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BABY STEPS ─── jack abbot

summary: now with a baby on the way, you and jack have reconciled and are learning to fall back in love again; when you show up at the ptmc with suddenly severe symptoms that threaten to take you away from him, he proves to you and himself that he'll do anything to keep you here. (6k)

characters: jack abbot / fem!wife!reader, michael robinavitch, the night shift attendings aka the night crawlers™

content: part two to this fic, established relationship, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, cw for medical inaccuracies (everything is for plot convenience atp lol), medical procedures, heavy mentions of pregnancy and pregnancy complications, kinda really sad but it gets happy in the end i promise, smut 18+ (MDNI): pregnant sex, shower sex, in jack's shower chair bc yeah :P

FIC #1 / 20 FOR 20

( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )

Jack Abbot had changed for you in many ways since the day you nearly left him. He seemed to grow alongside your round stomach, surpassing his own emotional milestones while your baby passed its physical ones. (The fetus was roughly the size of a strawberry when Jack finally decided to stop getting shot at for fun as a SWAT physician.)

He was, admittedly, a man carved out of sharp edges. You knew this long before you ever married him. He was fashioned from constant urgency, snap decisions, and a heartbeat that never quite slowed down. He didn’t let quiet exist — not inside his own head, and certainly not inside his own house. The faint crackle of his police scanner always bled gently down the hall, as low voices report chaos from somewhere else; which always meant that he was somewhere else.

If there was ever silence in your shared home, it only meant that something was horribly wrong — that Jack was gone or that you were; that something terrible needed fixing at the PTMC, or that your own world had slipped slightly off its axis. But then you found out that you were pregnant, while divorce papers still idled on the coffee table back home, and Jack learned quickly how to stay.

He removed the scanner from his nightstand. He ended his days as a TEMS provider and learned what it meant to take a real day off. He realized that he didn’t have to spend his mornings memorizing you before running into a burning building, because you’d still be there when the fire died out; he just needed to learn to stop running all the goddamn time.

Now, the silence in your home feels softer than it used to. Changed, almost. Filled not by a strangling tension of what once felt like an inevitable end, but rather by the steady hiss of running water and panted breaths as heavy as the steam swirling between you.

Jack slouches in his shower chair to accommodate your round stomach as you straddle his lap, bracing your hands on his freckled shoulders. His heavy eyes are clouded with a mixture of desire and worry as they dart between your face and the half-hard cock he holds in his fist.

“You sure about this?” he wonders through panted breaths, which make his flushed chest rise and fall at an uneven pace beneath you.

You exhale hard through your nose, annoyed in a flicker. “Are you gonna ask me that the entire time, or…?”

“I just don’t want you to hurt yourself,” Jack hums, lip quirking into a distant half-smile, ‘cause he loves how easily grumpy you get. “That’s all…”

You flash him a glower, and only slightly melt under his touch when his calloused hands trail up your waist and over your back, skin slick from the warm water rushing from the mounted faucet behind you.

“I’ve been hurting all day— This is the only way to not hurt.”

Jack melts for you instantly. ‘Cause he’s been worried about you all day, in truth, unable to find the root of your sudden headaches and stomach pain. He’s been checking your blood pressure every hour since he woke up, and giving you pain meds every two — though nothing seems to help you quite as much as sex, which you’ve been craving more and more in the latter half of your pregnancy (not that Jack is complaining, of course.)

“Sure you can handle it, honey?” the older man hums, teasing now, as the tip of his weeping cock nudges your achingly sensitive clit.

“Don’t I always, baby?” you deadpan, and don’t give him time to breathe before sinking down over him.

A groan rumbles deep in his throat as your pussy swallows him, inch by inch. Your relieved sigh entwines with the humming faucet as you ease yourself onto him. The warmth of him inside of you cuts through the ache that’s been lingering in your body for days now — a dull, persistent pain that only he can cure.

You melt into his slick chest as the aching leaves your body, replaced now by the fuller feeling of him nestled deep inside of you. You bury your head into his corded neck, inhaling the scent of musky soap clinging to his skin there. Jack noses into your damp hair.

