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Jack Abbot was familiar with war zones.
Some might argue Jack thrived in them.
He'd always had a talent for thinking quickly on his feet, remaining steadfastly calm under pressure, and making tough decisions with relative ease. He hadn't faced a real battlefield for a long time, not unless you count the handful of occasions he'd been shot at as part of his volunteer medic role with the local SWAT division. The difference between those occasions, however, and the one he now found himself in, was that all of those previous instances had been just that—voluntary.
Today, as he hovered over a bleeding resident under the desk in Central, the choice to enter another war zone had been made for him, against his will.
He'd descended the stairs and walked through the department doors not five minutes earlier, returning from another of his frequent trips to the roof for some pre-shift fresh air. Robby had already left for the day so he flew solo, soaking up the sights and sounds of the city at dusk before the darkness of the night took hold once again.
The ER doors opened on a crime scene. Blood was pooled on the floor outside the dispatch office and smeared across the window of BH2. Jack followed the trail of deep red droplets round the corner to the scrubs dispenser and stopped dead in his tracks.
"Ahmad?"
He approached the security guard quickly, landing on his knees as he stooped down to shake the man's shoulders. The front of his previously crisp white shirt was stained red as his own blood seeped through the fabric. Jack ripped open the garment to reveal a centre mass gunshot wound as his colleague drifted in and out of consciousness.
"Come on, Ahmad, open your eyes for me." He shook him hard again and slapped him across the cheek a couple of times for good measure, applying futile pressure to the gaping cavity in his chest. "Tell me what happened."
"Moh—" he tried, but his voice faltered as another gush of blood oozed out between Jack's fingers. Ahmad's eyes did not open again. His mouth did not move again. His body went limp in Jack's arms and that's when he became convinced this was just another lucid dream.
It wouldn't be the first time he'd experienced one, but it had been a while. The first year he'd spent at home after his last tour, they were a fairly regular occurrence. He'd often woken up in a cold sweat, utterly convinced that he was back on the base in Kabul after reliving the experience behind his eyelids in a vivid horror movie curated entirely by his own subconscious. It wasn't until Coco the cat crawled across his chest and settled there that he realised he was in fact at home in Pittsburgh.
Jack held Ahmad for another minute, repeatedly checking for a pulse that wasn't there. He took stock of his surroundings and couldn't make sense of them at all, no matter how many times he reassessed. The first thought that sprang to mind was to grab his go bag from his locker, so he did. At the same time, he swiped a blanket from a cart and laid it over Ahmad's body as he passed back through the same hallway.
The department was eerily quiet when he returned. The ambulance bay had cleared out, the hub abandoned, and the exam rooms as far as he could see from the corner of BH2 were a ghost town. A soft whimper and shushing sound echoed from under the desk in Central, but the sound of a crashing instrument tray drew his attention towards Trauma 1. He moved quickly and almost stormed into the room until he caught a glimpse of the scene unfolding inside, retreating by a couple of paces to observe from a safer distance.
A large man—Caucasian and somewhere around his mid to late 40's if Jack had to guess—stood with his back to the door wielding what looked like a 9mm pistol, pointed directly at Shen, Ellis, and their patient. He could barely make out a word they were saying and debated rushing in again, but realised there was one fatal flaw in his plan—bringing a 6-inch scalpel to a gun fight probably wouldn't end well for him or his colleagues.
Hushed tones and the same whimper sounded from under the desk again; Jack circled the hub without taking his eyes off the shooter, ready to duck down at the slightest head turn while being careful not to startle whoever was hiding beneath the furniture.
When his eyes met hers, that's when everything stopped.
It was Doctor Mohan.
"Doctor Abbot, I don't— I don't know what to do. Please," Mohan's lips weren't moving and it was only then that Jack registered Emma Nolan hovering above her, applying pressure to a gunshot wound on the right side of her chest. "I think she punctured a lung."
