Archive of Our Own

Samira Mohan returned victorious from the great battlegrounds in the sky (the admin floor) at least once a day, busily fighting the good fight against the machine (Shen’s words). She usually brought (read: stole, blatantly) the good pastries, or a couple bags of the good coffee, or sometimes even a corporate card on which she ordered just, all of the food, as her spoils of war. Everyone knew to celebrate her wins. No one tracked her statistically insignificant losses. 

“She’s fucking terrifying,” was Langdon’s fond, sincere review when questioned. “Slo-Mo our entire asses - whatever they did to her in Stanford turned her into the Terminator. Admin have so many regrets about hiring her back. Robby’s so scared all of the time.”

She was, nominally, an ED attending. She was too good a doctor to waste purely on admin, and anyway, she liked to remind everyone, the whole point of her was to be on the ground so she had direct reports to use against admin. She was only a junior attending - for now - but was already so much better than Robby at handling the C-suite that he was rumoured to have set up a divert all from his inbox to hers. 

She was, in practice, the ED’s attack dog, and the attack dog of all the ED’s many and varied denizens. She was very good at her job, maybe because she looked so sweet and had such a reputation as a bleeding heart that no one expected her to be so fucking mean when the occasion called for it. 

She was also, in practice, right now, like, while they all watched in frozen horror for the first twenty seconds of it happening, enduring a rare statistically significant loss - patient vs physician. She was, in this moment, leaning against the hub and bleeding through the gauze Dana and Robby were pressing against three different penetrating stab wounds on her anterior abdomen while Robby bellowed for a gurney and Dana hollered for security. 

“So thrilled to be back in town, Slam,” Parker said, slipping in alongside Robby as they wheeled Samira into Trauma 2. Two wounds on the right, one on the left. Okay, well, that was no fun. “Lucky me, picking up this shift, huh?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Samira sobbed, and also kind of laughed, because what the fuck else was she supposed to do as they shifted her onto the bed. “Fuck - and nobody call Jack.”

The thing about Samira Mohan was that she’d always had the capacity to be completely insane, and it wasn’t Parker Ellis’ fault that a lot of people missed that. Case in point-

“So she found the solution he wanted for his mom’s care,” said Langdon (attending physician, Board certified, still acing his monthly drug screenings thank you very much), “and because it was at a hospital on the wrong side of the river-”

“He’s on a psych hold,” Parker said, temples throbbing. She was not looking forward to the double she was about to volunteer for, and she was only here anyway because she was a fucking locum today because apparently half of everyone was sick (it wasn’t even flu season, Jesus) and her surprisingly chill overlords over at Presby had given her 72 off mid-week and she’d been tempted by the siren song of sharing lunch with Samira and seeing Abbot and Shen at handover. It had been fully two months since all their schedules had aligned for journal club, and Parker hadn’t moved back to Pittsburgh to not see her people. “And honestly? I’m kind of surprised Slam didn’t stab him back. I’ve been to self-defence classes with her. She’s feisty.”

Langdon didn’t look surprised by that. He’d been more or less unphasable since his Big Return, and Parker had liked Langdon 2.0 a lot more than the original recipe when they still worked together more regularly. Good to see he’d kept his head out of his ass.

“Question,” said the skinny kid whose name Parker had erased in the past two-and-a-half years of not being at the Pitt. Was he still a resident? Maybe? What was his name. Whitebread? It couldn’t possibly be that, could it? Parker just wouldn’t respond to him until she heard Langdon say his name. 

“Yeah, Whittaker, go nuts,” Langdon said, scanning over the chart a very nervous, incredibly tiny intern had proffered to him like a goat to a hungry god. What were they feeding the residents nowadays? She’d called Abbot a punk on like, her third day, and Samira had gotten to maybe the end of their first week before rolling her eyes every time Robby chided her (she’d also cried about it afterwards until their R3 year, Parker was pretty sure, but she’d still done it and that counted for a lot more than people realised). Kids these days. No spark.

“Did we, uh, know? About Doctor Mohan’s… Situation?”

Oh boy. Parker knew, obviously, as did Abbot and Shen. Dana probably knew, because Dana knew most things, and Lena because Lena let Abbot away with approximately zero shit and she fucking loved Samira. Perlah and Princess? Maybe, not a lot got past them, and while they loved a gab they also had enough sense not to gossip harmfully. Robby might know if he checked his emails or listened when he was spoken to, but given the rumours about that divert all had at least some truth to them… Who ever knew anything with Robby.

But mostly no, people didn’t know about Samira’s situation, not in full. More people knew she was married than didn’t (thanks, diamond so big it was visible from literal space, even if it was worn only outside the hospital), but even then it wasn’t something she advertised. She’d been careful not to let anyone at all know about Itty-Bit until she was way, way past the twelve-week mark, and she was carrying so small that it hadn’t been hard to hide it. She’d only had to size up two sizes in her scrub bottoms and one on top, which seemed to Parker a genuine miracle. All those Pilates and all that yoga paying off, she supposed. 

“Please, please, for the love of all that is holy and a bunch of things that aren’t,” Langdon said, looking genuinely concerned, “tell me you aren’t about to call Mohan an unmarried mother, Choirboy.”

“No! I mean, I know she’s married, anyway! No, I only meant that she’s been working as long of hours as ever, and if we’d known we could’ve helped-”

“Slam knows her own limits, and she’s kept it pretty lowkey,” Parker cut in smoothly, “and we’re going to do the same. Okay?”

“Yes, but-”

“There’s no buts here,” Parker said, a little less smoothly. “She’s just been stabbed, and it’s serious enough that Walsh didn’t even make a joke about what a shitty patch job Robby did when she came down to pick Slam up, so if you could all manage to not gossip about her until we know the outcome of her surgery that would be neat.”

Whitebread subsided. He looked a little more cowed than he maybe deserved, but that was Langdon’s problem as someone who actually worked here, in this hospital, on a regular basis, and so was responsible for the guy’s education. 

“I think people might’ve asked Samira directly,” Langdon said thoughtfully, “if they weren’t afraid of her turning on them the way she does on Robby. But, I mean, he usually deserves it. The kids maybe wouldn’t.”

Parker barked something kind of like a laugh, and then she grabbed a tablet and completely ignored Dana’s lowered brows. She marched off to check in on a couple of patients - waiting for imaging, waiting for admit, waiting for admit, waiting for surgery, fuck, why was she so good and efficient that she couldn’t even find a distraction!

Samira had been stabbed. Stabbed! They were all used to being smacked around and scratched and bitten, to screaming and shouting and whatever, but a stabbing? A switchblade? Parker was so deeply furious about it. She was also terrified, which she hated. Parker had worked on Samira alongside Robby, and they’d managed to stabilise her but only barely. Parker had had her hand inside Samira’s abdomen, had been the one to confirm that Itty-Bit, who was viable but still more premature than anyone would like at thirty-five weeks gestation, was at risk (as if they hadn’t known it, as if Samira hadn’t known it, as if it didn’t go without saying with three penetrating abdominal wounds) and had been the one to intubate Samira for surgery.

It was nobody’s business that Samira’s mat leave was due to start in like, a week. Well, it was maybe Robby’s so he could ensure the smooth sailing of the good ship Pitt, but again, who knew with that guy. Itty-Bit was Samira’s secret to keep or not keep, and Parker would defend her right to be a freak about that with her bare hands if she had to. Samira was a freak about a lot of things, valid and otherwise, but she was one of Parker’s people and so was allowed to be one of the weirdest, most highly strung people on the planet. It was good for the ecosystem to have weirdos like Samira around. Kept everyone else from relaxing too much.

Keeping Samira’s pregnancy (and the cause thereof) on the DL until they knew for sure how both she and Itty-Bit were doing would’ve been a teensy-tiny bit easier had Cece Abbot not blown in the doors from the ambulance bay on her stupid racing bike and said “Yo, Ellis, what’d you do to end up back in this shithole?”, and then charged right up to Robby with a “Where’s my fuckin’ sister-in-law, Robinavitch? You’d better’ve put her in an OR with a competent surgeon-”

“That’s Mohan’s sister-in-law?” Winnebago whispered, somehow still right by Parker now that she’d circled back around to the hub. 

“Isn’t that Abbot’s sister?” Donnie asked at the same time, and they looked at one another in terrible, badly timed realisation. So obviously “Mohan is married” had not fully progressed to “Mohan is married to Abbot” in the general understanding of things. Great. Awesome. 

“Walsh,” Robby said to Cece, ignoring the dawning drama. Parker didn’t hold it against him, just this once - he looked about as stressed as she felt. Anyone would, with Cece glaring at them like that from under the peak of her helmet. “OR 6.”

