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“Everything okay in here, Dr. Mohan?”
She’s sitting on the short stool at the man’s bedside (Adama, William, 72, head laceration resulting from a fall on an icy sidewalk, bleeding profusely, otherwise reports good health), finishing off, he can see, the neat set of stitches -six in total - to close up the small wound at his temple. It must have bled profusely (head wounds always do), there's a fair amount of blood to stain the man's impressively thick head of silvery hair, but otherwise he seems stable. In good humour, too, Jack notes, hardly surprising, given Samira's knack with putting her patients at ease; she's talking with him softly as she goes, explaining every step, distracting him.
Another good sign; he's not alone. In addition to the older man, a young woman is sitting in the small cubicle, tucked into a chair, more sprawled than sitting, her left knee bouncing restlessly. Slight with choppy blonde hair and dressed in the dark blue overalls of a navy pilot, she seems to be a force to be reckoned with as the energy surrounding her is fierce, if slightly chaotic, abrasive. Focused and intense, paradoxically, it also seems as though she’s seconds from bouncing around the room. She reminds Jack of Dr. Trinity Santos in some ways; more, she reminds Jack of his younger self in ways he could never have anticipated.
As he ruminates on the scene, and the people tucked away there, Samira looks up only briefly to greet him, her focus as always entirely on her work.
“Just finishing up with Mr. Adama here, Dr. Abbot, did you need me?”
As he waves away her offer, tells her that what he needs can wait, he assesses her as much as he does her patient. It's 5:30 in the morning; it had been a quiet night, still, she should be exhausted, she must be, but you’d never guess it looking at her. Her voice is calm, assured, undisturbed by the nature of her work and Jack’s quiet observation of it, the end of her twelve-hour shift showing on her face and by the slight fatigue he can see in the set of her shoulders, but in little else of her posture or in her attention to detail as she treats the patient. Dark, curly hair tucked up neatly in her trustworthy claw clip, she ties off the final stitch to suture Adama's wound closed. As Jack leans in to admire her skill with a needle (as to be expected, her stitches are neat, precise), he hums in acknowledgement as she tells them both she’ll be back with the results of the precautionary blood work before sending the nurse with the discharge papers.
Taking up the man’s chart, he glances only quickly at Mohan’s work to know it perfect, raising his gaze to smile at her patient even as she returns.
“Tests should be back shortly, assuming everything looks fine, Mr. Adama," she tells him, "but next time you might want to take care when you take out the garbage in the middle of winter.”
The man grimaces even as the younger woman reaches over with one hand to smack him accusatory on the shoulder.
“I will. Thank you, doctor,” he tells her, and grimaces further as a younger man steps into the cubicle to quietly join them.
He’s hardly a mirror image of Samira’s patient, this newcomer, but Jack sees enough there between the set of the eyes and their distinctive colour, from his bearing, that he reads ‘son’ easily from both his person and his demeanour. It's a suspicion confirmed with the younger man’s quiet introduction of ‘Lee Adama’ as he shakes Samira's hand, thanks her. Smiling, Jack watches as Samira interacts with both men in quiet and equally direct ways before she gathers up her tray, tells them she’ll be back to check in after the tests come back.
“You’re in good hands, Mr. Adama,” he tells him, already moving out from the small space, his mind half on the case of a teenager with severe alcohol poisoning in North Seven (it really had been a quiet night), when he hears the older man ask him, almost as an afterthought.
“Army, right?”
Stopping, turning, surprised, he watches Adama shrug as a small grin plays on his lips.
“I can usually tell.”
This time, Jack’s smile blooms easy. Two can play at that game. “That’s right. You Navy, then?” It’s an easy guess, given the younger woman’s dress and insignia (Navy), the younger man’s bearing at his father's side, not to mention the deferential way they both treat him, as if used to responding to his commands. Jack wouldn't be surprised if they were all armed forces personnel, or had been at some point.
“Guilty." This time, it's Jack's hand he's reaching to shake, unsurprisingly, Jack finds it measured, sturdy, firm. "Commander Bill Adama, retired.”
Even as the young blonde woman murmurs something about a text, gives a pat to the older man's shoulder, mentioning something about ‘switching off’ to send ‘Roslin back’ as she leaves, heading for the general direction of the Emergency Department’s reception, it's an easy decision for Jack to decide to stay an extra moment. Moving to settle into an easy stance at the side of the bed - by this time in his shift, his leg often needs what he thinks of as a little babying as the prosthesis starts to rub - he takes an extra moment to enjoy a fellow vet’s company.
Making a show of wincing, he smiles as he gets in a good ribbing – “Well, I promise, I won’t hold it against you, no matter how your guys mugged Army during the game last Sunday,” – and the older man chuckles, the sound a good one, one that lightens Jack's night just a little, hearing it.
