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“Get that drink now?”
“Yeah.”
—
Jack’s not a bench regular because he’s not afraid to see it like it is: no one wants their boss hanging around with them like he wants to be one of the cool kids.
He’s fine with his spot on the roof, melted cheese burning the roof of his mouth, lukewarm beer chasing it down. No talking, just sirens below and the rising sun on the horizon.
Day shift or night shift, doesn’t matter; he’d always kept his distance from the park. Not because he dislikes his colleagues, or doesn’t care about their personal lives and struggles and hobbies and preferences. He does.
It’s just easier, sometimes, to keep himself at arm’s length.
There’s always been an excuse not to join in, anyways: too tired, too jacked up, too miserable, too introspective.
But tonight there’s Robby, shoulders slumped and head bowed under the strain of all that tight, coiled emotion bursting out of him, the exhaustion of a fucked up overlong shift and a terrible, terrible tragedy.
Tonight, there’s Robby, who needs him, yeah—but mostly just needs a fuckin’ drink and human company.
So here they are.
—
Jack lowers himself slowly onto the bench. The bitter ache travelling up his thigh is at once familiar and cruel. Now that he’s sitting down, shifting his weight off the prosthetic, the lack of pressure tingles and burns and he has to bite back a gasp.
It’s heady enough that he misses the beer Donahue tosses him.
There’ll always be another nightmare shift, another disaster. They’re short-handed, understaffed, under constant pressure from the powers that be who only see the bottom line. Jack sighs and massages a little life back into his residual limb.
Today’d been just another day. They’d made it through.
The only way out is through.
The others don’t let their gazes linger on his exposed skin. Princess gives him a small, empathetic smile, but that’s it, and that small egotistical part of him is grateful.
There’s no shame in it, it’s human nature to do a double take, to pause on new information before your brain can catch up. He doesn’t take it personally, but there are… moments; moments of insecurity, of a knee-jerk reaction, a humiliating need to shield himself from an unwanted look.
Maybe that’s another excuse for not ever stopping by the bench.
“Is this where all the cool kids hang out?”
There’s a spike of something that hits his gut at her voice, a jolt that’s as hot as it is dangerous. Jack looks down into his beer as Dr. Mohan approaches, Dr. Shamsi’s prodigy daughter trailing close behind.
Mohan has seen his prosthetic before. Probably. Definitely heard about it, probably from Princess or Perlah, someone trying to fill downtime hours with harmless gossip.
He thinks back to hours earlier: covered in blood, hyper-focused on each incoming gurney, completely in the zone. In his element. No more stiffness, no more ache, whole again for a few adrenaline-fuelled hours.
He think of Dr. Mohan’s wide eyes, the way her breath had caught on, “Are you donating?” The glance down at his good leg.
The unspoken, Are you crazy? In your condition?
She knows about his leg. No doubt about it. And now he sits back, almost defiant, residual limb covered in goosebumps from the cool night air, and is kinda glad she does.
Dr. Mohan doesn’t even glance at it, just meets his eyes for a split second. No lingering, just a swift acknowledgement of his presence.
She’d been on fire tonight. He’s heard the nickname, derogatory and frankly insulting, knows Robby has been frustrated with her and Dr. Mohan remains earnest in her righteousness, and they’re both correct in a way but also so, so wrong at the same time, the stubborn calf butting heads with the bull.
Tonight she’d been glowing, though. Radiant. No more slo-mo. Quick-moving and graceful, excitement bubbling under her skin, leaking out of her; contagious.
He’d look up, elbow-deep in gore, and she’d be across the pit with those wispy curls dancing over the delicate curve of her cheekbone, efficient and focused, that brain of hers whirring a mile a minute, slim and capable hands moving even faster.
Smartest doctor in the hospital. He’d said that to Robby earlier today, and he’d meant it. It had only taken a devastating MCI to let her ease up on the brakes and stop second-guessing herself, let that beautiful brain work at full capacity.
He realises he’s staring and shifts his gaze to Javadi—
“—If there ever was a day,” Dr. Mohan is saying, smiling ruefully and accepting a beer, and he’s helpless as the words pull his gaze back like a rubber band snapping.
Fuck.
He’s not a bench regular, and looks like neither is she.
A soft breeze caresses the tender skin of his thigh, rustling the leaves above their heads. He looks down, checking for inflammation, lets the giggles of the others wash over him.
The others are laughing at—nothing, really; the kind of laughter that bubbles out of you without you really knowing why, overtired to the point of hysterics. Jack looks back up just in time to see Mohan reach up and pull her hair down, tilting her head to massage her scalp.
He can’t help but watch, chest tight, beer gripped tightly in his hand and dripping condensation onto his suddenly-hot skin, and when she flicks her eyes towards him, every muscle in his body tenses.
Beautiful.
You’re killing me here, Dr. Mohan.
The angle of the streetlight throws shadows across her face, hiding her expression when she tilts her head the other way, shading her eyes. He can’t help but wonder what color they would turn with afternoon sunlight hitting them just so.
How soft her skin would feel under his fingertips: a creamy thigh, smooth stomach, the taut pull of abdominal muscle underneath, juxtaposed further up by the underside of a small, perfect breast; those shiny black curls slipping through his fingers, snagging on the ring he still can’t bear to take off after all these years.
The way the cords of her neck would strain when she—
Enough.
He prays to a God he no longer believes in that his reaction doesn’t show when she shakes her hair out, because there’s a reason he doesn’t do this— socialise after a hard shift. He’s too vulnerable, can’t find the energy to bring his guard back up; like he’s been dumped off a Black Hawk into hostile territory, no MOPP gear, no Kevlar, no weapon. Easy target.
With his defenses lowered, images begin to flood his mind in incoherent flashes as he watches her: hair tangled and swept over a pillow, arched back and parted lips, a bead of sweat rolling down past a belly button and into dark curls.
Be advised, REDCON1 in 5 mikes, how copy?
Solid copy, over.
With effort, Jack shifts his attention back to Robby.
—
When Robby walks off, Jack watches him go. The worry on the roof that had kept his mouth going, stream-of-consciousness just to get a reaction, is fading slowly.
Talking Robby down from the ledge had been the hard part. Maybe tomorrow he’ll call Sam up for a quick session, talk to him about it. Let him know that maybe he’ll have a new patient coming his way.
He feels Mohan sit down next to him before he can take his eyes off of Robby’s back and barely manages not to stiffen.
“God, that feels good,” Mohan says softly, and leans down to rub an ankle.
A murmur of agreement from across the park. “You okay, sweetie?” Princess calls over.
“Just, you know,” says Mohan, shrugs a shoulder, and everyone nods in commiseration.
Jack moves his prosthetic away to give her more room, fielding a curious glance from Javadi, who’s trying to be subtle and failing miserably. Sweet kid, but obviously sheltered her whole life from the big bad world. Probably still doesn’t know how to recategorise him in her head: Mysterious cowboy ER night shift attending is an amputee? Error, does not compute.
It keeps him amused enough not to care how Javadi’s eyes keep flitting from Mateo to Princess to his leg and then back again. He’ll give it a pass. She’s had a traumatic first day. And what is she anyways, 15? Christ, he feels old.
Mohan yawns next to him, still bent down. She’s moved onto massaging her calves.
Jack can’t help himself.
“You did good tonight, Dr. Mohan,” he tells her quietly.
Mohan stops rubbing and looks up at him through her messy hair, eyes a little wide, the last of her manic energy seeping out of her still.
(He’d seen her looking up at that board tonight, frazzled and drunk on her adrenaline high, refusing to go home. The way she’d smiled to herself. He’d recognised that look immediately, warning sirens flashing. Best high in the world, worst crash you could experience.
(Well, one of the worst.)
“Real good,” Jack repeats. “I’ve never seen you move like that.” He lets the words breathe, an alive thing in the air between them, watches her mouth open and shut and God, what he wouldn’t give—
“Yeah?” Mohan breathes, corner of her mouth stretching into one of her (heart stopping) lopsided grins.
“Yeah.”
A beat too long. He tracks a wisp of hair across her forehead, down the delicate slope of her nose. That bottom lip, a little damp from her last sip of beer, caught under straight white teeth.
Jack breaks first, looking away and up at the streetlight.
