.
you groan sympathetically. “that’s the worst. i always have melatonin with me if you need it.”
jack’s mouth twitches. a flush forms from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. still, his gaze stays glued on you. “i’ll keep that in mind.”
with a smile, you turn back to the computer, already clicking through charts again, and attempting to calm your nerves. you grip the poor coffee cup, hoping jack doesn’t notice your skin is hot to the touch.
finally, he begrudgingly leaves to assist on a patient down the hall. when he’s out of sight, dana, who stands besides you, leans closer. “you know he bought that for you, right?”
you frown at your chart. “abbot?” you glance up at her, brows furrowed. she nods her head, widening her eyes like ‘wasn’t it obvious?’ you glance over your shoulder toward the hallway he disappeared down. “yeah, but he’s just nice. he’d do it for anyone.” you insist, scratching the top of your head.
dana stares at you like she’s trying to solve a complex neurological condition. “sure…” she finally says.
you just shrug, taking another sip of your coffee because that has to be the reason. right? why else would he buy you the coffee? you close your eyes, shaking the thoughts out of your head because…no way. meanwhile, somewhere down the hall, jack abbott is absolutely losing his mind.
{ TWO }
hour five is always the worst, in your opinion. close enough to the middle of your shift that you should feel motivated, but not quite there. not enough to push you through. just enough time for the exhaustion to settle in your bones and stay.
you’re in bay four with a chart tucked under your arm. the elderly woman on the stretcher looks small under the hospital blanket, silver hair falling loose around her shoulders. her ankle is already swelling beneath the thin sheet and she keeps apologizing every few seconds for something that wasn’t her fault.
“hey,” you murmur gently, crouching slightly so she doesn’t have to crane her neck to see you. “no apologies. gravity gets the best of all of us.”
she laughs softly at that. “i tripped on the rug,” she explains again. “my daughter keeps telling me to get rid of it.” her lips pull downward as she continues. “but it’s just so beautiful.”
you nod while carefully pressing along her ankle, fingers gentle but firm as you check for tenderness. “nothing wrong with enjoying art,” you say lightly. your thumb presses along the swollen joint and she winces just a little. you soften your touch immediately. “even if it occasionally decides to fight back.” she smiles in response.
behind you, jack stands close enough that his shoulder nearly brushes yours when you shift. robby got pulled into something more serious ten minutes ago, and jack (who once again is here before the start of his shift) stepped in without much explanation besides a quiet, i’ll help you with this one. you didn’t question it.
jack watches the way you explain each movement before you touch the patient. the way your voice softens slightly when she winces. the way your hands move with that careful confidence that only comes from repetition. you’re good at this. he already knew that, but still.
“alright,” you say after a moment, straightening slightly. “i’m gonna order an x-ray just to be safe, okay?”
the woman nods, commenting something about you being a doll. then, her eyes flick between you and jack. a slow smile spreads across her face. “aren’t you two just the sweetest together.” you both freeze. “such a nice couple,” she continues warmly. “working side by side like that.”
your brain stutters. “oh-” you start, laughing nervously. jack’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t flinch. you shoot him a quick look before turning back to the patient. “we’re not-”
the woman waves her hand dismissively. “no need to explain, dear.”
jack lets out a quiet chuckle behind you. it’s low and amused and extremely unhelpful. you clear your throat, suddenly very focused on the color of your pen ink. “we just work together.”
the woman hums like she heard you and chose not to believe it. well,” she says sweetly, glancing at jack, “he looks at you very nicely.”
your face heats instantly. you pretend to adjust the blanket around her ankle so you don’t have to respond. jack goes very still beside you. the room stays quiet for a beat before you say, a little too brightly, “okay! we’ll get that x-ray and see what’s going on.”
you scribble something on the chart and step toward the door. jack follows. the second you’re out in the hallway, you exhale like you’ve been holding your breath. “oh my god.” jack laughs softly in response. you glance at him. “you could’ve said something.”
“about what.” he feigns innocence.
“the couple thing.”
jack shrugs, hands slipping casually into the pockets of his scrub pants. “didn’t seem necessary.”
you stare at him. your eyes are wide and mouth agape. “it was embarrassing.”
jack tilts his head slightly, studying you for a second longer than necessary. then he says, voice low and teasing, “i didn’t mind playing your boyfriend for a few minutes.”
your brain stalls. you stare at him like he spoke a different language. jack watches the exact moment the words land. the faint color climbing up your neck. the way the floor tiles suddenly call your attention. his mouth curves slightly.
you clear your throat once again. he definitely didn’t mean it like that. jack abbot is many things, including a vigorous flirt. he’s just trying to fluster you. “i’m sure you’d do it for anyone,” you say weakly, turning toward the nurses’ station, “i-i,” cough, “have to, to go do something.”
jack moves to the side, motioning for you to walk. “go ahead,” he murmurs, but he’s smiling.
{ THREE }
the ambulance bay doors swing shut behind you with a hollow metallic clang. outside, the air is colder than it looked through the glass. it slips straight through the thin fabric of your scrubs, raising goosebumps along your arms almost instantly. your hands brace against the cool metal railing and you stare out into the dark parking lot like it might answer the questions still bouncing around your head.
the case had gone bad fast. too fast. one minute the patient had been talking. the next minute the room filled with voices and hands and alarms screaming over each other. someone calling for another unit of blood. someone else pushing meds. robby barking orders across the bed. you’d done everything right.
your shift ended an hour ago. by now, you should’ve been cuddled up with a hot cup of tea and your favorite fluffy socks and maybe a nice book. but after…that…you couldn’t leave. you offered to help the transition into the night shift and assist with some cases. it was enough to keep your mind off of it until now.
your jaw tightens. you take another slow breath, trying to push the noise out of your head. the ambulance bay door opens again behind you, but you don’t have the strength to turn around. heavy footsteps approach, steady and familiar, until someone stops beside you.
jack rests his forearms on the railing beside you. for a second, neither of you speak. he glances sideways, taking a deep breath. the brisk air burns his throat. you’re staring straight ahead, shoulders tense, lips pressed together like you’re trying very hard not to let the thoughts spill out.
jack knows that look. he’s spent way too long memorizing it. “hey,” he says quietly, bumping his shoulder against yours. you hum in response, which is about the most energy you can spare. jack watches you for another moment. “you did good in there.”
you shake your head slightly, inhaling sharply. “we lost him.”
jack sighs, nodding. “sometimes we do.”
you stare harder at the parking lot. “that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.” you mutter, tears pooling at your waterline.
that pulls the faintest huff of a laugh out of him. “yeah,” he says. “that’s the official medical term.” you shake your head, a small smile threatening at the corner of your mouth before it disappears again.
the wind picks up slightly. you shift your weight. jack’s eyes fall to your arms. they’re crossed loosely over your stomach, bumps covering every inch of skin. your shoulders hunch just a little to tell that you’re shivering. he straightens slightly. “hold on.” he says with a tight-lipped smile.
you glance at him. “wha-” but he’s already pushing off the railing before you can finish. you watch him disappear back through the ambulance bay doors with a small frown. he probably got sick of watching you mope. you scoff, kicking yourself mentally because he’s the chief attending and you’re standing here burdening him with your emotional issues.
about a minute later the door swings open again. jack steps back outside to find you in the same position as before. this time, something dark is slung over his arm. you blink as he walks back over and holds it out. a gray zip-up sweatshirt lies in his extended hands.
you stare at it, not moving. “what’s this?” you ask, even though it’s pretty obvious. you’ve never seen him wear the fabric. you’ve only watched him saunter through the automatic doors, eyes intense, and sweatshirt in his hand as he prepares for the night shift.
jack lifts an eyebrow, motioning his hand toward you. “take it.” his voice is low and raspy.
you hesitate. “i’m fine.”
jack gives you a look. the kind that clearly says you’re absolutely not fine. “you’re shivering.” he simply states.
you glance down at your arms like you only just noticed. “…maybe a little.” your hands rub up and down against your arms. jack doesn’t move. the sweatshirt stays extended toward you. after a second, you sigh and take it. “thanks.” when you pull it on, the scent of musky cologne and him fill your senses. you breathe deeper, the smell like a drug. your brain catches up a bit later. “wait—are you gonna be cold?”
jack snorts quietly. “i’ll survive.”
you zip it up the rest of the way, the sleeves a little long over your hands. you fold your arms again, but this time it’s inside the sweatshirt. “thanks,” your voice is softer.
jack shrugs like it’s nothing. “don’t get used to it.”
you glance sideways at him. “you’re very grumpy for someone doing something nice.”
“i’m always grumpy.”
“debatable.”
jack looks at you. his eyes bore into yours, memorizing every detail he can of you. your shoulders have relaxed slightly. the tight line between your brows is gone. mission accomplished. “you should go home now.” he starts softly. “the day shift is all gone and we can handle the rest from here.” he urges.
after a moment, you clear your throat and nod. “i’ll bring this back tomorrow.”
he shakes his head. “keep it.” he says it like it’s no big deal. like he’s not your boss and he’s not lending you a sweatshirt in an oddly intimate way. before you can argue, he says, “you forget things,” he’s already turning toward the door. “figure this way you’ve got a spare.”
you stare at him and just laugh. “that seems like a terrible system.” your shoulders move as you giggle. after the night you’ve had, this is the funniest scenario ever.
jack glances back over his shoulder. his mouth curves slightly. “works for me.” he disappears back inside before you can respond. you stand there for another moment, wrapped in his sweatshirt, staring at the ambulance bay doors.
your fingers curl into the sleeves, fabric bunching around your hands, still warm from him. it sits heavier on your shoulders than it should. you exhale slowly, shaking your head to yourself, a small, tired smile tugging at your lips.
he’s probably just used to this. used to residents stepping out after bad cases, quiet and shaken and trying to hold it together. used to knowing exactly what to say, what to do. how to fix it just enough to get you back on your feet.
you huff out a soft breath, pushing yourself off the railing. “yeah,” you murmur under your breath, already turning toward the doors. “he’s just good at his job.”
{ + ONE }
the bar is loud. a different type of loud than you’re used to. instead of the sharp, frantic noise of the ER, it’s the warmth of conversation and light jokes. robby makes a toast, glasses clink, and drinks are tipped back. the day shift claimed a long stretch of tables near the back. someone dragged two together at some point. chairs are half pulled out, people shifting and talking over each other like no one’s had a full thought all day and now they finally can.
you’re next to samira with one leg tucked under your chair, and your drink sweating in your hand. “i’m telling you,” samira says, covering her mouth to giggle before she even gets the words out. “dr. robby is hot.”
you gasp, choking on your drink before barking out in laughter. “i mean…i can see it.” you say quietly. she raises an eyebrow. you pause. “ok…of course he is.” you rephrase. “he’s just not my usual type.”
beside you, perlah and princess chuckle, pretending that they aren’t eavesdropping.
“what you mean is,” samira takes a swig of her drink before finishing. “he’s not jack abbot.”
you swear you almost drop your glass. “keep your voice down!” you hiss, looking over both shoulders to see if anyone heard.
“it’s not like it’s a secret!” she argues, barely containing her laughter. “you both like each other and you’re both too dense to see it.”
“i would know if someone liked me.” you insist, swirling your straw around in your glass. the ice cubes clink with each stir.
she rolls her eyes, nudging you with her elbow. “yet, you’re the only one who doesn’t.” she huffs out a laugh, shaking her head.
the conversation shifts again after that. someone across the table starts complaining about charting, whittaker gets louder, joy says something dry that makes half the table go quiet for a second before laughing. this is the part of the job makes everything else feel worth it.
you’re sitting quiet, listening to the chatter of samira and the occasional arguments of the med-students when a cool breeze brings goosebumps in its wake. you shiver, peaking over your shoulder.
jack abbott steps inside, pausing just past the threshold. he wasn’t planning on coming. it’s his night off. he told himself he’d stay home for once, maybe get a decent night’s sleep. maybe do something that didn’t revolve around the hospital. then robby mentioned called and drinks. then mentioned you’d be there, and here he is.
he scans the room once, finding you easily. he almost physically stumbles when he processes you. you’re laughing at something samira said, head tipped slightly back, hair down around your shoulders instead of tied up like it always is. you traded your scrubs for a pair of jeans and a simple top that fit you in a way that should be illegal.
jack exhales slowly. right. this was a mistake. he runs a hand over the back of his neck, debating turning around and walking right back out. instead, he straightens slightly and makes his way over. he doesn’t go to you first. mostly because he’s nervous and he’s sporting a semi-hard that needs to go down.
he stops by the end of the table, nodding at everyone, and engaging in conversation with robby. dana gives him a knowing look that he pointedly ignores. “thought you had the night off,” she says, blatantly interrupting robby.
“i do.” he crosses his arms.
“and yet.” dana motions to the room and where he stands.
jack shrugs, casual. “heard there were drinks.” dana hums like she doesn’t believe him for a second. she glances past him, toward you, and then back. jack pretends not to notice. he lingers there longer than necessary, letting himself get pulled into the edge of a conversation he’s not really listening to. how could he listen when you’re there looking like that?
he’s aware of you in a way that hinders his ability to interact. the sound of your voice cutting through the noise. the way you gesture when you talk. the way you lean into samira, laughing at something under your breath. he drags his gaze away, but it always comes back. he’s metal being pulled into your magnetic field.
finally, he pushes off from the end of the table. he circles the group until he’s right behind you. he can hear you clearly now, even smell your perfume.
“you always this loud?” he asks, voice cutting cleanly into your conversation, “or is this a special occasion?”
you freeze. samira’s eyes go wide for half a second before she bites her lip to keep from laughing. slowly—slowly—you turn your head. up close, he looks even better than he did from across the room. you can see his features clearly. the stubble beard he bother shaving, his salt and peppered curls, and that hardened look that always melts you. could he be anymore perfect?
your brain stutters. “i’m not loud,” you retort, which is immediately a lie.
jack raises an eyebrow. “no?” he asks, voice low, amused. “could’ve fooled me.”
samira lets out a quiet snort beside you. you shoot her a look before turning back to him, narrowing your eyes slightly. “maybe you’re just eavesdropping.”
“maybe you’re just easy to overhear.”
you open your mouth, then close it. you can barely breathe the way he’s still looking at you, never mind forming coherent sentences. you swallow. “what are you doing here?” you ask, tone lower.
jack shrugs, one hand settling on the back of your chair. your back brushes his fingers when you lean closer. “thought i’d see what you all look like outside the hospital.”
your stomach flips. samira makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like oh my god. “and?” you ask, lifting your chin slightly. “what’s the verdict?”
jack’s gaze drags over you in an antagonizing slow manner. it starts at your face, and dips before coming back up. your breath catches.
he hums. “undecided.”
samira chokes on her drink. “i need another round,” she blurts, already sliding out of her seat. she grabs princess and perlah by the wrist and drags the with her before you can even process what just happened.
traitors.
you’re suddenly very aware of the empty chairs beside you, and the fact that jack doesn’t move away. if anything, he moves closer. “so,” you say, clearing your throat, trying to ignore the way your heart is picking up speed. “night off?”
“yeah.”
“and you chose to spend it here.”
“seems that way.”
you huff a quiet laugh, glancing down at your drink (because if you don’t you’ll stare at him arms). “we’re honored.”
jack’s mouth twitches. “you should be.” he lowers his voice to a gruff sound. that has to be his bedroom voice, you think. you look back up at him, rolling your eyes, but there’s no heat behind it.
he watches you for a second longer than necessary before finally dropping into the chair samira abandoned like it was always his. your knee brushes his and neither of you move. you take a sip of your drink just to give your hands something to do. jack doesn’t look away. he leans back slightly in his chair, one arm draped behind you like it belongs there.
you clear your throat. “so,” you say, glancing at him, “you just haunt bars on your nights off now?”
jack huffs quietly. “only the ones you’re in.”
your brain trips over itself for half a second. you recover fast. mostly. “that’s…concerning.”
“yeah,” he nods. “i’ve been told.”
you shake your head, trying not to smile into your drink. the liquor warms your throat, giving you some much needed confidence. neither of you move. you glance down at your glass again, tracing the rim with your finger. “they’re short on night shift,” you say after a second. “again.”
jack’s attention sharpens. he notes the way your voice lowers. you don’t want anyone else at the table to hear. “yeah,” he nods, pouring himself a beer from the pitcher on the table. “we are.”
you look up at him through your lashes and he has to adjust his pants. you stall, questioning if this is the right time or place to talk about this. finally, you exhale. “i was thinking about maybe switching over for a bit,” you continue, shrugging one shoulder. “just temporarily. try something different.”
almost immediately, he replies, “you should.”
you blink, stifling a laugh. “that was fast.”
he doesn’t even try to backtrack. “you’d be good over there.”
you tilt your head slightly. “you don’t even know what i’d be like on nights.”
“yeah, i do.”
your brows lift. “you’ve never seen me on nights.”
“don’t need to.”
you bite the inside of your cheek to calm yourself. you feel tingly all over. “you’re very confident.” you say, avoiding eye contact with him.
“i’m usually right.”
“debatable.”
“not about this.” there’s a quiet certainty in his voice that makes it hard to brush off.
you shift slightly in your seat. “i just-” you sigh. “i don’t know how robby’s gonna feel about it. i feel like he’s gonna think i’m abandoning day shift or something.” you ramble. “and-”
jack leans forward now, thick forearms resting on the table. “robby won’t be mad at you,” he interrupts with no room for discussion.
you glance at him. “you say that like you speak for him.”
“i’ve known him longer than you,” jack replies easily. “he’s not gonna hold you back.” you nod slowly, but your not convinced. “he likes you,” jack adds.
your lips twitch. “he likes everyone.”
jack shakes his head slightly. “he admires you.” he corrects himself.
your eyes flick back to his. there’s something in his tone that makes your chest tighten again. you look down quickly. “i just don’t want it to be weird,” you say, softer now.
jack watches you for a second. then leans in just a little more. “it won’t be,” he says. he’s close enough that you can feel his breath fanning against your skin. your breath catches. after a moment, he straightens again. “we can talk more about it over dinner.” he states in a matter of fact tone.
you nearly choke. your brain tries to file that under professional—it doesn’t match. “…what?”
jack’s mouth curves slightly. “dinner,” he repeats, like it’s obvious. like you’re the one lagging behind.
you stare at him. that didn’t sound like just a friendly request. your heart starts picking up. “like…with the team?” you ask, clinging to logic.
jack’s gaze doesn’t waver. “no.”
your stomach drops. “…just us?”
“that’s usually how dates go, no?” he smirks. there’s no hesitation.
everything clicks at once. the realization flashes across your eyes in series of memories. the coffee, the sweatshirt, the way he shows up early, and the way he watches you like you’re the only thing in the room. your breath catches. “you’re asking me on a date?” you ask like you had to say it out loud for it to process.
jack’s smile deepens. “took you long enough.”
your heart stutters. “wait-” you sit up straighter, staring at him. “you’re serious?”
jack leans in slightly, voice low. “i asked you to dinner.”
your pulse jumps. “i thought you meant like talking about the shift-”
“we can talk about the shift,” he nods, taking a sip of his glass. his eyes flick down to your lips for a split second before coming back up. “doesn’t have to be the only thing.”
oh.
oh.
your face heats. you look away, then back, like you don’t know where to land. “you’ve been-” you shake your head slightly, almost laughing. “this whole time?”
“pretty much.”
you huff out a disbelieving breath. “i thought you were just-” you stop yourself.
jack raises an eyebrow. “just what.”
you groan, dropping your head into your hand for a second. “i don’t know…normal.”
that actually makes him laugh real low. “this is me being normal?”
you peek at him. “apparently not.” you lower your hand slowly, looking at him again. your heart is still racing, but you don’t hate it. “you’re bold,” you say quietly.
jack’s mouth curves. “only when it counts.”
your stomach twists again. you shake your head slightly, smiling despite yourself. “and you just assumed i’d say yes?”
“no.” he shrugs simply.
the honesty catches you off guard. “then why ask?”
jack holds your gaze. “because i wanted to.” he murmurs. “figured you were worth the risk.”
you stare at him for a second longer, tilting your head like it might help you figure him out better. “…ok.” it slips out before you can overthink it.
jack tilts his head slightly. “ok?”
you nod, a little more certain now. “yes, i’ll go out with you.”
a boyish grin takes over his face. it may have taken months of what he thought was obvious flirting, hundreds spent on overpriced coffees, and more self-control than he’d ever admit out loud, but he got there. now you’re sitting in front of him, cheeks warm, eyes a little wide, finally seeing him the way he’s been seeing you all along.
summary: good things happen to those who are found crying in the supply closet by their hot, older, maybe flirty boss-slash-mentor.
wc: 14.5k (i have no idea how that happened)
tags/tropes: age gap (duh), slow burn with an insane amount of tension, lowkey very emotionally rife, hurt/comfort, not-so-unrealistic amounts of crying, langdonmel in the background if you squint (you don’t have to squint very hard i love them so much guys im sorry) vaguely referenced but not subtlety implied bad childhood, gratuitous and frankly ridiculous medical inaccuracies because i took a lot of creative liberty, reader is an ode to Matilda by Harry Styles and You’re Gonna Go Far by Noah Kahan, Pitt Crew becomes reader’s family :)
a/n: this was supposed to be a sort-of drabble for @leeknowpegger. idk what happened. pegger i’m sorry i’ve been so dead recently (always) will you take this as an apology. If you’d like more cohesive tags, more context, extra details, and more in depth warnings, this fic has been cross-posted on ao3, and will be linked below :]
NOT-SO-FRIENDLY-PSA: Any comments asking me to write more, post another chapter, or anything of the sort will be deleted. Please do not send an ask into my inbox either. Screaming in my inbox (not about wanting more, general screaming) is totally fine though!
ao3
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۫ ꣑ৎ
You have been the perfect day shift intern for five months. Five freaking months of listening to mostly constructive criticism, five months of adapting and learning on the go with not a single complaint voiced, five months of diligent note-taking, studying, and practice. Five months of weaseling your way into the list of interns-slash-young-doctors that your residents actually respect. Five months of grueling shifts, hard losses, and never saying no when someone needs you to do something.
Five months of being the untouchable, “perfect” intern. Robby’s newest addition to his growing list of “work-wards.”
Five months of unflinching effort and dedication and it took four hours of your third night-shift to reduce you to a miserable, snotty mess on the supply closet floor. Tucked into the space between the two shelves, just the toes of your blood and snot and god knows what else covered shoes peeking out, the rest of you obscured.
Five months, four hours, and back to back fuck-ups that escalated into Dr. Jack Abbot, the man you may or may not have had the hugest crush on since beginning your intern year, removing you from a case. Five months, four hours, and two parents screaming at Dr. Abbot, telling him that you’re not fit to be a doctor.
Tonight isn’t the first night a patient has yelled at you. Tonight isn’t even the first time you’ve been removed from a case. It’s not the first time Dr. Abbot has had to correct you, and it’s certainly not the first time you’ve made a mistake.
You’re an intern. It’s your job to fuck up, learn from it, and keep going. That’s what Dr. Mohan said to one of the other interns awhile back. They’d ended up flunking out, but oh well. It was good advice. It wasn’t meant for you, but hell if you don’t say it to yourself every night like a prayer.
But right now, the usual calming mantra is doing absolutely nothing. You’re stifling ugly sobs into the tops of your knees, arms wrapped around and squeezing as tight as you can, your chest shaking and shuddering with the force of your complete and total freak-out.