“This okay?” he pants against your temple.

You nod lazily against him and murmur something that sounds like “fuck, you feel so good…” into his skin, though the words come out mostly muffled.

You thread your fingers into the damp silver curls at the nape of his neck, and Jack fights back a shiver. He molds you back together when you go lax on his lap, clutching your hip in one hand and cradling the base of your neck with the other, helping you move back and forth over his scruffy thighs.

“Take it then…” Jack mumbles in half-drunken slurs. “Take it for me, honey. C’mon…”

He leans slightly over, straining one arm to reach for the shower head hanging off the nozzle at his feet, left splashing against the tiled wall beside you. He keeps you pressed against his chest with one hand while his other angles the spout between your thighs. The water sprays against your already sensitive clit; you twitch instinctively at the warm pressure there.

“Jack—” you whimper through a gasped breath.

The man moans through gritted teeth when you clench around him. His free hand tightens around the back of your neck. “I know, honey. I know,” he hums in uneven breaths. “It’s okay. Just use me, baby. There you go. Just use me.”

His words cling to you the same way the rolling steam does, softening all the hardened edges of you. And just for a little while, as Jack keeps you together as you fall apart for him on his lap, the pain finally quiets.

The smell hits him about halfway down the hall.

The lingering steam from the bathroom, smelling like a mixture of your sweet-musky shampoos, gives way to something far more bitter as he nears the kitchen — which has become nothing short of your own personal laboratory since your pregnancy cravings hit. You’ve made otherwise unfathomable concoctions within these walls in the meantime. Jack’s just glad you’ve moved past the sardines and lemon juice phase.

“Wow…” the man croons sarcastically from the threshold, stuffing his keys into the pocket of his scrub pants. “It smells absolutely delicious in here, honey. What’s on the menu for today?”

You don’t look up from the counter before you, as you drench a plate in hot sauce. “Pickles and tabasco,” you answer in monotone. “AKA the only thing I can eat without puking.”

“Hm,” Jack hums, closer now, as his wide hands splay along your shoulders. He spots the container of Rocky Road sitting just to the side, slowly weeping until it gets to the consistency you like. “And the ice cream?”

You tilt your head, glancing up at him like it’s obvious. “To help with the burn. Duh.”

His stomach turns at the thought of such a mixture. His nose scrunches as you reach for a pickle slice, which seems to serve purely as a vehicle for the hot sauce that drips onto the side of your thumb and forefinger when you shove the thing into your mouth.

You hum with a slow nod, eyes fluttering shut as you lick the excess from your fingertips — you didn’t even look this gratified when he was fucking you a half-hour ago.

A laugh sputters from his mouth at the thought.

“That’s what makes you less nauseous?”

“Well, you made me eat real food last night, and I spent all morning puking, so…”

“You don’t feel nauseous anymore, though, right?” he asks, more solemn now, as his chest reignites with a red-hot worry.

“Mm-mm,” you hum wordlessly through another bite.

“And the medicine helped your headache?”

You sigh hard through your nose, turning once more to face him. “Yes, Jack— What’s with the third degree?”

His scruffy jaw tightens a fraction as concern flickers behind his eyes. The hands on your shoulders grip you harder, absentmindedly massaging the ache in your back with his thumb. “You just worry me, honey. That’s all…”

You roll your eyes, though there’s no real bite to your annoyance now. “It’s your fault for getting me pregnant…”

“Hey. You were there, too,” he scoffs, watching with a big dumb grin on his face as you shovel a bite of Rocky Road into your mouth to wash down the pickle-tabasco mixture. “You played a pretty big part in the whole getting pregnant thing, if I recall. Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it, either.”

He reaches past you for the plate and steals a sauceless pickle from the pile there, pinching it into his mouth with his thumb and forefinger.

“Hm,” you shrug and swallow down the mouthful. “Jury’s still out on that, I think…”

That earns you a look. Jack’s eyes widen with something sharper and visibly amused, scruffy cheek softly jutted until he downs the bite. “Oh, you are just asking for it, aren’t you?” he hums, leaning forward with clear intent.