“Hot,” Cece said, which was only normal if you were insane, which, she was Abbot’s twin. “Tell PJ, tell him me and Em’ve got his girls, yeah?”

She didn’t give Robby a chance to say anything else, but that was the Abbot MO all over. Leave ‘em wanting more.

“Abbot’s a twin?”

“I don’t see why it’s such a huge deal,” Parker said, not looking at Santos - still here on the Medical Education fellowship, which had seemed genuinely insane until Parker and Samira had sat down and discussed it over very, very overpriced drinks when Samira had taken Abbot up on a sugar daddy-ass offer to fly her to New York to spend a weekend with Parker while they’d been in the trenches of their fellowships. They’d agreed that while they personally might not have ever wanted to learn under her, ever, they couldn’t deny that the interns and students who’d come along after them all seemed to thrive under Santos’ ungentle hand. “He’s one of five, Santos. Let’s keep it moving.”

“Has he other sisters? Are they all as hot as that one?”

Regrettably, yes - the Abbot siblings, based on Parker’s exposure, were the same person in five different fonts. Mags had a gap between her front teeth, Cece was the only girl over five-five, Jack was the only boy, Katy had blondish-red hair instead of the standard issue dark auburn, and Maisie had big startling blue eyes that had reportedly taken them all by surprise. Parker knew more about them than she cared to, because Samira had made flash cards ahead of meeting them and hadn’t wanted to ask Abbot to help her study. 

They were all, also, more or less as attractive as one another. 

“All girls except him, and yes, but they’re all happily married.” So many nieces and nephews. Parker had had a migraine the day after the wedding. 

“Even that one?”

“Cecelia,” Parker said, because Cece didn’t let just anyone call her Cece, “is married to Emery Walsh. You’re welcome to try, but they’ll eat you alive - not in the fun way!”

“And she works at Presby?”

No, she worked at UPMC-Magee, was widely regarded as one of the best OBGYNs in the state and had literally written the book (or at least multiple papers) on crisis intervention in emergency obstetrics. Even if she hadn’t been Abbot’s older-by-an-hour twin, she would’ve been top of Samira’s extremely comprehensive list of care providers for her and Itty-Bit. Parker would know - she’d helped Samira make the list. They’d spent a full weekend on it, even though they’d known going in that Cece was the only person Samira and Jack would ever trust to look after their baby.

“Can we focus on the patients, please?”

Santos frowned, and then she did the worst possible thing: she laid a gentle hand on Parker’s shoulder.

“I thought the distraction might help,” she said. “Sorry, dude. Wanna come terrorise the students with me?”

“Nah, I’m sorry,” Parker said. “You’re Slam’s friend, too, I’m being-“

“Yo,” said Langdon, “I know we’re not texting Abbot, but has anyone texted Mel?”

Of course no one had texted Mel. Parker would Facetime Mel as soon as she was off the clock, like a civilised human being, provided she survived the next ten minutes.

“Hey, Parker. Two things,” Jack Abbot said, and to the untrained ear he even sounded normal. Well, normal for him. Parker might have been fooled if he wasn’t starting to turn red. “One, why is my sister’s stupid racing bike behind the desk? Two, where the fuck is my wife?”

The story of Samira Mohan’s relationship with Jack Abbot was long and torrid and, frankly, nobody’s damn business.

(This was only kind of true: sure, Jack had panted after her in a respectful and professional manner from the moment she’d pulled off that shit with the pigtail catheter the day of Pittfest, and Samira had genuinely not noticed for the better part of a year. But they’d kept a strict, no-nonsense boundary in place despite the embarrassingly charged energy between them for the rest of her residency, and then! Then, he’d very nearly fumbled asking her out at the drinks to celebrate her and Parker and Langdon’s completion of their residencies. Per Samira, Jack had shown up unannounced at her door three days later and spent his every day off for the next four weeks, that being Samira’s final month in Pittsburgh, fucking her through the mattress. Then he’d flown out to see her as often as his schedule allowed while she was at Stanford, and they’d gotten married as soon as her fellowship was done. And then Jack had knocked her up, like, immediately after she signed her attending contract. Ah, romance.)

The reality of things right now was Robby running across the ED as soon as he spotted Jack, and the colour starting to rise in Jack’s cheeks, and the way Jack’s jaw was grinding - a sure sign that something major was coming. Dana herded them both into the break room and slammed the door behind them.

“Stay the fuck out,” she warned them all, an order gladly followed by everyone except Parker, who didn’t intrude but who did hover. “Don’t make me ask twice.”

The door of the break room was not soundproof, but Jack wasn’t the kind of guy who blew up in moments of heightened emotion. He tended to sort of implode instead, folding in on himself as if he was trying to hide - Parker, who’d worked almost exclusively nightshifts from early on in her R2 year right up until her last shift at PTMC, had walked him through more than one episode. She knew what was up.

So instead of shouting and furniture being thrown around, what Parker got was the murmur of Robby’s voice (exhausted) and a sound like a tire being let down (heartbreaking). God, this fucking sucked. 

“Can you handle handover?” Robby asked her when they finally emerged, a whole minute-and-a-half-two-minutes later, guiding Jack by the shoulders toward the elevator. “Shen should be in, and-”

“Yeah, no, go, I got it,” Parker said. “Bossman-”

Jack nodded, not making eye contact. Okay. Fuck. Parker wasn’t exactly broken up over that - she didn’t want to see whatever the fuck he was feeling just now, and she was sure the feeling was mutual. Well, she’d just cover his shift for him and he’d know what she meant. 

Where were they going, she wondered briefly, but duh - Walsh’s office. It was a no-doubt luxurious shoebox, because Walsh was boujee as hell, and it would offer enough privacy that Jack might let himself, like, emote a little, and knowing Walsh (which Parker did, better than she’d like, via Abbot Twin Osmosis and also proximity) it’d be set up like a fucking foxhole. In Case Of PTSD, Break Glass. 

“Shen still arrive fifteen before?” Parker asked Dana, who guided her into a chair behind the hub and pressed a bottle of water into her hands. “I just- I’m fine, Dana.”

“Nah,” Dana said. “Y’ain’t. None of us are, after something like that. Don’t worry about Shen. He’ll get here in a bit, you just - do your charting, kid. Langdon’s got the floor.”

Parker wanted a distraction but did not entirely trust herself to stand up and not follow Robby and Jack upstairs. She didn’t trust herself to pick up a tablet without looking up Samira’s chart. So she sat and answered questions from passing med students and residents, and she did at least some charting. Whether any of it had any clinical merit or not was between her and Epic and maybe Al-Hashimi.

“Uh,” Parker said ten minutes later when Baran Al-Hashimi herself walked in, hair perfect and Lululemon jacket immaculate. Despite that, she looked legitimately flustered for the first time in Parker’s memory. “Hi?”

“Robby told me what happened,” she said hefting an overstuffed tote bag higher on her shoulder. “I’m covering for Jack - walk me upstairs, we can start handover?”

“Oh!” Parker said, feeling less confused but no less startled. Robby was still jealous enough of Baran that it was genuinely shocking that he’d reached out to her for help, even for something like this. Then again, she’d stepped the fuck up for Samira when he’d dropped the ball during their final year of residency, and no one ever let him forget it - especially not Jack, who’d been witness to Robby dropping the ball with Samira (and a certain specific subset of all residents, wow, so unpredictable) the whole way through residency. Whatever shit he’d had going on himself - and he had, no one had missed that, couldn’t have missed it even without his sabbatical - didn’t excuse that. Baran Al-Hashimi had come in as a Hail Mary for Samira, able to connect with her where a lot of people dismissed her as an intense weirdo (which!) and that had mattered. Maybe Robby did know some things after all. “Yeah, c’mon, they’re upstairs. Electrolytes?” 

“And sandwiches,” Baran confirmed, waving hello to Dana, who looked about as surprised as Parker felt. “When I say Robby told me what happened-“

“I can imagine. Uh, geriatric patient needing end-of-life care, Slam spent half the day getting it all figured out. She got everything locked down, a full-time care facility that was covered by the patient’s insurance, but she was going to have to go to Presby for them to handle the intake and referral, and the patient’s son did not take that well. Took it out on Slam, Ahmad and Langdon took him down.”

“Police?”

“Psych hold,” Parker corrected. “He’d stopped filling his prescriptions so he could pay for home care for his mom. We didn’t know until he pulled a knife on Samira.”

