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The first time Parker Ellis meets Jack Abbot isn't in an ER or an ambulance bay or even in the city of Pittsburgh itself. No, the first time Parker Ellis meets Jack Abbot she's doing her biology homework at a fold-out table in someone's back yard; Fort Benning, Georgia, 2008. Half distracted by the crowd, little kids running around barely supervised and the scent of barbeque smoke wafting on the breeze.
"You've got your arteries mixed up there," he sneaks up behind her, voice genial as he gestures to the diagram of the human heart she's carefully labelling, open bottle of beer in his hand.
"Oh," she responds, looking up at him through her shades, nose scrunched, "You a medic or something?"
“Or something,” he grins, waving a hand before elaborating, “a doctor.”
Somewhere to his left a pretty woman in a long floaty skirt calls his name and his head snaps up, shoulders turning unconsciously towards the sound, a soft kind of smile stretching across his face. “That’s my queue,” he tells Parker, somewhat self-conscious as he runs a hand through his hair, wedding ring glinting among his curls.
She nods, for lack of anything better to say – dismissing it as yet another interaction with any number of soldiers on the base. One of hundreds every week. Meaning less than nothing important.
The first time Parker Ellis meets Jack Abbot is immaterial. By the time they cross paths again, over a decade and a hundred lifetimes later, they’ll both have forgotten it ever happened at all.
-
When she is offered a residency at PTMC, she is explicitly warned that she’ll end up working nights more often than not. It’s pretty much the opposite of a problem – Parker would be nocturnal if that was a little more socially acceptable. Had gotten through undergrad without a single eight am class and still considers any morning where she has to wake up before ten to be a borderline violation of her human rights. Had said as much to her interviewer – albeit couched in much more diplomatic, professional terms – and received a half smile of understanding from the older man,
“Yeah,” he’d said, still scribbling notes on the pad in front of him, handwriting so atrocious that Parker has no chance of deciphering what he’s writing, even though she typically considers herself pretty good at reading upside down, “we’ve got a few of those here.”
-
The night shift attending is, not always, but more often than not, a Dr Abbot. When she’d received confirmation of her residency placement, she’d asked one of her classmates (who’d done their last med school rotation in the PTMC ER) for the low down. “Ex military,” Alison had told her, “good teacher – and shit Ellis, those arms. The things I’d let that man do to me might be illegal in a couple States.”
Parker, who grew up surrounded by military men with admittedly very nice arms, is largely unmoved by this description, but had certain expectations off the back of it nonetheless. Had really presumed the forty-something year old ex-combat medic would be the stoic, silent type. The sort of person who would teach by example and half-barked orders.
Boy, as it turns out, was she ever wrong.
-
The second time Parker Ellis meets Jack Abbot he’s involved in what hasn’t yet escalated into a shouting match with an angry looking surgeon, both of them planted firmly on the floor, her with her hands on her hips and him gesticulating wildly.
“Oi.” Shen, the third year resident who’d collected her from the front desk, interrupts them mildly, taking a sip from an honestly outrageously large takeout cup of coffee, “new intern,” he adds when both attendings turn towards him, looking impressively calm in the face of their slightly incredulous expressions. Honestly, Parker’s kind of loving his whole vibe. Wonders if it would be weird to ask him if he wants to be her friend.
“Dr Ellis, right?” Abbot asks her, anger melting into something more closely resembling resignation in the time it takes her to nod. Sticks out a hand for her to shake, smiling slightly sheepishly, “Welcome to the Pitt.”
The surgeon, apparently realising that whatever argument they’d been having is now over, shoots him an absolutely filthy look, “Good fucking luck,” she tells Parker, comment thrown over her shoulder like a barb, like poison, “Try not to learn too much from him, if you can help it.”
Abbot, who as far as Parker can tell is a grown-ass adult man, actually sticks his tongue out at her in response, grinning when the surgeon visibly rolls her eyes and offers him the finger.
“Who was that?” Parker chances asking, quietly, once the other woman is out of earshot
“Dr Walsh.” It’s Shen who answers. “She – uh – grows on you.” He adds, eyes flitting towards their attending who’s still watching the other woman retreat across the ER, something oddly fond in his expression
“Hmmm,” Abbot agrees, smirking a little, “Like some sort of toxic mould - deadly and utterly impossible to get rid of.”
Shen mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “you would know,” into his coffee cup and oh, okay -that was flirting. She files it away under: kind of fucked up, definitely good to know, and turns back to the attending, clearing her throat,
“Okay,” she asks him, “Where do we start?”
-
Six months into her intern year, Parker is absolutely convinced she is where she is meant to be. Every gruelling, exhausting shift feels a little bit like flying, every mistake feels world-ending and somehow surmountable all at once. Like she’s standing at the bottom of a very tall mountain and looking up, can’t even see the tip for the clouds, but knows – with absolute surety– that the view is going to be incredible when she gets there.
She loves the night shift crew as well.
