Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Samira Mohan ended up on night shifts mostly out of necessity.

She stopped sleeping. Or, at least, stopped sleeping enough. Her struggles all started at the beginning of R2. There was some catastrophic change in her brain chemistry. Somewhere in her cerebral cortex, the hours of the day that were supposed to be restful became a nightmare.

The first time she woke up in the dark of her room, heart pounding, nausea tearing at her esophagus, Samira thought she was literally dying. The sense of absolute doom that clouded her thoughts would have driven anyone to the same conclusion. She was certain she was going to have to show up at her place of employment, look Abbot, or Shen, or one of the other night shift doctors she didn't know very well in the eye, and beg them to help her. Beg them to save her. Because surely, something in her body needed medical intervention immediately.

The minutes ticked by, each one spent bargaining with herself that she just needed to survive one more minute. Surely, one more minute and whatever was happening to her would subside. She literally crawled from her bed to the bathroom, wounded sounds escaping her chest as she dug her fingers into the scratchy, shitty carpet of her hallway. She was going to die in this crappy, barely furnished apartment, with nothing to show for her life except a medical career cut short.

As she heaved into her toilet bowl, tears blurring her vision, she deliriously thought to herself, at least someone would surely come looking for her and discover her body after she failed to show up for work.

She continued like that, into the wee hours of the morning, succumbing to belief that this was it for her. But as the first light of dawn began to leak past her curtains, as she was forcing her hyperventilating breaths in through her nose, and out through her mouth for the millionth time, the symptoms began to recede. First the nausea, as the light turned her apartment indigo. Then the shortness of breath, as the light went blue. Then, finally, the thready, rapid pulse, as the light shifted to a soft, gentle yellow. Until she was just a sweaty, shivering mess on the cold tiles of her bathroom floor, staring at her distorted reflection in the cheap metal of her towel rack.

She realized, with some dawning embarrassment, that she had just woken up in the middle of the night mid-panic attack and let it suffocate her for the better part of four hours. Samira Mohan, a resident physician, had not recognized the symptoms of a run of the mill panic attack and had catastrophized until she truly believed she was about to die.

It was ridiculous. She had a good life. She had nothing to panic about. She had a good job, which would turn into a great job in just three years’ time. She had a decent place to live. She had enough food to eat. She had nothing to be panicking about. It had to be a fluke. A faulty chemical reaction in her brain.

As she got dressed in her usual scrubs and pulled her hair back into her usual claw clip, she wrote it off as a one-time glitch in her otherwise carefully regimented life. In the light of the morning, that seemed like the most likely explanation.

But then it happened the next night.

And the next.

It didn't matter if she dosed herself with diphenhydramine. Like clockwork, her nervous system would shake her awake with a thundering pulse and shortness of breath sometime between 1 and 2 AM. It would send her running to the toilet, bile trying to work its way out of her empty stomach. Her body, used to six hours of sleep, suddenly forced to subsist on two. Forced to remain upright and functioning through twelve hour shifts under Robby's scrutiny. Forced wade through the slow, sticky thoughts in her brain to make diagnoses.

Despite it all, Samira thought she had been doing a decent job hiding the fact that she has been operating on two hours of sleep for nearly a week. She arrived on time and did her job and had not misdiagnosed, misdosed, injured, or, god forbid, killed anyone. She thought so, until Dana sidles up to her one day, mid-morning, while Samira is looking up at the board outside the Hub, trying to blink away the sleepy haze in her vision. Dana presses a warm paper cup into her hand, a tea bag floating lazily on the surface of the steaming liquid.

“You alright kiddo? You seem a little down.”

Reflectively, Samira’s shoulders tense, her desire to hide anything that could possibly constitute a weakness innate at this point in her medical career. Good doctors did not let something as mundane as a little sleeplessness get in the way of practicing good medicine. And Samira was going to be a good doctor. Samira is a good doctor.

She tries to work her voice into something light and casual, almost carefree. “Just... having trouble sleeping lately. I’ll be fine.”

Dana hums sympathetically, reaching out to squeeze at Samira’s arm. It’s the first friendly human contact Samira has had in weeks. Maybe months. It nearly makes her cry.

“You ever thought about trying out nights? Some doctors prefer being nocturnal. The dark stuff that happens here makes more sense when it's dark outside, you know? They need extra hands right now, anyways, with Abbot on leave.”

This information is curious enough to draw Samira’s attention from the board, breaking her sleepy focus. Abbot is never out, as far as she knows. She has never arrived for a hand off in the mornings and not seen a glimpse of his greying curls. “Abbot’s out?”

