Work Text:
Samira felt the napkin burning a hole in her pocket. Ten little numbers and a smiley face in black ink.
It started at 11:36. 32 year old male, 2 and a half inch laceration on the palm of his left hand. A butcher knife slipping off the edge of a countertop, a reflex instinctively telling him to grab at it before it hit the floor, fist closing around blade. Skin versus knife, knife wins. He had gotten lucky all things considered, the cut didn't make it to the dermal layer.
She gave him stitches. They talked about the restaurant where he worked (he was the sous, apparently, a job that she thought only existed in movies). He asked if she'd ever been, she said she hadn't. She tried to say it in a way that seemed casual, that didn't expose that she doesn't really go anywhere. She doesn't have the time, or the energy, and she definitely doesn't have the money. Her, at some restaurant so dimly lit you can't even read the menu, where they serve scallops with microgreens on wooden boards instead of plates, rose panna cotta with raspberry coulis for dessert... yeah right. The closest she'd been to a fine dining experience was the Vietnamese place down the street from her apartment. 12 dollar bánh mìs and an A rating from the health inspector... that was her idea of luxury.
She finished off his last suture with a tight knot. His hand would be a-ok, but his blood sugar was low, and he was a bit pale in the face. She offered him a juice before he hit the road, brought it to him with a small white napkin. Told him to sit tight until he finished it.
It was as simple as that, nothing out of the ordinary. Until she came back to his room, handed him his discharge paperwork, told him he was free to go. He thanked her for her help, smiled at her. Signaled casually towards the pen in her scrub pocket, which she handed over. He scribbled quickly on the napkin and stuck it out to her, told her to swing by the restaurant sometime, after closing. He'd make her dinner, whatever she wanted. Promised he'd be careful not to drop any knives while she was there.
He was nice. Sure, she didn't have butterflies in her stomach, but that doesn't actually happen to people, right? Plus, who was she to complain? She had resigned herself to the fact that she was on a time crunch. 30 was young, at least that's what all her 40 and 50 year old coworkers liked to tell her. But the timeline was... scary. She wanted to be with someone for at least 3 years before she'd even consider having kids with them. So, best case scenario, kid at 33. If she wanted to have a second, which she knew she would (she had lived the only child experience and wasn't exactly fond of it), she'd want to wait at least two years, three to be safe. Give herself healing time, lowers the risk of preemie birth significantly, minimizes complications. So pregnancy number 2 at what, 36? A possible third at 39? You know what they call that? A geriatric pregnancy. Could they pick a more terrifying word? Geriatric. In every other area of medicine, the floor for the geriatric window was 65. When you started doing bone density screenings and testing for glaucoma. For pregnancy, thirty-five was "geriatric".
Maybe nice was good enough. She could settle for nice. A nice life with a nice guy. It all sounded so.... nice.
She had never actually been asked out by a patient before. Flirted with, maybe. A handful of guys who were around her age. But most were much older, (lonely widowers who spent all day alone, reveling in the opportunity to connect with someone, even just for a moment) or much, much younger (15 year old boys whose eyes were swollen shut after getting pelted in the face by baseballs, white pulpy bone sticking out after a nasty fall off a skateboard, children with childish crushes).
There was Leroy, of course, the 59 year old unhoused frequent flyer. He had a setup at the encampment two blocks down and would swing by every couple weeks. Get an infection under control, get his stomach pumped. Receive the five star ham-and-cheese sandwich and sponge-bath treatment. He was a flirt, a predictable flirt. He'd ask for her by name, and every time she'd pull back the curtain he'd turn to someone and make some version of the same joke: "Nurse, am I dead, because there's an angel in the room." She'd scoff lightly, "Yeah, yeah, calm down, Mr. Delano, it's just me again." She'd get him whatever he needed, and he'd stare at her the whole time like she'd hung the stars. He had some good lines, she'd give him that. "How does a girl like you end up in a place like this... when are you gonna let me take you away from this place?", he'd once asked her in a drunken stupor. She cracked a half smile at him. "Tempting."