The patient isn’t dead. Despite your mistakes, they didn’t die. There’s really nothing to cry about. Nothing to hide in the supply closet for.
And yet, here you are.
Your first mistake wasn’t terrible, but it was ridiculously stupid and incredibly embarrassing. Triage room, emergency measures being taken. And you, tired and off kilter from being so used to the day-shift, broke the sterile field. Like some dumb medical student, not a fairly seasoned intern who’s drilled sterile protocol into her head until it’s muscle memory.
For a scalpel. You dropped a scalpel. Arguably the worst thing to drop. And then, like an idiot, you picked it back up.
And, well. There’s no time to re-scrub, so there wasn’t a need for you in the triage room anymore.
Your second mistake was equally stupid and avoidable, if you’d focused more. Dr. Garcia was kind enough to let you scrub in on an emergency appendectomy.
It was a test. Not your first.
And you ripped the fucking purse strings.
Once again, you were unceremoniously booted from the room (being kicked out of an OR feels a hell of a lot worse than being kicked out of a triage room) and sent back to the pit. Dr. Abbot immediately caught wind of it and demoted you to scut work until “you get your head back in the game.”
And, well. You tried really hard to devote yourself to your new task, but you had to keep blinking tears out of your eyes every five seconds and you absolutely refuse to cry in front of literally any of your coworkers, lest they think you some weak-willed weak-stomached intern who can’t handle some criticism and correction. You’re a hard worker. You’re good at this. You have to be.
So yeah. Crying in the supply closet.
You’ve always been a frustrated cryer, which is annoying on a good day and downright awful on a bad one (case in point.)
You’re just so upset with yourself. You’re better than this. You know you are. You’ve proven that you are. You don’t drop scalpels. You don’t break the sterile field. You don’t rip purse strings.
But you did tonight. And maybe one day you’ll laugh, but today is not that day.
You just don’t get it. Day shift? Incredible. Manageable. You’re on top of things, put together, and worthy of Dr. Robby’s respect.
But tonight? Quite literally the exact opposite.
You can’t be burning out, right? That’s not how burn out works. There’s like, signs, and you start to feel terrible and awful and exhausted and sure you definitely feel all of those things, but that’s because you work in medicine. And you’re an intern. You’re supposed to feel terrible and awful and exhausted. But maybe you’re not? You do enjoy your work, and it’s exhilarating, especially when you try something for the first time and execute it well, because you always do, you always get things right on the first try, obviously, so that means that this can’t be burn out. You don’t burn out. That’s not you. Right? No. Of course not.
You gasp a particularly rough sob into your knees, air feeling like knives as you inhale, making you cough horrendously. You must be quite a sight.
Unfortunately, due to your alternating hacking coughs and dramatic crying, you don’t quite hear the door open.
You do, however, hear the quiet “Oh.” that’s mumbled a few moments later.
Of-fucking-course.
You scramble upright, aggressively wiping at your face and attempting to make it look like you weren’t just crying on the ground.
“Dr. Abbot! I’m so sorry, this is very unprofessional and I know you have me on scut work but I promise I’m still working on it—“
He holds up a hand, and you slam your jaw shut with an audible click.
“Just needed some four by fours, kid.”
Always one to be helpful (especially to the guy you have a crush on who also happens to be your boss, aka the same person who professionally told you to get your shit together about forty minutes ago) you reach beside yourself and hand him the package of gauze, an awkward smile fixed on your face.
“…Those are three by threes.”
Bitch. Motherfucker. Fuck your life.
“Right,” You mumble, dragging your hand down your face. “I’ll just get out of your way. Sorry.”
You turn to walk past him, attempting to go quick enough that he might not notice the new tears shining in your eyes before a hand lands on your shoulder.
“Look,” Dr. Abbot starts. “You’re one of Robby’s adopted interns, right? Robby-Junior?”
“That is one of the rumors Santos has been spreading, yes.”
His hand is on your shoulder. His hand is on your shoulder. (!!!)
You don’t know what to do. He’s looking at you. Your boss doesn’t fluster you. You’re chill. You’re normal. You’re cool as a cucumber, yep yep yep.
“Robby doesn’t adopt interns lightly. Don’t let one bad shift mess you up. It happens to everyone.”
You purse your lips. You should let it go. Take his advice. Thank him.
The all-consuming-guilt and ever-present-need to prove yourself itches too painfully to ignore.
Dr. Abbot seems to notice, and he catches your gaze again.
“What, it doesn’t happen to you?”
A jolt of panic stabs your chest. “No! Of course it happens to me, I didn’t mean to imply that I’m like, above making mistakes or having bad shifts at all—“
Genuinely what is wrong with you. Why the fuck does he do this you. You’re a smart, confident woman who apparently chucks her brain into the garbage bin whenever her boss is around.
Dr. Abbot, probably picking up on a pattern of behavior by now, levels you with another look that shuts you up fairly quickly. He’s got a sort of impish grin on his face, and it shouldn’t be hot, but he’s got his hand on your shoulder and you’re having a ridiculously shitty night. Does anything matter anymore?
“Usually, we try to mix up interns schedules so you don’t get into a rhythm on one specific shift so that when you inevitably switch, the change doesn’t mess up your flow. But I'm sure your knack for keeping your head down and doing good work let you fall through the cracks.”
He takes his hand off your shoulder and shoves it into his pocket, but you almost don’t notice because he said you do good work.
Abbot gives you another grin. “And I didn’t stick you on scut as a punishment. Mindless work tends to be calming, which in turn helps focus your mind.”
“But I ripped the purse strings,” You blurt like a Catholic school girl in a particularly rife confessional, “Like an idiot.”
“You ripped them like an intern doing something for the first time.”
“I practiced hundreds of times to make sure it didn’t happen!”
He tilts his head, almost cat-like. “Did you also practice on a live person in a higher stakes situation while your body is messed up from a sudden and huge sleep schedule change?”
“…No?”
He snorts. “Exactly. Dr. Garcia probably won’t hold it against you. She’ll give you shit for it, but it’s not like she’s never going to give you another chance.”
You wipe the last bit of wetness of your cheeks with the back of your hand, embarrassment heating your face. Despite the awfulness of being caught crying in the supply closet, the beginnings of pleasant warmth is spreading through your chest, Dr. Abbot’s reassurances echoing in your head.
“Thank you, Dr. Abbot. Um. Sorry about the crying. I promise I don’t usually do that.”
Dr. Abbot snorts as he saunters towards the door. “Wouldn’t judge you if you did, kid.”
—
Dr. Jack Abbot is bored.
He has his work, which is great. He became a doctor after being discharged because he’s always been the kind of man that needs something to do. Something to mind, something to watch, something to fix. Robby and him and much the same in this way.
Working at the ED was enough for a while. There was a certain challenge to it, an unpredictability that itch sated, kept him sane. And, well. Now he’s an attending. Night shift lead.
He started to get restless again.
He thought a pet might work. He was going to get a dog, but it didn’t sit right with him to get an animal built for companionship and then leave it at home for over twelve hours a day. Then he thought a cat might do the trick. He looked online first, saw beautiful, well bred felines that could probably compete and win for best in show for whatever the cat equivalent is for the Westminster Dog Show.
And then he made the mistake of going to the shelter and seeing an old, one eared tuxedo cat that stared at him with something in between fear and spite and its eyes. And well. The shelter attendants assured him that the cat in question prefers being left alone and having its own space, but might warm up eventually, and he brought him home that day.
And then it was just Jack, occasionally Robby, and now his asshole cat who might not love him back.
That also worked for a while. Having Charlie was fun. It was nice having another living creature in his house that wasn’t him. Even if he did have a habit of chewing on power cords when left unattended and eventually progressed into attempting to destroy Jack’s stethoscope if he left it anywhere he could find.
Minding the cat gave him something to do that wasn’t tedious, and it was a special sort of bonus to wake up every now and then and see the cat sprawled at the foot of the bed, snoring away. He didn’t actually know cats could snore like that.
Around the time that the itch came back and Jack was considering adopting a second cat from the shelter (well on his path to becoming a crazy cat lady, as Robby said in the park over beers) he met you for the first time.
Sometimes Jack slips quietly into the ED and watches the chaos of day shift’s conclusions. He’s picked up a very special language of gauging what he’s getting into based on the body language and behavior of the rest of the hospital staff. Robby had told him about the latest intern— a motivated, stubborn sort of girl that frequently went toe-to-toe with Santos but without any of the pushback when receiving correction or criticism. He’d heard that you were smart, capable, and well on your way of becoming a great doctor.
Robby failed to mention that you were pretty.
He’d watch you, comparing notes with Mohan with a certain intense focus on your face, worrying your lip between your teeth and repeatedly tucking a piece of hair behind your ear because it’d fallen out of your disheveled pony tail he thinks ‘Oh.’
And then, a few months later, he finds you crying in a closet, subtly confessing fears of failure and falling short of expectations, and then he thinks ‘Well, there’s something to do.’
Jack tries not to think about you, at first. You, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes, bottom lip jutted out just a bit, hugging your knees. He tries not to think about how you’d looked at him when he’d assured you that you did good work, the awkward thank you, and the way that for the rest of the shift, all the annoying menial tasks that get forgotten in the chaos were all mysteriously taken care of.
He tells himself that he’s just going to keep an eye on you. For Robby’s sake. He’d do the same for Whitaker.
The next time you have a night shift, you’re clearly more prepared for the exhaustion, and when he finally sees you in true, proper action, he understands immediately why Robby likes you and Mohan frequently attaches you to her cases. Skill, patience, and focus.
When he watches you trach a patient with a certain ease that only comes from practicing hundreds of times, Ellis shoots him a knowing look. Raised eyebrows and smirk. When she passes him in the hall a few hours later, she jabs her thumb behind her shoulder at where you’re diligently filling out a chart.
“That one yours, then?”
Jack shakes his head. “It’s not like that. You make me sound like a creep.”
Another raised eyebrow. “Sure it isn’t.”
“She’s Robby’s intern.”
“Mhm.”
“She’s way too young.”
Parker shrugs. “She’s good.”
“She is.”
The senior resident cuts a glance back to you. “Think she’ll burn out?”
“Maybe.”
Parker crosses his arms. “Are you gonna let it happen?”
“She’s not my intern.”
Up to three Parker Ellis looks and counting.
“It’s an HR nightmare.”
Parker shrugs. “You just said she’s not your intern.”
He narrows his eyes. “You know what I meant.”
“Do I? It’s been awhile, Jack. No one would really judge you for having some fun.”
“Parker.”
“Jack.”
He shakes his head, walks towards the boards. “You’re the worst.”
Parker just laughs. “Sure I am.”
To your credit, he doesn’t find you crying in a supply closet again to see evidence of you doing so for a solid few weeks. But, like most things in the ED, the peace doesn’t last.
You came into work soaking wet, which is odd, considering the fact that he knows you drive, and the walk to the parking lot isn’t far enough to account how you’re shivering in your freshly changed scrubs. He brushes it off, chalks it up to freakish Pittsburg weather.
Some night shifts are relatively slow and mild. Tonight is not one of those shifts. Patients are extra irritable at late hours, which is to be expected, but what he’s not expecting is to walk by South 15 and see a 50-something year old man slap you.
Jack blinks, and in the next second he’s in the room, standing in between you and the patient.
“Excuse me, what the fuck is going on here?”
Gloria will probably give him shit for his language later, but right now all he can think about is the startled look on your face and the echo that the contact made.
“I said I want a real doctor, not this fucking—“
“Get the fuck out of my hospital.”
Shen peaks his head in. “Security’s on their way.”
Jack reaches behind him to where you’re still standing, your hand covering your cheek, and gently pushes you towards Shen, towards the door. You stumble over your feet a bit, but truly, Jack’s never been more thankful for his residents because then Parker is right there, ushering you out the door with a hand on your shoulder. Jack resolutely ignores your mumbled “I’m fine, really, he just surprised me.”
Thankfully, security doesn’t take that long to get to the room, and the second Jack is finished explaining, he’s out the door and scanning the ED for your face. Nurse Young jerks her head towards the break room, and he thinks he manages to give her what he hopes is a thankful smile before he’s beelining for it.
When he opens the door, you’re sitting on the floor again, holding an ice pack to your cheek with one hand and dabbing at your lip with a paper towel. Like you’ve never heard of medical protocol in your entire life.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
You jerk your head up, a kid caught with its hand in the cookie jar.
“Dr. Abbot!”
Lowering himself to the ground is awkward, physically. Prosthetics don’t lend to much mobility and he’s too old to be doing this, but he just. There are little beads of blood collecting and then sliding down your chin, dripping onto the leg of your scrubs. At the same angle of the split in your lip, there’s a little cut he can see peaking out from under the ice pack.
He reaches forward, fingers itching towards the deep scarlet dripping steadily. He pauses, remembering things like words and questions and sees the wild look in your eyes.
“Can I…?” Jack’s voice trails off, the words clunky and useless in this bubble that’s seemed to form around the two of you, on the probably disgusting floor of the ED break room.
You slowly drop the napkin, let the ice pack lower to your lap and nod.
“He had a ring on. I guess it caught me. I didn’t really notice until I got here.”
“Parker and Shen didn’t notice?”
You look at your lap. “I told them I was fine… And covered it with my hand. There are other patients. It’s just a little cut.”
Jack’s fingers finally reach your face, and he almost takes them back when you flinch on the initial contact, shaking ever so slightly.
But then, with noticeable effort, you relax into his palm, his fingers curling around the side of your jaw. He should grab gloves. He should get up, take his hand off your face.
Anyone could walk in right now and call Gloria on his ass.
His thumb sweeps across your cheekbone, just below the cut, which does have some faint bruising around it. And truthfully, the split in your lip doesn’t look that bad either.
But there’s still little dots and trails of scarlet and he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to calm down until he fixes it. He needs to fix something.
“If I leave you here so I can get supplies,” He starts, voice a little rough, “Can I trust that you’ll stay here and not do anything stupid?”
“Uh, yes? Should I move to a real chair though?”
Jack huffs as he hauls himself to his feet. “That’d be preferable.”
Later, when he’s at home in his bed, he’ll assure himself that the night shift wasn’t truly that busy and he trusts his residents to handle things while he’s busy.
No one stops him on his way to the medical supply closet (the irony of the location is not lost on him) and he makes it back without interruption. Upon opening the door, you have in fact moved to a chair, and it seems the bleeding slowed in his absence.
What he should do is sit down in the chair opposite of you and handle this situation like a professional, like the Dr. Abbot, night shift attending, not Jack who’s got a thing for fixing.
He does try to remove his emotions and feelings from the situation, he really does. It’s something he’s generally very good at —which is where he and Robby differ; Robby would prefer to feel too much and Jack would prefer to feel nothing at all— but you’re looking up at him and there’s something really dangerous in the air and it must’ve gotten into your blood stream or something cause it’s swimming in your eyes and he realizes that removing his feelings is not going to be possible.
He decides he could at least tone it down. You’re an intern. Robby’s intern. So what if you’re bleeding all over the break room? Jack’s just doing his job as the attending to look after the doctors and nurses under his jurisdiction or whatever. That’s all.
“Tilt your head up.”
He sets to work cleaning up the cut and split as detached and clinically as possible, even puts on gloves so there’s no skin to skin contact, just protocol, but he can feel the warmth of your skin through the latex and you keep sucking in these tiny little breathes when something stings and he can’t get the sound of the slap out of his head and it’s all just kind of a lot.
He readjusts his hand on the side of your face, sort of holding your forehead now to have better access and control over the cut on your cheek and wow. Your skin is really warm. It kind of feels like you’re burning up.
Jack tosses the piece of gauze he was using and rests the back of his hand against your forehead. Shit, you are burning up.
He thinks back to you, walking in today, soaked to the bone.
“Did you walk to work today?”
You wince. “My car kind of died? On the way here? I was only a mile away. But I called a towing company, so I didn’t just leave my car in the middle of the road.”
He blinks.
“Your car died, so you had it towed and walked a mile to work, in the rain, late at night, and didn’t tell anybody?”
You just keep staring at him, brows furrowed.
“Yeah? I carry a knife and I’ve taken self defense classes, and my car was just towed back to my place, so. I had a shift to work.”
There’s… a lot to unpack in your answer.
“Kid,” He starts, wondering why Robby never thought to give him a heads up before you started working more night shifts, “What was your plan to get home?”
“Walk, probably. I was thinking about taking the bus. Dr. King knows the bus schedule, so I’m probably going to text her.”
Jack decides to just finish cleaning you up, before he does something stupid like shake you by your shoulders and ask why you didn’t think to let your boss know that your car broke down and you’d be walking home in the rain. Or that when a patient slapped you in the face, his ring cut your face and lip open.
God.
“It’s really fine though,” You say, gesticulating animatedly with your hands. “My place isn’t that far, and it’s not the first time my car’s died. The battery’s kind of shot, but I guess my car has a weird battery, and it’s like, crazy expensive to get a new one, so. Besides, I like walking. I’ve been meaning to catch up on my audiobooks.”
He wishes you’d stop talking so he’d stop hearing things that make him want to do things he can’t and shouldn’t do. Like find out what car you drive so he can buy you a new battery. Or buy you a new car all together.
Christ, you have him wrapped around your fucking finger.
“I’ll drive you home. If you’re fine with that.”
Jack has to fight a grin at how comically wide your eyes grow at his suggestion.
“Oh no, you really don’t have to. I promise I’m—“
“Please stop saying you're fine,” He begs, “You don’t have a working car, a patient slapped you in the face, and I think you’re coming down with something.”
The smile that’s seemed permanently fixed on your face since he came into the break room falters, for a bit.
“Well,” You grimace, hands fisting the hem of your scrub top, “Things certainly aren’t… great, but I’ll survive. I’m not like, incapable, or anything.”
Jacks quiet for a bit, not just mulling over your words but the way you said them; the cadence and tone.
He hums. “Is that what you think? That I or someone else here will think you’re not competent or that you’re weak if you take a break or ask for help?”
Your face falters again. “No, no, of course not I just… I don’t know. I’m an intern. It’s my job, supposedly, to mess up and have to be looked after in case I accidentally kill someone and stuff like that. I just don’t want to be someone that people think they have to worry about. I need— internships are competitive. They’re competitions, really. And I want to win.”
Jack Abbot knows what it’s like to want to win. That need to prove yourself, prove that you’re capable and strong and unfailing.
So Jack also knows how quickly that can all go south.
“You’re a smart kid,” He says, voice ever so slightly soft in the quiet tension of the break room, empty except for the two of you, “And you’re going to make a great resident, and one day, a damn good attending. But none of that means shit if you burn out or get run yourself into the ground before you get there.”
He avoids eye-contact while he carefully applies the bandage to your cheek. “This industry will chew you up and spit you back out if you don’t take care of yourself. I get it. We’re doctors. We make the worst patients. But you got slapped in the face during a shitty day. It’s okay to… not be okay for a minute.”
You huff a watery laugh. “Isn’t that what energy drinks are for?”
He shakes his head. “What, trying to die faster?”
“Anything to shake those student loans. Can’t be in debt if you’re dead.”
“Don’t they just pass it to your family? Next of kin or whatever?”
“I don’t think they can give student loans to a cactus. I mean, I consider her my daughter, but I hardly think it’ll hold up in court.”
Jack mentally files that information away for later. What later is, he isn’t sure.
He stands, pulls off his gloves and tosses all the used gauze and shit in the trash can.
“I gotta get back out there,” He jams his thumb towards the door, “But feel free to take five. No one’s judging you. Matter of fact, as your boss, I’m telling you to take a break.”
You roll your eyes. “Whatever you say, Dr. Abbot. But thank you. For the…”
You gesture to your bandaged cheek and lip. “…And for the advice.”
He shrugs, like taking care of you hasn’t become a persona fantasy he may or may not fall asleep imagining most nights. Like it doesn’t matter, like he’s just doing his job.
“Offer for the ride’s still open. Just let me know by the end of shift.”
And with that, he’s out the door.
It’s the end of shift, and you’re staring at the double doors that lead to the outside world, and beyond that, absolutely fucking miserable weather for walking, a dead car, and cold as shit apartment.
You’re not exactly rushing out the door.
You’re clutching at the strap of your bag, regular clothes on, still damp despite the fact that it’s been over thirteen hours since you originally took them off, begging the universe to strike you down where you stand. Spontaneous lightning bolts happen indoors too, right?
The doors just stare back at you, unchanging in their miserable-ness, and after a solid ten minutes of staring, you feel rather than see Jack sidle up next to you.
“Still raining out there?”
“Yep. Looks worse now.”
“Not great weather to walk in. Especially considering the low-grade fever.”
“Mhm.”
“Did you text Dr. King for the bus schedule?”
“No. I didn’t want to wake her up.”
Jack huffs a breath, then jerks his head towards the doors that lead to the employee parking lot.
“Come on, kid.”
The ride is quiet and awkward. Well. Dr. Abbot probably doesn’t think it’s awkward, because he seems like the kind of man not to be bothered by long stretches of silence. Or silence at all.
He’d been kind enough to turn the heat on full blast (you started shivering the moment you stepped outside) and the radio is softly playing, and it’s only thanks to Sabrina Carpenter’s voice that you don’t feel like completely freaking out.
You mouth along to the lyrics, quietly humming the chorus under your breath.
“—I get wet at the thought of you being a responsible guy—“
“—Treating me like you’re supposed to do, tears run down my thighs—“
By the time you’ve realized that perhaps this isn’t the best song choice to sing along to, considering the situation and who’s car you’re currently riding in, the words “I get wet” have already left your mouth so there’s no real point in stopping.
On a completely unrelated note, Dr. Abbot starts smiling a little bit when you hum.
Pittsburgh traffic is terrible, so the drive kind of drags on. The radio is playing Chappell Roan now. Casual specifically. You’re considering changing the radio station because god.
“So,” You start, just to say anything that drowns out “knee-deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out, is it casual now?”, “Did you… have a good shift?”
That was a terrible question. Jesus. What the hell is wrong with you? How did you get through medical school?
Dr. Abbot snorts. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”
Ah. Right. The Incident.
“I told you I’m—“
“Didn’t I tell you to stop saying that?”
Your lap has never looked more interesting. Wow, is that a loose thread on your sweats?
He continues. “Fine or not, a patient assaulted you. Even if he didn’t leave a mark, that’s still shitty.”
“Have you been hit by a patient before?”
He huffs. “Hell yeah. It happens to everyone eventually. It’ll happen again. You get better at keeping your cool.”
“Sorry you had to step in. I’ve been hit by a patient before and I was fine.”
“Oh yeah?”
You nod. “It was during my Pedes rotation, actually. I’ve always known working with kids probably wasn’t going to be for me, but, well. Kid came in for intussusception, and she was screaming and writhing in pain, and I failed to restrain her properly.”
“What, did she slap you too?”
“Nope. Kicked me in the chin. Ended up biting almost clean through my tongue.”
“Fucking hell, kid. What’d you do?”
You shrug. “Kept my blood in my mouth until we finished sedating the patient. Ended up with three stitches.”
Dr. Abbot lets out a low whistle. “Always the patients you least expect.”
“The importance of proper patient restraint was thoroughly impressed upon me, I assure you.”
