blueymoons

“I’m just glad we had a doctor in the house so I didn’t have to go to the emergency room and let Trinity take care of it for me,” she said with a grin and a wink as she turned away and picked up the spatula she’d dropped on the floor when the baking sheet had met her arm. 

“Two doctors, S’mira. Did you forget you’re a doctor too?” Mel’s sister, Becca put in with a sweetly girlish giggle. She’d been silently rocking side to side in her seat at the breakfast bar, while Mel had cleaned and treated the burn she’d inadvertently caused. Her hands had been gripped tightly, worry creating the deepest furrows in her brow over her glasses. Now that the crisis had passed, however, and the tension in the room had dissipated, she’d ceased her rocking and rejoined the conversation. 

“You know what, Becs? I must have.” She bonked the heel of her hand against her forehead and pulled a face at her friend’s sister as Mel took the spatula from her and began washing it at the sink. “How could I possibly have forgotten?”

“Hmmm.” Becca’s brow furrowed again as she pondered this question. Samira grinned over at Mel, charmed by the absolutely adorable expression on Becca’s face. “Maybe you need to get more rest. That’s what Mel always tells me when I forget things.”

“And Mel’s the best doctor I know so she must be right. Thank you for that advice, Becs, my love. I’ll try to remember that in the future.”

“But, S’mira…How are you gonna remember if you don’t get any rest.” Becca twinkled innocently mischievous.

“That’s quite a conundrum,” Mel inserted with a laugh. “Why don’t you go wash your hands in the bathroom, Becca, while Sam and I clean this mess up?”

“And cookies after?” Becca called as she scooted out of her chair and dashed out of the room.

“And cookies after,” Mel called after her as she handed the now cleaned spatula to Samira.

“I love her so much, Mel. She’s so funny.” Samira said as she began transferring the cookies they’d spent the evening baking into various containers. One for Samira to take home, one for Mel and Becca to keep and one for Mel to take to the hospital in the morning to share with the rest of the Pitt Crew.

“She’s the best.” Mel agreed with a tiredness in her smile that Samira didn’t miss. 

“Is she getting better with the new schedule? Adjusting well?”

“Seems to be. Monica says she’s developed a routine for the nights she’s staying over at the center, and she does seem happier on the days she’s here at home.”

As Mel’s workload at the hospital had increased, she’d begun to feel that the quality of care she’d been giving Becca was slipping and Samira knew that it had taken some immeasurable bravery for Mel to reach out to Kiara and ask for help with transitioning Becca to half week stays at the adult center she went to while Mel was at work. Mel took Becca’s welfare more seriously than she took her own at times and everyone at The Pitt had been relieved to see Mel looking more well rested and cheerful in the past few weeks as Becca had begun staying overnight at the center more often. 

“Plus, she comes home with the juiciest gossip and most interesting stories,” Mel whispered conspiratorially. “I swear sometimes I think she’s more observant than Dr. Abbot.”

And on cue, at just the mention of his name, the ivy on Samira’s right calf started itching. Just like it always did when Dr. Jack Abbot was mentioned, or near. 

Or, when she thought of him in the dark of her bedroom.

She and Mel finished cleaning up the kitchen and settled down to play a round of Uno with Becca while they nibbled on the freshly baked cookies, but an hour later, after she’d hugged both King sisters and carried her container of cookies to her car, the ivy was still itching. 

She walked into The Pitt the next afternoon at five-thirty, ready for her first night shift in a month. She’d tried to limit the times she worked the night shift, because night shifts meant being near Jack, and being near Jack meant the possibility of him noticing and commenting on the one wound flower she couldn’t hide easily, and, of course, the persistent rustling itch of the ivy.

Sometimes the fern rustled along her skin too, its single leaf tickling lightly, but its gentle tickling itch was more easily ignored than the bristling of her calf full of thick ivy and vines. 

It really did seem more sentient these days. 

And so, she tried everything possible to not exacerbate its insistence, including avoidance, even though she was well aware that she was sacrificing valuable learning opportunities by avoiding working with Jack. 

She hadn’t been able to avoid this shift though, not when parker’s mother had fallen ill and had been hospitalized. Parker, naturally, wanted to be there for her mother, and Samira, who knew what it was like to lose a parent, had immediately volunteered to pick up Parker’s shifts until she could return to PTMC.

She was stowing her bag in her locker and trading her outside shoes for her hospital only shoes when Mel dashed into the room at top speed, comically skidding to a stop at Samira’s side. 

