Chapter Text
Samira stands by the door of her bedroom, paralyzed. Her head is telling her—reminding her—that the faster she moves, the faster she can get out of here. Her body doesn’t seem to get the message. That seems to be a recurring theme for the day, seeing as the simple act of arriving at the house had elicited a fight-or-flight response within her. She must have been frozen behind the wheel for a good five minutes before forcing herself out of the car, and she was grateful Abbot didn’t bring it up when she finally joined him as they walked towards the front door.
At least she had managed to convince him to switch over with her around the halfway-mark of their journey, after a quick bathroom break and a tank refill. He had stubbornly argued that he was fine to drive the rest of the way, that removing the inversion accelerator for her would only stall them. Little did he know Samira Mohan was just as obstinate as he was, and would find a way to drive his car even with all the changes and adjustments made to accommodate his prosthetic. If he was worried about stalling, he had a particular way of showing it.
Samira feels him lingering. He stands behind her, with just enough distance so it doesn’t feel like he’s crowding her, but close enough that she can smell the hints of his cologne through her inhale—something with sandalwood, if she had to guess, though she’s never been particularly good at identifying scents. Her mind shifts to him, to how he must be feeling. She hadn’t accounted for what he would do in their time there. She certainly isn’t expecting him to help, she would never ask that of him—much less after she had nothing to offer him in return for driving her there … except maybe some gas money (if she manages to sneak it into his wallet, or hide it somewhere in his car). But the other option—leaving him with her mother without any sort of buffer to stop her from asking wildly inappropriate and intrusive questions—seems like an even worse choice. Maybe the best option is to let him make the choice—though that makes her feel inexplicably guilty.
She sighs, forcing herself to cross the line into her bedroom. The lilac walls and the faded posters still adorn the room—the signs of time reflected in the chipped paint and the scratched corners—making her feel like she’s stepping into a time capsule; an alternate reality. She can’t stop herself from thinking about her seventeen-year-old-self, with the unruly curls and the meticulously-crafted ten-year-plan, and she wonders what that version of herself must see when she looks back at her present self.
Disappointment, if she had to guess.
Samira forces herself to shake the thought out of her head before she heads down a spiral she knows she won’t be able to come out of.
Focus, Samira, she tells herself. Breathe.
She drops the stack of trash bags she has been carrying from her hands, taking one and flinging it open. Without much thought, she starts shoving things from her shelves, desk, and nightstand into it, clearly not taking the time to decide what she’s going to be doing with them. She fills it to the brim, sets it on the floor, moves on the next one. Repeats the process. Again. And again. And again.
Abbot (who has been carefully assessing the situation from the door before choosing to intervene) gently places a hand on her shoulder, which startles Samira back into her body. There’s a crease between his brows drawn with concern.
He says nothing. He just stands there, offering his unwavering support. Somehow, that makes the situation worse.
“I need some air,” Samira decides, walking away from him without extending an invitation for him to follow.
Jack sighs, scratching the back of his neck as he ponders whether he should leave her alone or not. Realistically, she probably needs the time to herself. Selfishly, he doesn’t want anything to happen to her. Against his better judgement, he slowly treads behind her.
He makes his way down the stairs, finding her mother standing at the bottom, as if waiting for him to explain what just happened. She raises an eyebrow at his lack of explanation and he nods towards the garden, hoping she’ll understand it as a signal that he doesn’t know but plans on finding out.
He’ll take care of it. He’ll take care of her.
No.
That's not his job.
Ellis has made that abundantly clear.
So, maybe Jack Abbot has been harbouring a crush on Samira Mohan for a while now—longer than he’d like to admit. He is not proud of this fact, given the nearly-twenty years that stand between them, and the position of power he holds over her as an attending. He has tried to suppress his feelings, and, God, if he were able to not feel this way, he would. He feels like a pathetic teenager whenever he thinks about her. Worse, he feels unprofessional; incapable of doing his job.
He thinks he has done a pretty good job of concealing his feelings. His coworkers, clearly, would disagree. Thankfully, it seems that only Shen and Ellis have caught up, and he has made them swear to keep the secret between them—which they agreed to do, after Jack pulled out some old intimidation tactics. Though they tease him endlessly, they see him struggling with the situation, and offer (un)helpful and (un)requested advice when they deem necessary. Mostly, Jack asks them to keep him in check—to make sure he doesn’t overstep when it comes to Samira, even when he desperately wants to.
