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He’s on his way out—and he truly did intend to leave this time, he was going to sleep—but then he sees her.
He’s walking through chairs, slow and measured, doing a quick scan of the patient load. He’s not really seeing anything though, not at all. His corneas have gained a filmy quality to them, a subtle glaze that rendered his vision off. It had been a normal day for all intents and purposes, but then came Howard.
Before I can’t talk, I just wanna say: thank you for everything.
The first cloud had floated across his vision and he’d blinked and blinked, again and again, to banish it away.
Sorry for all this trouble.
Maybe it was the look in Howard’s eyes. The shame. The discomfort.
You have a 100% chance of death without it.
50% chance with.
Maybe the way Howard seemed to grimly accept his fate, regardless of what they said. Another long, slow blink, another cloudy spot.
I wanna talk to my sister first.
It persisted, as the minutes ticked past; the world was fuzzy at the edges, an unreal quality to it. He knew what it was, he knew he needed to get away from the ED soon.
And then. The final cloud, turning his vision hazy, pulling his mind away.
Oh, I forgot to tell him I love him.
Howard was in surgery. Howard with the guilty face, with a joke on the tip of his tongue, with sad eyes. Howard, who was Jack, so many years ago. Betrayed by the one thing in his control, left at the mercy of, begging for the regard of, shamefully asking for the help of.
Car crash, burn unit, four leg surgeries over ten years.
Laid me up so much, I lost my job.
Life is a slippery slope. Memories are a curse. Memories appeared in his path, deceptively shallow, but Jack knew how deep the waters could be, knew that he could drown sooner than he could float.
So, Jack walked through chairs with cataracted vision, mind pulled between two realities; the past, the present, the grim in between, the hours spent spinning the metal around his finger, the days staring blankly at the wall trying to remember the last time they’d had breakfast together, danced together, sat together.
Chairs were familiar ground, at least. The hospital, the patients, were untouched. So, Jack walked through chairs, slow, steady.
A voice catches his attention; he’s too vigilant to miss the commanding sharpness of it, too battle-tested to ignore brewing conflict.
“Sit the fuck down,” it says and his head whips over. What he sees is more destabilising than he could imagine.
Samira; covered in a thin sheen of sweat, Samira panting with a tight expression on her face, Samira pushed into a wheelchair by that smart med student.
Jack’s ears are ringing as he watches her get quickly wheeled away. He’s following after, he can see his surroundings changing, but he can’t feel his legs, can’t feel them moving at all.
He watches the med student push her through chairs, back through the doors to the ER, gaze fixed on the closed double doors. Jack feels like he can hardly see at all, through his foggy corneas. He blinks again, trying to pull the world into focus. He watches the med student push her into a room, watches Langdon kneel in front of her, but he can’t seem to hear what they’re saying. He stands at the mouth of the room, only to be shoved aside by Perlah, speeding in while snapping gloves on.
Jack is pulled back into the present suddenly. He inhales sharply through his nose once and marches his way back, eyes jumping around the room in search of them. He watches Perlah pull her gloves on.
“Someone present,” he barks, ignoring the tenuous sound of his voice. He looks directly at the med student, then Langdon. His eyes jump to Samira when she speaks instead.
“I think I’m— an MI? My chest is so heavy,” she recounts through a shallow breath. He blinks, looking back at the med student, then at Perlah. He can’t lose it, he reminds himself. He has to be steady, he has to—
“Draw blood and start getting leads on her. We need to rule out a cardiac event,” he instructs. Jack watches Perlah begin to move, tying off Samira’s arm and prepping the materials for the blood draw. He feels a calmness settle into his bones, the kind that had guided him through the last forty four years of his life. This was a routine to fall back on, the medicine was the only thing that ever made sense in the end.
He watches Joy and Langdon tag team the leads and he tries to steady his breath. Jack looks at Samira again, watches the way her brows scrunch. Her hand is clenched tight, held up near her chest and she’s sweating still, head whipping around the watch the moving hands around her. He catches her eyes, finally, and understanding crystallizes in his mind.
Samira stares back at him, breath still coming out harshly, as the machine records the rhythm of her heart. Subconsciously, Jack finds himself breathing deeper, more exaggeratedly.