Shen who’s weirdly chill about medicine and significantly less so about the ratio of vodka to tomato juice in his post shift Bloody Mary. Who’d showed her where he keeps the emergency coffee and invited her to drag brunch with him and his boyfriend after her third shift. Who understands how it feels to be queer and a person of colour and a doctor in post-pandemic America, and despite all that, never lets her wallow in it. Drags her on and up and makes her keep going even when every muscle in her body is screaming at her to stop.
Lena who explained the interpersonal drama that apparently plagues dayshift before Parker pulled her first double. Who makes the best shortbread on the East Coast and is always humming whatever song was playing on the radio on her drive in. Who’d held Parker’s hand as she cried in the toilet’s after losing her first patient, handed her tissues and told her it was okay to feel things, that it was okay to be human despite what certain emotionally repressed attendings might say to the contrary.
Bridget who is constantly trying to set Abbot up with her sister. Who’s husband is a paramedic and sometimes leans over central hub to kiss her sweetly after he’s delivered a patient. Who’d made her join the ER’s softball team and laughed at her for the next three months when she’d struck out after only five minutes, told her thank god she was a half decent doctor so at least she had a career to fall back on. The first person to ever say it so casually, to believe in her without qualification.
And finally Abbot – who teaches, and jokes about being the diversity hire and bitches about the price of tickets for whatever band it is the kids are into these days, but clearly loves his daughter right down to his bones. Who’s fights with surgery and cardiology and, on one memorable occasion, the weird guy who works downstairs in the morgue, are the stuff of legends; that provide Parker with first date anecdotes for literal years.
The lot of them are a team, and half a family, and it makes Parker feel warm. Makes her remember why she thought moving several States away from most of the people who love her was a good idea.
-
Parker is very proudly bisexual. Parker is also the only daughter of a well-respected military chaplain. These things come into conflict surprisingly rarely – perhaps because she’s gotten so good at separating the different aspects of her life. Church and state, like in the constitution.
Unfortunately (also, like the constitution) these things seem to go better in theory than in practice.
Her parents are in town for a family friend’s wedding and they’d had dinner before Parker’s shift. Hadn’t said anything outright, but they hadn’t had to for her to feel their disappointment. To feel their pride as they spoke about her brother, who’s the first chair violinist in the South Carolina symphony orchestra. Married to a teacher and has two little boys. Remembers to call their parents every Sunday after church.
To feel their words turn sour under their tongues when they’d asked her if she was dating anyone and she’d admitted, over their main course and a glass of wine, that she was seeing a girl she’d met through her five-a-side soccer league. Her parents love her, she knows this. Her parents love her, but they might love their idea of god more – have always, and maybe always will, find it nearly impossible to reconcile these two pieces of themselves.
It's why she slams into the ER after dinner, having dropped her parent back at their hotel. Keeps her head down and her words short. Tries to get through the night with her feelings under wraps.
Of course Abbot – at once the world’s most and least self-aware man – notices. Corners her in the break room after he’s told her to take five and, full of false casualness that’s belayed by the worry in his eyes, asks her, “What’s got you acting so weird tonight, Ellis?”
She thinks about telling him to go to hell, but then she thinks about what she knows about Jack Abbot. Has seen the dog tags around his neck – looped them over his head to reassure a patient, a veteran, while Abbot had been too busy trying to keep the man’s fingers attached to his body to do it himself. Has seen where they say Catholic under ABBOT, Jonathan and blood type O-. Knows that he fulfils his teaching requirement by running a seminar on emergency room abortion care, has a daughter out of wedlock and when he’s had a bad night, and he’s not up on the roof, he can be found in the hospital chapel as often as not.
Abbot, much liked father, has watched men do terrible things in the name of God and the United States of America. He is the kind of man who must have, at least at some point, understood religion and duty in the same way that her father does. He is a father himself. He might have a perspective on this.
“It’s a process,” Abbot tells her, after she’s finished unloading, hand hovering over her shoulder like he wants to offer comfort, unsure if it will be welcome. “Give them time,” Abbot tells her, comes into work the next week with a pride pin on his lanyard and never says a word about it to her, to anyone. “If you can,” Abbot tells her, like he knows something about it, “give them time.”
-
A tipsy, obnoxious banker with a head lac decides that four am is the ideal time to make a move on her. Flirts in a way that makes her skin crawl, but she’s got a grip on it – is handling it, alongside an OD and a kid with a broken ankle – when the man decides he’s been patient enough. Grabs at her wrist and drags her towards him, whispering compliments wound up into horribly explicit threats.
She must yell or scream or something, because Shen is there almost immediately – the only time she’s seen him anything other than utterly composed as he yanks the man away from her. Deploys soft restraints with unnervingly quick and precise movements.
“Are you okay?” he turns to her, after security have flooded the room. She’s shaking a little, can feel the man’s fingerprints on her arm turning into bruises. She feels lost, like a little girl in a supermarket – and that, in turn, makes her feel angry. Can’t make her brain work properly, just gapes at him as he steers her gently into the break room and pours her a glass of water. Sits down beside her, shoulders bumping, offers her his sleeve to wipe her eyes when the tears that have been threatening to spill over finally do.
Abbot, stalks in ten minutes later, still covered in blood from a trauma and looking like a storm cloud come to life, “Hey Ellis,” he says gently when he sees her, dumping his gloves in the nearest medical waste bin, approaching her slowly – keeping himself in her eyeline the whole time, “You good?”
