Chapter Text
The black tungsten ring on the third finger of his left hand twists round and round as Jack plays with it, the thick circle of metal heavy and yet weightless under his fingers, the material of it comfortably warmed from its contact with his skin. Fiddling with that ring, it’s second nature, it’s instinct, it’s habit, after all these years, most of the time, he doesn’t even notice as he does it. Round and round and round it goes, a comfort as he feels it move against the tender skin of his hand, tethering him to the world around him, anchoring him there, acting as a reminder that even everything he yet lives – even if some days he finds it hard to remember why he should continue doing so.
He can remember not wearing it, the wedding ring that sits on his left hand, but only if he tries.
It’s sitting on his finger now, that ring, just as it always is. It sits there, it does daily, as it has for as long, long, time, almost as long as he can remember. The ring sits there on his finger as it always does, but it’s not only there; somehow, it’s also on the little stone table in front of him in this quiet, small green garden – present in both places equally. Not two rings, though, still the same one, still, his original, only wedding ring. It’s impossible, it defies the laws of physics, but nevertheless, it’s true: the black ring is both on his finger and on that table at one and the same time. His wedding ring sits on the third finger of his left hand, as always, but it’s also present on that stone table, twirling and spinning and shining as somehow it turns and turns and turns, as somehow it keeps its balance long after it should, spinning soundlessly and endlessly before falling to rest against the top of that table with a gentle, soft, echoing clang – before it somehow it starts spinning again on its own, the dark matte metail shining in the tendrils of golden sun that break through the green canopy of the garden’s overarching mass of mature trees.
Two places at once, it shouldn’t be possible. Jack shouldn’t be able to feel his ring as it occupies the space of both; the ring on the small stone table shouldn’t be able to move on its own, but they do. The rules don’t apply here, he knows without being told, and nothing is impossible, for everything in this garden – this place that is everywhere and nowhere all at once and the same time – is as it wants it to be.
“You still wear it,” the figure remarks idly, the one sitting across the table from him and looking too much like Robby, as for once, a look almost compassionate crossing its face as it nods at the ring that Jack so absently plays with.
Yes.
Jack’s wife may be gone, but he still wears her ring.
“Every damn day.”
By now, it’s as much a habit as it is ritual: him moving to take it off at the end of the night, putting it on as he steps out of the shower each morning. The decision to take it off and put it once again is a choice each time, sometimes conscious and sometimes not, but every time, it is a reflection of the decision he made the first time he had handed it to his new bride at their wedding for her to slip it onto his trembling finger as a promise in front of too many attentive eyes to be comfortable.
A decision, and a promise, to love her always.
Over seven years now, since she died, still each morning, he puts it on; as unconsciously as he at times does so, he can’t imagine choosing not to.
The grief hits then, sharp and stabbing as it can sometimes be, and he feels the blow as it moves through him, accepts it, absorbs, breathes, waits for it to pass. It’s not as often that breathtaking as it is in that moment, though, it can be. Most days, thankfully, it manifests as a dull ache; there are even some days he forgets it entirely until it sneaks up on him. He carries it daily, though, shrugs into it daily each morning the same way he slips his ring onto his finger – a reminder, a commitment.
The pain hits - a reminder of his grief, his loss – sharp, robs him of his breath, and has his words coming out as edgy, impatient, sharp.
“Is that what this is about, this farce? Whatever this place is? It’s about the ring? About me moving on? About me taking it off? About me not taking it off?”
Permanently, he means, not just as he reaches to turn off his bedside table, but for good. Is it about deciding to leave it behind, about him choosing to place that ring in the same small velvet box that holds the ring his late wife had worn, him making the chest to nestle the ring she had chosen for him in that space alongside hers. Permanently removing it, not just for the night, choosing not to pick it up from its place on the bedside table and slip it back on when he emerges from his shower and moves back into his quiet bedroom to dress for the day.
Is that what he needs to do to get this done, to escape this Void, this purgatory he must be in? Could it be as simple as all that? Is that the decision the Void looks for him to make?
