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The engine had been off for several minutes.
Jack hadn’t moved. He couldn’t.
He sat behind the steering wheel, his glasses still on, staring at the apartment building in front of him.
His apartment was somewhere up there.
Samira was waiting for him.
They had plans.
Nothing complicated.
They were supposed to cook together. She said she would bring the vegetables and he said he would take care of the meat. He wanted to show her how he makes his steaks. They wanted to drink some bad wine and argue about what music to put on, eat too much and stay up later than they should.
A normal evening.
He took over Robby’s shift. He hated dayshifts but Robby needed him to do it and it was perfect so Jack could spend the evening with Samira.
And Jack got reminded why he never took dayshifts.
He should have been upstairs ten minutes ago.
Instead, he sat in his car, his hands rested loosely in his lap and he looked just exhausted. Because he was exhausted.
It felt like his body had simply stopped asking him whether or not he wanted to keep going.
The shift had been bad from the beginning.
Too many patients. Too many emergencies.
Too many people who came through the doors already too sick.
He couldn’t remember how many anymore. All he wondered was how Robby was able to do it. Nightshifts were exhausting sometimes and he saw some crazy shit. But it felt like this dayshift was cursed for him.
He couldn’t stop remembering that one child. That little eight year old girl.
Cardiac arrest after a seizure.
They worked on her.
And worked.
And worked.
They gave her so many meds, way too many for this little body.
They did chest compression under the protocol.
Jack kept pushing.
He spent two hours coding her.
Maybe even more.
He just couldn’t stop.
At some point the nurses looked at him. They didn’t say anything but he knew what they thought.
Everyone in that room knew what the numbers meant.
Santos had said quietly that it might be time to stop.
Jack heard them all. And he knew that they were right. He also knew what the numbers meant.
He knew what the lack of response meant.
He knew.
He still wasn’t able to stop the compressions.
His hands just kept moving.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Even when his arms started to hurt.
Even when his shoulders burned.
Even when someone had quietly told him they should call it.
He kept going.
He didn’t know why.
He only knew that stopping felt impossible.
Eventually Dana came in after Jesse told her about what was going on. She kept talking to Jack, trying to convince him to stop. She stood there for multiple minutes, talking about how she understood him but that he had to stop.
She kept repeating the numbers, trying to get them into his head.
Eventually, he stopped.
He called it.
13:04.
He ripped the gloves from his hands and knew he had to talk to her parents. Usually, he was able to do it with a straight face. Straight but still with compassion. But in that moment it felt like he wasn’t even really in the room.
He watched the moment they understood. The moment they started crying.
And somewhere between leaving that room and finishing the rest of his shift, something inside him had simply gone quiet.
After that, he had moved through the ED because his body knew what to do.
He answered questions.
Signed charts.
Seen patients.
Spoken to nurses.
He had done everything he was supposed to do.
He just wasn’t really there anymore.
Now he was sitting in his car. Home. But not upstairs.
Not yet.
His phone which was lying in the charging station lit up-
Samira: How much garlic?
Jack stared at it.
A few seconds later, another message appeared.
Samira: And before you say “however much you want”, I’m asking because I’m making dinner not just for me but for you too.
His mouth barely twitched up. Usually, he’d probably laugh about it. Because she knew him. And he loved that about her.
He picked up the phone.
Jack: However much you want. ;)
The answer came almost immediately.
Samira: See? That’s why I asked.
He stared at the screen for a moment longer before he put his phone back down.
With a sigh, tapped onto the touchscreen of his car to turn his Spotify on and find his playlist. He knew exactly what he needed in that moment.
Purple Rain.
The full version.
Eight minutes and forty seconds.
The shorter radio version was fine. He liked Prince and when it came on the radio at home, he turned the volume up.
But this version was different.
This was the one he listened to when he needed the world to stop asking things from him.
It was his.
He didn’t share it.
Not because he thought Samira wouldn’t understand.
She probably would.
But that wasn’t the point.
If he played it with someone else, if he explained why he listened to it, if he turned it into something they talked about, maybe it would stop being what it was.
Maybe it would stop working.
So he kept it to himself.
Not even his therapist knew about it.
Jack lifted one hand and rubbed his forehead.
Then his eyes.
He didn’t even bother taking off his glasses.
He was too tired.
His fingers pressed against the bridge of his nose, pushing the frame slightly upward.
His eyes were closed now.
For a moment, it almost felt like he was crying. But there were no tears.
Just exhaustion.
His chest felt tight. His head hurt. His arms still remembered the movement.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The apartment building was still there.
Samira was still upstairs.
He imagined her moving around his kitchen.
Probably already had everything laid out.
Probably annoyed that he made her wait.