You pull back from him at the last second, scrunching your nose in disgust.

“My breath smells.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Jack scoffs, and leans down again to press his mouth to yours anyway — a chaste and smacking kiss, filled with a sort of domesticity that makes your stomach do a back flip. It’s hard to imagine, now, that there was ever a time you didn’t want this; that you didn’t want him.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” he tells you with a huff, parting from you to head to the front door. “Get some sleep while I’m gone— I need you to be well-rested for what I have planned tomorrow.”

Your eyes narrow in his direction, because you thought you’d made it pretty clear that you had zero plans of doing anything until the baby got here. “And what is that exactly?”

“Well, it’s my professional opinion that intercourse is the best way to induce labor,” Jack tells you as he swings open the door, letting in streams of golden hour sunlight and wisps of cool evening air. He picks up his military bag from the entrance and swings it over his shoulder. A slow grin spreads across his face as he says, “And I plan on intercourse-ing the shit out of you when I get home.”

Your chest burns with a giddy feeling. One you haven’t felt in quite some time, a flame burning anew.

“Yay…” you deadpan anyway, rolling your eyes for dramatic effect. “So exciting…”

“Yeah. Keep it up,” Jack squints with a smile as he swings the door shut behind him. “Let’s just hope you can back up that mouth when I get back.”

It starts first with a headache. It always did, even before you were pregnant. That sharp, splitting pressure behind your eyes is all too familiar to you now. You languish in the ache for a while and wait for it to pass with a cold press over your forehead like you always do. It doesn’t start to really scare you until it feels like the room has tilted slightly on its axis; an unwavering dizziness that doesn’t seem to shake off with a few blinks like it normally would.

The panic that gives you makes it suddenly very hard to breathe. Each exhale comes out shorter and tighter, as if your lungs have forgotten how to stretch properly. A cold, leaden weight settles in your chest accordingly, overpowering the pain that curls warm and low in your stomach where the baby kicks and writhes — an alien sort of feeling, like being stretched from the inside.

When it doesn’t pass after five minutes, you fumble for your phone and call the number for the PTMC like Jack had told you to — the best way to reach him while at work. It rings three times and clicks once when it’s answered. Static hums briefly on the other line before a familiar voice comes in, stammering slightly, as if they’d been told to answer.

“Uh— Um, PTMC— This is Mel. I mean, uh, Dr. King.”

“Hey, Mel…” You squeeze your eyes shut when your voice wavers, despite your attempt to steady it. You exhale slowly through your mouth and rub at the right side of your stomach, just below your ribs, where the baby kicks mercilessly at your side. “Is, uh… Is Jack around? He told me to call if I—”

“Honey?” Mel blurts, then turns slightly away from the receiver to call somewhere distantly. “Hey, Robby? Dr. Robby— It’s Honey.”

There’s a beat of silence, filled by distant shuffling as the line shifts again.

“Honey?” Robby calls, immediate and alert. “What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t think you’d still be around…” you hum into the receiver, voice taut as you blink away the blur creeping into your vision. “Aren’t you supposed to be on the road by now, Motorcycle Mike?”

He huffs a tired laugh. “Yeah, I-I’m headed that way, actually— Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I— I’m fine,” you lie weakly. “Is Jack there?”

“Uh…” Robby trails off, voice distant as he glances over his shoulder. “He’s in the OR right now, I believe. Do you need something?”

Your clammy grip tightens on the phone. Asking for help feels like choking.

“Do you remember my last check-up? With Dr. Myers?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, she told me that if I had another one of those headaches that feels like I’m being stabbed through the eyeball, that I need to come in, right?” you ramble on bated breath. “But do you think she meant it, like, I need to come in, or was she just, you know, saying that as a… formality?”

Robby’s silence is less than comforting. The static that precedes his response is heavy and ominous.

“Do I need to come get you?” he asks, suddenly very, very serious in a way that makes your aching chest that much tighter.