“Dr. Abbot has poppies on the side of his right tricep,” she whispered frantically, and the laugh that had been bubbling up Samira’s throat turned into a choking cough as her stomach lurched with a feeling like she’d missed a step on a flight of stairs.

She cursed inwardly. She should have seen this coming.

“I overheard him talking to Robby about it. Apparently they showed up last night.” Mel continued, her eyebrows rising over the frame of her glasses significantly as she hissed the last two words.

“He told Robby?” Samira asked dumbly, her mind churning, trying to come up with a way to explain away this turn of events and prevent Mel from coming to the obvious conclusion she was already working up to.

“He did. He came straight in about thirty minutes ago and asked to talk to Robby in T1. I was outside the room, chatting with Trin, and saw him showing them to Robby. And then, as they were leaving to go to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee I heard him saying something like, ‘I didn’t think you could have two, Robby. How do I have wound blooms again? I already had mine.”

Samira stood there wordlessly, her brain still frantically searching for a way out of this. . 

“Sam,” Mel hesitated before going on. “Sam, do you think he might…” she trailed off as Samira’s eyes met hers before covering a soft, but deeply shocked, gasp with her hands. 

“Oh. My. G—” Samira’s head dropped heavily onto her shoulder, cutting off her exclamation. 

“What am I gonna do, Mel?” she wailed in a frantic whisper.

“Did you know before now, Sam?”

Samira nodded against her shoulder.

“How?” Mel asked.

Samira sighed and leaned down, quickly pulled up the cuff of her scrub pants so that Mel could see a sliver of the ivy twining around her leg. 

“Ohhh. Right. Of course.” Mel nodded, dumbfounded. “How long have you known?”

“Two months after I started my residency.” She rested her forehead on Mel’s shoulder again. Mel’s hand patted her shoulder awkwardly at first, before beginning to stroke it softly. 

“Do you want to call off? I can cover you. Becca’s back at the center for the next few days.”

Samira shook her head, “It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It’s been years now and he still doesn’t know.” She lifted her head off Mel’s shoulder, rolling her shoulders back and standing up straight as though doing so would make this whole problem go away. “He doesn’t know. He never has to know. And if I just pretend that this isn’t happening, then it doesn’t have to matter. Right?” She heard the anxious edge to her voice

“It must have been so hard to hide, though,” Mel said softly, and not without a small amount of pity. 

“Not too hard. He never sees me in anything but scrubs and they hide the ivy and…others.”

“You have others?!?” Mel’s eyes were huge behind her glasses as she took this information in..

Samira nodded miserably. “One on my deltoid and another on my waist.” She tapped each spot as she mentioned them. 

“It makes sense, I guess,” Mel mused. “He was in the Army.”

“The buttercup is the one I can’t hide. But I don’t think he’s seen it yet, especially since anytime he’s looking at my hands or close enough to see it, I’m usually wearing gloves.” She held up her knuckle with the tiny yellow flower and leaves.

Mel stroked it with the tip of her finger, entranced by it’s smallness. “Tiny.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Mel, listen—”

“You don’t have to ask, you know. I’d never say anything. But,” Mel hesitated for a minute, glancing out into the main room with a wistful look on her face that Samira knew wouldn’t have been nearly as wistful if Dr. Frank Langdon was still there to bounce from bay to bay like a hyperactive terrier. “Don’t you want to tell him eventually? Don’t you want to know what would happen?” Then under her breath, “I would.”

Samira sighed. “Honestly, Mel? I don’t know. There’re so many things to consider. Technically, I’m his subordinate. He’s at least twelve years older than me. He’s a widower. He may not even like me or want to twine with me. You know he’s a loner.”

“Do you think maybe it’s possible that he’s not a loner? Maybe he’s just lonely.” 

Samira found herself wishing she could blink and bring Langdon back to The Pitt. Mel’s  words had been filled with so much aching loneliness that she wasn’t sure even Mel herself was aware of. Instead, she took Mel’s hands in hers, offering silent comfort and squeezing them firmly, then her wrists, then her forearms, before finishing with a hug and a whispered, “I can’t yet,”. Mel’s braid rubbed against her cheek as she nodded her silent understanding. 

And as the ivy began to itch, Samira watched over Mel’s shoulder as Dr. Jack Abbot walked through the doors of the department beside Robby, a paper coffee cup in his buttercup hand and the silver strands of his hair seeming glinting under the fluorescent lights. 