Dana cocks her head at Samira. “His wife passed away a week ago. Robby is forcing him to take at least two weeks off. Gloria had to beg Pres to let us borrow some of their attendings so we can still run a night shift.”

Samira’s brain catches on the first part, on the casual, familiar way Dana dropped the bombshell into the sentence, like this is information she should already know. “His wife?” she finds herself confirming, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice. Heat spreads over her neck. She is embarrassed that this devastating piece of information has somehow slipped by her in the haze of her exhaustion. A colleague has lost their spouse and she’s feeling sorry for herself.

“Yeah. Cancer. Knew it was coming but… Well, nothing can really prepare you for that sort of thing.” She pauses, looking Samira over again in a way that makes her skin itch. So familiar, so knowing. Like she has seen hundreds of Samiras pass through this emergency department. Like she can see through every facade Samira throws up to protect herself.

“Oh, you didn’t know. Don’t worry about it, kiddo. He’ll be alright. But the night shift is hurting without him. They could use the extra hands.”

Samira had never really considered the night shift. Robby brought her on at PTMC, so she always assumed she would just stay with him until her time at PTMC came to an end. But, if her body was going to continue its mutinous betrayal and keep her up all night, she supposes she might as well spend it doing something productive.

Although, she wasn’t sure how she would even begin to broach the subject with Robby. Robby, who already thought she wasn’t quite fast enough. Who already thought she needed more oversight. Surely, he would be resistant to passing her off onto nights, where there were already not enough hands and the emergencies were often a lot more emergent.

“I don’t know. Robby might…” she trails off, not sure how much she should say to Dana. If Robby is the captain of this ship, Dana is his first mate, the one that keeps the rest of their crew in check. She doesn't need word getting back to Robby that Samira is discontent with the way he runs his department.

There’s a squeeze at her arm again, and Dana’s eyes crinkle in a kind smile behind her glasses. “I’ll say something to Robby, how does that sound? Can't have our best and brightest falling asleep on the job.”

She makes the switch the following week, with minimal Robby intervention outside a long look and a promise (read: threat) to bring her back to days if her patient turnover and satisfaction scores slip.

And it seems to work, mostly. Sleeping during the day is easier for her. If she does wake up with a racing heartbeat and breaths sawing out of her lungs, the sunlight peaking through her blinds immediately calms her. It’s a little strange walking into work as the sun dips towards the horizon in the west, but nothing she couldn't get used to with time.

Nearly as important as actually sleeping, the night shift operates in nearly complete contrast to the day shift. She was distantly aware of its two residents, Dr. Shen and Dr. Ellis, having done hand-offs with them on occasion, but for all intents and purposes they are loose acquaintances at best. The pair of them are essentially running the pitt on their own, in Abbot’ absence, with a rotating guest appearance of attendings borrowed from Presbyterian. Even though she is only an R2, they let her run her own cases. They still pop into her patient rooms, asking her to present, providing guidance where she wants or needs it, and overseeing treatments she is not experienced enough to perform on her own. But mostly they leave her be, letting her operate at her own pace, unless there’s a reason for them to step in.

For the first time since she started at PTMC, Samira feels like a real life actual doctor. She is learning and healing and, most importantly, sleeping. If everything stays exactly as it is, she thinks she might actually be ok. She could survive three more years like this. Becoming nocturnal is maybe not the most ideal solution to her problem, but it’s a solution nonetheless.

Everything just has to stay how it is, and she will be ok.

Dr. Abbot returns the next week, three weeks on the dot from the date of his wife’s passing, apparently. Shen, Ellis, and Bridget all share knowing glances around Samira, murmuring, “Too soon?” and “Too soon,” back and forth, shaking their heads. For the first time since switching to nights, Samira hears the telltale acceleration of her pulse in her ears, feels the twist of nausea in her gut. She has no firsthand experience with the night shift attending, but knows he and Robby are quite close. And if Abbot is anything like Robby when it comes to dealing with his grief... Well. That does not bode well for the new found stability in Samira's life.

She knows what angry, grieving bosses are like. She has spent the last year enduring Robby’s unpredictable tutelage, never knowing whether she was going to get Robby, her mentor, or Robby, Adamson’s grieving mentee. She doesn’t blame Robby, of course not. It’s unfathomable the decisions he had to make. But it doesn’t make it fair the way he treats her when he's having a particularly bad day.