Leroy was sweet, harmless. He called her "Miss Doctor" and always thanked her genuinely and never took things too far. Once, on a particularly bad night when he had a killer respiratory infection and was coughing up blood and she could see in his eyes that he was genuinely quite afraid, she removed her glove and held his hand for a minute, leaned in a little and whispered: "Can I tell you a secret? If I ever want to make a clean break from this place, you'd be the first person I call." He smiled so wide she could see each one of his teeth, and then fell right to sleep. She knew he wouldn't remember her saying that when he woke up.
She knew this kinda thing wasn't completely out of the ordinary. She'd heard stories of it happening to other people. Heard stories of people who actually went all the way with it, went on a date, had a one night stand. She's sure some people probably did meet their future spouses that way. In primary care that kind of thing would be considered unethical. In emergency medicine it worked a bit different. You patient is only your patient for a few hours and is hopefully never your patient again. It wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world. She could do it, if she wanted to. Did she want to?
***
It was 5:13 now, her shift almost over and her head still completely scrambled. She had successfully forgotten about the man, the napkin, the phone number for multiple chunks of her day. It didn't cross her mind when she intubated the MVC victim in South 4, or treated the girl who somehow stuck her hand in a running blender. But every once in a while, she pulled the little napkin out of her pocket, not all the way, just enough to look down and see the numbers, the little smiley face, confirm to herself that it existed. And now she was stationary, finishing her charting, and her anxiety was bubbling back up to the surface. Her fingers toyed with the fibery paper of the napkin in her pocket, rubbing to separate the plies. She finally pulled it out, held it in both her hands, got a good look at it under clear lighting. It was like the opposite of a security blanket, it was a little cloth patch of anxiety and indecision. A 5 inch by 5 inch albatross. She hated herself for how much she was overthinking this. She felt like a teenager.
She was so hyper-focused on it that she didn't see Dana staring at her across the counter top of the charge desk. "What's got you all out of sorts?" Samira wasn't sure if she had just started talking to her or had been trying to talk to her for a while. If she had been, she hadn't heard her.
"Nothing, nothing, sorry." She looked up for half a second, then back down. Jerked her hand around awkwardly, couldn't decide if she should put the napkin back in her pocket or hand it to Dana. "A patient, kinda... well, he gave me his number." She set it down in the end, spinning it so the numbers faced her.
"Well, well, well..." Dana nodded, a small smirk on her face. Princess shot up from her seat, abandoning the facade that she hadn't been listening in, and leaned over the napkin with raised eyebrows.
Samira's eyes rolled back into her head slightly, her hand coming up to wipe across her eyebrows. "I don't know what to do. Would it be insane? I mean he was nice but I don't even know if I like him. But... I don't know. I don't exactly have a list of candidates lining up."
The corner of Dana's mouth lifted slightly, the look you can't help your face from making when someone says something minorly depressing but you don't want them to feel you pitying them. People used to correct Samira when she said things like that, reassure her. At this point everyone has heard it from her enough that they stop trying to convince her otherwise.
"Would you do it?" She turned to Princess now, probably not the person to ask. Princess would do just about anything, and even if she wouldn't, she'd have no qualms telling someone to do something she wouldn't do herself.
She shrugged lightly, the smile on her face betraying her. "Depends. What was he in for?"
"Hand laceration in central 2. Workplace injury. So at least I know he has a job. And that he'll live."
Dana chuckled lightly, flipping through the pages of her clipboard. Samira wasn't joking. Considering the sorry state of the Pittsburgh dating pool, "employed" and "living" checked off two of her major boxes.
"Hey." She heard his voice then, cutting through the scuffle of the bullpen, turned for half a second to see him walking towards them. It was 45 minutes before handoff, but he usually ended up wandering in a bit early anyways. He was only a couple feet away, so she flipped the napkin over quickly, left it sitting there blank side up. She busied herself with the work in front of her then, praying that Dana and Princess would drop this topic immediately. She really didn't want to have to explain herself to him, have to see the look he'd give her if one of them mentioned it. She actually couldn't think of anything more embarrassing.
She could feel his eyes on her as he sidled up next to her against the charge desk, unwrapping a sandwich, picking up a triangular half and taking most of it in one bite.
"Those are for patients, Abbot," Dana swatted towards the half of the sandwich that still sat on the desk, but Jack's reflexes were quick, grabbing the food and leaning back a couple inches with a passive grunt, like a petulant child complaining at bedtime.