Her eyes are probably red rimmed. She can feel her heart beating out of control in her chest, the come down from adrenaline and embarrassment, “I’m mad.” She tells him, “I’m so fucking mad.”
“Atta girl.” He gives her a sharp smile. Asks her if she wants to go home and smiles even wider when she shakes her head, demands to be allowed to get back to it. As if that will somehow vanish the shame that she knows - she knows - is irrational, but that is still curling round her spine, making her feel weak in a way that she despises.
“Come on then,” he tells her, beckoning with an outstretched hand, “I’ve got a really gnarly shoulder dislocation that’s definitely going to take two of us to get back into place properly.”
-
When the doorbell rings later on that morning, Parker really doesn’t want to answer it. Anger has swung into exhaustion and back around to anger again – and she honestly believes that if she has to do anything more than marathoning old episodes of Star Trek while eating some of the chocolate she’s stolen from her roommate, she might actually cry.
Problem is though, she’s a doctor, and the neighbours know that. Problem is that one time the person knocking on her door was little Javi from downstairs and his mum was bleeding and the time it would have taken the ambulance to get there might have killed her and the baby both. That thought is the only thing that gets her up of the couch, has her crossing the room and opening the door. The culprit behind the ringing isn’t one of her neighbours (who she mostly knows by sight, if not by name) though, but a youngish guy with bags like purple bruises under his eyes and a door dash cap shoved skewwhiff on the top of his head.
"Uh, hi." He says, looking her up and down nervously, "do you know a guy named Jack Abbot?"
Parker must grimace at this, even as she nods, because the man continues,
"He's not like a creep or anything, right? Cause he gave me twenty bucks to deliver this," he gestures to the bag of takeout under his arm that smells a suspicious amount like Parker's favourite burger place, "and to check you were okay." The door dash guy hesitates, “Dude has a super weird energy, but the tips are amazing, and this is the first time he’s ever asked me to do anything that wasn’t just, like, delivering beer to the roof of a hospital – you know? And honestly, he doesn’t seem like a predator or anything – but I’ve been listening to a lot of true crime lately and God, you just never can tell really.”
“Uh,” Parker responds, honestly kind of overwhelmed in the face of the word vomit that’s just been spewed her way, “He’s my boss.”
The door dash guy – Marco, her brain fills in, because apparently she’s the sort of person who’s internalised the name of her attending’s delivery man - shifts uncomfortably, "I feel like my question stands.
She grins then, because yeah – he’s not exactly wrong, “definitely not a creep.” She tells him, reaching out for the brown paper bag in Marco’s arms, suddenly ravenously hungry and feeling a little warm, a little cared about for the first time that day, “actually, maybe a really great guy.”
-
When Marco ends up in the ER a few months later - sleep deprived cyclist vs stationary bollard -she ends up with his number. They go on two dates (during which she learns that he's a year into a PhD in medieval history and has been delivering beers to Abbot since his undergrad days), have some surprisingly athletic sex given the state of his wrist x-rays, and promptly realise that they are both so busy they don't have any actual time to see each other.
Parker would have felt disappointed about the dissolution of what might have been, except she meets Amara not three months later and falls ass over tit so hard in love that she's still sort of feeling the concussion.
-
She follows Abbot up onto the roof after a particularly hard case, because there’s no other attendings around, none of the usual suspects and, well, she’s not blind – is aware enough to know, or at least suspect, why he goes up there.
She finds him standing on the wrong side of the railing, stethoscope round his neck and arms crossed in front of him. He looks round when he hears the door close and half smiles when he sees it’s her. It’s enough acknowledgement that she goes over and stands next to him, leaning her weight up against the railing between them and looking out at the Pittsburgh skyline. It's a bitter, windy evening, but he’s not wearing a jacket. Looks for all the world like he’s alright, except he can’t quite meet her eyes, can’t keep his hands still.
Some doctors (Mohan, Shen, Abbot himself) went into medicine because they'd watched it fail someone they loved. The ultimate act of hubris, the ultimate act of love. Parker though, had looked at everything her dad had built and thought, fuck this shit, thought she'd save more lives with a scalpel than he ever did with a bible. And sure, she’s got her own stuff, but she’s more than half convinced she has things easier – that she doesn’t come into work each day knowing there’s a chance she’ll spend it reliving the worst kind of thing that could ever happen to a person.
Its why, she thinks, watching Abbot’s curls of silver hair rippling slightly in the cold night air, that someone else would probably be better at this. More able to empathise or understand. Then again, that might not be what he needs right now. Maybe all he’s looking for is a distraction.
"I slept with your door dash guy," she tells him, half casual, hitting him with the best story she can come up with in the moment.
He turns slightly, raises a single eyebrow. She knows she has him before he even opens his mouth, before she hears the edge of sarcasm to his teasing response, "I hope you used protection,” he tells her, “I don't tip Marco well enough to pay child support."
Parker, who knows full well that his tips covered Marco's entire book budget through to senior year (when a housemate had taught him the virtues of piracy) just rolls her eyes, keeps standing there beside him until he shakes himself, folds his body back onto the safe side of the roof.