Jack dropped to his knees instantaneously; he wasn't sure if Emma had moved out of the way willingly or if he'd pushed her, but she was no longer hovering over Mohan—he was. When another whimper escaped her, Jack realised it had been Emma making the frightened sound the whole time, and Mohan had been the one trying to hush and comfort her while bleeding profusely.
Sounds about right, he thought.
Despite the hammering in his own chest, Jack assessed the wound with clinical precision. He needed to get ahead of the bleeding—fast.
"Nolan," Jack said, barely above a whisper. "I need you to do something for me."
Emma didn't lift her head. She just kept staring at Jack's hands which had replaced hers on Samira's rib cage.
"Emma." Sharper this time, but still quiet enough that the sound wouldn't travel further than between the three of them. "Are you listening?"
"I'm sorry, I— I'm trying," her voice cracked on the last syllable as she wiped her shaking hands over her thighs, smearing Samira's blood across the front of her scrub pants.
"I know. I'm sorry, I know you are," he sighed. It suddenly dawned on him that this was probably her first time encountering a man wielding a gun in the ER, or anywhere. As sympathetic as he was to that fact, he needed her full attention and cooperation. "Doctor Mohan needs our help, Emma. It's very important. Can you help me help her?" She nodded. "Good— good job, Emma. The first thing I need you to do is crawl to central seven, right over there," he pointed to the room just opposite the desk, "grab a portable heart monitor and bring it back here."
"What if—"
"He isn't coming out here, I promise. Just stay low. Do not raise your head any higher than the height of this desk, do you understand?" She nodded again. "Bring the monitor back here and I'll give you another job to do."
She scurried away, shaking and crying softly as she dragged herself across the department on her hands and knees. Jack turned to look at Samira whose eyes were full of tears she was too stubborn to let fall. A bead of sweat ran down the side of her face, dampening a loose curl that had escaped her claw clip.
"How you doing, Mohan?"
"Peachy," she coughed lightly. "Think I could still work a double."
Jack choked on a dry, humourless laugh as his gaze flickered back to Trauma 1 where the circumstances didn't appear to have escalated any further. Shen and Ellis were still working on their patient in silence, encouraged by the pistol being pressed into Bridget's side. Shit, he hadn't seen her in there before. The gunman still had his back to the door, and Jack hoped to God he would keep it that way at least until he could get Mohan upstairs.
"I need to roll you over a little so I can check for an exit wound, okay?" Jack placed one hand on her hip and the other on her shoulder, and Samira grimaced as he tugged her up off the floor. He held her there for a few seconds before rolling her back down to lay flat against the tile. "Good news and bad news… the good news is it's definitely too far right for your heart, and too high for the liver. Bad news is I think Nolan's right, you've punctured a lung. As soon as she comes back, I'm getting you out of here, okay?"
She nodded. The colour had drained from her face almost entirely. They waited another minute for Emma to return; Jack's hands pressed firmly into her side as hers grasped his wrists for no reason other than to ground herself.
When Emma crawled back towards them, following Jack's guidance to the letter, she handed over the heart monitor and awaited further instruction. "What else can I do to help?"
Jack scanned the department again and assessed the situation in Trauma 1, which was still unchanged. He wanted to go in there and protect his staff, bargain with the man to let them go and point that thing at him instead. On any other day—in any other circumstance—he'd already be in there doing just that. But there was no way he was leaving Samira Mohan to bleed out on the worn linoleum floor of an emergency department in Pittsburgh before her life had even begun. Over his shoulder, he gave Emma her next command.
"I need you to head to Pedes. Same as before, stay low. When you get there, lock the door— hell, barricade the door behind you. Pick up the phone, and call in a code silver."
"Code silver?" Emma questioned.
"Active shooter."
Jack watched the lump in her throat bob up and down as she swallowed hard.
"Won't somebody have already done that?"
"Maybe… but if they haven't? We need to be sure that help is coming."
She nodded slowly, taking a couple of deep breaths before committing to leaving the safety net of the hub once again. "Doctor Mohan, if I don't see you—"
"You will," Jack insisted before she could say anymore. Emma smiled half-heartedly, tears filling her eyes again as she set off on all fours towards the Pedes room at the end of the north west corridor.