“I had great support,” Mohan says, straightening up, and then immediately sighing and slouching back to rest against the bench. She’s still looking at him, he can feel it, like a beam of sunlight warming his skin. “I can’t even begin to think about the procedures I got to see firsthand. Some I haven’t even heard about before tonight.”
“It was an… experience, that’s for damn sure,” Jack agrees, trying not to think about hesitant hands threading a pigtail catheter, a shaky demeanor turning determined with just a few words of praise.
“Never did find out everything left in your go-bag,” Mohan adds, a little slyly.
He looks down at his backpack. He’ll have to resupply, probably get a spare butterfly ultrasound for future… situations. That baby sure came in handy tonight.
“I’ll show you sometime,” he says.
Maybe it’s the second beer talking. Jack’s starting to feel looser, drawing away from the persona he’d tapped into to get through the shift. He hadn’t had to reach that far back in a long time. It’ll probably take him several full sessions to shake off completely.
He turns back in time to see Mohan make a face. “What?”
“Well, you’re night-shift,” she says, looking defeated. “And I’m… well, not. So. ‘Some time’ seems more like never. ”
Jack digests the words. Then, “Where there’s a will,” he begins. Trails off.
The look on her face is pensive, and they don’t speak again until the sun has fully risen and they all collectively decide it’s time to head home.
—
“Can I get one of those?”
Perlah smiles at him welcomingly and flicks him a can of Yuengling. “You bet, cap,” she says, with a wink and a cute little flick of her eyes up and down his body.
Jack lets his eyes linger as well, smirking just so. Perlah just laughs and swats him away.
There’s a tiredness in his limbs, bone-deep; his lungs feel tight in his chest with every breath, like giant hands are clamping down and squeezing.
Jack hasn’t really been sleeping. The body keeps the score and all that, right? Well, he can feel the fucking score in every tendon, every nerve, in the tight knot between his shoulderblades and the ache in his knees.
It’s just when he’s turning to find a seat when he’s stopped short by wide brown eyes and the faint smell of—
He doesn’t know. Of wildflowers, light citrus, of honey. Of her.
“D-doctor Abbot,” Mohan blurts, inhaling sharply. “This is a nice surprise.”
Her curls are a little more managed today. There’s a hint of pink in her cheeks, breath coming fast like she’d jogged down to the park. The weak morning light washes her out a little, accentuating the subtle bags under her eyes but she’s still… so…
Jack swallows against another hot spike of longing. There’s an errant curl moving back and forth with every breath she takes, and his fingers flex, wanting to—
He’s staring.
“Dr. Abbot?” she says, confused.
“Yeah, sorry. Just a little wiped.”
“Of course,” Mohan says, expression twisting into one of commiseration.
He’s about to turn away when it hits him. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you clock out last night with Collins and King?”
The pink flush on Mohan’s cheeks deepens. “Oh,” she says, “I’m— I haven’t been home yet. Just dropping by to say hi before getting a cab.”
He should’ve picked up on it sooner: her no-nonsense jacket is the one she usually wears to work, the ones he sees glimpses of in passing when his shift is about to end and the replacements start to flow through the doors; her outfit underneath, though, is definitely not her usual scrubs.
“Huh,” says Jack, drawing the syllables out. He tilts his head a little, making a show of checking out her spiky heeled boots.
The flush turns violent. Mohan blushes so fiercely he’s surprised she doesn’t catch on fire.
“Went out for a drink,” she says, answering his unspoken question. “ABBA night at Craic.”
Sleezy little bar on the corner, favorite hang-out spot of the hospital staff. He wonders if she was alone.
“Isn’t that a bit old for you?” Jack wants to take it back as soon as he hears himself say it, but she just laughs.
“My dad used to tell me when I was a kid that I’m an old soul,” Mohan says, smile so genuine as she tips her head to look up into his face that Jack’s hand balls automatically into a fist. “Anyways, trying to put an expiration date on ABBA is like saying Freddie Mercury wasn’t a generational talent.”
“Yeah, ridiculous, man,” Jack agrees. He can’t tear his eyes away from her face, not even to blink.
He needs to unfuck himself, get a grip. The longer he looks at her, the harder it gets to tear his eyes away.
Mohan beams at him and sways a little. The skirt of her deep red dress is riding up a little, hem snagging on her sheer black tights. The breeze catches the silky material and tosses it like it weighs nothing.
Her legs seem to go on forever.
“I just wanted to say again,” she interrupts his glazed observations, words coming fast like she’s trying to get them out before she can change her mind, “that I really appreciated working with you last week. Um. The night of the MCI. I ordered a Control Cric kit for myself, it arrived yesterday.”
Mohan looks at him hopefully.
“Good girl,” Jack says, still distracted by those fucking legs. “That’ll come in handy, trust me. You remember how I used it?”
Her expression changes, a split second of shock, a tiny hiccup in her inhale. She nods, eyes wide. “Yes, I remember.”
She’s so beautiful it makes his teeth hurt. Jack looks back down at those long, slender legs to break their shared gaze and immediately regrets it.
“If you ever need to use it, get Robby to oversee. Just in case.” He pauses, remembering. Meehan, his buddy in SOCM, had a demonstration video he’d passed him back when they were taking the course. He still has it on a hard drive somewhere. “And if you want, I have a video I can send you, pretty much walks you through it. Don’t worry, it’s short,” he adds, when she takes another shaky, uncertain breath.
Mohan breathes a laugh out. “That would be so cool, Dr. Abbot. Thank you.”
He starts to turn away, but she stays in place, expectant. Waiting.
Jack plays his words back in his head. Oh fuck. “Uh— you have an email…?”
“Here’s my phone number,” she says quickly. “If you email me, I might miss it. I don’t check it that often anymore.”
Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea.
Over her head, Jack can see Perlah cast them a curious glance as Mohan pulls her phone out and rattles off her number, fingers clutched tight like she might drop it.
Bad idea.
He gives her his before he can back out, and excuses himself. The seat he takes, next to Ellis, is as far away from her as he dares.
—
Robby squeezes his shoulder. “You should take off. We’ve got this.”
Jack takes a quick last look around the Pitt. Hushed voices leak out from behind closed curtains, most of the beds occupied, but it has been a quiet night, so they’ll be cleared out soon to make way for the morning crowd. Robby came in early, tension in his shoulders, a gait that belies his faux-cheerful expression.
Sleepless nights. He’d clock them on anyone.
It’s earlier than Jack usually clocks out, but he’s running out of reasons to stay any longer, cases already handed off and paperwork filed, so Jack nods and pats the hand on his shoulder. “You good, brother?” he asks, although it’s probably futile.
Robby nods back, gives him a smile-grimace that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Good as it’ll ever get.”
“Speak to Collins yet?”
The smile-grimace slides till it’s just a grimace. “She still isn’t feeling well. I told her to use her PTO for a break but she’s… stubborn.”
“Takes one to know one,” says Jack.
Robby looks annoyed now. He sighs, “She’s still feeling guilty about last month. You know.”
Collins still hasn’t forgiven herself for turning her phone off. Jack wouldn’t either, in her position. “Still doesn’t mean she needs to punish herself for it. We need her back to full strength.”
“I’ll leave it to you to get that message across,” Robby says wryly, and then with another pat of Jack’s shoulder he’s gone, all long strides and loping gait and the weight of the world on his shoulders.
—
Jack’s feet are already automatically carrying him to the stairwell door. He’s been changing up his routine more, lately. Two or three times since the night of Pittfest he’s showed up to the bench, practically hat in hand, trying not to show his discomfort.
His therapist is pleased. Progress, he likes to tell Jack, is one small decision at a time.
Well, who the hell is Jack to stand in the way of progress? The roof calls to him, but he finds his mind’s eye sliding towards the park. It’s the doctors’ turn to buy the beer tonight, so that means Shen will have the bench crew drinking that IPA swill he loves so much.
Jack hates IPAs.
Fuck it.
He changes direction mid-stride and adjusts the strap of his backpack as he walks towards the exit door to chairs instead.
—
“Yo, yo, yo!” Shen greets him in the park, face breaking into a bright grin. “General Kenobi in the house.”
“More of a Qui-Gon guy, but I’ll take what I can get.”
