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“I wonder if Mohan knows. She’s not stupid, and Abbot’s not good at hiding things. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
The floor nearly squeaked against Samira’s shoes with how quickly she came to a stop right before entering the hallway full of staff lockers. Thankfully it didn’t, or she would have given herself away to Doctors Shen and Ellis from where they seemed to be gossiping. Gossip was essential for a hospital shift, kept the gears oiled and energy alive- but there was never, ever, gossip regarding Samira Mohan. Not in elementary school (when kids forgot her entirely, except for group projects), not in college (when everybody else was too busy having relationships and fun parties and making memories to notice her, except for study groups), and not at work. Even when her and Jack had properly started to date, the rollout had been professional, contained; the relationship never crossed work boundaries in front of patient or staff eyes.
So why the hushed tones? Why the sure talk of Abbot hiding something from her? And what, if it was as true as Shen’s voice had made it sound, was the secret?
“It’s gonna be a shitshow,” Ellis said, “But we all know what Samira’s gonna do.”
Both lockers slammed shut before Shen clicked his tongue thoughtfully and responded: “I dunno… She’s gonna find out, and I don’t know if he’s gonna be able to live with himself. She’s not the type to run off because of it, right?”
“Dude, no way. This is Mohan we’re talking about- she doesn’t have it in her.”
Samira ducked out of the hallway and hurried far enough into the Pitt to not arouse any suspicion that she’d been able to hear their conversation. If ever there was a time she was thankful for the hectic nature of emergency medicine, it was when she needed to take her mind off of an overheard conversation that implied her first serious significant other (whom she also believed to possibly be her last) was having an affair.
Though it felt idiotic to admit, the only part worse than the affair itself? The idea of Jack finding her too stupid to ever find out about it.
The feeling in Samira’s stomach was less of a pit and more of an abyss. She had overheard the conversation a whopping four days ago and every single one had brought with it new levels of nausea and unease. Had she really been so naive in trusting Jack? There was nothing Samira despised quite like humiliation; after all she had poured into this relationship, from opening up to him to having to tell her mother she was dating her significantly older, dead-wife having attended and that no, it was not too much baggage to handle and he wasn’t a scumbag weirdo, would she have to bear the weight of being wrong? Would Samira have to call her mother and explain that she wouldn’t be meeting Jack during her visit in August like they’d planned? Did she really go out on every limb, push herself to love and trust and open up to herself and another entirely separate human, spend nights moussing her hair for dates and emergency cleaning her apartment “just in case”, just to prove her insecurities right? To leave his house with her tail tucked between her legs after discovering the affair, and show up to work never to speak about it while being absolutely sure everyone there knew?
Day 5, Samira decided she loathed Jack Abbot.
Samira hated that Jack could do this to her. If he was going to cheat, didn’t he think she was worth telling at some point? He could cheat on her, lie to her, steal, break, or borrow, but to keep lying to her? That, she couldn’t forgive. She wouldn’t.
She had uprooted her life for him. She’d learned to live alone out of necessity, accepted she would probably die single since she had never had a serious relationship by 28, and, damnit, she liked the apartment she’d made into a sad little home for herself. It was scary, back then, to imagine a life where she’d never know love, where she’d only be left with herself and her scrubs, but it was still more welcome at the time than the idea of putting herself out there only to be let down. Sure, she made the decision at the end of the day to love him and change her life to be able to express that, but how was she to know that Jack was a dirty, lying asshole? Even now, he had the audacity to sit in the living room, squinting past the glint of his readers, tapping at his iPad.
“Samira, what is- my screen’s doing the yellow thing again, how do I… oh, never mind. Got it. Turned night mode off, like you said,” He smiled that catlike, close lipped smile at her. Samira, ever the actress, returned it with a sincere enough smile for him not to notice its insincerity while his head was already in the process of turning back to whatever medical journal, study, or other woman’s text messages he was clacking away at.