"You don't—" Samira coughed, "don't really believe that, do you?"
"Believe what?"
"That I'm gonna make it."
"Of course I do, and you should too," Jack said firmly, low enough that she could barely hear him over the sound of her own blood pumping through her ears. "We need to move now. Sorry, Mohan, but I'm gonna have to drag you— can't risk drawing any attention to ourselves."
He slipped off her shoes with one hand and left them tucked neatly under the desk, as if straightening them up might help him remember where he left them when coming to retrieve them later. She'll need them when she walks out of here in a few days' time, he thought, and didn't let himself imagine that scenario any differently for even one second.
The go bag he'd recovered from his locker was slung over his shoulder before he braced his forearms under Samira's armpits, tugging gently to guide her sluggish body towards the elevators. He maintained a visual on Trauma 1 at all times, silently praying that his colleagues would forgive the decision he made to leave without them. He just needed to stabilise Mohan, then he'd come back, he reasoned with no one but himself.
The unexpected ding of the elevator sent chills through Jack's spine. He froze, still cradling Samira in a grip reminiscent of a trust fall gone wrong, and kept his eyes locked on the trauma room as he waited for someone in there to glance over and give him away.
After what felt like an eternity, the elevator doors slid open and he dragged Samira inside, rapidly and repeatedly pressing the button for the surgical floor and praying to escape before their cover was blown. He breathed a sigh of relief as the doors sealed shut and they began to rise through the lift shaft.
Jack swiftly unzipped his go bag and pulled out the monitor Emma had rescued from central seven, along with some fabric scissors, ridding Samira of the blood soaked scrub top clinging to her torso so he could attach the pads to her chest. His fingers hooked under the front of her bra and she laughed weakly as he apologised for not buying her dinner before snipping off the garment.
"That was… my favourite," she was struggling to catch her breath now, he could tell. She had about another minute or two before she lost consciousness completely, then it would be down to Jack alone to do whatever was humanly possible to make sure she regained it again.
"I'll buy you a new one," he smirked. "I promise."
Jack gave himself a mental pat on the back for doing such a good job at masking his panic. The last thing he expected to find when he walked into work this evening was PTMC's best resident laying wounded on the ground with nobody but him available to save her. All things considered, he was handling it pretty well so far.
For the past two years, more if he was being honest with himself, he'd thought about little else but Samira Mohan. Their exchanges at shift change were infrequent; he'd feed off of any crumb he could get a hold of and take it home to bed with him—or to the shower. The water would be steaming against his pink, freckled skin and she would be there, heavy in the palm of his hand and right at the forefront of his mind.
He'd lay in bed for hours, ashamed of the pleasure painted by his own imagination, staring at the ceiling and wondering what she was doing until sleep eventually pulled him under. Then he'd dream about her… a lot.
Sometimes, on a quiet day, he'd let his mind wander to how she might dress up for dinner, even just to grab a coffee—anything that would allow him to sit in her company. To study the micro expressions of her face and the way her eyes creased when she laughed, and for him to be the one causing the unabashed joy.
"I— I need to," Samira tried, her eyes fluttering closed again before she could articulate her thoughts.
"No, no, come on," Jack rubbed his fist forcefully against her chest, rousing her back to consciousness as if she were just another trauma patient who'd passed out on him. "Mohan, can you hear me? Keep talking to me, tell me what you need."
The echo of a single gunshot interrupted whatever she was about to say; her body went rigid and her hand twisted almost instinctively around Jack's wrist to ground herself again. Without any hesitation, Jack slammed on the emergency stop button and braced himself against the wall as the elevator ground to a halt.
"W— what are you…" Samira questioned the choice considering they were almost at the surgical floor.
"Just a precaution," Jack confirmed. "We can get going again in a few minutes."
She summoned the energy in that moment to nod; her eyes said more than she could convey with words—they always did.
"Doctor Abbot."