It’s a mixed bench crowd this morning, more diverse than usual. He actually sees Walsh , hair down and relaxed, back up against a tree and laughing with Ellis. She catches his eye over Ellis’ shoulders and tips her beer at him in greeting.
There isn’t any space on the bench today. The gaggle of night shift nurses all greet him cheerfully, but they know better than to get up and offer him a seat.
Instead, he joins Shen on the grassy knoll, tailbone resting uncomfortably against a root sticking up through the dirt. Distracts from the numbed ache in his scar, though, so he takes it.
“Been heating up again,” Shen says conversationally. “Gonna have to break out the baby powder again at this rate.”
“You have the sweatiest balls I’ve ever heard of, Shen, and I was in fucking Baghdad. It’s November, for Christ’s sake. ”
“Hey, bro, not my nuts’ fault that global warming gave us 77 degree weather in place of snow,” Shen sniffs. “Want one?”
Jack is about to refuse when he notes the conspiratorial edge to Shen’s grin, what’s in his outstretched hand.
“Yeah,” Shen laughs when Jack takes the Corona in surprise. “I know you better than you think, old man.”
“No shit,” Jack says under his breath, kind of close to staggering under an unexpected wave of emotion. “Thought I was being more subtle.”
“Whatever it’ll take to keep you coming back here, right?” Shen winks. “Not gonna force-feed you IPAs if you’re just gonna pretend to drink them the whole time. Waste of good hops.”
“Thanks, man. I mean it.”
“When’d you start getting in on the action, anyway?” a voice says.
They both look up. It’s Walsh, reaching deep into the cooler to grab another beer.
“Oh, I dabble,” says Jack. Looks around, casual, taking in the tired faces around him and coming up empty. “Depends on the company.”
Walsh flips him off, beer already up to her mouth, and accepts his wink before returning to Ellis.
Mohan isn’t here. He wasn’t expecting her to be.
Not the reason he’d stopped by, anyways.
—
He swears he’s not counting, but it’s been two weeks since he’s last seen her outside of morning rounds, and the park feels empty no matter how full it is with hospital staff.
No more bullshitting himself, because who is he kidding? He’s becoming a semi-bench-regular partly thanks to her, and it stings that she isn’t here to see it, but— progress is progress, right?
Marco probably misses him.
—
The next two park visits are short ones. He grabs a beer, does a headcount, and dips as soon as it’s socially acceptable or whatever.
It’s also getting cold as fuck. Jack doesn’t want to admit it, but the after effects of sitting in the park follow him all the way home and into bed, hot shower or no.
“Don’t push yourself,” Sam says to him when he reports this, in his brusque, no-nonsense manner that sold him on Sam as his therapist in the first place. “I’m glad you’re socialising more, but you know your limits.”
He wants to tell him about Mohan. He doesn’t know how to begin. He doesn’t know how he could make Sam understand when Jack doesn’t understand himself.
—
He finds himself next to Robby at the nurse’s station the next day during shift change.
“Samira’s been asking about you,” Robby says, totally out of the blue.
Jack lowers his head to peer at a page of incident reports, skimming the words without understanding a single letter, ignoring the way the words punch the air from his lungs.
“Anything you’d care to share?” Robby continues lightly, and crosses his arms across his chest in that way he has that speaks volumes without a single word.
“Depends what you’re asking,” Jacks says back. Bit too snappy, actually. Fuck, he was shooting for chill, but his heart rate is up and he knows Robby can see right through him.
The sharp look Robby shoots him confirms it.
Jack gives up the charade and puts the reports down, pushes an exhale out of pursed lips. “Nothing to share here,” he says quietly. “Think she just wants a mentor, and for some reason she picked my sorry ass.”
Robby’s eyebrows are slowly creeping their way towards his hairline, forehead creasing in disbelief. “A mentor.”
“Like, I don’t know—“ Abbot throws his hands up—“someone to walk her through shit, keep an eye out. I get the feeling she’s feeling a little abandoned recently.”
It’s a low blow, a little pointed; Robby takes the hint immediately, posture shifting in a way that wouldn’t be obvious to anyone who didn’t know him really, really well.
“There’s a difference between teaching and coddling,” Robby says, voice suddenly cool.
“Yeah, the line’s a mile wide. Kinda like the line between constructive criticism and outright bullying.” Then, just to rub it in a little, Jack adds, “which you still managed to cross without realising. Apparently.”
An expression flashes by on Robby’s face, and Jack is surprised to recognise it as hurt.
Jack has been the reason for that expression before. Few times, actually. The worst had been standing in Robby’s apartment all those years ago, still fresh from a shower and loose-limbed from shoving his cock down Robby’s throat, when Jack had lashed out like a wounded animal at some stupid comment that hadn’t even been that serious and Robby had flinched like he’d been sucker punched.
God, Jack hates that look. Still, needs must.
“I’m not talking about this with you, not here,” Robby says, low.
“Just calling it like I see it,” Jack says, just as quiet. “What did Dr. Mohan want, anyway?”
There’s a pause. Robby looks up at the ceiling, hands going to his hips. “Wants to start working a double every other week. She said she wants some night shift experience.”
“You gonna put in the request for her?”
Robby doesn’t take his eyes off the ceiling, but the defeat in his voice is telling. “Yeah, guess I am. See how much I’ll regret it later.”
“Good,” Jack says.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
Two EMTs burst in with a gurney and a flurry of commotion. Male, mid-40s, fell out of a window he’d been cleaning five stories up. Robby shifts immediately into a professional stance and is by their side in an instant to start the usual debrief, questions rapid-fire but voice calm and clear above the racket.
Jack, still reeling, doesn’t watch him go.
—
“Dr. Abbot!”
Jack closes his eyes, gathering strength. Her voice penetrates his skull, vibrating there like a church bell.
When he turns, Mohan is jogging up to him, her stethoscope bouncing cheerfully against her sternum.
“Dr. Mohan,” he greets her, and can’t hold back his smile. She’s beaming at him, practically glowing.
He’s thrown back to a month ago, the night of the MCI, watching her look up at the board with glazed eyes and a bright, manic smile.
Bit less manic around the eyes, today. But only just.
“You finish handing over your cases?” Jack asks, striving for professionalism, leading her into a stroll around Central.
“I’m actually… it’s actually my first double shift, sir,” says Mohan, smile faltering imperceptibly. She’s looking up into his face like she’s watching closely for a reaction.
Jack slows, then stops, attention snagged on the word ‘sir’ sliding from her lips, the casual way she’d said it. Then he processes what the other words mean.
“Oh.” He blinks stupidly at her. For a moment, it looks like she’s gonna laugh, like she’s desperately trying to hold something in. Her eyes flick quickly over his face.
“You know you don’t have to call me that,” he grits out. “The kids on my block don’t even call me that.”
“Of course, Dr. Abbot,” Mohan says. She looks startled. “I don’t know why I said that.”
Innocent doe eyes. Oblivious.
Before Jack can react, Mohan flashes him another wide, excited grin and skips away, wearing her previous 8 hour shift like it’s nothing.
God, she has no fuckin’ idea.
He can feel someone watching him. It’s Perlah, arms crossed, mouth twisted.
“Welp,” Jack says. Helpless shrug.
She shakes her head and returns to the nurse’s station.
—
GSW. OD. Drunk guy with a piece of rebar in his side. OD. Alcohol poisoning. Bathtub drowning. Kid that won’t stop vomiting.
Jack checks the board, then his watch, then the board again. His team has everything under control, fewer crazies tonight than usual.
He peeks over his shoulder; Mohan is still firing on all cylinders like she has been all night, forehead creased in concentration as she types up a report. He spots the RedBull by the keyboard, though, and the way she's rubbing at her temples. He sighs.
“You know we have a cot in the back, right?” Jack says.
Mohan springs to attention like he’d shouted at her. “A cot?” she breathes, mouth hanging open slightly. Stares up at him like he’s lost his mind.
She’s practically vibrating in her seat.
Jack turns and leans back onto the counter, a temporary relief. “Double shifts are no joke,” he reminds her, a little puzzled by her reaction. She probably should ease up on the RedBull. “I need you alert, just in case. A 15 minute power nap can be a lifesaver.”
Her eyelashes flutter. “O-oh,” she says. She looks disappointed. “Right. Of course, Dr. Abbot.”