-
“I was never going to jump.” He corners her later, looking determined, looking one foot in the grave exhausted.
“I know.” She tells him evenly, and she does really – knows that the thing that tips him over the edge will be far greater than just one bad night in the ER
He gives her a soft smile. The kind she thinks is reserved for the other lives Jack Abbot lives -where he is someone’s father, someone’s brother; maybe even someone’s child still. “Thanks all the same though, Ellis.” He hesitates, then adds, “Your terrible taste in men aside, I’m lucky to be able to call you my friend.”
She leans across, bumps his shoulder with her own, “Ditto.”
-
“Are you still mad at me for not telling you about Walsh?”
“Friends tell friends about their crazy scalpel wielding exes,” Parker tells him, “Preferably before said friend has to call them to pick your old ass out of a trauma bay.”
He looks at her for a long minute, “Fair,” he agrees with a shrug and a shake of his head, “Hanna says I should thank you, by the way,” he tells her, “says I don’t have that many braincells left to lose- wants me to invite you over for dinner.”
She quirks an eyebrow, hasn’t exactly heard either a thanks or really a question in what he’s said.
“Bring Amara?” He asks, “Thursday after next?”
She doesn’t have time to answer before Walsh, who’s appeared from nowhere like the mere mention of her name is enough to summon her from the depth of the OR floor, cuts in, "Christ” she says, “you're not going to cook for them, are you?"
"I'm a good cook." Abbot looks mildly offended, handing the other woman a takeout cup of coffee nonetheless. Parker has no idea where he got it from, but its steaming slightly - still warm.
Walsh shoots him a look that’s part amused, part fond, "The same fucking pasta bake I've been eating once a week for the last ten years absolutely disagrees."
-
“Do you want to come to dinner with my attending and his kid,”
Amara who’s been doing a good job of pretending to be asleep on the sofa cracks an eyelid. The fancy clothes - pencil skirt and silk blouse and killer heels kicked off by the door – mean she’s been in court today. The nice looking bottle of Laphroaig out on the counter means she won.
“Which attending?” Amara asks warily, rising from her seat to pull a couple of glasses out of the cupboard over the sink, watching shameless as Parker wriggles out of her scrub top and pulls on one of the hoodies hanging by the door.
“Abbot.”
“Alright then.”
“You agreed to that suspiciously quickly,” Parker eyes her girlfriend. Knows Amara typically views other emergency room doctors with the same mix of hostility and confusion over their career choices that Parker reserves for corporate lawyers, “I’m reliably informed he makes some sort of deeply average pasta dish.”
Amara shrugs, “We’ll bring good wine then– and besides,” she waggles her eyebrows, “I want to ask him about his thing with the surgeon.”
Parker winds her arms around Amara’s shoulders, rest their foreheads together, regrets ever bringing any of the ER gossip home, “You cannot,” she tells her, punctuating her request with a kiss, “ask my boss about his sex life.”
“Spoilsport.”
-
What Parker really should have known by now is that lawyers are very good at upholding the letter, if not the spirit, of an agreement. Amara does not ask Jack a single question about his relationship status. No, instead she turns to Hanna over dessert and says, casual as anything:
“How did your parents meet anyway?”
“Oh,” Hanna swallows a chunk of meatball before answering, gesturing at Abbot with her fork, “Mom cut off his foot.”
Amara shoots Parker a look that plainly says ‘what kind of weird ass psychodrama have you dropped me into now’. “That’s…” she trails off,
“Insane?” Hanna offers, affecting a put upon sigh. She has exactly as much sass as Parker would expect from Emery Walsh’s almost teenage daughter, “Welcome to my life.”
-
It’s a – touch wood – relatively quiet night and she comes across Abbot in the staff break room, eating dry cereal out of the packet and calling it dinner. Shrugging, she reaches her hand out, making a ‘gimme’ gesture until he hands over the box. She’s a resident, after all, and not above calling a handful of lucky charms a part of a balanced diet.
“Don’t choke,” he tells her, half amused as she shovels misshapen lumps of overly sweet grain into her mouth and then washes them down with a swig of black coffee.
“Got to keep the energy up.”
“Mmmm,” he agrees, titling his head in a way that always makes her feel like he can see straight through her, “You’ve been pulling a lot of doubles recently – everything alright?”
It is, as it happens. “I’m saving up for a ring,” she tells him, unable to keep the smile of her face. In truth, she couldn’t care less if they get married – but Amara does. It means something to her, so it means something to Parker too.
“No shit,” Abbot’s eyebrows practically hit his hairline, “that’s pretty cool, Ellis,” he says after a minute, hands automatically coming together, clasped over his own wedding ring. He’s been widowed, she knows, for close to two decades. Had been young when it happened – younger than Parker is now. Still wears his wedding ring every single day. She has the feeling marriage means something to Jack Abbot too.
“Yeah,” she agrees, passing him back the cereal box so he can do something with his hands that doesn’t make her incredibly sad, “and listen – I’m definitely going to need some proposal advice from someone other than Shen,” she continues, looking at him meaningfully,
“Oh, of course-” Abbot grasps onto the lifeline she’s offered with both hands, giving her a genuine smile, “We’re all agreed the skywriter was overkill.”