Baran’s hand was cool and firm on Parker’s forearm. Huh. When did she cross her arms over her chest? She could hear Samira teasing her for her defensive body language. What was she defending against? Emotions, Parker, but I promise they’re not as scary as you think. Hypocrite- okay, no, she was not having an imaginary argument with Samira. Time to stop that right in its tracks. 

“Samira is strong,” Baran said, with the clear, implacable confidence that made her so difficult to argue with. Not that Parker was arguing this particular point. If Samira could be pushed through this with the power of calm, steady belief, they were onto a winner with Baran on her team. “And assuming Emery Walsh and Cecelia Abbot are working on her and the baby-“

“Yep.” 

Right, because obviously Baran knew about the baby. She’d bought those adorable little booties that made Samira all weepy last week. Parker was used to thinking of her as Baran, Samira’s mentor and friend, rather than Dr al-Hashimi, attending physician and sort of forgot to count her as part of the PTMC team. She, like Samira and Jack and John and Lena, was a real person in Parker’s head.

“Then she’s in the best hands possible,” Baran said, and the elevator doors dinged. “They both are. Oh. Do you know where Dr Walsh’s office is? I don’t think I’ve ever been there.”

Neither had Parker, but two passing nurses took pity (or wanted the stink of the ED gone as quickly as possible) and pointed them in the right direction. It was, as expected, a shoebox, containing a jittery looking Robby and no sign of Jack. That would’ve worried Parker, except she knew Jack, and she knew that him not being visible meant that obviously he’d gotten himself into the smallest, most hidden space available.

Parker laid herself across Walsh’s big desk and let her head hang down, so she could look at Jack where he was curled in the footwell with his head between his knees. Well, at least he hadn’t passed out. He was box-breathing. Cool.

“Gimme your keys, old man,” she said without preamble, reaching in to poke him in the arm. “C’mon, up, gimme your keys and eat some of this food Baran’s brought you-“

“Not hungry.”

“Oh, wow, awesome! I don’t give a shit. Slam’ll yell at me if you go all hypoglycaemic on my watch, so get outta there.”

He got. Parker had not expected it to be that easy. 

“I’m going to get Slam’s hospital bag and your chair,” she said, holding out her hand once she’d clambered off the desk. She was vaguely aware of Robby and Baran watching them in open confusion, but it was that kind of day. They’d get over it. “Gimme. And sit on a real chair to eat, and get off your leg. Actually, you should get your leg off altogether, I’m sure we can source a pair of crutches somewhere.”

His eyes were red, a little swollen. He wasn’t a crier, usually, but Parker figured he’d more than earned a pass given the circumstances. 

“Keys,” she said again, and hauled him in by the neck for a hug when he finally handed them over. “They’re going to be okay, Bossman. I’m not gonna promise on Walsh and Cece’s behalf, but-“

“I know,” he said. “Thanks, kid.”

“Make sure he eats and don’t let him take anymore ibuprofen for at least another two hours,” Parker said over Jack’s shoulder to Robby. “And, Baran-“

“Please don’t thank me,” she said, looking mortified. “Just drive safe - I’ll call if we get any news while you’re gone.”

“Tell Cece I’m leaving her bike at Jack’s,” Parker added, this to Robby again. If she let down the back seats, it’d fit in her trunk. She knew this from the bitter experience of being surrounded by cyclists. “Okay, I’m gonna catch Shen and then I’m gone, okay? Okay.”

“Parker-“

“If you try and thank me I’ll tell Slam how much you actually paid for the crib,” she warned him. The crib was the most gorgeous thing Parker had ever seen, hand-made by an artisan furniture maker in the tiny shithole town Jack had grown up in, adjustable to fit Itty-Bit until she needed a real actual grown-up bed, and had cost more than Parker’s first two cars combined. Maybe her first three, now she thought about it. Samira did not know this. Samira did not need to know this. Parker would hold this over Jack’s head until the end of time. “Sit, eat, text me if you think of anything else you need from the house. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Fuck. Wait. 

“Uh, should I call Samira’s…?”

“God,” Jack said, rubbing his face with both hands. “Uh, let me eat before I make that decision.”

“Hey, if it gets you to eat, put it off as long as you want.”

“Uhhhh,” came the dulcet tones of John Shen’s expertly masked panic, welcoming Parker back downstairs. He’d obviously recognised Cece’s bike, still behind the desk at the hub. Parker really was plagued by cyclists. “Is Itty-Bit coming early?”

“Slam’s in surgery,” Parker said, planting her face into John’s shoulder with a sigh of relief that she felt through every bit of her body. “Hug, please, and I’ll tell you everything.”

John hugged. Parker told. John hugged harder. 

“Robby and Baran are upstairs with Jack, in Walsh’s office,” Parker said, still muffled against John’s shoulder. “Uh, as you guessed, Cece’s here, her and Walsh are working on Slam and Itty-Bit. I’m going to pick up some stuff for Jack and Slam-“

“The sling,” John said, which, great call, Jack would need the sling if he was going to carry Itty-Bit and propel himself in his chair, which-

Parker hadn’t noticed John walking her into the break room, but she was glad he had when she started to cry. 

“Fuck,” she managed. “And I still have to call Mel.”

“Then call Mel,” he said. “Langdon’ll give me handover, and by the time that’s done I’ll be able to walk you up to your car. You want me to bring Cece’s bike in the morning? I’ve got a rack, won’t have to adjust my seats or anything.”

“Fucking cyclists,” she sniffed, rubbing her eyes. “Okay, cool, I’m gonna call Mel, and maybe vomit, and then I’ll go get their stuff. Okay.”

John’s face reflected back to Parker just how not okay this whole situation was, and that made it feel a little more okay. 

“Walsh and Cece’ll cut their residents up for parts before they let Slam down,” John said firmly. “C’mon, call Mel, I’ll be back in a few.”

Mel was on vacation, taking in the sights and sounds of Chicago with her sister, and they were just back from dinner when Parker got through to her.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” Mel said, nodding firmly and completely ignoring Parker’s protests.

“This is more important than our vacation!” Becca piped up from somewhere off-screen, and Mel nodded again. 

“You’re honestly the best,” Parker said, feeling like she might cry again. “Breakfast or lunch or whatever meal is applicable when you get here is on me, Mel, I swear.”

“I’ll hold you to it!”

And she would.

Mel was the only person aside from Jack who could really get Samira out of a spiral, and Parker was pretty sure they’d need her once Samira woke up. Parker also, selfishly, really wanted to hold Mel’s hand about all of this. Fuck.

Robby had never gotten a handle on crosswords, but being bad at things had never stopped him from trying. Jack had often admired that about him, and usually encouraged it. Right now, he wished very badly for Robby to put some effort into improving his skill at shutting the ever loving fuck up. 

“Please stop,” he said, very, very close to climbing back under Emery’s desk, because at least then there’d be a desk between Jack’s ears and Robby’s anxious rambling. Whoever had given him a copy - a physical copy - of the New York Times was dead to Jack. “I can’t think about crosswords right now, man.”

“Sorry,” Robby said, and then spent a nervous couple of minutes folding down the newspaper until he could stash it in one of his pockets. “Uh. You want another sandwich? I think Baran bought out the store.”

Knowing Baran, she had. She was a fail to prepare, prepare to fail kind of gal. 

“No, I don’t want another sandwich,” Jack said, really wishing Robby would take a second to remember which of them was supposed to be playing mother just now. It was Jack’s wife and kid under Emery and Cece’s knives right now, not Robby’s, but that probably wasn’t apparent at first glance. “I want to be very, very quiet until someone comes to me with news. That’s what I want.”

Robby hadn’t let Jack anywhere near a tablet or a computer since he’d arrived, and he’d only given him a barebones explanation of what had even happened. Whatever. Parker would be back soon, and she’d kick Robby out for a bit. Jack could get actual details from her, instead of going slowly insane. Well, more insane.

A knock on the door. Jack’s neck cracked, he looked up so quick, and Robby jumped up to answer as if glad to have a task. 

“Hey, Bossman,” John said, sticking his head around the door and bypassing Robby completely. Robby didn’t take it personally - proof that therapy was working. “Just checking in - Parker’s on her way back, should be here in fifteen or so. You need anything in the meantime?”

“Nah, we’re as good as we’re gonna be,” Jack said, not bothering to try faking a smile. John wouldn’t believe it, and might even be hurt at the implication that he didn’t know Jack well enough to see through a front. “Keeping the whole team up to date?”

“Most everyone’s kind of shellshocked. They assumed Slam had better taste, so they never expected her to be married to uh, you know, you, never mind that she’d have a kid with you.”

Yeah, that sounded about right. Jack had the same realisation every time he rolled over in bed and saw Samira drooling into the pillow next to his. It didn’t make sense that she’d picked him, but she had, and now they were here. 