It’s so quick he almost misses it. Mohan’s eyes dart to his arms, then his hands. She swallows, and when she looks back up at him…
He could swear her pupils are dilated.
Well, that can’t be right.
Jack truly is losing his mind.
He needs to go. Now. The roof, the locker room, ambulance bay— hell, anywhere but here. He can feel the tension in his gut, the contracting of muscles, the slow stirring of heat starting to build.
Mohan swivels her chair away from the computer and faces him, legs swaying slightly open.
“I’ll go,” Mohan says slowly, “if you promise that when I get back, you’ll tell me why we still manage complicated parapneumonic effusions with iterative therapeutic thoracentesis when in 2021 a study showed a 16% increase in pneumothorax complications after application.”
She gets it all out without taking a single breath. Jack tries not to think of the implications because he can not get any more distracted right now.
“Do I get to read this famous study before we begin?” asks Jack, swearing inwardly at how hoarse his voice sounds, like he’s been shouting into the wind for hours.
Mohan smiles. “Way ahead of you. Check your messages.”
He’s so turned on his ears are ringing.
Jack just watches Mohan slowly stand up and gather the miscellaneous items she’d dropped into a neat little pile on the desk. Every time she moves he can smell her, a little floral, a little sweet, that underlying hint of sweat.
Hand flex. Leg twitch. Deep breath in, deep breath out.
Oh, that was a mistake. He recognises her perfume now, faded and almost gone; he tracks it to an exact spot behind her ear, another deep breath to pinpoint it. He pictures her this morning, sun not yet risen, leaning over the sink to watch herself in the mirror as she dabbed it on.
He walks up from behind her, slides his arms around the delicate curve of her waist, spanning his hands over her belly. She leans back with a happy sigh, which turns into a soft moan when he turns his head to gently brush his lips over—
“I guess I’ll see you in 15 minutes?” Mohan says.
He waits until she leaves to bury his head into his arms.
—
“—so the first step after that was a contrast CT to assess the damage, right? This guy was totally torn up, looked like a pincushion. CT showed shrapnel that started at the base of his neck, but travelled subcutaneously all over the mediastinum. He was in rough shape by the time he got to us, I’m talking both pneumomediastinum and bilateral pleural effusions.”
Mohan sucks in a breath, transfixed.
They’re both headed out the door, shift finally over. He hadn’t meant to walk out with her, but he’d turned the corner and she’d been there, sleepy but satisfied and wrapped in her coat, like she’d been waiting for him.
Don’t ask him how she’d gotten him to start talking about Kandahar.
“So what was our next step?” he prompts. They step out into fresh air, as fresh as downtown Pittsburgh can get, and he inhales deeply and closes his eyes, taking a second to appreciate it.
When he opens them, Mohan is deep in thought.
“Bronchoscopy,” she says after a moment, firm and decisive.
God, he hasn’t wanted anyone this bad since...
Jack clears his throat. “Bingo. That’s how we found the laceration in his membranous trachea.”
In an unspoken agreement, they’re slowly walking towards the park. Jack slides a look at her; she’s still looking pensive, eyes far away. He can tell she’s accurately imagining the exact scenario he’s describing, down to each individual piece of shrapnel.
“So, like I said, traumatic injuries to proximal structures are tricky things. Easy for stuff to hide that can come back to bite you in the ass. We didn’t even catch the TEF till he started coughing when we switched to a fluid diet— suspected a leak, did an IV oral contrast CT and confirmed it with an intraoperative EGD.”
“How did a cough lead you to suspect the TEF?” asks Mohan in surprise. “Aren’t traumatic fistulae rare in general, never mind a tracheo-esophageal one?”
“Rare enough, but field medicine exposes you to a lot of rare shit that you’d never see in a hospital like PTMH. Gotta think on your feet, especially with limited time and resources. My partner had dealt with something similar in the past, just went on a hunch with an endoscopy.”
The bench crowd is more lacklustre than the previous times he’s stopped by; unsurprising, considering that they’d had a relatively slow night.
Jack hides a smile when Ellis grins and hands them each their beers. “Your turn next week,” Ellis reminds him, eyebrow raised.
“I’ll start saving up,” he tells her seriously, and is rewarded with another grin and an eye roll.
They take their seats. Mohan lets him take exactly one sip of his beer before urging him to rehash their treatment of the patient, down to which sutures they’d used.
It’s funny how the world seems to quiet around them, like they’re in a dell, trees rustling around them, the sound of the fountain behind them like the trickle of a nearby stream. Mohan’s attention is wholly fixed on him, his face, her eyes darting down to watch his mouth move, and he must be answering her questions because she's nodding, but he can’t even hear the words coming out of his own mouth.
Her own lips are a little chapped, rosy pink in the center fading out to dusky brown, plump and inviting. Jack stutters, loses his train of thought for a second when her tongue darts out to dampen her lower lip.
Mohan tilts her head, a question in her eyes. The energy between them is shifting; no more peaceful nook in the forest. Jack hears a waterfall now, powerful and surging in his ears, feels the current pulling him towards her like a physical force.
“Do you think about it a lot?” Mohan asks him softly. “Your time in the field?”
“Every time I close my eyes,” Jack confesses, low. Could be his imagination, but it seems like she’s being drawn in as well, slowly leaning forward into his space.
“Is that why you work nights?”
My therapist says I find comfort in the darkness.
Darkness had meant something else in theater. Hoarse shouts, stumbling in NVGs, bullets whizzing overhead but no way to tell which direction they came from. Hot blood rushing over his hands without being able to see the bright red of it, just the coppery stench in the air to confirm its presence. Low moans and pleading, faces made anonymous by the shadows.
Doc it’s not that bad, right? Am I dying, Doc? You’re okay, brother, just a scratch. Don’t close your eyes, now, stay with me—
He closes his eyes, shakes the sense memory off.
“Something like that,” he replies.
A gentle pressure on his knee; Jack looks down and it’s Mohan’s hand, fingers curled into his scrubs. He can feel the heat from her palm soak through the material and deep through his skin; he tenses so as not to jerk away.
“I’m sorry,” Mohan whispers.
Jack is suddenly very aware of two things: one is that they are, in (semi) broad daylight, hunched together inches away in the midst of at least 8 of their colleagues, and two: the arousal that’s been a low thrum in his body the past 8 hours is suddenly kicked up to a dangerous throb in the lower pit of his stomach.
Still, he’s selfish, so he lets her hand linger a moment before he carefully shifts his leg. “Nothing to be sorry for,” Jack says, regulating his voice to a normal volume. “Thank you, though.”
Mohan startles, then quickly pulls her hand back, looking embarrassed for a split second before her features smooth out. She’s about to say something, eyes bright, when Ellis wanders over.
“So yesterday Shen was saying you prefer Qui-Gon over Obi-Wan,” Ellis says, like she’s continuing a conversation they’d already been having.
“Not saying I prefer him,” Jack replies, going with the flow, almost thankful for the interruption. “Just see myself more in him, that’s all.”
“Nah,” Ellis shakes her head. “Don’t got the hair for it.” She tosses back a mouthful of beer.
It makes him choke. Coughing and pounding his chest, Jack throws a sideways look at Mohan. Ellis does the same.
Mohan looks thoroughly amused but also a little lost. “I’ve actually never…” she trails off.
“Oh my God,” yelps Ellis, “have you never seen Star Wars?”
“Have you?” Mohan asks, incredulous.
“Who hasn’t? I grew up on that shit.” Ellis eyes her. “Don’t tell me you only watch, like, A24 movies, Samira.”
Mohan actually looks a little offended. “I like some fantasy, I just never really got around to Star Wars. There’s just… so much. It was a little overwhelming. Plus, I never had the time.”
“Bet you had enough time for Bridgeton,” Ellis says pointedly.
Mohan blushes.
“Ha! I knew it.”
Jack has no idea what the fuck they’re talking about, but leans back and lets himself enjoy the bitter-sweet sting of the beer, the embarrassed way Mohan covers her smile with her hand while Ellis fully ramps up the teasing.
“Season 2, right? Projecting yourself onto that goddess, of course you did.” Ellis is shaking her head in mock judgement, but her eyes are gleeful. “Heterosexuals are so predictable—”
Mohan makes a sound of protest. “I’m not a het—“
“—like ohhhhh, does he like me? Will he fight for my honour? The height difference, yum yum. Let’s throw the hunk into the water and get his shirt all see-through.”