The silence after your short conversation is slightly more comfortable, and thankfully the radio station has decided to play less pointed music.
Between the warmth of the car, the smell permeating the seats that smells distinctly like Dr. Abbot, and the drumming of rain outside, it doesn’t take long for drowsiness to begin to overtake you.
Your last thought before falling asleep is that you don’t remember if you gave Dr. Abbot your address or not.
Someone is gently shaking your shoulder, and you feel like shit.
“What?” You attempt to say, but the side of your mouth is pressed against the seatbelt and your shoulder so it comes out sounding like: “Whamfgh?”
Opening your eyes is a herculean task, like someone sewed miniature weights to your eyelids while you were asleep. You’re absolutely freezing, despite the steady hum of the car's heat, still on high, and you vaguely recognize the street the car is currently parked on.
Oh right, your apartment.
“Oh,” You yawn, hauling yourself semi-upright, aiming for woman who has it together, and less disheveled swooning woman in a Baroque painting.
Dr. Abbot is staring at you with equal parts humor and concern.
You rub at your eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Little over forty minutes. You looked like you needed it.”
“It doesn’t take that long to drive to my place, even with traffic.”
Your brain is moving like molasses, so it takes you a second to catch up with the implication of his statement.
“Did you just… park in front of my house? So I could keep sleeping?”
He just shrugs. “Like I said. You looked like you needed it.”
Embarrassment and a touch of something else floods through your body, hot and cold at the same time.
“Sorry. You didn’t have to wait.”
“If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t have.”
Still moving slowly, you gather up your bag from where it partially spilled on the floor all over your feet, shoving old receipts and pads and chapstick back in with the reckless abandon of a person who isn’t nearly aware enough of social cues to be in a car alone with their hot boss.
Whilst you're grabbing and shoving, Dr. Abbot reaches into his back seat, rifles around for a bit, and then drops something rather unceremoniously over your head and shoulders. After a quiet “hey” you pull it into your lap, and then that hot feeling is back in full force.
It’s a rain jacket. Clearly Dr. Abbot’s. You can see his name written on the inside pocket. It’s nice too. Definitely not the kind of rain jacket you could afford on an intern’s budget.
“For the next time your car dies,” He clarifies, as if the jacket’s purpose is the thing that’s stupefied you, not the fact that he’s the one giving it to you, “In case of rain.”
“You really don’t have to,” your words are rushed and clunky in your mouth, tumbling over each other in your haste to say something, anything, “I mean, I can just buy my own—“
“First of all,” He cuts you off, voice smooth and rough at the same time, “Do I seem to be the kind of guy in the habit of doing things I don’t want to? And second of all…”
He tilts his head, gaze sharp. “Are you really going to buy one for yourself?”
Your mouth goes dry.
“I was planning on looking online—“
Dr. Abbot interrupts you. “Now you don’t have to.”
Like it’s that easy. Does he want it to be?
“Dr. Abbot, I—“
“Jack.”
His grin goes from mild to shit-eating as you stare at him, obviously radiating confusion.
“Jack,” you start, testing out the name in your mouth, hearing how it sounds in the air. “I can take care of myself. You don’t need to give me your jacket. I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”
“Kid—“
The prickling of perceived weakness makes anger spark in your chest.
“Don’t call me kid like I’m stupid.”
Dr. Abb— Jack seems simultaneously impressed that you interrupted him for a change and vaguely put out.
He holds up a finger, effectively silencing anything else you were thinking of saying.
“I don’t call you kid because I think you’re stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid. You’d know if I thought you were stupid, because I would tell you. ‘Kid’ is a…” He trails off, free hand tapping thoughtful rhythms on the steering wheel, “…Nickname. Term of endearment. Whatever you want to call it, but it’s not derogatory.”
Jack holds up a second finger.
“You have not been taking care of yourself. If you were, you wouldn’t have a low grade fever, and you would’ve called me as your boss or one of your friends to drive you instead of walking after your car died. You’ve been surviving. There’s a difference.”
Shame burns white hot through you— all your recent failings laid out by the person you want least to notice them. Clearly, he has.
Possibly out of pity in response to your no doubt miserable expression, Jack continues.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’d be an honest-to-god miracle if any intern managed to properly take care of themself. Hell, residents don’t do it either, and neither do attendings. Does Robby strike you as the kind of man who takes perfect care of himself?”
“That depends. Is my answer going to make it back to him?”
Jack huffs a quiet laugh. “Exactly. Doctors make the worst patients, in and out of a hospital setting. Knowing better doesn’t actually make us all that inclined to do better. Terrible misconception.”
He nudges the jacket on your lap. “So just take the jacket. One less thing to worry about.”
Emboldened by his recent streak of kindness towards you and the flush of fever running through your veins, you look over to him.
“You worry about me?”
Something dances in his eyes for a split second, gone before you can blink.
“I worry about all the interns and residents on my service, but especially the ones my best friend has taken a liking to.”
Right. Of course. He only cares because of Robby. And Robby only cares so he can add another doctor to the already short-staffed PTMC. It’s not like Jack actually likes you or anything.
You clutch the jacket to your stomach, finally finding the energy to get out of the car. Jack’s car.
“Well. Thanks for the ride, Dr. Abbot. And the jacket.”
“No problem, kid.”
And if later on that evening, in the safety of your tiny apartment, you take in the deep, fresh, almost spicy smell that makes up Jack, lingering on the jacket, that’s no one’s business but yours.
—
From that night on, it feels like Jack Abbot is everywhere.
Whether it’s something he’s doing on purpose or you’ve just developed a heightened sense to his whereabouts— it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s a whiff of his cologne (eerily similar to Dior Sauvage, which makes you shudder. Certainly he didn’t choose a cologne similar to the number one male manipulator scent on purpose?) or seeing his handwriting on a whiteboard or his notes in a chart, he’s there.
You’re being scheduled for night shifts fairly regularly now, in addition to the 24-hour shifts you have the pleasure of being put on as an intern.
Working a double isn’t horrific, really. Exhausting, sure, but Robby and Jack’s solid presence makes the shifts more bearable. Plus, you’re quickly becoming friends with the fresher residents, Whitaker and Santos, plus some of the older residents like Mohan and King. Even Dr. Langdon gives pretty solid advice and mentorship, despite the tension in the air whenever he happens to be working with or near Robby.
Normally, 24 hour shifts are grueling, but not impossible. Somewhere around the 15 or 16 hour mark, the sleep deprivation hits, and you can just coast on stress-induced inertia and a healthy does of energy drinks and mania.
Today, though, has been particularly fucking awful. Maybe it’s the fact that the fever never really went away, or the fact that you started your period the day before (being sick on your period should be illegal.) It’s probably both of those things.
But there isn’t really anything to do but grin and bear it. The day will pass, and you have the next two days off anyways. Just survive the next however-many hours of the shift and then you can go home, dress in exclusively fluffy clothes, and binge watch tv whilst eating heart-stopping junk food.
You’re distracted from your charting, propped up on the counter at the nurses station by a light tap on your shoulder and someone saying your name.
Dr. Langdon has sidled up next you, voice hushed.
“Hey, uh. I just wanted to let you know that you seem to have… bled through.”
If a spontaneous earthquake could open a chasm beneath your feet and swallow you whole, now would be the time.
“Fuck fuck-ity fuck fuck,” You mumble, wiping your hands down your face. “Right. Yeah. Of course. Thank you for letting me know.”
In a moment that is as mortifying as it is kind of sweet, Langdon passes you a hoodie that is clearly his.
“To tie around your waist,” He clarifies, holding the object out across the meager space between the two of you, voice a bit awkward and stilted, like you might decide to spit in his face or something.
You don’t actually know what it is that Dr. Langdon did before your arrival that makes the break room go quiet when he walks in (unless Dr. King is there) but you don’t particularly care. If it was truly something horrific that you should be worried about, he wouldn’t be working here. Robby wouldn’t let that kind of thing slide.
So you take the offered hoodie with a strained smile (can this shift just be over) and speed-walk to the break room, praying no one decides to snag you on the way there.
What you should do is go to your locker where your stash of pads, tampons, spare underwear, and extra scrubs are, and then probably the bathroom to get changed, so you can keep on going but you also just saw Dr. King go into the break room and you just really need a hit of her specific brand of optimism.
The woman in question perks up when she notices your arrival, hastily eating the same snack she always eats around this time— a tiny bag of pretzels.
She watches as you collapse into the chair across from her, letting your head thunk onto the table.
“Bad shift?”
“Bad life,” You grumble. “Dr. Langdon had to give me his hoodie to tie around my waist because I bled through onto my scrubs. Like a middle schooler who doesn’t know what pad sizes are for.”
Dr. King nods thoughtfully. “He asked me if it would be weird of him to let you know and offer his hoodie. To which I replied that periods are a normal bodily function and he’s a doctor.”
“Here here,” You half-heartedly cheer, any actual cheer or enthusiasm severely lacking in your voice. “How did you survive your intern year, Dr. King?”
“We’ve been working together for awhile, you can call me Mel,”
She pops another pretzel in her mouth before answering. “But to answer your question, I mostly just kept telling myself that failing wasn’t an option. Which. Probably isn’t helpful, or good advice, but it worked for me. Something that’s nice is if you have a fellow intern or doctor that you enjoy working with. I know the other two interns who matched into the PTMC dropped out of the course, so it’s just you, but you have Dr. Robby, right?”
You nod, picking absently at a spot on the table and ignoring the way that it wasn’t Robby who popped into your head, but Jack.
Your teeny, ignorable crush on him has become a full-blown thing, with semi-weekly dreams about him in various… situations, and casual daydreams at all hours of the day of what it would be like to just be with him, or hear him, in any capacity that couldn’t be qualified as work or a boss checking on his employee. Intern. Whatever.
Hormonal and fever-ish, you suddenly feel like you’re going to explode and die if you don’t have someone to confide in right this very second. You haven’t heard Mel really talk about anyone you work with outside of professional doctor-to-doctor conversation, not even about Dr. Langdon, who she seems almost suspiciously close with.
“Mel,” You start, voice a little too thick and watery to just be talking about your stupid, annoying, one-sided workplace crush, “Can I tell you a secret?”
She seems to consider the pros and cons first, and looks fairly caught off guard, but she answers. “Um. Sure?”
“Have you ever had a crush on a coworker before? Or like, a boss or mentor?”
Mel sets down her bag of pretzels. “Is this about Dr.—“
“I have the biggest crush on Dr. Abbot and I think it’s ruining my life.”
The words burst out of you all at once, and Mel’s expression goes from shocked, to confused, before finally settling in abject amusement.
“Ah,” She says, sliding the pretzels across to you. “Um. Well I personally don’t have a crush on Dr. Abbot, but I think I understand the sentiment.”
You bury your face into your hands and groan. “It’s awful. It’s so cliche. It’s so fucking Grey’s Anatomy.”
“I’ve never actually seen that show. Becca likes it though.”
Mel allows you a few moments of wallowing and pretzel eating before she speaks again.
“Have you… acted on it?”
“No!” You snap your head up. “I mean. No, I haven’t. I’m not naive enough to think that he would reciprocate. He’s an attending and I’m an intern.”
She leans in. “But…?”
“But sometimes… I wonder? I don’t know. I’m probably crazy. He drove me home the other day, cause my car died, and it was raining, and I got slapped by a patient, and that was when I first came down with this stupid fever, and like, that’s normal, right?”
Mel nods. “Fr— Langdon drives me to work when we share shifts, and sometimes when we don’t. I think Dr. Santos and Dr. Whitaker carpool too. So maybe?”
“Right. Yeah.”
She takes the pretzel bag back. “Is there more evidence that makes you feel crazy?”
Your skin flushes hot at the memory alone.
“He gave me his rain jacket. To keep.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Mel once again takes a few minutes, and the rest of her pretzels before responding.
“I’m honestly not the best person to ask for advice about this. I’ve been told I can be… dense when it comes to romantic endeavors.”
You shrug. “You’re a great listener, and you haven’t steered me wrong in the past.”
She brightens. “That’s good! I think my advice would be to talk to Dr. Mohan. She has experience with your… particular situation.”
Mel tosses the empty pretzel bag and heads toward the door. “I’ll let Robby know you’re taking ten, so don’t worry about someone looking for you while you’re changing.”
“You’re the best. I love you.”
The resident flushes at your gratitude, and then ducks out the door, leaving you alone to stew on her advice.
—
Talking to Dr. Mohan proves difficult, at first. How exactly do you start that conversation? “Hey, I heard you had advice on having a world-ending crush on your boss, got any tips?”
Additionally, she’s kind of hard to track down. You greatly respect Dr. Mohan’s work ethic and truly aspire to her unflinching devotion to patient care at the PTMC.
After a few days (which turns into a few weeks, because you are an emotional coward) of trying (and failing) to find a moment to talk, Dr. Mohan actually ends up finding you.
“Hey!” She jogs up to you as you’re walking to your car, a too-bright smile on her face for the fact that you both just got off a fourteen hour shift.
“Sorry to be that annoying coworker who talks to you in the parking lot, but I wanted to catch you before you left. Mel said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Right!” You stammer, slightly mortified. You admire Dr. Mohan so much and really want her to think you’re capable but you really need some advice on Jack Abbot as a whole, and it sounds like she’s the only expert around. “Yes. That. It’s a really normal question, you know.”
Dr. Mohan just nods, a smile still fixed on her face, like this is a totally normal conversation. “Uh, sure?”
There’s a beat of silence where you both stare at each other, and then she gasps.
“This is about Abbot, isn’t it?”
You groan, throwing your head back in defeat. “Am I that obvious?”
She laughs goodnaturedly. “No. Probably not. You’re just the only intern in the ED right now so I try to make it a habit to keep an eye on you. Plus, Mel is literally the only person in the world who knows about my now-dead crush on him, so. I just connected the dots.”
“He’s so hot, Dr. Mohan. I feel like I’m dying.”
She makes a noise of sympathy. “He is. It’s fucking annoying, at a certain point.”
“Thank you!” You shout, “Like it’s just so there. It should be illegal to just walk around and look like that. I should be focusing on like, studying and learning, but instead I’m just harboring this stupid crush on an attending.”
“Have you ever seen Grey’s—“
“Yes. I know. I can’t be Meredith. Meredith was like, always a mess. Am I a mess?”
Mohan purses her lips. “Well. You did just say you felt like you were dying.”
“I know,” You sigh. “It makes me feel… shallow. I like being a doctor. I was so excited to get matched into the PTMC, and this stupid crush is throwing me off my game.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“On my first night shift rotation I dropped a scalpel, picked it back up, and then ripped the purse strings on my first appendectomy.”
She winces. “Oh. That’s not… great.”
Your hand finds its way to your comfort necklace. “He found me crying in the supply closet like some medical student, and then he comforted me. It was terrible.”
Mohan starts ambling towards the direction you assume her car is in. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I’ve been caught crying in the supply closet several times. I think it’s a right of passage. And as for that second part…”
She shrugs. “Abbot gives credit where credit is due, but he won’t coddle you. If he actually offered real comfort or advice or whatever, then he meant it.”
“That’s what he said. It just didn’t really help the whole crush-on-him part. And then there was the slapping incident, and he drove me home, and now I have his rain jacket in my backseat in case my car dies again.”
Mohan actually looks taken back.
“Okay. It sounds to me like this is a situation that is in serious need of wine. Do you drink?”
“Whenever I have a spare twenty dollars.”
She grins. “I happen to have a couple bottles at home that might do the trick. Follow me back to my place?”
“Yes please.”
Wine and, eventually, takeout at Samira’s is much more enjoyable than you expected— considering the fact that you’re an intern and she’s a resident. She confides that she doesn’t have very many friends outside of the ED and was excited at the opportunity to have “real girl-time”.
She shares how she weathered her own seemingly life-ending crush on Jack, gasps and screams at the appropriate times when you tell her about the slapping, the events that occurred in the break room afterwards, the drive home, and the jacket.
You leave her apartment feeling lighter than ever. Like life might be worth living. Like you could survive your intern year.
Maybe everything will be okay.
—
Everything is not okay.
You’re now two full weeks into a never-ending fever, you keep getting stuck with shitty shifts (how many times a month can one person possibly be scheduled to work a double?) and top it all off, you’ve been pissed on not once, but twice in the same fucking shift.
Santos snorts when she sees you go by in your third set of scrubs for the day.
You shoot her a look. “Supportive as ever, Dr. Santos.”
“I try.”
You sink into the chair next to hers, taking a moment to press the heels of your hands into your eyes and maybe, like, take a thirty second nap.
It doesn’t help much.
There’s a particular misery in watching the day-shift rotation handoff with the night shift and not being able to join in the process. Because you’re still there. And will be, until you see them again for your handoff, in twelve fucking hours.
Patients tend to get bitchier the later it gets, and it’s one of those nights where every patient bleeds into the next in a never-ending sea of complaints, pain, and fixing.
The fixing is fine. You like the fixing.
You’re just… having a hard time keeping up with everything while the fever perpetually runs you down. It’s the kind of thing where no amount of sleep can help you. Unless it was for 48 hours straight and then you got another 48 hours off after that to relax while you’re awake, and then another 48 hours to be productive.
A vacation. A week off. You’re describing taking a week off work. It’s comical, actually. Imagine requesting a week off from work. Gloria or whoever it is would never grant that. Not as an intern.
You notice Jack lingering around your general vicinity, which is fairly normal on a night like tonight. Technically, as the only intern on shift, you’re the only liability he has to really worry about.
Somewhere around the eighteen hour mark, he slides into the chair next to you while you’re charting.
“You’re flagging.”
Your eyes burn as you tap information into the tablet, then check on the computer in front of you. “I’m fine. I just need a Redbull or something.”
He slides the tablet out of your hands. “Part of being a good doctor is knowing when to take a break. Can’t be a good doctor if you’re falling asleep during the exam, right?”
“I would never fall asleep during an exam.”
He shrugs. “I’ve seen it happen.”
Jack jerks his head towards the break room. “Take five. Get an energy drink or whatever. Then I want you on chairs for at least an hour.”
“Yes sir.”
He rolls his eyes. “Get going.”
Chairs don't prove to be as uneventful as you (and probably Jack) hoped it would be. You get vomited on by a teenage girl, who apologizes profusely when she finally manages to stop throwing up, narrowly avoid a swing from a patient that quickly becomes a behavioral case, and become an unwilling participant in another patient’s doctor fantasy.
Security had to get involved with that last one. It was. Something.
Your shift ends with little fanfare. It’s honestly a miracle you survived. You’re exhausted, achey, and still feverish. The only thing you can think about is crawling into your bed, indulging in a rare expense of turning your heat up, and sleeping until your next shift.
Walking into your apartment ends up being a slap in the face. First of all, it’s fucking freezing. As if you left every single window open while you were gone. Secondly, it’s dark. Like, not even the clock on the microwave is on.
“Fuck,” you mumble under your breath, tears beginning to burn with unshed tears digging through your bag and fumbling with your phone, about to text your landlord when you see that he’s already texted.
Eric (Landlord): Power and AC is down. Might take some time to fix. Power should be back on by tonight.
And that’s just the last straw, really.
You slam the door behind you, not even bothering to go inside your apartment at all, chest tight and face hot, you race down the stairs, trying to find Samira’s contact through blurry eyes. When you think you’ve found it you click call, collapsing on the curb with your body doubled over, crying like a crazy person into your knees, at something like nine in the morning.
The phone rings for a bit, and you’re about to give up when the line finally stops and somebody picks up.
“Hello?”
It’s not Samira who answers. It’s Jack.
You sniffle. “Why are you answering Samira’s phone?”
“I didn’t. I answered my phone. Because you called me. Are you okay?”
“Oh,” You decide to ignore his question, “I meant to call Samira. Sorry.”
“Wait,” Jack’s voice comes out all rough and tinny through the speaker, but even distorted through a phone, you could listen to it for hours, “Answer the question. Are you okay?”
Your bottom lip wobbles dangerously.
“The power’s out in my building. And the heating went out too. My landlord said the power won’t be on until tonight, and I just wanted to go to sleep, but it’s cold and I'm tired and this stupid fever won’t go away.”
“Do you have a place to stay?”
Always a man of action, Jack is.
You shrug, then make a non-committal noise when you remember he can’t see it. “I was supposed to call Samira and see if she’d let me sleep on her couch.”
“I have a guest bedroom.”
The statement hangs in the crisp morning air. You think of Jack’s encouraging advice, Jack’s steady presence, Jack’s warm car and his nice smelling rain- jacket. Jack, Jack, Jack.
“Jack?”
“Yes?”
“What’s your address?”
The drive over involves bawling your eyes out to Vienna by Billy Joel. It’s just that kind of day.
You have no problems finding parking (miraculously) and no one stops you as you head up to Jack’s apartment as directed.
It’s… fancy. Like, polished floor lobby, lounge area adjacent to the front desk fancy.
The actual building itself isn’t very tall, nothing like a skyscraper, so it’s not exactly surprising that Jack’s apartment is the penthouse. It’s just suddenly very awkward standing in front of the door, in the same sweatshirt you’ve had since high school, sweats that have seen better years, looking exactly like the kind of girl who sobbed on the ride over to Billy Joel.
Jack opens the door almost immediately after you knock, and.
If seeing him in scrubs was bad, it doesn’t hold a fucking candle to him in a tight, army green shirt and grey sweatpants. Grey sweatpants. That couldn’t have been intentional, right? Is he online enough to know these things? God.
His features soften when he takes in your tear-streaked face and disheveled appearance.
He makes a low noise in his throat.
“Oh, you poor thing. Come here,”
Jack had actually been gesturing to the apartment, saying ‘come inside’ but the dam breaks the moment he says “poor thing” and you don’t have the wherewithal to think anything more complex than “Jack=Comfort and Safety".
Your bag drops with a dull thud onto the ground and then you’re crashing into him, face pressed into his chest and arms wrapped around his middle. You can barely find it within yourself to be embarrassed.
Jack doesn’t react at first, going completely stiff in your hold, and you think maybe you’ve gone and fucked this up too, like everything good in your life, but right when you move to pull away a hand finds its way to the back of your head, and another rubs circles on your back.
“Poor girl,” he murmurs, voice a soothing rumble with your ear close to his chest, “They been running you ragged?”
You nod uselessly, feeling raw and cut open— like you’ve been smashed against a rock and everything you keep tucked inside is spilling out and you can’t stop it.
“I’m so tired.” You half-mumble-half-sob into him, a sentiment that feels too light to convey everything that’s happened since you became an intern at the PTMC, and everything else you don’t talk about that happened before.
“I know sweetheart, I know,” Jack is solid beneath your cheek and arms, a lifeboat in a storm. “How about we get you inside and get you warm, huh? That sound nice?”
At the promise of warmth you finally detach from him, shame burning through you when you eye the wet spot on his shirt.
“Sorry,” You say, voice barely above a whisper. “I think I got snot on your shirt.”
“Trust me kid, it’s seen worse.”
He grabs your bag before you can even make a move for it, and you trail behind him into his apartment, attempting to ground yourself by looking around his apartment.
It’s nice. Lived in, not sterile. It doesn’t, actually, look the inside of a dentist’s office, like you were half expecting. Most new apartments have that doctor’s office lobby feel. Not exactly comfortable when you’re a doctor and the goal of home is to not remind you of your job.