Is this his purpose here? Choosing to leave the ring and his grief behind? Resolving the past before he moves on, is that what this is? Dealing with his past pain, past life, before he moves into the future or the beyond, whatever that might be?
Simple and impossible both at once.
The ring that is, and that is not the same as the one on his left hand, spins and spins and spins on the top of that stone table, shining, the dark metal unmarked, as if still untarnished and new, this symbol of love and grief, this talisman of mourning made physically tangible. He watches it spin on that table, he watches as it spins and spins, and spins, he accepts its presence there – and still he takes comfort and reassurance in how that ring yet still sits heavy and warm on his hand, the metal glinting to catch his gaze.
Robby, who is not Robby, sits there all the while Jack ponders it; he sits, and he waits, patient in that unworldly way of his. They sit there, still, wait for Jack to work it through, they watch, as he does, as that ring spins and spins and spins, somehow defying physics and gravity and never, ever stays down as it falls.
“Could you?” they ask, voice as soft as the light that drifts through the trees. “Take it off? Leave it off?”
Of course, he could, of course, he would.
Naturally, he could, Jack thinks; it would be but the work of a moment. He could absolutely take it off one night, nestle it into that little velvet box, and, waking the next day, walking out of that quiet, solitary room, leave it there. Of course, he could. He’s just never remembered having the urge to do so.
Since he first put it on, he’s never felt the need.
His right hand is rising without him even thinking the command for his hand to do so; it’s rising to the level of his left, unconsciously seeking out the feel of metal under his fingertips, until he’s reaching again to twist the wedding ring round and round around his ring finger. Naturally, he could leave it off, and yet, as much as he feels it, the urge to leap, the urge to fall, and he doesn’t move to take that ring off. It sits still at its accustomed place on his left hand, its presence there comfortable, familiar. It sits there, just as it has for decades; it rests on his finger just as it has always done.
Could he leave that ring behind? Walk out with that symbol of devotion and commitment missing, go through life and into his daily life with his finger bare where it had been adorned for decades, go without it until not only the imprint of it on his skin would be present to show that it had sat there for so long.
‘Robby’ is still looking at him, still watching for his reaction – looking, assessing, judging, watching – waiting for him to respond. Eventually, Jack remembers that he’s meant to answer; he can’t remember why he forgot to do so.
“I could.”
Of course, he could. Obviously. He could.
“And yet you’ve never felt the need,” the masquerade of his friend continues, and though phrased as a statement, there’s a hint of a lift at the end of the phrase meant to indicate inquiry. It’s more question than it should be, as if the figure asking doubts Jack’s response, or more, doubts his commitment to the answer.
No matter.
The answer is no. No. Jack hasn’t actually thought of leaving it off, no, he’s never thought of removing it, permanently. No. He’s never felt the urge to leave that ring behind in that little box that holds the matching ring that had sat for so long on his wife’s hand. It’s simple, his life, his relationship to this ring. He takes it off to sleep and places it carefully on his bedside table. The next morning, then, he gets up, he showers, he places the ring back on his finger as he dresses, and then he proceeds about his day; it is as simple as that. He would keep it off should he have felt the need to leave it behind, and yet he never had, and thus he never does.
He’s never felt the need to leave his wedding ring off, so he doesn’t; why should it need to be more complicated than that?
“And if you had felt the need?”
What a stupid question – if he had felt compelled to leave the ring off, if he had decided to leave the ring behind, then he would, naturally, of course, he would. What kind of person does this strange void – playacting as Michael Robinavitch and asking again and again the same inane questions he should already know the answer to – think he is?
“Is that what you’re looking for?” he asks again, frustrated, almost overwhelmingly so, for reasons he doesn’t understand. “For me to leave it off? Is it not enough for you to know that I could? Does it matter either way?’
A vague smile before the answer comes.
“Is it me who’s asking?”
Always a question answered with a question, it’s an old habit of Robby’s - it’s infuriating.