Probably wondering where the hell he was.
His phone lit up again.
Samira: Are you okay?
He stared at the message.
His thumb hovered over the keyboard.
He could tell her.
Bad shift.
Really bad.
I can’t come upstairs yet.
None of it seemed right.
So he just typed:
Jack: Yeah. Just got home.
He sent it. It was all he could say because there wasn’t really a point in lying anymore. He was there. Outside. In his car. For more than ten minutes now.
Samira: Okay. Take your time.
Jack looked at the last three words.
Take your time.
He swallowed.
The song continued and he stayed where he was.
He didn’t cry. Not really.
He didn’t think about what happened in any coherent way.
He didn’t replay chest compressions.
He didn’t think about the parents.
He didn’t think about whether or not he should have stopped sooner.
For eight minutes and forty seconds, he did nothing.
He just listened and stared at the building where Samira was waiting for him.
When the song finally ended, the silence that followed felt almost too loud.
Jack looked at his watch. He had been sitting there for more than fifteen minutes.
Then, he closed his eyes. That’s where a tear dropped down. Just one. Not enough for his eyes to swell and make him cry hard. But that one tear that dripped onto his pants was his wake-up call.
His phone lit up once more.
Samira: Dinner is still warm.
This time, he smiled a little more. So he wiped that tear away.
He finally reached for his keys, got out and locked the car behind him. His body moved on autopilot as he crossed the small distance to the building entrance. The walk felt way longer than it usually did. He barely registered the elevator ride.
Jack wasn’t sure if that was because he was exhausted or because some part of him still didn’t want to go upstairs.
He wanted to see her.
And that was the problem.
He wanted to see her so badly enough that, for a moment, he almost didn’t want to.
Because once he opened that door, he couldn’t stay in the quiet anymore.
He would have to be a person again.
He would have to talk.
Or at least pretend that he could.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside. The apartment was warm, just a few lights were on. The smell of garlic and butter reached him immediately, followed by something that smelled like rosemary.
For a second, he just stood there.
There was music playing quietly from the kitchen.
“Hey.”
Samira’s voice made him look up.
She was standing by the stove, stirring something in the pan. Her hair was pulled back loosely, a few strands had already fallen around her face. And she wore an old shirt from him. One, that he was looking for for a few days…
And when she was smiling at him, he tried his best to do it too.
“You’re late.”
“I know.”
“You said you’d be home ten minutes ago.”
“I know.”
She put the spoon down. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
It came out way too quickly. So much so that Samira clearly noticed. But she didn’t challenge him. Instead, she looked at him for another second. “Do you want to change?”
“Yeah, I should.”
“Go.”
But he didn’t move. He couldn’t.
She raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then…why are you standing there? You wanted to get changed.”
He looked down on himself and just put his glasses down onto the kitchen counter. And for her, that spoke volumes. “I don’t know.”
She smiled faintly. “Come here.”
When Jack stepped closer, she wrapped her arms around him. He didn’t react immediately, his arms stayed next to his body but then, slowly, one arm came around her back. He closed his eyes and for a few seconds they simply stood there.
She didn’t ask him anything.
She just held him.
Eventually, Jack pulled back. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I made you wait.”
“I was cooking.”
“We were supposed to cook together. I…was supposed to help you.”
“None of that. We can do that another day.” She gestured towards the pans and the pot on the stove. “I followed your steak recipe and I think it went well. You have to be the judge for it though.”
He cracked a small smile. “Alright, alright.”
They sat down at the table together.
Dinner was mostly quiet. Not awkward. Just quiet.
Samira didn’t try to fill the silence.
Jack ate.
At first, she wasn’t sure if he was actually tasting anything.
He moved almost mechanically. Cut the meat. Took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed.
Then again.
He wasn’t eating like someone who didn’t want food.
He was eating like someone whose brain hadn’t fully caught up with the fact that his body needed it.
After a few minutes she finally asked: “Is it okay?”
Jack looked down at his plate. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Pretty good. You…followed the recipe well. You said you never really made steak before.”
“No, I never have. But your recipe was detailed enough.”
He smiled before she returned to her own plate.
After Jack was done, he leaned back slightly in his chair, rubbing his eyes.
“You’re exhausted,” Samira simply stated as she finished her own dinner.
“Yeah.”
“Bad shift?”
“It’s the damn dayshift… They’re…cursed or something like that.”
“Yeah, that’s usually what I go through.”
“I shouldn’t have taken Robby’s.”
“You said you’d take it.”
“Yeah. And I learned quickly why I usually don’t do it.” He looked down to his plate. “Never again. Next time I’ll force Shen to do it. This was just…hell.”