“Oh, and I told Parker I’d bring Cece’s bike in the morning, ‘cause I’ve a rack,” John added. “I’ve seen how Parker fits a bike into her car and I like her too much to let her damage Cece’s bike.”

“Smart.”

“Okay, well - lemme know. I’m nearby.”

Robby closed the door behind John’s thumbs up, and looked Jack dead in the eye. 

“Parker’s gonna kill me if you don’t at least drink a Gatorade.”

“Give me a fucking sandwich, then, fuck.”

The thing was, they’d been planning on the big reveal. Samira had it all planned - she’d designed a cute little card that would serve as their birth announcement, and Jack would bring it in his first day back after she gave birth and pin it to the break room fridge without saying anything. All they needed was a photo of them and their daughter. It was going to be funny as shit, because he knew there was money riding on the identity of Samira’s mysterious husband, and he knew there was money riding on whether or not she even really was pregnant. It was going to be funny as shit, because everyone in the Pitt aside from Robby, John, Lena, Baran, and Dana thought he’d pined miserably after Samira for most of her residency and nothing had come of it. The plan was engineered specifically to cause as many silly reactions as possible.

This was nothing at all like their plan. 

Jack felt sick. He’d been here before, after all. When Lou died, he’d been sleeping off a double and hadn’t gotten here in time to say goodbye before he was wheeled up to surgery. He’d gotten to the hospital right as the anaesthetist finished putting him under, by his best guess, and Robby had stashed him in Emery’s office then, too, and locked the door on him until Cece arrived. He’d broken Em’s stupid fancy ergonomic chair, and she hadn’t even given him shit for it. 

But Samira wasn’t going to die. The universe was not, he believed, inherently cruel, and so it wouldn’t ask him to survive burying a husband and a wife.

At least this time, while waiting for the news that would either kill him or cure him, Parker was here. She had given him a slightly more detailed account of what had happened, and was refusing to tell him anything specific about Samira’s injuries or how Itty-Bit had been. Jack was in his wheelchair, off his leg just like he knew Samira would want. He was not panicking.  He was calm. He was definitely-

“PJ? You here?” 

Jack jumped so hard he tossed his phone into the stupid fake plant in the corner. He hadn’t even been looking at it, had just been tossing it back and forth while Parker hummed and read over a paper for a friend, and now it was probably smashed. Whatever - that’d give him an excuse not to call Samira’s mom.

“Cece,” he said, “how are- are they- please.”

“I’m here to bring you to the NICU, baby brother,” she assured him, pulling off her neon pink scrub cap. Her hair was all sweaty and gross, the same dark auburn Jack’s had been before he lost his leg. They’d both been pissed off about looking so alike at one time or another while growing up, but man, Jack was glad that he knew Cece’s face as well as he knew his own. Meant he could read the relief in her expression without even trying. “You wanna meet your daughter?”

He was going to puke. He’d never been more excited in his life, and that paired horribly with the ongoing terror over not knowing how Samira was, fucking curdling in his gut. 

“More than anything,” Jack said, and was almost out the room before he remembered - Parker. “Parker-”

“I’ll take out the trash and hang around downstairs,” she said, handing him his phone and punching him in the arm. “Send us pics, okay? Aunty Parker and Uncle John are ready to meet Itty-Bit.”

Jack wasn’t ready to meet her. He was supposed to have weeks more to get used to the idea of being a father, a dad, and-

“Okay, let’s go, before you freak yourself out,” Cece said, which was exactly what he’d said to her when she’d almost freaked out over meeting her and Emery’s firstborn. Daria had been cute as a button then and still was now, fifteen years later, not that Jack would dare say that out loud. Daria was also mean as shit, in the specific way of teenage girls. She was maybe Jack’s favourite of his many nieces and nephews. “You want me to push you?”

“No, I don’t fuckin’ want you to push me, Cecelia, just - get out of the way of the door. Let’s go.”

Parker tucked the baby sling into his lap before she parted ways with them at the elevators. If they were different people, he might have hugged her just for that. Instead, he held out his fist and she bumped it with her own. Perfect interactions happened all the time, if people only had eyes to see them.

Jack had been so mad about the idea of the sling, when Samira had first mentioned looking at them. She’d added a tab to her spreadsheet of Baby Items just for slings (comparing them across an array of criteria - Jack mostly just read reviews online and went to the store to look at the thing. Different strokes), and then she’d ordered two, one that she thought would suit each of them best.

Admitting he wanted the sling - that he wanted to be able to cradle the baby against his chest while he cooked, or while he oiled Samira’s hair, or even just while he used the computer - was easy. Admitting that he needed it, if he ever intended on carrying the baby while he used his chair? 

Hard. Very hard indeed. 

It had felt like one more thing he needed that a normal dad, a dad who was the same age as his wife, a dad with two feet and a functional emotional regulatory system, did not. Samira had obliterated his self-consciousness over being so much older than her by simply not giving a shit about the gap between their ages, but it was a lot easier to come to terms with being sixteen years older than his wife than it was to being fifty years older than his firstborn child. The sling, when it had arrived in a sensible, stain-resistant olive green (which Samira had chosen so it wouldn’t clash with his cargo pants, because she was funny as shit), had just seemed like one more way she’d had to adapt to his needs when it was all supposed to be about her. He’d hated it.

Fuck, he was grateful for it now. 

The NICU was, to Jack’s eye, a little creepy. Intensive care was always kind of creepy - too many ventilators shushing away, in the eerie quiet - but the NICU was especially creepy because the patients were so small. 

“She’s a little jaundiced, and I’ve got her on oxygen,” Cece said gently, coming to a stop by one particular incubator. “And I know Samira’s got a bunch of hats and blankets picked out, but I figured she wouldn’t mind us using what we had to hand…”

He was vaguely aware of Cece speaking. Whatever she was saying didn’t really matter. All that mattered was the baby.

The baby - Jack’s daughter, Jack and Samira’s daughter - was so, so tiny. They’d known she was going to be a little small, because she’d measured a little small the whole way through Samira’s pregnancy, and now she was here five weeks early to top it off, but she was so impossibly small. He’d never seen anything so little.

(He had. He knew he had. He had delivered babies with his own two hands, in extremis, and he’d held every single one of his nephews and nieces within two days of their being born. He knew, intellectually, that he had seen things as small and smaller than the baby. Except that he hadn’t.)

She had ten tiny fingers, and ten tiny toes, and a big head on her skinny little neck. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open, and Jack had never, ever loved anything or anyone as much as he loved her. Holy shit. That was his kid. 

“Hi, Nalini,” he whispered, getting his chair as close to her incubator as he could. He was afraid to even ask about touching her - she was so tiny and perfect, what if he hurt her? His hands felt so big and clumsy. He felt, for no good reason, the dumbest he’d ever felt, which was really saying something. She was incredible. “Hi, baby - I’m your dad. Sorry about that.”

“He’s not making a great first impression, but he improves as you get to know him,” Cece said conspiratorially, just loud enough to carry. “I promise - the only way is up.”

But she was leaning against him, arms looped around his shoulders, and she didn’t even make fun of him for crying. 

Jack was allowed to put his hand into the incubator to hold Nalini’s hand. She was warm and soft and her whole hand wrapped around his fingertip. He worried that the blood pressure cuff around her leg was irritating her skin. He wondered if any of the baby lotions he and Samira had picked out (her based on reviews, him based on his own stupid, sensitive skin) would be baby-safe enough for her just yet. 

“I texted to let Em know where we are,” Cece said, curled up in a chair beside him. Her hair was all smushed flat on one side of her head, the same way his was, and he wondered if maybe Parker’s theory that Cece went to the same barber he did was right. “She’ll come straight here as soon as she’s out. You okay?”

“No. Will be once I know Samira’s in recovery,” he said, not looking away from Nalini. She had Samira’s long, thick eyelashes, and round, velvety-soft cheeks, and her chest was rising and falling and rising and falling-

“She’s going to be okay,” Cece promised him, and he trusted her. He did. But he didn’t have an easy time trusting much beyond his own hands. “PJ. Listen to me. Emery and I are the best. Nalini’s okay, and Samira will be too. Have faith.”

He could have faith in Cece and Emery. He wasn’t too good at faith on the whole anymore, but he could have faith in them. Cece was as good as she said she was, better than he’d ever been, and Emery was probably the best surgeon he’d ever met - not that he’d ever tell her as much.