"Samira," he countered. "We are trapped in an elevator, and I just destroyed your favourite bra… I think Jack will do just fine."
"I need to tell you…" Her jaw tensed as she swallowed hard and her eyes closed again. She fell silent as the beeping on the monitor intensified.
Jack cursed the stats, watching as her heart rate spiked and her O2 levels plummeted. The wound was sucking air and putting pressure on the lung that wasn't shot to pieces. He grabbed a trauma dressing and some tape from his go bag and began to create a seal, pushing air out of the wound and preventing it from sucking any more air in. Placing both palms on her ribs just beneath the bullet wound, he pressed down to release some of the pressure that had built up beneath the surface. Samira winced at the unexpected force while Jack sat back on his heels, observing the monitor intently as he watched her heart rate come down slowly.
Her O2 level stayed the same though; she needed oxygen. He rummaged around his go bag, breathing a deep sigh of relief when the cool titanium of his wedding ring clinked against a small portable tank at the bottom. He took it out quickly, pulling the mask over Samira's nose and mouth and slowly releasing some of the gas from the canister.
He knew he'd have to ration it. He wasn't sure how long they'd be stuck in this elevator, and if the oxygen ran out… he didn't want to consider the consequences. Diving back into his go bag, he searched for some aspirin—mostly for Samira, but if there were enough to go around, he wouldn't pass them up. The extended period of time spent on his knees was beginning to take its toll.
Thankfully, there were plenty. Jack popped two and swallowed them dry before encouraging Samira to do the same, apologising for the lack of a water as he brought his palm to the back of her head and tilted it up just enough to help her to get them down. He tightened the mask back around her face and began rummaging through his bag for more supplies.
After a couple of minutes, Samira was calmer. The aspirin seemed to be touching something, and although she'd never felt physically worse, she somehow summoned the energy to speak again.
"Jack," his eyes snapped up to hers as she reached for the oxygen mask, defiantly pulling it away from her face. "I— I love you. It's okay if you don't— I'm just— sorry I never said it before."
"Samira, put the mask back on." Jack grabbed the plastic face covering, hovering it in front of her nose and mouth. "You've lost a lot of blood, you're confused—"
"No, I'm not," she insisted. "I'm just a coward who's been in love with you for two years— maybe more, I don't know," she attempted a deep breath but winced at the sensation it created in her chest. Her lips twitched into something that almost resembled a smile as one single tear finally escaped her left eye. "Figured you'd at least appreciate the ego boost before I die, even if you don't feel the same way."
"You're not dying today, Samira." Jack chose to shelve the rest of her proclamation for now, focused instead on the medicine at hand. She was surely hallucinating, and even if she wasn't, he couldn't allow his mind to go there now, not if he was going to have any chance at seeing her alive again on the other side of those elevator doors.
"Jack," she inhaled as deeply as she could through the oxygen mask, like she was siphoning diesel from a fuel tank, and said as much as she could on just a few shallow breaths. "You're the only person who's ever believed in me. I've never been sure if I belonged here, but you made me feel like I did. Everyone kept telling me what they thought my specialty should be, what kind of clientele my pace would be best suited to… you never did. You've always just… got me. And if I hadn't been such a coward, I really think you could have been my person. So… thank you, and… sorry."
She huffed a laugh as best as she could with only one working lung. Jack's gaze flickered between her and the monitor. She was stable for now, but there's no way she was coherent enough to fully understand the words coming out of her own mouth.
"Can you do something for me? You can say no, but—"
"Anything," Jack watched as she scanned his face, her eyes roaming up and down before landing on his lips. He swallowed hard and braced for what came next.
"Kiss me."
"Samira—"
"Please," she whispered, tightening her grip around his wrist in a desperate bid to reason with him, and partially to pull the oxygen mask closer to her face as she gasped for air. "If there's any part of you that feels the same, please. I've seen the way you look at me, Abbot… and I can't die not knowing."
"Not like this," he shook his head.