“South Asian representation is still rare in mainstream Western media, you know— “
He lets them bicker it out. It’s past the time he’d usually bow out and disassociate through the bus ride home to a brisk shower and a cold bed, but for some (dark-haired, dark-eyed, blushing) reason he can’t bring himself to leave. Not just yet.
—
Message received
Dr. Samira Mohan
19:45
Double shift again tomorrow :) Dana tells me you’re the lead attending. Looking forward to it.
—
January slips into February like a thief in the night, taking him by surprise when he looks out at the grey heaps of melted snow pushed up against the edges of the ambulance bay and realises that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.
Time is no longer the straightforward, linear thing it once was. There aren’t seven days in a week anymore; there are the days leading up to every other Thursday, and the days that follow.
The nights with Mohan, and the nights without.
He’ll be working the night of the 14th. The idea that he’d be doing anything else is laughable. Smoothing his thumb over the empty space where his ring—now safely tucked into a pocket in his locker—usually hugs his finger, Jack sighs and takes in the bitingly cold air and briefly falls back into the memory of a hard, warm body tucked up against his, a delighted laugh and a romantic table for two, before he squeezes his eyes shut and cuts the memory off at the head.
No space for that, now. The ambulance ETA is 3 minutes, and Dr. King is shifting nervously at his side. He needs his head in the game.
Bitter wind cuts at the skin of his neck like so many pieces of shrapnel.
Five days till Thursday.
—
The Thursday of the pile up on the I-376 is grey and starkly cold, sleet falling in miserable sheets.
They get the call right before Jack walks through the door for his shift: a transit mixer hit a patch of black ice at a speed far above the legal limit, sending it skidding across all three lanes.
A UPMC Mercy ambulance had been right behind it.
Mind already racing through worse-case scenarios, Jack tosses his rucksack into his locker without seeing it. He can already feel traces of himself disappear behind solid mental walls, shamal winds on his face and sand between his toes; he tries to fight it, two breaths in and a long one out, struggling against the unnatural barrier erecting itself in his mind.
Funny thing, PTSD. How in the 20 years since his last tour he’s worked through it, learned how to deal with it— how, inevitably, it still manages to claw its way to the surface.
—
Robby’s looking out across the ambulance bay, shoulders tense and brow creased, when Jack re-emerges.
“ETA?” Jack asks, stepping in beside him.
“Any minute now,” replies Robby.
A pause; Jack knows that Robby’s straining like he is to hear the sirens.
“Cleared most of the rooms, but shouldn't need them. Word is, five are in critical condition but already stabilized,” Robby says quietly, words clipped. “Should be the first ones in.”
Jack looks over his shoulder when the doors slide open, sees the large brown eyes he’d forgotten for the first time to search for in the sea of faces.
Behind Mohan trails King and Ellis, expressions just as tense as Robby’s, faces fresh and obviously just arrived for their shifts like he had.
Mohan, on the other hand, looks a little ragged. He counts the curls straying from her hair clip and holds back a smile.
When she sees him, the corner of her mouth ticks up briefly, dimple making a flash appearance before disappearing again. He steps slightly to the side, an unspoken invitation, which she accepts with grace.
Her breaths come out in puffs of white, arms crossed over her chest in an attempt to stave off the chill. Jack looks down at her, close enough now to count every fuzzy baby hair, every eyelash. When she meets his gaze, just a split second, the white cloud of her next exhale catches his chin; an invisible touch, not unlike a caress.
Jack very carefully looks away, any wayward thoughts shuttered firmly. Not the time.
—
The Mercy hospital EMTs are the first to be wheeled in, the sheen of their blood stark under the sterile lights. Jack catches Mohan’s gaze and she’s immediately at his side, rapid steps mirroring his.
There’s a figure keeping time with them on the other side of the gurney.
Jack looks up from the patient, a quick assessment: the man is holding himself in a way that Jack recognises immediately as ex-military, blue scrubs bloodstained and torn at the knee.
Interesting.
“36 year old male, blunt force trauma to the skull and neck when the ambulance tipped over. Heart rate 109, bp 158 over 85,” Sullivan, one of the night shift EMTs, tells Jack as they push the gurney into the emptied trauma room.
Jack steals another quick look at the lanyard swinging from the mysterious doctor’s neck: Dr. Timothy Robert Bryan, Emergency Medicine, Mercy Hospital.
Dr. Bryan meets his gaze this time, unflinching. Almost like a challenge.
Jack just nods at him, taking note of the way Dr. Bryan’s posture shifts just a little, like he’d been bracing for a punch that never came.
—
“On three: one, two—“
Jack can feel Mohan watching him, but doesn’t let himself look, just braces his lower body as they lift the patient from the stretcher and onto the bed.
The patient’s hair is matted down from the blood still oozing from the laceration on his hairline. Jack carefully pushes it aside and leans back to let Mohan begin her assessment.
“Left frontalparietal swelling,” Mohan says, voice calm and clear. “Skull fracture.”
Jack lets her continue, moves down to where the cargo pants are shredded like confetti, revealing a mess of torn flesh and the dangerous white of exposed bone.
“Humerus fracture,” Jack adds, hands carefully running over the patient’s limbs, noting every haematoma, any other swelling or breakage.
He lets Mohan work through the preliminary neurological checks while he methodically works his way down the man’s body. In a moment he’ll step back, let her take over. For now, he’ll steal this moment with her, bodies bowed as though in prayer over mutilated flesh, moving as though they are one.
Through it all, Dr. Bryan stares at him from the corner of the room, arms crossed over his chest, tracking every movement. His dark eyes are narrowed like he’s trying to see through him, his mouth a tight line under his moustache.
Well, that’s enough of that.
Jack touches Mohan’s shoulder. “You got this?”
She tosses him a look over her shoulder, eyes shining. “I got this.”
A shiver of want starts at the nape of his neck and runs clear down his spine. He clamps down on it immediately, sidesteps Perlah who’s untangling an IV.
He’s turning to leave the patient in Mohan’s capable hands, check on the other incomings, when:
“Dr. Jack Abbot.”
Jack stops, glancing back at Dr. Bryan. “So they tell me,” he says lightly.
“Former sixty-eight whiskey? Camp Blessing, ‘01?”
“68W1,” Jack corrects automatically, hand on the door, and frowns.
Dr. Bryan shrugs. “Sure."
Reluctant but curious, Jack reaches back in his mind and tugs on the thread there, unravelling the memories, trying to understand.
Camp Blessing. He’d been stationed there with his battalion, young and dumb enough to think he got lucky for his first tour.
The military camp had been harsh and cold, frigid and barren, just like the rest of Afghanistan. It held little in terms of fond memories.
He’d learned a good deal in his time there, though: how to chow down half a jalapeno and cheese using just his teeth while juggling an IV and a tourniquet; how to layer his socks to keep the chill at bay; how to fashion an NPA out of MRE straws when the H&S restock got hijacked by insurgents just outside of the valley, and the CSH had slowly run out of medical supplies.
Dr. Bryan wasn’t one of the Airbone, though. Jack would’ve remembered that face, those fierce brown eyes.
Not Army, Jack thinks, aware that it’s been a minute and he’s still staring.
Bryan’s gait’s all wrong, posture a little too smug, movements too careful. Marine.
No. Not Marine. Corpsman.
A spark in his mind, a sudden connection, and he’s thrown back to 2001, memories coming in flashes. He’d been a kid, fresh on the ground, little to no field experience.
A raging fire, explosions in the distance: a CH-53E Super Stallion careening down out of the sky.
Shouted orders and groans of pain, trying to tune out his own terror and focus through the noise and smoke and the smell of burning flesh.
Doc Bryan, Navy Hospital Corpsman, staggering through the debris with blood running fast and heavy from a large laceration on his upper arm.
That dirty face under the stained bandana tight over reddish brown hair that’s now streaked with grey had been more boyish at the time, cheeks a little more filled out, sure— but it’s him.
Jack remembers with startling clarity how calm Doc Bryan had seemed that day, all laser-focused intensity, suturing and intubating with soothing touches and firm words of comfort; remembers the shock when Bryan had suddenly snapped, leaping to his feet with hot fury stretching his body taut, when an officer had dared to suggest they move their men back to Camp Rhino. Where they belonged.