-
There’s something weird in the air of the ER. Abbot’s being oddly smiley for one. Is running around like he’s received the best news of his life – and given what she has heard about yesterday’s day shift, she can’t imagine what could possibly have caused that.
Can’t imagine it until she’s elbow deep in a trauma and Walsh comes down for a consult. They always stand way too close together, but they keep looking at each other – keep making the kind of shy eye contact that quite honestly reminds Parker of teenagers on a first date.
Half way through checking vitals and out of the corner of her eye, she sees Walsh blush. It’s so shocking that Parker can’t help but make direct eye contact with Garcia across the patient’s body - gets a sharp nod in response; one that plainly says, ‘no you’re not imagining it’ and also ‘yikes’.
-
"So how long’s that been going on?" She asks him after they’ve pulled off their PPE and sent their accident prone hedge trimmer up to the OR, elbowing him in the ribs and gesturing (probably completely unsubtly in Walsh’s direction).
His mouth quirks into an immediate smile, apparently entirely unable to hide his emotions. It would be adorable if it was anyone else, and frankly it’s still bordering on pretty darn cute. “She snuck out my bedroom window the other morning,” he tells her quietly, a little smug but mostly just sounding utterly overjoyed.
She holds her hand out and offers him a discreet high five, not bothering to hide her grin. Frankly, it’s about fucking time.
-
She realises Walsh is pregnant a couple of months later. Knows it’s his, because – well – she’s not a complete idiot and besides, Abbot’s doing that thing where he watches Walsh incredibly carefully while trying to pretend he’s not looking at her at all.
Parker thinks she might be the only one -except Dana, who naturally knows everything – to have enough of the pieces of the puzzle to put it all together. Sidles up to him, just before shift change and whispers, “Quick work there.”
“Shut up.” He grumbles, looking inordinately pleased with himself.
“What did you do?” She continues, teasing, “Knock her up immediately? Honestly I’m just impressed - old man like you.”
“I’m forty-eight years old Ellis, not fucking dead.”
She shrugs as if to say, ‘you might as well be.’ Punches his shoulder as if to say ‘ congratulations, you idiot.’ Has absolute and full faith that he knows what she means when she does it.
-
A couple of weeks after Pittfest she has the inordinate pleasure of watching Robby totally lose it at shift change. Check his tablet, turn an unfortunate shade of red and squawk Abbot’s name – pulling the other man into one of the empty cubicles and dragging the curtain firmly shut behind them.
“Twenty bucks says they’re making out in there,” a bemused Santos whispers to her. As the senior resident in this scenario, Parker should probably say something about not placing bets on your attending’s personal lives. As someone who’s going to make a lot of money when the Abbot and Walsh of it all comes out into the harsh light of the ER, she doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
“I’ll take that action.” She agrees, shaking the other woman’s hand. Parker is not afraid of a little bit of insider trading where it benefits her.
-
“The request for paternity leave finally made it through HR and into his emails.” Jack tells her later, in a quiet moment where they are both charting behind the desk, “He’s been very carefully not asking me about Em for weeks.”
“You’re such a dick.” She tells him, meaning it. A little impressed. She aspires to that level of cool headed trolling and really, Robby needed something to get him out of the weird funk he’s been in since the MCI.
“Yeah,” he agrees, smirking, “it’s been said before.”
-
Abbot’s on a stretch of off days when she messages him to ask about a citation for a case study she’s co-authoring with Mohan, a niggling memory of him talking about a similar presentation in South Korea or Surinam, or somewhere else equally far flung, in the back of her mind. He rings her immediately which is somewhat surprising – not the fact that he calls her, the man is pathologically allergic to texting – but the fact that he’s even awake at four am on his day off.
She tells him as much when she answers, making a quick ‘five minutes’ hand gesture at Shen and ducking into the locker room so she can’t be pulled into a patient consult.
“Well Ellis,” Abbot replies, audibly yawning, “I don’t know if you knew this, but babies don’t sleep all that often.”
Parker pauses, retort that had been sitting on the tip of her tongue swallowed back down. Thinks about what he’s said, and then pauses some more. “Did you…” she ventures, slightly hesitant and utterly unable to hide the amusement in her voice, “Have your baby and forget to tell anyone?”
She can practically hear the cogs whirring in his brain. Imagines him mentally processing back through the events of the last week, “Maybe?” he settles on eventually, more than a little sheepish.
“That’s-” She doesn’t bother to try and stifle her laugh, “For fucks sake. That’s actually quite on brand for you.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Right,” she tells him, rolling her eyes, voice all fondness, “tell me their name and text me a picture. I’ll pin it to the break room fridge and save you any number of outraged repeats of this conversation.”
“Yup,” he agrees, sounding bemused, sounding a little overwhelmed if she’s honest, “She’s called Katie,” he tells her and then, quieter, “she’s pretty perfect, Ellis.”