Sometimes she has the fanciful thought that it seems as though the ivy wants to be seen.

That it wants her to reveal it, get it out in the open, air it out.

But she’s not ready yet. 

Even though somehow she knows that letting it be seen might finally cool the itch.

She doesn’t think he’s ready either.

She’s not sure he ever will be.

She’s worked side by side with him multiple times, on multiple night shift rotations. 

She trusts him. She respects him. She nearly reveres him. 

Tonight only added to that respect, that reverence. His go-bag full of tricks and that calm, steady, straightforward presence had kept her calm and steady through the insanity of the MCI they’d just come through. 

But it was always like that when Dr. Abbot was her attending. Unlike Robby, he seemed to have endless patience. He’d never once referred to her as “Slo-Mo” in her hearing. He’d never taunted her with the cruel moniker in a bid to get her to move faster. And, really, she knew Robby wasn’t truly taunting her, but, God, sometimes it felt like it. She could feel his disappointment radiating off him every time he stopped to talk with her about her timing with patients. Every time he questioned her process, why she’d ordered the labs she’d ordered, why she’d moved forward with the treatment she’d chosen. She had to remind herself that it was his job to question her, to make her better. That he wasn’t being disdainful or mean, he was just doing his job as her teacher and making her a better doctor. 

But she never had to remind herself of anything when Dr. Abbot was teaching her. Actually…that’s not entirely correct. She often had to remind herself to look away from him and concentrate on the patient, instead of allowing herself to drown in the comfort of his eye contact. And she loved his eye contact. 

The reassurance in it. 

The kindness. 

The sureness of his gaze was intense, but in the most comforting way. A reminder that he was there and he wouldn’t let anything go awry, but that he trusted her decisions and her capabilities.

The ivy twinged again as she sipped the beer Donohue had tossed her. 

Her eyes met Abbot’s over the rim of the can as he finished cleaning his shoe and set the prosthetic back on the bench between him and Robby. 

And the ivy itched. 

A slightly unhinged laugh bursts out of Robby, just as she looks away. 

And the ivy itched.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, truly confused and more than a little unnerved to see Robby so uncontrolled.

And the ivy itched.

Robby chuckles as he says something about remembering that this shift was Javadi’s first and soon everyone is cracking up and she joins in with a slight chuckle of her own as Abbot shakes his head saying, “That was baptism by fire, baby.” 

And the ivy itched.

She occasionally wished he’d call her baby. 

Or honey. 

Or sweetheart. 

Or some other lovely endearment. 

But then the ivy would itch and she’d remember that she wasn’t ready.

And that he may never be. 

She’s heard the scuttlebutt. That he’d been married, then widowed, and hadn’t been seen with or rumored to be seeing anyone since. She’d never heard him flirt with anyone other than Dana, and that was very clearly the kind of platonic flirting longtime close friends shared. He’s never mentioned a woman’s name that wasn’t someone associated with the hospital or a patient’s. He’s never brought anyone with him to any of the get togethers they’ve been to. Not even to the mandatory fundraiser gala that Gloria hounds him and Robby into showing up for every year. 

She’s almost certain that if he did mention another woman or show up with a date to some event, she’d have to chop her own leg off to stop the itch of the ivy once and for all.

Sometimes it really felt that sentient. 

The ivy had appeared on her right calf in the summer of her second year of med school. She’d been on the beach with her friends, enjoying a beer and laughing at the guys playing volleyball horribly because they were too busy trying to show off for the girls watching to actually play the game correctly. One second she’d been laughing into her drink and the next the ivy had twisted around her right calf and the first itch had begun. It had felt as though the leaves were rustling against her skin, tickling it the way a fallen hair tickles the back of your arm when it gets caught on your shirt.

She’d had other plants and flowers bloom and itch mildly before. They’d started blooming in her teens. 

She’d felt the tickling brush of a small branch of fern that had grown along the side of her waist during a football game in her senior year as she’d played the piccolo in the pep band on senior night. It had been the first of the marks that hadn’t faded like the marks she’d had before had.

A miniscule white daisy had appeared on her forehead the afternoon after her junior prom and her mom had commented that at least it had happened after the event. That one, thankfully, had faded within a day or two.

But she had violets that had blossomed and remained on the front round of her left deltoid that had appeared like a pretty botanical tattoo in her junior year of undergrad and then a sweet little buttercup with miniature leaves on the middle knuckle of her left hand. It had stayed as well, though it had shrunk a bit in the days following it’s appearance.