“You were with the 15th MEU,” Jack says, stunned. “Just outside the valley. You were shot down.”
Bryan nods.
“Your infantry unit—“
“Yeah.”
Shaken, Jack grips the door harder, steadying himself. “Fuck.”
“Clusterfuck of a day,” Bryan agrees. He finally blinks, loosens a little. “Glad you were close by when we needed a hand, brother. You did some good work.”
“Yeah.”
Jack has seen some shit. Both of his tours had enough material to give him nightmares for the rest of his life. But there was something about that day, something about the newness of it all, the mind-numbing shock at the bodies and carnage and warped metal, that stays with him to this day.
Jack gives his head a small shake to clear it. He can feel his mind finally return to the pit, the sounds of the past fading back into the ether. “You’re at Mercy now, huh?”
“Closest to family.” Bryan grimaces. “Could do without the shit rolling downhill, but I’d have to deal with that wherever I end up, right?”
Funny. He’d been funny then, too.
Jack crosses the room and offers a hand, a little relieved when Bryan takes it without hesitation, handshake crisp and professional.
“Dr. Mohan here is one of the best,” says Jack. “Your boy’s in good hands.”
In his peripheral vision, he sees Mohan’s mouth open, like she’s about to speak. Then she closes it, stunned.
Bryan nods. “Glad to hear it.”
“I’ll be back to check on him later. Take it easy.”
“Will do. Stay frosty.”
It makes Jack smile.
He shoulders his way out the door and back into the fray, not looking back, a headache already threatening to bloom behind his eyes.
His residual limb aches.
—
The roof is empty, a small blessing. Jack shivers and rethinks his decision to grab some air and a moment to himself when sleet hits him in the face.
Retreat. He ducks under an air vent, a makeshift cover, and takes a clumsy minute to angle his prosthetic enough that he can sit down on the cold concrete.
The ER had quieted down after they’d stabilised and handed over the pile-up victims to the OR and ICU, giving them all a minute to take stock and grab a drink.
He’s still shaken after his foray into the past. He closes his eyes and sees Doc Bryan’s face behind his eyelids, both past and present; wonders if each and every one of them—Army medic, Flight surgeon, Navy Corpsman, didn’t matter—had signed up to this shit for life before the ink even dried on the enlistment contracts.
He knows other men he’d served with who’d retired from the military only to end up right back in Emergency Medicine, civilian life just an extension of their military service. Like they couldn’t get enough. Like there was nothing else they could think of doing with their lives. Like he’d felt, all those years ago, the day he’d applied to the Emergency Department.
We’re the bees that protect the hive.
The door opens, hinges screeching in warning.
“Dr. Mohan,” he greets her, and Mohan spins around, looking a little guilty.
“Dr. Abbot! Sorry, I saw you come up here, and I just—“ She hesitates. “I just wanted to make sure you were ok.”
“Just peachy, but I appreciate it.”
It’s a flat out lie, but she doesn’t have to know that. Not her burden to bear, after all.
Mohan cringes against the sleet, drawing her coat tighter around her body.
“C’mere,” he says, thinks affectionately: Crazy girl. “You’ll catch pneumonia, and then Collins will definitely kill me.”
“I’m wearing a thermal shirt under my scrubs,” she protests.
He just raises his eyebrows.
Thunder rumbles behind the dark clouds, a low warning in the distance. Mohan relents and rushes over to him, head ducked, and fits herself into the small space next to him that’s still surprisingly dry.
“Nice work with the cardiac tamponade,” Jack says, trying to ignore how she presses up against him in an effort to fit herself under the vent.
Mohan flashes him a proud grin. “Thanks. The case report you showed me last week actually helped a lot.”
Jack strains to remember. The shaky feeling in his limbs is loosening its hold. He grounds himself in the feeling of her, the way her knee brushes his.
“Oh, the one in the European Heart Journal. Yeah, that one was a doozy. Glad I could be of service.”
Mohan smiles up at him. He marvels at how it takes the wind out of him every time.
“You always are,” she says.
“That’s what I’m here for.”
They don’t talk for a minute, just sit listening to the wet patter of the frozen rain. Jack aligns his breathing to hers, calm and steady. Afghanistan is a million miles away.
“Dr. Bryan says to tell you thanks,” Mohan says. “He left with the Mercy Hospital transport an hour ago.”
“Hell of a guy,” Jack murmurs. “One of best.”
“I’d like to hear that story, one day.”
Jack looks down at her. Mohan looks a little surprised at herself, like she hadn’t meant to say it. A little guilty, like she’s just realised that maybe he doesn’t want to relive a memory that obviously fucks him up a little to this day. She meets his eyes, questioning, asking permission.
If it were anyone else, he’d be flippant: it was a long time ago. Don’t really remember it that well.
Or, Yeah, maybe one day.
But Mohan’s not anyone else. She’s—
“Tell you what, if we catch some down time next time you’re here with us, I’m all yours,” Jack says gently.
Don’t worry, you’re not overstepping.
He can feel a small shudder run through her, and then she slips her hand into his and leans her head on his shoulder, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Jack rests his chin in her curls and closes his eyes.
Thunder rolls in the distance, and his heart beats a staccato in his chest, sudden heat rolling through him despite the chill of the air, and he realises—certain, matter of fact, like he’s known it all along— that he’s falling for her, and he can’t even bring himself to care.
—
Except that, hours later, when he’s had enough time to overthink it, he realises that he really. Really cares, actually.
“Stupid,” Jack mutters to himself. He grits his teeth and glowers and stalks around the ER, nurses and patients parting like the Red Sea before him.
Idiot.
Perverted old fuck.
She looks up to you.
She’ll never feel the same.
And,
It would be worse if, somehow, she did.
Mohan, busy examining a drunken party girl with a profusely bleeding nose, looks up when walks past. “Dr. Abbot?” she calls out, and he flinches at the heat in his veins, in his gut, just from the way his name sounds coming from her lips.
He purposefully does not return her gaze and doesn’t let his stride waver.
—
It feels like the longest shift of his life.
Shouldering the door of the staff toilets open, Jack determinedly walks over to the sink, opens the tap, and dunks his head straight underneath the water.
He gasps, the cold shock hitting his system, and then buckles a little at the relief of it till he’s resting his elbows on the sink.
There’s a dried drop of blood on the back of his hand. He stares at it, mind blank, recalls the feeling of her small hand in his, how warm her body had felt tucked against his chest, the stark contrast to the raging storm surrounding them.
There’s no coming back from this. He shuts off the water and pointedly avoids his reflection in the mirror.
“Goddammit,” he mutters. The sound echoes off the tiles like a gunshot.
In response, there’s a clatter of something hitting the ground in one of the stalls.
Jack freezes. He hadn’t seen anyone coming into the bathroom before him, and he’d been at the computer right across from it for a good 20 minutes, balls deep in paperwork. Maybe his age is starting to override his situational awareness.
Annoyed—he’d been hoping to ride this particular existential crisis out in peace—he turns to leave.
“Dr. Abbot?” a voice says, high and strained, from the stall.
He flinches. Water drips slowly from his hair and down his neck, and suddenly he feels like a fucking idiot because he’s back where he was 30 minutes ago, body flushed and wanting , just from the sound of her voice— except now, on top of it all, he’s also dripping wet.
“Dr. Mohan,” he replies, cringing a little. “Didn’t know you were in here.” Pause. 20 minutes. That’s not exactly your run-of-the-mill bathroom break. “Everything okay?”
“I-“ There’s a tremble in Mohan’s voice. “Not really, no.”
Could be exhaustion. She’s 13 hours into a double shift, and their caseload has been unusually complex tonight. Could be work stress, maybe overlapping personal life stress; the possibilities are endless.
Despite her eagerness and general positive outlook regarding the job, burnout in residents— particularly in the Emergency Department—is no joke, and she’s susceptible. Like they all are.
So Jack does the only thing he can think of, what comes most naturally to him: he tries to talk her through it.
Walking slowly up to the closed stall door, he leans against it, careful not to make any sudden movements, despite the fact that she can’t even see him. Now that he’s closer he can just make out the way she’s breathing— in fast, aborted little gasps. Fuck, is she crying?