“I’ll bet,” Parker responds, pulling her phone away from her ear when she feels the vibration of a message alert, opens it up and looks down at the picture. She’s pretty sure most babies look the same, sort of scrunched up and ugly as hell in the beginning – but she’ll admit this one is kind of cute. Big eyes open to the world and wearing a tiny yellow hat. “Gets her good looks from her mom, then.” She smiles into the phone, can picture the exact look he has on his face as she says it – right down to the frown lines between his eyebrows.
“Ha ha,” he says, then a pause, “but you’re not entirely incorrect.”
“Never am.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Listen Ellis-” he says, she can hear a baby crying in the background, getting louder as he clearly moves toward the sound, goes to pick up his kid, “I’ll let you get back to it. That article you were after” he adds, “EMA, Volume 35, issue 2. I’ve got a copy if you’re struggling to get hold of it – just let me know.”
“Thanks,” she tells him, then quickly before she hangs up, “and hey, congrats – best news I’ve heard all night.”
-
Per the hospital’s very much unofficial MCI protocol, Abbot – who is absolutely not on shift – shows up within fifteen minutes of the call coming through. In a slight deviation from the status quo, however, he has an eight month old baby with him when he does.
“You can’t practice medicine with a baby strapped to your chest,” Robby tells him, half exasperated as they wait for everyone to gather in the central hub for a briefing.
Abbot rolls his eyes, “Wasn’t planning to,” he tells the other man, as if that should have been obvious – though knowing Abbot as well as she does, it wouldn’t exactly surprise Parker if he tried it, “babysitter is ten minutes out.”
“I’d hope so,” Walsh tells him, having rocked up at the desk just in time to hear his last comment, already wearing her bright orange primary surgery vest. Gesturing for him to hand over the baby which he duly does, a slightly guilty look on his face.
“Love you” he mouths at Walsh, as she goes to stand with the rest of the surgeons, letting that slight ‘adorable loser’ look he gets sometimes when he’s talking about Emery or his kids out for a split second before he’s all business, briefing them on what to expect beside Robby.
-
Hanna comes into the ER straight from hockey practice on a random Tuesday in September, a wad of bloody gauze pressed up against her chin and an achingly familiar stubborn expression on her face. Parker, as the only resident working tonight who would be able to recognise her on sight, has the good fortune of being on chairs when she arrives, accompanies by a harried looking adult Parker presumes is her coach.
“Hi Hanna,” Parker says, coming to a stop in front of her and tilting the girls face upwards so she can get a better look, “remember me?”
“Doctor Ellis, right?” Her voice is a little strained, but Parker’s honestly impressed by how calm she appears - especially in comparison to her coach who’s looking on worriedly and babbling something about how she hasn’t been able to get in touch with either of her charge’s parents.
“Can you show me?” she asks, gesturing to the gauze and wincing in solidarity when Hanna takes it away to reveal a nasty gash on her chin that will need at least a few stitches. “Skates?” she asks, looking up at the coach who nods. “Okay then,” Parker continues, “let’s get you inside.”
“Abbot’s kid,” she says to Blessing on the front desk, who nods and immediately buzzes them through, repeats the same to Dana – who’s covering this evening’s night shift while Bridget is at her brother’s wedding in Chicago.
“South sixteen is open,” Dana directs her, “I’ll page up to surgery and grab Abbot as soon as he’s out of the trauma bay.” Parker knows he’s been coding a teenage car crash for the last hour, knows he won’t be in the best frame of mind to deal with this when he gets out and is determined to make sure he has as little to worry about as possible when he does.
She instructs the coach to wait in the family room, and helps Hana up onto the beds. “We’re trying to get a hold of one your parents,” she tells the teenager, as if she hadn’t likely overheard what she’d said to Dana a few minutes earlier, “But are you alright if I make a start on fixing you up?”
“Yes please,” Hanna nods, “They’ll only make a fuss.” Privately, Parker agrees with her. Privately though, Parker thinks they might have a right too. Knows what expressions would have filled her own parent’s faces if she’d shown up to their place of work looking like she’d been on the wrong end of a knife fight.
“Okay then,” she peels the gauze away from Hanna’s chin and starts to clean up the wound, ordering some lidocaine on her tablet once she’s determined it will definitely need stitches. “Your dad would probably just stick some staples in and be done with it,” she tells Hanna, who smiles. She has the same sharp toothed grin as her mother. With the blood caught in her teeth, its more than a little menacing, “But I reckon we can do a little better than that.”
“Stitches?”
“Yeah,” Parker agrees, “But I’m really good at them, so I don’t want you to worry.”
-
Walsh is in surgery, so the first anxious parent she has to deal with is Abbot, who tears open the curtain – still in blood covered PPE.
“Oh cause that’s going calm the situation down,” she hears Dana say over his shoulder, “For Christ sakes, I told you she was fine.”
Intellectually, Parker knows he can see that. In the time it’s taken him to finish up with his trauma case, she’s got Hanna stitched, cleaned up and into one of the spare hoodies she keeps in her locker. Given her a mild pain killer and an antibiotic. If it wasn’t for the admittedly large dressing covering her chin, she’d look like pretty much any other mobile phone obsessed teenage girl.