Jack hangs your bag on a hook by the door, right next to his own. Something twinges in your chest at the sight.
There’s a feeling under your skin you can’t place as you shuffle into his apartment, something warm and skittish that aches for this to not be a one time thing, to be able to compare the pale morning light you’re watching now to late afternoon sun. To know where he keeps his mugs, what drawer the silverware is in, if he’s got a junk drawer with random shit in it, and what the random shit is. What it feels like to be in his kitchen, shoulders brushing.
But that’s a lot of complicated things to name or voice just past the threshold of the foyer, so you wrap your arms around yourself and toe your shoes off, then pad quietly after him.
Jack is— inviting, or maybe enticing; all those words that beckon the skittish thing closer and it feels just on the tip of danger to obediently sit on the couch he ushers you to.
“By the way,” Jack says somewhere behind you, maybe in the kitchen? “I have a cat. His name is Charlie. He probably won’t come near you, but be warned, he’s an asshole when he wants to be.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I like cats. Especially the asshole ones.”
“That explains a lot of things.”
His statement is kind of loaded, chock full of subtext you don’t care to parse through at the moment.
“Um,” You start, feeling a bit unsteady, “Is— Do you mind if I shower? I kind of smell gross probably, and I feel… grimy. Your apartment seems clean and I’d hate to get my hospital grime on anything.”
Jack just chuckles. “One, I wouldn’t care if you got ‘hospital grime’ on anything because that would be a very hypocritical thing to care about, and two, of course you can shower. Do you have spare clothes?”
“I might’ve forgotten to grab those.”
Another huffy laugh. “That’s fine. You can borrow some of mine. I’ll leave them on the bed.”
That’s like. Wow. Yeah. You’re just gonna borrow some clothes from him. From Jack. You’re going to shower in Jack’s shower and use whatever bodywash he has (hopefully not 5-in-one) and then put on his clothes and you are totally capable of being Completely Normal about these things.
“I already started on dinner when you said you were coming over. Should be done by the time you get out of the shower. Chicken noodle okay?”
Damn Jack Abbot and damn your shitty emotional regulation and damn your life for putting you in these situations.
“Yeah,” You croak, thinking about things like soup and family and being cold and strong and alone, “Yeah that’s fine. Thank you.”
Jack politely does not comment on the fact that soup is reducing you to a tangled heap of emotions and tears, and instead directs you to where his shower is and says to use whatever you want and take however long you want. He says want, not need. You’re not sure if there’s an intention behind the word choice.
Once in the shower, you allow yourself time to cry, to feel awful and self-pitying and all those things that are terrible to go through in front of another person. His shower is expensive and the water is warm and he does not have 5-in-one. There’s a litter box nestled next to the toilet, and it’s not funny, but it kind of is, because Jack would be the kind of guy to look at a litter box and put it right next to the toilet. Everything in its place.
Maybe that’s your problem. You haven’t felt like anything is in the right place in years.
You want to stay in the shower, in the bubble of protection it provides, but the idea of running up Jack’s water bill is enough to guilt you into getting out. You shiver, dry, aggressively attempt to make yourself look less like a wreck at the sink, and then tip-toe into the attached bedroom and carefully pull on the clothes Jack left for you on the bed; a faded, oversized college shirt, and a comfy pair of sweatpants.
They smell like him. You smell like him, like his body wash. The house smells like him. Everything you take in is a pleasant assault of Jack, Jack, Jack.
Enough guilt to fuel an entire room of ex-Catholic’s is the only thing keeping you from snooping around his room. The idea of stumbling upon something private or hidden away makes you feel slimy and gross, so you exit the bedroom and pretend like you don’t feel like a foster dog on its first night home from the shelter.
(Do shelter dogs miss the shelter? Do they miss its familiarity? Do dogs miss anything at all?)
The apartment smells of more spices and good smelling food than you privately thought Jack capable of. You’d read him as the kind of guy to subsist on takeout and maybe like, protein bars. But he’s dutifully stirring a metal pot with all the diligence of the military man that he once was.
Quietly, as if he might throw the wooden spoon he’s stirring with if you make too much noise or take up too much space, you carefully pull out a barstool in front of his kitchen island, the one closest to the door, and haul yourself onto it.
He gives you an examining glance over his shoulder, turns a knob on the stove, then rests his forearms on the island counter across from you. His rather delicious looking forearms, you might add.
“Feeling better after your shower?”
You hum an affirmation, folding your arms and resting your chin on them.
“Isn’t it kind of weird to make soup for breakfast?”
He shrugs. “It’s dinner for us. Or, well, me. I’m not sure your body knows what meal it is.”
He taps a pointer finger rhythmically on the counter. “Any word from your landlord?”
“No. Sorry for… all of this. I know you’re tired.”
“I wish you’d stop apologizing for things I don’t mind doing for you.”
You don’t really know how to respond to that, or what to do with how it makes you feel, so you elect to save it for later. Good at compartmentalizing, ED doctors are.
You clear your throat. “I can call Samira whenever. She’d probably be excited to have girl time. So you know. Don’t feel like— I have other options. If or when you want me to leave.”
“Do you want to leave?”
You wish he’d stop asking questions you don’t want to answer.
You try to play it off, smother your fear and exhaustion with humor. Robby’s kid, through and through.
“Well, I can’t have you getting sick of me. You’re the only person I know who has a very rob-able house if this whole internship doesn’t pan out.”
Jack straightens, shoulders pulling and flexing. “Who said I’d get sick of you? Maybe I like the idea of you in my house.”
“Do you?”
You ask the question before you’re aware of how terrified you are of the answer. But you’ve already said it, and it feels nice to be the one asking the hard question instead.
Jack, likely experienced in this sort of thing, doesn’t look outwardly bothered by it, but he gets a sort-of-sad look on his face, almost like he’s disappointed that you had to ask.
“Have I given you any reason to think otherwise?”
“I don’t know,” You look down, picking at a hangnail to avoid his expression and his eyes and his everything, “I don’t want to assume anything.”
“You’ve already assumed quite a bit.”
You scrunch your face. “That’s different. Those are safe assumptions.”
“Are they?”
“Obviously, it’s safer to assume that you don’t want me to stay here, or at least not for very long, because if I assume that I do I’ll bother you and I want you to—“
You cut yourself off, jaw shutting with a firm click, but the end of the sentence hangs in the air unspoken anyways. It’s not hard to figure out what you were going to say.
I want you to like me.
Jack sighs, and alarm blares are going off in your head and your chest starts to feel tight and cold despite the warmth of his apartment, and then he’s rounding the island and you turn your body to follow him —never turn you back, never let your guard down— and then he’s standing in front of you, over you, and you’re not sure if you want to run or metaphorically curl up at his feet, tail tucked.
It’s pathetic. It’s embarrassing. It’s impossible to ignore.
(What does a shelter dog think, on that first night? Do they hope? Do dogs hope?)
He raises a hand, slowly, giving you a chance to lean away, and when you don’t, it comes to rest on the side of your face, his thumb swiping at the barely-there wetness from earlier tears.
It’s cleaning the cut from the slap, it’s a kindness you can curl into, and it might be a threat. Might be bad, might turn harsh and painful, might leave without a word.
Unlike that day in the break room, there’s no fluorescent lights to suck any heat out of the room and no gloves as a barrier; as a reminder of who he is, of what you are, of how things work.
It’s just you and Jack, in Jack’s apartment, wearing Jack’s clothes, and pretty soon you’re going to eat food that Jack made. Just for you.
And you think maybe, possibly, if he stops here you could kind of hold onto this moment for the rest of your life and it would get you through being alive and strong and alone, and you’d make it through this, whatever this is, if he stops here.
He doesn’t. He starts talking.
“I like knowing that you’re safe. That you’re taken care of. I like knowing with certainty that these things are true because I’m the one making sure of it.”
Your breath hitches in your chest.
“That’s kind of a lot of work, though.”
He hums. “It is. Luckily, I just so happen to be a pretty hard worker.”
Everything about the current situation is a lot and your nerves are over-taxed and dialed up to hundred, so it’s not surprising that you start crying again.
Jack brings up a second hand to the other side of your face and gently wipes away the tears as they come. It feels sort of like the physical version of everything he’s been doing for you since that day in the supply closet.
“You don’t have to do anything, or say anything, or make any kind of decision right now, okay? We can do whatever you want. I’ll do whatever you want.”
There’s the word choice again; want, not need. Is there a difference? What does the difference mean to him? What does he mean? Why is he doing any of this?
Jack's phone goes off in his pocket, and he steps back, drops his hands, and goes back to the stove.
Jack said you don’t have to make a decision right now, but you kind of feel like if you don’t do something you’re going to be sick with everything that’s swirling and clawing inside you, threatening to burst. Like the very essence of you is going to explode, and your soul will be painted on Jack’s perfectly decorated walls.
That would be something, wouldn’t it.
You stay seated at the island, turning to stare at Jack’s back while he adds the final touches to the soup. He doesn’t talk anymore, but he keeps looking back every few minutes, like he’s making sure you’re still there.
Eventually Jack turns the stove off, dishes up a bowl of soup for you, and sets it gently in front of you. He uses his pinky to cushion the placing of the bowl, so there’s no loud clinking noise when he sets the bowl down.
There’s a tiny sprig of parsley on top of the soup, right in the center. Like a Panera ad for soup in September.
You start crying again, in earnest.
“I’m sorry,” You gasp, pressing the heels of your hands into your eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m— I don’t know. I don’t know.”
You’re hoping the last sentence encompasses an entire lifetime of events, accidents, mistakes, and memories that have never been able to find a place in your head except dead center, at the forefront of your mind at all times, stamped on your forehead for anyone with eyes to see.
Your life hasn’t been wants or choices for a very long time. And here Jack is, giving you an array of both, and saying things like he wants you to want.
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Hey, hey hey hey, shhh,” Strong arms wrap around you, tucking your head into a warm chest, effectively shutting off all sensory input that isn’t Jack. “You’re okay, you’re safe, you’re okay, I got you.”
He rubs circles into your back, then switches to tracing shapes, and he lets you cry into him again and he doesn’t tell you to stop, or to calm down, or you’re being too much too fast.
“You’re okay, you’re gonna be okay sweetheart. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
—
You, embarrassingly, fall asleep right there, sitting at the kitchen island over a bowl of soup and twenty-something years of holding up your life with hands that never quite seemed big enough to do it.
You wake up in Jack’s bed, his comforter pulled up to your chin and the clock at the bedside table reading 8:17 p.m. There’s the muffled sound of several voices coming from beyond the door.
Holy shit. What the fuck.
Deciding to ignore the implication that Jack carried you to bed, you mentally take stock of what’s around you.
In front of the clock is your phone (plugged in to charge), a glass of water, and a note with Jack’s handwriting on it.
Kid-
I’ll probably be in the ED for the night shift by the time you wake up. I called Mohan (who called Mel, who was with Langdon, for reasons unknown) to go to your place and grab you some things. There may be people in the apartment when you wake up. You are in no way obligated to interact with them. They have to leave eventually.
Charlie is in the room with you because he hates strangers, but he probably won’t leave the bathroom. Probably. Drink water and eat something, if you can. Text me if you need anything.
The voices beyond the door are, more than likely, the aforementioned individuals who have now seen the glorified closet you call home. It’s not ideal, but you’re wrung out and don’t have the energy to really care. Besides, Samira and Mel are too nice to judge you that hard (you hope) and from what you’ve heard, Langdon isn’t really in a place to say anything.
On one hand, going out there requires socializing. Which, ew. On the other hand, Samira and Mel are the best. Langdon is maybe okay.
Before you can talk yourself out of it, you shuffle out of bed and then continue shuffling to the door, hoping that whatever you look like isn’t too terribly awful.
Samira, Mel, and Langdon are standing around the kitchen island, various takeout containers and bottles of alcohol littering the space. For some reason, Trinity, Dennis, and Robby are also present.
Samira and Langdon are engaged in what looks to be a rather animated discussion-slash-argument, and Mel is standing just a little closer to Langdon than what could be considered normal for friends. Trinity is very obviously ignoring Langdon’s general existence, bickering with Dennis on the couch, and Robby is seated in the armchair by the window, nursing a beer and watching both conversations unfold.
You sniff aggressively, and all heads snap to you.
“There are more of you here then there’s supposed to be,” You grumble, scrubbing at your face. “Why are you all here?”
Mel is the first to speak.
“It was Frank actually!” Trinity rolls her eyes, and part of you wants to share the sentiment, “He figured Trinity would be upset that something happened to you and he knew and didn’t tell her, so Trinity decided that me and Samira would get your stuff while everyone else stayed here in case you woke up before we came back!”
Wow, okay, that’s. A Lot.
You squint. “That doesn’t explain why you’re all here. I mean it does, but only like, why you’re here physically.”
Robby frowns. “We heard that you were going through a rough time and you had to stay with Jack, so we came.”
Trinity snorts on the couch and Dennis, next to her, looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm.
Robby shoots her a look, but continues. “We care about you. We— I don’t want you to feel like you have to do everything on your own. In or out of the ED.”
Trinity blows out a loud sigh and low whistle. “Jee-zus Robby, give the woman some time to wake up before trying to induce tears again.”
Robby does look a little apologetic, maybe a teensy bit chastised (and annoyed that Trinity was the one doing the chastising) and turns his deep brown eyes back to you.
"Sorry. Can't help these Dad tendencies, you know."
Your face gets hot, maybe a tiny, wet prickle behind your eyes forms while Robby smiles, and the tension leaves the room all in one go, and you start to think that maybe things are in the right place.
–
At the ED, Jack Abbot, who's been checking his phone whenever he gets a free moment like a highschooler with a crush, opens the first text that pops up on his screen after hours of waiting.
It's a picture from Robby. You, with your head thrown back in a cackle of a laugh, not a single bit of stress evident in any of the lines of your body. There's one text accompanying the picture:
Please don't make me give you a shovel talk. I think you already know what's at stake here.
Jack snorts and pockets his phone, because yeah, he does.
–
When Jack finally gets back to his apartment, he's half-expecting to see the kind of mess that a large grouping of obnoxious people leave behind. Trash, maybe a few red solo cups, empty takeout containers, someone asleep on his couch, someone passed out on the floor.
He's not expecting to see a clean space. The only evidence that people were there at all is some rearranged pillows, a half-empty bottle of wine on the counter, and some new takeout menus on his fridge.
And then there's you. You're lying on the couch, eyes glued to the TV, watching a show he doesn't really recognize. There's a well-loved backpack on the floor, just under the coffee table. The shocking bit is Charlie, his resident asshole, is 'loafing' right on your chest, purring away.
You lift your head when you hear the jingle of his keys, a smile immediately brightening your face. He mentally takes a picture, right there, so he can remember this exact moment forever.
"What'd you bribe him with?" Jack says instead of something much more neurotic, like 'You don't have to go back to your place when the power comes back on.'
You shrug, unaware of his emotional and romantic pain. "You were right. He came out from under the bed after everybody left. He kind of growled at me for a little bit, but once I settled down here he just kind of... came right up."
You plant a little kiss to the top of his head, right in between furry ears. Great, now Jack's jealous of a senior cat with one ear who licks his own butt. "How could I resist this face? I see why you brought him home."
Jack rounds the end of the couch, shuffling by, and Charlie opens his eyes just enough to shoot him a look that Jack takes to mean: If you make her get up and move me, I will kill you in your sleep.
Jack does not disturb his cat as he sits down on the couch. There's a moment when things almost get hairy- you pull your legs back when he goes to sit, slightly jostling The Asshole, who pins his only ear back in annoyance.
Jack solves this problem by taking your legs, clad in some soft flannel pajama pants and pink fuzzy socks, and lays them across his lap. There. Problem solved.
The warmth of your legs on his lap and the look on your face is reward enough for him. He can't think of a way he'd rather spend his time.
Jack, in a rare show of mercy, does not tease you, and decides that you've probably had enough excitement for one day.
"So," He says instead, looking up at the TV and grimacing at the mutilated corpse on the screen, "What are we watching?"
He watches you shrink into yourself. He hates it when you do that. He hates that you feel like you have to.
"Uh, Bones. I can turn it off, though. I'm sure you don't want to watch this."
He doesn't answer the question you've not-subtly voiced, instead choosing to redirect the conversation.
"Why did you put it on?"
You start chewing on your lower lip. Your signature 'I don't want to answer this question so I'm going to think really hard about it' move.
"It's kind of my comfort show? I don't know. I watched it a lot growing up. We didn't have cable, but the hotels I stayed at sometimes did. I'd wait until my dad fell asleep and then I'd turn on the TV and watch from the sci-fi or drama channels. Watched a lot of Bones. Supernatural too, and sometimes Doctor Who, if it was on. But Bones was my favorite."
The characters on the screen are involved in some sort of car chase now, police siren flashing on a black SUV. Jack isn't paying attention to that at all, because this is the first time since the day you walked into the PTMC and introduced yourself that he's ever heard you talk about your childhood.
"How come?"
"I don't know. I've always liked procedural shows. Had a huge House MD phase. Death and bones and corpses and stuff has never really grossed me out, which is part of the reason I became a doctor. But also..."
You point to the male character. "You see him? That's Booth. Seeley Booth. They all have kind of crazy names. He's an FBI agent, and his partner is that woman there. Temperance Brennan. Booth calls her Bones."
"She doesn't look like an FBI agent."
You smile. "She's not. She's a forensic anthropologist, but she consults on murder cases and stuff like that because she's kind of a genius. She's smart, strong, and capable. She and Booth don't always get along, because they both can be headstrong and stubborn. But he respects and trusts her, implicitly. No matter what. They love each other."
Your throat bobs, but your voice is steady when you speak.
"And when Brennan needs him, if she's in trouble or she needs him by her side, even if she doesn't know she does, he's always there. He always saves her."
Jack can picture it, in his mind. You, small and alone, watching these characters on some shitty hotel TV and getting it into your head that this kind of thing only exists in TV shows. He pictures you dreaming of having a Booth, of having someone to be there for you, to pick you up when you fall. He thinks of you crying in the supply closet and how quietly you'd done it. Almost silent.
He thinks of what happens to a person to make them learn how to cry without making a sound.
He rests a hand on your ankle, fingers instinctively drifting towards the pulse point there- posterior tibial. He keeps two fingers on it, even though he can't feel it through your fuzzy socks. With his thumb he makes circles, because he's seen how you lean into Robby's shoulder grabs, how you preen at physical and verbal praise, how you'd slumped like a marionette with its strings cut into his arms just yesterday.
"Jack?" Your voice is tentative, unsure.
"Hmm?"
"Am I..." You start chewing your lip again, "Are you— I don't to assume anything. So if I fuck this up and make you uncomfortable—"
"I want to kiss you."
Jack has learned how to speak fluent you. He knows how to stop an incoming spiral, how to soothe old wounds rearing their heads.
He continues when you don't speak.
"I want you to wear my clothes. I want to take care of you. I want you, in whatever way you'll let me."
"Oh."
"I was laying it on pretty thick, kid."
You look away from him, and this is another moment he'd like to keep forever.
"I thought I was just reading into things!"
"Do you think I call every intern sweetheart?"
Jack is positive Charlie's presence on your stomach is the only thing keeping you from actively squirming in place.
"I thought maybe you were just one of those guys. Samira said it was possible!"
He rolls his eyes. "You can't ask Mohan for romantic advice. She's you in a different font."
"I'm going to take that as a compliment."
You turn back to your show, losing yourself in the plot for a while. When the murderer has been caught and the credits are playing, you look at him again.
"We don't. Um. Can we just keep doing this? For now?"
For the first time since meeting you, Jack gets to say exactly what he's thinking.
"We can do this forever. We can do whatever you want."
Summary: On a random Tuesday, you wake up tangled together in the late-afternoon light, exhausted and half-asleep, when Jack casually suggests getting married before your shift.
Pairing: Jack Abbot / f!Reader (reader works in night shift, nothing else described I think).
Rating: M.
Tags: Established Relationship. Tooth rotting fluff. Unconventional marriage proposal. Eloping.
Word count: 3904 words.
a/n: So... after publishing part 5 of my Harry Castillo story I word-vomited this in like an hour (don't get used to this 😅)... and I was like... I should wait to publish, but I just can't... so... here it is. Also, I'm aware that there are probably inaccuracies in how the courthouse system works, but, well... this is fiction, so... bear with me okay?
Here's my new obsession, The Pitt 😆, and even though I'm a Robby girl, this idea just wouldn't leave my head. I hope you like it! Also, English is not my first language and the corrector only goes so far, so if you see any weird stuff, I'm so sorry, I hope it doesn't bother your reading too much!
MASTERLIST
The apartment is honey-gold with late afternoon light, that weird hour that doesn’t belong to anyone.
Not morning. Not evening.
Just that quiet, suspended time night shifters live in, when the rest of the world is halfway through their day and yours is just beginning.
The clock on the stove reads 4:42 PM, but your brain still thinks it’s morning. Your body thinks it’s midnight. And Jack is wrapped around you like you’re the only solid thing in the room.
The blackout curtains don’t quite meet in the middle, so a stripe of sunlight cuts across the bed, warm against the sheets.
It lands right across his bare shoulder. Golden, soft. You trace it lazily with your fingers. He doesn’t wake.
He’s half on top of you, one leg hooked between yours, arm tight around your waist, face tucked into your neck. His breath is warm and slow and smells faintly like the toothpaste you both used at eight this morning before collapsing into bed.
Post-shift sleep always feels heavier, like drowning in cotton.
You shift a little. His grip tightens instantly. A low, sleepy hum against your collarbone.
“…don’t go,” he mumbles.
“I’m not,” you whisper.
“You’re warm.”
“So are you.”
“Good.”
He sinks closer, like a cat claiming territory.
You smile into the pillow.
This is your favorite part of night shift life, the world feels small. Private. Like you two exist slightly out of sync with everyone else. No emails, no traffic... No expectations.
Just him.
Your fingers slip under his t-shirt, tracing the familiar line of his spine; he sighs, then blinks one eye open.
“What time is it?” he croaks.
You squint at the clock.
“Four forty-something.”
He groans dramatically and buries his face deeper into your neck.
“Illegal,” he mutters. “The sun shouldn’t exist when I’m conscious.”
“You picked night shift.”
“I was lied to.”
You laugh softly, and his stubble scratches your skin when he kisses your shoulder, slow and lazy.
Neither of you moves to get up, you still have time. Report isn’t until seven. There’s always that dangerous illusion that you have plenty of time.
His hand slides under your shirt, resting warm against your stomach. Not sexual. Just… grounding, like making sure you’re real.
You turn to face him. His hair’s a disaster, pillow lines on his cheek, eyes puffy with sleep. God, you love him like this. Soft. Unarmored. Just Jack.
“Hey,” you murmur.
“Mm.”
“You okay?”
He nods, then shrugs. Then stares at you for a long moment like he’s trying to memorize your face.
“What?” you ask.
He studies you another second. Then, very casually, very quietly:
“What if we got married before shift?”
You blink.
“…what?”
“What if we got married today,” he repeats, like he’s suggesting takeout. “Before work.”
You prop yourself up on one elbow.
“Jack. We just woke up.”
“I know.”
“You still have pillow creases on your face.”
“So marry me anyway.”
You stare at him.
He doesn’t smile. He’s serious.
Soft. Calm. Certain.
“There’s that courthouse by the hospital,” he says. “Closes at seven.”