“No one will tell me anything about her injuries,” he said, leaning his head against the plastic shell of the incubator. He wanted so badly to lift Nalini out and tuck her against his chest, so he could kiss her soft head and feel her warmth and let her get to know him, so he could get to know her, could smell her downy hair and learn the weight of her in his arms, but he wouldn’t. He’d be good. He was going to be as good as he possibly could be, for her. “Will you-”

“No,” she said. “Not until Em comes to fetch us.”

“Can you at least tell me what you did? I know a straightforward C-section shouldn’t have taken as long as it did.”

“When Em gets here.”

“Cee. Please.”

He understood why she was reluctant to talk about Samira’s injuries yet. He understood, professionally, that it would be jumping the gun to make any confident claims as to Samira’s condition until Emery closed her up. He knew all of that. He did. 

But Jack pretty much never asked for anything of his sister - of any of his sisters - and he had to know. He had to know something. 

Cece sighed, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes and then immediately hissing - dummy forgot she was wearing contacts, obviously. 

“I had to perform an oophorectomy as well as the section,” she admitted. 

Okay. An ovary. They’d need to sit down with an endocrinologist to see what Samira’s hormones looked like after that. She’d need to go on a nice calcium-rich diet to combat the increased risk of osteoporosis, maybe some bisphosphonates if the docs thought she’d need them. Lots of vitamin D. Maybe they’d finally take that vacation he’d been threatening her with since she came home from California. 

An ovary. That was very, very close to the uterus. 

The desire to vomit returned. 

“Uh. How much do you know?”

“I know my wife was stabbed,” he said, “and apparently she was stabbed close enough to our unborn daughter-”

“Nalini is fine,” Cece said, keeping him from going any further down that path by reaching over to squeeze his wrist, digging her short, scrubbed-clean nails into the thin skin of his inner arm. “Look at her, PJ, she’s doing just fine.”

Jack looked. The baby snuffled. Give her a couple of weeks and she’d be snoring just like her mom, he suspected. It was one of his favourite sounds, and he couldn’t wait to hear it in stereo. 

“Samira was stabbed three times,” Cece said. “I’ll let her explain the prelude to that, but, yeah. I did the oophorectomy once I had Nalini out and okay, while Em was working on… the rest.”

The rest. 

“Listen to me,” Cece said. “Her ovary was compromised beyond saving, and there was some damage to the Fallopian tube - I took both. Surrounding tissue also suffered damage, obviously, but aside from the expected soreness she should be fine. I’ve already emailed a couple of colleagues to request consults once she’s up and about. She’s fit and healthy, and yeah, this isn’t ideal by any means, but it’s not the end of the world. You hear me?”

Cece was dozing against Jack’s shoulder. Nalini was still clutching his finger. He was the widest awake he had ever been. 

Emery somehow managed to startle him all the same.

“Spleen,” Emery said, pointing a lot higher than seemed right, “and appendix,” also higher than usual. “Pregnancy really does just shove everything aside, right? Makes me wonder where my goddamn spleen lived. Don’t make a guess.”

Jack couldn’t quite comprehend what she was saying. 

“What the fuck?”

“Samira’s the luckiest person this side of the equator,” Emery said, “which seems only fair given she’s saddled with you.”

Samira, Emery and a now-awake Cece tell him, took three penetrating wounds to her anterior abdomen. One went straight through her right ovary. One bisected her spleen, resulting in a subtotal splenectomy, which is a piece of wild, divine luck. And the third-

“Her fucking appendix,” Emery confirmed. “It bled unbelievably, but an appendectomy’s not exactly difficult. She’s good, because we’re good.”

Emery and Cece high fived over Jack’s head. He fucking hated them.

Parker was waiting for him right outside the NICU.

“Technically, I don’t work here,” she pointed out. “Don’t have access to shit so I couldn't let myself in. How’s Itty-Bit?”

“Perfect,” he said. He kind of felt like he was in shock. He didn’t really care. Nalini was okay. Samira was okay, or at least on the way there. What the hell else mattered? “She’s perfect, Parker. They’re putting a bili light on her because she’s a little jaundiced, and she’s going to be in the isolette for a couple days, but she’s perfect.”

Parker’s smile was brilliant. Jack was someone who had blatant, obvious favourites, and Parker was probably his second-favourite ever resident. 

“John’s gonna swing up as soon as he can get away,” she said. “You want one of us to stay with Itty-Bit while you go to see Slam?”

“Cece’s with her,” he said, “but you should put your head around the door, get a look for yourself.”

“I don’t even like babies,” Parker griped good-naturedly. “But I guess I can hide my disdain for Slam’s sake. Oh, hey Walsh-”

“Don’t let him talk you into coming back here, Ellis,” Emery said in lieu of anything normal. “Presby ED is better than the wild west downstairs, and don’t forget it.”

“Hey, fuck you, Walsh,” Jack said without heat. “Parker, go look at how pretty my kid is. Emery-”

“Yeah, yeah, come on,” she sighed, but left it there. “This way, soldier boy. Let’s go. I gotta call the nanny and apologise for both of us being so late.”

Em and Cece’s nanny would not give a single shit about being held over because they paid her crazy overtime. She was a cranky lady who cooked the most incredible curried lamb Jack had ever eaten, and she was the only person who could convince Daria of pretty much anything, and all three of the kids adored her. 

Daria was the same kind of obsessive overachiever as Jack and Cece had been in school, the same kind of competitive nightmare Emery had been as a child, and was anyway a teenager and didn’t need to be left to care for her younger siblings. Jack had been quietly thrilled when Cece had told him that her and Emery were keeping on their nanny even as Daria turned thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and he’d run interference with his and Cece’s mom when she sniped about it being Daria’s responsibility to look after the younger children. As if that wasn’t two-thirds the reason Mags didn’t speak much to their mother, these days. It wasn’t their mother’s fault that their father had been so fucking useless, but it maybe was their mother’s fault that her solution had been to depend on Mags so completely for the care and keeping of the younger four Abbots that Jack’s oldest sister hadn’t had a life for herself until she’d run away to get married.

Anyway. 

“I gotta call Mom,” he said, wondering if he could excuse forgetting to call his mom because of the circumstances of it all. “And Samira’s mom.”

There was never a forgivable excuse to avoid Samira’s mom, much to Jack’s deep, deep chagrin.

“And your sisters,” Emery reminded him, sounding much too cheerful considering he knew she didn’t even like most of his and Cece’s sisters. Hell, he wasn’t even sure she liked him, and he’d heard her refer to him as her best friend more than once. She really was one of a kind. “I can’t imagine how fun that’s going to be for you.”

“I like my sisters,” he protested. Not very convincingly, he’d admit, but the protest had to be registered all the same. Emery just snorted at him. “Mostly. And I’ve got good news to share, for once, so we probably won’t even argue.”

“You like Cece,” she corrected. “And you more or less get along with the others. That’s not the same thing at all, PJ.”

He fucking hated being called that by anyone except Cece. Patrick John, the most basic-ass Catholic-ass name his parents could’ve picked for their one and only son and heir, and he didn’t even use it except on paperwork. He didn’t like using his first name because he didn’t much like being the latest in a long line of Pat Abbots. None of his predecessors had exactly distinguished themselves as fathers, husbands, or human beings.

“Hey, Emery?”

“Don’t you dare thank me.”

“But-”

“I’ll cut off your other leg at the hip if you don’t shut up. Here, this door, Jesus fuck.” 

Emery held the door for him, looking like she’d literally rather be pulling her own teeth. That was pretty much open affection coming from her, so he didn’t push her any further. 

“Em,” he did say, because he couldn’t help himself. “Thanks. For real.”

“God, you’re a bastard,” she said, but she didn’t even smack him over the head, so it was probably fine. “Go check on Samira.”

Samira looked small. She was intubated. He’d have to keep an eye, make sure she didn’t extubate herself as soon as she woke up. Her vitals looked good. Her hands were unnervingly still and limp on the blankets. She was washed out, and small. She was alive. Her heart was still beating. 

He wouldn’t be bringing Nalini home on his own. He wouldn’t be going home on his own. Not this time.

“Oh, fuck,” he said, coming as close to her bedside as he could. “Fuck, baby, what the fuck.”

Jack laid his brow against her hip and lifted her hand to rest on the back of his head. Then, finally, he cried his fucking eyes out.

“You’re not on the roster, Doctor King!”

“Uh, no, I’m not,” Mel agreed, offering Dana a smile. “Since I don’t work here anymore. I just wanted to grab Samira’s things from her locker - Lupe waved me through-”

“I’m just messin’ with ya, kid,” Dana said, her smile wide. “It’s good to see you. Ellis told you what happened? Bad day. Real bad day. Think the vampires are all upstairs, if you wanna follow them up.”

