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Jack smiled to himself as his key glided into the lock and the door swung open silently. Evidently, you’d been making your rounds in his house again. Garlic may be the spice of life, but so was him returning to find his cupboards had been reorganised and restocked for the fourth time in a month and having every hinge in the house oiled.
His pace stalled when he spotted you perched at the edge of his settee - never amongst the many plush cushions, your posture at a strict ninety-degree angle to your seat. The back of your head was like the dark side of the moon all wrapped in TV glow.
“Hey,” Jack slung his rucksack by the door.
Your head rotated a few degrees then a greater deal more to face him. Your slow cat-like blink greeted him in return.
Jack had learnt long ago not to question your unannounced arrivals or your statuesque stature. But sometimes he felt a twinge of concern against his brow. Sometimes, it was as if you stopped existing when he wasn’t looking.
“Did you manage to sleep?” He asked you.
“Not really.” Your voice was rough, evidence over your lack of sleep. You turned back to the TV, “Watched the new David Attenborough though.”
Stump aching up through his thigh, Jack still persisted towards his kitchen, the marble countertops shining like new from your efforts, “Figured you were with me for my good looks, my charm, my income. Should’ve known you were after my cable.”
The corner of your mouth pinched up, “Sorry, didn’t know how to break it to you.”
A new scrubbing brush sat on the windowsill and Jack noted its dryness before attempting to retrieve a glass from the shelf and finding instead his cereal boxes. He tried the adjacent cupboard over the sink next and nodded at discovering the new hiding spot for his drinkware. Your efficiency saved him a few seconds to the sink before he topped up his glass.
Rounding the settee, Jack landed neatly upon the adjacent sofa cushion and was about to detach his leg when his eyes latched onto the brilliant white of a bandage wrapping around your hand against your usual black ensemble.
He reached out slowly like he was offering his smell to a growling animal, “What happened?”
His fingertips traced over the gauze, and you fought the instinct to snatch it back as you kept him in your peripherals. You liked to be useful; so did Jack. A mutual understanding, you let him feel useful.
“Caught it on the sanding belt,” you cleared your throat.
There was no denying; you’d taken care of your injury well enough. Wrapped neatly like everything you did, it wasn’t the first time Jack had caught you with a war wound. Semi-satisfied, Jack withdrew yet his hand hovered over your wrist so as not to encourage further pain from being apart from you.
“Why didn’t you come by the ER? I woulda seen you got our VIP treatment,” he said softly.
Oh, if only it was that simple for you to unravel a lifetime of disbelief and worth like you’d unwound the bandage off the roll that morning. Jack liked being busy, useful. But, for Jack to be useful, you’d have to admit you were burdening him. It never got easier to do so, no matter how often Jack reminded you of his devotion. And it looked like he was about to remind you again.
You silence cracked something crack in Jack’s chest. Again, it was like you didn’t exist when he wasn’t looking, but this made it like you couldn’t exist even when he was near. It wasn’t personal, clearly, yet Jack still felt like you didn’t trust him, that he was failing as a boyfriend. It sank down his chest like a stone thrown into a lake, his skipping on the surface days over as he was engulfed by this small tragedy.
He leaned more on his wit like a crutch, “I’m very good at my job.”
You didn’t respond to his humour, “Didn’t want to bring work into this.”
So, he didn’t persist.
You wished you could believe him as easily as he seemed to believe in you. Through gritted teeth, you allowed Jack to squeeze your shoulder in comforting contact. Your body’s instinct was to cave into it while your mind refused to allow you a moment of reprieve without serious scolding first. Just as you were leaning against his palm, it slid away and retreated with Jack back to the kitchen.
Tipping the water down the drain, Jack closed the dishwasher door with his glass inside. His hands planted against the countertop with a sigh. Overexposing you to his affection had to work at some point. Through the noise of his head was a reoccurring intrusion: how long had you been waiting in pain? Why couldn’t you see how much he wanted to help? Why don’t you let him?
Like a dilating pupil, his awareness zeroed in on your presence behind him despite your noiseless movements. You’d called that his spidey-senses, not a side effect of his traumatising service or his attending instincts, a little joke that landed better with your dry delivery. Unwilling to spook you away, Jack remained with his back to you.
Like ivy growing on a timelapse of a pillar, your arms grew around his waist and locked your body against him. Jack felt you embed into him with your cheek against his shoulder. Not a boulder weighing him down but a seatbelt securing him, your embrace
drained the exhaustion out of him, his body sagging without the rush of the ER to prop him up.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered. For bringing your work home.
“Don’t be,” Jack automatically replied. I could never not help you.
You carefully led him back to his room. Once movement began, Jack was able to undress and prepare for a day of (some) rest. Patiently, you sat up against the headboard and appreciated how Jack let you use his bedtime routine to wind down with him. No unnecessary input, though sometimes you would reach your hand over and squeeze his wrist and that was plenty comfort.