“EKG is normal,” someone says to his left. He nods absently, eyes still fixed on Samira. He grabs the read-out thrust at him, eyes scanning. No ST-segment elevation, no T-wave inversions, and no QT prolongation. Okay. Not an MI, not cardiomyopathy.
Samira makes a noise, then, and he looks up. She’s still sweaty, but now closer to lucid. “I’m–I’m okay?”
Jack nods at her, slowly to catch her eyes. “What happened?”
“I-I don’t know,” she says miserably, fist coming up to rub against her sternum. Jack’s own hands itch to be of use, to provide any level of comfort.
“I just got really hot, and I started having trouble breathing.”
Jake nods again, looking at Perlah. She has Samira’s blood in hand, watching him; Jack is briefly mesmerized at the sight of it, the red, almost black, sitting innocuously in the tube. His attention is pulled away when she passes it to a runner, instructing them to rush the test.
“We’re running the labs just in case, okay?” Jack tries to pitch his voice lower, trying to soothe.
“She was tachy, but it’s resolved now,” the same voice adds. Jack turns to see the med student, watching him with furrowed brows. He takes a moment to look around the room, at the concern etched in everyone’s faces.
He looks back to Samira, noting the way her eyes have settled solidly on him. She looks smaller than he’d ever seen her and the sight cracks his chest open. “Have you eaten anything?”
“Yeah,” she replies instantly, head nodding. Where he expects a defensive edge to her voice, he finds desperation instead.
“You staying hydrated?”
“100%,” she says, sitting up straighter. Jack’s eyes roam her, jumping down to the EKG again.
“I’m doing everything right,” she insists, then, voice gaining strength. Jack looks back down, into her eyes, and he recognizes the edge to them, recognizes the far away quality.
“It’s everything around me that’s all fucked up!” Samira sits up fully, then, pulling on the leads attached to her, crumpling the sheet below her in a fist. “It’s just my mom moving and calling me over and over again and now I'm scrambling to find a job next year."
Jack wants to butt in as she starts to look more agitated again, but she continues. “I had it all planned out, and now everything’s just out the window," she finishes, one hand coming back to rub against her sternum.
Jack watches her for a second, eyes tracking a bead of sweat on her temple before jumping around the room. “Everyone out, she needs space.” His tone brokers no argument and everyone files out quickly. He closes the door behind the last of them, turning the lights off as well.
He takes a breath before turning around, “You’re having a panic attack, Samira.” He tries to keep his tone gentle, but he sees the moment the words register. They settle in her like an impossibility, as if the words he said make no sense at all.
“What? No, I’m fine, I’m—”
“Samira, it’s okay,” he cuts in, taking several strides forward. “It’s okay, can you breathe for me?” He watches her and waits.
She looks so distressed in that moment that Jack can just barely stop himself from scooping her into an embrace. She looks so small still, he’s sure she’d disappear in the cage of his arms.
“Watch me, Samira,” he instructs, taking a deep, exaggerated breath in, holding the air, and then blowing it out. She nods at him, eyes tracking his fingers, watching the way they count out the time; in for 3, hold for 3, out for 3.
They stay like that for a few minutes; Samira’s breath begins to even out, her shoulders slowly relaxing and dropping away from her ears, and her fingers releasing the sheets from the vice grip. Jack’s own heart is heavy in his chest, already tender from a day of reminders, fit to burst into a pool of blood and throbbing flesh. He swallows down the feeling.
“Do you—,” he coughs, clearing his throat. “Do you want to talk about it?” Her eyes snap to him, now closer to sleepy than manic.
“My dad died when I was 13,” she says after a moment. Her eyes aren’t on him anymore, instead staring down at her hands twisting in her lap.
Jack steps closer, one large stride and his thighs are grazing the bed. He places a heavy hand over hers, arresting the movement.
"Heart attack,” she adds. Her voice is smaller than he’d ever heard it, lacking any of the usual Samira, for lack of a better term. She looks up at him then; he’s not sure what she’d seen, not sure if his face is any help at all. He squeezes her hands once, trying again for comfort.
“I remember that day so clearly, he dropped like a stone in the living room, not even 10 minutes after we got back from the ER.”
“I’m so sorry,” he says, words whispered in the air between them.