“…you’ve thought about this.”
“Maybe.”
“Jack.”
He exhales through his nose, thumb rubbing slow circles on your hip.
“I just keep thinking,” he says quietly, “how every shift feels like roulette.”
You know. You’ve both seen it. The calls that change everything. The families. The codes. How fast a normal day becomes the worst day of someone’s life.
“I don’t want to keep waiting for some perfect moment,” he continues. “Because we don’t get those. We get vending machine dinners and trauma bays and five minutes together in supply closets.”
You snort.
“Romantic.”
“Shut up, I’m trying.”
He cups your cheek, his hand is warm, steady.
“I already feel married to you,” he says. “You’re the first person I want after every shift. You’re the one I fall asleep with at eight in the morning. You’re home.”
Your throat tightens.
“So… what if we just make it official?” he murmurs. “Today. Before we clock in.”
“This is the least traditional proposal ever.” You reply, mid-laugh.
“I’m aware.”
“It’s very ‘we have forty minutes before report.’”
“Extremely on brand for us.”
You look at him, at the messy hair. The sleepy eyes. The absolute sincerity. No kneeling, no grand speech.
Just him. Choosing you. Right now. Every day.
You lean down and kiss him. Slow. Soft.
When you pull back, your forehead rests against his.
“Okay,” you whisper.
He freezes.
“…okay?”
“Yeah,” you breathe. “Let’s go get married before shift.”
He stares at you like you just rewrote gravity.
Then he laughs, bright and disbelieving, and pulls you into the tightest hug.
“Oh my god,” he says into your hair. “We’re insane.”
“Completely.”
“We’re going to show up to trauma married.”
“Dana is going to lose it. And Robby.”
“Worth it.”
Sunlight creeps further across the bed, reality creeping in. You groan.
“We have, like, an hour to shower and not look like raccoons.”
He kisses you again, quick and sure.
“C’mon,” he says, sliding out of bed and grabbing your hand. “Wife-to-be.”
*************
You stand in front of the closet in your underwear twenty minutes later, staring at your clothes like they personally betrayed you.
Scrubs, hoodies, old band tees, three identical cardigans… Why do you own nothing remotely bridal?
You huff out a breath.
“This is so stupid,” you mumble, rifling through hangers.
Then…
Your hand pauses in the back. The white dress. You’d forgotten about it. Simple. Soft cotton. Knee-length. Something you bought last summer for a friend’s birthday dinner and never wore again. Nothing fancy, no lace. No drama, but clean. Light. Easy.
You pull it out and hold it up. It looks… right. You tug it on. Bare legs. Minimal makeup. Hair still a little messy no matter what you do. You look like yourself.
You study your reflection… A woman about to get married before a 7 p.m. trauma shift.
Completely unhinged behavior.
You smile.
Perfect.
When you step out into the living room, Jack is buttoning up a clean dark shirt. Not scrubs yet, actual clothes. You stop walking.
Because…
Oh.
Oh no.
He looks unfair. Dark jeans. Rolled sleeves. Hair still slightly damp from the shower. That stupidly handsome jawline, the faint shadow of stubble… like he accidentally walked out of a “small-town courthouse wedding” indie movie.
He looks up. Freezes.
“…hi,” he says softly.
The way he says it, like you just knocked the air out of him, makes your stomach flip.
“You look…” he trails off.
“Don’t say bridal,” you warn.
“I was gonna say beautiful.”
You swallow.
“Good. Stick with that.”
He steps closer, hands sliding around your waist, thumbs brushing the fabric of the dress like he can’t believe it’s real.
“You look like you,” he murmurs.
“That good or bad?”
“The best.”
He kisses you. Slow. Warm. Like you’ve got all the time in the world, even though you absolutely don’t.
***********
The courthouse is only ten minutes away. Early evening light spills gold across the sidewalk. People are still out, walking dogs, grabbing coffee, living their normal Tuesday lives. And you’re sitting in the passenger seat thinking: I might have a husband in an hour.
Your hand is laced with his over the center console. He keeps squeezing your fingers like he needs to check you’re still there.
“You nervous?” you ask.
“A little,” he admits.
“Regretting your impulsive life decisions?”
“Never.”
A beat.
“Okay maybe a little but in a hot way.”
You laugh.
God, you love him.
The courthouse steps are quiet, almost empty. You step out of the car, heart suddenly thundering.
This is real.
This is happening.
Jack glances at the building, then at you. Then…
“…shit.”
“What?”
“I forgot something.”
Your stomach drops.
“What did you forget?”
“I’ll be right back. Two minutes. Stay here.”
“Jack…?”
But he’s already jogging down the sidewalk.
You blink.
“Jack!”
He waves without turning around and disappears around the corner. You just stand there. Alone. Outside a courthouse. In a white dress. About to get married. Possibly abandoned.
“…cool,” you mutter. “Love this for me.”
You check your phone. No texts. No calls.
Five minutes pass. Then seven.
Okay.
Now you’re spiraling.
Did he panic? Did this suddenly feel too real? Did you both just speedrun a proposal and now he’s having a crisis behind a vending machine somewhere?
Right when you’re about to march back to the car…
“Hey!”
You turn and there he is. A little out of breath, hair wind-tousled, grinning like an idiot. Relief slams into you so hard you almost cry.
“You absolute jerk,” you snap, marching toward him. “Where did you…”
He holds something up between his fingers. Two small velvet boxes. Your brain short-circuits.
“…what.”
“There’s a jeweler two blocks over,” he says, slightly breathless. “I couldn’t… I didn’t want you to not have rings.”
Your throat closes.
“I know we said courthouse quick and whatever,” he continues, suddenly shy, “but… I wanted something you could look down at during shift and remember we did this. That it’s real.”
He opens the boxes. Two simple bands.
Gold. Clean. Classic.
Nothing flashy, just solid. Forever.
Your eyes fill instantly.
“You ran to buy rings?” you whisper.
“Yeah.”
“You idiot,” you choke out, smiling.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “But I’m your idiot.”
You throw your arms around him.
He laughs into your hair, hugging you tight. He presses his forehead to yours.
“C’mon,” he whispers. “Let’s get married before we’re late for work.”
***********
The courthouse doors open with a heavy, reluctant creak, like the building itself is tired.
Inside, the air smells faintly of disinfectant and old paper, the kind of scent every public building seems to share. The lights are too bright after the soft gold of outside, fluorescent and unforgiving, humming quietly overhead. Beige tile floors, plastic chairs lined against the wall, a corkboard cluttered with notices about parking permits and jury summons. It’s deeply, aggressively ordinary.
You look at Jack. He looks at you.
And something about the sheer lack of romance makes you both start laughing under your breath, like kids who snuck into somewhere they shouldn’t be.
“This is it, huh?” you murmur.
He squeezes your hand. “Five-star venue. Very exclusive.”
Your fingers stay threaded together as you check in at the clerk’s desk. There, a tired woman with reading glasses squints at you both.
“Marriage license?” she asks.
Jack nods.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looks between you, then down at your dress, then at his shirt.Then back at you with the faintest, knowing smile.
“Night shift?” she asks.
You both freeze.
“…how did you-”
“Honey, I’ve worked this desk twenty years,” she says. “I can spot hospital people a mile away.”
You laugh. She slides the forms under the glass.
“Fill these out. Ceremony room’s at the end of the hall. Judge’ll be free in ten.”
Ten minutes. Your heart flips. Ten minutes until he’s your husband.
While Jack finishes the paperwork, you wander a few steps away, suddenly jittery with energy. There’s a tiny vending machine nook down the corridor.
And next to it…
A sad little stand. Plastic buckets. Half-wilted carnations. Baby’s breath. And one bunch of small white daisies wrapped in cellophane. Probably leftover from someone’s graduation or something.
You stare at them.
They’re imperfect. A little messy. A little crooked. You love them immediately.
Three dollars in coins from your scrubs pocket. That’s all they cost. You peel the plastic off and hold them in your hands.
Simple. Soft. Enough.
When you walk back, Jack looks up. Sees the flowers. His entire face melts.
“Where did you get those?” he asks.
“High-end floral boutique,” you say seriously. “Next to the vending machine.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“They were three dollars.”
“Still beautiful.”
He says it like he means you. Not the flowers. You feel heat climb your cheeks.
Your last names get called and you walk inside. The ceremony room is tiny, smaller than you expected, just a little office with folding chairs and a state flag in the corner. A fake ficus plant. A desk pushed against the wall.
That’s it.
No music. No aisle. Just you. Him. A middle-aged judge with kind eyes and sensible shoes.
She smiles gently.
“Just the two of you today?”
Jack squeezes your hand.
“Yeah,” he says. “Just us.”
Perfect.
Two courthouse employees linger near the wall with clipboards, polite and detached. Witnesses, apparently. One of them gives you a small smile, like she’s seen this a hundred times and still finds it sweet. It makes everything feel oddly real.
Not a dream. Not something private and imaginary. Official. Documented. Witnessed.
The judge says a few simple words. Nothing flowery, nothing long, just talk of partnership and commitment and choosing each other every day. The ordinary miracle of building a life side by side. The language is plain, almost practical, which somehow makes it land harder.
You barely hear half of it, because you’re too busy looking at Jack. At the way he’s looking at you like you hung the stars yourself. Eyes soft. A little glassy. Like he can’t quite believe you’re real, or that this is actually happening.
There are no vows. No speeches. No promises you rehearsed in the mirror. Just the judge glancing between you and asking, gently:
“Do you take this man to be your husband?”
“I do,” you say, voice steadier than you expected.
“And you? Do you take this woman to be your wife?”
“I do,” he answers, just as quick, like there was never any other option.
He reaches into his pocket, fingers fumbling slightly as he pulls out the small velvet box from earlier. For the first time since you got here, he looks nervous.
Not scared. Just… careful. Like this matters more than anything.
He slides the ring out and takes your left hand, his touch warm and familiar. You feel the faint tremor in his fingers as he guides the band over your knuckle. It’s simple gold, nothing fancy, but when it settles into place it feels strangely right, like something that’s always belonged there.
Like it was waiting for you. Your throat tightens.
“Okay,” you murmur softly, blinking fast. “My turn.”
You open the other box and take his hand. His skin is warm, pulse steady under your fingertips. You push the ring down slowly, feeling the shape of his hand, memorizing the moment. He watches you like you’re doing something sacred.
When the band slides into place, he lets out a quiet breath, almost a laugh.
Like relief.
Like home.
The judge smiles at both of you, satisfied, and closes the folder with a soft clap.
“Well,” she says gently, “that’s it.”
A tiny pause. Then:
“You may kiss your wife.”
The word hits you both at the same time. Wife.
His breath catches. His hand slides up your cheek, thumb brushing just under your eye, gentle and reverent, like you’re something fragile and holy and he’s afraid you might disappear if he moves too fast.
And then he kisses you. Slow. Deep. Not rushed. Not messy. Just warm and sure and full of everything you don’t have words for. It tastes like toothpaste and coffee and him. Like early mornings driving home half-asleep. Like shared granola bars at 3 a.m. Like every shift you’ve survived shoulder to shoulder.
Like home.
When you pull back, your foreheads rest together and you’re both smiling like idiots, a little dazed.
Married.
Just like that.
No music. No aisle. No big moment. Just love. And fluorescent lighting.
You huff out a shaky laugh, tears threatening anyway. “We really just did that.”
“Yeah,” he says softly.
He turns your hand slightly, brushing his thumb over your new ring like he needs to check it’s real. “Hey,” he adds, quieter, almost shy. “My wife.”
Your heart does a little jump.
“My husband,” you say back.
You check your phone out of habit and immediately grimace. “It’s 6:18.”
He snorts. “Of course it is.”
There’s no dramatic rush, no sprinting for the door. Just the two of you exchanging a look that says yeah, that tracks.
You grab his hand, bouquet tucked against your hip, and he squeezes your fingers once before leading you back out into the hallway.
“C’mon,” he says, already walking. “If we’re late, you’re explaining it to Dana.”
“That’s not fair, this was your idea.”
“Yeah,” he says, a small smirk tugging at his mouth. “Worth it though.”
And together you head back to the car, rings catching the last light of the evening, two slightly underdressed, newly married idiots on their way to clock in for night shift like nothing monumental just happened at all. Like this is just another day.
Only now, you’re his. And he’s yours.
***********
Inside the ER, the familiar sounds hit immediately; phones ringing, someone laughing too loudly at the desk, the squeak of stretcher wheels, the constant low murmur of controlled chaos. The smell of antiseptic and stale coffee wraps around you like muscle memory.
Lockers first.
The white dress gets folded carefully into your bag, softer now, like it belongs to another life entirely. You pull on your scrubs, tie your hair back, wash your face quickly.
For a moment, you just stand there looking at your left hand. The ring catches the fluorescent light when you flex your fingers. Simple gold, nothing flashy. But it feels heavier now. Warmer.
You turn it once around your finger, just to feel it there. Still real. Still yours.
When you step out, Jack’s already finished changing. He bumps your shoulder lightly as you pass each other, an unconscious touch, the same as always, except now it sends a little electric current up your spine.
Your husband.
Jesus.
You’re going to lose your mind if you keep thinking that.
Dana is at the nurses’ station when you walk out, flipping through charts with the kind of focus that suggests someone’s personally offended her with bad handwriting.
“Nice of you two to join us,” she says without looking up. “Thought you called out together or something.”
“Tempting,” you reply, logging into the computer beside her.
“Yeah, yeah. You can rest when you’re dead.”
It’s normal. Completely normal. The same start to every shift you’ve had for months, which feels surreal, considering you got married less than an hour ago.
Report rolls on. Room numbers. Admits. Staffing gripes. Someone already asking about coffee. You jot notes automatically, brain sliding into work mode like muscle memory.
Across the station, Jack leans beside Robby, talking through bed assignments, one hip against the counter, arms loosely crossed. Calm. Focused. He looks exactly like he always does at the start of shift.
No one would ever guess. Your gaze drops to your hand as you type. The ring catches the fluorescent light. Just a small flash of gold. It sends a stupid, giddy warmth straight through your chest.
Your husband.
God.
You look down too long, and Dana notices. She pauses mid-sentence, eyes narrowing slightly at your keyboard.
“…hold on,” she mutters.
You instinctively still.
“What?” you ask, too quickly.
She doesn’t answer. She just stares at your hand resting on the desk. Then at your face. Then back at the ring. Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“You were not wearing that yesterday,” she says slowly.
Your heart leaps into your throat. Across the station, Jack glances over at the shift in her tone. He watches you lean closer to her, shoulder brushing hers, like you’re about to share gossip.
You whisper, “Don’t react.”
Dana immediately reacts. Her hand clamps onto your forearm.
“You didn’t,” she breathes.
“Shh,” you whisper, already smiling. “Just- keep your voice down.”
“You didn’t,” she repeats, louder this time, eyes going wide and shiny. “You two did not-”
“What?” Robby calls from across the desk.
Dana looks between you and Jack like her brain can’t decide who to yell at first. You try to shush her, but it’s too late. She turns fully toward both of them.
“Are you kidding me right now?” she blurts.
Jack straightens. “What did we do?”
Dana points dramatically at your hand.
“Explain. The ring.”
Everything goes very still for half a second. Robby looks at your hand, then automatically at Jack’s… Because of course he does.
And there it is. Same simple gold band. His eyebrows shoot up so fast they nearly disappear into his hairline.
“…no way,” he says.
Jack exhales through his nose, caught, like a kid who just got busted sneaking candy. You and him lock eyes across the station. There’s that tiny, helpless smile again.
“Well,” you say softly, because there’s no point pretending now, “we had the afternoon free.”
Dana makes the most offended noise you’ve ever heard. “You got married and then just came to work like it’s nothing?!”
“Courthouse,” Jack says, shrugging like you’re talking about grabbing groceries. “Took twenty minutes.”
“TWENTY-” she chokes. “I hate you both.”
Robby lets out a low whistle. “Before shift? That’s… actually kinda badass.”
“It was impulsive,” you say, laughing.
“It was insane,” Dana corrects, but she’s already tearing up. “Oh my god. You idiots. That’s disgustingly romantic.”
She grabs your hand to look closer at the ring, then immediately grabs Jack’s wrist too, comparing like she’s inspecting matching tattoos.
“They match,” she says, voice wobbling. “I can’t deal with this. I’m too tired to be this emotional.”
Jack looks mildly alarmed. “Please don’t cry at the desk.”
“No promises.”
Robby claps Jack on the shoulder. “Congrats, brother.”
Jack just nods, a little bashful now, scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Then he looks at you. Not big. Not dramatic. Just soft. Private. Like the rest of the room fades out for a second.
“Guess we’re stuck with each other,” he says.
It’s the most Jack thing he could possibly say.
You smile back. “Yeah. Looks like it.”
Dana sniffs loudly. “Okay, great, beautiful, love wins, whatever. Trauma room two is waiting and you’re both still on the schedule, married or not. Move.”
And just like that, the moment folds back into the noise of the ER, monitors beeping, phones ringing, someone calling for transport.
Life continuing.
Only now there’s a small band of gold on your hand when you reach for gloves.
And every time you catch Jack’s eye across the department, there’s that quiet, stunned look between you both.
Like you’re sharing the best secret in the world.
By the time you get home, the sun is fully up and the world is already loud again; traffic, neighbors, someone mowing a lawn down the block. It feels wrong, somehow, after the strange bubble of the night. You barely make it through brushing your teeth before you both collapse into bed, still half damp from the shower, limbs heavy and boneless with exhaustion.
Jack falls into you automatically, like he always does, one arm slung over your waist, his face tucked into your neck. You tangle together without thinking, sheets twisted around your legs, his thumb drawing slow, sleepy circles against your side. Neither of you says anything. There’s nothing left to say.
A few minutes later, just before you drift off, he presses a lazy kiss into your shoulder and murmurs, “Night, wife,” like it’s the most normal word in the world. You smile into the pillow, pull him closer, and finally let sleep take you both.
***********
a/n: So... what I meant is... I know you probably can't just go and get married right away, but for the sake of the story let's pretend you can 😆
𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: coach!steve harrington x teacher!reader
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: living inside Mrs. Harrington’s stomach is Eli Parker's newest—and most important—friend.
𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: elementary school au, pregnant!reader, girldad!steve, tooth-rotting fluff, you thought steve was smitten just wait 'til he's expecting a baby with you, eli being a cutie patootie as usual (4.7k)
𝐚/𝐧: part of my p.e. teacher!steve series, but this can be read as a standalone fic
. * ✦ . ˚ ✦ .
There’s an unspoken rule here at Hawkins Elementary:
Try not to look too married at work.
You’re professional educators. Responsible adults entrusted with the sacred, time-honored task of shaping young minds. You are not, under any circumstances, supposed to be making heart eyes at your spouse across the monkey bars.
Unfortunately, your husband has never been particularly good at subtle.
Recess is in full swing, the blacktop swarming with a small army of sticky-fingered, grass-stained kids burning off the last of their pre-lunch energy.
You’re stationed beneath the big maple tree at the edge of the playground, planner balanced on your knee. Sunlight spills through the leaves in soft patches of gold, warming your lap and the backs of your hands.
The weather is beautiful. You’d be enjoying it a lot more if your lower back didn’t feel like it was being slowly pulled apart.
You wince, bending forward to finish scribbling the rest of your reminders—copy math worksheets, call Toby’s mom—when a shadow falls across the page.
You close your planner slowly, letting the suspense sit there for a second before you tilt your head up.
The first thing you see is the whistle.
Silver gleaming against his sternum, hanging from the faded blue lanyard you gifted him during his first week teaching here. The edges are frayed now, worn soft with years of use, but Steve refuses to replace it.
Below that is his gray P.E. shirt, darkened slightly with sweat from a morning of dodgeball and relay races. His basketball shorts sit low on his hips, revealing strong, sun-bronzed thighs sculpted from years of sprinting across this very playground.
You raise a brow. “Mr. Harrington.”
Steve squints down at you, one hand lifted to shield his eyes from the sun. The other rests casually on his hip, fingers splayed over the waistband of his shorts.
“Mrs. Harrington,” he replies, lips curving into an easy, knowing smirk. He nods toward the empty space beside you. “Is that seat taken?”
You tap your pen thoughtfully against your planner. “Hmm, I don’t know. Depends who’s asking.”
His grin widens as he steps closer.
“Well. There’s this insanely smart, ridiculously pretty fifth-grade teacher who happens to be married to me. She says I’m kinda great. Might vouch for me.”
You roll your eyes, though your lips betray you with a smile.
He drops onto the bench beside you, knees bumping yours.
The teasing spark in his eyes softens almost immediately once his gaze lands on you—quietly roaming over your face, a silent ritual to catalogue the smallest of details.
“Hi, baby,” he murmurs.
You laugh under your breath, reaching out to untwist the lanyard where it’s gotten caught on his collar. “Hi.”
You haven’t seen him all morning.
Tuesdays are brutal—back-to-back classes with no shared planning period, no painfully long faculty meeting where he sits beside you, slouched halfway out of his chair, nudging your ankle under the table until you kick him in the shin.
You didn’t even get your usual five minutes with him in the hallway. The ones where he leans against the lockers outside your classroom, brushing a loose strand of hair from your face while dramatically recounting how his third graders attempted to unionize against the mile run.
Now, finally, you get a second to really look at him.
And Steve Harrington in sunlight is frankly a dangerous thing.
His skin glows warm from all the hours he spends outside, chasing rogue kickballs and letting kids climb on him like he’s a human jungle gym. His eyes always hover somewhere between honey and deep chestnut depending on the light—right now, in the afternoon sun, the centers are a rich amber, little flecks of green scattered around the edges.
You like that his hair’s grown out a little lately. Thick, luscious strands catching the light, the tips kissed gold by the sun.
Just a little halo of sunshine clinging to your golden boy.
“Free block?” you ask.
“Mhm.” His thumb starts tracing absentminded circles over your knee. “Had to come check on my girls.”
You huff a quiet laugh. “You’re so dramatic.”
He bristles. “What? I haven’t seen you all day.”
His gaze drops for a moment, mock indignance softening when it passes over the gentle curve of your stomach. He tips his head, brows knitting faintly.
“You feeling okay?”
“Uh-huh,” you nod as you sit up, trying to stretch out the tight pull in your back. “Just a little achy.”
It's like a switch gets flipped inside of him.
He immediately slides closer on the bench, turning so you’re both facing the playground—two coworkers supervising recess, nothing suspicious about it.
Except now, his entire side is pressed against yours.
Shoulder to shoulder, flush from knee to hip, the solid heat of him seeping through cotton and denim until you’re practically fused together.
Steve has always run warm—your golden boy, always carrying a pocketful of sunshine with him wherever he goes—and right now, it’s radiating straight into your aching hip.
His arm starts to creep behind your back.
“Steven,” you warn under your breath, eyes flicking toward the kickball field where Mrs. Patterson is very much within viewing distance.
He hums like he didn’t hear a word.
You feel the warmth of him first, then the broad span of his palm settling at the small of your back, just below your waist. His fingers spread gently, steadying you as his thumb traces along the line of your spine.
Then he presses in. Deep.
The sound that escapes your throat is completely involuntary.
“Yeah?” he murmurs, leaning a little closer. “Right there?”