You’d struck gold when it came to sleeping arrangements anyway; Jack worked nights and your insomnia cheered at his irregular habits. It was admittedly unnerving for Jack, waking up to you staring at the ceiling – or him – the first time. But there were many worse things he had become adjusted to during his vulnerable sleeping hours and you keeping watch was nowhere near any of those.
“I like it,” you told him once when Jack woke up with arms and legs latched around you like an elastic band. “I know you’re safe.”
Thus, he made you his glorified teddy bear, and you got a weighted heated blanket.
Jack’s curls comforted your cheek as he rested against you, prosthetic propped up against the bedside table. Your hand throbbing against the absence of anaesthesia, you graced it by Jack’s lower back.
Relationships had always been tumultuous for you: familial, fraternal, friends. But Jack was a perpetual eye of the storm, and you were determined to stay in the centre as much and as long as he would allow you to seek shelter in him.
You were a priority to him somehow. You had to start acting like it.
“Dr. Abbot?” Said doctor raised his head to meet the gaze of Chantana whose voice had cut through the hubbub of the ER like a scalpel. She seemed a little perturbed, a crease in her brow that couldn’t be smoothed out. “There’s someone in chairs asking for you.”
“Oh yeah?” Jack glanced back at his iPad to confirm, yes, the results were as harmless as the diagnosis they revealed. It allowed him space to quickly wrack his mind for who could be visiting him. He overturned furniture and cast up dust that landed on an old hope. Maybe…
He tore his gaze away and landed it back on Chantana, “Let me finish up here and I’ll be right out. Thanks.”
“No problem,” the ward clerk was already backwards as she spoke.
False hope fluttered in his chest as Jack docked the tablet back at the Hub. Methodically, he hovered under a gel dispenser and followed the hand motion routine ingrained into his soul. A rumbling mumbling grew as he approached the double doors to Chairs. His careful gaze scoured over the topography of the waiting room for a familiar face.
Dr. Jack Abbot M.D. was not a man who could easily be shocked by what arrived on the doorstep to his emergency room. Every now and again, a humorous injury would appear, and air would huff through his nostrils a little more forcefully than usual. Sometimes, a case would catch at his heartstrings in ways too close to home and he’d pencil in a call to his therapist. It’d been many years since tears had threatened to make an appearance because of someone seeking his help. Yet he welcomed them like old friends when he landed upon you sat upright between a woman with a hacking cough and a middle-aged man scrolling Instagram without headphones. Your mouth was twisted, eyes staring at the gap beneath the chair in front of you with the intensity he’d come to adore. Your hand was elevated under a dish towel.
He forced a steady gait over to you, kneeling despite the clicks and grunt. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Caught it in the coping saw,” you replied, “It’s deep. Sprayed all over the bench. I’ll clean it later”
Of course you were concerned with the mess you’d made. Cleanliness was forever in the top three priorities for you. In dark moments, Jack wondered where he was in that list.
Rather than dwell on that – tears might get inspired and make an appearance – Jack took your words like he did with all information he learned about a patient and ran with it, “Let’s get you sorted so it can get cleaned up then.”
He was gentle enough to not blame you for the mess but reassure that your best interests were at the heart of this. You looked at him properly and nodded, your chin puckering just a tad as you stood.
Like a duckling, you followed Jack through the double doors and without an ounce of guilt over the rest of the waiting room. That hotbed of germs and entitlement made your skin crawl. Jack’s presence washed you clean as he guided you to a bed and curtained you off from the outside world. Lights buzzing, feet tapping against the linoleum, antiseptic singed your nostrils.
A quirk of Jack’s eyebrows and a nod of your head allowed Jack to peel back the tea towel and assess the damage. Though the bleeding had slowed dramatically, the serrated edge of the saw meant stitches were required to close up the crevasse in your skin.
“Will I make it?” you asked dryly.
Jack’s mouth mimicked a thoughtful pout, “I’m sure we can find a way to save your limb.”
You hummed and Jack saw the corner of your mouth spasm, glowing to receive such a reaction to his humour.
On the other hand, Jack was holding himself together as well as he was holding your flaps of skin. His focus was on you so entirely that he nearly forget to compose himself at the springing of tears from your acceptance.
“I’ll be right back with everything we need,” he excused himself from you once he’d returned the tea towel over the cut.
He gave himself a remedy: a few deep breaths in the bathroom, a quick whip-round for supplies and the most professional and calming front to ensure he didn’t spook you. This was not an opportunity nor an option for failure.
It wasn’t odd per se, the sight of a patient seemingly dissociating over the “rate your pain” chart in front of them. What was particularly noteworthy was Dr. Abbot dutifully stitching their hand without any assistance or any chatter, not even the typical bedside manner that swayed many a patient’s sexuality in his direction like a reed bending in the wind.
“That patient looks like they’re auditioning to be a ruler,” Ellis remarked casually as she passed by Lena.