A sharp bark of laughter erupts from Jack’s throat before he can stop it, harsh, strangling, scraping it raw; he doesn’t even know why. It’s not like anything about this is funny; he’s apparently trapped in what is either purgatory or the nothingness of life beyond life or – even possibly, though it is unlikely, in the unending featureless sleep of a coma, his mind seeking somehow to protect itself from what has to be the unbearable pain his body suffers – and this stupid avatar or a figure wearing his best friend’s face insists on tormenting him, interrogating him with a string of unending questions, all in similar form, all equally unimportant, all, apparently, having no right answer.
“You’re not asking me anything – but then, you’re not telling me anything, either.”
Instead, he’s just there; the figure is just sitting there in this quiet, beautiful garden of greens, golds and lingering shadows. It’s just there, this figure, sat there across the table like a mockery of Jack’s best friend, complete down to the way he wears his big, stupid hangdog face and looks at him with his dark, brown puppy dog eyes, his gaze a misfit to the endless welling nothing void of the Void’s fathomless expression.
As he looks at Jack with those hangdog brown eyes of his – and all but mocks him.
“And if I were to ask?” he asks, seemingly hung up on how Jack still wears the ring he has had sat snug on the finger of his left hand for longer than he remembers. “If I were to ask you to put it aside, leave it aside, leave it behind? If that were the condition of your waking? If that was the step necessary for you to leave this place behind?”
The removal of his ring. Permanently.
It’s impossible to imagine the void, that figure in Robby’s clothes asking Jack to leave his wedding ring behind; more than Jack being unable to picture his finger being bared of that ring for longer than an hour or two. It’s impossible to imagine the figure sitting in front of him – the one who seems to read his thoughts before Jack even thinks them – making so simple a request.
He doesn’t like to think of how he hesitates over the answer to the question.
“And if it weren’t me asking you to leave it behind? If it were her instead?”
Then I’d like to know why.
If she were to be the one asking, yes, the conversation would be different, in tone and context; yes, if she were asking, Jack would like to know why. If she were the one at the other end of that question, first off, he’d want to know why, even before he would consider the answer he would give her. But she’s not here, asking, so that’s a question for another day. It’s a hypothetical, an unknown, maybe even unknowable, each possible answer painful in ways vastly different and Jack, even as he knows himself a coward, chooses the better part of valour – and thus equivocates.
“Her?”
Even as the question hangs in the air, as disingenuous as it had been the first time Jack had been asked it, his tone deliberately vague, stupid, he regrets it. He knows immediately his disavowal, as limited as it is, beneath her, and in addition to even that, knows it won’t make a difference; there’s no way he’s getting off the hook in any way that easy.
He regrets it immediately even as all he hears is a snort and then a familiar voice, the edge of it harsh and impatient, knowing, knowing in the way only someone who has known you – at your best and at your worst, inside and out – it’s knowing in the way only someone has known you for a time immemorial can know you, as his companion tears him to bits in ways he should have expected.
“Her? ‘Her,’ Jack? As if you don’t know, very well, who we are talking about? As if you don’t know who I mean? Are you still looking to play games with me, brother? You really want to do that? Did you forget how well I know you, how long I’ve known you?”
It has him catching his breath, because, for just then, just for a moment, just for that solitary segment of a fraction of a second, Jack sees him there. Just in that minute as the question hangs in the air, he sees Robby – not the Figure, not the Void – but Robby, Michael Robinavitch, M.D. BCED. He sees his friend, the man who knows him better than anyone else; he sees Robby, and he hears his voice, feels his impatience as Jack plays dumb. His breath catches, hard, and, for that moment, looking at Robby, he can’t speak – even as the impression fades, Jack surrenders at last.
“Samira,” a whisper, it’s more of a sigh – an exhale of a breath long held – than a statement, but as a confession, it seems to be enough.
Still, Jack would have thought Voids couldn’t growl, but even if that were the case, this one finds a way.
“At last. Fucking finally. We’re actually getting somewhere. And at last, we’re actually using her actual name. Yes, Samira.” Her name on the Figure’s lips is a mockery, not of her, but of Jack – they both know it – for the way he finally allows the first name of the woman in question to slip past his closely guarded lips. “Of course, I mean Samira. Samira. Dr. Samira Mohan, M.D. Who you work with. Samira - the woman who is your ‘friend’.”