“Hi Dad,” Hanna tells him calmly, reaching out for a hug which he dutifully sinks into. Parker can almost see his blood pressure lowering as he pulls back, holds her at arm’s length, inspecting her for any further injuries.
“You’re okay?” he asks her, just a trace of the frantic in his voice, “You’re good?”
“She is,” Parker tells him, as Hanna nods, offering him her tablet – Hanna’s chart pulled up on the screen. “Dana’s calling round the attendings,” she adds, “we’re going to get someone to come in so you can take her home after we’re done here.”
“Thanks, Ellis,” Abbot tells her, genuine, fervent, his hand curled round his daughters, “I mean it.”
She hovers a hand over his shoulder, taking her tablet back from where he’s discarded it on the bed, smiling at Hanna, “It was my genuine pleasure.”
-
After she completes her residency she starts applying for jobs in California. Amara misses her family, her hometown, with the kind of vehemence that has had Parker feeling guilty for years. Every relationship is about compromise, and it’s time for Parker to take one for the team.
She wants to leave – she really does – for all sorts of reasons like better pay, and learning to surf and making her wife happy. She wants to leave, but at the same time she can’t imagine anything worse – can’t imagine climbing down off the summit of the mountain. Leaving behind her friends and colleagues and starting over somewhere new.
Shen insists on throwing her an outrageous going away party that straddles the boundaries of two separate shifts so that everyone who wants to can come and say goodbye. She hugs nearly everyone over the course of the night, but it doesn’t really feel like an ending until she’s sat at the bar with Abbot,
“You’re going to do great things,” he tells her, raising his glass to clink against her own, “and for what it’s worth, I’m very proud of you.”
“It’s worth a lot,” she tells him, “as it happens.” Doesn’t say that she’ll miss him because that feels to final, simply squeezes his arm as she hears Shen calling her name from across the room. Walks away from him and doesn’t look back.
Parker Ellis has to move on – wants to, even – but God it’s hard when you know what your leaving behind.
-
“I had to come down and see the woman that got Dr Jack Abbot to pick up the goddamn phone and tell me I’d be an idiot not to hire.”
It’s Parker’s first day at UC San Diego and this is the first thing any of her new colleagues has said to her other than, “hello” and “what’s your name.” She appreciates the directness. Appreciates that there are apparently people – friends – out there in the world who have her back.
“Oh yeah?” Parker respond, trying for casual, “He better have had nice things to say.”
“Full of praise.” The man – who is, by the colour of his scrubs an attending - confirms, offering his hand to shake, “I’m Tom Kaminski. Abbot was my CO in Iraq – don’t think he complimented me once the entire time we were out there.” He adds, grinning to show he doesn’t really mean it.
“Parker Ellis,” she returns, and because nobody else seems to be volunteering, “do you fancy giving me the lay of the land round here?”
-
She comes to like Tom a great deal. Joins his motley little gang of attendings and senior nurses for after shift drinks more often than not. They don’t really talk about Abbot again though, not until that year’s Christmas party when they’ve all had a couple of drinks and Tom, half hesitating, ask after the other man.
“We don’t really talk anymore,” he admits to her, “Just, too much history – you know?” Finishes with a self-deprecating smile that has Parker’s breath tightening a little in her chest, understanding mixed with a little bit of pity – carefully shrugged off because she knows it’s the last thing either of them would want from her.
Instead of responding, she flicks through her phone, opens WhatsApp and scrolls to where Emery is still saved as Dr Walsh, Surgical Attending (scary). Flips it round so her colleague can see the picture she’d been sent just the other night: Jack in a Santa hat, Katie on his hip. Hanna crowded into his shoulder. All wide grins and laughing eyes.
“He’s doing alright,” she tells him, arm reaching out to pat his shoulder, “I’ll tell him the same about you, when he asks – yeah?”
“Yeah.” He agrees, shaking his head slightly, taking a long sip of his drink, “thanks Ellis.”
“Any time.”
-
Abbot is the blind reviewer on a publication she’s lead-authored with a few of her senior residents. Immediately breaks cover to email her a stupid picture of Katie who must six or seven now, scribbling on the print out. She has some notes, he’s written underneath.
Tell her to go to medical school, Parker emails him back, then we’ll talk.
-
Eighteen years after she last stepped foot in the PTMC emergency room, Parker is very much a California girl. Pulls two shifts a week at her local trauma centre and teaches an oversubscribed class and two skills labs over at USD to keep her from getting bored.
She’s only attending this conference as mentor for a group of fourth year medical students. To enthuse them about emergency medicine and get them chatting to representatives from hospitals with potential residency opportunities. The group of them have been annoying enough on the drive up, however, that she’s grateful to be able to dump them at registration. Decides letting them figure out the lanyard situation on their own will be a good learning experience, and is just considering where she might find a decent cup of coffee when she sees him.
It might have been a decade or so, but he still has all his hair – more salt than pepper now - and is leaning ever so slightly on a cane. Despite that thinks she might recognise him anywhere.
“Jack Abbot,” she says, coming to a stop behind him, waiting for him to turn round and catch sight of her, “as I live and breathe”
“Ellis,” he responds, grinning delightedly in greeting when he recognises her, “I didn’t think this was your neck of the woods – I would have called.”
