Work Text:
What's left behind, in no particular order:
Ten garbage bags of clothes destined for Goodwill.
A school-recommended grief counsellor who smells of cigarettes.
A burning desire to put emergency medicine to rights.
Loneliness (not to be talked about in polite company).
And a jar of olives.
—
It's an odd sort of bar at an odd time of year. Strings of kitschy coloured Christmas lights eat into the middle of January; little slivers of last year's radiance wedge themselves in neon tubing and in the cracks of the worn leather bar stools. The rain outside is thick. With any other company, Samira might be nervous about her options for getting back to tonight. Pittsburgh's been her home for nine years, but the city is still a stranger to her outside the narrow corridor of work and home. Jack, however, treats it like an old friend.
They order a bottle of wine. The bartender brings it with a perfunctory smile, and a plate of olives.
"Complimentary," he says, already turning away before Samira opens her mouth. The disinterested flatness of his tone telegraphs that the free bar snacks were management's bright idea, not his. A plastic swizzle stick skewers one olive right through its red pimento heart.
She looks to Jack. He only shrugs, focussed on pouring. When all's about equal, he taps his glass into hers. "To good fucking health."
Samira laughs. She can't bring herself to curse so casually, but she rakes her blunt nails up the length of his thigh. The wine is warm and good, filled with cherries on the nose. Miles away from the splatter of cold, slushy world outside.
To good fucking health, indeed.
—
They remind her of hollow eyes. Or open mouths, screaming.
—
"How about we play a game? First one to talk about work eats the whole plate."
"You kidding me Mohan? That would give me heartburn bad enough to send me to the - "
—
In the ambulance bay, a bruised to-go cup is pushed into her hands.
"That was a rough one," a gruff voice says. "You ok?"
It's embarrassing, feeling so green after all those years in medical school. Samira can't claim to know Abbot as an attending like she knows Robby, but it's only taken a couple of shifts to figure out that Abbot shoots straight down the middle and never blinks first. It cracks patients sometimes. It's been known to crack senior residents. Not her, though. Never her.
"I'm good, thanks." She puts her face into neutral and straightens out her spine. Smiles, for effect. "Just needed a minute."
The coffee he's given her burns through the cardboard, but it gives her hands something to do that isn't shaking. She's going to dump it in a plant the moment his back is turned. It'd be her third in an hour; not good for the head or the heart.
Abbot's eyes narrow on her, but whatever he sees he chooses to keep to himself. He tilts his head towards the doors instead. "If you need a minute, do me a favour and take five. But come find me after - got a kid in South 16 who might've swallowed a battery. His mom could do with a soft touch."
She doesn't know him like Robby, but there's one thing Samira can already appreciate: Abbot seems to understand when a problem isn't within his remit to fix.
It's all going to be fine. Everyone's going to be fine.
It's just a minor choking hazard; that's all.
—
"Samira." Jack pinches the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. "I'm not arguing this with you."
"It's not arguing, it's debating." The pros and cons of moving from bar to booth, both sides of the argument orchestrated by the swizzle stick Samira's waving between her fingers. The movement is smooth as hell; she should've been a surgeon. "Look, I was MVP of my high school's debate team. Got a reputation to uphold here."
Jack's face creases fondly. "That doesn't surprise me in the slightest."
—
In the kitchen, her mom is elbow-deep in dishwater and her father is playing the fool with a drying cloth. Olive juice bubbles away at the edge of his lips.
Samira turned thirteen four days ago. In a fortnight, she'll get her first period.
She holds her father's hand as her stomach eats itself.
Then she goes home and dries the dishes.
—
Seventeen, and the jar is still there. Pushed back to the farthest corner of the refrigerator, opposite the hum and fizz of the door light, carefully hidden behind the stalwarts of the kitchen inventory. Orange juice. Yogurt. Turmeric-stained tupperware.
Summer sweat curls around the backs of her ears. She only came looking for a Diet Coke.
In her memory, the jar was heavier. Thick-bottomed and precious, not cheap plastic. It doesn't even do her the kindness of shattering when she throws it to the floor.