She doesn’t seem to hear him at all. “I wonder if he was scared when he died, if he felt like I did.” She sighs, breath leaving her in a quick stream that tickles his forearm. “All I could think was that my life was a waste. That even when I planned and planned and worked myself to death, I still wasn’t enough.”
Jack’s hand tightens again, in shock rather. “Samira—” When she doesn’t look, he puts both hands on her shoulders, crouching lower to catch her eyes. “Samira, no.”
Samira scoffs, “He probably was scared, but all he told me was that he loved me. I heard it when I thought I was—. I heard him whispering I love you, kanna. I can’t remember if that’s what his voice even sounded like.”
Jack’s vision grew hazy again. His chest is burning, a rush of jealousy blazing through him; He didn’t get to be there. She didn’t tell him anything and he didn’t tell her anything. He’s instantly ashamed at his own thoughts, blinking harshly, trying to pull the room back into focus.
Samira clears her throat, pulling away. She runs a hand down her scrub top, trying to settle the wrinkles. “I just need some water and I can head back out there, I don’t need all of this,” she says, eyes imploring him to understand. Her voice is painfully close to a whine and Jack tries to ignore that.
Jack tries to swallow back the acidic taste of his selfishness, throat working. “It’s okay to not be okay,” he says, defaulting to words that have been said to him before. “You’re not weak for needing a moment.”
Samira stares back at him, not blinking for a while, before nodding. “Okay.”
Jack steps away, his hands clenching at his sides. He itches to settle them over hers again, but he doesn’t deserve to, not really. He wants to confess it to her suddenly; to tell her that he couldn’t remember the sound of his wife’s voice either, that he was jealous she had those words to hold on to and that he needed a hug as much as he wanted to give her one right now.
“Any fellowship program would be lucky to have you and I will write as many reference letters as you’d like to attest to that,” he says instead. It’s easier to stick to the facts rather than feelings. Samira was the future of medicine and that was something tangible and real. Jack could fix that, he would fix that.
“Do you really think so?” her voice is pitched high, eyes a little wide and earnest. He wants to look away, but forces himself not to.
“Of course,” he says reflexively. “Of course. You think about what you want to do and I will help you get there,” he assures, eyes resolutely on her. “I know it seems like your life has imploded and your plan is gone, but there is always another plan and another option. Especially for you.”
Samira nods, slowly, like she’s trying to digest the words. “Okay,” she says finally, nodding again to herself. “I was thinking of um.. Dr. Al-Hashimi suggested geriatrics.”
His eyebrows shoot up, surprise clearly written on his face. His mind flashes to the dozens of case studies shared between them, each case more daring than the last, more miraculous too. “Not that you wouldn’t excel at that, or anything you choose, but is that where your interests lie?”
Samira laughs. A broken, horrible sort of laugh that makes him cringe internally. “Does it matter anymore?”
Jack frowns, mouth pulling to the side. He doesn’t respond, simply waits for her to give up and meet his eyes and when she does, he speaks. “Yes, it does, Samira.”
She looks away first, back down to her hands. Jack doesn't move towards her again.
They stay there, in the heavy silence of the Central 6, for another few minutes. Neither speak and Jack simply stands guard as Samira gathers herself. She pats the sheets of the bed she’d occupied, before grabbing her tie and securing her hair again. Jack’s eyes are fixed instead on the wall, unfocused.
Samira clears her throat at some point and his head snaps towards the sound. He hears a foggy “thanks” and nods once, reflexively. He watches the shape of her leave, a dark blob and then the click of a door. His eyes are fixed in that direction, but they can’t quite see.
His hands are shaking, he can feel the tremors and the way they crawl up his arm. He lets out a deep sigh, feeling more haggard than he had in a while; it reminds him of the anniversary of the first year without her, of the week he spent with his curtains drawn tight, staring down the bottom of a bottle. He clenches his fists, trying to bring feeling back to them, trying to bring himself back down to Earth.
My name is Jack Abbot. I’m in Pittsburgh.
today is saturday, the 4th of July and i miss you.
i love you i love you
His mind jumps to Samira, unbidden. He can see her, curled into herself, looking smaller than he’d ever seen.
i love you i love you
please don’t you leave me too.