Archive of Our Own

Dana Evans had always believed she could tell when someone was drowning.

Over thirty years in emergency medicine taught you the signs. The shaking hands disguised as caffeine withdrawal. The too-bright humor. The way someone stopped sitting down because sitting still meant being alone with their thoughts. She knew how exhaustion settled into the body. She knew how grief sharpened people into something brittle and dangerous.

She had missed it anyway.

That was the part she could not forgive.

The first Monday without Robby felt wrong from the moment Dana walked into PTMC.

Not in obvious ways. The chaos of the ED stopped for no man. A teenager was already sobbing in triage while his mother argued with registration over insurance; someone on a psych hold was singing tunelessly at the top of his lungs; EMS rolled in a patient with chest pain before shift change even finished.

Wrong in subtler ways.

His usual station sat occupied by Dr. Al-Hashimi, who looked perfectly competent and perfectly temporary in Robby’s chair. Too neat. Too organized. The coffee beside her remained untouched for almost twenty minutes.

Dr. Jack Abbot stood in front of the board with his arms crossed, reading through patient notes with an expression that suggested he already hated every person in the building.

Dana slowed when she saw him in daylight.

“You look awful,” she told him.

Jack glanced down at her. “Good morning to you too.”

“You’re pale.”

“You’re late.”

“I’m three minutes early.”

“You’re usually fifteen minutes early.”

Dana opened her mouth to snap back automatically, then closed it again because he was right. She had sat in her car for almost ten minutes, staring at the steering wheel and trying to convince herself to come inside.

Jack watched her for another second too long.

“You OK?”

The question set her nerves on edge.

“Fine.”

“Right.”

Al-Hashimi cleared her throat from the station. “Are we terrorising each other already? Because, technically, our shift hasn’t started.”

Jack ignored her.

Dana forced herself to move. “What’s staffing look like?”

“Bad,”

“Define bad.”

“We’re down two nurses, one resident called out sick, beds are nearly full already, and apparently administration thinks splitting Robby’s attending load between me and Baran—” he jerked his thumb towards Al-Hashimi, “—is somehow cost-effective.”

“Jesus.”

“Exactly.”

The first thing Dana noticed is the quiet.

Not silence — never that, not in the Pitt — but a thinning. A subtle, unsettling shift, like a room that’s lost one of its load-bearing walls and is precariously holding its structure. The monitors still chirp, the doors still slam, the paramedics still wheel in poor souls having the worst day of their lives, wrapped in blankets and blood, but something underneath it all is… off.

A Robby-shaped hole.

She doesn’t say that out loud. No one does. But she can feel it anyway — in the break room, at the nurses’ station, in the way people hesitate half a second longer before making a call they used to trust him to make.

Abbot pulled her aside a few days into Robby’s ‘sabbatical’, and told her the truth.

“An inpatient programme?” she repeated, fingers pressed to her mouth. Jack can hardly look at her.

He’s getting help, Jack explained. Psychiatric treatment. Somewhere with clean lines and soft voices and professionals who aren’t drowning.

“He called me the morning after the Fourth,” Jack confided quietly, fiddling with a pen in his hands and leaning against the kitchenette counters. “He spent the whole night riding as far as he could, scared that when he stopped he might… do something stupid.”

Dana dragged in a deep breath, sitting back heavily in her chair. She had suspected, of course, had even shared her concerns with Jack, but to have them confirmed…

Robby never stopped moving. He was the axle the whole department turned around. The idea that he had been barely holding himself together for God knew how long while all of them leaned on him made her stomach ache with something close to shame.

The silence stretched between them. Jack watched her. It wasn’t new, exactly - he’d always been observant - but there was a different quality to it now. Less detached. More intentional.

“You’re carrying too much,” he said finally.

Dana huffed an unimpressed laugh, dropping her hand from her face. “We all are.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But you’re worse at pretending you’re not.”

She almost deflected, almost brushed it off with something blithe and easy. But it’s been a long month. Longer than a month, if she’s honest. Since before Robby left. Since PittFest, and Doug Driscoll, and Dr. Adamson and COVID. Since before she realized how bad things had become.

“I should’ve seen it,” she whispered.

Jack doesn’t ask what she means. He doesn’t have to.

“You’re not psychic,” he said.

“I’m his friend.”

“And?”

“And I missed it.” The words come out as flat as she feels. “I missed how bad it was. I didn’t question his schedule. I watched him work double shifts and stay too late. I —”

“Dana.”

Her name landed like a hand on her shoulder, firm and grounding. She stopped.

“That’s not on you.”

“It feels like it is.”

She let out a shaky breath, pressing her fingers to her temple. The fluorescent lights hum overhead, relentless.

Jack pushed off the counter. For a second she thinks he’s about to walk out of the break room — conversation over, back to work — but instead he stepped closer. Not crowding, not quite. Just… there.

It takes a long time to settle into any kind of new normal.

Jack moving to day shift disrupted the ecosystem in ways Dana hadn’t expected. He belonged at night. Everyone knew it. He had the temperament for darkness and catastrophe and strange emergencies arriving at 3am. Even a month in, day shift still didn’t quite fit him - he wore it like a jacket that pinched at the shoulders, becoming sharper around the edges.

Less patient.

Residents wilted under him.

Nurses complained he snapped too quickly.

Dana found herself intercepting conflicts before they escalated, smoothing things over, redirecting people before Jack bit someone’s head off completely.

The fifth week had been rough. By Thursday, she found herself fantasising about throttling him.

“You cannot tell a resident she has the procedural competence of a raccoon,” Dana hissed, cornering him in the stairwell, away from listening ears.

“She missed the line twice.”

“She was nervous.”

“She should be nervous.”

“You’re being an asshole.”

Jack rubbed a hand over his face. “Dana—”

“No, don’t ‘Dana’ me. Everybody’s stressed out. It’s not just you.”

Something flickered across his expression then. Exhaustion, mostly. Real exhaustion. His eyes looked bloodshot beneath the fluorescent lights.

“I know,” he said quietly.

The softness disarmed her more effectively than anger would have.

Dana looked away first.

“Just,” she muttered, “try not to traumatise any more newbies before lunch.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

Despite herself, she smiled. Jack stuck his hands in his pockets, and gave her a detached once-over.

“You eaten today?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t start.”

“That’s a no.”

“You’re one to talk.”

He doesn’t touch her, but there’s a quiet insistence in the way he lowers his voice.

“Dana.”

He pulls his hand from his scrub pockets victoriously, holding aloft a protein bar, and nudges it into her hand. 

“I hate you,” she muttered, peeling it open.

“Eat,” he instructed, ignoring her.

She does. Jack towers over her like a prison guard, arms crossed, watching in that same too-attentive way.

“You don’t have to babysit me,” she told him after a minute, through a mouthful of oats and peanut butter.

“I know.”

“But you’re doing it anyway.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, like it was obvious. “Because someone should.”

That struck her with a quiet, unexpected pang. She looked away, suddenly very interested in the wrapper.

“That’s not your job,” she told him.

“Neither is half the stuff you do,” he shot back.

Jack shifted closer. Close enough that she can feel the heat of him, the quiet steadiness.