The Figure, back again, the all-too real facsimile of ‘Robby’ makes air quotes with the index and middle and index fingers of his hands as he holds them both up, his long fingers bending in ways meant to be mocking (he accomplishes it), and it’s awkward, and it’s childish and it’s inappropriate for the fifty-ish old, highly acccomplished and respected doctor who is his friend. It’s more appropriate to the young men they had been all those years ago when they had met in the brief overlapping years when their residencies had overlapped; it’s more appropriate to the teenager Jack can’t imagine Robby being – it’s wrong, awkward, jarring, and somehow that works, fits, too, as the Figure continues.
“Samira. Her. So, then, if it were Samira asking, if she wanted to know why you still wore your ring, if she were the one asking if it were possible you could take it off – more than that, if she wanted you to – would you?”
The question hangs in the air and yet sits there too long for either of them to be comfortable, and yet there’s silence, for Jack can’t answer. He can’t think of how to respond, if it were possible to respond, for, in that moment, imagining that scenario, imagining Samira asking, imagining it, he can’t force the air necessary to breathe through his lungs.
If Samira asked.
The moment passes, and the Figure, or Robby, Jack can’t even tell anymore, presses harder, relentless, asking all the barbed, impossible questions Jack had never wanted to imagine asking himself.
“Your friend, your colleague, Samira,” Robby probes, not letting up, not letting Jack breathe, not letting him think, just pushing and pushing and pushing, never stopping, “if that, as you put it, ‘amazing, incredible, remarkable doctor’, if that woman that you spend too much time thinking of in ways that you know you don’t want to admit, even to yourself– Jack. If Samira, the one person you look to – and look for – as you enter every room; if she asked you to take off the ring on your left hand, could you do as she asked?”
If she asked – if Samira asked, of course, he would, he would have to. He can’t imagine her doing so, but if she did, then he would, because when had he ever been able to deny her anything?
Still. It’s a moot point.
“She wouldn’t.’
Even if she wouldn’t, anyway, why would she? They aren’t– they don't – he doesn’t know what they are, exactly, he and Samira, but they aren’t that - whatever that is, whatever that could be. They aren’t– they don’t ask those things of each other.
Asking those types of things of each other, that would mean something different, after all, even if he isn’t sure what, doesn’t want to delve into asking. What that would entail, who they would be if they asked those types of each other – it would mean something completely different; it would mean they are, that they would be something completely different to each other, they would have to be. Because they aren’t that.
She can’t want that
“Wouldn’t she?”
A curl of a lip, as a face adorned with a heavy black beard, one more liberally scattered with white every year and for once neatly trimmed, twists in expression, more mocking, as always, than threatening.
“Wouldn’t she? An excellent question, my friend. When you imagine her in all the ways that you imagine her – and remember, I’ve been in your head, Jack Abbot, I know how you can dream, I know how you imagine – does Samira Mohan ask you to take it off, that ring you cling to? When you think of her, when you picture her, can you imagine her asking? Can you imagine her taking? More than that, can you imagine you giving?”
Giving yes, he gives to her already; if anything, he wants only to give more. He’d give anything to her, for her, he already has, continues as much as he dares. He’d give her, gives her, his knowledge, his confidence, his faith – in her – his support as she needed it, in every way and at every turn, most of all, he gives her his trust that she’s always been ready to fly.
He doesn’t need to answer for the Not-Robby to know the truth of his answer.
Yes.
“So. Jack. I’ll ask again. When you think of her, Jack, when you imagine her in the dreams you replay in your head every night, does she ask you to remove that ring? When you imagine her taking you to her bed, when you dream of her fucking you until you’re begging for her never to stop, as you whimper for her, as you give up everything for her to pick apart and enjoy, when she takes you inside her – when you imagine Samira claiming you, when you picture it, does she have you take the ring off?”