You swear your husband has some kind of supernatural gift—he finds this exact spot every time without even trying, that stubborn knot of tension right above your sacrum that’s been throbbing all morning.
“Lean into me a little,” he says softly.
You do it without thinking.
Your shoulder tips against his chest, your weight settling against him as his arm tightens around your back. His thumb resumes its slow, steady circles, pressing and easing and pressing again.
The kids shriek across the playground. A whistle blows somewhere near the jungle gym.
But right here, tucked against Steve’s side, the world goes pleasantly quiet.
“Better?” he asks, breath warming the side of your neck.
You nod, eyes drifting closed for a moment. “Mhm.”
His hand slides a little higher along your spine, thumb digging in just a touch more firmly this time.
You groan, a little louder than you probably should.
Steve huffs a laugh under his breath.
“Careful,” he murmurs, faintly smug.
You’d elbow him if you could remember how to move your arms.
For a while, you sit there in silence. Letting him work out the knot in your back, leaning into his chest like a cat nuzzling into a spot of sun-warmed carpet.
“How’s she doing today?” he asks after a long while, lips brushing your temple.
You sigh dramatically.
“Other than using my bladder as a trampoline and wrecking my back?” you mumble. “She’s fine.”
Steve’s chest lifts with a quiet laugh. He leans down and presses a kiss to your shoulder, soft and lingering.
You smile, melting into his touch. Forgetting, briefly, that you’re at work.
Then you very much remember.
“Okay, okay,” you laugh, reaching back to catch his wrist. “That’s enough, Mr. Harrington. I’m supposed to be supervising.”
“What?” he huffs, hand lingering at your waist. “I’m just... being a good husband. Nothing wrong with a little massage.”
You tilt your head subtly toward the playground. “Tell that to Mrs. Patterson.”
Steve glances over.
Sure enough, Mrs. Patterson stands near the kickball bases with her hands on her hips, scanning the playground like a hawk who has spent thirty years policing recess etiquette.
He sighs dramatically. Mutters something about how he can’t even take care of his own wife in peace.
Still, he behaves.
Reluctantly shifts a few inches away, withdrawing his arm from behind you. His hand returns to rest casually over your knee.
You sit up properly and reach for your planner.
Before you can even touch the pen, Steve asks casually:
“You eat this morning?”
You hesitate.
It’s tiny, barely a pause.
But Steve Harrington notices everything when it comes to you.
His brows raise slowly.
There’s a daisy-printed lunchbox sitting untouched on your desk.
Steve insisted on buying it after going through an entire color-coded stack of OB pamphlets—one he hoarded from your doctor’s office “just in case.”
You’ve walked into the kitchen on more than one occasion to find him hunched over the table, elbows planted, brow furrowed, lips moving faintly as he works through a paragraph about fetal development like he’s cramming for finals.
Apparently, pregnant women can get lightheaded if they don’t eat often enough. Something about blood sugar. Or iron. Or both.
You don’t remember exactly, but Steve does.
“You’re not supposed to go more than two hours without eating,” he told you last week, moving around your kitchen with the focus of a man preparing for battle. “You could get nauseous. Or like, pass out. Which we’re not doing. So,” he’d set the lunchbox on the counter with finality, tapping the lid. “You eat this one before lunch. And I’ll pack something extra for after. Okay?”
Every day since, you open it during quiet reading time to find: two pre-peeled cuties clementines, string cheese, homemade trail mix portioned into a little reusable container, and a granola bar he spent five full minutes analyzing in the cereal aisle because he didn’t “trust half those ingredients.” There’s always an ice pack inside, too, because you mentioned one time that fruits taste better cold now that you’re pregnant.
Unfortunately, that lunchbox is currently buried under a stack of ungraded spelling tests and construction paper solar systems.
You hadn’t meant to forget. You really hadn’t.
“Stevie…” you try gently, knowing the nickname will soften the blow. “This morning was so busy.”
He holds your gaze with an unimpressed stare for exactly two seconds.
“Baby, I thought you were supposed to be the responsible one,” he sighs, shaking his head, fondness softening every word.
“I am the responsible one.”
“Uh-huh.” His hand slips off your knee as he leans down, rummaging through the gym bag at his feet. “Sure you are.”
“I am!”
Steve straightens a second later.
And when he does, he’s holding a bright, round fruit in his hand.
Glossy in the sunlight, skin dimpled and taut, a deep sunset color that's almost too perfect to be real. It looks plump, like it might burst if you so much as look at it too hard.
Your mouth waters instantly.
Your second trimester cravings have been all over the place—salt and vinegar chips one week, strawberry milk the next—but lately, all you can think about are oranges. Cold ones. Sweet, juicy, dripping-down-your-wrist ones. You’ve gone through three bags in five days.
Steve watches your posture straighten, eyes locked onto your target.
His mouth curves slowly.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, smug. “Thought so.”
He leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, and presses his thumb into the top of the peel. It splits with a soft tear, citrus scent blooming instantly between you. You lick your lips in anticipation.
Steve peels with the careful precision of someone who has done this many, many times.
His thumb slides under the rind and lifts it away in long, clean strips instead of shredding it. When stubborn white threads cling to the fruit, he scrapes them away gently with the pad of his thumb, collecting the little curls of pith in his palm so they don’t fall onto your dress.
He always peels them for you now.
Says you’ll complain when the smell sticks under your nails. Says he’s better at it than you—no mangled fruit on his watch.
But really, it’s because he wants to.
Only a few months in and he’s already the kind of dad who reads ahead in pregnancy books like there’s going to be a quiz. Who keeps a page in his class planner filled with bedtime story ideas, with little notes about hairstyles and braids he wants to practice before the baby gets here.
Last week you’d tried peeling an orange yourself while standing at the kitchen counter.
Steve lasted about three seconds watching you struggle with the rind.
“Just—give it to me,” he’d said, gently prying it out of your hands. “Your fingers are gonna smell all day.”
Lately, he doesn’t let you do much of anything alone.
He ties your shoes before you can bend down, picks things up the second you drop them. Slides chairs out before you even reach the table.
He’s started appearing at your classroom door halfway through the morning with a giant cup of ice water, because that’s been another one of your cravings lately.
There was one afternoon he walked in and found you standing on a chair, arms stretched high, trying to staple construction paper planets to your bulletin board.
Two seconds later, you felt a pair of hands wrap around your hips, easing you down.
“Absolutely not.”
“Steve—”
“Nope. I’ll do it.”
And he did.
Spent his entire free period stapling crooked Saturn rings to a crayon-dotted galaxy, asking you three times to confirm whether Uranus came before Neptune.
At home, it’s even worse.
If you so much as shift in the middle of the night trying to get comfortable, Steve wakes instantly.
“Mmph… baby?” he mumbles, pushing himself upright. “You okay? What do you need?”
“Nothing,” you whisper. “Go back to sleep.”
But he’s already swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
Next thing you know he’s in the kitchen at two in the morning—barefoot, hair sticking up in cowlicks, wearing an old t-shirt and boxers while he spreads peanut butter thick across a slice of toast or scoops vanilla ice cream into a bowl.
Most nights it’s both.
Then he sits cross-legged at your feet while you eat on the couch, eyelids heavy with sleep. Warm hands wrapped around your arches, thumbs kneading all the tender spots until your whole body melts into the cushions.
You used to tease him about it.
“Steve,” you laughed once, nudging his shoulder with your foot. “I’m pregnant. Not dying.”
He’d only shrugged, stubborn as ever. “Yeah, I know. Just like doing this stuff.”
Stuff like this.
He finishes peeling the first half of the orange and starts separating the slices. Eases his thumb into the center seam, gently pulling a segment free without bursting the delicate juice pockets. His finger runs along the curve, checking carefully for seeds. When he finds one, he digs it out with his nail and flicks it into his palm.
Only when he’s satisfied does he lift the slice up to your mouth.
“Open.”
You roll your eyes, but you do.
The fruit presses cool against your tongue—he must’ve kept it cold all morning somehow— and the second you bite down, sweet juice floods your mouth.
You practically melt, eyes slipping closed.
“Good?” he asks quietly.
“So good.”
He laughs under his breath. You feel a small bead of juice slip toward your chin, but Steve’s thumb is already there, brushing lightly along your bottom lip to catch it before it falls.
When you open your eyes again, he’s still looking at you.
Really looking, gaze warm and intent, tiny creases gathering at his temples from how wide he’s smiling.
So painfully affectionate, your husband.
Like this—feeding you orange slices on a splintered playground bench—is somehow the highlight of his entire day.
You swallow and reach for the next slice.
He pulls it back just out of reach.
“Ah ah—say thank you, Mr. Harrington.”
You narrow your eyes.
“...Thank you, Mr. Harrington.”
He grins, victorious, and slides the wedge past your lips with exaggerated care. “You’re welcome, Mrs. Harrington.”
A loud shout from across the playground makes you both jump.
“What?! Coach Steve! Coach Steeeeve!”
You and Steve share a look.
It’s a voice you both know all too well.
“Uh oh,” he sighs, slowly lowering his hand. “Here we go.”
Eli Parker comes sprinting across the grass like a tiny tornado, curls bouncing wildly with every step. His velcro sneakers slap against the pavement—one strap has come undone, as usual, flapping behind him.
“Coach Steve!” he pants, skidding to a stop in front of the bench, cheeks flushed pink and shiny with sweat. “Why are you here at recess? You don’t have recess! You have P.E. time!”
Steve lifts the half-peeled orange solemnly. “I’m on snack duty.”
Eli squints. “That’s not a real job.”
“It is now. Mrs. Harrington’s eating for two, remember?”
Eli blinks.
His gaze drifts slowly toward your stomach.
“Oh.”
And just like that, his favorite teacher becomes background scenery—more important matters await.
Eli sidesteps your husband like he’s a piece of playground equipment, edging closer to you instead. He tucks his hands behind his back and rocks forward onto his toes, suddenly shy.
“Um... Missus Harrington?”
Your heart melts a little every time.
“Yes, Eli?”
He glances up at your face, then at your belly. “Um... is the baby ready?”
Steve pauses mid-peel. He glances up at you, brows furrowed.
Ready for what? he mouths.
You bite back a smile and lean back slightly, patting your stomach. “Yep. She’s all yours.”
Eli steps closer and bends at the waist, hands planted on his knees.
Slowly, he lowers his face toward the curve of your bump.
“Hi, baby,” he whispers. “It’s me again, Eli.”
Steve’s fingers slow over the orange.
“Today we had apple slices at snack. But they were kinda mushy, so you didn’t miss nothin’. And Jacob falled in P.E. but he only cried for like… this much.” He pinches his fingers together to demonstrate. “I helped him up ‘cause I’m strong now. I eat all my carrots.”
You smooth your hand over your stomach, smiling.
“And we’re playin’ tag but I didn’t get catched even one time. I was too fast! You gotta run zig-zag, like this,” he demonstrates with his arms, nearly elbowing Steve in the chin. “When you come out, I’ll teach you. You gotta go like—whoosh whoosh!—so nobody can tag you. Not even Coach Steve. He’s... kinda slow.”
“Uh—hey," Steve protests.
Eli ignores him. “Just don’t run by the slide. There’s a crack there. Timmy tripped there once and there was blood everywhere. He had to get stitches! But he’s fine now. He got a Spider-Man bandaid. Oh, and...”
“He does this every day,” you murmur quietly to Steve while Eli continues his extremely detailed recess debrief.
“Seriously?” Steve whispers.
You nod. “Comes over to give her updates.”
Steve blinks, staring down at the top of Eli’s curls, expression gone soft. “Huh.”
“…and you always haveta pick chocolate milk first at lunch,” Eli explains firmly. “’Cause if you wait, it’s all gone and then you haveta drink regular milk and regular milk tastes weird.”
You’re still listening to Eli’s spiel on cafeteria survival rules when you feel a gentle nudge against the back of your hand.
Steve is holding another orange slice out to you, attention split between feeding you and listening to this tiny seven-year-old explain why pizza day is the most important day of the week.
You bring the slice up to your mouth.
As soon as the juice bursts across your tongue, you feel it.
“Oh! Hey, Eli?”
“…and then Jacob pushed—huh?” Eli looks up.
“Wanna feel something cool?”
“What kinda cool?”
You grin.
“The best kind.”
You take his warm, sticky hand in yours, and guide it carefully to the curve of your stomach.
“Right here. Just wait.”
Eli waits.
Nothing happens at first.
He squints down at your belly, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth.
And then—
“WOAH!” Eli yanks his hand back with a gasp, eyes round as saucers. “What was that?!”
You laugh softly. “That was the baby.”
“The baby?” he repeats, voice dropping to a loud whisper.
“Yep. That was her kicking.”
Eli’s jaw falls open, eyes fixed on your stomach.
“Um, Missus Harrington?” he says, voice growing a little urgent. “Can I feel again?"
You nod, guiding his hand back. His palm rests there, quivering ever so slightly with excitement.
Another small thump.
Eli gasps, but doesn’t pull away this time. A small giggle spills out of him.
“Wow,” he breathes. “She did it again. Does that mean she knows me?”
“Yeah, honey. She knows you’re there.”
Eli beams down at your stomach, rubbing his palm side to side like he’s waving through a window.
“Hi, baby,” he whispers. “It’s okay. It’s just me. I’m your recess buddy, remember?”
Steve has gone very, very quiet.
You glance up to find him completely frozen.
The orange sits half peeled and forgotten in his palm as he stares. Gaze locked on Eli’s hand, on the soft stretch of your dress over the life the two of you made.
When he catches you looking, he blinks quickly, that stunned expression flickering away.
In its place comes an exaggerated pout—eyes drooping, lower lip jutting out.
“Uh oh,” you murmur, smiling. “Somebody’s jealous.”
You grab his orange-sticky hand and guide it to the other side of your stomach.
Steve doesn’t move a muscle.
It’s like this, every time; he holds his breath, barely rests his palm on your stomach. Like he fears pressing too hard might disturb her.
He never says a word—just waits.
Eli, meanwhile, is vibrating with curiosity.
“So, so if she can kick, why can’t she talk? Does she have a mouth?”
“She does. She’s just still growing.”
“Can she hear me?”
“Yeah, but it’s probably a little muffled. Like when you’re underwater in a swimming pool.”
Eli thinks about that.
“Do I haveta be louder, then?”
“Well...”
“Nope,” Steve cuts in quickly. “Definitely not louder. She can hear you just fine, buddy.”
Your husband shoots you a quick look—eyebrows raised, lips quirked into an amused smile—before slowly pulling his hand back, clearly reluctant to lose contact.
A moment later he hands you another slice of the orange.
Then he fits one into Eli’s palm, too.
The slice looks enormous in Eli’s tiny grip. He clamps all five fingers around it, taking a massive, full-force bite. Juice immediately dribbles down his wrist.
Steve leans forward like he’d been expecting it, using the hem of his own shirt to wipe Eli’s arm before the stickiness spreads everywhere.
Eli barely notices, too busy chewing with wide-eyed focus.
“Are you gonna teach her stuff? ’Cause you’re a teacher?” He asks around a mouthful, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk. “Like, y’know… ABCs and stuff.”
You smile. “Yep. Eventually.”
He frowns a little. “Eventually?”
“Yeah. We’re gonna have to teach her how to talk, first.”
Eli freezes mid-chew.
“She can’t talk?” he says, scandalized.
“Not when she’s first born,” you confirm gently. “She has to learn everything. How to move, how to talk… it’s all brand new for her.”
Eli turns his head slowly, staring at your stomach like this is deeply upsetting information.
“What about... what about running?”
“Mm, she'll have to learn that too. Maybe by the time you’re in fourth grade.”
He gasps, betrayal written all over his little face.
“She won’t even know how to run?” he whispers.
You laugh softly. “Not right away, honey. Babies can’t do very much when they’re first born.”
He stands there for a second, eyes squinted, lips pursed. You can practically see the gears turning in his head.
Then suddenly his whole face lights up.
“Wait!” He bounces up onto his toes. “But that means I can show her stuff! I can teach her how to count to a hundred,” he says, chest puffing up with pride. “And I can do the monkey bars all the way across without help now. And—and I can show her how to tie her shoes! I learned that last week.”
He lifts one foot to prove it—the sneaker he's got on has three velcro straps, and one of them is hanging open.
“That’s very impressive,” you say seriously.
Eli nods like he already knew that.
Then he reaches out with his free hand, tiny fingers carefully brushing against the curve of your belly.
His voice drops into a soft whisper.
“I can’t wait ’til you’re out, baby.” He pats your stomach gently. “I’ll teach you everything.”
He thinks about it for a second. Then adds:
“I’ll be like… the best big brother ever.”
Your throat closes up a little. You glance over at Steve to find him already looking at you—this warm, stunned sort of wonder in his eyes, like the moment landed in his chest the same way it did in yours.
He reaches for you quietly, thumb brushing along the back of your hand.
You lace your fingers with his and give them a squeeze. He squeezes back.
Then the bell rings.
A long, miserable groan ripples across the playground.
“What?” Eli exclaims, shoulders collapsing dramatically. “But—but I wasn’t done!”
“You can talk to her again tomorrow,” you promise.
Eli turns back toward your stomach, lips puckering in serious thought.
“Okay,” he sighs. He leans closer one last time.
“Bye-bye, baby. Don’t forget me.”
“She won’t, honey,” you smile, smoothing his curls back from his forehead.
You brace your hands on the bench, ready to stand.
Steve is already on his feet. One hand wrapped around your forearm, the other settling at your lower back. You don’t actually need the support, but he always acts like you might topple over without him.
“Easy, easy.”
You roll your eyes affectionately. “Steve, I’m fine.”
You call your class over, watching them shuffle toward you in a crooked, noisy line.
“Alright, fifth graders! You ready?”
“Wait, wait,” Steve says suddenly, hurrying forward. “One more.”
Before you can react, an orange slice gets slipped past your lips.
You laugh around it, juice bursting sweet across your tongue.
You reach up on impulse, resting a hand on his shoulder to press a quick, soft kiss to his lips.
It’s not something you do often at school, and you can tell it catches him off guard.
You pull back to watch him blink, tongue darting out as he instinctively licks away the glossy residue on his mouth. Hazel eyes gone round, breath caught like you haven’t been kissing him for years.
You kind of hope he’ll always look like that, no matter how chaste the gesture.
Behind you, your class erupts into varying degrees of horror and fascination: “Ewwww!” “No way!” “Coach Steeeve, can I have a bite of the orange?"
“Alright, alright!” you laugh, waving them down. “Enough.”
You turn back to Steve, lowering your voice. “See you after last period?”
“Uh huh,” he nods, still a touch dazed. He blinks, shakes his head. “Yeah. I’ll—yeah.”
You smile at him and turn back to your students, ushering the rowdy line toward the school doors.
Halfway across the blacktop, you glance back.
Your husband is still standing by the bench, one hand lifted in a loose wave as he watches you go.
You mouth the words silently.
Love you.
He smiles, mirrors the words right back.
Love you too.
And right then, a small flutter rolls through your stomach.
A tiny voice responding in kind, a little heartbeat of its own saying:
Love you three.
✿
Once you disappear through the school doors, Steve exhales slowly.
Then he looks down.
Eli is still there.
Hovering by his leg, nibbling thoughtfully on what’s left of his orange slice. At this point it’s mostly membrane, barely any juice left, but he’s got more important thoughts on his mind.
He sucks at it with intense focus, eyes narrowed in deep, seven-year-old contemplation.
“Coach Steve?” Eli says finally.
Steve rests his hands on his hips, orange peels crumpled loosely in one fist. “What’s up, buddy?”
Eli glances toward the doors where you disappeared, then back up at Steve.
jack abbot x f!reader | slow burn, age gap, hurt/comfort, veteran!jack, reader is a paramedic turned ER charge nurse, chronic pain themes, emotional avoidance, pittsburgh winter
The first thing you learn about Jack Abbot is that he lies about his pain levels.
Not dramatically. Not in the way patients lie, theatrical minimizing, hoping you won't notice the sweat on their upper lip or the way they're breathing through their back teeth. He lies the way someone lies when they've been doing it long enough that the lie has become the first language and the truth is the translation. Automatic. Fluent.
You know this because you spent six years as a paramedic before you became a nurse, and paramedics learn to read bodies the way other people read faces. By the time you get to a scene, the body has already been telling the story for minutes, sometimes hours. You learn to listen to it instead of the words.
Jack Abbot's body, on a bad day, says something completely different from what his mouth says.
His mouth says fine, it's manageable, don't worry about it.
His body says the socket fit is wrong today, or the weather changed overnight and the phantom pain is running hot, or he's been on his feet for six hours past the point where he should have sat down. The particular set of his jaw and the almost-imperceptible shift of his weight to his right side are the story, if you know how to read it.
You know how to read it.
You don't say anything about it for the first two months.
You came to PTMC in January, which is, in retrospect, the worst possible time to move to Pittsburgh. The city in January is gray in a way that feels personal, a low flat gray that sits on everything and muffles sound and makes the days feel like they're happening inside a cotton ball. You grew up in North Carolina. You were not prepared.
What you were prepared for was the job, because the job is the one thing that has always been straightforward. You are good at this. You have always been good at this, from your first day on an ambulance at twenty-two to the charge nurse position you'd held at Durham Regional for four years before the particular series of events that led you to Pittsburgh. You don't think about those directly if you can help it. You've filed them under necessary change in the organizational system of your own history.
PTMC's night shift ER is a different animal from what you knew. Bigger, faster, with the specific energy of a teaching hospital, residents everywhere, the constant low-level hum of people learning under pressure. You'd worked in teaching hospitals before. You understood the rhythm.
What you didn't anticipate was the attending.
Your first shift, you're given the standard orientation rundown by the outgoing charge nurse, a woman named Delphine who has clearly been doing this long enough to have developed a personal shorthand for everything, delivered at speed. She covers the board system, the trauma bay protocol, the supply room situation, the attendings. When she gets to Jack Abbot, she pauses in a way that isn't quite a pause, more like a breath, like she's selecting the right words.
"Night shift lead," she says. "Ex-military, Army. Left leg prosthetic, below knee. He'll never mention it, don't mention it either unless he brings it up or it becomes a clinical concern. He runs a tight floor. He's fair. He doesn't raise his voice." She looks at you over the top of her reading glasses. "When he gets quiet is when you should pay attention."
"What does quiet mean?" you ask.
"You'll know," she says, which is not an answer, and turns out to be completely accurate.
You meet him properly at the start of that first shift, in the handoff briefing. He's already at the board when you come in, reviewing overnight census with the precision of someone who has been doing this long enough to read a board the way other people read a sentence. Whole, not word by word.
He's, you notice him the way you'd notice a weather system. Something that occupies space differently from the things around it.
Late forties, maybe early fifties. Dark hair with gray through it, more at the temples. The kind of face that would be called handsome in a way that's about structure rather than prettiness, strong jaw, lines around his eyes and mouth from years of squinting into the sun or the middle distance. He’s in black scrubs, wearing them with the unconscious uprightness of someone whose posture was trained into him young and never quite left.
When he turns to acknowledge the incoming shift, his eyes do the thing Delphine warned you about. A quick systematic read of the room, everyone clocked and filed in seconds. When they land on you, they pause one beat longer. New face. Catalogued.
"Charge nurse?" he says.
"Yes," you say. "First shift."
"Durham Regional before this?"
"Six years before that as a paramedic."