“You’re allowed to stop holding everything together and relax occasionally,” he said.

She laughed softly, but there’s no humor in it. Abruptly, she becomes aware of how close they are. Of the way Jack’s arm is almost touching hers, of the way his gaze has softened into something less clinical.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“So are you.”

A ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth. It faded quickly, replaced by something more serious. Something that makes her pulse pick up for reasons that have nothing to do with stress or missed meals.

Both of their phones went off before either could say anything more. Dana picked hers up first.

Code Trauma, ETA five minutes.

Dana stepped away from him immediately, grateful for interruption.

But as she brushed past, Jack’s fingers caught briefly against her wrist.

Not restraining.

Just there.

Warm.

She felt it like a brand for the next hour.

Doug Driscoll appeared in her dreams again after Robby left.

That surprised her.

For months after the assault, she had dealt with her panic quietly and methodically, the way she handled every crisis in her life. Mandated therapy appointments squeezed between shifts. Breathing exercises she pretended not to believe in. Benji asking careful questions over dinner while she lied and said she was improving faster than she actually was.

Mostly she had been improving.

Then she wasn’t.

She woke at 4am with her pulse racing, the ghost of a fist flashing toward her and a dark figure towering overhead.

Benji slept beside her, warm and oblivious. Dana slipped out of bed and sat in the bathroom with the lights off until sunrise.

At work, she missed two bed allocation errors during admissions.

Perlah had to ask the same question three separate times before Dana realised she hadn’t answered.

“You’re somewhere else today,” Jack said eventually.

She looked up from the Pyxis. “I’m here.”

“Physically.”

“Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting anything.”

Jack leaned back against the wall, studying her. Too close. His voice lowered slightly beneath the surrounding department noise.

“Talk to me, Dee,”

Dana shut the medication drawer harder than necessary. “What are you doing?”

Jack held her gaze.

“I think you’re close to flaming out.”

She laughed once under her breath because otherwise she might cry right there in the med room.

“Join the club.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“You’re exhausted,” he said again, quieter this time.

“What else is new?”

He pushes away from the door. “Let me help.”

The words are simple. The tone isn’t. 

Dana’s breath caught, just slightly. She should leave. Should put space between them, reset the boundaries that have started to blur recently — long shifts, shared responsibility, the strange intimacy of covering for someone they both care so much about.

Instead, she stayed exactly where she was.

“What do you mean?” she asked, even though she’s not sure she wants the answer.

Jack studied her, like he was weighing something. Then, slowly, he reached out.

It’s not dramatic. Not a grab, not a pull. Just his hand, settling lightly at the side of her neck, thumb brushing once along her jaw.

Dana inhaled sharply.

“Jack—”

“Tell me to stop.”

He said it steadily. Certain.

The terrifying part was not that he was touching her. It was that he would stop if she asked. 

The choice settled heavily between them, unmistakable now. Jack was handing restraint over to her pointedly, deliberately, and Dana understood with a flash of sick clarity that she did not want to be the one to exercise it.

The room feels smaller suddenly. Quieter. The hum of the hospital fading to something distant and irrelevant. The door was right there — anyone could come in at any time and catch them like this.

His thumb traces the same path again, slower this time. Dana’s eyes flutter shut for a second, just a second, as the tension she’s been carrying seems to gather under his touch.

“You’re wound so tight,” he murmured.

“Whose fault is that?”

“Not mine,” he said. “I’m trying to fix it.”

She let out a shaky laugh. “This is not a standard stress-relief technique.”

“Maybe it should be.”

His hand slid, fingers threading briefly into her hair at the nape of her neck. It’s gentle, but grounding in a way that makes her shoulders drop, just a little.

“Jack,” she said again, softer now. Less protest, more… warning.

“I know,” he says, and pulls his hand back.

But he doesn’t move away.

Neither does she.

It started accidentally.

At least that was what Dana told herself afterward.

A twelve-hour shift became fifteen after a bus collision flooded the ED with walking wounded. Everybody moved faster. Tempers shortened. By 11pm, Dana’s lower back screamed every time she bent down.

Jack found her in a supply cupboard. Not crying. Just leaning against the shelves with her eyes closed.

“You disappeared.”

“I’m hiding.”

“You’re the charge nurse. You can’t hide.”

“Watch me.”

Technically, they were both finally off the clock — Dr. Shen, Lena and the night shift had taken over now that the initial influx of disaster victims had been treated. Jack stepped fully inside and shut the door behind him.

The tiny room seemed to fold in around them.

Dana opened her eyes slowly. “What do you want, Abbot?”

Jack was close. Close enough that she noticed lines of fatigue around his mouth she hadn’t spotted before. He looked older lately. Or simply less guarded.

“Take a minute,” he said.

Dana barked out a tired laugh. “A minute isn’t fixing this week.”

“No.”

“Or Robby.”

“No.”

“Or my marriage.”

That one slipped out accidentally.

Jack’s eyes sharpened slightly. “Trouble at home?”

“Thirty years of marriage at home.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, don’t do that.”

“I wasn’t judging.”

Dana rubbed both hands over her face. “Sorry. I’m tired.”

“I know.”

The gentleness in his voice undid something in her.

Before she could think better of it, she said, “Do you ever feel like if you stop moving for five seconds, everything catches up to you?”

Jack looked at her for a long moment.

“Yes.”

Quietly spoken. Definitive.

Dana swallowed hard.

Then Jack touched her shoulder.

A simple gesture. Human.

It should not have felt so intimate.

Her chest tightened painfully.

She had spent months feeling watched at work after the assault. Protected. Monitored. People trying not to smother her while still making sure she was OK.

This felt different.

Jack’s hand remained steady against her shoulder blade.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that.”

Dana laughed weakly. “Maybe eventually it’ll be true.”

His thumb moved once, almost unconsciously, along the fabric of her scrub top.

The air shifted.

She felt it happen.

Jack felt it too because his expression changed immediately afterward — awareness replacing exhaustion in a way that made her pulse stumble.

This was a terrible idea. Dana knew that instantly.

Still she didn’t pull away.

Jack’s voice came rougher now. “Dana.”

He looked at her mouth briefly before meeting her eyes again. Dana realised suddenly that she was no longer surprised to have him standing this close to her. That should probably have frightened her more than it did. 

Jack looked at her the way people looked at ledges right before stepping off them — not uncertain, exactly. Just aware there would be no taking it back afterward.

The silence stretched.

Then Jack exhaled hard through his nose like he was irritated with himself.

“Jesus Christ.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

Dana did. Of course she did. 

Fifty-five years old and standing in a supply closet feeling sixteen again.

Humiliating. Dangerous. Alive in a way she had not expected.

I should leave, she thought.

He moved closer again, slowly enough to give her time to stop him.

Dana didn’t.

The first kiss lasted barely a few seconds. Soft. Careful. Testing.

Jack’s hand slid around the side of her neck and Dana’s whole body reacted at once, heat rushing through her so fast it almost embarrassed her.

She kissed him back harder.

The response surprised both of them.