He can’t breathe then, sitting there, in that green garden, Jack Abbot; it’s as if the oxygen of the entire world is gone, his blood is burning in his veins, his heart is pumping as if he’d run a marathon. Though he sits still and comfortably on that cool stone bench in this quiet garden, he can’t breathe; he’s gasping, wishing desperately to curl over into himself, to fold his body over itself; he is broken. He’s too hot, sweating, as the figure before him rips his every fantasy out of his head – those purient and innocent alike, each one equally devastating – and shows them to him as if they were the entrails revealed to him by his disembowelment at the hand of an uncaring executioner.
He’s dying, he must be, as the Figure hunts out every hidden secret of his most shameful thoughts and brings them out into the light for examination and dissection.
It is relentless.
“When you picture her mounting you, when you dream of how you would whine under her and beg for more, when you imagine it as she strips you of everything, tucks you into your own bed to claim it along with you yourself, as she fucks you to within an inch of your life, does she – does Samira – make you take off the ring another woman placed on your finger? Does she ask you to leave it behind?”
Defensive, desperate, tears falling unheeded as his eyes burn, Jack lashes out – “I’m not discussing this with you,” – and finds it makes little difference for the words and images and fantasies of his most shameful imaginings, the ones he’d thought hidden so deep within him, tucked so safely way that even he himself couldn’t find them unless he were really looking, are ripped from his unwilling brain as the Figure forces him to look, as the moment goes on and on and on – unabated, relentless, unending.
As the Figure bearing Robby’s face and channelling all too accurately the man’s soul sits there before him, flays him open for interrogation, each series of questions he asks worse than the ones before – more painful, more devastating.
“Be honest for me, Jack. Confess. When you beg her to sit on your face, when you plead for the smallest of tastes, for her slightest touch, when she takes everything and leaves you wanting only to give her more – does she ask that of you? Does she take that from you, more, does she ever take more than you can give?”
“No,” the word is gritted out, forced between his teeth, a groan – the truth.
A lift of an eyebrow once again, once again in mockery, as his companion opposite returns again to asking questions, the answers to which they both already know. As it asks in the lilting, mocking tone Jack hates.
“No?”
“You already know, so no, she doesn’t ask me to take the ring off,” and the words come out on a deep swallow of nothing, the hurt of it which is painless in comparison to the shame of the other knowing so much of what even Jack never wanted to acknowledge. As he gives up a confession, an admission of his deepest, most shameful weaknesses, however pointless that might be. As he forces out the words for his lips to form and breathe an answer to the question they both already know. “When I imagine her– Samira– us, no, you know she doesn’t have me do that.”
Never. Not in his dreams, just as he knows, somehow, she would never do in life.
“Samira doesn’t do that? She never asks more from you than you can give? She never demands you deny the past, move on, move forward, remove the wedding ring, another woman’s ring, from your hand as she has you?”
“No,” and this time it’s firmer, knowing, convinced; Samira does not do that.
She would not.
There’s a silence then, thankfully, an all-encompassing, merciful quiet, and Jack takes refuge in it even as he notices all at once – there’s only one ring now, not two, there’s only the one on his hand, nothing more. The ring that had been spinning on the small stone table in front of him is gone, its shadow missing from the clear white surface, the sound of its clanking missing, the shine it reflects from the sun faded into the shadows.
Rather, there’s only one ring, his ring, the one on his hand, remaining. There’s only the ring as it sits heavy and warm on his finger, the metal of it comfortable and familiar as he looks down at it, the small weight of it as comfortable and as familiar as ever, the black clean and deep as a reassuring shadow.
“No?”
No. Samira does not, and she would not. For he knows she could never, knows she would never think of asking that, even if they were – it takes him a moment even to think the words – even if they were together. She would never ask things of him that he wasn’t ready to give, even if he himself tried to give them regardless.
Even if they were somehow together, even if he could take the chance of reaching for her.