Something registers in his expression. Not warmth exactly, more like the slight adjustment of a person recalibrating an estimate. "Good," he says, and turns back to the board.
That's the whole introduction.
Later you'll understand that good from Jack Abbot in the first thirty seconds of meeting you is the equivalent of a lengthy written endorsement from anyone else.
The first month is learning. Not the job, you know the job, but the floor, the people, the particular language of this specific place.
You learn: Lena at the main desk has worked this floor for nineteen years and knows where everything is, has ever been, and probably will be. Consult her before the supply room. Resident Santos is sharp and combative and improves dramatically when you treat her like the intelligent adult she is rather than a medical student who needs managing. Resident Whitaker is careful and slow and will get there, he just needs more runway than the others. Dr. Parker Ellis is the senior resident who has, apparently, been trying to get Jack to take a vacation for three consecutive years.
You learn Jack in layers, the way you'd learn a complicated patient history. Not all at once, but accumulating, building toward a picture.
He takes his coffee black and too hot, and he has opinions about the ER coffee machine that he has apparently been voicing to facilities since before you arrived. He reviews charts standing up, always, unless it's the end of a long shift and he thinks no one is watching, at which point he will occasionally, briefly, sit. He has a particular way of delivering bad news to families. Not scripted, not the sterile clinical distance some doctors put on like protective gear, but present. Actually in the room with them. You've watched him do it three times in your first month and each time it's the same: he finds a chair, he sits at their level, he doesn't rush the silence.
He is, in ways that are professionally inconvenient, exactly the kind of person you find most difficult to be indifferent to.
You do your level best anyway.
The pain thing comes to a head on a Thursday in February.
The weather has been bad for a week. Pittsburgh winter, which turns out to be a different category of winter than North Carolina winter, with a wet cold that gets into everything and a wind off the rivers that has a personal quality to it, like it knows where you're going. You've been told by multiple people that you'll acclimate. You're skeptical.
The floor has been brutal. A multi-car pileup on 376 sent four traumas in under an hour, and the residual administrative chaos of that is still reverberating five hours later. You've been moving without stopping since the shift started, and you're aware, in the background-noise way you're aware of your own physical state during hard shifts, that your feet crossed the threshold from tired into genuinely unhappy about two hours ago.
You're at the medication cart at hour seven when you notice Jack at the far end of the hall, reviewing a chart. The weight distribution is wrong. He's putting almost nothing on his left side, and the line of his back is carrying a tension that wasn't there at the start of shift. He's been on his feet for the same seven hours, plus whatever time he was here before handoff, and the socket that connects his prosthetic to his residual limb has a tolerance for hours-of-use that you know from six years of working with amputee veterans is finite and individual and frequently ignored by the person most affected.
You finish with the medication cart. You think about it for another minute. Then you go to the supply room.
When you come back, you find him at the hub.
You set a heat pack on the counter next to him, the kind you crack and shake, runs for about forty minutes. You don't say anything. You go back to your charting.
A long pause.
"What's this for," he says. Not a question. The sentence has the quality of someone who knows exactly what it's for and is deciding how to handle it.
"Residual limb pain responds well to heat when it's cold-triggered," you say, eyes on your screen. "Particularly after extended weight-bearing. I've got four amputee veterans in my contacts from my paramedic years and two of them told me that independently."
Silence.
"Your weight's been on your right side for two hours," you say. "I noticed."
More silence. You type something. You can feel him looking at the side of your face.
"I didn't ask for—" he starts.
"You didn't," you agree. "I didn't offer it as a commentary on your ability to do your job. I offered it as a heat pack." You look at him then, briefly, level. "You don't have to use it."
You go back to the screen.
Another pause. Then, in your peripheral vision, he picks it up.
He doesn't say thank you. He goes back to his chart.
You don't expect him to. You weren't doing it for the thank you.
About twenty minutes later, a cup appears next to your keyboard. Coffee, from the good machine at the other end of the floor, not the hub machine. Hot.
You look at it.
You look toward the board, where he's standing.
He's talking to Ellis about a consult. He doesn't look over.
You drink the coffee.
This becomes, without either of you naming it, a language.
Not every night. Not predictably. But the small offerings accumulate, the coffee, the heat pack on the bad days, a granola bar left near your station during a brutal stretch when you haven't eaten since before shift, a specific piece of information relayed in a way that makes your job marginally easier, the quiet appearing at your shoulder on the nights that earn the particular designation of hard rather than just busy.
You do the same back. It comes naturally. Six years of paramedic work teaches you that care is often most useful when it's practical and doesn't require the other person to acknowledge receiving it.
The first conversation that isn't about the floor happens in the break room, five weeks in.
You're eating dinner at eleven PM, or what passes for dinner, which is the depressing collection of vending machine items that constitute nutrition during a long night shift, when he comes in for coffee. He does the microwave thing. He leans against the counter while it runs.
You eat your crackers.
"Durham," he says. "What made you leave?"
He's not looking at you, looking at the microwave, thirty-eight seconds remaining on the display.
"Needed a change," you say.
"From the job specifically?"
"From a version of myself I'd gotten stuck in."
The microwave beeps. He gets the cup. He turns around and leans against the counter facing you now, and the expression is attentive in the particular Jack Abbot way, not performing interest, just actually interested.
"What version," he says.
You consider how much of this you want to hand over to someone you've known for five weeks. Then you consider that you're in Pittsburgh in February eating crackers at eleven PM and your options for honest conversation are limited.
"The version that had gotten very good at the job," you say, "by removing herself from it. Technically excellent. Clinically appropriate. Completely sealed. You do the thing for long enough without adequate processing and it just," you tap the side of your head, "goes somewhere it shouldn't. Calcifies."
He's quiet.
"Paramedic work specifically does something to you," you say. "You're first in. By the time a patient reaches an ER, there's a team, there's protocol, there's structure. On a scene it's you and your partner and whatever you find when you get there. No buffer. You absorb a lot." You pause. "I absorbed a lot."
"And you stopped processing it."
"I stopped having the bandwidth. And then I stopped noticing I'd stopped. And then one day a woman in the waiting room asked me if I was okay and I realized I genuinely didn't know how to answer."
He makes a sound that isn't quite a word.
"You know that version of the problem," you say. It's not a question.
A beat. "I know a version of it," he says. "Different origin. Same architecture."
"Military."
"Yeah."
"When."
"Three deployments. Third one ended the career." He glances down at his leg without looking like he's glancing down at his leg, a micro-movement you'd miss if you weren't watching carefully. "By which point I'd been not-processing for about eight years."
"How'd you get out of it?"
He makes a quiet sound that has some irony in it. "Badly, at first. Then therapy. Then time. Then finding something worth being present for."
"Medicine."
"Among other things."
The break room is quiet. The vending machine hums. From outside the door, the distant sounds of the floor.
"Pittsburgh was supposed to be temporary," you say. "I was going to do a year, get my head right, figure out the next thing."
"And?"
You look at your crackers. "Still figuring."
"How long have you been here?"
"Seven weeks."
"Give it till April," he says. "The city looks different when the gray lifts."
"That sounds like the beginning of civic propaganda."
"It sounds like someone who came here for temporary reasons and then stayed," he says, and picks up his coffee and goes back to the floor, and you sit in the break room for another few minutes thinking about the specific weight of that sentence.
March is when the floor gets to know you.
Lena starts leaving notes for you at the start of shift, small intelligence briefings on the state of the floor, the status of the supply situation, which residents are having good nights and which need watching. Santos, after an incident involving a difficult patient and your intervention on her behalf, starts bringing you coffee exactly once a week in what you understand is her version of a significant gesture. Whitaker asks you questions in the tentative way of someone who has been burned before by asking the wrong person, and you answer them straight, and he relaxes.
Parker Ellis tells you, on a Tuesday in March, that you're good for the floor.
"How so," you say.
"You stabilize things," she says. "Some charge nurses manage the floor. You hold it. There's a difference."
You think about this later. You think about the version of yourself in Durham who was excellent at managing and terrible at holding, and whether Pittsburgh is teaching you something or whether you arrived already changed and the city is just the location of the change.
You think about a lot of things lately that you'd stopped thinking about for a couple of years.
Jack is not incidental to this. You'd be dishonest with yourself if you tried to argue that he was. There's something about the quality of his attention, the specific way he notices without making the noticing a performance, that has begun to unlock things. Things you sealed up and labeled later and then ignored.
You don't know what to do about this, exactly.
You file it under pending.
The night it shifts is a Wednesday in late March.
A warehouse fire on the South Side sends three critical patients in under forty minutes. It's the kind of night that strips everything down to function, no room for anything except the work, the sequence, the next right thing. You've been in these nights before. You know how to move through them.
What you haven't navigated before is moving through one of these nights and simultaneously being aware, in some registered but unaddressed corner of your attention, that Jack Abbot is running on something that isn't all right.
It starts small. The tells are minor. He's been on his feet longer than he should, the cold has been bad this week, the socket issue you've been watching for two months has been a recurring problem and he's mentioned the new fitting exactly once in the dismissive tone of someone who made an appointment and then cancelled it. On a normal night you'd leave a heat pack and a coffee and consider the conversation managed.
This isn't a normal night. This is eight hours of controlled emergency, and by hour six you can see, if you're watching, if you've been watching for three months, that the pain is running high enough to be a factor.
He doesn't show it in the work. That's the thing that makes it worse, in a way. The work is impeccable. The decisions are right, the communication is clear, the patients are managed with the same steady competence that they always are. Whatever he's dealing with, he has put it somewhere else with a proficiency that speaks to long practice.
But you've been a paramedic. You've seen people push through pain until their body stops accepting the instruction, and you know what that looks like in the seconds before it happens.
At hour seven, during a lull between the second and third trauma, you find him at the hub. You don't ask how he's doing. That's not the language.
"I need you to do something for me," you say.
He looks at you.
"Sit down for twenty minutes. I'll cover."
"I don't need—"
"I know you don't need to. I'm asking you to do it for the floor." You hold his gaze. "You're eight hours into a shift that's had three traumas and you've been compensating your gait for the last two hours, which means the socket is causing problems, and if you end up off your feet involuntarily in hour nine because you didn't sit down in hour seven, that's a floor problem. So I'm asking you, as charge nurse, to sit down."
A long pause.
"That was very tactical," he says.
"I spent six years on ambulances. I learned to frame requests so people would take them."
Something almost moves in his expression. "Twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes."
He goes to the break room. You cover the floor. Twenty-three minutes later he's back, and the gait is better, and the tension in his jaw has reduced to something closer to baseline, and he doesn't say anything about it and neither do you.
But at the end of shift, when the floor is winding down and you're both at the hub finishing charting, he says, without looking up from his screen: "How did you know it was the socket and not the phantom pain."
"Phantom pain doesn't change your gait," you say. "Socket fit does."
He's quiet.
"You cancelled the fitting appointment," you say. Not a question.
"How do you—"
"You mentioned it in February. You haven't mentioned it since, and the problem's gotten worse, not better." You save your chart. "I'm not asking you to explain yourself. I'm observing that the appointment would probably help."
A pause. Then: "You're very annoying."
"I know."
"In a," he stops. Starts differently. "It's useful. The annoying."
"High praise."
The almost-sound, the one that isn't quite a laugh. You've been hearing it for three months and you've started to understand that it's the version of warmth he allows himself in professional settings, the suggestion of it, the controlled release. You've started to notice when you prompt it.
You're aware this is information with implications you haven't fully processed.
April arrives and the gray does lift, like he said.
It happens incrementally, a morning here, an afternoon there, the river catching light in a way that Pittsburgh in January made you doubt was possible. The city reveals itself differently in April. Older neighborhoods with the particular architecture of a place built by people who intended to stay. Bridges everywhere, connecting things.
You take a different route to work and find a diner and start stopping there before night shifts, and the routine of it, the specific booth, the same server who brings coffee without being asked after the third visit, grounds something that has been unmoored since January.
You're better, you realize, in April.
Not fixed. Not resolved. But better, in the specific sense of being present in your life rather than passing through it at a remove.
You tell Jack this, one night in the break room, because the break room has become the place where you say the things that don't fit on the floor.
"You were right about April," you say.
He's at the table with a chart, paper, one of the few remaining paper charts, a particular older patient who prefers them and for whom Jack has apparently been maintaining the practice without comment for two years. "Was I."
"The city looks different. You were right."
"Mmm." He makes a note. "How's the diner?"
You look at him. "I haven't mentioned a diner."
"You come in before some shifts with powdered sugar on your jacket," he says. "There's a diner on Penn Avenue that does beignets until four AM. It's the only place within walking distance of the parking structure."
You look at your jacket. There is, in fact, a trace of powdered sugar on the lapel.
"That's —" you start.
"Observational" he says. "Same thing you do."
You sit down across from him. He turns a page in the chart. The break room is quiet.
"How long did it take you?" you ask. "After you moved here. To feel like Pittsburgh was where you actually lived and not just where you were."
He thinks about it. "Two years, maybe. Closer to three before it felt like home."
"What made it feel like home eventually?"
He's quiet for a moment. Then: "People. The floor. Having something that mattered."
"Not the city itself."
"The city's just the container" he says. "What you put in it is the part that matters."
You look at the table. "I haven't put very much in it yet."
"You've been here four months."
"I know. In Durham I had ten years of putting things in. People, places, a version of myself that knew how to be there. Starting over is —" you look for the word.
"Expensive" he says.
You look at him.
"It costs something," he says. "Starting over. People underestimate that. They think fresh start means free, but it's actually the opposite. You pay for the fresh start with everything you built before it."
"Was yours worth it?" you ask. "The cost."
A long pause. He closes the chart. He looks at you with the expression that isn't quite neutral, the one you've seen a handful of times, the careful one, the one that's managing something.
"Most days," he says. "Yes."
The night in April that you file under the night things changed is less dramatic than you'd expect.
It's not a bad shift, particularly. Moderately busy. No catastrophes. The kind of night where you move steadily and finish on time and feel, at the end of it, tired in the clean way rather than the hollowed-out way.
What happens is this: at two in the morning, during a quiet stretch, you're in the hallway outside the storage room and your phone rings with a call you've been half-expecting and fully dreading.
It's your sister in Raleigh. Your mother's been asking about you. It's been three months since you visited. When are you coming home.
You stand in the hallway and have a version of the conversation you've been having for a year, the one where you explain, without explaining, that home is a complicated word right now and that you're figuring things out and that yes, you'll visit, you just need a little more time. Your sister is kind about it. She's always kind about it. The kindness makes it worse, somehow.
You hang up and stand in the hallway for a moment with your hand flat against the wall.
"Bad news?"
You turn. Jack is at the other end of the hall, heading toward you.
"No," you say. "Just family. It's fine."
He slows as he reaches you, reading the hallway the way he reads everything. He doesn't keep walking. He stops, a few feet away.
"You don't have to," he starts.
"I know." You lower your hand from the wall. "My mom wants me to come home for a visit. My sister was relaying the message. Nothing bad happened. I just—"
you stop. You're not sure how to finish the sentence.
"Don't know what home means right now," he says.
You look at him.
"You said in March, starting over costs what you had before. I think one of the things it costs is the easy answer to that question."
Your chest does something complicated. "Yeah."
"That gets easier," he says. "Not because you answer it definitively. Just because you get better at living in the ambiguity."
"That sounds terrible."
"It's better than it sounds."
You lean back against the wall. He stays where he is, which means he's about three feet from you, and the hallway is empty and quiet and it's two in the morning in Pittsburgh and you've known this man for four months.
"Jack," you say.
"Yeah."
"Can I ask you something personal?"
A pause. "Probably."
"After you came back from the last deployment, the one where you lost the leg, who took care of you?"
The question sits in the hallway. He's very still.
"Why are you asking that," he says. Carefully. Not defensively.
"Because you're very good at it," you say. "Taking care of people. Not in the managing way. In the actual way. And I've been trying to work out if that's just who you are, or if someone taught you by doing it for you."
A long pause.
"My platoon medic," he says. "Before I became one myself. Man named Curtis. He had a way of treating the person that had nothing to do with treating the injury. Used to drive the MOs insane. He'd spend ten minutes just talking to someone. Being there. And they'd come through things they statistically shouldn't have come through." He pauses. "I asked him once why he did it that way. He said the body takes cues from being witnessed. That knowing someone is there changes the physiology."
"He was right," you say. "That's documented."
"I know that now." He looks at the floor for a second, then back up. "After I came home the last time, after the leg, no one took care of me, specifically. I didn't allow it. I had a version of that problem you described. Sealed up. Handled." He says handled with the specific irony of someone who has been in enough therapy to know what they were actually doing. "I took care of myself because the alternative meant admitting I needed it."
"How'd you crack that open?"
"A therapist with considerably more patience than I deserved," he says. "And time. And losing enough by refusing to let anyone in that eventually the cost of refusing was higher than the cost of letting."
"What did you lose?"
He's quiet for a moment. "That's the longer story."
"Okay," you say. You don't push.
He looks at you. The careful expression, the managed one, and then, for just a second, something shifts in it. Like a held breath, released.
"My wife died," he says. "Seven years ago. And I'd been so shut down, for so long, that I almost missed the last year of her life because I was performing fine for everyone including her. Including myself." A pause. "I don't, I'm not putting that on the table as a bid for sympathy. I'm answering your question about who taught me by doing it for me. She did. Once I finally let her."
The hallway is very quiet.
"I'm sorry," you say.
"Thank you." Said simply. Not deflecting it, not managing it. Just receiving it.
You stand in the hallway for another moment.
"That's not a shorter story." you say, finally.
The almost-sound. The not-quite-laugh. Warmer than usual. "No." he says. "It's not."
"Thank you for telling me."
"You asked an honest question," he says. "You get an honest answer."
He pushes off from where he's been standing and moves back toward the floor. At the hallway junction, he pauses.
"You should go visit," he says. "Your mom. It doesn't have to mean anything about home. It can just mean going."
You look at him.
"Pittsburgh will still be here when you get back," he says, and turns the corner.
You stand in the hallway for another thirty seconds.
Then you go back to the floor and do your job and don't think about it. Or try not to.
You fail, mostly.
May.
You go to Raleigh for four days, which is the longest you've been away from the floor since January, and which reveals something you hadn't fully understood: you miss Pittsburgh when you're not there.
Not the winter. Not the gray. But the diner and the particular quality of the morning light over the river and the floor and the people on it. Lena and her comprehensive institutional knowledge. Santos and her weekly coffee tribute. Whitaker finding his footing. Parker Ellis's running commentary on everything.
And Jack. You miss Jack, which you acknowledge privately and then immediately file under to be examined later while you eat your mother's cooking and sit on your sister's porch and allow yourself, for four days, to be someone's child and someone's sister and not a charge nurse running a trauma floor.
When you come back, you are, measurably, better. Something that was wound has loosened. Something that was held at distance has been permitted to be close.
You walk into your first shift back and Lena says "welcome back, honey" and Santos gives you a nod that is the Santos equivalent of a standing ovation, and Whitaker tells you about a case he managed well while you were gone with the barely-suppressed pride of a kid showing a parent a test score.
Jack is at the board when you come in. He doesn't turn immediately. You do the handoff briefing, get caught up on the floor status, settle into the shift.
An hour in, he ends up beside you at the hub.
"How was Raleigh," he says. Not looking at you. Looking at the board.
"Good," you say. "It was good."
"Your mom."
"Good. She kept feeding me."
"Sounds right."
"How was the floor," you say.
"Functional. Ellis covered competently. Whitaker had a good week."
"I heard."
A pause. He marks something on the board.
"You look better," he says. Still looking at the board.
"I feel better."
"Good." He caps the marker. And then, still not looking at you: "Pittsburgh felt different with you gone."
You go very still.
He puts the marker in the tray. He still doesn't look at you. The floor noise continues around you, the steady background hum of a functioning ER, monitors, voices, the distant sound of the ambulance bay.
"I'm not sure what to do with that," you say, very carefully.
"You don't have to do anything with it," he says. "I'm just saying it. For accuracy."
You look at the side of his face. The line of his jaw. The gray at his temple.
"Jack," you say.
He turns, finally, and looks at you.
"I need you to be clearer than that," you say. "Because I have been working very hard for five months to be professional about something and if you are saying what I think you might be saying I need you to actually say it."
A pause. Something in his expression moves through several registers, the careful controlled neutral, the managed version, and then the version underneath it, the one you've seen a handful of times. The unguarded one.
"I think about you," he says. "Outside of work. I think about whether you're sleeping enough, whether the diner is open when you need it to be, whether whatever you're still carrying from Durham is getting lighter." He looks at you steadily. "I'm aware of the position. I'm not asking you for anything. I just, you said you needed me to be clear."
You breathe.
"I think about you outside of work too," you say.
The hallway with your sister calling. The four days in Raleigh and the shape of what was missing. The floor at two AM and the particular way he told you the longer story because you asked an honest question.
"I think about how you are the first person in a long time who has not asked me to perform anything," you say. "Who takes me as I am and doesn't need me to be more okay than I am, or less damaged than I am. You make it easier to be actually here. And I don't know what to do with that either, but I'm done pretending I don't know what it is."
He's very still.
"I don't know what this looks like," you say. "Practically. Given,"
"The floor."
"The floor."
"You're charge nurse," he says. "I'm the attending lead. There's no direct supervisory,"
"I know."
"It would require—"
"I know."
A pause.
"I'm not impulsive," he says. "I need you to know that. I don't do things halfway. If this is something, it's something. I can't do the version where it's ambiguous. I'm not built for that anymore."
"Okay," you say.
"Okay?"
"I don't want ambiguous either." You look at him. "I moved to Pittsburgh because I needed to stop being a recording of myself and start being actually present. And whatever this is," you gesture slightly, the small inadequate gesture for the thing you've been building for five months in a language of heat packs and coffee and two AM honesty, "it's the most present I've felt in two years. I'm not interested in backing away from that."
The floor continues around you. Someone calls for a consult at the other end of the hall. A monitor beeps its reassuring rhythm.
Jack Abbot looks at you with the expression that has no performance in it.
"There's a restaurant," he says. "On the North Side. It's good. I've been meaning to," he stops. Tries again. "Would you have dinner with me."
"Not a shift," you say.
"Not a shift."
"When."
"Saturday. You're off Saturday."
"How do you know my-"
"I know the schedule."
You look at him. He looks back. The door, which has been ajar for five months, is open.
"Yes," you say.
He nods. The expression does the thing, the almost-laugh, warmer than you've ever heard it, and then, briefly, the real one. Quiet and genuine and entirely devastating.
"Back to the floor," he says.
"Back to the floor," you agree.
You go in opposite directions. You don't smile until you're around the corner.
Saturday is April in Pittsburgh, which means cool and bright, the city wearing its best version of itself. The restaurant is on the North Side, small and warm, with the kind of menu that takes itself seriously without making you feel like you've walked into a performance.
He's there when you arrive. He's early, you realize. Of course he's early. He's been running tight logistics his entire adult life.
He stands when he sees you, and the simplicity of the gesture does something unexpected to your chest.
"Hi," you say.
"Hi," he says.
You sit down. The server comes. You order wine. He orders water and then looks at the wine and changes his order, and you file this as the first new thing you're learning about him outside of the hospital context. There will be many more of these. The prospect of them is something you haven't felt in a while.