And now, here she is, about to get stuck with another angry, grieving boss. Because how could anyone who had just lost their spouse be anything except angry? She still sees the ghost of her father in everything she does, and it's been more than a decade. She cannot fathom losing a spouse, the way a loss that monumental would cast a shadow over a life. His anger would be more than justified.

Samira knows she is being selfish - certainly feels guilty for it. But she doesn’t really know Dr. Abbot, and she had just started to feel in control of her life again. The steady, reliable presence of Shen and Ellis was such a relief. And now it was all probably going to be thrown out the window again.

But, if there is one thing Samira Mohan can do, it is endure. So, as she walks into her first shift under her new attending, she promises herself she will endure this, too.

Dr. Abbot appears during her third patient of the evening: a young woman who cut her hand open on a kitchen knife, saving her cat from the blade it had knocked off the counter in the first place. The patient is calm and the room quiet, as Samira methodically works the absorbable sutures into vertical mattress stitches along the patient’s palm. She doesn’t even know they’ve been interrupted until she notices the patient looking over Samira’s shoulder, and then pointedly back at Samira.

Abbot stands in the doorway, blinking at Samira, like he thinks something is wrong with his vision. He looks… terrible. Not that Samira has had much of a chance to study him in better circumstances, but this is obviously a man white-knuckling his way through his day. He looks afflicted. Hollowed out. Stricken. Like he isn't quite sure what he was doing here. A greying five o’clock shadow covers his jaw and the skin beneath his eyes is smudged with purple. His scrubs look rumpled, like they might have sat in a dryer, unfolded, for several days.

“Dr. Abbot,” Samira says, and he blinks at her some more, like he is still trying to place her, like he can’t quite figure out what she is doing here on his shift.

“This is Maggie. Laceration to the palm. Stitching her up and then she’ll be good as new.” She smiles at Maggie as she says this, because if there is one thing Samira Mohan does have, it is good bedside manner. The highest patient satisfaction scores in the Emergency Department, in fact, in spite of Robby’s constant nagging. And she will not let a new attending ruin that for her, no matter what he is going through.

The introduction of the patient seems to spur something to life inside of Abbot, some long established routine forcing him through the motions of practicing medicine. “Nice to–” he starts, but his voice is hoarse enough that he has to clear his throat before he can continue. “Nice to meet you, Maggie.” He doesn’t move from the doorway, but Samira sees him glance at where Maggie’s palm is splayed on a tray in front of Samira, eyes tracking the progress of her stitches. “Looks good, Dr. Mohan. Have Ellis or Shen take a look before you send Maggie home.”

It’s Samira’s turn to blink. It’s not at all what she expects. He’s… almost pleasant. No unnecessary reminders about the proper vertical mattress technique. No passive aggressive glances at the clock on the wall.

“Of course,” is all she says in response.

And then, with a single, stiff nod at her, he’s turning, disappearing from view. Samira can’t help staring at the empty doorway, a little dumbfounded. No anger. No resentment. Not even a little projection. Just a man seemingly trying his best to maintain his professionalism.

“He seems like a nice boss.”

Samira’s head snaps back to Maggie, who is patiently watching Samira, like she isn’t sitting with a hand laceration half-stitched up while two doctors have a bizarre exchange in front of her. Giving what she hopes is a reassuring smile, Samira returns to her stitches, trying and failing not to ruminate on the strange placidity of the grieving night shift attending.

The shift continues like that. Samira taking patients, still under Ellis or Shen’s supervision, Abbot occasionally appearing in a doorway to check on her. He seems to get more comfortable as the night progresses, like he is adjusting to her presence in his department, like he might even not mind it. Some of the sadness sloughs off of him, too, as the night progresses, the routine of the night shift softening the sharp edges of it.

It’s when Samira is working on a wheezing child, anxious parents hovering over her shoulder as she tries to listen to the lungs, that Abbot finally gives up his self-imposed vigil from her doorways. She doesn't see him make the decision – her attention is directed towards her patient, not half watching the entrance to the room. Because, unlike on day shift, she doesn’t feel the need to constantly worry about the appearance of the attending in the doorway, telling her to hurry up.

One minute, she is alone, silently begging the parents to stop asking her questions, to give her space so she can properly listen to the air inside their child’s lungs. The next, Abbot strides into the room unceremoniously, gloves snapping over his hands, like she and he have worked together a million times and not at all like this is the first time they have ever stood within five feet of each other.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Abbot, the attending physician. Who do we have here, Dr. Mohan?”