Even if he could somehow imagine that his feelings for her could ever be returned, even if he could ever imagine that she might see him as more than the friend who does his best to stand at her side, support her in all the ways he knows she longs for. Even if he could imagine her somehow seeing him beyond what they were to each other now. Even if he thought she could accept more than the simple, uncomplicated and undemanding ways he tries to be there for her now – with a proffered coffee, a smile he can’t keep from her and an attentive ear and a mind ready to consider all those crazy, wonderful, complicated aspects of their work, with a meal to warm her days and lighten her load, with a new journal article to annotate each day and a mind to bounce ideas against.
Even if he thought she might see him as something more to her than what he was – a friend.
No, Samira would never ask of him things he couldn’t give, even if he already knew there was nothing he could or would deny her. No, he knew she would never ask of him things he wasn’t ready to consider giving, even if he himself would choose to do so. No, she does not, and he knows she would never demand he cut out a part of himself. She wouldn’t do that, no matter what, not even in his unbridled fantasies, not even in those wild imaginings he keeps so carefully close.
Samira doesn’t take from him more than he can give – not ever – not even when he dreams of how he dreams she might, not even in those wonderings of what it would be like, feel like, if he reached for her and if she reached back in turn to claim him as her own. She would never demand of him that which he didn’t offer easily — even if sometimes she should.
“No.”
The Robby before him smiles, for once gentle – merciful – as it speaks softly in response.
“Well, then, if Samira Mohan wouldn’t ask that of you, if she wouldn’t demand you take off that ring that seems these last years to have become so necessary a part of you, then why should I?”
The world is spinning now, shifting again in ways Jack can’t understand; it’s confusing, disorienting, it’s disconcerting, it’s like the ground has fallen away below his feet. Unlike moments earlier, he can breathe, easily, comfortably, but yet again, like moments earlier, he’s uncentered, unsettled – unsure. As in the moments before, he’s reaching out blindly, looking somehow to find something to center him.
He can’t understand what’s happening.
“After all, you and I, Jack Abbot – and I imagine Samira Mohan, for that matter – know there are many ways to cling to the past, ones that go beyond a simple ring on one’s left hand.”
It’s a reprieve, if a short-lived one.
“That’s never been my concern, that’s not the reason – that ring – why you find yourself seemingly stuck here. That’s not the question I’m asking you to answer – more, asking you to consider as you sit here. No, the question I’m asking is not why you cling to the simple piece of metal you wear on your left hand.”
It’s a reprieve – before the knife stabs back in, deeper than even before – before it twists.
“What I wonder instead is why you cling so hard to the past it signifies.”
Plunges in deeper, has him wheezing as if the air has been once more punched from his lungs.
“Yes, the question I’m asking, and it’s a harder one, I know – the one you should be asking, the one you refuse to ask – that question is why it is that you cling so close to the pain you carry in your heart? As if it’s a friend, as if you can’t imagine not revisiting it each day?”
As Jack feels himself flinch again at the Figure’s relentless words, the pain as tangible, as shocking, as electric, as he can imagine he’d felt when he’d taken a bullet to his chest earlier that day.
“That’s the question you need to answer, Jack. More than that, you should be asking – and answering – the ones that follow. Why are you sitting with me here, talking about what was, about what you lost, when you could so easily be living instead? The question you should be asking is why it is you spend so much time thinking about what was, what life you might have lived? Why are you so fixated on that which you insist could never be? Why are you so sure about the nature things you know so little about? Why so focused instead on things no one can change?”
Again, there’s that flinch, there’s that deep, stabbing pain again, racing through him, turning his body into a prison he could never escape; there’s that sense of something stabbing him, shocking him, as if someone had reached into his chest, ripped out his heart, let it attached so he feels it as they shock it again.
“Why not, instead, think about what could be?”
Or, perhaps, it’s not as if someone had ripped out his heart, maybe it’s not that so much as if they had attached charged car jumper cables to it – maybe it’s that, having attached those electrical lines, they are free to send shock waves through them, giving them an inexorable path direct to his heart.
As his body jumps in response, surging him forward by his chest, as sitting on that stone bench, he somehow yet stumbles forward, losing the foothold he doesn’t have, thrown off balance, shocked into an unnatural position he could never fall into on his own. The pain is excruciating, electric, sharp, forcing itself through his veins like the first icicles of winter force themselves into his lungs on a frozen morning.
