Barking instructions to someone on the other end of the line--Samira tries to remember who's on the schedule today, but can't, her thoughts obscured by the press of the Abbot's fifth metacarpus into her center. His hand is hot, even through the layers of cotton and fleece. The pads of his fingers draw up the width of her gracilis muscle, up and over her adductors. The whole muscle chain trembles.

"You decide you wanna get out of here, you just let me know. Yeah?" His voice is like gravel in her ear. "You look like he's spent all morning stressing you out."

"Sometimes I think it's his favorite hobby," she murmurs, keeping their bodies close, their faces closer. "Sometimes I think it's his only hobby."

If she doesn't look too closely at the situation, if she squints and tilts her head all the way to the side, there's something thrilling and taboo about what she's doing. About letting Jack touch her like this. Something even more than an attending physician and a resident, a man approaching fifty and a woman who's just turned thirty. If Samira lets herself pretend, she's spent the table doing her homework at her dad's house, resentful that it's his weekend in the custody arrangement. If she lets her imagination take ahold of fantasy and run, Jack is her father's best friend, someone trusted, but someone who should not be trusted with her.

She will let him touch her on Robby's couch, when Robby isn't paying attention, and imagine that it's a betrayal.

"I can invent an excuse to get us out of here any time you want. But I'm kind of having fun with this, aren't you?" Samira bites her lip, giving him a sort of smirk around her front teeth pinning her mouth closed, and nods. "Good. I hoped so. Now tell me to fuck off if you need me to. But I'm gonna keep playing with you when he's not looking."

Five minutes later, Samira has a blanket in her lap. It's cold outside, sidewalks crackling with ice, a fresh coat of snow covering roofs and window ledges. She needs a blanket.

She takes Jack's hand, the one resting on the back of the sofa, an inch above her shoulders. She adjusts her hips and her position just so. And when Robby stands up to yell at the refereeing, she places it down the front of her sweatpants, under the elastic cinched to her waist. With a careful, blank face, Jack delves his middle and ring fingers into her folds, stroking slowly.

Robby's phone rings again, and it's hospital administration, following up on a patient complaint to the ombudsman. Cursing under his breath, he pads out of the room, lumbering towards his office. She waits for the door to snap shut, and then turns in Jack's arms, resting her back against his chest.

It's friendly, a little too friendly, but she remembers Robby commenting off-hand that Jack has always been affectionate. Jack takes the prompt for what it is, sliding the hand toying with her pussy up under her sweatshirt, towards her tits.

"You're not wearing a bra?" he asks, voice tinged with awe.

"No. If I don't have to, I don't," she explains, craning her neck to look up at him. "And with a hoodie on, I don't really have to."

"How many times have I seen you without a bra on?" he all but demands, circling a nipple with his thumb, drawing it into a tight point. He pinches it then, tugging lightly, making her gasp.

"Well, never at work," Samira replies, arching her back, pushing her breasts into his palm. "I'm not doing chest compressions without a bra on, as much as I think you'd enjoy that."

He snorts, eyes locked onto the shadowy depths of the hallway leading deeper into Robby's house, back towards the bedrooms and his office. The door remains shut. They can hear Robby's voice, muffled by layers of compressed wood.

"It certainly brings a whole new meaning to return of spontaneous circulation."

We first see Samira in season two five minutes into the episode, greeting new attending Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi with a hug. She's immediately pulled into a trauma case that as the R4, she's in charge of running. During the high stakes bedside procedure with Garcia, her phone keeps going off. After the patient is stabilized and sent up to surgery, we see Samira on the phone with her mother, and irritated about it. Samira speaks to her mother in Tamil, and keeps the conversation short.

SAMIRA: I will call you when I get a chance. [...] That's the best I can do. [...] Yes. Fine. Bye.

We learn from her conversation with Cassie McKay that Samira's mother is "trying to destroy her life," and that four days into her senior year of residency, she's already committed to a partnership-track position next year at a hospital in New Jersey so she could be close to her mother and support her. (Side note: as a NJ native myself as well, I'm desperately curious as to which one.) But now her mother is getting married and selling Samira's childhood home to go on a year-long cruise around the world. We learn from the post-episode podcast that Samira's mom has been calling her while getting rid of Samira's childhood things.