“I’d hope so,” she tells him, leaning in for a hug that he returns warmly, “And you’re right, it’s not – not exactly. Just doing my bit to educate the future doctors,” she gestures behind her at where her posse of medical students are no doubt standing and gawping at them, “or at least future morgue attendants, of America.”
Parker’s obviously correct in her assessment about the gawping, because Abbot gives them a sardonic wave over her shoulder. They scatter immediately, causing Parker to wonder if she was that dumb when she was their age. She hopes to God she wasn’t.
“Not exactly your neck of the woods either, old man?” She continues, looking him up and down. He has a few more lines on his face, is down one wedding ring, but otherwise looks pretty much exactly as she’d left him. She hopes these last ten year have been as kind to Jack Abbot as he deserves.
“Nah,” he agrees easily, “I’m on a panel tomorrow, but really there’s just a few talks I want to go to– and Katie’s a sophomore at Caltech now, so we’ll drive up and see her after the conference.”
A sophomore – Jesus, Parker thinks, where does time go. She’s still sort of caught in that thought, when he glances at his watch, gives her an apologetic look, “Listen,” he says, “there’s a talk I have to catch but – hey, you should come. We can get dinner after?”
Her med students have an optimistically named ‘free time’ square on their calendar, so technically Parker is equally free of all responsibility this evening – and while she’d been planning to soak up some rays at the hotel pool, she thinks she’d much rather catch up with an old friend instead. “Lead the way.”
Abbot shuffles her into one of the smaller auditoriums. It’s reasonably full – but not packed out – so they don’t have any trouble finding seats. It’s not until they are sat down, and Abbot has casually pecked the cheek of the woman next to him, that she realises Walsh is here too - a conference brochure in her hand and a wide smile when she catches Parker’s eye. The other woman is definitely older than the last time she saw her, silver hair – like Parker’s own nowadays – pulled back into a ponytail and a softer expression on her face. She’s head of Surgery at PTMC these days, rules the place with an iron fist if the rumours she’s heard are anything to be believed. Not that Parker would expect anything less, really.
They barely have time to wave at each other before the talk is starting though. She and Abbot must have been cutting in fine in their haste to catch up. So it’s only then that Parker realises she doesn’t know what she’s in for – and it’s not until a familiar looking young woman with curly brown hair is introduced, that she realises who the speaker is.
She reads the title card twice before pulling her notebook out of her bag, scrawls, she’s a psychologist?!? And shoves it in Abbot’s direction.
He smirks, plucking the pen out of her hand, MD/PhD he writes back, a proud smile on his face. And actually yeah, that sounds about right, she thinks, sitting back in her chair to enjoy Hanna Abbot’s presentation. If anyone was going to raise a specialist in the effects of trauma on the brain, it’s the two people sitting beside her.
-
They’re milling about chatting after the presentation is over, waiting for Hanna to finish talking to some colleagues so they can go out and grab dinner.
“Hey,” Emery tells her, after Parker’s finished expressing how impressed she’d been by Hanna’s talk – how she can’t believe she’s missed this much, “you’ll have to fly across for Jack’s retirement party. Everyone’s coming – even Dana’s been enticed away from Florida and the grandkids for the weekend.”
She wonders how much of the PTMC ER she’d recognise these days. John’s in Baltimore now, Robby had absolutely not (but definitely very much had) followed Collins back to New Jersey and Samira, who’d been running the place for a few years there, had gone and married a real life astronaut and moved down to Texas, is doing some big-brained medical research things with NASA.
She so caught up in imagining that it takes her a second to even realise what Emery has even said, “Wait,” she exclaims, turning to Abbot, “you’re retiring?”
Jack gives her an amused look, shifting his weight, “What?” He asks, “You thought I'd just drop dead in the middle of the ER one day and that would be that?”
Yes, if she's honest, but she doesn't want to say it. Is rescued by Hanna making her reappearance, pecking her father on the cheek and asking cheekily, “Is it really retiring if you're replacing the one job you have with two others, though?”
Jack doesn’t dignify that with a response, instead tells her how great she was with a genuine enthusiasm that makes her blush, even as she loops an arm round his shoulder and leans into the side-hug he gives her. Both parents clearly so proud of her in a way that makes Parker ache – in a way that reminds her of the place she’d got to with her own before they passed. Give it time, indeed.
When she looks closely, Parker can still see the spiders web thin scar from the stitches she'd put in Hanna's chin when she’d been fourteen. From this angle, she can see what she couldn’t have when Hanna was on stage: Jack Abbot is going to be somebody’s grandfather.
The beautiful surprise of it all keeps her quiet as she follows them out of the room, his fingers threaded through Emery’s, Hana’s bag over his shoulder. If anyone deserves this, she thinks, this seemingly perfect life after all this time – all the years, both good and bad – it is him. The man who taught her how to crack a chest, and gave her advice about her parents and proposals, who trusted her with his children and even once punched a patient to defend her honour. She can’t wait find out more about it all over dinner, the bits that she’s missed – desperate to know for sure that the story has a happy ending.