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If you were to ask Jack Abbot his biggest regret in life, he wouldn’t tell you it was losing a leg. Oh, no. That one is regrettable, but doesn’t even come close; in fact, he lives with it quite harmoniously now. If it were three years earlier, he might have told you that it was not having children with his wife before he lost her, but he’s come to believe that everything happens for a reason.
If you asked him today, right this moment, Jack Abbot would tell you that his biggest regret in life is failing to tell Samira Mohan he loves her in time for her departure from the PTMC.
Everything may happen for a reason, but sometimes the reason ends up being your own stupidity. Jack is painfully aware of this now, and makes sure to remind himself every time he looks in the mirror as he’s getting ready for night shifts. To make matters worse, he’s sure Shen and Ellis have reminded him a million times too. Almost like a fun little bonus. He knows it isn’t coming from a place of malice; they care for him, and they cared for Samira, but it just never came to be. They saw how his eyes lit up watching her thrive during the PittFest incident, and similarly they noticed that shine dull as soon as he found out she’d be moving on to UPMC to specialise in sickle cell anemia.
It’s fucking selfish of him, he knows it is, to wish she’d stay in an environment that clearly put undue pressure on her, where she’d clash with Robby almost daily on their conflicting views around her treatment methods. He couldn’t fault her for wanting to be somewhere that her work and pacing was valued, especially after seeing the days she’d endured at The Pitt towards the end.
But still, each day he curses himself for being such a coward. Relives all the opportunities he had where he could have told her just how incredible he thought she was, but kept his stupid mouth shut for her own sake. God, what would it look like? An attending almost twice her age so pathetically in love with her he doesn’t even know what to do with himself. She’s so smart, so beautiful, so compassionate—and she’d definitely be better off never knowing that this was the reality.
The first week is the hardest. Showing up at shift change and expecting to see her smiling face lighting up the room, ready for anything… instead being met with nothing. It’s moments like those especially when he wishes more than anything that he would have just told her.
Maybe the night of PittFest, when they’d sat on that bench outside with beers to celebrate making it through the night. When he couldn’t quite tell if her knee was touching his on purpose or if she was just too exhausted to realise how close to him she was actually sitting.
He wonders if that moment crops up in her mind as often as it does in his, like driftwood that isn’t quite ready to sink into the depths yet.
Samira not leaving Pittsburgh is actually harder, Jack thinks. Every time he finally convinces himself he might be starting to get over her, he’ll head to the grocery store after a particularly rough shift and there she’ll be.
He notices the claw clip first—always. Her messy curls. She never did care much about making herself look put together, either inside work or out, but there’s something in that which Jack finds especially breathtaking. He’ll notice her big, round eyes, that gorgeous brown particularly intense as she studies the condition of the fresh produce laid out in front of her.
She won’t notice him, but he knows that after all the deliberation she’ll always reach for the mangoes. He’s observed from afar long enough to know that by now; he’s observed long enough to grow begrudgingly familiar with the ache that settles in his chest seeing her so close again, but forcing himself to stay away.
It’s not even just the supermarket, either. Sometimes it’s the book store, the park, the coffee shop. Some nights it’s the liquor store, and he almost feels confident enough to say something—but quickly changes his mind, telling himself she’d only be clipping her wings if she tied herself to damaged goods like him. The only place he never sees her is the gas station, but that’s because he knows she’d always preferred taking the bus. But he still sees fragments of her everywhere, scattered throughout every routine aspect of his life… and he tries to tell himself to find comfort in that, knowing she’s being her amazing, successful self somewhere else, but… that means coming to terms with the fact she’s totally fine without even a trace of him.
Jack’s therapist is sick of hearing about it by now, failing to see a single reason why he wouldn’t just reach out to Samira and tell her exactly how he feels. He still has her number after all, doesn’t he? She gave it to him but he made excuses not to use it, consumed by his steadily growing self-loathing.
He came to a compromise with his therapist eventually, agreeing he’d find an outlet somehow. Even if that outlet wasn’t saying it outright. So for the best part of two months, whenever he has some free time and a scrap of paper, Jack writes a note addressed to Samira that he slips into his journal afterwards, telling himself it’ll never be seen by her eyes.
One becomes some. Then several. One confessing everything. One listing everything he adores about her. One relaying his personal hopes for her career, everything he wishes he could be by her side to see her experience. As much as he’s embarrassed to admit it, one wondering which parts of her he’d need to touch and kiss the most to see that beautiful smile on her face pointed right at him.
It’s a double edged sword—it’s catharsis for him in a way, for about as long as it takes for his resolve to crumble and start reading them over again. Then all it does is remind him exactly what he’s missing, and how stupid he was to let it slip through his fingers.
His journal ends up so stuffed with letters it won’t even stay shut by the time he finally cracks, realising he’s only ever going to lose more time he could spend being happy if he carries on like this. So one day after getting back from the grocery store where he’d been sent home smiling after his usual brief encounter, his hand finally slides over to his phone to pick it up and dial her number.
“… Wait, so you wrote all of these in the span of, like, two months?” Samira exclaims, eyes wide and pupils darting back and forth across the hastily scrawled words on the papers she’s holding.
She’s curled comfortably into Jack’s side in her (their) apartment; Samira and Jack have been dating for over a year now. Following the months of her opening her own bare-bones space up to furnish and create a safe, comfortable home with him, Jack figured it would only be fair to finally allow the topic to come up.
All the letters from when he was, as Samira would put it, down horrendous.
“That’s me,” he chuckles, one large hand giving her shoulder an affectionate squeeze as he reads along with her over her shoulder. “You can even keep ‘em, if you want.”
There was a time once when he’d hesitate even letting his therapist become privy to the contents of these letters. But all of a sudden, seeing the beautiful woman that inspired every single one of them pouring over them with such dedication and focus, he’s finding that he doesn’t actually mind the vulnerability so much.