(Which. A metaphor for Samira holding onto her father's death in ways that make it hard for her to look forward with her life if I ever saw one.)

Samira is so mad about this that we hear her drop her first fuck word in the entire series, calling it, "A pretty fucking stupid idea, if you ask me."

Her mother has known her future husband for less than a year. "What if he's a player? What if she disappears at sea?" Cassie replies, "What if they're in love?" Samira scoffs. "Lust is more like it."

Cassie smirks down at her work station. "That is even better. Man, it has been a while, and I'm solo this weekend. I need to get laid."

Samira glares at her.

CASSIE: It's a little much before 8 AM, right? SAMIRA: Yeah. [BEAT, during which Cassie walks away.] Or ever.

Now, I don't think Samira's problem is that her mom is getting remarried. We learn in 1.05 while she's interacting with Joyce and Ondine that she's very well aware that her parents didn't have a loving marriage. She's under no illusion that her mother has been hung up on her father for eighteen years... like Samira has been.

SAMIRA: Nice to know you can still make each other laugh. JOYCE: Make each other laugh? ONDINE: Make each other deliriously happy. [Joyce and Ondine kiss] Sorry, didn't mean to get all mushy in front of you. SAMIRA: Are you kidding me? You two are the sweetest. I never got to see this kind of love between a married couple. JOYCE: Your parents weren't the lovey-dovey type? SAMIRA: My dad died when I was thirteen. [...] He's the reason I got into medicine, and the reason I'm conducting research on racial disparity in the ER. I'm doing a retrospective chart review on our past five years of patients of color. JOYCE: Is that how you knew what was going on with me?

No, like we see in Samira's interactions with the widow with the overprotective son we see her treat later in the episode as well as her emotional response to the baby left in the bathroom, Samira's feeling abandoned by her mother.

We see her interact with the widow, Candace O'Grady, and her son first.

After Richard (the son) micro-aggressively calls Samira a nurse and she corrects him, the widowed patient gently checks her son and sends him away. She apologizes: "Please excuse my son, ever since my husband died, he's been a little overprotective."

SAMIRA: I think it's sweet. You're very lucky to have him. MRS. O'GRADY: I am.

We then get into the meat of the patient interaction. Mrs. O'Grady has gone off her medication, and has been treating her pain with edibles instead. While the marijuana has had a positive impact on her pain, it's possibly the cause behind her intractable vomiting. (I'm no doctor, but my first thought is Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome.) Samira cautions Mrs. O'Grady that there have been some studies that show an added dementia risk with marijuana use in older adults.

But Mrs. O'Grady doesn't really care. "Well, that sucks for old people," she replies bluntly.

It doesn't take a large leap to see that Mrs. O'Grady, widow with an overprotective son, is a stand-in for Samira and her own mother. Especially considering that Mrs. O'Grady is partaking in risky behavior by going off all of her own medication six months ago to treat herself with a routine course of twelve edibles a day.

Next, we see Samira come in to check on the baby found abandoned in the waiting room bathroom while Robby and Al-Hashimi are examining her.

SAMIRA: Is this the abandoned baby? ROBBY: Mmhm. SAMIRA: How old? ROBBY: How old do you think she is? SAMIRA: Month, month and a half. AL-HASHIMI: It's tricky. Under 28 days is a Safe Haven drop off, no questions asked. But over 28 days is a crime, child abandonment. ROBBY: How should we assess? SAMIRA: Under 28 days gets everything, including an LP. But over 28 days, you can follow PECARN or Step-by-Step to determine risk of invasive bacterial infection. ROBBY: This baby looks great. AL-HASHIMI: But we know nothing about the birth history. Did mom have group B strep, active HSV lesions? ROBBY: We should assume the worst. Put in your orders, Dr. Mohan.

It's not difficult to see that this baby is analogous to (at least, in this episode) Samira's character. Samira feels abandoned by her mother, like this baby has been abandoned by her mother. The only question, regarding the baby, is if the abandonment is criminal or not.