Electric.
Painful, so painful – and he can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t shift. He can’t breathe.
He sees it, then, just for a second, as the Figure masquerading as Robby disappears, fades, flickers, disappears for just a second – replaced with that of someone as familiar but far more welcome, face as intimate but warmer, gentler, eyes as fierce but softer somehow.
As he sees her.
Just for a moment, he’s granted just a tiny hint of seeing her – Samira Mohan, the real one.
Just for a moment, then, he’s granted a flicker of her face, just for a moment, he’s allowed to feast himself on the sight of her. Masked, she stands at his side as, just for a moment, he sees how he lies on a bed in Trauma Two. Just for a moment, he is allowed to see how she works on him. She’s a sight, a vision, he stares, watching from his position, prone beneath her hands and yet from a place behind, entranced as he sees her, her figure alone clear and focused in his mind’s eye among the mob of people milling around her, responding to her direction without a second thought. She’s got her safety goggles on, she’s dressed in the protective personal equipment they all wear during those moments, as Jack sees the familiar off-white walls of the trauma bay, clear as day, behind her.
Beautiful, stunning, so powerful it almost hurts to watch her, he nevertheless gorges himself on the sight of her as she mutters under her breath, angry obscenities she so rarely uses tangled up in rageful, urgeful demands to spill absently from her lips, absently spoken under her breath as she works – as she tends to his prone, limp, uncooperative body, as she does her utmost to pierce him back together.
As she demands he come back for her, to her.
Leaning over him she mutters angrily – “Come on, Jack, don’t make me repeat all that nonsense about ‘nipples to navels’ and ‘no man’s land’; just give me something – fucking bullet, tearing you up from the inside – stop fighting us, Jack, work with me here,” – and Jack hears it even he feels it again, that stabbing, thudding electric pain as it hits his chest. As he takes the full impact of the disorientating shocks as they rock him, relentless, never-ending, as they hit him over and over and over again.
Beating at his chest, stabbing, thudding, the pain in his chest electric as it shocks him.
Hearing as he does, Samira’s voice – clear, powerful, resolute – rising over the din.
“Clear!’
As he hears the sound of the paddles charge, as he feels it as the practiced hands of his colleagues work on him, as he feels the jolt of electricity move through him – again and again and again. As Samira Mohan’s small, capable hands and remarkable brain - all-encompassing heart – bring him back from the brink.
All the while, the figure before him watches.
“Think on our conversation, Jack,” he hears as the Void that wears Robby’s face – his face, his wife’s face – as it flickers by, as they flicker by, as he sees them smile one last time, as they all fade into the nothingness that is this place.
As Jack slowly leaves them behind.
“Think about what we talked about,” they tell him. “Think, and remember there’s more than one way to cling to the past – but there’s more than one way to carry it with you all the while moving beyond the unbearable pain of it.”
Before even the shape of that figure starts to fade, before the dark grows at the end of his vision, moving slowly but surely to fill his vision, to take over the focus of his mind’s eye, as Jack feels himself start to move almost completely back into the black, he hears as his companion of these last hours leaves him with one last exhortation, this one edged in warning.
“Remember. I don’t want to see you back here anytime soon.’
.
.
.
When he opens his eyes next, it’s in a hospital room, not one he immediately recognizes, not fully, but enough to know he’s still at the place which has become his second home. It’s one familiar enough for him to know he’s still in the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre, only not in the Pitt itself. Not there, nor in the Operating Room, but rather upstairs, he imagines; he’s in a quiet room, a private room, a patient room.
Intubated, blinking against the too-bright sun that shines from the wide windows of which someone should have closed the drapes, the quiet form of Samira Mohan sprawled in an uncomfortable chair that sits at the side of his bed, the dark circles beneath her eyes visible even as she sleeps, her hand resting by his side, as if in the unconscious search of reassurance that he’s yet at hand, Jack Abbot wakes – and he remembers.
Somehow, he manages to reach over to take hold of her hand.