Jack made a rough sound against her mouth before backing her carefully against the shelves. He braced his other hand beside her head, and pressed flush against her. The contact knocked the breath out of her, electric and anchoring all at once.

Everything after that blurred slightly around the edges.

His hand at her throat.

Her hands tangled in the front of his scrub top.

The dizzying relief of wanting something uncomplicated for exactly thirty seconds.

Not marriage.

Not responsibility.

Not trauma recovery or departmental collapse or watching people she loved fall apart.

Just this.

Dana’s head tipped back when his mouth shifted from hers, her grip tightening in his shirt as he traced along her jaw, down her neck. The sensation was overwhelming — too much and not enough at the same time.

“Jack—” she breathed, but it came out thin, unconvincing.

“I know,” he whispered, but he didn't stop.

His hand moved and settled at her hip, slow at first, deliberate, like he was still giving her an out.

She doesn’t take it.

If anything, she leant into it, a response that said more than words could. His restraint slips – not gone, but loosened enough that what he’s doing, what she’s letting him do, is no longer ambiguous.

Confident he’s not about to be slapped, Jack’s hand moved higher, mapping the line of her side like he’s memorising it. His palm ran against the side of her breast and, with little preamble, he pressed his thumb deliberately against her nipple.

Dana’s breath stuttered, her head falling back fully against the metal shelf behind her. The tension that’s been coiled in her for days, weeks, desperately sought somewhere to go, unwinding in uneven waves.

This was a mistake.

She knew that.

But in this moment, pinned between the shelf and the solid reality of him, it felt like the first thing that had made sense in a while.

Her hands moved without instruction — over his shoulders, into his hair, pulling him back to her mouth. The kiss deepened again, messy now, a little desperate.

Jack shifted against her, pushing one knee in between her legs, and the pressure of his thigh right where she wanted it made her breath hitch.

The world narrowed fast. There was no space for anything else, not yet. Just sensation, intense and consuming, her body reacting before her brain could catch up.

“OK—” she started to say, but it broke apart halfway through, dissolving into something softer, less coherent.

He pressed his forehead to hers, both breathing unevenly into the scant space between them.

“Dana,” he said, low. It’s a question.

She should say stop. She doesn’t.

Her answer is in the way she presses back into him, in the way her hands don’t let go.

Not stopping. Don’t stop.

He dropped both hands between them, rucking up her scrub top as he worked at the drawstring of her pants. Dana clutched his shoulders, breath catching against his ear as the knot finally gave way. His hand slipped inside her underwear a moment later.

The first contact pulled a cry from her before she could stop it. Jack shifted instantly, pressing his cheek to hers, voice lowered.

“You’re going to get the whole hospital’s attention like that, sweetheart,” he murmured. A beat passed, his hand moving again with more certainty. “Fuck. You’re wet.”

Dana’s knees nearly gave out.

She caught herself against the shelving behind her, metal biting cold through her palm, the other hand flying to her mouth to trap whatever else might come out of her.

He was right. This was reckless. Obvious. Far too easy to be overheard in a place that never truly stopped listening.

“Don’t tease me,” she said, voice fractured behind her fingers.

Jack didn’t respond with words right away. He adjusted his hand, slower now, more deliberate, like he was deciding something rather than escalating it. Then, carefully, he slid two fingers inside her.

The noise she made was swallowed into her hand — a sharp exhale, half curse, half surrender.

It was too much.

It was exactly enough.

Just this. Just him.

Jack had the magnanimity not to draw it out, aware even now how risky this was, how easily they could be caught. His fingers settled into a steady rhythm, and once she was squirming helplessly between him and the shelving unit, his thumb found the sensitive bundle of nerves that made her hips jerk against him.

Heat flashed through her so fiercely it stole the breath from her lungs. Dana tipped her face up toward the ceiling, hand clamped hard over her mouth, a broken, wordless sound muffled behind her palm.

It crested suddenly, all-consumingly — her breath catching hard, her whole body clenching before it broke, the release leaving her unsteady. Jack held her through it, the movements of his hand slowing gently as the sensation passed, murmuring sweet nothings against the column of her neck.

Dana’s trembling hand dropped to his shoulder as she opened her eyes again, breath still ragged, head resting back against the shelf. Jack pulled his hands away, planting them on either side of her — not touching her anymore, just holding himself there like he was trying not to cross back over a line he’d already found too easy to cross.

They stayed like that for a second.

Two.

Then she let out a shaky exhale. “OK.”

“OK,” he echoed.

“That—” she started, then stopped, because there were no good words for that.

“Yeah.”

She let her head fall forward, pressing briefly against his shoulder. Not quite an embrace.

“That definitely crossed a line.”

Jack leant his head gently against hers.

Dana glanced down between them then, between his legs, and felt her already warm cheeks blushing further. She made a gesture with her hand. “Can I…?”

“No, it’s all right.” 

Jack stepped back, adjusting the waistband of his scrubs as if that was going to hide his problem. Dana felt the loss of his body, his warmth, straight away. She swallowed, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

“I should go,” she said quietly, pushing off the shelves. She tugged at her own scrubs, trying to set them to rights.

“Yeah. Go home,” Jack said just as quietly. A pause. Then, softer, “Get some sleep.”

Dana gave him a tight nod and slipped past him into the corridor.

The change was immediate. Fluorescent light instead of shadow. Noise instead of breath. The hospital reasserting itself around her as if nothing had happened inside that room at all.

Someone called her name from triage almost at once, and Dana answered on instinct, already moving, already returning to herself in pieces.

But her pulse didn’t settle for a good long time.

Nothing happened again for a while.

Jack became more careful around her afterward, not less. Deliberately professional. Deliberately distant.

Dana hated it.

By the following Tuesday, she realized with mounting horror that she was seeking him out unconsciously during shifts. Watching for him across the department. Listening for his voice.

Pathetic.

Worse: mutual.

Every once in a while she would catch him looking at her with an expression that disappeared too quickly to fully read.

Once, during a patient transfer, their hands brushed reaching for the gurney and Jack audibly lost his train of thought mid-sentence.

Dana nearly walked directly into a crash cart afterward.

At home, Benji asked if she wanted to go away for the weekend sometime soon.

“Maybe the coast,” he suggested while washing dishes. “Just us.”

Guilt opened inside her so suddenly it felt physical.

Benji had loved her steadily since they were twenty.

He made her coffee every morning.

He remembered the dates of difficult anniversaries without needing reminders.

After Driscoll assaulted her, Benji slept lightly for months because he worried nightmares would wake her.

Dana looked at him standing barefoot in their kitchen and felt like a monster.

“That sounds nice,” she said quietly.

Benji smiled.

She cried in the shower afterward where he couldn’t hear her.

A few weeks later, Dana had a panic attack in the ambulance bay.

A psych patient grabbed her wrist unexpectedly from his bed. That was all. It hadn’t been malicious, and he hadn’t hurt her.

But suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t think.

The concrete beneath her feet seemed to tilt sideways while adrenaline flooded her bloodstream hard enough to make her nauseous.

She got through the interaction professionally. Barely.

Then she walked out beyond the bay doors and braced both hands against the wall.

Someone followed her a minute later.

Abbot.