“Yeah,” you scoff anyway. “Because driving a motorcycle with a pregnant woman on the back is so safe.”

“No, I—” he huffs a breath, a mixture of a laugh and a frustrated sigh. “I meant, do you need someone to come get you?”

The thought of someone picking you up to take you to the ED is just as nerve-wracking as having to call someone for help. So you spend another two minutes convincing Robby that you’re fit enough to drive, and the eight minutes it takes to get to the hospital praying your migraine doesn’t blind you before you can pull into the parking lot.

Robby meets you in the waiting room to escort you the rest of the way inside. The white-blue fluorescent lights overhead feel like daggers in your temples. The sounds of a moderately controlled chaos blur around you — of beeping monitors, rushing footsteps, and distant voices.

He ushers you into the nearest room and dims the lights before he goes, leaving you alone just long enough for you to put on a hospital gown.

You wait for him on the edge of the made bed, with your heart in your throat and your legs swinging off the side. Robby knocks before he enters, flashing you a small smile as he rubs sanitizer between his palms.

“Jack’s finishing up. He’s on his way down now,” he tells you, then tilts his bearded chin in a more concerned look. “How’s your head?”

“Eh,” you shrug. “Haven’t had any complaints.”

“Okay, I’m not even— gonna comment on the sarcasm,” Robby huffs as he descends onto the squeaking stool beside the monitor. He slips his glasses out of his scrub pocket and slides them onto the bridge of his nose. “You being a smart ass is a pretty good sign, actually…”

He slips a blood pressure cuff over your elbow with practiced hands. You try not to focus on the strangling feeling as it tightens around your arm, where you can feel your heart beating as your fingers start to tingle. Robby watches the numbers closely, with a strange sort of attentiveness typically only reserved for less-than-desirable results.

“What?” you blurt when his expression shifts. “What is it?”

He blinks hard for a second, then shakes his head. “Nothing. Sorry. Your— Your blood pressure just a little higher than I’d like…”

The cuff loosens with a mechanical whir. Robby slips it off and slides it back into place on the monitor beside you. You tilt your chin to watch him as he looms suddenly over you.

“Is that bad?”

Robby doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he slips his stethoscope over his ears and presses the cold chest piece against your back.

“Take a deep breath for me,” he murmurs in a distant, gritty voice. You abide and pray silently that he doesn’t notice how the inhale catches somewhere deep in your chest. He listens for a few beats longer than you expect him to, with his brows lowered in a look of concentration.

“Any chest pain?” he wonders suddenly.

“I had some earlier. You know, before I called.” You inhale once more. “But I feel better now.”

“What about any nausea or vomiting in the past week?”

“I had some morning sickness when I woke up, but… Google said it was normal, so…”

“Well,” Robby scoffs a laugh, sliding his stethoscope back over his neck. He keeps his hands wrapped around either end as he walks backward for the door. “If it was Dr. Google, then I guess it’s alright.”

His smile slips off his face the second he’s back outside. His pace hurries as he rushes for the work station down the hall. He makes a beeline for Dana by the overhead monitor, keeping his voice low, though it trembles around the edges with urgency.

“Get a crash cart and a fetal monitor to North 2,” Robby whispers to the woman, who tenses at his direction, because she knows you’re the one in North 2. “Call the NICU, call the OB, and wherever Jack is— tell him to hurry the hell up. Now.”

Robby disappears for no longer than a minute or two. He brings a strange air in with him when he returns, an undeniable tension that makes it suddenly very hard to breathe. He plucks on a pair of blue gloves this time before he steps in — and you’ve known him long enough to tell that the smile he gives you is faker than the one he had before.

“Is everything okay?” you ask, heart pounding against your ribcage. It’s like anxiety times a thousand — the racing pulse you get right before a panic attack, except no amount of breathing can seem to slow it down again.

“Yeah,” Robby says gently, and steps out of the doorway when a team of doctors and grey-scrubbed nurses rush in — machines rolling, wires tangling, voices overlapping with directions.