The seed of an immature, insidious thought cemented itself in her stomach’s abyss at the sight of the iPad. She slept alone that night as he went off to the night shift, one she didn’t share with him. He tucked the tablet into his bag on his way out and the seed began to blossom.
Jack was growing forgetful in his old age.
He was a man of staunch routine- a holdover of his military days. This routine started with pushing himself up off the mattress (after a still-asleep kiss to his partner’s head) and sitting up for one minute, still as stone, resting and then reaching for his prosthetic. It involved the same stained coffee mug as he got ready, the same chair to rest his backpack on, the same pre-ground coffee mix, and the same order of packing things into his bag. Today, that routine was disrupted.
Technology wasn’t what it used to be. His iPad cord had been on the fritz and evidently fought its last fight while Jack peacefully slept down the hallway: all that blinked up at him from the screen was the sign of an entirely drained battery. Thankfully this wasn’t even a minor inconvenience, as he rarely used it and simply packed it “just in case”, though Samira never knew what it was just in case for. He only ever used the device to read emails, journals, and articles, and he was not exactly swimming in free time at the PTMC. While it disrupted the routine- pack the laptop, then the iPad, then two granola bars- he ultimately just groaned, cursed technology, and left it on the table before heading to his shift.
“Dr. Mohan,” She didn’t look up from the screen into which she was finishing the last of her notes on a patient’s chart. His voice lowered in volume, a signature for when they talked about anything remotely personal. “Could you do me a big favor if you’ve got time today? The charger finally broke, could you swing by-”
“Got it,” She sighed, “iPad charger.”
Jack chalked her apparent crankiness up to nothing more than a stressful workday; Lord knows that on his best days, he left even grumpier than her in her worst moments. Before she left he snuck into the hallway and peeked out from her locker to give her a quick kiss away from the prying eyes of their coworkers.
Bastard.
The iPad laid on the coffee table with a brand new charger plugged into it and a stock-still woman sitting before it.
It was immature- it was petty, high school behavior. Was she really even considering it? Wouldn’t it be an admission that the trust in their relationship was so nonexistent, their relationship might as well be over already?
Was she really waiting for it to juice back up so she could rake through his messages and see who he’d been linking up with?
Jack barely knew how to turn his brightness down. Surely, he was unaware that his texts, logins, emails, and browser history were all linked from his phone to the tablet, including texts he might have deleted on his phone. He didn’t spend enough time on the tablet to be sifting through texts and calls, deleting and blocking conversations histories; if there was something to be found, Samira had no doubt whatsoever it would be on that tablet.
A chime. A bright screen. A default wallpaper of the milky way.
She deserved to know.
Samira stopped wringing out her damp curls and snatched it off the coffee table, exiting out of the days old news article she’d sent him and pulling up his texts instead.
Nothing. She was one of his four starred contacts, which was a nice gesture: her, Robby, his late wife’s mother, and Roberto, owner of his favorite deli. Scrolling through proved that the messages were dry- Gloria asking about shifts, a glorified gossip group chat with Shen and Ellis, spam texts that he always complained about instead of just replying to them all with “STOP” or “NO” like they said to do if you wanted to unenroll.
The phone log was equally dry, if not drier. Really, it was kind of sweet seeing how often he called Mrs. Flores to check in on their family, or how the only other people he regularly called were Samira and his weekly conversation with his sister.
So far, she’d just twisted herself into feeling guiltier than she had at the beginning. What if there really was nothing? Was it better or worse than if she did uncover some horrible truth, some backstabbing infidelity? The final probe was into his search history, though Samira was feeling sufficiently eaten alive by her own distrust in Jack. Sure, Shen and Ellis made it sound like there was some horrible affair going on right under her nose, but everything so far had come up squeaky clean-
Samira gasped. The iPad clattered to the living room carpet. It took one full minute before she dared to scoop it up and clarify that her eyes had not forsaken her.