Of course.

Dana laughed shakily without turning around. “Do I have a tracking device I don’t know about?”

“No,” he said softly.

“You just magically appear whenever I’m losing my mind?”

“More or less.”

“Great.”

She heard him come closer.

“Look at me.”

“Go away.”

“Dana.”

Something in his voice made her turn to face him, slumping back against the wall.

Jack stood directly in front of her now, concern plain across his face.

“You’re OK,” he said quietly.

Dana closed her eyes briefly. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“Logically, yeah. Not–”

She broke off, breathing unevenly and fighting to steady it.

After a few moments, Jack’s hand settled carefully at her waist. Steadying.

Dana exhaled shakily.

“There you go,” he murmured.

The softness nearly destroyed her.

Before she could think through the consequences, she surged forward and kissed him. Rough. Desperate.

Jack made a quiet sound against her mouth — surprise, maybe, or something more — and ripped back from her.

“Not here,” he grunted, his hands flexing on her hips, and after a furtive look around them — miraculously, the ambulance bay was empty excepting them, for once — he guided her briskly around the corner, out of view, crowding her against the exterior wall out of sight from the ambulance entrance.

The cold brick pressed through her scrub top and undershirt. His hands were on her again, running firmly over the curve of her ribs. His mouth found hers again, moving with an intensity that made her knees weaken. Not gentle, never quite that. Urgency threaded through it now, edging closer to reckless.

Dana grabbed fistfuls of his hair instinctively.

Everything narrowed.

The night air.

Their breathing.

Jack’s hands roaming over her body like he was trying simultaneously to comfort her and not lose control completely.

When his forehead rested briefly against hers, Dana realised her panic had dissipated entirely, replaced by something far more dangerous.

“Oh, this is bad,” she sighed.

Jack laughed breathlessly.

“Yeah.”

After two months of Robby’s absence, the department had developed a rhythm around the damage.

Not a healthy rhythm. More like the kind people found during disasters — adaptive, temporary, held together by caffeine and muscle memory and stubbornness.

Dana watched everyone compensating in different directions.

Whitaker picked up extra shifts without being asked.

Javadi had proved herself to be unexpectedly gentle with psych patients.

McKay started bringing actual meals instead of vending machine garbage because half the department had stopped eating properly.

Jack got worse.

Not openly, maybe. Nobody else seemed to notice it. He still functioned at the same terrifyingly competent level he always had; still handled impossible traumas with mechanical precision; still managed to handle bumbling residents with gentle hands and firm corrections.

But Dana saw the cracks now.

He forgot things occasionally. Tiny things. Where he’d left his coffee. Whether he’d already reviewed labs. Once he stood staring at the board for nearly a full minute before realising someone was talking to him.

The exhaustion around him felt denser lately.

He was carrying Robby’s patient load on top of his own, plus administrative work he openly despised, plus grief that never really seemed to leave him entirely.

Dana understood that kind of grief.

Not widowhood specifically. But the way loss became structural after enough years, incorporated into the architecture of a person.

She caught herself looking at his wedding ring more often these days.

A gold band. Worn smooth.

He still wore it every day.

“You should go home.”

Jack didn’t look up from his charts. “That’s funny.”

“I’m serious. You’ve been here almost sixteen hours.”

“And?”

“On a medical level, you are becoming concerning.”

Jack signed an order with unnecessary force. “I’m fine.”

Dana rolled her eyes. “Jesus, now you sound like me.”

That finally got his attention.

A brief smile flickered across his face before disappearing again.

“Low blow.”

“Accurate, though.”

It was nearly 10pm. The department had entered that strange temporary lull where catastrophe paused long enough for everyone to remember they were human.

Dana leaned against the desk beside him.

“You eat dinner yet?”

“Coffee.”

“That’s not food.”

“There was cream in it.”

“Jack.”

He sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. Up close she could see the fatigue sitting in him like illness.

“You know what the worst part is?” he muttered.

Dana waited.

“I can’t even tell if I’m doing a bad job.”

The honesty in it caught her off guard.

“You aren’t.”

Jack stared at the desk, voice quieter now.

“Robby made this look manageable.”

“Robby also had a nervous breakdown.”

His mouth tightened.

Immediately Dana regretted saying it so bluntly.

But Jack just nodded once.

“True.”

The silence afterward felt heavier than usual.

Then he said, without looking at her, “He needed more support from me.”

Dana’s chest tightened painfully.

There it was. The guilt. Same shape as hers.

“You couldn’t have known,” she said softly. “He’s spent twenty years making sure nobody worried about him.”

Jack laughed bitterly under his breath. “Yeah.”

Dana studied him for a moment.

The grief in Jack always sat close to the surface, she had learnt over the years. More than he admitted. More than people understood. Like a chronic injury: manageable until suddenly it wasn’t.

Without really thinking about it, Dana reached over and touched the back of his hand where it rested on the desk.

Jack went still.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor alarm started blaring.

Neither of them moved.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Dana said quietly.

Jack finally looked at her then.

There was something raw in his expression she had never seen directed at her before. Not lust exactly. Not only that.

Need, maybe.

The dangerous kind.

Dana felt her pulse jump.

Then Ellis rounded the corner asking about imaging results and the moment shattered instantly.

Jack pulled his hand away first, professional mask back in place so quickly she almost wondered if she imagined the whole thing.

Almost.

The problem became the anticipation.

Not knowing when it would happen again.

Every shift with Jack acquired this unbearable undercurrent to it, something alive beneath ordinary interactions. Dana would hand him a chart and feel heat crawl up her throat because his fingers brushed hers briefly.

Sometimes he touched her casually now.

Small things.

A hand at her lower back while squeezing past in trauma.

Fingers purposely pressing against her wrist while taking supplies from her.

One shift, during a quiet lull, he leaned close enough for his mouth to brush her ear while asking for a room update and Dana’s brain stuttered to a complete halt.

Embarrassing. At nearly sixty years old, she should not be reacting like this.

She especially should not be reacting like this to Jack Abbot.

Except. He looked at her like he saw every wounded, ugly part of her and wanted her anyway.

Benji still loved her. Deeply. Comfortably. Reliably.

But after so many years together, there were entire sections of Dana he no longer noticed because life had worn familiar grooves around them.

Jack noticed everything.

It felt incredible.

It made her sick with guilt.

It was always awful when a child came in. Dana knew it would be a bad day the moment EMS called ahead about a pediatric drowning.

The child survived.

Barely.

The adrenaline crash afterward hit the entire department hard. Nurses moved slower. Residents spoke quietly. Everybody looked wrecked.

Dana took herself off to a private examination room, half expecting to find a night shift doctor there trying to steal a few moments of sleep. Finding the room blessedly empty, she sat alone on the bed for five minutes because her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Then the door opened softly.

Jack stepped inside.

Neither of them spoke straight away.

He shut the door behind himself and slowly crossed the room toward her, hands in pockets.

“You OK?”

Dana laughed. “Everybody keeps asking me that lately.”

“That’s because you look like hell.”

“Charming.”

“You know what I mean.”

She did.

Dana rubbed her eyes. “Kid looked too much like my granddaughter.”