Jack Abbot had always believed that Samira Mohan would be the undoing of him. He just figured it would be when she finally realised she was too good for PTMC and jetted off to a fellowship somewhere on the other side of the country, never to be seen or heard from again.
So much so that he rarely let himself fantasize about the alternative. The one where she decided to stay in Pittsburgh, the one where he'd take her out to dinner to celebrate her new position, where they'd talk for hours about everything and nothing all at once. The hours would turn to days, to weeks, months, and eventually years.
When his mind really ran away from him, Jack imagined how his sunset years would have been spent loving her openly and without complexities, and how he'd have basked in her glow.
"What?"
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this. You were supposed to finish your residency. One hundred and forty two days. That's how much longer I had to wait. That's when I would have… that's when we should have been having this conversation."
"Ja—" the harsh beeping sound emitting from the monitor cut Samira off again and her eyes drifted shut.
"No, no, no."
Grabbing the oxygen mask, Jack snapped it back over Samira's mouth and nose and stalked the numbers on the monitor until they stabilised.
Left with no other choice and not much time left to waste, he knew he had to call in reinforcements if she had any chance of making it out of this elevator alive. He slid his phone out of his pocket and hit the name of the only contact who could possibly help him right now—if she was still alive herself.
Pick up, pick up, pick up, he willed as he listened to the repetitive droning of the outgoing dial tone.
"Go for Walsh."
"Em?" His voice cracked on the only syllable he managed, small and scared, like the time when—at twelve years old—he stood sheepishly in the doorway of his childhood home and had to confess to his mother that he'd dented her car with his basketball, despite her telling him about a hundred times to be careful.
"Abbot? Where the fuck are you?"
"I'm in the elevator… with Samira," he whispered the last part as if it was some dirty secret.
"Oh, yeah? I hear adrenaline can be quite the aphrodisiac. Maybe you should finally tell her how you feel and see what hap—"
"She's been shot."
"Fuck, Jack," she gasped. "Is she…?"
"Critical," he confirmed. "But stable for now. She doesn't have long left on the portable oxygen, then I— I don't know…"
"Garcia and I are in OR4. Can you get her here?"
"Yes." Standing up with one hand still holding a firm pressure on Samira's chest, he pushed the button to reactivate the elevator. It didn't move. He tried again, nothing. "You have got to be fucking kidding me… fuck."
"What's going on?"
"Elevator's not moving. I shut it off when I heard the last shot. Just been waiting it out and now it's not fucking working."
"Okay," she took less than one moment to think about it. Much like Jack, Emery Walsh was a master in the art of thinking on your feet. Or, foot, in Jack's case. "We can make this work, I'm gonna talk you through it."
"I know what I'm doing," he shook his head, not that she could see him doing it. "GSW to the right side of the chest. Tension pneumo, possibly from a bronchopleural fistula. I need to relieve the pressure."
"Okay, start by raising her right arm above her head."
Jack did as he was told and lifted Samira's wrist. He tilted her face to the left, settling her cheek to rest against the worn linoleum floor.
"Do you have a scalpel? Kelly clamp?"
"Scalpel, yes. Kelly is… somewhere," he delved into his go bag once more and quickly located the instrument. "Got it."
The hand that was still unconsciously rested against Samira's cheek migrated down to the middle of her collarbone as Jack traced the structure of her rib cage, settling between the fourth and fifth ribs on the right side of her chest, creating a two inch incision through layers of flesh and tissue. He slid his left index finger into the incision, rooting around for the fifth rib. At the same time, he picked up the Kelly clamp and placed the tip carefully into the incision.
After a couple of minutes of silence, Walsh prompted a status report. "How's it going, cowboy?"
"Doing a blunt dissection to get to the rib," he commentated as he eased the instrument further into Samira's open chest. "Advancing the Kelly."
"Make sure you stay close to the rib," Walsh warned. "Don't want you nicking an artery."
"Thanks mom, but this isn't my first rodeo."
"Just trying to help, and save myself the extra work when you get up here."
"I know, sorry," Jack sighed. "I'm just— this is fucking insane."
