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“— that’s what I’m saying,” Trinity is saying as Samira comes up to the nurses’ station. Trinity’s leaning up against Parker’s favorite workstation and Parker is charting, clearly listening with half an ear.
When Trinity sees Samira, she perks up. “Excellent. Samira, come listen to my theories.”
“What theories are these?” says Samira, distracted as she takes a glance at the board. She won’t say it out loud, but it’s looking relatively calm for a night shift this close to Christmas. They’ve only had one ornament-in-the-ass incident, even, and it hadn’t even broken. The guy had had the foresight to use a wooden Santa instead of glass, so. Only a few splinters.
“I’m saying,” says Trinity, turning to Samira, “that Abbot’s acting real fucking shifty about his Secret Santa assignment. And it has something to do with you.”
She says this last bit with an accusatory air, pointing at Samira, and Samira feels her whole body come to attention, though she tries to hide it. From the aggressive eyebrowing Parker is doing at her, she’s only marginally successful. “Oh?” she says, like a normal casual person who doesn’t care at all, “in what way?”
“In the way that he keeps asking me what you and I like to do for fun,” says Trinity, with the air of a person who has endured untold agonies. “He asked me if we liked to go to the mall.”
“We don’t even hang out that much,” says Samira, unthinking, and then winces slightly at how rude that sounds. But Trinity just laughs, and Samira is once again grateful that Trinity’s brusqueness last year has melted away now that she’s decided she and Samira are friends. It helps that Trinity has Parker now too. They make a neat little trio when Trinity takes night shifts. And Trinity doesn’t mind when Samira sometimes blurts things out because she’s out of practice with small talk. Like now.
“That’s what I told him,” says Trinity, laughing, “and he looked like I’d told him I hated him and wanted him to die.”
Parker rolls her eyes. “Trinity here thinks Abbot has you, Samira.”
“What?” says Samira, trying to be extremely chill and not betray the little spark of excitement that zings up her spine at that.
Her excitement is two-fold. The first reason is that everyone wants Jack Abbot as their Secret Santa. He gives objectively excellent gifts, thoughtful and useful and entirely out of the $25 price limit. Last year, he’d given Parker a glorious set of trauma shears, and the year before Heather had gotten a fancy personalized stethoscope. He swears up and down that he doesn’t rig the system, but it’s an open secret that he always chooses a resident, someone who’ll appreciate the gift and would never have bought it for themselves. So getting Jack Abbot, everyone agrees, is a little like winning the lottery.
The second reason is one that she doesn’t quite feel ready to put a name to, but which she feels swirling around in her stomach every time they talk or text or even just see each other. It’s not anything, yet, but neither is it nothing. It’s something, or on the precipice of something. A possibility, an open secret hiding in the way his eyes meet hers for a beat too long or the way her heart speeds up when she gets a text from him, even if — especially if — it’s another case report he thinks she might like. Or in the way he’s been bringing her, and only her, increasingly elaborate coffees at the start of shifts they share together.
It’s not like — she’s not expecting him to rig the system to get her; saying that even to herself feels like jinxing whatever’s developing between them. But she also feels like it would be entirely in keeping for him, a person who openly rigs the secret santa gifting system every year, to rig it in favor of a person he seems to, well, favor. Still, she’s just as superstitious as anyone else in their field about the risk of naming things out loud — it’s quiet, it’s calm, Jack Abbot likes you, etc — and so she doesn’t say anything. But she can’t quite stop the spark of excitement building in her.
She doesn’t let herself think intentionally about it, but she can’t help but notice little things that could be nothing, but might be something. He texts her the next day to ask when her next day off is, and then during their next shared shift asks a group of people hovering around the desk, including her, if any of them had been to see the lights at the Phipps. His gaze lingers on her as she very casually tells everyone that she hasn’t ever been, but would love to go. Maybe on her next day off.
A few days later, he seems to finally get up the courage to ask her directly. She gets a text as she’s getting home from a shift — a good one, nothing grievous but a tense little thoracotomy that she and Abbot had overseen together which had been, as terrible as it sounds to say, incredibly fun. Great job with the thoracotomy, says the text, And don’t think I didn’t notice that cut pattern from the JAMA article you sent last month. She thrills a little at that, then tells herself to get a grip. Anyway, he’s saying, proper punctuation and all, you and Santos are friends right? I asked her today about something and she threw a pen at me and told me to ask you myself.
Samira laughs, a little giddy, and texts back. yeah we’re friends. hope you survived the pen attack.
Barely, he says, and then a bubble appears and disappears and then appears again. She holds her breath. Anyway do you guys go to the movies together at all? Shen told me about AMC A-list.