Mel would do just that, just as soon as she fetched Samira’s things from her locker. Parker had given her Samira’s locker code, passed on from Dr Al-Hashimi, Dana winked, waved her on, and returned to her work. Mel, for her part, waved across the room to Santos and her flock of students and ducked into the locker room. 

Samira’s locker was typically neat and tidy - spare clothes, spare shoes, a box of her preferred protein bars, Liquid IV sachets, anti-nausea pills, a stack of heavily marked-up papers and journals, her purse, her laptop bag, and, tucked into a corner where you might not notice it if you weren’t looking for it, the bag containing her jewellery. Mel tucked that into Samira’s purse, grabbed her purse and her laptop bag, and locked her locker again.

“Yo, Mel,” Santos said, catching Mel right as she turned for the elevators. “If Mohan’s up, tell her we’re all rooting for her, yeah?”

“Of course, Trinity,” Mel said, “although I’m sure she knows that.”

Trinity gave her a thumbs up, nodded, and returned to work. Mel nodded in return, tucked Samira’s purse and laptop bag over her shoulders, and headed for the elevator.

She went to L&D first - Parker had texted to let her know that she was in the NICU with Itty-Bit, and Mel wanted to check in with Parker before intruding on Samira’s rest. 

“Melicious!” Shen called quietly, almost as soon as she exited the elevator. Had he been waiting for her? That was sweet. “Hey, good to see you - Park’s this way, wait ‘til you see the baby, she’s awesome.”

Shen loved babies. He had two nephews and liked to talk about them whenever he got a chance, and he was always exceptionally sweet with any children in the ED. Mel had always liked that, when she worked with him. She’d asked him one night why he hadn’t specialised in Pediatric EM, and he had been forced to admit that he couldn’t handle seeing that many sick kids.

Mel thought that was more than fair. Dr Robby had suggested she apply for fellowships that focused on special needs adults, and she’d very nearly vomited on his shoes. She understood, she thought. 

“I have Samira’s things,” she offered, and Shen took Samira’s laptop bag with a grin. “The baby is okay?”

“Little premature, obviously, so a few issues, but Cece’s on top of it,” he assured her. “C’mon, Parker’s hogging the bedside but you’ll be able to peek around her big head, ths way-”

Mel followed him in. Parker was absolutely hogging the bedside, but she gave Mel a bright if tired smile in greeting and waved her closer.

“She rocks, right?” Parker whispered, winding her fingers through Mel’s. “Like, I knew Slam would make a cute kid, but I did kind of worry that Jack’s dumb genes would interfere. But look at that, right? She’s a cutey.”

The baby was a cutey. She did rock. She was awesome. Parker and Shen had been completely correct in their assessments. 

She had glossy black hair - not much of it, just enough to dust over her head like the fuzzy curls at Samira’s hairline and her nape - and a little pink mouth. Babies this small couldn’t smile, of course, but Mel thought that maybe she would have Jack’s smile. It would be good if she did, because otherwise there would be no evidence of him in her whatsoever - even under the blue lights in the isolette, even tiny and premature and tiny, she looked exactly like Samira.

“What a cool niece, right?” Parker whispered. “We really lucked out.”

“Jack’s going to be so annoyed with us, like, all of the time,” Shen agreed. “We’re going to spoil the shit out of her. We’ve got to do Slam proud, outdo the Abbot sisters.”

That made sense. Samira didn’t have much family of her own, but she had them. Now, so did Itty-Bit.

Mel looked down at the chart hanging on the end of the isolette. Nalini. She noted it so she would remember to ask Samira what it meant, later.

“So Slam’s been up,” Shen whispered, “and we convinced Jack to like, eat and whatever when she went back to sleep, but she’s due to wake back up soon. You want to catch a nap?”

“We’re going for brunch,” Parker said. “You should come too, given you ate like, half a protein bar and the ice in your coffee last night.”

“I’m full up on the joy of being an uncle again,” he said, cheerful. “But I could go for some waffles. My treat.”

The baby - Nalini! Nalini Mohan-Abbot, or Abbot-Mohan, Mel didn’t know if Samira or Jack had won the argument that had been ongoing since the pregnancy had been confirmed - stirred a little, flexing her arms around her head. 

“Looks like she agrees,” Mel offered, squeezing Parker’s hand. “Your treat, John.”

Brunch was in one of their old usual spots near the hospital, and Mel was relieved to find that the menu had not changed since last she’d visited. 

“I’m gonna eat a whole chicken,” Parker said, sprawling in the corner of their booth with her head tipped back. “And maybe a pig, too.”

“Would you still love her if she was a chicken, Mel?” Shen asked, propping his head up on his fist. They both looked exhausted, glassy-eyed and unsteady, and Mel ordered for all three of them when they didn't even seem to register their server arriving. “I think Mel would love you if you were a chicken, Park,” John went on, mostly asleep and still leaning on his fist. “She’d build you a cute little coop on your balcony, and she’d splurge on… what do chickens eat, Mel? You need to know if Park’s a chicken.”

“I’m not a chicken, is the thing,” Parker said, eyes closed. “Oh, we should get a chicken stuffy for Itty-Bit, that would be so cute. Or a duck. We should get her a duck. She looks like she’d like a duck, right?”

“I don’t want to call her by name,” Shen sighed. “Nalini’s cute, but Itty-Bit? We ate that one up. She’s so itty-bitty.”

They were very sweet when they were sleepy. Mel kept them awake long enough to eat, and used Parker’s card (saved into her own Apple Pay at Parker’s insistence after their third date) to pay. Then she sent them both home in an Uber, even as Shen tried to protest something unclear about a bicycle. Mel would no doubt receive a clarifying text once he’d had a few hours sleep, and they could sort it all out then.

Parker and Shen safely sent to their beds, she returned to the hospital. 

Mel liked working in medicine for all kinds of reasons, but one small thing that she’d liked from her very first day was this: it was very easy to track what she was supposed to call everyone. Dr Last Name was a failsafe formula, and all of the nurses used their first names and seemed to expect the doctors to forget them, so they didn’t mind her asking. 

Even with her friends, she had stuck to the formula until she was invited to use their first names - Dr Langdon had become Frank, Dr Ellis had become Parker, Dr Mohan had become Samira. 

Dr Abbot had never specifically invited her to call him Jack. He had, however, married one of her very closest friends, and Mel had made the conscious decision on their wedding day to address him more familiarly.

“Oh,” he said, looking up when Mel knocked on the door of Samira’s room and peeked around the door. “Hey, Mel.”

“Hi, Jack,” she said, definitively. “Sorry I didn’t wait to see you earlier, but Parker and John were, uh…”

He smiled. He had a good smile, very sincere. 

“Yeah, I’ve worked enough nightshifts with them to guess how they were,” he said, shaking his head. “Come in, sit down - you see the baby?”

“She’s very sweet,” Mel said. “Congratulations?”

“Thank you,” he said, and Mel relaxed into the chair by Samira’s bed. She wondered for a second at the best, most comfortable chair in the room being free, and then she realised that Jack was sitting in his wheelchair. She’d never seen him use it before, except when he’d been run over by a gurney wielded by a particularly belligerent police officer who hadn’t wanted to let them bring a suspect up to X-ray. He’d suffered a dislocated right knee and three cracked ribs, leaving him unable to use either his prosthetic leg or his crutches.

Mel had found out about his relationship with Samira that morning - he’d asked her to let Samira know why he wasn’t answering his phone, which had been more or less crushed in the accident. Maybe she should have started calling him Jack at that stage.

But she’d only seen him using his chair then, so she hadn’t been expecting it now. He almost never went without his prosthetic in public, in Mel’s experience, and when he had to, he used his crutches. 

“I can’t carry the baby on crutches,” he explained, when Mel asked. “Well, I can, if I use the sling, but I don’t think it’s super secure and safe when she’s so little. We got some skin-to-skin time earlier, so I figured I’d keep the risk to a minimum.”

“I’m glad you’re getting contact time,” Mel said. “Has Samira seen her yet?”

“Nah, she wasn’t fully lucid when she woke up earlier,” he said. Mel couldn’t quite understand the look on his face. “They extubated her before she could do it herself. Uh, she should be waking up soon, so I was wondering - could you sit with her a little while? I gotta freshen up, check in on Nalini, and I don’t want her to wake up alone.”

“Of course! I’d be happy to!”

Mel really was happy to sit with Samira, and would have been even if Jack hadn’t asked for such practical reasons - he did look like he needed to freshen up, and of course he wanted to check on the baby. Mel wasn’t even the baby’s parent, and she kind of wanted to check on her. 

“Dana might be up, and maybe Robby,” he added. “Princess, too, probably - everyone wants details, now they know Samira’s waking up. You ready for the interrogation?”