Obviously, he has not been doing great at sticking to that plan. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be here. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have asked Baran to cover the last hour of his shift (a favour he’ll return, of course), just so that he could meet Samira at six for their drive here.
He has come to the conclusion that he would do anything for Samira Mohan. And that frightens him.
As he stands next to her on the front porch of her childhood home, he wishes he could take away her pain. But he knows, deep down, that it is something he can’t do—not only because it’s physically impossible, but because it’s all part of the process. Unfortunately, it’s a part of it that she can’t skip.
He looks over at her, and though there are no tears in her eyes, he can see a deep sadness settled within them.
“It never gets easier, does it?” she mumbles, acknowledging his presence without facing him.
“No, it doesn’t. But you learn to live with it.”
Samira nods. “I just wasn’t expecting it to … hit so hard. But I’m fine. I just needed a little break, that's all. I’m fine.”
Abbot doesn’t buy it.
Samira attempts to walk away from him again, but she is stopped by his soft grip around her wrist.
“Mohan,” he whispers, and she thinks that that alone could be enough to break her.
“I’m fine,” she repeats, though the confidence in her voice falters.
“Talk to me.”
She keeps her back to him, still painfully aware of his fingers wrapped around her skin with light pressure. She can feel herself getting choked up again, but she won’t allow herself to cry. Not yet. Not until she’s back home, or whatever it is that she can call her shoebox apartment back in Pittsburgh, with its empty white walls and the bare necessities for survival. She has never taken the time to make it an actual home, always feeling tethered back to this place in Jersey; always telling herself her existence within those confines would be temporary. Now, she is forced to reckon with the fact that the last time she had at home was when she was seventeen. She doesn’t know how to reconcile that.
She shuts her eyes, as if the force will be enough to keep the tears from escaping them. “You can stay out here if you want,” she offers. “It shouldn’t take me long to finish, anyway. I-I’m throwing out most of the stuff. I just need to find what I’m interested in keeping.”
He lets go of her hand, and almost immediately she runs back inside and up the stairs.
She’s not ready yet.
True to her word, Samira finishes packing within a few hours, bags piled up next to her bed, a few boxes atop it, ready to grab and go. The last one on the pile has a picture of her and her dad at her band recital—the last picture they ever took together. For years, the frame lived stored away, too painful for her to see. Now her heart still clenches, but she looks at it with a different set of eyes. She can see how proud of her she was, his smile spreading all the way to his eyes. She recognizes herself in his features, having grown into them after her awkward pre-pubescent stage. She had braces at the time, and made it a point to smile close-mouthed in every picture that was taken of her, always finding the colourful bands to be too distracting against the flash. If she had known this would be the last picture taken of them, she would’ve made more of an effort to smile; she would’ve pressed her body tighter against him, refusing to let go; she would’ve buried her face in his coat, taking in his scent until she could commit it to memory. Now she can’t even find it in her memory. If she had known he would die so soon, she would’ve told him she loved him more; she would’ve made sure he knew it and never forgot it.
Tears are pricking her eyes again, so she compartmentalizes the thoughts and the memory by sealing the box shut. Not now. She’ll deal with it later.
She loads her things into the back of Abbot’s car and hugs her mother goodbye—a hug so forced, cold and formal one would not assume they were family members, unsure of when the next time they would see each other would be. Even though they were related by blood, even though that was the woman who had given birth to her, Samira knew they hadn’t been family in a while. Not since her father died.
Her skin is itching with fervour, screaming at her to leave. Samira is grateful Abbot has resumed his position behind the wheel, needing to take a second to decompress before she can trust herself to get them back to Pittsburgh in one piece. She’ll complete the second half of their drive, just like she did on their way there.
Once again, they sit in a rare kind of silence—not necessarily uncomfortable, but dense; packed with words unspoken yet wishing to be said. As they leave, Samira rolls down the window, letting the cool air hit her face as she, one last time, glances back at the house that grows smaller in the distance.
She mumbles a thank you.
She lets it go.