Work Text:
“What’s going on?” Robby asked in his doctor voice. Samira felt a little stab of embarrassment.
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” She stared at the EKG.
“You don’t look okay.” He plucked the paper from her hands and looked at it.
“You look like shit.”
She felt like shit, like she had just gotten over the flu, but in record time and now her body was catching up. “I feel like shit.” Samira grumbled.
“What happened?” Robby put the stethoscope in his ears and listened to her heart.
“I… I don’t know. I…”
Dana breezed in. “Alright you all, out. Beds need to be cleared.”
Her colleagues began to leave, and she swung her legs over the bed. “No, no.” Robby pushed her shoulder down and back.
“I’m fine now.” She argued with him.
He hummed and waited until everyone left. Langdon closed the door.
“What happend?” His voice was the kind of rough soft that reminded her of linen pants.
“I just… got really hot, and I was having trouble breathing.”
He nodded once. “Any chance you’re pregnant?”
She would’ve laughed in his face if she didn’t feel like this. Instead, she said, “I don’t feel comfortable answering that.”
He raised both brows at her.
She knew that he knew. Her and Jack.
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
He took a breath in and held it as he nodded. “Okay.”
She counted the weeks back in her head. “Nine weeks ago… condom—”
“Mhm.” He looked behind him at the window. No one was paying any attention. “Stay here.”
He rushed out and she stared down at herself. Could she be pregnant? She wondered and pressed a hand flat on her stomach. Her period had always been unpredictable at the best of times and chaotic at the worst. She hadn’t had one in the past twenty eight days, which wouldn’t have been concerning.
Robby returned. “You want me to call him?” He handed her the pregnancy test he had slipped up his sleeve.
She tugged her earlobe and stared at the test. Taking it, her brain told her, would admit defeat. She’d been nauseous but famished all day. And things tasted weird. Water tasted like metal, bananas tasted like cotton candy.
“Samira.” He coaxed.
She blinked up at him and took it. “Can…” She exhaled and felt tears rush to the surface. “I know you hate me right now, but can you just… wait here?”
He leaned away from her. “I don’t hate—”
“Please. You’ve been on my ass all day today.” She snapped and stood.
He looked down at the ground. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”
She left the room and took the test. Taking a leaf out of her attending’s book, she slipped the test into her sleeve and walked back to the room discreetly.
He set his watch. Five minutes. She sat on the bed as he tugged the curtain closed and clicked off the lights. She left it on the side table.
“You have options. You know that.” He whispered to her.
She gripped the sides of the hospital bed tightly, and he sat next to her. “How much longer?” She asked.
He checked his watch. “Four minutes, forty-five seconds.”
“Great.” She rubbed her forehead.
“You want me to talk or…”
“Or.” She decided. She’d keep the baby. No, would she? She chewed the side of her thumb as she thought.
She and Jack had only been dating for about three months. It started with him finding her after a particularly hard shift crying in the empty family room after she had to tell a six-year-old her dad wasn’t coming back, and her mother had to go with the police.
He held her while she wept and shook from the horror of the daughter asking her why her daddy didn’t love her anymore to come back.
Days later, in a slow period in the hospital, Dana had turned on the news, and there was the mom, arrested for attempted kidnapping and murdering her ex-husband. Jack came in moments later. He said he saw the news and just knew she was going to need someone.
They had the next day off together, and she invited him over for pizza and beer for lunch. That turned into them drinking wine while laughing around the kitchen as they cooked pasta and tomato sauce. Then that turned into ordering ice cream with Korean face masks on while watching a crappy hospital drama. They booed at the inaccuracies and laughed at the dramatization. Then quoted lines back to each other.
She kissed him first. He smelled like the strawberries and cream from the facemask.
“How much more time?” She asked.
Robby held his wrist up, and she had to squint in the dark, but watched as the timer went from 4:15 then continued steadily counting down.
“How come Jack doesn’t have kids?” She asked.
The question took him aback. “Uh…”
Jack told him about a week after they had first kissed. There was some yelling in Trauma One, and she had to pretend to not know what it could be about to her peers… even though everyone most certainly heard the name Samira.
“After Ann passed… I just… I think he thought it wasn’t in the cards for him.”
She nodded. They’d talked about his wife, and the sudden car wreck that took her life. He talked about how funny she was, and how he practically ran home every day to see her. He told her on at least a half dozen occasions: Ann would’ve loved you.
“He… he wouldn’t hold you to it. If that’s what you’re asking.”
She shook her head. “I know he wouldn’t.” She counted to fifteen in her head silently then asked. “Did you meet her?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Uhh… yeah.”
“What was she like?”
He was silent for what felt like an hour, but eventually, he gripped the side of the bed and leaned forward. “Brilliant. Beautiful. Way too good for Jack.”
She snorted.
“I was the best man at their wedding. Courthouse wedding, you know.”
“Jack told me.” She breathed.
“I was in charge of the rings. Middle of December, and they were so cold when I picked them up. So I put them on. Did he tell you that?”
She shook her head and looked at him.