His mouth moves into a convincing smile, hazel eyes gone soft as he looks at the red-faced boy dwarfed by the adult-sized gurney. Not at all like the man who had appeared in Maggie’s doorway six hours ago. Samira wonders what this act is costing him, how painful it is to shove his grief down so deep.

Slipping the stethoscope off his neck, Abbot glances at Samira when she fails to immediately respond, giving her a little nod, the “Go on” implied. Samira stares a little – she can’t help it. Her brain is trying to reconcile the differences in him. He’s handsome, Samira finds herself realizing with some shock, before immediately chastising herself for losing focus, for thinking something so unprofessional. This is her boss who was just widowed.

She finally finds her words. “This is Dominic, and his parents Kate and Luke. Dominic is having some trouble breathing tonight.”

Abbot makes a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat, before leaning over to slip his stethoscope beneath the boy’s superhero pajama shirt. “I see that. Nice to meet you, Dominic. Dr. Mohan here is one of the best we have, so we’ll get you feeling better.” And then Abbot’s eyes are finding hers, where she’s already staring back at him, and he gives her another nod, before his eyes flick over both her shoulders. “Luke, Kate, nice to meet you as well. Would you give Dr. Mohan a little space, just a step back. Like that, yes. Thank you. Now, tell me what’s going on with our friend Dominic, Dr. Mohan.”

Samira feels like she’s floating as she exits the Emergency Department. She’s exhausted, sure, but she hasn’t felt so hopeful in so long. Like maybe emergency medicine wasn’t a grievous mistake. Like maybe she was actually meant for it.

The early morning sun warms her face, and she can’t stop the smile from pulling at her face as she turns to head down the sidewalk towards her bus stop.

She pulls up short when she sees a now familiar figure on a bench against the building, head hung low between hunched shoulders, face pressed into his hands. At Abbot’s feet, a backpack sits, unceremoniously dumped on its side, like he and the pack half collapsed as soon as they were free of the building.

Part of her wants to slip by, to not draw his attention. But part of her, a bigger part of her, is replaying the way he clearly was trying so hard today. The way he was clearly suppressing his own needs for the needs of the department.

“Dr. Abbot?” she tries, pausing a few feet away.

He doesn’t lift his head, leaves his face pressed into his hands, but she sees his shoulders stiffen, and knows he’s heard her. With his positioning, she sees the glint of his wedding band, the titanium dark even in the warm light of morning. It looks heavy. She wonders if the weight of it is a comfort or a torment now.

When he still doesn’t move, she again thinks about leaving. She doesn’t know him, not really. She doesn’t owe him anything beyond being a good resident, to listen to his teaching and follow his instructions. She doesn’t owe him anything. But again, she is reminded of the loss of her own father.

“Can I get you anything? Or, can I get Robby? Or Dana? Sorry, I know I’m not what–”

“Thank you, Dr. Mohan.”

His voice is hoarse again, like the beginning of the night, and thick, like he might be about to cry. He doesn’t lift his head, but his fingers move, rubbing at his eyes. The dismissal is fair enough, she supposes. Kinder and more polite than any dismissal Robby has ever given her.

She starts to step away, to continue home, to sleep, when he says, “Dr. Mohan?” stopping her in her tracks.

His head finally lifts and she sees that she was right. The obicularis of his eyes are red, agitated. His hazel irises burn almost green, brightened by the combination of the morning sun and the unshed tears in his eyes. “Sorry,” he continues, “That was rude. Thank you. I mean it.”

She is out of her depth now, unsure how to handle a boss who not only shows his grief, but apologizes when he misplaces it on her. She isn’t sure what to say, isn’t sure what’s appropriate, so she says what feels right. What she would want to hear. Not promises that she would feel better, not fake words about how the grief would pass. Just comfort that she was not alone and that her feelings, whatever they may be, made sense.

“It’s ok, really. I’m sorry about… I heard about your wife. I’m very sorry.”

Abbot still watches her, sniffling once, rubbing at his jaw. “Thank you.” After a moment, he braces his hands on his knees, straightening his torso. “Not making a very good impression, am I?”

The cadence of the joke is there, but the tone is all wrong, and there’s a twinge behind Samira’s sternum at the vulnerability of it all. His wife died three weeks ago and he is trying to make her feel more comfortable around him. It makes her want to be brave, to be vulnerable, to share some of the weight of what he has endured.

“I– I lost my dad. When I was younger,” she offers, eye dropping away from his for a moment, long enough for a mental image of her father to flash through her mind, as he was the last time he was truly alive.