Understanding crossed Jack’s face. “Ah.”

For a second, neither of them moved.

Then his hand settled against the side of her neck and Dana closed her eyes instantly, relief hitting her so fast it almost hurt. Her body recognised his touch before her mind caught up to it, her nervous system settling around him automatically, like it had quietly decided somewhere along the line that Jack meant safety.

“That’s it, Dee,” he murmured.

The tenderness of it undid her completely.

Dana reached up and cupped his face, pulling him down into a kiss.

Jack responded with a rough sigh low in his throat that made heat coil low in her belly.

This was different from the ambulance bay.

Less frantic. Gentler. More intimate.

His mouth moved against hers with slow thoroughness that made her feel dizzy. Dana hadn’t realised how long it had been since someone kissed her like he did — not affectionately, not routinely, but with focused hunger.

Jack’s hands wandered around her waist, her hips.

The kiss deepened naturally, their lips parting, and Dana’s breath caught softly as his tongue brushed against hers. Warmth spread through her chest, stomach and thighs, gathering between them at the sensation — and the quiet certainty in the way he kissed her now. Her hands smoothed down his neck and over his shoulders as she melted further into him.

Gently, he guided her backward onto the exam bed. Dana let out a shaky exhale as her weight tipped onto her elbows, bracing herself on the mattress he lowered her carefully onto, her breathing already uneven as she looked up at him. Jack followed her down a second later, one hand planted beside her shoulder as he bent to kiss her again.

“Dana,” he said against her lips.

“What?”

“We should really stop doing this.”

“Probably.”

Neither of them stopped. 

Jack laughed softly into the next kiss.

His forehead rested briefly against hers afterward.

The room felt too warm. Dana could hear both of them breathing.

Then Jack’s hand edged beneath the hem of her shirt, just enough for his palm to press against the bare skin of her stomach.

Dana inhaled sharply.

The reaction clearly affected him because his eyes closed briefly.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

Dana felt reckless.

Wanted.

Alive.

She ran both her hands beneath his scrubs in return, fingers spreading over the tense muscles of his back.

Jack’s composure cracked visibly.

His head dropped against her shoulder for one dangerous second.

That tiny surrender nearly destroyed her.

“Oh,” she whispered before she could stop herself.

Jack pulled back just enough to look at her. Something had changed in his expression then.

Dana realised abruptly that this was even bigger than she had thought.

Not workplace flirtation. Not stress relief. Not two shattered people making terrible decisions in supply closets.

Feelings had entered the room somewhere along the line.

The realisation terrified her.

Jack must have seen something shift across her face because he stilled immediately.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Dana.”

“We should get back out there.”

His expression closed slightly at the tone in her voice.

Professional again.

Guarded.

“Right,” he said quietly, sitting up and swinging his legs off of the bed.

Guilt punched through her, but not enough to stop her leaving first.

That night, she slept with Benji.

Not because she particularly wanted to.

Because she felt obligated to prove something to herself.

It was fine. Familiar. Easy in the way long marriages became easy.

Benji kissed her forehead afterward and fell asleep quickly beside her.

Dana stared at the ceiling for nearly an hour, thinking about Jack’s hands on her.

Thinking about the way he looked at her in that examination room.

Thinking about how badly she wanted to see that expression again.

By morning, she hated herself.

Three days later, Jack cornered her while she reset Trauma 1, drawing the door shut behind him.

“You’re avoiding me.”

Dana kept her focus on changing the sheets. “I’m working.”

“Bullshit.”

“Careful, Abbot, HR might hear you swearing.”

His jaw tightened slightly.

“We need to talk.”

“No, we really don’t.”

He dropped his voice low, ensuring only she could hear him. “You made out with me in an observation room two nights ago.”

She felt her cheeks flush, and refused to look at him. “And?”

“And then you disappeared.”

She had done all the stretching and tucking she could. Standing upright, Dana folded her arms defensively. “What exactly are you looking for here?”

Jack stared at her.

The hurt on his face was subtle enough that someone else might’ve missed it.

Dana didn’t.

“That’s not fair,” he said quietly.

Her chest tightened.

Because he was right.

Because she knew exactly what she was doing.

Dana exhaled hard and looked away.

“I’m married.”

Jack’s expression shifted. Not surprise — they’d crossed that bridge already — but something more tired.

“I know.”

“Thirty years.”

“I know.”

“And you—”

“My wife died five years ago,” he finished flatly.

Dana closed her eyes briefly. Silence stretched between them.

Jack dragged a hand over his face.

“I’m not asking you for anything,” he said.

The weariness in his voice made her chest ache.

“I know.”

“I just…” He stopped, jaw tightening. “I don’t like feeling like something you regret the second it’s over.”

Dana looked at him then.

Really looked at him.

Jack rarely asked for softness from anyone. He carried himself too defensively for that. But, right now, there was something almost unguarded beneath his frustration.

And suddenly, Dana understood that perhaps this had never been casual for him.

That should have made her end things immediately. Instead it made her want to touch him.

“You’re not a regret,” she said softly.

Jack held her gaze.

“Then what am I?”

Dana didn’t have an answer.

That scared her most of all.

Somehow, after that disaster of a conversation, things became easier between them.

Not safer, but honest.

Dana stopped pretending she didn’t want him. Jack stopped pretending he could keep emotional distance from any situation once he cared about someone involved. They still avoided defining whatever was going on, but the strain of denial eased slightly.

Which meant everything else intensified.

The glances.

The tension.

The awareness.

It sat between them during every shift now like a live electrical wire.

Robby called her in the first week of October.

Dana answered from the staffroom, expecting logistics or scheduling questions. Instead she heard his voice and nearly started crying from relief alone.

“Hey, Dana.”

“You sound better.”

A small pause.

“I think I am better.”

The hope in it made her want to cry.

“How’s the programme?”

“Annoyingly effective.”

She laughed softly and sat down heavily at the table.

“How are things there?”

Dana looked automatically through the door toward the usual pandemonium outside.

“Terrible.”

“Mm.”

“You left us with Abbot on day shift.”

“That bad?”

“He threatened to sedate a pharmaceutical rep.”

“I feel like that’s reasonable under certain circumstances.”

Dana smiled before she could stop herself.

God, she missed him.

Robby’s voice gentled slightly through the phone.

“How are you doing?”

There it was again.

That question.

The one everybody kept asking lately like she looked as frayed as she felt.

“I’m OK.”

“Dana.”

She closed her eyes briefly.

The problem with Robby was that he knew her too well.

“I’m tired,” she admitted quietly.

“Yeah.”

“And everybody’s scared for you.”

Silence hummed softly through the line for a moment.

“I know,” Robby said finally. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise for getting help.”

“Easy thing to say to someone else.”

Dana huffed quietly because that was painfully true.

Robby spoke again after another pause.

“Is Abbot holding up?”

Something strange tightened low in her stomach.

“He’s managing.”

“Meaning he’s making himself miserable.”

“More or less.”

Robby sighed knowingly. “Keep an eye on him.”

Dana almost laughed at the absurdity. If Robby had any idea.

“He doesn’t make that easy.”