Robby looms at your side and ducks his head to keep your wandering attention. “Everything’s great, honey— You’re just about to meet a lot of people right now.”

The inhale you take feels shorter than usual as you blink up at him with eyes swimming with worry. “But… I’m okay, right?”

“You’re gonna be,” he tells you, steady and only slightly reassuring, as he reaches for the oxygen tube propped on the monitor at your side. “You and Jack are gonna meet your baby before the night’s over— That’s exciting, right?”

You feel strangled. Like worry’s wrapped a cold hand around your throat and your heart, too — and when you go dizzy again, you can’t tell if it’s from the news or if the migraine is flaring again. You take in a stuttering breath when Robby slips the oxygen tube over your ears, cool air rushing up into your nostrils.

“Where’s Jack?” is the only thing you can think to say.

“He’s on his way,” Robby promises firmly.

Shen lays a cotton blanket over your lap as Crus stands on the other side of the bed, rolling an ultrasound machine with him. “Some jelly on the belly, Ms. Honey,” the R4 tells you with a smile, too soft for all the chaos filling the room. “We’re gonna do a quick ultrasound, okay? Check on little Abbot in there.”

You can’t find the words to speak. You feel like your throat’s too tight for that now. So you just lift the bottom of your hospital gown and drag it over your round stomach, leaving the rest of you concealed beneath the blanket. He squirts gel onto your skin, and a shiver trails up your spine.

Only then do the words on the tip of your tongue seem to gain the courage to spill out.

“What the hell is going on—?”

The door swings open then. You just barely catch sight of Jack over the bustling bodies surrounding you, but his voice is unmistakable. “What the hell is going on?” he announces the same way you had, though his sharper tone cuts through the room like a blade.

Robby leaves your side to intercept the man, pulling him to the corner and debriefing him in a hushed voice. “Her BP’s 170/110. Her symptoms have only gotten worse since she’s been here— I’m worried if she doesn’t deliver this baby right now, she’ll go into cardiac arrest.”

Jack’s face drains of color.

He crosses his strong arms over his chest in a feeble attempt to soothe the sudden tightness there, as his head whips suddenly in your direction. He watches his residents tend to you with a controlled sort of chaos, moving around each other in swift motions usually reserved for when someone’s really in trouble.

He shakes his silver head to himself. “No… No, she was— She was fine this morning, man. I’ve been— I’ve been checking on her all day. She was 130/80 when I left—”

“Well, it’s not anymore,” Robby interjects, firm but not entirely unkind. His dark eyes swim with a similar sternness when he catches Jack’s eye. “If we don’t do something now, something will happen to this, baby— Or to her. So you don’t have to stay and watch, brother, but you cannot get in the way, understand?”

Jack struggles to catch his breath. He feels a little like the room is spinning around him. He blinks hard once, regains his bearings, and rushes immediately to your side. He plucks a handful of tissues from the dispenser on the wall to wipe the gel from your stomach as Crus finishes the ultrasound.

Your pinched look of worry ebbs at the sight of him. Your heavy head lolls on the pillow behind you as your bleary eyes follow his face, though you struggle to blink the haze from them now.

“Jack…” you sigh.

“Hey, honey…” he says, voice soft but still tighter than usual.

“What’s going on?” you tell him, in half-breathless slurs. “I just came in for a headache— I don’t… I don’t understand what’s wrong?”

“Everything’s fine—”

You shake your head, then close your eyes when it makes the room spin harder. “You’re lying…”

“You have severe preeclampsia. It’s a blood pressure disorder. The only cure for it now is to deliver the baby,” Jack explains in a strangely even voice as he leans over the side of your bed, keeping your gaze on him and not the chaos surrounding you. “But your heart’s working a little too hard right now, so we’re gonna have to put you to sleep so we can get you upstairs to the OB—”

“We’re inducing here,” Robby says, as a nurse helps him tie the back of his PPE gown.

Jack’s head snaps over his shoulder. “Here?”

“It’s better than her arresting in the elevator.”

