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Jack should’ve seen it coming. It had been a rough week with patients and colleagues who were making their lives harder than they should’ve. Robby was acting like a dick, towards Jack for once and not Samira, Santos was constantly pushing Samira’s nerves and Shen… Shen was simply Shen. It was only Tuesday when Jack started a shift, Shen was on time, sure but he spilled his coffee all over the floor just while a patient came with the paramedics. The second coffee landed on Jack’s shirt and on Wednesday a patient vomited on Jack with the force of a compressed air cleaner. For once it was him who looked like a mess, not one of the residents. He had it everywhere. Hair, shirt, pants, arms, even inside his shirt. Nothing was safe. There was vomit in places he didn’t even know it could reach. When he came home that day Samira forced him to shower three times before he was allowed to enter the bed and even then she insisted that he was still smelling.
The week didn’t look much better for her. One patient was a living fountain of blood because Whittaker accidentally cut into an artery. Robby hit his own head and insisted to not get checked so he had to be forced by Samira to let her check him. He wasn’t injured, it was just a small bump which was covered by his hair. And another patient ran around the ED entirely naked and got severe diarrhea and the result was a multiple feet long trail of liquid shit. There wasn’t even a nicer wording for it.
And of course all that was missing was Samira’s family wanting to visit in Pittsburgh. In the beging Jack thought she was overdramatic when she complained about that one uncle. How could an uncle be worse than explosive diarrhea on the entire ED floor? Oh, he didn’t know the entire family drama and he was quickly about to learn why. He knew her relationship with certain family members was strained to some degree. But he didn’t know that her uncle was a drunken mess who always thought that blood was thicker than water until a few days ago. They were in bed when she got a message from said uncle, announcing that he wanted to visit Pittsburgh. Apparently he wanted to visit the PNC park and some museums. All Samira thought about was the stripping district. Apparently the man had certain…interests. And not only did he want to visit the city. No, no, he didn’t only ask if he could come over to their place, he basically expected to be invited to sleep at their apartment for free.
Samira told him multiple times that their apartment was too small, that they didn’t have a guest room and that the sofa was uncomfortable and that they weren’t even at home. But her uncle didn’t let it go. It had been days now since the first message and it still wouldn’t stop.
So all Jack saw when he came home that day was a stressed Samira who tried her best to cook while being extremely jumpy and annoyed. For a second he thought about stepping back outside the apartment. But he was a little worried she would accidentally hurt herself with that knife if she kept shaking that much.
By the time he started helping her in the kitchen, she was rambling about that uncle for twenty minutes already. She was getting totally worked up about him and Jack had come to realize by then that there was a point at which her arguments stopped being arguments and started consisting of nothing more than excess energy.
“I already told him that,” she said, pacing around the apartment with her phone in her hand. “Several times. Not just once. Several times. I even explained to him that we don’t have room. And now he’s texting me that he’d only be coming over for a few days, as if that’s somehow the point.”
Jack sat down on the couch and watched her. “It’s not the point.”
“Exactly.”
“I know.”
“And then that ‘I’d love to see you’, as if I hadn’t already–” She paused briefly, only to continue with another thought. “And anyway, why does it have to be Pittsburgh? Why now? He knows how much I work. He knows I work shifts. And if he really wants to come here, there are hotels. There are about a hundred hotels. I don’t understand why this is suddenly supposed to be my problem. Sure, now he wants to see the new boyfriend, blah, blah, blah.”
“Samria–”
“And I’ve told him often enough that the apartment isn’t suitable. It’s not like we have a guest room. Like we–” She took a deep breath. “We don’t even really live together. Good I didn’t tell him that because then his idea would be to just go to your place. It’s not that we even have–”
“Samira.”
“–Room for more people, even if it’s just one person. And then I’d probably have to take time off work so he could see anything at all because that would be what he wants, and I already know he’d be offended if I didn’t–”
Jack stood up. “Samira.”
She didn’t hear him.
Or maybe she did hear him, but her brain had decided there were more important things right now.
“–and then there’s that ‘family’ thing again, as if that’s some magical answer to everything. Just because someone’s related to me doesn’t mean I necessarily want them in my home. I can like them and still not want them there. And then this stupid ‘I want to see your new boyfriend’ as if you’re obligated to–”
Jack took two steps towards her, hoping she’d finally listen to him. “Samira, breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“No. No, you’re not breathing.”
She shot him a look that was somewhere between annoyed and exhausted. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do.”
And then she kept talking. “I just mean, it can’t be that hard to accept a ‘no’. I said no. Several times. And now I have to come up with some excuse again or finally tell him that I just don’t want him here, and then I’ll be the bad guy again because–”
Jack sighed, finally put his hand on her cheek and kissed her mid-sentence. Not slow, not announced. Just a quick, quiet kiss, just long enough to cut off her sentence.
When he pulled away, she looked at him with these big, wondering eyes he loved. Silently.
Jack raised his eyebrows lightly with a smile. “Hi.”
Samira blinked. “Did you just kiss me to shut me up?”
“You were spiraling.”
“I was making a point, Jack.”
“You were making like… seventeen points.”
“That’s not–”
He kissed her again and this time she actually had to laugh against his lips. Just a short moment but it meant enough to him. He placed a hand on her arm and looked into her eyes. “You don’t have to have him over.
She exhaled. “I know.”
“No. I mean it.” He softly ran his thumb once over her sleeve. “You don’t have to make the apartment smaller. Neither yours nor mine. You don’t have to rearrange your life. You don’t have to take time off. And you don’t have to come up with some elaborate excuse just because he’s family.”
She looked away. “He’ll be offended.”
"Probably. So what?”
“Jack.”
“What? He can handle being offended.”
A small smile flitted across her lips. “You’re very unsympathetic, Jack Abbot.”
“I’m extremely sympathetic. To you.”
She shook her head.
For a moment, they didn’t say anything. He just kept brushing his thumb over the sleeve of her pullover, looking down to her. Then she looked back at her phone. “I still haven’t answered him.”
Jack sighed playfully. “I know.”
“What if I just don’t answer?”
“Then he’ll text again.”
“Right.”
“And again.”
“Probably…”
“And eventually you’ll get so annoyed that you’ll send him a six-paragraph message at two in the morning.”
“I would never.”
A small amused smirk rushed over Jack’s lips. “You did once.”
“When?”
“Our first big fight. We were together for a month. You were angry because I washed your favorite shirt too hot, it shrunk and you weren’t able to wear it anymore.”
“The purple one with the flower.”
“Yeah. God, you hated me because of it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did. You gave me the silent treatment and didn’t come over here for… I don’t know. Then you sent me a text at two in the morning. It wasn't six paragraphs but…close.”
“How did I forget about it? This was…four months ago.”
“It was such a small and stupid thing. I know you loved that shirt so yeah, I might’ve messed up. But after you sent me that text about how you realized you over reacted… We just forgot about it. Just…thought about it now. So maybe, you’ll do it again with your uncle. Well, this time you’re not overreacting.”
She snorted. “Okay, so maybe it’ll be twice.”
He smiled, then pulled her closer to him. “C’mere.” She didn’t object. Just leaned against him, her head on his shoulder and just stood there.
After a few seconds she muttered: “I really don’t want him to come.”
Jack kissed her on the top of her head. “I know. And if you don’t want it, you don’t have to. Trust me, he might be offended. But let a grown man be offended. He'll live.”