Robby tilted his head back a smile and held up his right hand. “I put Jack’s ring here.” He pointed to his middle finger. Then pointed to his pinkie. “Hers here. Jack’s came off easily, but then came time for her ring… and it wouldn’t come off.”
She clapped a hand to her mouth.
He laughed and dropped his hand. “And Ann was so… patient about it. Jack was having a cow and half. The judge, thank god, had a sense of humor.”
“What did you do?” She asked.
“The bailiff saved the day. Had a needle and thread. Managed to not stab me… and wrapped the thread around and around until she’d compressed the swelling down well enough to slip it off.”
She laughed.
“After the ceremony, we went to a Mexican hole-in-the-wall, and she was just laughing and laughing. At Jack for being pissed at me. At me for being so stupid…”
“I wish I could’ve met her.”
“Me too.” Robby whispered.
A flash of anger rocked through her. “Why? So that I could keep my hands off him?”
He stared at her.
She deflated quickly. “Sorry. Shit.”
“It’s alright.” He said after a beat. “And… no. She was the kind of person that just… pulled everyone in. You know? That magnetic personality. Brought people together.
“Once… she had it in her head to do this potluck for my birthday. The entire neighborhood showed up… but somehow everyone missed the memo about bringing something. So all we had to go on was this insane batch of potato salad she had made.”
“Insane?”
“You know those lasagna disposable pans?”
She nodded.
“Nine of those. Filled with potato salad.”
“Sorry. Nine?”
Robby laughed. “She misread the instructions… instead of five pounds of potatoes, she read twenty five? I still don’t know how she did that.”
“At some point she had to have realized that was too much potato salad.”
His smile made him look fifteen years younger. “You’d think that. But she said she was ‘in the zone.’ Turned out okay… able to feed the whole block on potato salad and not have leftovers.”
“Impressive.”
He grinned at his hands. “She was.”
“I know… you don’t approve… of us.”
He shifted on the bed, and began to talk, but she bulldozed over him.
“You think I’m too young for him. That I’m just gonna be some fling or something, but you’re wrong. I don’t care about my age or his, and… I’m sticking around.”
His lips were in a thin line. Then he inhaled deeply and glanced at the test. He checked his watch. She glanced over his shoulder. Two minutes.
“Say something.” She asked him after he was silent for another fifteen seconds.
“You’re wrong.” He whispered.
Another hot bolt of fury rushed through her.
He held a hand up. “You’re good for him. Too good for him. Which is something that he needs, and… despite… outward appearances… I’m happy for you two. Really.”
Tap, tap
The door opened. “Michael?” Whitaker whispered.
Robby cleared his throat. “With a patient.”
Whitaker peeled back the curtain just a hair and saw the two of them. His cheeks went pink. “Sorry!” He rushed out.
She frowned at the curtain as it still swayed in the gentle breeze of Whitaker.
Samira frowned at Robby.
He glanced at his watch. One more minute. He shut his eyes tightly.
“Since when does Whitaker call you Michael?” She prodded.
He shook his head. “Since… we… started seeing each other.”
She felt her eyes nearly bug out of her head. “Wh… Whaaa?”
Robby shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Since when?” She asked.
“On and off for about half a year.”
She punched his shoulder.
“Ow!”
“He is not an on or off sort of relationship! Whitaker isn’t something you can just… toy with.”
“Yeah. I know! I know… He’s been more patient with me than I deserve.”
“If you fuck him up I will fuck you up.”
“Jack and Dana said the same thing.” His watch beeped.
He smacked a palm on it to silence the notification then pointedly looked at the test.
Fear struck her then, and lifting the test seemed to be the most impossible thing.
“Do you want me to read it?”
Her chest eased a little, and she was able to take a full breath. “Yeah. Yeah.”
He stood and flipped it up. He blinked at it.
“Well?” She asked.
“Positive.” He handed it to her. Pregnant :) The test read.
“Would explain the irritability… mood swings… panic attack.”
“Can… you call Jack?”
He nodded. “Do you…”
“Don’t say anything.”
“Yep.”
“Any idea why Robby called me back so early?” Jack asked her about two hours later at the nurses station. His bag slung over his shoulder, bags under her eyes.
“I… I have some test results I want you to look at, get a second opinion?” She asked as casually as she could.
His brow furrowed. “Sure. Lead the way, Dr. Mohan.”
In the hallway she handed him the tablet and he skimmed through it. “Chief complaint: tightness of chest, flushed skin… EKG normal… sounds like a panic attack.” He listed.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek.
“Three positive pregnancy tests.” He read, then shook his head at her and handed her back the tablet. “What’s… the question?”
She didn’t take the tablet back, instead she scrolled back to the top and pointed at the patient information.
He read it twice, then dropped the tablet and stared at her.
“I… I can get an abortion, or if you don’t want to be a dad that’s okay, too. I can—”
He swept her into a hug. “Oh my god. Oh my god.” He whispered into her hair.
She cried. “It explains why I had the craving for pickles the other day.”
He laughed. “Oh my god.” He pulled away and pressed his forehead onto hers. “Do… Do you want to keep it?”
He wiped her tears away with his knuckles and she nodded.
“You’re going to be the best mom.” He promised her with fresh tears in his own eyes.