The dinner is easy. Which is not what you expected, exactly. You'd anticipated a version of the careful managed conversation of the floor, the professional language, the deliberate navigation.
But off the floor he is still Jack, still precise, still honest, still the person who answers real questions with real answers, but something has been set down. Some part of the management. He talks about his sister who calls him too often and who he would not trade for anything. He talks about what it was like to go to medical school in his mid-thirties, post-military, post-amputation, in a class full of people a decade younger, and what he learned from that and what it cost. He asks about your paramedic years with the genuine curiosity of someone who wants to understand the timeline of a person, not just the resume.
You tell him about the car accident that started your paramedic career. The one you were first on scene for at twenty-two, the one where you didn't know what you were doing and did it anyway and everyone survived and you sat in the ambulance bay afterward for forty minutes understanding that this was what you were supposed to do. He listens to the whole thing.
"That's how you know," he says, when you finish. "When you can't explain the why and you don't need to."
"Is that how it was for you? Medicine?"
"After the leg," he says. "I needed something to fix things with. I'd been breaking things, one way and another, for long enough. I wanted to be on the other side of it."
"And?"
He looks at his glass. "And it worked. Mostly."
"Mostly?"
He looks at you. "There are still nights."
"I know," you say. "I've seen some of them."
"You have," he agrees. "You see things very clearly. I found it uncomfortable at first."
"And now?"
The expression. The real one. "Now I find it," he considers the word carefully, "restful."
You look at him across the table in the warm light of this restaurant on a Saturday in April and you think about five months of a specific language built of small gestures in a hospital at two in the morning, and how the thing you came to Pittsburgh to find, the presence, the being actually here, has arrived from a direction you weren't expecting.
"Can I tell you something," you say.
"Yes."
"I came here to stop being a recording of myself and I'm not sure when exactly it stopped being a risk, but I think it was early. Earlier than I wanted to admit."
He waits.
"I think it was around the time I started leaving pens near your chart station," you say.
The almost-laugh. The real one. Warm and quiet and brief, and you're close enough now, across a restaurant table on a Saturday night, that it's not at a professional distance anymore.
"Around the same time," he says.
"The heat pack?" you say.
"Before that, actually."
"When?"
"Third shift," he says. "You were in bay seven with a patient who was frightened and escalating and you were completely still. Not frozen. Still. Like someone who has been in frightening rooms before and knows that the stillness is what the other person needs, and who can provide it without it costing them anything in the moment. I'd seen nurses do that before. Not like that."
You don't say anything for a moment.
"And then I walked away and told myself it was a professional observation," he says, dry, "and I was extremely convincing. To myself. For about two weeks."
"Then what?"
"Then you left a heat pack on the counter without making it an event," he says. "And that was harder to file away."
You look at him.
He looks at you.
"Jack," you say.
"Yeah."
"I'm not very good at this part. The saying the thing part. I spent a lot of years being good at everything else."
"I know," he says. "I'm not either. I've been told I communicate like a situation report."
"You don't, actually."
"Only with you," he says. Simply. "Only recently."
The restaurant is warm and the wine is good and Pittsburgh is outside the window doing its April thing, and you reach across the table and put your hand over his.
He turns his hand over.
His thumb moves across your palm, once, and you feel it in your sternum.
"We're figuring it out," you say.
"We're figuring it out," he agrees.
Here is what you know, by the time the summer comes.
The diner on Penn Avenue knows your order. The server, whose name is Gloria, asks after Jack on the mornings you come in alone, because you came in together twice and once is a coincidence and twice is a data point and Gloria has been reading data points for thirty years.
The floor is still the floor. The work doesn't change, the long nights don't change, the particular weight of the hard ones doesn't change. But there is a shift in the architecture of the hard ones. The knowing that at the end of them there is a person who will not require you to perform recovery, who will simply be there while the shift processes through you like weather.
You go back to your hometown in June and this time you don't feel the pull of the departure the way you did in May. You feel it on the return, the Pittsburgh-shaped gravity that has been building since January, that you understand now is not the city itself but what you've put in it.
You call your mother from the airport and she asks how things are going, really, in the tone of a woman who reads her children accurately from two states away.
"Good," you say. "Really."
A pause. "There's someone," she says. Not a question.
"There's someone," you confirm.
You can hear her smiling. "Does he deserve you?"
You think about a man who answers honest questions with honest answers. Who said restful and meant it as the highest thing.
"I think we deserve each other," you say. "Which is different."
"That's better," she says. "That's the right answer."
Jack is on a Saturday morning in July, in your apartment, drinking coffee that is actually hot because you got a machine that does it correctly, reading something, when you come in from your run.
You are, in the clinical vocabulary, a lot. Red-faced, sweaty, approximately nine miles of July heat in your joints.
He looks up. He looks at you. The expression, the open one, the unguarded one, the one that stopped being rare sometime around April, sits on his face with the ease of something that lives there now.
"There's water," he says.
"I see it."
"You look like you ran somewhere unreasonable."
"Nine miles."
He shakes his head. Returns to his book. "Statistically inadvisable."
You get the water. You sit on the other end of the couch, legs folded under you, drink half of it and look at him.
"Jack."
"Hmm."
"I rescheduled the fitting appointment."
He looks up from the book.
"The socket's been giving me problems," he says.
"I know."
"I cancelled twice."
"I know that too."
A pause. He looks at you. The expression is the one that means he's deciding how much to say.
"Thank you," he says. Quietly. "For staying on it."
"You stayed on mine," you say. "The processing thing. The being-present thing. You stayed on it without making it a project."
"That's different."
"It's not."
He holds your gaze for a moment. Then the almost-sound, warm and real.
"Annoying," he says.
"You keep saying that."
"It keeps being true."
You lean over and take the book out of his hands and put it on the coffee table, and he watches you do this with the mild expression of someone who is not going to object.
"We have four hours before you have to be at the hospital," you say.
"I'm aware of the schedule."
"Then stop reading and pay attention to me."
The actual laugh, brief and quiet and entirely devastating, the same as the first time you heard it and every time since.
"You're the most presumptuous person I've ever met," he says, and puts his arm around you when you lean into his side, and outside the window Pittsburgh is doing its summer thing, green and warm, the rivers catching the light.
You're learning that this is what it's supposed to feel like.
You're learning it's worth the cost of getting here.
Author's Note:
jack abbot has been living in my head rent free for longer than i'd like to admit, and at some point i had to do something about it. so here we are.
this one is slow and quiet and a little bit about learning to let people see you. if that's your thing, i hope you like it.
for everyone who's been fine. you know the kind.
— with love and an embarrassing amount of feelings about a fictional man
Would you ever do a Junebug fic where the reader either catches a bug and is sick needing Jack to pay a house visit or Jack misses a picnic with the two and you go down to see if he's okay?
Love your fics so far!
yes!! i love a sick fic!! thank you
jackrabbit and junebug 1.1k
You’d just gotten rid of your sling when you started to feel that tickle in the back of your throat. June blamed it on the bad luck fairy. And maybe she’s right. It seems you can’t catch a break with all of these doctor’s visits and hospital bills tanking your credit score.
Jack calls you just about every day on his way out of work. It’s about the time you’re on your way in to your own job, one of the few gaps in your conflicting schedules where you both can manage to spare a few minutes. But today you don’t answer. Jack doesn’t think anything of it. You’ve got your hands full with work, and only fuller with June.
But it is strange when you call back just two hours later with how antsy you get about taking personal calls when your bosses are around. Jack answers on the first ring.
“Hey. You at work?”
“No, I—” You interrupt yourself with a chesty cough. “I called off.”
“Oh, you sound awful.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Want me to come over, I—”
“No, it’s okay, Jack.” He hates the way his name comes out all nasally. You poor thing. “I’m okay. I’m sure it’s just a cold.”
“Let me check? I’m not far.”
“No, I don’t want you to see me like this. I’m all gross.”
“Can’t be any more gross than the hand I saw blown to bits last week.”
“Eww,” you laugh in a way that sounds like it hurts. “Don’t tell me that.” But your voice is still yours. Still beautiful.
“I’ll see you in fifteen.”
“Give me time to clean up at least.”
“Fifteen. And don’t you dare get up.”
“You’re the worst.”
He’s the best. He hangs up with his car keys already in his hand. And he takes a shortcut to get to your place quick.
He knocks once, expecting you to answer in a tizzy, but what he doesn’t expect to see is June. She swings the door open so hard the hinges scream, and she throws herself at Jack’s legs with a force that nearly takes him out.
“Oof— what are you doing here? Mommy let you stay home?”
“Yeah, she’s real sick, Dr. Rabbit. It’s a good thing you’re here.”
Speak of the devil. You come sliding by in your socks, face turning through a ripple of several emotions. “June, what did I tell you about answering the door?”
“It’s just Dr. Rabbit. He’s here to help.”
“I know, babe, but you can’t—” Your eyes jump to Jack's. You go a little lightheaded in the rush, but he braces you by the arm. “Sorry, I–”
He lets himself in and plants a kiss to the side of your face. “How you feelin’?”
You release a sigh that’s been building, and you turn straight into putty in his hands. “Exhausted.”
The back of his hand probes your forehead. “Warm,” he notes, more to himself.
“I took a pain reliever. Sorta helped.”
“Come on. Let’s go lay down.” His fingers find the slope of your back, the kind of touch that makes all the aches and pains disappear.
“Did you bring medicine for Mommy?” June asks him, watching him shoulder off his bag onto the floor beside the couch.
“I did. I brought some food and a drink to make her feel strong again.”
“Are you going to give her a shot?”
“Not today.”
“Does she have to go to the hospital?”
“I don’t think so.”
June is relieved to hear that. She gets distracted by the cartoon playing low on the TV.
“Sit, honey,” Jack says as you start to clean up. You’re swiping crumpled tissues into a pyramid on the coffee table and shoving the blankets back onto the couch. June steals one of them, and by the looks of it, it’s the comforter from her bed.
She’s still in her pajamas. A dark blue set with all sorts of sparkly constellations. And you are only slightly more dressed, like there was an effort made, but you got too tired to finish.
You plop into the couch cushion with a regretful wince.
“Head hurts?”
You nod sorely up at Jack. He’s good at this whole doctor thing. You see why they pay him so much.
He fishes out a carton of fresh fruit and a radioactive-looking electrolyte drink from his bag. “Hungry?”
“Not really,” you admit. “But thank you.”
“How’s that cough?”
“Not too bad.”
“It’s terrible,” June tattles on you.
“It’s not,” you argue.
“Mommy sounds like Peppa Pig when she sleeps.” June makes a very long, very loud snorting sound with a giggle.
You can’t stop the coughing fit that arises with your own laughter. You turn away to sputter privately into your elbow.
Jack tuts his tongue disappointedly when you finish. “Sounds like June’s telling the truth.”
“I am!”
You send a faux glare to your mini me. It’s like you’re arguing with yourself. Jack adores it.
“It’s not that bad,” you say.
“Would it kill you if I check?”
“Yes.”
Jack pulls out his stethoscope anyway. He’s ninety percent sure it’s just a cold, as you say, but he’ll take any reason to fuss over you and run with it.
“Deep breath.”
You breathe in big, with an even bigger eye roll.
Jack’s hand moves professionally up your spine. “Again.”
June watches with buckets of curiosity as Jack listens to your lungs. She still doesn’t trust all of his doctor devices.
“Congratulations,” he says. “You’re officially not dying.”
“Great,” you deadpan.
He sends you that tight little Jack smile you’ve fallen so easily for. “Give it a few days,” he adds, setting the stethoscope aside. “Fluids, rest. You’ll survive.”
“Like I said.”
“Don’t get snotty with me.”
“Have more than enough of that.”
He squeezes onto the couch with you, in your gross little nest you’ve made. His arm falls across your shoulders, and he pulls you in.
“You’ll get sick,” you prophesize.
“I have a strong immune system.”
You take his word for it and lean in. His hands work magic for your achy bones, and his chest is the comfiest pillow you’ve got.
He watches June work through a coloring book on the floor while you doze off. And when you’re out, he does your dishes and sweeps all of your used tissues into the trash. You can’t help but think that maybe your luck has finally turned.
You and your picky four-year-old daughter, June, become frequent faces in the ER, where the devoted Dr. “Rabbit” works. TW mentions of eating disorders/vomit
summary: rockstar!eddie x fem!reader; you faint and find yourself in the lap of your favorite rockstar.
cw: fainting, mentions of blood, concussion, reader ends up in an ambulance and then in the hospital, fluff, hurt/comfort
~~
“Can you open your eyes for me?”
You slowly blink your heavy eyes open, head pounding. You’re not sure where you are or how you got here, but as your brain catches up with your body, you realize two things:
You’re lying on the ground, concrete hot beneath you.
Your head is in someone’s lap.
That someone is looking down at you, his face upside down over yours and blocking you from the beating sun, which is casting a halo-like glow around his head. His big brown eyes are locked on yours, etched in concern.
He looks like an angel. He might be an angel.
“There you are,” he smiles. “Had me worried there for a sec.”
Another shock of pain shoots through you. Your face scrunches up, and the boy winces empathetically. Your eyes close in search of some relief.
“Hey, take it easy. Try to keep your eyes open, okay?” You barely register him gently rubbing your temples. “Can you tell me your name?”
All at once, reality crashes into you. You know that voice.
It’s not just any boy holding your head in his lap, and it’s definitely not an angel. It’s Eddie Munson, lead singer of Corroded Coffin.
Your favorite band. The whole reason you’re in Indianapolis in the first place.
Your eyes widen. “Shit.”
Eddie chuckles. “Well now, that can’t possibly be your name. A pretty girl like you?” His voice is all the humorous flirting he’s known for, but at least five times quieter, like you’re something delicate his voice might break if he’s not careful. His fingers are still rubbing your temples.
You feel like you’re on fire. “No. No, sorry. It’s Y/N.”
He hums and repeats your name, his tone resembling one you’d use to soothe a child. Or a frightened animal. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Eddie. Do you know where you are right now?”
You feel a hundred levels of sick, and the embarrassment is not helping. You close your eyes. “A terrible dream, I hope?”
Your weak attempt at a joke doesn’t have time to land. “Hey, hey, eyes open, okay?” Eddie gives one of your cheeks a gentle pat. “I’m not sure if you should fall asleep right now.”
You force your eyes open. “Indianapolis,” you mumble.
“What?” Eddie asks, his brow furrowing, having forgotten his own question in his anxiety about you going unconscious again.
“Where I am. Indianapolis.”
“Oh,” Eddie’s response is a mix of a relieved sigh and a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, you are. Good. Do you remember what happened?”
You really don’t. One minute, you were walking up to a record store your friend back home had insisted you visit while you were in town, and the next you found yourself in Eddie Munson’s lap, of all places.
“No,” you say, and the lack of memory combined with the pain you’re feeling has a familiar heat growing behind your eyes and a stinging in your sinuses.
“Whoa, hey. That’s okay!” Eddie wipes a stray tear away with his thumb as it leaks out of the corner of your eye. “Don’t cry, sweet thing. I’m not sure what happened either. I was just walking out of Vinyl Frontier and saw you falling down. I tried to catch you before you smashed your face into the concrete, but I think your head still hit the wall pretty damn hard before I could get to you. We’re waiting on an ambulance right now. Everything’s going to be a-okay. We’re fine, we’re dandy. Don’t work yourself up, I’ve got ya.”
Eddie is brushing your hair back from your forehead now as he speaks. It makes you want to cry more, because what the actual fuck. You finally meet your celebrity crush, and you’re practically on your death bed.
The thought gives you pause. You reach up a hand to touch your head, and Eddie catches it and places it to rest on your stomach with a pat.
He tsks. “Let’s not touch that.”
“Oh god. Are my brains out? Am I going to die?” Your voice spikes.
This pulls a genuine laugh out of Eddie. “What? No, sweets. You’ve kept all your brains in your pretty little head, I swear. Just a little bit of blood is all, nothing major. A few stitches and you’ll be killer.”
You close your eyes again, overwhelmed by everything that’s happening. Eddie reaches down and carefully parts your eyelids with his pointer fingers and thumbs. “Open.”
“I don’t feel good,” you say, pathetically.
Eddie frowns. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. They should be here soon.” He’s back in full soothing mode, one hand laid on the side of your upside down face, his thumb caressing your forehead while the other gently runs fingers through your hair. “Let’s keep you talking until then, sound good? Are you from Indianapolis?”
You try to shake your head and wince. Eddie squeezes your face as an attempt to help you ride out the wave of pain. It does nothing, but you appreciate it anyway. “No, I’m from Willow.”
Eddie grins. “Oh, no shit? I’m from Hawkins. Howdy, neighbor.”
You know that Eddie and his band are from Hawkins, the town about 35 minutes from yours. You even know that he went to Hawkins High at the same time you went to Willow High, and that, if he’d ever gone to any sporting events, it was likely you’d been in the same place at the same time, though you’d never heard of him until his band started touring with Metallica a few years back.
But you weren’t about to tell him that.
“Oh,” you say. “Cool.”
There’s a glimmer in his eye that you’re not mentally present enough to decipher, but it feels like fondness. “You’re great at this whole ‘keep you talking’ thing. What brings you all the way from tiny town Willow to the Big City?”
“Uh,” you start, wondering if you can still blush if you have a concussion, then wondering if that’s a stupid thing to wonder. “A concert.” You sound a little guilty even to your own ears.
Eddie’s smile turns into a wicked grin, all smugness and pride. “Oh, I see. Have you come all this way just to see little ol’ me?” He’s hoping to lighten the mood, to make you smile a bit and ease some of the pain.
Instead, your face scrunches up in upset, the pain in your head too intense to play things cool. “Fuck me, I’m gonna miss the concert, aren’t I?”
You’d paid a lot of money for tickets, had taken off work to come to Indianapolis, had even booked a hotel room to make it into a fun little weekend getaway for yourself. You’d been looking forward to it for a long time; not being able to go would be devastating.
Eddie thinks about it; the concert isn’t until the next night, but typically one isn’t allowed to go to a loud event with an active concussion. You probably will miss it.
“Tell you what, sweet thing,” Eddie says, holding your head in both hands and leaning down a little bit closer to your face. “How about you promise you’ll take care of this head of yours,” he gives your head the smallest shake, barely perceptible, so as to not hurt you further. “And I’ll promise to hook you up with tickets to any other show on the tour providing it is after you’re fully healed. We got a deal?”
Your eyes are hopeful, bordering on sad puppy. “You’d do that?”
Eddie thinks he’d give you anything you want right now. He laughs it off, sitting up to put a more appropriate amount of space between the two of you.
“Well, luckily I know a guy who’s got connections with the band, and as you can see, I love playing knight in shining armor.” He winks. “Alright, tell me something else about you. Your pets. Your friends. Your favorite food. First time you ever got a hickey. Whatever you want, angel, I’m all ears.”
You open your mouth to speak, but the bright lights of the ambulance stop you before you start.
“About fucking time,” Eddie whispers conspiratorially to you.
You don’t register much as the paramedics lift you onto a gurney and roll you into the ambulance, but you manage to see Eddie giving you a small wave, then turning to talk to a man in a uniform.
They ask you a few questions and hook you up to some IVs.
Everything goes dark after that.
~~~
You wake for the second time to the sound of beeping. Your eyes blink open, once again confused and disoriented as you survey your surroundings.
White walls, white sheets, the smell of disinfectant in the air.
Oh, you think. I’m in the hospital.
“Oh good,” a voice beside you says, startling you. “You’re awake.”
You turn your head to see Eddie Munson, rockstar extraordinaire, sitting with his legs crossed in a chair that simply can’t be comfortable, a paperback fantasy novel folded in his hand.
“Wh–what?” You ask as your still-hurting-but-now-medicated brain sprints to try to recall the past several hours that led you here.
Eddie stands and walks over to you, putting a hand affectionately on your head. “How ya feeling, sweets?”
“I–,” your mouth feels like cotton. “I don’t know.” Tired of waking up not knowing what the fuck is going on, you think.
“Oh shit. Water.” Eddie turns around too quickly, almost tripping over his own feet as he unceremoniously grabs a cup from a table in the corner and holds it in front of you. “There ya go. You’ve been out awhile, you must be parched.”
You take the water gratefully and take a sip. Eddie is smiling at you widely like he’s glad to see you, his hands on his hips.
You clear your throat. “I’m sorry to ask, but is this a dream? Am I actively in a coma and this is a weird scenario my brain has created?” Your voice drops to a whisper. “Did I die? Like actually?”
Eddie giggles, tickled. “No, you’re not dead. Nor in a coma, though it felt like it there for a bit. You can really sleep, you know that? I mean of course there was the medicine and all, but that’s neither here nor there.” He talks with his hands like he’s been deprived of conversation for too long and it’s been killing him.
You have so many questions.
“Sooo…what are you doing here then?”
He looks surprised that you’d ask, then remembers himself and laughs somewhat nervously, scratching the back of his head like he’s trying to be casual. “Right. About that. So when the ambulance came, they told me I could only ride on it with you if I was your family or your partner. I didn’t feel like I knew enough about you to pull off brother, so I told them I’m your boyfriend. Sorry, I know that’s probably psychotic considering we met, like,” he glances at the clock on the wall at the front of the room. “Nine hours ago now. Almost our ten-hour anniversary. Happy anniversary, babe.”
You feel warm all over, embarrassment and flattery and shock all in one. The heart monitor hooked up to you gives you away immediately. To his credit, Eddie only smirks at it, biting his tongue and sparing you any teasing.
“You didn’t have to come here with me,” you start. “Or stay, for that matter. Why are you still here? Did you not have plans?”
Eddie gasps, faux-offended. “What do you mean? It’s my boyfriendly duty, obviously.” And when you give him a look, clearly not accepting this as an answer, he simply shrugs, waving his hands nonchalantly. “Plans schmans. I wanted to be here. I was…invested, I guess. Just wanted to make sure everything turned out alright.”
You tilt your head to the side, realizing you don’t actually know the current state of your physical health. “And did it turn out alright? What’s the prognosis, Doc?”
Eddie grimaces, his hand moving back towards your head and pushing your hair away from your face again, like he had when you’d been lying in his lap. The movement feels so natural, so second-nature, if you didn’t know better, even you would believe he actually was your boyfriend.
“Grade 2 concussion. Got some pretty badass stitches, too.” He moves his hand to the edge of your hairline on the side of your head and runs his fingers over where you assume a line of stitches are. “You’re supposed to take it easy for 2 weeks, then ease into normal life. Think you can do that?”
You think about work and how shitty it’ll be trying to get that time off. But Eddie is looking at you with such tenderness, you find yourself nodding.
“Atta girl,” he says, giving your head two soft pats before dropping his hand. He takes your now empty water cup from you and steps away. “They’re keeping you here for 24 hours to monitor you or what have you. And get some fluids in you, since you were, like, alarmingly dehydrated. So I hope you like fantasy, sweets, because this is the only book I have and I am great at voices.”
“Eddie, you don’t have to–”
He’s cutting you off before you can finish your sentence. “Alright, alright. I get it, I don’t have to, yada yada yada. I’m staying, and that’s that. Capisce?”
You nod wordlessly, confused but grateful for whatever good deed you must’ve done to land you in this place with this man.
“Good,” Eddie says, flopping back into his chair and crossing his arms. “Because if I recall correctly, before the ambulance came, you were about to tell me about the time you got your first hickey. Do go on.”
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