Rings. Rings, upon rings, upon rings. Gemstones, diamonds, silver and golds and bookmarked pages of red sarees and extravagant nose rings and an article called “How Not to Buy the Ugliest Engagement Ring Ever”.
She’s not stupid, and Abbot’s not good at hiding things.
We all know what Samira’s gonna do.
She’s gonna find out, and I don’t know if he’s gonna be able to live with himself.
Bile rose to Samira’s throat. She shot up from the couch and started to pace throughout the house, their house, the house he’d brought her into and made her an equal in and apparently wanted her to stay in, forever, as his wife. When the clock crossed midnight and into her off day, still, she paced.
Jack had gone to therapy. Jack had done the one thing humans, and men most of all, struggled to do: He looked inward and found his flaws, embracing and elevating himself from them. He got through the unimaginable by talking, and reading self help books, and taking advice from a professional. He had spent years, even before his wife’s death, on improving himself. On moving forward; on growing up. Meanwhile, his girlfriend just went through his iPad at nearly thirty years old because she thought he was cheating on her.
It was worse because he was thoughtful. Jack was so incredibly in love with her, and he didn’t know how else to love besides all in: curled up in bed in the early hours of the morning, she scrolled through all of his bookmarked pages, figuring she was too far into it to stop now.
He wasn’t just searching for rings. He was bookmarking beautiful rings, not just the standard, ugly rings men halfheartedly bought their partners. He was searching up Indian wedding traditions, jewelry, proposal ideas and traditions. He was searching up “Mother of bride rings”, “Mother of bride dress”, and- the ones that made Samira’s heart ache the most- “Honoring dead at wedding”, “Honoring dead relatives at wedding Tamil fusion wedding.”
He didn’t even know what to search for, or if she wanted a wedding like that, and he over-researched anyway because that’s the kind of man Jack was. His heart was in all the right places and Samira had forsaken it. Here was a man working on himself, educating himself, trying to search for the perfect proposal and ring to go with it, and she’d gone and spoiled the entire thing.
The right thing to do was fess up to her mistake. Samira was ill at the very thought and when Jack finally returned from work, showered, and sank into bed next to her with his routine kiss atop her curls, she’d hardly slept a wink.
The end of the same three curls were braided, unbraided, and braided again. The air was fraught with buzzing, palpable tension as Samira waited for his alarm to go off. It multiplied tenfold at the sound of his footsteps slinking down the hall and arriving next to her. He had no idea, just kissed her cheek and settled with her on the couch.
Samira had been staring at a blank television screen. Jack cleared his throat when she, looking straight forward and nervously fiddling with her hair, made no effort to reach for the remote and change this.
“Great pick,” He joked, voice gruff with sleep, to which she immediately blurted out:
“I know you’re looking at rings.”
It was, admittedly, less graceful than what she’d been hoping for. However, she hadn’t expected it to be such a telltale heart-esque situation: it was as though her conscience compelled her to say it before her mouth and brain could catch up. Now, she looked at him- just in time, too, to see Jack’s brows shoot up. If he hadn’t been awake when he sat down, he sure was now.
“I went through your iPad because I overheard Shen and Ellis talking about us and it sounded really… affair-like,” She began diplomatically, “So I went through it last night. It was dumb, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… I don’t know why I did it,”
“Samira-”
“But I did, and I know, and you deserve to know that I… I ruined it, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have doubted you, and I can’t undo it, but I won’t-”
“Samira, just, come on-”
“It was stupid of me, and I understand if you need some time. I can sleep in the guest-”
“Samira! Please,” She finally broke from her apologetic trance at his raised voice. Jack quieted instantly. “Samira, I could care less.”
“Couldn’t,” She habitually corrected.
“Okay, right. I couldn’t care less. I’m not cheatin’ on you, but I wasn’t gonna propose to you.”
Her heart constricted. That… was not what she wanted to hear, actually. Jack picked up on this immediately, because Jack knew Samira like nobody else did, and explained before she could spiral any further.