He sighed and took his plate to the kitchen. “Nightshift isn’t like this.”
Samira followed him with her plate. “What?”
“Nightshift.”
They leaned against the kitchen counter together after he filled his wine glass.
“It’s different. You don’t have all those people around.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t have families everywhere. You don’t have everyone talking. Everyone’s tired. It’s quieter. Even during emergencies. The patients are mostly tired too so that’s a plus.” He swung the wine in the glass.
“Nightshift makes sense to me.” He shrugged. “It’s just people who need help. You do your job. You go home.”
“And dayshift?”
“I hate dayshift.”
She smiled. “I got that part.”
“It…was just a bad day…”
She didn’t answer immediately. Because that wasn’t quite what he said. It was more what he wanted her to believe.
“A bad day,” she repeated.
“Yeah.”
She sighed. She knew better than to push when he was still trying to convince himself.
They sat down on the sofa together, Jack gave her the other glass he filled with wine.
“Do you want me to do the dishes?” He asked as he put his glass down on the coffee table.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
She watched him as he took his prosthesis off with a sigh. He looked completely drained. Not tired in the usual sense.
Empty.
Quietly she took his hand. Jack looked down on it, then at her.
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
He was quiet for a while, and took a drink from his glass. Then his thumb moved slowly over her hand.
“We lost a kid,” he says quietly, looking down to the floor.
Samira didn’t move.
“Eight years old.”
Her fingers tightened slightly around his.
“Cardiac arrest after an epileptic seizure.” He swallowed. “We worked on her for two hours. More. And I–”
She stayed quiet, but kept tightening her fingers around his hand.
“–I couldn’t stop.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I knew we should. I knew the numbers. Everyone knew.” He looked down at their hands. “Santos told me we should stop.”
He paused and swallowed. “I heard her. I just couldn’t.”
Samira didn’t tell him that he had done everything he could.
Because he wasn’t looking for reassurance or asking her if he had done enough.
He was trying to understand why he had been unable to stop.
“I just kept pushing.” He closed his eyes. “Again and again. I– I heard her small ribs break under my hands… No, I not only heard it… I felt it… I felt those small ribs break further and further with every push. I could swear I felt it.”
She started rubbing her thumb over his.
Eventually, he continued. “Dana came in. She talked to me for several minutes. Kept telling me we needed to stop.”
His eyes were distant now when he opened them. “I knew she was right.” Then he shook his head once. “I just couldn’t make myself do it.”
Samira sighed.
“When I finally stopped… I called it. 13:04. Usually I try not to remember the time but I did.”
He breathed out heavily, trying to stop his voice from shaking. “I talked to her parents. They cried. I watched them understand. I don't even remember what I told them.”
Samira didn’t say “I’m sorry.”
She knew that sometimes those words were too small. Especially for doctors. She knew it from herself.
Instead, she shifted closer until her shoulders rested against his.
Jack leaned into her. Just slightly.
“I don’t know why this got to me.”
Samira looked at him for a moment. She had a pretty good idea.
Not exactly why. Not completely. Jack had never told her everything about the years before she knew him. There were things he talked about easily and things he didn’t.
And there was one thing she had never asked about.
Not because she hadn’t noticed.
Because she had.
There had been little things.
The way he sometimes went unusually quiet when someone mentioned pregnancy, even patients. The way his expression changed whenever a young, pregnant patient came in. The way he had once stopped halfway through a sentence when he talked about a friend who became a father.
And once, a few months ago, he said something that hadn’t quite made sense at the time. It was when he told her something about his wife. That day he was more open about her.
“We thought we were going to have a kid once.”
He hadn’t elaborated.
She hadn’t asked.
Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe she’d just misunderstood him.
But somehow, she didn’t think she had.
Samira tightened her fingers further around his hand. “You don’t have to know.”
“I just…” His voice trailed off.
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t say anything else. Then his voice became quieter. “She was so small.”
Her chest tightened.
She didn’t correct him. Didn’t tell him that he was talking about the patient as if he knew her.
“I’ve seen kids die before.”
“I know.”
“I’ve lost patients. I’ve lost people I couldn’t save. That’s part of the job.”
Samira nodded.
“But this–” His voice cracked. “It felt different.”
She didn’t ask why.
She just moved closer.
And after a few seconds, Jack rested his cheek lightly against her hair.
“There are some things you don’t really get over,” he said quietly.
Samira’s thumb stopped moving.
She knew.
Or at least, she thought she knew what he meant.
There were some losses that didn’t disappear just because years passed.
Some stayed somewhere inside you, waiting for the wrong moment to surface again.
She didn’t ask him about it.
Not tonight.
Instead, she rested her head against his shoulder.
And Jack let her.