“I'm sorry.”

She shrugs, because that's what people expect you to do, after a certain amount of time has passed. They expect you to be ok, to move on. They expect you to ignore the gaping void in your life that hangs in the periphery, always just close enough that you can never fully forget it's there.

“It was a while ago.” She finally looks up again, a little surprised to find Abbot has not looked away.

His mouth twitches then, like he might smile, like she has said something a little bit ridiculous. Like for a moment he's forgotten the depth of his grief, the weight of the ring on his hand.

“Doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt. And for that, I'm sorry.”

Again, Samira finds herself not sure what to say, so off balance around the simple, earnest way Jack Abbot seems to move through the world. Where Robby is a blackhole, an inevitable gravitational pull she constantly fights against, Jack Abbot feels more like the first light of dawn, inevitable in his own way, but like a promise of a new day. It makes her want to trust him. It makes her want to be someone he trusts.

She finds herself opening her mouth without really thinking, just wanting to offer some more comfort. “Sometimes, when I’m sad about my dad…” But she catches herself, letting her voice trail off, remembering who this is, where they are. Remembering what he has just endured. She remembers this is her new boss, that she doesn't know him. She remembers that maybe he doesn’t want her comfort – Robby never does, after all.

“What?” His head cocks, the tense line of his body now curious instead crumpled under grief.

Shaking her head, she says, “It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have… It was insensitive of me to compare our situations.”

Again, that twitch of his mouth, like he sees right through her. A duck of his head, like he is a little bit amused by her. “If it was nothing, I don't think you would have said anything.”

He’s right. She knows he’s right. And he has been nothing but open with her, so she owes him the same. “Sometimes when I miss him, I go read a new case report. And I think about what I would tell him about it. We used to read together, all the time. Not case studies, obviously, because I was twelve. But, it’s sort of the same. And the case study distracts me, and thinking about him being alive… It helps.”

The shine has returned to his eyes. He clears his throat as he wipes at his nose. “That's… That's a good idea, Dr. Mohan. I’ll have to try it.”

He doesn’t get what she’s offering him, she realizes. Samira drops her backpack off her shoulder, into the crook of her elbow, so she can tug the zipper open. Rifling through the main pocket, she grasps at the stapled papers inside and pulls them free. “I read this case study yesterday. Written up by a team of doctors in the Australian outback about drone based emergency medical intervention to serve remote populations.”

Samira extends the sheets of paper towards him. He looks up into her face, then down at the papers, then back to her, like she, too, has defied his expectations of her. And for a moment, the briefest flash, a dimple appears on his cheek, at odds with his red-rimmed, watery eyes. It vanishes before she can get a good look at it, because Abbot stoops, grabbing his backpack and sliding to his right, making room on the bench.

In the light of the sun rising over Pittsburgh, Jack Abbot says, “Tell me more, Dr. Mohan.”

Chapter Text

It’s a quiet night in the ED. 

Jack would never, ever admit that out loud, but he can’t stop himself from thinking it, as he surveys his department. He's had enough bad luck for a lifetime. There’s no need to draw the attention of the fates more than he already has. 

The board glows from its mounted position above him, a scant few lines occupied, none of them emergent, none of them critical. There are less than three patients per doctor, which is the lowest ratio he has seen in… years. 

It’s a quiet night in the ED, and Jack refuses to voice the observation to Bridget, even though he can feel her gaze tracking his restless movements. Bridget, who, despite the months that have passed, still keeps a watchful eye on him from the Hub. Instead, he works his way from room to room, past the empty, dark expanses of Trauma One and Trauma Two. Ready, waiting, but empty for the last six hours. Ellis charts at a mobile desktop outside the room of her cardiac patient, stabilized, but under observation for the next several hours. Shen is handling a laceration and a sprained wrist, neither of which warrant so much as a glance from Jack. 

With neither Shen nor Ellis needing anything from Jack, that left just one other doctor on shift. The youngest and newest to night shift. And, as of a few months ago, the only one who had seen him cry at work. 

He finds Dr. Samira Mohan seated on the end of the gurney, one leg tucked beneath her, facing away from the door. A purple clip holds dark curls away from her face, and she has a navy hoodie pulled on over her scrub top. Over her shoulder, he can see she has her hands cupped towards the child in rainbow pajamas seated at the head of the bed. An immobilizer is strapped around the girl’s right leg. With careful movements, eyes focused on Dr. Mohan’s cupped hands, the girl reaches forward, selecting an object before bringing it back to her lap. 