"There's thousands of them." He said casually. He planted his elbows on the desk and stared at the sandwich in his hands, evaluating his next bite with food still in his mouth. "Everyone eats them, we just don't tell you."
Dana huffed through her nose at that, tried to calm herself and was mostly successful until she peered over the top of the glasses resting on the bridge of her nose. "And you're leaving crumbs everywhere!" Jack made a quick movement of sweeping off the counter before she officially lost her shit on him. "Pain in my ass..." she mumbled as she returned to her work, eliciting a small giggle from Princess. The corners of Jack's mouth turned up, pleased with himself. He couldn't help it. She never stayed angry.
He leaned his right forearm on the desk then, turning his whole body towards Samira. She never engaged in moments like this, when everyone was having fun, playing around. At least not with him. He'd seen her from across the room, smiling, laughing. Gossiping with Santos or Perlah or Whitaker. But when he was there, she was all business, hyper-focused on charting. He could never tell why. The only way to get her involved was to look right at her and force it, and he always did.
She wasn't looking at him, so he wasn't sure where to look himself. "You work Friday?" His eyes flashed from the bridge of her nose, the bun resting on the back of her head, the pen in her hand, before landing finally on her mouth, awaiting response.
Samira didn't look up from the clipboard, but stopped writing while she thought. In her periphery she could hear Princess choke out a short cough, plop onto the desk chair, wheel a few inches away, remaining in eavesdropping distance."Um..." Did she have Friday off? Even she didn't know. She didn't have much reason to keep track of her days off. Just another day she spent at home, resting up and waiting until she could come back in. She'd be there every day if Robby would let her. "No, I don't think... I'd have to check."
"You have Friday off." He said then, matter-of-factly, a little shrug like he was happy to inform her. He signaled towards the break room with the bit of sandwich in his hand. "I checked the board already."
Samira's lips parted, her head spinning. Then why did you ask? But instead she said nothing, just looked at him awkwardly, unmoving. At this point she knew better than to try to understand Abbot. But he was just staring back at her, letting the awkward silence build, unfazed by it. Clearly she'd have to be the one to break it.
"...Okay?"
Abbot tilted his head slightly. "Wanna grab lunch then?"
Huh? Samira stared off, slightly to the left of him, zoned out. Her brain felt like it was solving a riddle. Friday. Grabbing lunch. Did she want to grab lunch on Friday? It was simple enough, but her brain couldn't parse it, at least not coming from his mouth. It took her longer than it should to fill in what was left unsaid. You have Friday off, (I know you Friday off, I checked to make sure you have Friday off), so would you like to grab lunch. On Friday. With me.
He started up again. "You said you wanted to go over your QI initiatives, right?" Oh my god, he's still talking, she thought. She was still stuck on question one and now he was adding more. She had to say something before he kept going and she completely short circuited.
"Um, yeah... sure... yeah." It came out of her mouth more like a question to herself.
He nodded at her slightly, his brows raised a little. The kind of look he gives her across the ER, for when he's trying to say calm down, deep breaths, no big deal. He had a habit of doing that, sensing her nervousness and somehow finding a way to dispel it without drawing any attention to it, without making her feel even worse.
"Okay." He popped the last piece of his sandwich in his mouth, a little corner of crust, and picked up the brown wrapper it came in.
Then, eyes still locked on hers, his hand went back down to the counter, and before she could catch what was happening, before she could reach out to try and stop him, he picked up the little white napkin, used it to wipe off his fingertips, and crumpled it up along with the plastic wrapping. "Then Friday it is." The corners of his mouth upturned for half a second as he turned away, tossing the ball of paper and the ten numbers and the smiley face into the big biohazard garbage bin.
She felt like she stood there staring for a whole five minutes before she turned back to the charge desk and was reminded that they had an audience. Princess cheeks were puffed out, stifling a giggle. Dana didn't need to say anything because her face was saying it for her: well would you look at that...
Samira’s instincts to act natural were so far out the window. "What just happened?"
Princess smiled at her widely, practically giddy at Samira's naive bewilderment. "That was fate stepping in."
Dana chuckled, hooking her glasses back onto her scrub top. "Oh no honey, fate had nothing to do with it... that was all Jack Abbot."