She knew it was normal. She knew most people had experienced at least one mark bloom or blossom by the time they graduated from high school. Finding your soulmate so early in life was rare, but everyone she knew had had at least some proof that they had one. Even if their marks usually faded after a few days or a week.

She knew it was odd for her to have the permanent marks she had, though. They indicated that whoever her soulmate was, they’d been, at the very worst, careless with their personal safety, or, at the very best, terribly clumsy. 

But, honestly, she liked them. She liked how bright they were against the gold of her skin. She liked looking in the mirror and seeing tangible proof that the soul that was meant to twine with hers existed, somewhere. And, though she’d never admit it to anyone, she sometimes caught herself daydreaming as she looked at them in the mirror after a shower, convincing herself it was just a matter of time before their lives twined and bloomed 

together like flowering clematis.

Once, at a study session she’d watched tiny clovers bloom along the pad of her friend Allison’s thumb and had looked up to find that the guy who’d been assigned to their study group, whose name she wasn’t even sure she’d known yet, had a corresponding paper cut dripping blood onto his flashcards as he’d watched the clovers bloom with them. 

David, that had been his name, and Allison had left the library together that afternoon and they’d gotten married a year later. 

And she’d caught herself looking around the library as they’d left, looking for a scar on the round of a deltoid that would match her clustered violets.

But she hadn’t seen anyone.

Then the ivy had twined around her calf, and the tickling itch had begun and it had slammed into her that evening, as she took a shower to wash off the sticky sand and salt of the day, that this mark, circling her leg, deeply green and thick with vines and leaves, was an indication that something had been permanently lost. 

Three years later she’d met Dr. Jack Abbot.

Two months after that she’d sat with him in the break room on her first night shift rotation and watched him pull up the right leg of his scrub pants and adjust the shell of his prosthetic. 

Two minutes after he’d walked out the door she’d finally caught her breath and begun frantically trying to figure out how she was going to hide this from him as long as she possibly could. 

By the time she’d gone home that night she’d convinced herself she was wrong. She’d sat on her bed, her back against the pillows tucked against her headboard and stared at the ivy that had done nothing but itch from the moment she’d seen his leg. She’d reassured herself, over and over, that Dr. Jack Abbot couldn’t possibly be her soulmate because surely there were thousands of other people in the world with the same injury and just because he was the only one she’d met with it, didn’t mean that his was the vine she was meant to twine with. 

She’d fallen asleep, resolving to not even think about it the next day. Because it just wasn’t possible. Surely.

And then, the next evening, at the start of shift, she’d glanced at his hand as it had curved around the mug of coffee Parker had handed him while they’d all been standing at Central, contemplating the board, and there, on his left middle knuckle, was a tiny white, raised, and shiny scar, exactly the size of her buttercup. 

She’d had to pretend the gasp of shock and dismay that had left her mouth was due to something she’d forgotten in her locker and she’d rushed away, feeling his intense eyes following her and hearing the murmur of his voice as he replied to Parker’s, “What was that about?” with a chuckle and a “Who knows.”

Two years later she’d somehow managed to keep all but her buttercup a secret. And while she couldn’t hide the buttercup, her hands were often covered with gloves when he was close enough to see it, and he’d never commented on it, and so she was fairly certain that he had no idea. 

But tonight, watching him working on a patient as a bag strapped to his left leg had filled with his blood, the ivy had itched. 

The heat of his body next to hers as he’d guided her through the riskiest procedure she’d ever done before, his intense eyes had caught hers, holding them firmly as he’d silently reassured her that she was capable, that he had faith in her.

And the fucking ivy had itched.

And itched.

And itched.

And now here she was, beer in hand, standing beside the bench he was sharing with Robby, his prosthesis propped crookedly beside him, watching him laugh and run his scarred hand, the buttercup hand, through his beautifully silvering curls and she ached while the ivy itched and she wanted, more than anything, to finally scratch that itch.

An ambulance siren screamed behind them, prompting all the heads in the park to turn, following it with their tired eyes.

Robby stood, catching the beer Donohue offered, “for the road” and she waved lamely as he wished them all a good night and walked away, leaving the spot next to Dr. Jack Abbot and his leg, empty.

She walked toward the bench and lowered herself into that empty space, her eyes meeting the dark intensity of his.