Dr. Mohan doesn't move, just patiently watches as the girl slowly threads what Jack now sees is a bead onto a string. Once she has arranged it to her satisfaction, she looks up expectantly back at the doctor. 

“What’s next?” 

“R.” 

The scene repeats itself, the child reaching forward, selecting another bead from Mohan’s hands, then returning to her lap. As he fully steps into the room, Jack raps his knuckles into the metal of the door frame. “Dr. Mohan, how are we doing in here?”

Mohan whips towards him, a curl escaping her clip with the movement, and lurches to standing. Her hands are still cupped in front of her, revealing a pile of beads, some colorful, others white with small black letters embossed on them. Her eyes go a little wild, flicking between Jack and the clock on the wall, like she's trying to calculate how long she’s been with the patient. 

“Sorry, it's just that it's slow, and she was having a hard time sleeping, and I thought a relaxing activity might help, and-” 

Jack cocks his head at her, raising a hand to interrupt. Not for the first time, he wonders what exactly Robby is doing with his interns and residents, how his teaching style has degraded so much that it has left a brilliant second year resident so jumpy, so immediately apologetic any time she realizes she is operating at less than 100% efficiency. 

“I was just checking in, Mohan.” 

She relaxes, marginally, shoulders dropping while the corner of her mouth lifts in a slightly embarrassed smile. They're still getting used to each other, even though they've worked dozens of shifts together at this point. Their interactions started out stilted, awkward, unless there was a case study or a patient between them, but it had slowly morphed into something more comfortable. Not friends, per se, but friendly, at least. Mohan still seemed to struggle with understanding that the dynamic between them, the friendliness, didn't need to stop when they were on shift together.

“Imaging has been completed, with a consult request into ortho. She says her pain is at a three.” 

Jack nods, opening his mouth to inquire as to what Mohan had observed in the imaging, when a small voice excitedly interrupted. “We're making friendship bracelets while my mom talks to Keiara!” Her hands extend towards them, a partially assembled bracelet clutched between fingers sporting nails painted ten different colors. 

Mohan turns away from Jack then and, even in profile, he can see the curve of her cheek as her mouth lifts in a smile. “We made Maya’s first, and now we're making mine,” Mohan says. “Could you tell Dr. Abbot what your pain is, on the scale we talked about?” 

The little girl’s face scrunches, thinking, before she announces, “Three, still. I can feel it but it doesn’t make me sick or give me a headache.” 

Highest patient satisfaction scores for a reason, Jack thinks to himself, as he steps backwards, retreating from the room. “Looks like you've got everything under control, Mohan. Come get me when you hear from ortho, alright?”

As he walks off, back towards the Hub, Jack hears Maya ask Mohan, “What’s his name?” 

At the end of his shift, when Jack is pulling his backpack from his locker, someone steps into his periphery, and a glance reveals Mohan chewing at her lip. 

“Everything alright, Mohan? Got another case report for me?” It wasn’t a particularly rough day, for his ever present grief, but, admittedly, he enjoyed the quiet camaraderie of talking through a case report with someone who didn’t actually know Jen. Someone who isn’t carefully tracking his progress and recovery, someone not constantly monitoring him for signs of improvement or decline. 

She shakes her head though, instead extending her hand towards him, something colorful looped on her fingers. “Maya insisted I give this to you. I didn’t know what your favorite colors were, when she asked, so I hope green and blue are ok. I don’t have much use for a bracelet with “JACK” on it, you know?” 

Reaching out, Jack slips the bracelet off her fingers, surprised by the warmth of her skin against his, despite the ever present chill of the ED. The bracket gets caught on the edge of his ring briefly, as he slips it over his hand and onto his wrist. He twists his hand, admiring the way the small glass beads shone under the fluorescents. 

“Think Robby will be jealous?”

He doesn't know why he says it. It's stupid, especially given Robby is technically Mohan’s mentor. But his discomfort vanishes when her face splits into a smile and, not for the first time, Jack feels the warmth of it like stepping from the shadows into the sun. He should tell her thank you, or good job, or anything else related to her efforts today. He should not be thinking about her smile, or its warmth, or the way he will probably think about it the whole drive home. 

“My favorite color is green, for the record, although no one has asked me that in a decade,” is what comes out of his mouth, instead. Her smile doesn't fade, just shifts into something even softer, something knowing, that forces Jack to clear the emotion from his throat before he continues. “Good guess, Mohan. You got a minute? I found this case report from South Korea that I thought might interest you.”