“No,” Robby agreed warmly. “But he tries harder than people think.”

After they hung up, Dana sat alone for another minute staring at nothing.

Keep an eye on him.

Too late for that.

Way too late.

The shift everything finally tipped sideways started with a triple trauma and ended with a dead teenager.

By hour thirteen, everybody in the department looked haunted.

Jack especially.

Dana noticed it halfway through the pronouncement. His voice remained perfectly steady while speaking with the family, but his hands flexed repeatedly at his sides like he was trying not to crawl out of his own skin.

After the shift change, he disappeared for nearly twenty minutes.

Dana found him eventually on the roof, smoking a cigarette he clearly hated.

She stopped dead at the sight.

“You quit.”

Jack looked over, unsurprised that she had found him.

“Apparently not permanently.”

The cigarette glowed briefly between his fingers in the cold night air. 

Dana walked closer slowly.

“You OK?”

Jack laughed under his breath. Not kindly.

“Like hell I am.”

The honesty startled her.

Jack took another drag, then grimaced like the taste offended him.

“I was thinking about Liza,” he said suddenly. “Thinking she would’ve known what to say to those parents, how to make it better.”

Dana went still. Jack rarely volunteered personal information. Especially about his wife.

He looked out toward the city skyline instead of at her.

After a long silence, Dana moved beside him against the railing.

“I am sure she was a good counselor, but even she couldn’t ease the pain of losing your kid,” Dana said.

A faint, humourless smile touched Jack’s mouth. “True.”

“You don’t talk about her much.”

“No.”

Another silence.

Then Jack glanced sideways at her, fatigue stripping some of his usual defenses away.

“She liked you.”

Dana’s breath caught embarrassingly hard.

“Jack—”

“She did.” He stared down at the cigarette. “You have her favourite qualities. Smart. Terrifying. Mean to idiots.”

Dana laughed softly, though it came out a little sad. “Sounds like your type.”

“Unfortunately.”

The look he gave her afterward felt dangerously intimate.

Dana’s pulse stumbled.

“You should go home,” she told him.

“So should you.”

Neither moved.

The cigarette burned out between his fingers eventually. Jack crushed it beneath his shoe and exhaled slowly through his nose.

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he admitted quietly.

Dana looked at him. The exhaustion. The grief. The pressure of carrying too much for too long.

And beneath all of it, something startlingly vulnerable. She wanted to comfort him.

Before she could reconsider, Dana stepped closer and touched his face. Her thumb brushed lightly along the exhausted crease beside his mouth.

“You don’t always have to be the one holding everything together,” she said softly.

Something in his expression broke open.

He kissed her fiercely enough to make her gasp. Dana clenched her hands in his curls instinctively. His hands gripped her waist with rough urgency that contrasted sharply against how carefully he usually touched her.

“Dana,” he breathed against her mouth.

She kissed him again instead of answering. 

For a few dangerous seconds, the entire world shrank to heat and pressure and relief.

Then they heard ambulance sirens wailing nearby.

Reality slammed back into place and they jerked apart.

Dana stared at the ground, catching her breath. Jack scrubbed both hands through his mussed hair.

“We can’t keep doing this here,” he said hoarsely.

“No,” she agreed.

Jack looked at her again with an expression that made her stomach drop.

“Come home with me.”

The words landed like an impact.

Dana’s heart kicked painfully against her ribs.

This was the line.

Not supply closets. Not hidden moments during shifts.

This was real.

Jack must’ve seen the panic flicker across her face because his expression tightened.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“I just…” He exhaled hard. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

The vulnerability of that nearly undid her.

Dana thought suddenly of Benji asleep at home. Of almost four decades together. Of wedding photos and children and mortgage payments and ordinary accumulated love.

Then she looked at Jack standing wrecked before her, illuminated by the Pittsburgh city skyline.

Grief-worn. Exhausted. Wanting her.

Dana made the worst decision of her life with complete awareness she was making it.

“OK,” she whispered.

Jack’s apartment did not surprise her.

Bookshelves organised meticulously. Kitchen spotless. He touched a few buttons on his phone and soft jazz started playing quietly from somewhere she couldn’t identify.

The place looked inhabited by someone trying very hard not to disturb ghosts.

Dana stood awkwardly in the hallway while Jack locked the door behind them.

“This feels weird,” she admitted.

“Yeah.”

“You bring a lot of coworkers home after traumatic shifts?”

A faint tired smile crossed his face. “Just you.”

Warm affection bloomed in her chest.

Jack shrugged out of his jacket slowly.

“You want a drink?” he asked, leading her into the kitchen.

“No.”

“Good. Me neither.”

Quiet settled briefly around them.

Without the ED between them, everything felt heightened somehow. More exposed. Dana became acutely aware of her own body, her own breathing, the intimacy of simply standing in his home at nearly midnight.

Jack looked at her carefully.

“We can still stop.”

Dana nodded.

Then she crossed the distance between them first.

The kiss turned desperate almost straight away.

Months of tension collapsed inward all at once. Jack backed her against the kitchen counter, hands already beneath her scrub top while Dana dragged him closer by his collar.

Everything felt slightly unreal.

The heat of him.

The roughness of his hands.

The stunned little sounds he made when she touched him, like he still couldn’t quite believe this was happening.

Jack kissed like a man trying to stay in check and failing at it.

Dana understood that feeling intimately.

He pushed her denim jacket clumsily off her shoulders. Her scrub top and undershirt followed soon after, and his gaze dropped immediately to the grey sports bra underneath. Dana shifted under it, suddenly self-conscious. If she’d had any warning this was going to happen tonight, she might have worn something prettier than plain grey cotton. But the look on Jack’s face suggested he either hadn’t noticed or very much did not care. 

She reached for him then, tugging his scrubs over his head before running both hands across his chest, solid muscle and warm skin beneath her palms. His breath hitched slightly when she brushed her thumbs over his nipples, and the reaction sent a small thrill through her. Afterward she dragged her hands slowly down his ribs, fingers catching briefly at the waistband of his pants.

Jack rested his forehead against hers and laughed quietly at himself. Dana stilled.

“What?”

“I forgot how to do this.”

Something in Dana’s chest twisted unexpectedly.

“You haven’t forgotten.”

“Debatable.”

She cradled his cheek in her hand, kissing the other, then his forehead and the bridge of his nose. The tenderness of the gesture visibly affected him, and he pressed his lips to hers.

When they finally made it to the bedroom, leaving a trail of their remaining clothes in their wake, reality intruded in strange uneven flashes.

Dana noticing framed photographs, turned face-down on his dresser.

Jack taking her hand and hesitating briefly when he felt the metal of her wedding ring.

The sheer awkwardness of two middle-aged people carrying grief and guilt into bed together. 

His sheets were cool against her overheated skin, the pillow soft beneath her head. Jack hovered above her, kissing her mouth once, twice, before trailing lower — her chin, her throat, the sharp line of her collarbone.

He took his time with her in a way that made her ache. Mouth against her chest, her ribs, the inside of her knee. He traced the silvery C-section scar just above her pelvic bone with a gentle finger, watching her face for any discomfort. Like he was trying to learn her instead of simply touching her.