“Hey,” he starts, trying to shoot for comforting. “I know it hasn’t been a walk in the park around here recently, tensions being high and all that. But I just want you to know that—“ Deep breath— “I’m proud of you. We’ve all seen how hard you’ve been working, the progress you’re making.”
A sound like a small sob muffled into an arm filters through the door. Jack swallows and pulls his arm up to brace against the cool wood of the door, leans his forehead onto it.
“Hell, you put some of us to shame that have been doing this decades longer, you know?”
“Are you trying to remind me how much older you are than I am?” Mohan interrupts breathlessly, laughter in her voice.
Jack’s throat closes for a second. She doesn’t sound tearful, which is—good? But her words sting a little, if he’s being honest.
“Oh, no, Dr. Mohan. I’m sure having to look at my face all night was a damn good reminder by itself,” he says.
It’s so quiet he thinks he’s imagined it: a choked-off moan, muffled again.
A moan? Right. He needs to get a fucking grip .
There’s a prolonged pause. Maybe his words of affirmation are getting through.
“It’s a goddamn pleasure to work with you,” he blurts, feeling a little bolder, suddenly wanting her to know everything he’s been silently telling her for weeks now. He pictures her on the roof, hand in his, sighing against his side. It burns. “You brighten up everyone’s day, you know that, right? Patients, doctors, nurses… hell, I know my day gets a hell of a lot better when you walk through that door."
Well, that might've been a little bit too honest.
Jack thumps his head against his arm, trying to get back on track.
“You’re getting quicker with your judgement calls, which I know you’ve struggled with in the past. But your work with the severe REPE complication tonight? After the pneumothorax?” He lets out a low whistle. “I know your first instinct was to blame yourself when things took that turn for the worse, but you overrode that. You gave clear and concise commands, made the right decisions, and stabilized the patient so damn quick I didn’t even have time to grab myself a sandwich.”
Still no reply. He strains to listen for signs of life.
“I can’t stop thinking—“ He sucks in a breath. Fuck it. “—I can’t stop thinking about you, even when you’re not here.”
And— there: Mohan’s breathing has sped up again, cutting his praise short. He can’t be imagining it, he’s not that far gone.
“Dr. Mohan?” he tries, keeping his voice steady with effort.
“Yes," she says, and it’s nothing like her normal speaking voice, it’s almost a whine . “Dr. Abbot, I— please. Don’t stop.”
Almost like she’s—
Dumbfounded, Jack closes his eyes and zeroes in on the sounds coming from inside the stall. Hitched breaths, still abnormally fast. Some shuffling, the material of her scrubs almost rhythmically sliding against her body.
And the slick sound of—
Blood starts to pool almost instantly in his groin, his balls tightening up as his cock twitches. Jack screws his eyes shut even tighter and fights to keep hold of his sanity.
He thought he’d been imagining it, projecting just because he’d been struggling with his own arousal, all night, all week. But the evidence is there in front of him.
By the sound of it, Mohan is fucking herself on her fingers, and she’s been doing it since he walked in the door, and she hasn’t stopped while he’s been telling her what a good fucking doctor she is, and now she’s letting him hear it. She wants him to know.
“Dr. Abbot,” Mohan whispers again, and he hears a rustle of synthetic cloth, the distinct sound of scrub pants hitting the floor.
Panicking, he presses the palm of his free hand against his hardening cock, arm still braced against the door and holding his head in place.
“Dr. Mohan,” he says, low, “would you like me to leave?”
“Don’t,” Mohan gasps, and Jack balls his hand into a fist, punches the side of his thigh in an effort to regain some self-control.
“Do you want me to keep talking?”
“Yes.”
Okay. So that’s the way she wants to play it. Still in disbelief, Jack finally gives in and fully cups himself through his scrubs, shuddering at the contact.
She’s getting louder now, bolder. He can see her with perfect clarity in his mind’s eye: scrub top bunched up around her waist, perfect legs splayed, free to move now. Head tossed back—no, leaning against the wall?—her arm contorted to reach down and find the right angle, one… no, two fingers sunk deep into a perfect, wet pussy, her other hand busy on her clit.
“I can’t stay in the same room as you for too long,” he says, voice low and harsh like his vocal chords have been dragged over gravel. “But at the same time, I can’t take my eyes off of you. You move with such grace, so deliberate, beautiful…it almost hurts to watch, but I can’t stop.”
Another aborted little gasp. He imagines Mohan’s eyes closed, forehead creased, mouth fallen open. His cock pulses at the mental image and, instinctive, he pushes his cock against his hand, a helpless thrust.
“You’ve got this incredible curiosity, you know?” Jack doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s saying anymore, the words are flowing out of him faster than his brain can form them. “Like you want to soak up every ounce of medical knowledge in the world till you’re bursting with it. Like you can’t get enough.”
He ruts against his hand again, then thinks again, fuck it, his new mantra, and licks his palm and shoves his hand down into his scrubs, groaning at the pressure when he finally grips his cock.
Jesus fuck.
Jack hopes no one comes through that fucking bathroom door because he wouldn’t be able to stop now, come hell or high water.
“—and hell, Samira, I just want to feed that desire, feed you, I want to cut myself open and let you take whatever the fuck you want. Whatever I can give. It’s all yours. I want to have my way with that brain until you lose interest and toss me aside for something newer and shinier, but at least I’ll have had something.”
“Jack,” Mohan chokes out, voice so desperate and cracked that he barely recognises it, and then he hears her muffle a long, deep moan and he knows his words have pushed her over the edge, core pulsing and hot and soaking around her own fingers— and oh God, oh fuck, what he wouldn’t give to feel Mohan shudder against him, feel her flutter and gush hot and wet over his fingers, to replace the hand on her clit with his mouth and keep going until she’s an overstimulated, whimpering mess, lick her clean and taste her.
Jack strokes himself, rough and uneven, legs trembling at the effort it takes to not just kick down the door and fuck her up against the tiles like a goddamn animal. He’s so close, he can feel the blood rushing up his legs, his body, pushing him towards release—
The stall door starts to open, and he almost loses his balance, hand shooting out instinctively to hold it in place.
“Don’t,” Jack barks, immediately tense, suddenly thrown back into the real world, ears ringing and breath harsh.
A beat.
“Let me see you,” Mohan whispers.
Jack drives a fist into his thigh again, jaw clenching and teeth grinding against each other. His self-control is pulled tight, a string about to snap, and he’s too close to stepping aside and letting her do as she damn well pleases.
They’ve already crossed a line. A huge, damning, call-HR-and-get-the-lawsuit-ready red line. They’ve crossed it, it’s so far behind them it’s not even in their rear view mirror anymore, but he hasn’t touched her and, hell, didn’t even see her; there’s still a chance they can come out of this without her being branded as a whore who sleeps her way to the top, or he as a predatory attending who takes advantage of helpless, innocent young residents.
He’s not even gonna touch the fact that she’s more than 15 years younger than he is.
“We can’t,” he bites out. “You know— goddammit, Samira, once we open this door, it can never be closed again.”
“But—“
“Don’t let your feelings get in the way of your common sense.”
“You’ve been telling me the exact opposite for months now,” Mohan points out.
She sounds mellowed out, almost lazy. Jack intends to leave without seeing what her face is like post-coital, because that would mean living the rest of his life with that knowledge and he doesn’t know if he could survive that.
Her voice leaks through the crack in the door, soft but determined. “Trust my gut, right? Stop overthinking?”
It’s almost teasing.
He should tuck his erection into his waistband and leave right now, go somewhere she won’t know to follow, and either will it away or take care of it, cold and clinical. It would be for the best.
“I stand by that,” Jack chokes, suddenly wanting to laugh at the absurdity, “but you gotta know this isn’t the type of scenario I had in mind.”
“Unfortunately, Jack,” Mohan says, and he braces himself against the stall again to keep his knees from buckling, “this is exactly the scenario I’ve in mind. Not at first, but… for a while, now.”
“Fuck,” he breathes out.
Movement from inside: a rustle of cloth, her scrubs coming back on and fixed into place. “I’m coming out,” she tells him, almost conversationally.
His cock pulses, a constant reminder of the state he’s in.
He should go.
Jack can’t fucking move.