“Mohan, in what world would I propose to you without telling you first?”
“It’s supposed to be a surprise-”
“You want me to ask you on a random Tuesday, with no heads up, whether or not you want me to be in charge of your life if you get put on life support?”
Samira hated that it was the first thought to pop into her head after his incredibly valid point but, sure enough, out came: “Don’t propose to me on a Tuesday.”
“See? That’s what we’ve gotta talk about. We’re planners- we’re cut from the same cloth.”
“But the rings, I,” She cleared the lump that all too suddenly rose to her throat, “I saw all the rings, Jack, it’s…”
“Fuck the ring. I don’t have any idea what your dream ring is.”
“But your research!”
“Just because I don’t know,” Jack went on, “Doesn’t mean I’m copping out. I wanted you to know that I cared. I looked up a bunch of rings, stuff I thought you might like, to prove that I thought about it. Doesn’t mean you have to take that into account. Honestly… honestly, you probably shouldn’t, because Bridget said my taste in rings is still really bad.”
Samira sniffled. “I want gold.”
“Gold, okay. That’ll look good, with the,” He trailed off, averting eye contact, “If you do the, you know, the red and the gold.”
“You want an Indian wedding?”
Jack held his hands up, feigning sudden jerkish confidence. “What? You don’t? Don’t you wanna see me in a kurta dhoti?”
Samira made a note to herself: on their wedding day, she had to make Jack pronounce that in front of her mother. Then, she couldn’t tease Samira for her Tamil ever again.
“Jack,” Samir scolded, “I’m serious! I still feel bad.”
“You should. I’ll hold this over your head forever,” He deadpanned. It earned him a roll of her eyes- but when she sank into her seat she was considerably more relaxed, a small smile even making an appearance.
Neither of them rushed to speak. The weight of the conversation returned with his jokes now fading away. Samira held up her left hand and turned it over: her, a wife. Somebody’s wife. His wife.
His wife.
“Jack,” Her voice was small, unsure if she was testing waters she shouldn’t be. “Did you ever think you’d remarry?”
His Adam's apple bobbed. Samira watched a lifetime of memories, of promises made (and, in the unfortunate matter of ‘til death do us part’, promises kept) and uselessly planned out futures whiz through his mind.
“We made a list of promises. One included that we wouldn’t stay single if the other one died. She said,” He stopped, shaking his head and continuing with a smirk, “She said I should never rob the world of my pecs.”
“Smart woman.”
“Yeah. Never thought I’d want to, though. Kind of figured it would feel like cheating, or saying goodbye to her forever, but… it doesn’t feel like that with you. It’s completely different with you than it was with her. And I want,” Again he had to stop, though it wasn't just him getting choked up now, “I want my life in your hands, if you’ll allow it, and I want what’s mine to be yours. I want to be your husband.”
Samira chewed on the inside of her cheek. God, it was just about everything she ever wanted to hear. Still, something was wrong. Flashes of her in an apron, bouncing babies on either side and her hospital badge long discarded, flitted before her. She’d never seen the Eiffel tower, or a rodeo, or hiked a great mountain or seen the Great Wall. She had spent just shy of three decades on this Earth and felt there was very little outside of work to show for that; what if a ring, or the lifestyle it brought with it, tied her down before she ever got the chance to fix that?
“I’m not ready yet,” Samira told him, hastily tacking on, “But someday, when we decide it’s the right time for you to ask, my answer will be yes.”
Jack returned her grin, looking every part the schoolboy who had just bagged the head cheerleader. Even as a young girl, had she ever dreamed of a world where a man looked at her with such reverence? Such unbridled joy, of which she was the source?
Samira took his hand and tugged him back to lean against her while she finally turned the TV on. Her future husband draped his arm and ringless hand across her shoulders and, with her snuggled tight up to his side, he planted a routine kiss to her forehead.