And this time, when he slid his fingers inside her, he didn’t have to remind her to stay quiet.

Quite the opposite.

Dana bit down hard on the sound threatening to escape anyway, her hand flying instinctively to her mouth before Jack caught it gently and pulled it away. His fingers threaded through hers instead, holding tight as he pressed his mouth between her legs. 

She had only ever done this particular act with Benji before, and even that had been tentative at first, something learned slowly over time. Jack moved with none of that uncertainty. His attention was steady, unhesitating, and it left her nowhere to retreat inside herself.

His tongue worked in a deliberate rhythm with the press of his fingers, and Dana’s control slipped faster than she expected. A broken sound left her, her grip tightening on his hand, the other tangling in his hair as she tried — and failed — to stay composed.

When she broke, she did so sharply. A gasping cry, her body tensing before giving way, thighs tightening reflexively around his shoulders. Her voice came out rough when she said his name, more sound than word. Jack slowed only once it was already passing, his movements easing as he responded to her cues.

Dana stared at the ceiling for a long moment after, trying to find her bearings in a body that suddenly felt unfamiliar. It reminded her, inconveniently, of trauma rooms after a code — that strange silence afterward where everything still functioned but nothing had returned to normal.

Jack pulled back only long enough to catch his breath, hair dishevelled, mouth wet, gaze lifted to her face in a way that made her shiver. There was nothing smug in it — only focus and satisfaction at having undone her so completely.

He didn’t give her time to settle.

He was back over her, mouth finding hers again, one arm propped beside her head as she became aware of him fully pressed against her. The heat of him, the unmistakable weight of his arousal, the reality of how far they had already gone.

Dana reached down, and Jack caught her wrist almost instantly, stopping her with a hiss.

“Sorry,” he murmured against her, voice ragged. “I don’t think I’ll last if you do that.”

Her breath stuttered at the honesty of it.

“Oh,” she said, quieter now. Then, after a beat, “All right.”

She held his face instead, grounding him there, and shifted beneath him until the space between them changed again, hips and pelvises aligned, intentional this time — no hesitation left in it.

Jack swore under his breath, eyes shutting briefly.

“You’re going to ruin me,” he said, not quite a complaint.

He reached for the drawer beside the bed to retrieve a condom, moving quickly now, and Dana watched without looking away. There was nothing performative in it — just the fact of what they were doing, laid bare in small, ordinary motions.

When he returned to her, he kissed her again, rolling her under him as the moment broke into motion.

Dana gasped at the first push of him inside her, fingers tightening against his back hard enough to feel the muscle shift beneath her grip. The stretch burned, just a little, unfamiliar in a way that pulled a helpless sound from her throat she didn’t manage to swallow.

Jack went still for a moment, forehead dropping to hers.

“Are you all right?” he asked, voice lower now.

“Yes,” she said, but it came out strained, honest rather than assured.

She drew her knees up, anchoring him more fully between them, and the movement made them both inhale sharply.

“Jack,” she said again, smaller this time, not quite a request and not quite anything else.

Watching her face, he shifted his hips back before pressing forward again, the movement controlled but increasingly unsteady, like he was holding himself together by force of will alone. The sensation made Dana whimper, her body reacting faster than thought.

Her hands couldn’t settle. They moved over him in broken, searching patterns — shoulders, ribs, the hard line of his back — not just touch, but confirmation. That he was here. That she was here. That they were both still inside something neither of them had really agreed to, but also neither of them had stepped away from. 

Each thrust, each point of contact sparked pleasure through her until she felt unmoored by it: flushed, trembling, barely aware of where her own body ended and his began. Her body felt too responsive, too honest, as if it had stopped filtering anything through thought or consequence. There was only sensation, and underneath it, a low, persistent awareness that this would not stay contained in this room, no matter what they told themselves afterward. 

Jack kissed her like he couldn’t hold himself back. One elbow braced beside her head, the other gripping her thigh around his waist hard enough that she thought he might leave bruises. There was nothing careful left in the way he held her, only urgency.

Dana could feel the shift coming before it fully arrived — the rhythm breaking into something less measured, Jack’s breath growing laboured between them, sweat dampening his skin beneath her touch.

She tightened around him instinctively, one hand running down his spine, the other anchoring at his shoulder. Something left her mouth — his name, maybe, or something close to it — but it didn’t form properly into words. 

Jack swore against her lips. His hand moved between them to touch her, rough and ungraceful, and the sensation pulled her swiftly out of thought entirely. Her body’s response came fast — unexpectedly fast — building until it broke over her in a way that felt disorienting in its intensity, leaving her panting, shaking, clinging to him as she came down from it.

Jack followed a moment later, burying his face in her hair and groaning her name.

Afterward, the silence felt abrupt. Jack lowered his head to her shoulder and stayed there, not immediately moving away. His chest heaved against hers, and Dana became acutely aware of how much of him she was still holding onto — how easily her body had started treating this closeness as something familiar.

A mistake, a voice in her mind supplied. Automatic. Practical. Defensive. But it didn’t feel like that in her heart.

Dana lifted a hand and threaded her fingers into his hair, slower now, comforting rather than exploratory. She could feel the heat of him beginning to settle, the tension leaving his body in stages.

Neither of them moved for a while.

Dana stared at the ceiling feeling strangely hollow, absently stroking Jack’s curls even as he began to grow heavy on top of her.

Eventually, Jack eased himself off her, and the warmth of him disappeared from her skin. There was a brief pause, the sound of movement in the dim light as he disposed of the condom, and then he returned, the mattress dipping again as he settled beside her.

“You OK?”

There was that question again.

Dana laughed softly.

“You really need new material.”

A pause.

Then unexpectedly, Jack smiled.

She heard it in his voice when he answered.

“Probably.”

Dana woke before sunrise to the sound of Jack moving carefully around his own bedroom like he was afraid of startling her.

For one disoriented second, she forgot where she was.

Then her memory returned all at once.

The apartment. The rooftop. His hands on her waist. The unbearable intimacy of lying beside him afterward while neither of them admitted this had already become emotionally catastrophic.

Dana closed her eyes again briefly.

God.

She could smell coffee drifting faintly from the kitchen, and the promise of caffeine kept her from rolling over and going back to sleep.

She sat up slowly.

Her body felt heavy. Not pleasantly so. More emotionally waterlogged than physically satisfied.

Dana ran both hands over her face.

She should leave before this became more awkward.

But then Jack appeared in the bedroom doorway holding two mugs and wearing sweatpants low on his hips and a tired smile across his face, and Dana felt a swell of affection she didn’t know what to do with.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey.”

Neither mentioned the obvious.

Jack crossed the room and handed her her coffee, fingers brushing hers for only a second.

“You can shower if you want,” he said. “I’ve got extra towels somewhere.”

The normalcy of the offer nearly made her laugh.

Like this was ordinary.

Like she hadn’t crossed a line she could never uncross.

Dana looked down at the mug in her hands. “I should probably go home.”

Jack nodded immediately. Too immediately.

Her chest tightened.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Probably.”

The agreement hurt more than she expected, which was insane.