Your breath stutters, and this time, it feels impossible to catch again.

“Am I gonna die?” you hear yourself ask.

“No,” Jack answers immediately. “You’re fine, honey. Between all of us, we’ve seen this procedure done a hundred times, okay? You’re in good hands— The best hands.”

McKay enters your tunnel vision then. The PPE covering her from head to toe feels sort of daunting, but her eyes are still kind behind her safety glasses.

“I’m gonna give you an IV, okay? The medicine’s gonna sedate you— It’ll feel just like falling asleep,” the woman coos to you, as she smooths an alcohol wipe over the inside of your elbow. “A little pinch and some burning…”

You wince when the needle pierces your skin. An icy burning sensation follows quickly, spanning the length of your forearm. You’re grounded only by Jack’s hands on your cheeks, warm and softly calloused, velvet personified.

“I’ll be right here when you wake up,” he tells you, holding your weary gaze with a sterner one. “For you, it’ll feel just like blinking, okay? It’ll be over in a second. You won’t even know it happened—”

His words do little to comfort you. You can hardly hear him now over the heartbeat whoosh, whoosh, whooshing rapidly in your ears.

“Please don’t let me die…” you whimper as burning tears cloud your vision.

It’s not the death part that’s so scary to you exactly, but rather the fact that the nursery isn’t even finished; and that the crib is only halfway done; and that you haven’t even decided on a baby name yet. There’s too much you haven’t done yet — a whole life inside of you that you haven’t gotten to hold between your hands.

“Please, don’t let me die, Jack. Please, don’t…”

You trail off. Your eyes grow glassy and distant, like you’re looking right past him. Your head grows heavy in his hands a second later.

“…Honey?”

“Is it the medicine?” Nazely asks from where she observes in the corner.

“No. It wouldn’t work that fast—”

Your neck jerks back, and your eyes flutter shut, never quite closing as they dance back and forth. The monitor starts beeping first — “She’s seizing!”Shen announces to the room. You begin trembling in his hold a half second later.

“Get her on her side!” Robby calls through the surgical mask being tied around his scruffy jaw.

Jack works with quick, practiced hands despite his racing mind. He cradles the back of your head in one palm, and your jerking shoulder with the other.

“Push another 10 of IV diazepam!” he commands. “Have another on standby!”

“Put the AP pads on in case of cardiac arrest,” Robby says as the crowd parts for him to make his way to your side. He flashes Jack a stern look from the opposite side of the bed. “I love you, brother, but right now, you either need to gown up or get the hell out of the way.”

Jack’s worried eyes snap to his. He inhales sharply through his nose, though the breath tries to hitch in his chest. He nods once to clear his head, then twice more in confirmation.

“Alright. C’mon. Matteo— Help me scrub in,” he commands and stands to full height again, shifting to doctor mode in a blink. He never quite takes his eyes off you as the nurse dresses him in sterile gear.

Please, god, don’t take her, he finds himself praying to a god he’s not entirely sure he believes in. I only just got her back. You can’t take her from me now.

Recusitative hysterotomy in thirty-six seconds. The whole ED is talking about it.

You were V-Fib for two minutes. Your baby wouldn’t cry for five. It took a roomful of doctors to bring you both to life again. But all that havoc is gone now — your baby is in the NICU for more intensive monitoring, and all the doctors have moved on to all their other patients that need saving.

Somehow, the stillness feels more nerve-racking than the chaos.

Maybe because Jack never was the best at waiting. It’s a truth that lives deep in his bones, etched there from decades of sirens and split-second decisions, that hesitation can cost lives. To him, waiting has always felt a little like negligence — like standing still and watching everything else happen around him. But that’s all he can do for you now. Wait. And it feels a little like dying.

He sits at your bedside in a hard plastic chair with his elbows braced on the thin mattress and his trembling hands holding your limp one. He can’t bring himself to take his eyes off of you, scared to miss you for even a faint fraction of a second. The dim lighting of the recovery room casts soft shadows over the edges of your sleeping face. Machines whisper just next to you, in slow and rhythmic beeps that remind him that you’re still here — that your heart’s still beating.