Samira laughs. He’s such a … well. Something. no, she says, trinity likes tragic lesbian art house cinema and i like action movies. not compatible.
Good to know, he says. Knew you had good taste.
The day of the gift exchange dawns miserable and slushy and cold, and the ED is overrun almost immediately with MVAs and nasty falls on icy sidewalks. Samira’s on a swing shift, which is nice because she can see the day and night shift gift exchanges. Mel gives Dennis a hat she knit herself, which is slouchy and oversized and impossibly charming. Donnie gives Robby a patch for his motorcycle that says “I <3 ORGAN DONATION.” Samira herself has Dana as her recipient, which is stressful, because Dana is perfect and Samira always wants to impress her and stay on her good side. But it’s also easy, because Dana only ever wants one thing: a packet of Marlboro Reds. Samira pads the gift out with a personalized Zippo lighter she found on Etsy.
She’s feeling good — excited even, as the night shift starts to come in. Abbot bustles in with rosy cheeks and a cheeky grin for her, and she feels her heart rate start to spike.
But then Victoria is coming over to her, shy and smiling with a very nicely-wrapped gift, and Samira feels her heart sink, and then hates herself a little, and then makes herself beam at Victoria.
Victoria has given her an entirely lovely cashmere hat and scarf set that is almost certainly out of the budget limit, but she looks so nervous and bashful that Samira can’t stop herself from lavishing her with gratitude until Victoria gets overwhelmed and scurries off.
Samira sees Abbot watching her from across the nurse’s desk, and abruptly feels so embarrassed that she can’t stand it. She needs to get out of here, needs a breather. She feels so stupid, somehow. She’d really thought —
She’s almost to the lockers when she hears Abbot call out, “Ah, Santos, just the person I was looking for,” and her heart sinks a little more as it all comes together.
She turns and sees Trinity looking properly gobsmacked as Abbot hands her a slim card. “Annual pass to the Row House. One movie a month.”
Trinity looks at him in astonishment. “I didn’t know they offered that.”
“They don’t,” says Abbot, “usually,” and saunters away.
Trinity looks at Samira then, and Samira abruptly can’t handle the look she’s giving her, so she runs away, busying herself with stuffing her new scarf and hat into her locker.
She’s so busy in fact, that she nearly misses the slip of paper that comes tumbling out as she opens her locker, but she’d know that sharp hand anywhere. It’s an address, somewhere in Shadyside she thinks, and a time: noon tomorrow. There’s no signature, but she’d know that sharp hand anywhere.
The rest of the shift passes in a haze of conflicting emotions. She’s kicking herself for thinking Abbot would have rigged the system for her, she’s embarrassed for wishing he had, and she’s desperately curious to know what tomorrow has in store.
Noon finds her in front of a charming little craftsman, porch festooned in swooping cedar garlands and a fresh pine wreath on the door, and when she knocks, she’s met with a be-sweatered Jack Abbot, flustered and pink and smiling.
“Ah,” he says, running a hand through his still-wet hair, “just in time. Come in.”
She loiters, bemused, in his entryway while he bustles around somewhere in the house, and she takes in glimpses of everything peeking around open doorways. There’s a slightly lopsided Christmas tree in the corner of a living room, piles of journals and papers on a broad kitchen table, and —
“You have a cat?” she says as he comes back into the entryway, coat in hand. She’d seen a tuft of tail darting around a corner.
“Oh, Cleo!” he says, brightly. “She’s shy. But she might say hi next time.”
Samira feels like she’s missing a few steps. “Next time?”
“Well,” says Abbot, and then doesn’t say anymore, just gets his boots on and bustles her out the door.
They’re almost to his truck when she finally pulls him to a stop.
“Dr. Abbot,” she says, and then, feeling brave, “Jack. What the hell are we doing.”
Abbot — Jack — stops abruptly then, face going bright red. “Oh fuck,” he says, “I thought — sorry, did you not get my card?”
“No? Just your address?”
He goes, if possible, even redder. “Fuck,” he says, running a hand through his hair again. He turns to face her.
“Well, I laid this all out in the card, and it was a lot easier but, ok, I didn’t want to be too obvious, so I took Santos and then I figured I’d do something separate for you, and so the card, and I had this whole day planned and I wanted to — sorry, I thought, you coming here, you were saying yes, I didn’t think I’d have to do the asking in person, and —“
She feels herself smiling helplessly now. “Jack, whatever it is, I’ll probably say yes.”
He cuts off, looking at her, and then he smiles, one of the broad boyish grins he gives her when he’s about to suggest they try something crazy in an OR. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says, smiling back.
“You might regret it,” says Jack, and he’s closer now, crowding her into the side of the truck.
“Probably not,” she says, and they’re both smiling, and then they’re kissing, and it’s perfect.