She didn’t want him asking her to stay. That would make this worse. More real.

Still.

Dana took a slow sip of coffee.

Jack remained standing instead of sitting beside her again. She wondered if he regretted last night already. The thought bothered her more than it should have.

Finally she said, “Was this a terrible idea?”

Jack laughed once under his breath.

“You want the honest answer?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Yes.”

She looked up at him then.

Jack leaned against the doorframe, gaze unwavering.

“But,” he continued quietly, “I don’t think I regret it.”

The honesty landed low and aching inside her.

Dana stared down into her coffee because suddenly looking at him felt too intimate.

“I should,” she admitted softly. “I don’t know. I think I’m going to.”

“But you don’t?”

She thought about her husband sleeping alone in their bed last night.

About how guilty she’d felt afterward and how that guilt still somehow existed alongside the undeniable warmth spreading through her right now just from being here with Jack.

“I don’t know what I feel,” she said finally.

Jack nodded like he understood perfectly.

Things changed after that.

Dana started noticing domestic details about him during shifts. The specific coffee he preferred. The fact he hummed absentmindedly while reviewing scans. How he rubbed at the scar near his wrist when stressed.

She knew too much now.

And Jack—

Jack looked at her differently.

Softer when nobody else was paying attention.

Once she caught him smiling unconsciously while watching her argue with a surgical resident.

The expression disappeared the second he realised she’d seen it.

That tiny moment haunted her for days.

Because Dana understood then, with terrible clarity, that Jack Abbot was falling in love with her.

The realisation arrived quietly — no dramatic revelation, no cinematic certainty. Just a growing awareness that every time he touched her now, there was meaning in it.

And God help her, she was in trouble. 

Benji noticed something wrong before she was ready for him to.

“You seem somewhere else lately,” he said one evening while folding laundry together.

Dana nearly flinched.

“I’m tired.”

“You’ve been tired for months.”

Fair.

Benji folded another towel slowly.

“Is work getting worse?”

The concern in his voice made guilt twist viciously through her stomach.

Benji had always loved her gently. Patiently. Even during the years she wasn’t particularly easy to love.

Especially then.

Dana suddenly remembered being twenty-four and pregnant and terrified after their first apartment flooded. Benji sitting beside her on the kitchen floor eating cereal because they had no dining table yet. Making her laugh until she snorted milk through her nose.

Thirty years of accumulated tenderness.

And she had betrayed him anyway.

The shame of it sat like acid beneath her ribs.

Dana forced herself to smile. “Work’s just complicated right now.”

Benji studied her face for a moment too long.

Then he nodded.

“You know you can talk to me, right?”

The kindness nearly broke her.

That night, Dana lay awake beside him feeling profoundly miserable.

At 2am, her phone buzzed quietly on the nightstand.

A text from Jack.

Still awake?

Dana stared at the screen for almost a full minute.

Then:

Unfortunately.

The reply came immediately.

Me too.

Heat spread through her chest despite everything.

Pathetic.

Dangerous.

Wonderful.

Dana pressed the phone briefly against her sternum and hated herself for smiling in the dark.

Robby returned on a rainy Thursday afternoon in November.

Nobody warned her beforehand. Dana was two soaked gowns and one near-breakdown deep into her shift and saw him standing near the nurses’ station holding coffee like he’d never left.

For one stunned second, it felt like the entire ED froze.

Then chaos erupted.

Mel nearly tackled him.

Santos swore loudly enough to turn heads from triage.

Langdon went very still, then looked away stiffly.

And Dana—

Dana crossed the department at speed before grabbing Robby into a fierce hug hard enough to make him grunt.

“Oh, thank God,” she muttered against his shoulder.

Robby laughed softly.

“Missed you too.”

When she pulled back, he looked better.

Not magically cured. Not transformed.

But steadier somehow. More present inside himself.

The change was subtle enough that outsiders might miss it. Dana didn’t.

“You look rested,” she said.

“That feels offensive, somehow.”

“You know what I mean.”

Robby smiled.

Then his gaze shifted past her shoulder.

Jack stood several feet behind her.

Watching.

Dana felt a current move through the air.

Robby looked at Jack for a long moment.

Jack looked back.

No words passed between them.

Still, Dana had the uncomfortable sense that an entire conversation happened silently anyway.

Eventually Robby crossed the room toward him.

“You look terrible, brother,” he informed Jack.

Jack snorted. “Welcome back.”

Then, after the smallest hesitation, they hugged tightly.

It lasted maybe a few seconds.

Dana nearly cried again anyway.

The affair ended three weeks later.

Not explosively. No screaming match. No dramatic discovery.

Just the inevitable finally arriving.

Dana sat in Jack’s apartment, nursing a beer neither of them particularly wanted while rain drummed softly against the windows.

Another impossible shift behind them.

Another almost-kiss in the break room beforehand because apparently they had learned absolutely nothing.

Jack sat beside her on the couch, exhausted enough that his shoulder remained pressed against hers without self-consciousness.

Neither spoke for a while.

Then quietly, Dana said, “I think I’m in love with you.”

The words landed heavily between them.

Jack closed his eyes.

“Dana—”

“I know.”

“No,” he said softly. “You don’t.”

She turned toward him.

Jack looked wrecked suddenly.

More emotionally exposed than she had ever seen him.

“I think if we keep doing this,” he said carefully, “Eventually, something important breaks.”

Dana looked down at the bottle in her hands, feeling tears sting unexpectedly behind her eyes.

The awful thing was, something already had.

Not her marriage. Not yet.

Herself, maybe.

The part of her that still knew how to walk cleanly back into her own life and believe it belonged entirely to her.

She thought about how relieved she felt every time he touched her. How quickly her body calmed around him now. How she had started measuring difficult shifts by whether she would get five quiet minutes alone with him. 

Some part of her had known from the beginning that this was never going to survive outside borrowed rooms and exhausted nights. She just hadn’t realised how much it would hurt anyway.

Jack rubbed a tired hand across his face.

“I haven’t…” He stopped. Started again. “I haven’t felt like this since Liza died.”

Dana’s chest cracked open quietly.

Jack laughed once under his breath, miserable.

“Which is inconvenient, considering you’re married and I’m apparently losing my mind.”

Despite everything, she smiled weakly.

“Yeah.”

Rain filled the silence awhile.

Then Jack looked at her again.

God.

That expression.

So much affection inside it that Dana could barely breathe around it.

He touched her face gently.

Not hungry this time.

Just sad.

“You deserve better than this,” he murmured.

Dana almost laughed because the tragedy was that she didn’t want better. 

She wanted him.

Still.

Maybe always now.

But wanting wasn’t enough.

Slowly, carefully, she leaned forward and kissed him one last time.

It tasted like grief.

When she pulled away, Jack rested his forehead briefly against hers.

Neither of them spoke.

Eventually, Dana stood. Jack walked her to the door silently.

At the threshold, she hesitated.

She wanted to say something meaningful. Memorable. Something worthy of all this aching tenderness between them.

Instead, she managed quietly: “Try sleeping occasionally.”

Jack huffed a laugh.

“You too.”

Then Dana left, and neither of them stopped her.