“Literally never.”

He laughed a little, and shrugged.

“Me either,” he admitted. “Thanks, Mel. I won’t be long, but you can text me when Samira wakes up.”

Samira woke up the way she always did, in Mel’s experience - which was not particularly extensive, but mostly involved a hungover Samira on Mel’s couch after a night out. By Mel’s reckoning, the way Samira woke up from a post-surgery, post-sedative sleep was not dissimilar to the way Samira woke up from three hours sleep following many, many units of alcohol.

“Oh my God,” Samira groaned, turning her head away from the light. “Oh my fuck.”

“Hi, Samira,” Mel said gently. “Ice chips?”

Samira opened one eye just enough to see Mel sitting by her bed.

“Hi, Mel,” Samira said, her voice a rough croak. “You seen my baby?”

Samira hadn’t not wanted to be a mom. She had wanted kids, in an abstract Five Year Plan kind of way, but she’d never really considered what it would actually look like. Like, she’d had a clinical understanding of pregnancy, and she’d been around plenty of babies and knew that she liked them, that she wanted kids herself someday - something that meeting the little Langdons and Imran al-Hashimi and the many half-Abbots had only confirmed - but she hadn’t really understood what that would… mean?

And then, Jack had pulled out and said “Uh, so,” about a broken condom about a week after they got home from their honeymoon, about two days after she’d started back in the Pitt, about three days before she had her first stand-up row with Robby, attending-to-attending. 

And they’d sort of agreed to forget to go to the pharmacy for Plan B. 

And Jack had put a note on their shared calendar eight weeks out, a reminder to buy a pregnancy test. 

And they’d thrown out the rest of their condoms.

And now, this.

“I’m not going to lie,” she said, flopping her head to look Mel in the eye, “I’m not mad to have been unconscious for the actual birth.”

Mel’s smile was radiant. 

“Silver linings!” she chirped, and helped Samira to another round of ice chips. 

Samira was mostly numb - they had her on a higher dose of pain meds than she would have expected, and she figured Jack had probably asked for that to make sure she was comfortable - but it still wasn’t a good time, trying to move. Mel helped her, though, carefully guiding her and moving the bed for her, and soon enough she was sitting upright enough to happily crunch on some ice chips and feel almost human.

“Before you ask,” Mel said, “no, you can’t see your chart. You have to wait for Dr Walsh and Dr Abbot-”

“You can call him Jack, Mel.”

“-Dr Cecelia Abbot to come speak to you.”

Samira had no recollection of Cece being in the hospital, but given she was no longer pregnant, she could only assume her sister-in-law had hit a new PB on the twenty-minute journey from Magee to PTMC by bike to get here in time to deliver her newest niece.

Cece was by far Samira’s favourite in-law, mostly because she was the only one whose personality was at all like Jack’s.

“Emery and Cece are either working or sleeping, Mel, c’mon,” Samira said. “And since I’m not allowed up to go to the NICU, surely-”

“Do we know for certain that you’re not allowed up to the NICU? We’re both doctors. Surely they’ll trust us to manage your care for twenty minutes.”

The ICU doctors did not, in fact, trust Mel and Samira to manage Samira’s care for twenty minutes. They made it very clear that they found the question a very emergency medicine thing to have asked, and that that was not a compliment. 

“I want to see either my baby or my chart,” Samira huffed. “That’s reasonable. I think that’s perfectly reasonable!”

“And I’m sure your doctors will agree,” Mel said, patting Samira’s hand. From anyone else, that would’ve been condescending, but Mel understood Samira’s petty frustrations in a way no one else did and her sympathy was always sincere. “But maybe we should wait for them to get here to ask.”

Jack would be back soon, Samira knew, and he’d immediately crumble and let her look at her chart. She knew how to get what she wanted out of him, even if Mel was immune to her best efforts. 

“You’re also probably hungry,” Mel said, flicking through her texts. “Parker says you didn’t eat enough during your shift yesterday-“

“She’s such a snitch!”

“- so even with the IV nutrition your body is craving sustenance.”

Samira blinked. Wait.

“Are you saying I’m hangry, Mel?”

Mel smiled. It was a very small, very pleased smile. 

“I would never say anything like that,” she said. “Not in so many words, at least.”

“Stop trying to guilt Dr King into giving you your way,” Emery chided from the door. Samira had absolutely not noticed her coming in. “Jesus, you’re so rude, no wonder you and him are such a good match. ”

“Thank you for saving my life, Emery,” Samira said, as sweetly as her raw throat would allow, just for the pleasure of seeing Emery scowl. “How did you do it?”

Jack, when he returned from the NICU with his hair still damp from what was probably a quick, unsafe shower in a non-ADA compliant staff bathroom, thanked Mel for sitting with Samira and doubled down on thanking Emery for her good work (“You fucking asshole.”). Samira let Mel hug her, promised to Facetime later that evening, and settled in to learn everything that she could have learned much more easily by just reading her damn chart, since no one seemed to want to let her see her baby. 

The first thing Jack did once they’d waved Mel off was to kiss Samira, despite the fact that her mouth probably tasted like absolute shit. Then, he started putting his leg back on, and it was then that Samira learned that Jack had been given the barest of bare bones explanations of her injuries the previous night.

“We told him about the shit we had to remove,” Emery admitted, ignoring the look of thunderous displeasure on Jack’s face. “He was one piece of bad news away from needing sedation, so we figured we’d keep him upright and wait until you were awake to share everything else.”

Lena gently pushed Jack aside by the shoulders to take up pride of place at Samira’s bedside a little while later. 

“Go look at the baby and calm down,” she told him, and Jack, conditioned to do whatever he was told by his charge nurse as soon as she told him to do it, went. “God, you’d think he’d never treated a stab wound before. Of course there was extra damage! He think the poor looney who stabbed you went in with a copy of Gray’s in one hand and a scalpel in the other?”

“Walsh caught you on the way out, huh,” Samira guessed, grinning. She leaned into it when Lena gathered her up for a (perfect) hug, and didn’t squirm when Lena immediately set about tidying up her hair. “He’s a little overwhelmed is all, he’ll be fine in an hour.”

“You’re too forgiving, sweetie, I keep telling you you oughta be meaner to him!”

Lena fixed Samira’s hair. Lena sat down in the good chair at Samira’s bedside. 

Lena took Samira’s hand and said “Fuckin’ A, though, kid, when Dana told me what happened I about lost my life. Don’t ever pull that shit again.”

“Yes ma’am,” Samira said, squeezing Lena’s hand. “I’ve got too much to live for, don’t worry. You been to see the baby?”

“I’ll go see your baby - of whom I’ve had only glowing reports, by the way - when you’ve called your mom.”

“Lena!”

“I know things are tough for you, but if your idiot husband has to call his parents then you’re not getting out of calling your mom. You want me to sit with you? Because I’ll sit with you, but you still gotta do it.”

Jack’s parents (and hadn’t it been a truly insane reveal to learn that both of his parents were alive and kicking, his mom now a fresh seventy and his father a pickled seventy-four) looked like American Gothic with more hair. They looked like every possible stereotype of not-a-hick rural white people Samira could possibly have imagined. They were weird as hell and Jack’s relationship with them was fraught at best. 

He had, however, called his mom to tell her about the baby. Given the givens, Samira really couldn’t worm her way out of calling her own much less insane mother for much longer. 

But the thing was - the thing about it all was that Jack’s parents were more or less strangers to him these days. He had cordial but not close relationships with his sisters other than Cece, and while he was close to his older nieces and nephews, they weren’t close to Mare and Pat Abbot. Jack and Cece had gotten the hell out on scholarships for college, and they’d never, ever looked back. 

Samira’s situation wasn’t as clean cut. The lines between her mother and herself had been strange and blurry since her father’s death, and that whole mess over the sale of the house had only made it worse. Jack, weirdly enough, who her mother loved because Samira couldn’t take issue with her new stepfather if her mother was accepting of Samira’s ex-boss-almost-twenty-years-her-senior-husband, and then the sheer distance of Samira’s time at Stanford overlapping with that stupid fucking cruise had helped. Things still weren’t good. She doubted they ever really would be, and that really fucking sucked, especially at times like this. 

She wished she could trust that her mom would react, like, normally. That was all. 

“No matter what,” Lena said gently, “you’ve got all of us. You know that, right?”

Samira sniffed. 

“Oh, honey, c’mere-“

Samira basked in another of Lena’s hugs, hoping that if she looked pathetic and sad enough then Lena would let her off the hook. 