We, the audience, know very little about Samira's history besides what we've been able to glean from small comments. We know her father died from racialized medical negligence in an ER. We know that she became a doctor because of her father's death, and the direction of her research is to prevent it from happening again. We know her parents didn't have a loving marriage. We know from the photo with Adamson that she likely went to Pitt for medical school. We know she doesn't have a social life and she's not in a relationship. We also know that at least two scenes that would have established more facts about Samira's history--confirming she's been in Pittsburgh for seven years, informing the audience she had a cat that passed a month before--were cut from season one.

We should assume the worst.

Samira puts in her orders. She will take care of this baby. She will protect this baby the only way she knows how: through medicine.

Later, we see Samira close out the episode performing further examinations on the Safe Haven baby. Dr. Al-Hashimi comes in to join her. It's nice to see Samira interact with an attending who's a friendly face, and nice for Al-Hashimi to interact with someone who already likes her and trusts her.

"How's she doing?" Al-Hashimi asks, both about our current allegory for Samira, the Safe Haven baby.

"Seems happy enough," Samira, who last season finale we saw breakdown in the staff bathroom before re-emerging to convince those around her that she was completely fine, replies.

So, what does this all mean?

We can summarize where Samira Mohan is emotionally in the 7 AM hour with a couple of bullet points.

Frustrated and abandoned by her mother's choices.

Abandoned by her mother's choice to leave after Samira has committed to the hospital in NJ.

Abandoned by her mother's choice to sell the house Samira grew up in.

Abandoned by her mother's choice to marry a man she just met and go on a year-long cruise with him, just as Samira is finally finishing up her medical training and can move home.

Concerned that her mother is making the wrong choice and is going to get hurt, which will in turn become Samira's responsibility to support her through.

Exasperated at the idea that her mother is acting out of lust, or acting irrationally.

Sympathetic to Richard O'Grady for feeling overprotective of his widowed mother.

Exasperated with Mrs. O'Grady for stopping her meds cold turkey to engage in what she sees as risky self-treatment.

Sad for the Safe Haven baby.

Happy to be interacting with the Safe Haven baby.

A duty of care for the Safe Haven baby.

What can this mean for Mohabbot?

We have some delicious set-ups for Samira to have to potentially eat her words. Including, but not limited to:

Her mother is marrying a man she's known less than a year. Samira's known Abbot for approximately 4-5 years. But there's always the possibility they fast-track their own relationship and Samira has her own "when you know, you know," moment.

As anyone who has grown up remotely close to the culture of the US Military, it's common for people in the military to move quickly and marry fast for benefits, higher pay, getting out of the barracks, etc. It's not impossible that Abbot married his first wife after less than a year of knowing her - resulting in a marriage that ended with her death, and Jack still wearing his ring.

"Man, it has been a while, and I'm solo this weekend. I need to get laid." Samira's glare insinuates that it's also been a while for her, likely in regards to getting laid and feeling lust. Based on what we know is coming (thanks, New Yorker, for ruining that for everyone) we can assume Samira's gonna remember what it's like to feel lust before the end of the day.

It seems that Samira's main hurt comes from feeling like she has chosen her mother, but her mother has rejected her. Has anyone put Samira first since her father died, or did they look at her and think she looks "happy enough." Because as we saw during the MCI episodes, Jack is the only character who really looks at Samira and sees anything besides someone who is "happy enough." Jack sees when Samira needs encouragement and support, and gives it freely. He listens to her, and he notices her.

In summary, the plot threads have been put in place for Samira's arc this season to focus on having to choose where home is going to be. Without her mother, without her childhood home, without the things she planned on being there when she returned to New Jersey, will she evaluate Pittsburgh in a different light?

It feels likely.

We learn that Samira hasn't put down any roots in Pittsburgh, seemingly on purpose. She is very focused on the past, and finding meaning in her father's death. She writes off a lot of potential personal fulfillment outside of her grieving process as something that can happen when she's done with her residency, and as we know now--back in the house that holds all the memories of her father, and of losing him.