"Don't apologise," Emery's usual combative tone was warm through the phone. It was unnverving. "This is beyond fucking insane. Gloria's gonna have a field day with reporters swarming this place tomorrow. If they're not already out there… fucking morons."
"Can't wait," he huffed, turning back to the task at hand. "Puncturing the chest wall."
With a sharp force, he plunged the tip of the Kelly clamp through the final layer and turned his attention to the monitor again.
"Air's coming out, she's stabilising."
"Good job," Emery encouraged. "Now pull the clamp. Get your finger back in there and give it a sweep, make sure nothing is blocking the opening. Be ready with fresh gauze and tape if you have it."
Jack did as instructed—again—and plugged his left index finger into the incision, maintaining pressure while he grabbed fresh gauze to pack it with. He taped the bandage over the wound and brought the hem of his t-shirt up to wipe his face, clearing away the beads of sweat which had trickled down and settled at the dishevelled curls around his temples.
"She's stable for now," Jack breathed a sigh of temporary relief. "You guys have blood up there?"
"I'm on it," Garcia called out from somewhere in the distance. He figured he must have been on speaker this whole time.
Just as he started to roll back off of his knees, a sudden jolt of the elevator sent him flying back onto his ass, shoulders landing flat against the wall.
"What was that?" Emery asked.
"Elevator's moving."
The numbers on the small digital panel above the doors rose steadily until they were approaching and finally stopping off at the surgical floor.
"We're on our way."
The elevator stopped and the doors parted to reveal a gowned up and slightly out of breath Walsh and Garcia already on standby. They had a gurney ready and swiftly grabbed each of Samira's legs as Jack's grip remained firmly under her arms, hoisting her off the bloodstained floor and onto the bed.
"Definitely a tension pneumo," Garcia confirmed.
"Pulse is thready."
Steering both sides of the bed, Walsh and Garcia powered down the hall and burst through the OR doors, the room already prepped and waiting for them.
"Jack, get me a chest tube," Walsh ordered.
Garcia was already hanging two units without being asked.
Jack found the equipment with haste and handed it over before grabbing a pair of large latex gloves from the dispenser on the wall.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Walsh scoffed. "You can wait outside now."
"No. I'm staying."
"I'm not asking, Jack."
He didn't move. Garcia's eyes darted between the two of them as she waited for someone to make the next move.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Walsh conceded. "You can watch, but stay out of my way."
Three agonisingly long hours of waiting and observing passed by in a blur.
At one point, Jack thought about going back downstairs to help out Shen and Ellis in trauma 1. He didn't realise he'd voiced that thought out loud and begun to set off until Walsh told him to "sit the fuck down, you've pulled off enough heroics for one day."
Ninety minutes in, they received a call to say the shooter had been apprehended and everyone else was safe. Ahmad, by some miracle, was their only fatality. Not that that made it hurt any less. The picture of his colleague's lifeless body was still burned into Jack's retinas and he didn't anticipate being able to shift it for some time, if ever.
Walsh had encouraged him to go back downstairs just as his phone vibrated in his pocket. When he pulled it out, there was a new message from Dana. Emma told them what happened; the day shift, including Robby, had all come back to help, so he could take the rest of the night off if he wanted.
He sent back a quick thanks and said he'd try and come back down later. For now, he had no plans to leave the OR until Samira was out of the woods.
The colour started to return to her cheeks as Garcia hung more units. It was the first time since he saw her laying under the desk in Central, barely conscious, that he'd allowed himself to feel scared at the thought of losing her. When her life was solely in his hands, he couldn't afford to question it for a second. But now, watching as Walsh prepared to close, he let his mind wander.
Two years. Maybe more.
Her words came back to him in fragments. He sat with them, digesting each one and trying not to spiral as he thought about all the things he should have said, should have done, and didn't.
I love you. Sorry I never said it before.
Why didn't he just say it back? It wouldn't have been a hardship. It would have been the easiest and truest thing he ever said.
Even if you don't feel the same way.