“Good to know, Abbot, though, as a Navy man, I do have to say I’m glad it was that younger, prettier, nice doctor who stitched me up rather than you. She seemed sharp as a whip, too, which is more than I can say of you Army guys.”
This time, Jack’s smile is free of artifice entirely.
“Dr. Mohan is indeed one of our best.”
A big smile from both the patient and his son are given in return as the next few minutes pass easily as they sing Samira’s praises, making their appreciation for her efforts on behalf of the elder Adama known. It’s only in the quiet lull that follows that it happens, the conversation that changes everything. With his son having stepped away for a moment to use the restroom, Adama and Jack are shooting the shit waiting for his return, and casually rambling on, waving one hand towards Jack, the light of the hospital lights glinting on the wide golden ring that sits on his broad left hand, looking over to gesture vaguely at Jack’s darker ring in turn, the older man asks, almost as an afterthought:
“How long has it been since she passed?”
Without giving it much thought, almost on autopilot this time of night, Jack replies with the truth.
“Seven years.”
It seems almost unbelievable - seven years - to think that it’s been that long since he buried Michelle, since they had lowered into the cold ground, the drizzling November rains of the season pittering on his bare head as he stood over her grave. Seven years – it seems like an age ago, he remembers it as though it were yesterday, he remembers thinking of it as if it were a dream. Still, the shock of her death lingers more than anything, even if the sharp pain of losing her has faded for the most part, leaving him for the most part with only happy memories and the occasional pang of grief.
Only then, reflecting on that thought, does Jack realize the disconnect of the moment; he's exhausted, tired to the bone, so it takes a second longer for the pieces to slot together.
Had he mentioned he was a widower?
“How did you–?”
He’s still staring even as the old man nods with that expression of faded sadness. “Over a decade and a half in my case, though it feels longer, we’d been divorced five years before that. Still, even after burying her, even after everything we once were to one another faded away, the ring stayed on.”
Jack finds his voice still stands quiet as he continues to stare.
“I never found the need to take it off,” Adama continues, meanwhile, as if oblivious to the way Jack looks at him in shock. “Some days, despite everything, I wonder if I would even be able to do so.”
His broken voice barely recognizable, Jack, nodding, manages to force out words resembling English.
“I can’t imagine not putting it on in the morning.”
A little scoff as Adama settles further into the pillow, the lights from the small area glinting off the steel rims of the round glasses he wears, his eyes closing as if in search of reprieve from the harsh halogens that never turn off.
“Either can I. Why do we do that, do you think? It’s just that it feels like my finger is naked without it.”
Their conversation is then interrupted as the young blonde returns, accompanied by a slight, fluffy-haired redheaded woman, more than a bit younger than Adama, about Robby’s age, perhaps, Jack thinks, one with bearing the attitude of intense focus and deep concern. Arriving at his side, she takes Adama’s left hand, fingers gently, seemingly absently rubbing against the golden ring another (dead) woman had apparently placed on his hand, as she looks at him with a mix of fondness, worry and evident exasperation, bending to kiss him lightly, gently, full on the lips.
“You should have called me, Bill. I would have come straight home.”
Jack wouldn’t have thought it possible, but somehow, the older man looks, in that moment, sheepish.
“I didn’t want to worry you while you were in the final negotiations–” he starts before the redhead interrupts sharply and resolutely, the concern clear on her face.
“Don’t be ridiculous, to think that–”
They’re still bickering as Jack moves to leave them; he figures they have audience enough with the slim blonde watching, seeming both familiar and amused by their interplay and with the man's son due to return any moment. Even as he sees the small party leave later in the day, discharge papers in hand, he can’t help but think of them and of the older man’s earlier words.
My finger feels naked without it.
He ponders those words, and the older man’s strange insight – how could he have known Jack was a widower and not a married man? How had he known that Jack was in so many ways conflicted about the ring he wears? – and he watches as Adama squires the remarkable redhead so carefully out the ED’s main front doors, flanked by the complimentary figures of his son and the blonde who so suited him, he ponders. Even as he works, he watches and ponders and wonders and watches.
Reflects.
The next twelve hours that follow fly by, for he ponders those words all through those long hours of the double he hadn’t meant to work. Impossible not to, he wonders at the meaning of Adama’s words as he works so closely with the woman who had in so many ways provoked them. Impossible not to, he thinks on those words - my finger feels naked without it - as he watches her work. Samira Mohan, efficient and brilliant, a woman, a doctor with so much compassion – he watches her, he ponders, he wonders, and all the while, he reflects on what the ring he wears on his finger means to him (and, though it’s hard to even think it, possibly to her).
The days that follow, he ponders what that black tungsten ring that sits so snugly on his hand means for his future.