“Now call your mom,” Lena said, once Samira’s snuffles had subsided, “or I’ll have Dana come up here and stand over you.”

“If I call her,” Samira bargained, “then you have to remind Robby he needs to file an incident report with Gloria on my behalf.“

“Oh, that I’ll do for free, kid.”

“Hey, babe,” Samira said, waiting for Emery and Cece to come back around lunchtime. She was fully prepared to cry on them if they didn’t immediately clear her to go to the NICU in a wheelchair. Robby still hadn’t come up to see her, but neither had Gloria descended, which meant he was continuing to chicken out on handling things. “Hey, Jack.”

“If you had your eyes open, you’d know I was looking right at you, honey.”

Samira opened her eyes. Jack was sprawled against the side of her bed, arms folded near her hip and cheek resting right there on her favourite patch of freckles on his forearm.

“Hi,” she said, scratching idly at the scruff on his throat. Today was supposed to be a shaving day - his skin was delicate, and he couldn’t shave close at the best of times without leaving himself a wreck of razorburn, but the cold, dry weather of this past week had done a real number on him. So his beard was grown out a little further than usual, was her point, and she’d been making a sensory toy of the underside of his jaw for about three days already. 

He probably wouldn’t get to shave today. He didn’t keep a razor in his rucksack and he wouldn’t be leaving the hospital until she did. 

“Hello,” he returned. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the way he looked at her. Awestruck, Mel had called it once. Awful, Santos had echoed her, and mimed puking. With the exception of Mel, who didn’t like altered states, they’d all been horrifically drunk that night and Samira still hadn’t admitted to having any non-professional feelings about Jack. There had still been a couple of months left of residency, after all. “You need anything? Cece and Emery should be here soon, I think.”

“Hmm,” she sighed. She was a little sleepy - she didn’t want to be, but such was the reality of recovery. “Tell me again.”

“Yeah? Okay.”

And he did. He took out his phone and he scrolled through the dozens of photos he’d already taken of Nalini, of their baby, who was small and a little fragile, sure, but who was already squirming and fighting and proving herself exactly who they’d known she’d be. He talked her through all of Cece’s notes on Nalini’s arrival, and her treatment plan, and her prognosis. He talked her through the timeline for bringing Nalini home to the nursery they’d decorated for her. 

He did not mention the crib. The crib was shockingly beautiful and, Samira knew, despite Jack’s best efforts at secrecy, shockingly expensive. Maybe when she’d been on attending pay as long as Jack had, she’d be able to shrug it off as easily as he had. 

“I just want to meet her,” Samira sighed, wishing her voice wasn’t wobbly with unshed tears. Parker and John had sent her a million pictures on top of all the ones in Jack’s phone, but that wasn’t the same at all as actually seeing her. “This is the longest we’ve been apart since she was conceived, you know?”

“As soon as Cece says-“

“I know! I know. I do know. Can’t go home if I bleed out via c-section incision. I promise I’m not going to do anything dumb.”

“The only dumb thing you’ve ever done is to marry me, so…”

“She also let you knock her up,” Cece pointed out, leaning around the door. “All of her bad decisions seem to involve you, PJ, so…”

Cece’s hair was still auburn and she wore her glasses instead of squinting around contacts at work, but otherwise it was immediately obvious that her and Jack were  twins. Not identical, but too alike to be anything else. Samira had loved Cece from the day they met, the kind of instant, easy connection she’d felt with only half a dozen other people, ever, one of whom had been Jack. 

“Marrying him got me you as a sister-in-law,” Samira pointed out, holding out a hand in greeting. “I hear you did a really good job with my baby.”

Cece was in street clothes - soft, wide leg pants and a thick cable-knit sweater that Samira’s pretty sure came from Jack’s closet. Samira found herself kind of jealous, because there was no greater comfort than bundling herself up in Jack’s clothes when she was sick. 

Cece was also, more importantly, pushing a wheelchair ahead of her into Samira’s room.

“I’m coming with you, just in case,” Cece said, “but I figured you might want to meet her, see for yourself how she’s doing. Shall we?”

Ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes, and Samira’s own dark hair and brown skin, both of their curls and Jack’s serious mouth, a grip like an arterial clamp and a squeaky yawn like a kitten. 

“Oh my god,” Samira said, hands completely steady but heart racing as Cece set Nalini into her arms. Samira gathered her daughter close, tucking her into the unbuttoned neck of her pyjama top so they could rest skin-to-skin for just a few minutes. She was lighter than Samira would have liked, but they could fix that. Had they put her on formula? Samira hadn’t fully settled on formula versus nursing, had been leaning toward formula for purely practical reasons, so she made a mental note to ask Cece later. 

Holy shit. She was real. Nalini was finally here, and she was real, and Samira was literally holding her baby, her and Jack’s baby, in her arms. “I grew this? What the fuck, babe.”

“Yeah, honey,” Jack said, wrapping his arms around them both and tucking his face over her shoulder. He was crying, she knew. She was too. This was so cool. A baby! Their actual daughter! “I know.”

“Can’t believe we didn’t ban Lena from the pool. Biggest ever and we lose it to insider trading? Fuck me, man.”

Dana looked at Ahmad over her glasses. She felt she was doing a really good job at not laughing in his face. She honestly felt that everyone who’d missed Mohan and Abbot’s mutual appreciation society even before she’d left for fellowship deserved to lose their money. 

“I mean,” Dana said, trying to be reasonable. “Yeah, buddy. You all brought this on yourselves.”

Dana had made out like a goddamn bandit in the pool - was Mohan straight? Immaterial, she was too obsessed with the medicine to settle for anyone other than a fellow doctor, and she was an old lady in a young lady’s body, so an old man. That left her with two options, here in the Pitt, and Robby wouldn’t have been able for her even if he hadn’t been such a dick to her over the years.  

So, Jack. Who was conveniently obsessed with her and her big, scary brain.

Ahmad went away grumbling, and Dana thought she might get some work done before Langdon draped himself over the desk to unfuck whatever he’d done to his back this time. 

“So,” he said, “did Robby ever actually… talk to Gloria about this?”

Langdon had won a little play money in the pool, too, because while he and Mohan weren’t best friends they did seem to vibe, as the kids said. It didn’t surprise Dana that he’d picked up on the pregnancy of it all, and he’d made a tidy collection on the due date. 

“Nah. He’s waiting for Mohan to get back to work, I think.”

Princess, nearby, made a noise that wouldn’t have been an insult to Robby’s honour if Dana didn’t know her so well. Not one nurse was pleased with him over his soft touch handling of this mess, and Princess in particular was furious - she’d been in the room where it happened, and had had a full screaming match with Robby this morning when she found out he’d done a big fat nothing about it. 

“Probably for the best,” Langdon said, frowning. “You might actually get more security staff if she leads the charge- hey, should you be out of bed?”

“Shut up, Frank,” Mohan said, grinning and visibly blissed out. Oh, yeah - they had her on the good shit. “I’m smarter than you.”

“The woman of the hour!” Dana crowed. “What’re you doing down in hell, huh? Don’t you got a baby to coo over?”

“Not to toot our own horns,” Abbot said, pushing Mohan’s wheelchair out of the elevator, absolutely pink with joy, “but we really outdid ourselves. She’s awesome.”

“Well, what brings you down here when you could be up there?” Princess asked, hugging Mohan for so long there was a queue waiting behind her. “Dr King cleared your locker - do you need anything? Can we do anything for you?”

Mohan was hugging Princess right back. She didn’t look in any real mood to let go.

“I’m never going to ask you anything ever again, Princess,” she said, “because I maybe owe you my literal life, but someone has been dodging my calls.”

Robby emerged from Central-6 and made the fatal error of not scanning the room before coming to the hub. 

“Hey, Dana, can you follow up on the CT for West-4-“

“Hi, Robby!”

He looked up from his tablet. Mohan was grinning, still wrapped in Princess’ arms, with Abbot leaning over her.

“You’re not getting out of this one, brother,” Abbot said cheerfully. “You haven’t even offered us your congratulations yet, man, it’s just plain fuckin’ rude.”

“You and me,” Mohan said, “we gotta talk to Gloria, big guy.”

“Maybe we should wait until you’re back on your feet?”

“Nah,” Mohan said, “I wanna get back to my baby, Robby.”

“Exactly! You should-“

“Dr Robinavitch,” Mohan said, in the sugar-sweet tone of voice they’d all learned to look forward to when her and Robby argued. “You’re holding me up. You gotta go faster. Let’s go.”

Dana laughed. Robby looked so fuckin’ gobsmacked that she couldn’t help it. 

And Robby, who had long since ceded control of the ED’s relationship with admin to Samira Mohan, went.