He knows this. He knows sedation, and post-op recovery, and how to read every machine in this room. But none of it matters now. Because he can’t stop thinking about all the cynical what ifs — what if your heart stops beating when no one’s looking; what if your brain was starved for a second too long; what if the last thing you ever said to him was ‘please don’t let me die?’

Jack doesn’t think he could live with himself if that were the case.

When he hears the door swing open and shut behind him — when he hears the noise of the hallway swell and muffle again — he knows it’s Robby entering the room without having to look over his shoulder. Maybe because he knows no one else is brave enough to come talk to him in a state like this.

Jack’s eyes flicker to the monitor.

“BP’s 102/64,” he announces to the silent room. “Hemoglobin’s up to 9.”

“Good,” Robby nods slowly. “Baby Abbot’s stable down the hall— three pounds, seven ounces. Fifteen inches…”

Jack doesn’t say a word.

“You can go hold her if you want,” the older man presses.

Again, Jack stays silent. He doesn’t know how to say that he’s too scared to leave you, too scared to face that he’s a father without having you beside him, too scared to ruin a little life before it’s even begun.

Robby sighs hard through his broad nose and walks to stand at the man’s side.

“You can’t stay in here like this, brother—”

“The hell I can’t,” Jack snaps with a hardened glare.

“You’re not her primary caregiver,” the man reminds him. “So, technically, you shouldn’t even be in the room— Gloria would have a fit if she found out you were treating your wife.”

“Well, good thing she’s not gonna find out, right?” Jack deadpans. “And I couldn’t care less if she did. I’m not leaving my wife.”

“It’s an ethical conflict, and you know it. We have doctors here that are more than capable of tending to her—”

“Robby, I—” Jack inhales sharply through his nose, eyes fluttering shut as a red-hot frustration swells within him. Through gritted teeth, he murmurs. “I love you, man. And I— I owe both my girls’ lives to you, but… Please don’t make me beat your ass on my daughter’s birthday. I really don’t think that’d be a great first start to fatherhood.”

Jack turns slowly to face the man beside him, his eyes glassy with the unshed tears he can’t seem to blink away. There’s less of a bite to his glare now, but it’s no less serious.

Robby knows this, so he nods in response and claps him on the shoulder. “Yeah. Fair enough…”

You wake forty-five minutes after Robby has left for the E.D. Jack knows this because he’s been taking your blood pressure every thirty minutes, and was nearing his hourly check of your IV line. He feels your fingers twitch in his hand first, right before you grumble an unceremonious “ow...” in the back of your gravelly throat.

Jack’s chair scrapes hard against the tile as he rises abruptly, reaching for you before you’ve even managed to open your eyes. He keeps your cold hand clutched in his left one, while his right hand cradles the top of your head — his thumb smooths over your temple without thinking, ‘cause he’s so used to massaging you there during your migraine spells.

“Easy, honey…” he coos, voice rough and frayed around the edges, when you shift on the thin mattress below — as if you’re momentarily confused as to why the bed you’re on now feels unlike your own.

Your lashes flutter when your eyes open. Even the dim lighting feels a little too bright. Your throat feels dry when you try to swallow, and your tongue feels a little heavy in your mouth. There’s a dull ache, too, that spans from your forehead to your ankles — and a burning sensation from your collarbones to your bellybutton.

You remember the headache that sent you in, and the chaos that followed, but nothing after Jack burst into the room.

“Hurts…” you manage weakly.

“I know, honey. I know,” Jack hums sympathetically, and clears his throat when his voice breaks.

“My chest…” you choke out, features twisting in a quiet agony.

“Yeah, you’ve got some burn marks from the defib pads, baby— They should go away in a few days. I’ll put some more medicine on your bandages, okay?”

You don’t say anything in return, and Jack doesn’t totally expect you to. There’s a long beat where neither of you says a word. You just breathe, in slow and even inhale-exhales, and Jack just watches you. He almost thinks you’ve fallen asleep again until you shift once more on the mattress.