Her words like a jinx, you broke your run as a statue to look down at your doctor. However, Jack was too engrossed in rotating his wrist ninety degrees to acknowledge how his patient was staring at him with a visual strength that would make a houseplant wither.
Lena glanced away easily as her landline rang. Upon hanging up, she returned to her attending for the shift and approached loudly enough to be polite with her intrusion.
“Sorry to interrupt. Dr. Abbot, incoming trauma, two minutes, fall from a tree.”
Snipping the thread, Jack thanked Lena and she left him to it. His bedside manner was certainly consistent yet there was something oddly intimate about watching him recite what was likely next steps and home care instructions to you who only blinked when it seemed like you remembered you needed to. Then Jack left his patient but not before squeezing your knee then patting the same spot twice. If she had a minute’s more time, Lena would find someone to talk to about it.
You watched Jack approach the paramedics rushing in, skin crawling at the exposure the open curtains left you feeling. It wasn’t intentional that you’d timed your injury to get a lift home with Jack at the end of his shift. You’d just waited until a certain point to head over to the hospital, knowing it would lessen the burden of worrying on Jack. But with your focus on subduing your blood flow, you’d neglected to account for all of Jack’s stories of the ER’s chaos.
Counting the exits and tracking the staff members discreetly only calmed you so much. You were reduced to reinforcing your self-imposed meditative state by staring down the rainbow coloured faces portraying excessive emotion. Was 10 the worst pain imaginable or the worst you’d ever personally experienced? Regardless, you doubted you’d be that red or pulling that face.
A scream from across the ER didn’t break the surface of your meditation; it did strengthen the core of your straight back however. Not once did you consider lying back on the bed you'd been placed upon.
Mel passed by your cubicle twice in the next half an hour. Both times, she noted how you didn’t adjust your position or fidgeting with something to distract from the boredom. What was catalogued was the intensity of
“Hello,” she said clear but calm, continuing even when you didn’t respond, “I’m Dr. King. Just checking everything’s alright. I’m sure Dr. Abbot will be done soon and we can discharge you.”
A jerk of your chin became a nod, your brow now wrinkled with concentration. Mel was just about to make her exit when you spoke at a pitch almost lost under the hubbub of the ER.
“Dr. King?”
“Yes?” She turned her full attention back to you.
Your frown cleared, though you didn’t smile, “Jack’s mentioned you before. He likes you a lot.”
“Really?”
“Especially after the appendicitis patient last week.”
“Thank you,” Mel ducked her head graciously, unable to hide the smile from the indirect approval. Then her telltale squint reappeared behind her glasses, “How do you know Dr. Abbot?”
You stared for a few seconds; Mel could see your mind working behind your brow.
Then you looked back to the pain poster, “I clean his kitchen.”
“Oh,” Mel said in a way she hoped conveyed understanding rather than the confusion she truly felt. She redirected to your wound, “How does it feel?”
“Not bad.” You rotated your hand under the unforgiving LED lights, “I don’t like hospitals. Made do before now without them.”
“Well, I’m glad you came in today and I’m sure Dr. Abbot is too.”
You hummed once and short like an experiment in your vocal ability.
A rise in beeping and chatter with a familiar voice caught your attention. The storm of the ER picked up once more. Walking out of the glass room, Jack helped his team wheel their patient towards the elevator. About as stable as a Jenga tower, he made a mental note to ask how they got on after surgery as he delegated amongst his team and Walsh to get them to a higher chance of survival. The elevator doors creeped open, signalling the end of Jack’s jurisdiction.
“Sorry, no rest for the wicked,” he declared once he reached your side, binning his gloves and massaging in some anti-bac. “I’m going to hand off then I can drive us home. How did you get here?”
“Walked,” you shrugged.
Your nonchalance was convincing to passive observers but not your boyfriend whose stern expression conveyed his disapproval. Yet he didn’t verbalise it, and you suspected it was because he was just happy you sought him out in the first place. You were honestly still reeling from the waiting room to even receive the full impact of his satisfaction.
Delayed gratification was your reward as, when sat up in bed, you got to observe Jack in his sleep shirt and readers gently rewrap your hand up, the campfire hints of the lamp silhouetting his face. The shadows through his wrinkles, like sand carved by the outgoing tides, highlighted his concentration, his care for your well-being.
Your mouth twisted to counter the urge to cry.
Jack caught you, a complaint lodging in your throat when his fingers froze and he asked you, “Does it hurt? I can get you some more Tylenol.”
Your breath shook as you pressed your face into his shoulder, nuzzling and hiding your overwhelm in his body’s warmth seeping through his cotton sleep shirt. With hesitation, you felt Jack adjust an arm around you, rubbing up and down your lower back. It still hurt to let someone get this close to your vulnerability. But something else grew alongside that weed of doubt, something softer, and you found that you wanted to be willing to let Jack coax that growth.
You rubbed your cheek on his shoulder twice – a silent “thank you”. Jack closed his eyes at your affection, willing the stinging behind his eyelids away, his prayers for the first time in his life answered.