The pang in his chest overwhelmed him as all the years he'd spent feeling the same way were reduced to a few desperate, fragmented sentences in a broken down elevator. He hated himself for ever allowing her to question his feelings for her.
If he'd known how she felt, maybe things might have been different. He thought it was the noble thing to do, spending the past two years taking every shred of an interaction he could get from her and sustaining himself with it, desperately trying to convince himself it would be enough. He was an attending, she was still a resident, and the power dynamic was questionable at best; she'd worked far too hard and was far too smart to be diminished to rumours of someone who'd slept her way to the top.
Patience is a virtue, and she was worth every second of it.
You could have been my person.
Kiss me.
Shit. Why didn't he do that either? He promised her he'd do anything, it was the one thing she'd asked of him in what could have been her final moments on Earth—her one dying wish—and he couldn't get over his own insecurities enough to grant it to her.
Fuck. He groaned internally and watched as Walsh tied off her final stitches across Samira's chest.
"Now we wait," she stripped off her gloves and mask and tossed them on the ground beside her own blood-stained shoes.
"Em?" Jack mumbled deliriously as the adrenaline of the night started to wear off.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
While Samira was being transferred to the recovery ward, Jack took the opportunity to go to the bathroom and check in with his colleagues downstairs. It wasn't long before he was heading up to the fifth floor to rejoin her.
Dana had made him change out of his bloody scrubs and back into plain clothing, so he took his badge with him in case anyone tried to question why he was wandering around the halls at gone midnight looking like a civilian. Nobody did question him. Whether it was because they recognised him, or because they thought he looked like shit and figured he'd probably been through enough already, he wasn't sure.
It was peaceful up here—the antithesis of the emergency department. Even the lighting was softer, a stark contrast to the harsh LED bulbs that illuminated the floor he spent most of his life on.
He made his way to the admit desk and leaned against the counter on both elbows. "Hi," he attempted a smile. "I'm Doctor Abbot from the ER. I'm looking for Doctor Mohan, uh, Samira Mohan, she was just transferred to this floor."
The nurse behind the desk gave him a glance up and down over the top of her glasses.
"Room 207. She's sleeping right now, though."
"I understand. I won't wake her, I'll just sit," he promised. "May I?"
After a considerate beat, she nodded. "Sure."
Jack made his way down the hall and peered through the window into her room before he entered. It was dimly lit inside, and for the first time all day she looked peaceful. It was actually the most at peace he'd ever seen her if he really thought about it. Her semi-reclined body had been covered with a hospital gown, wires from various monitors poking out over the top. They'd placed a couple of IVs—one for painkillers, the other for fluids. Her hair was scraped back off her face, someone must have tied it up out of the way as he could see her claw clip sitting on the table beside the bed, smeared with her own blood which had now dried on.
He opened the door and closed it behind him, quietly making his way to the chair at her bedside. Looking down at her hand rested against the pale blue blanket on the bed, he gently took it in his and laced his fingers through hers. The steady beating of the heart monitor grounded him as he listened to the sound—a stark reminder that she was still alive—and allowed a few small, silent tears to escape his eyes for a minute.
The shifting of her weight spooked him into retreating, dropping her hand and sitting back in the chair as if he'd just arrived to observe like any other patient. Clearing his throat softly, he watched as her brows tightened and her eyes flickered beneath her lids. She opened one eye, which immediately found him and she smiled weakly.
"Why did you stop holding my hand?" Samira mumbled beneath her oxygen mask.
"Oh, uh… sorry. I wasn't sure if…" Jack stuttered. "The nurses won't be happy with me, I wasn't supposed to wake you."
She slowly twisted her palm towards him, silently encouraging him to take it back in his, which he did without hesitation. He held it tighter this time, tracing small circles across her knuckles with his thumb.
After a few minutes, she opened both eyes and scanned the room, settling her gaze on what she needed most. Jack followed her line of sight and wordlessly picked up the jug of water beside the bed, pouring a small amount into a plastic cup and standing to bring it to her dry lips. She pulled the oxygen mask away from her face as Jack held her head up with his thick palm, just as he had done hours before in the elevator, and encouraged her to take small sips.