A hollow feeling has started to settle in your stomach. It feels empty, wrong, and creeps gradually up on you until it starts to feel like something has been carved out of you entirely. Your brows knit slowly together.

“Where…?” you start, though the whispered question trails before you can finish it.

“She’s in the NICU getting checked out,” Jack tells you, voice trembling as he blinks back burning tears.

It doesn’t truly hit him until then — that he’s a dad now, that he’s got a family with you, the only girl he ever dreamed of having one with. He couldn’t let the thought truly settle until he was sure that you were okay.

“She’s perfect,” he adds, because he knows you need to hear that most of all. “She’s doing real well—”

“She?” you echo, voice small and disbelieving.

You find the strength to open your eyes then. They’re a little swollen from hours of induced sleep, but sparkling with newfound life all the same. Jack feels the look right in his chest, a sparkling red-hot feeling that makes him feel like crying.

“Yeah…” he says on an exhaled breath that’s supposed to be a laugh, though it comes out a little unsteady. “She. Three pounds, seven ounces, fifteen inches… Robby’s been trying to convince me that Robin is a perfectly good girl name ever since she got here.”

Your lip twitches faintly upward. A ghost of a smile breaks through the haze as your thumb smooths over the rough edges of Jack’s knuckles.

“Can I hold her now?” you ask in a fragile voice.

Jack’s expression softens. Something warm and aching floods into his eyes.

“Yeah,” he nods. “Soon. You just… You gotta get your strength back first, alright? She’s a little early, so… They wanna keep an eye on her for a bit.”

You nod against the pillow, head heavy and tired. You blink slowly as you try to piece together what happened to you through the fog still clouding your mind.

“Was it bad?” is the first thing you think to ask.

Jack’s jaw stiffens slightly. He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

“It wasn’t good…” he answers honestly, greying brows bouncing. He nods to himself and blinks away the unshed tears that burn the backs of his eyes. “But you’re okay now— Both of you. That’s what matters…”

You stare at him for a long moment, blinking slowly, as the words settle heavily upon you.

“Holy shit…” you whisper on barely a breath.

Jack’s chest stings. He exhales through his nose and bends at the waist to press a soft, careful kiss to your temple. “I know, honey—” he murmurs there, mistaking your tone, and preparing to soothe you through whatever wave of panic comes next.

But then you shake your head, just barely, as your brows furrow in an incredulous look.

“We’re parents now…” you murmur to yourself, voice still coated with leftover sleep. “We’re responsible for a whole human…”

Jack huffs a quiet laugh as he stands to full height again. He swipes an eyelash from the apple of your warm cheek and nods. “Yeah. That’s… That’s pretty terrifying, huh?”

“A lot terrifying,” you correct.

“Well…” he starts. “I’ve kept you alive this long, haven’t I?”

You flash him a look, weighed down with fatigue but still obviously playful. “Jury’s still out,” you quip drily.

Jack scoffs a laugh. “So she’s got a fighting chance, at least.”

Your chapped lips curl slowly into a tired, barely-there grin. Your heavy eyes flutter shut as something short of sleep threatens to drag you back under. “You’re gonna be such a good dad…”

“Based on what?” the older man quips. “My stellar bedside manner?”

Your head shakes weakly against the pillow as your fingers just barely tighten around his hand. “Based on the fact that the first thing you ever did for her was fight to keep her here…”

Jack feels his heart swell up into his throat. It makes him feel like crying. He shrugs a lazy shoulder in response, if only to deflect. “That’s kinda the job, honey,” he jokes with a sad sort of laugh.

“That was you…” you argue in sleepy slurs. “She’s lucky… Both of us are…”

Jack’s teary gaze falls to your entwined hands. He nods slowly with his lips pursed to the side of his mouth, until he’s sure he can speak again without his voice shaking. His words come out a little taut, even still.

“No, I’m the lucky one here, honey,” he tells you in a strangled, gravelly voice. “I promise.”

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