“I’m not going to touch you,” he warns her, then flinches when the door slowly opens and she’s right there, expression sated but still hungry, eyes dark and inviting, lids heavy.
“Okay.”
“Get back to work, Dr. Mohan, or you’ll probably be hearing from Robby about it next week.”
“Or what?” Mohan whispers. She reaches a hand out towards his arm, pauses when he flinches back a step.
“Or—“ Jack swallows. Reality check. “Or I’ll have Shen cover for me every Thursday, and you’ll be working under him for your doubles.”
Mohan just stares at him, expression changing. “You’re really serious about this,” she says, searching his face.
She takes a step closer; he takes another step back.
His ass hits something cold and hard, and he realises it’s the sink, and he grabs onto it, thankful for the grounding feeling of ceramic on his burning skin.
“As a heart attack,” Jack confirms.
It’s for the best it’s for the best it’s for the best.
They just look at each other for a beat.
She breaks eye contact first, heated gaze sweeping down and catching on the erection straining against his scrubs. Jack doesn’t want to think about how he probably looks. Probably fucking wrecked.
“All right,” Mohan says, finally. She backs up until she’s leaning against the stall, still facing him, mirroring his position, and folds her arms over her chest. “If that’s what you want.” Lips pursed. “What are you going to do, then? You can’t go back out there looking like that, Dr. Abbot.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Jack says weakly, heart skipping a beat at the return to Dr. Abbot.
“There are patients waiting for us.” Her lips curl into a half smile. “I started this. It’s only fair that I finish it.”
Warning signs flash in front of his eyes at the look on her face. “Dr. Mohan—“
“Touch yourself, Dr. Abbot,” Mohan says.
A fine tremble runs through him. He just stares at her.
“I won’t watch, if that’s— if it’s easier that way,” Mohan wavers a little, bravado deflating just that tiny bit. Second guessing herself again.
“Yeah, there’s no way in hell that’s happening,” Jack tries to say, but his cock throbs so fucking hard that he can feel it jerk in his pants, cutting him off before he can finish.
Mohan’s gaze turns steady, holding his. For a moment she frowns, looking thoughtful, but then it passes and she squares her shoulders like she’s made a decision.
“I mean it,” Jack warns, alarmed at her look of determination.
“So do I.”
Mohan rests the back of her head against the spot where Jack had been just moments ago and reaches a hand up to her neck, stroking slowly down, down over her exposed clavicles and that smooth, dark skin. Her fingers travel lower, over the top of her breast, pausing over where he can see the peak of her hard nipple pushing against the fabric of her scrubs, and any blood left in his brain drains when he realises she isn’t wearing a bra.
“We can’t touch each other,” she whispers, chest rising and falling quicker now, eyes darkening till they look black as night. “Those are your rules, right?”
Jack swallows. “Sure.”
Her fingers travel lower, and Jack feels his hips jerk upwards, cock straining for contact, leaking and dampening his boxer briefs.
Mohan dips her hand down the front of her black scrubs and arches her back, and that’s when the wall of his last remaining self-control crumbles to dust.
“Those are the rules,” Jack agrees, breathless, and reaches in to grab his cock.
They both groan quietly when he starts to stroke himself.
What he wouldn’t give for a bottle of lube right now. He withdraws his hand from his scrubs to spit into his palm and sees Mohan’s entire body shudder at the sight, mouth open on a soundless moan, eyes heavy-lidded and sultry, fingers moving fast under her scrubs and on her clit.
It’s so intensely erotic that Jack has to clench his jaw against the sounds trying to escape from his mouth.
The meagre friction of his hand isn’t enough, he needs more, he needs her, and he desperately thrusts up into his tightened fist, breathing harsh and heavy through his nose, trying not to look down, not to watch her hand move in her pants, trying not to imagine what she’d feel like around his cock and failing so miserably that he almost laughs.
Jack tries to keep his eyes on her face, and then realises that’s even worse.
“I know you’re imagining what it would feel like,” Mohan says without warning, breath coming in short little pants.
“Mohan, Jesus Christ, don’t talk," he pleads, shutting his eyes in desperation.
Mohan just hums and, unsurprisingly, refuses to listen. She whispers, “Get closer.”
Against his will, Jack’s eyes fly open and fix on her, on the way she curls her hips up to meet her hand, on her gorgeous lips and the jaw carved by the gods, those maddening curls escaping her hair clip, and he looks at her like he’s looked at her every chance he’s ever had: mesmerised, memorising every detail, refusing to blink.
He lets himself be drawn towards her. Powerless. One step. Another.
Close enough now that her leg brushes against his, just a touch, enough to make his head spin.
Close enough that he can see the sheen of sweat on her forehead, see the fluorescent lights reflected in her eyes, smell the clean fragrance of her curls, the sharp sting of antiseptic.
Mohan’s breath hitches in her throat, staring back up at him, head tilted up and neck strained. He leans down just enough that he enters her personal space, lips lingering right above her pulse, shaking with the effort to stop himself from closing the gap and latching on.
The heat of her skin calls to him, hypnotising, agonising. I can’t, I can’t, we can’t —
He can’t stay upright like this. He shifts and steadies himself with a hand on the wall above her head, and the movement shifts him just that little bit closer, drawing breathless moans out of them both.
“I’m close again,” Mohan pants, and fuck, he feels the puff of hot air on his chin like a sucker punch. “I want you to come with me, please."
Another pulse of white hot need cuts off his ability to form words. “Yeah,” he breathes, voice high and desperate, cracking a little around the almost-whine. “Yeah.”
Faster strokes, desperate and shallow, too much too much—
“I want to taste you,” Mohan says shakily. “I want to feel you on my tongue, I want—“
And there it is: the pressure building and narrowing till it finally snaps, a sharp burst of pleasure that makes his vision go white. Jack grips himself roughly, hips jerking forward helplessly into his fist, still keeping his eyes on hers. When Mohan bites down hard on her lip and starts to tremble he knows she’s there with him, and he feels another sharp stab of pleasure when her breath hitches and she snaps forward, body jackknifing, whispering his name almost in anguish.
It’s the most beautiful fucking thing he’s even seen.
Their shared gasps sound suddenly too loud in the cold, cramped space.
“Jesus,” Jack mutters, slowly coming back down to himself, pulsing and too-hot, skin hypersensitive to every spot his scrubs are touching.
“Yeah,” Mohan breathes, slumping back, flushed and sated.
Slowly shaking his head, he huffs out a laugh, wonders at how not guilty he feels, how much he truly doesn’t give a fuck now. Stupid semantics, maybe, but they technically didn’t do anything wrong, right?
They were just two colleagues letting off a little steam who happened to both be in the same cramped little staff bathroom at the same time.
Maybe they’ll actually get away with this. Maybe he won’t have fucked up both of their careers just because he’s finally accepted that he’s gone out of his mind for her.
Mohan smiles at the sound, wide and joyous.
“You’re a fucking force of nature,” Jack tells her, blood still rushing in his ears from the force of his orgasm.
“I know.”
His pants are completely ruined. Thank God for the automatic scrub dispenser only a few meters away, he thinks wryly. Looks like he’ll have to spend the rest of his shift going commando.
He backs away, sluggish and winded, putting distance between them again so he can scrub his hands and arms down in the sink.
When Mohan sidles in next to him to wash her hands after him, he can’t help but lean in and breathe deeply, taking in the scent of her, the lingering musk that has his cock twitch pathetically.
She turns just slightly; they still aren’t touching, but their arms are an inch apart, so close he can feel the warmth radiating from her. When she looks up at him through her lashes, tilting her face up just an inch, a wave of longing crashes into him so hard that he almost breaks and kisses her.
He catches a fleeting expression that tells him she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
Before he can stop himself, he reaches up to gently push aside the tendrils of hair falling into her face, fingers trembling, fighting the pull of her skin, her lips.
Her gaze drops to his mouth.
Okay. Deep breaths.
They’ll make it through this.
Right?
“I’ll see you out there, Dr. Abbot,” Mohan says softly.
“Yeah,” Jack says, swallows his need back down, tucking it away safe and hidden along with his love for her. “See ya, Dr. Mohan.”
And so it is just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
Most of the time
And so it is the colder water
The Blower's Daughter
The pupil in denial
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can’t take my mind off of you
Fin.