Settling back against the pillow, Jack's hand was still cupping the back of her neck, and Samira let her eyes drift closed again.
"Well… this is kinda embarrassing," she laughed dryly.
Jack searched her expression, realising that in the last few minutes she'd begun to piece together some of the events of the past few hours.
"It really did feel like I was dying…" she opened one eye again, studying him. "I'm sorry about the things I said. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."
Sorry I never said it before.
Sorry about the things I said.
Her conflicting statements swirled around his mind as he tried to make sense of what she was saying now.
"Did you mean it?" Jack asked. Enough waiting, enough wondering. This was his second chance and he couldn't afford to waste it now he understood the true value of what he could have lost. "What you said? I figured you'd maybe confused me with someone else. You lost a lot of blood and—"
"I meant it. I'm sorry it took me almost dying to say it and I know it was a selfish thing to drop on you in the middle of an already stressful situation but if I was going to die, I needed you to know. And I needed to know if you felt the same way."
"I love you, Samira," he smiled. "Two years, maybe more," he repeated her words back to her. They were as true as any he could have conjured on his own. "And I'm sorry it took you almost dying for me to say it too."
"I thought you said I wasn't going to die," she teased. "In fact, you were pretty insistent on it."
"I wasn't going to let you die, Samira, not if I could help it… I did everything I could." She yawned and he slid his hand out from behind her head, resting it against her cheek instead. "You should get some rest. We can talk more later."
"Can you at least tell me what happened in the elevator, after I passed out? I want to hear about the procedure… I promise it'll help me sleep."
"You are something else, Mohan," he chuckled.
Jack settled back down in the chair beside her, taking her hand in his as he talked her through the procedure. The rationing of oxygen, the two inch incision between her forth and fifth ribs, puncturing her chest wall with a Kelly clamp while Walsh consulted over the phone. The broken down elevator and the finger thoracostomy before patching her up and putting her life in the hands of Walsh and Garcia.
The trouble was, Samira was so enthralled by the story that she was more wired than ever by the time he finished telling it, interrupting with constant questions about why he did things a certain way and how he would have done it differently if he'd had more resources to hand. He answered each one thoughtfully, equally thrilled to be able to have this conversation with her; it far outweighed the alternative of running through the procedure with her mother as he explained to her why he couldn't save her daughter.
"Get some rest now, Samira." He stood from the chair and leaned over the bed, placing a gentle kiss to her forehead.
As he began to pull away, she raised an eyebrow as if to ask permission—which he silently gave her—before she laced her hand around the back of his neck, lightly grasping onto the curls at the base of his skull. Tugging his lips down to meet hers, she kissed him softly. Jack cupped his right hand around the side of her face, caressing his thumb along her jawline in one soothing stroke. It was chaste and sweet… Samira really didn't have the lung capacity for anything more.
Jack sat back down, giddy, and Samira reached for his hand again. They stayed like that for a while, appreciating the tranquility after one of the most emotionally charged days of either of their lives.
Samira couldn't settle, her mind was racing through the events of the past twelve hours. When the reality finally set in… she began to laugh hysterically.
"What's so funny?" Jack asked amusedly. Suddenly his grip tightened on her hand when he noticed her wincing and clutching at her right side. "Be careful."
"I'm fine, it's nothing," she blushed. "I— I can't tell you."
"You can tell me anything, sweetheart."
She caught her breath and angled her face towards him. "If you must know, I was just thinking about your thoracostomy…"
"I didn't realise my life-saving tactics would be such a great source of amusement for you."
"They're not," she insisted. "And it's not that I've thought about it obsessively or anything, it's just… it's not really the scenario I had in mind when I imagined your fingers entering me for the first time, is all."
Jack choked on an inhale as a faint blush bloomed at the tips of his ears and crept across his cheekbones. His eyes darted to the floor and then back to hers.
"Yeah," he grinned. "Me neither."