—
She gets the number of his therapist before she gets his.
It's a little funny, in retrospect.
—
Abbot fidgets.
Not every shift, and not when he's needed. It's something Samira only ever notices at the frayed ends of an early morning. In the scant moments of quiet behind a computer screen, between rooms, lurking near the lockers. He looks off into the middle distance and pushes his wedding ring counterclockwise around his finger.
It's odd, but Samira figures they're all entitled to a quirk or two. People talk. If there was an interesting story behind it, she's sure she'd already know.
—
"You're doing great, you know." Samira notices the way Jack says it more than anything. Soft and quiet, shoulders curled forward like a pocket tissue in the humid height of summer. She wonders if the novelty of seeing him relax will ever wear off. She kind of hopes it doesn't.
"I thought we weren't talking about work."
"We're not. I'm talking about you." He starts to smile. The red-blue-pink-yellow-green of the Christmas lights get all caught up in the lines of his face. "It's different, I promise."
—
Old habits die hard when they start taking turns guessing which person in the bar is most likely to show up in chairs. As far as Samira's concerned, safe money's on the older guy with rhinophyma happily double fisting two beers to the left of them, but Jack thinks the bartender has better odds.
"People who don't want help don't wait for 12 hours in a godawful waiting room," he says by way of explanation.
Samira looks back at her happy drunk and his bulbous nose. It annoys her that Jack's right. Charms her too, as it always does, when he manages to shift her perspective without really trying.
She goes to look up the national statistics for emergency department visits anyway.
Jack kisses her knuckles and gently pries the phone out of her hands.
—
She can't be the only healthcare worker who stands in the grocery store after a long shift, unable to read the label off a jar of tapenade without thinking of pericardial tamponade, can she?
—
It's probably the wine that pushes the words against the back of her teeth: you know, it took me 45 minutes to pick out my underwear tonight.
It's nice when an evening is predictable. So few of them in their line of work are. When Samira pulls soft cotton over her thighs she knows the way Jack's body will feel when he kisses her against her front door. Rocking onto her toes and feeling the tug in her calves is a ghost of the half-jump she’ll take onto the kitchen counter as Jack puts her there. He's too damn proud to admit it, but she knows his knees bother him when it's raining, and she doesn't want him to hurt. Pulling her well-loved, marginally moth-eaten, shapeless sweater over her chest, knowing it'll be rucked back up. Breasts lifted out of her bra. He's eaten her out on that countertop enough times that it's at risk of becoming a running joke. Sometimes, when she comes, it's more from the sheer thought of having a man like Jack Abbot between her legs than the physical stimulation.
He likes the colour green on her skin, but she really picked this set because Jack likes things he can get between his teeth.
So the wine in her that wants to say: I know I've been slow when it comes to you, but I think it's worth the wait.
Bartender calls last orders. Jack's back to twisting his wedding band as he settles up.
Samira knocks back the last of her drink and swallows everything she does and doesn't want to say along with it.
—
His fingers catch in her mouth and taste like brine. She whines, hungry, and licks them clean.
—
The morning after is grey - a dull light, difficult to swallow for those who've had too much or not enough. Samira barely opens her eyes to it before she feels a warm, familiar weight sink down on her left. A pair of arms, strong and sure, bracketing her head. The faint smell of cotton and coffee.
"Morning," Jack mumbles as he leans in. Kisses her throat, her jaw, her nose. It's an ungodly hour for two shift workers trying to realign, but Samira's been an emergency physician for long enough to know that the most common thing about bodies is they all have something uncommon about them, and Jack's hold over his circadian rhythm is his.
Samira grunts a sleepy acknowledgement, stretching skywards before wrapping her arms around his neck. "Morning," she yawns. "Are you making coffee?"
"Yep. I need you caffeinated for this conversation." Their noses brush as he looks at her. God, she loves the way he looks at her, even when his eyes are full of mock solemnity. "We need to talk about the empty fridge situation in your kitchen."
She pulls him closer and sighs. "Suppose we do. Give me a minute?"
And she knows he will.
A minute, five, forever.