darling

If anyone cares to ask (they won’t, he knows they won’t), Jack is taking a smoke break. He’s been working through the same pack of American Spirits for the past seven months now, paper carton getting softer with time. The air is cool for July, and the sky is surprisingly clear. Not a cloud in the sky, just a few faint wisps of smoke hanging in the air. How patriotic.

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Samira looks up, just for a second, as he approaches. Her eyes dart back to the asphalt once she recognizes him. Her spot on the curb is surrounded by fading glow sticks and already exploded Pop-Its. Her hand is braced along the back of her neck.

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“Mind if I join you?” Something crunches under his foot. Probably a pair of novelty sunglasses. Maybe one of those necklaces with a shot glass glued to it.

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“Go for it.” Is all she says.

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Jack lowers himself down to the curb, knees popping as he goes. Residents love sitting on the ground. They have all that healthy cartilage. Everything is so much worse from down here with the weight of the entire world pressing on your shoulders, nothing but cement beneath you.

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He considers actually pulling out a cigarette, making good on that alibi he’s building for himself, but the smoke would choke both of them out. “So, New Jersey?”

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That makes her chuckle, not necessarily because he’s said something funny, but because something is funny. There’s some inside joke Samira has with herself that he just so happened to reference. “I don’t even know what I was thinking.”

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“That you wanted to be closer to home.”

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Her legs are pulled close to her body, chin stacked on top of her knees. “I think I’ve been back home maybe six times in the past seven years.” Her teeth bear down on her chapped bottom lip. “It’s just–it’s what I was supposed to do, you know? I’ve had this vision of my life in my head since I was thirteen. Now I’m thirty, and I think…” she exhales, wipes the back of her hand along her hairline. Her hair is down, curls tumbling over her shoulders in unpredictable patterns. It reminds him of white water rapids; the sudden peaks and dips and whorls. He kayaked through rapids once. That Boy Scout trip was the first time he had to administer first aid. Samira turns her face towards him, and Jack is pulled back into the present. “I think I’m done.”

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“You should go home.” Her shift officially ended four hours ago, and then it actually ended forty-five minutes ago. Even Santos is gone.

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Samira moves, sits up straighter. Her thumb picks insistently at the skin around her other fingernails. “No, I think I’m done here.”

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“What does that mean?” Jack mirrors her, sitting up straighter to match her sudden intensity.

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Her voice is even. “Most people aren’t suited for emergency medicine.”

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The air reeks of gunpowder. That’s what’s always left after a fireworks show. The tinge of gunpowder and an ambient humming that threatens to swallow you alive.

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“It’s not always like it was today.” That’s the one thing he can promise. Tomorrow will be different, because every day in the emergency room is its own complicated mess. New problems, new solutions, a fresh start. That’s what Jack can offer her. “It’s not always this bad.”

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“You know how they say insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results?” Is that something people say? Jack’s only ever heard it in movies or from people who are trying to sound like they’re in a movie. Samira just sounds desperate. Worn down. “Well, this is year four of walking into this building, working myself to the bone, and falling short. It doesn’t take a particularly sane person to see the pattern there.”

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“You’ve had a rough day.” A hell of a day from what he’s heard in bits and pieces of whispered gossip.

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She shakes her head. “Not really.”

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“Samira, you are an incredible doctor.” Everything this field needs. Everything a patient could wish for.

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“I think I’m just stubborn.” Again, she shakes her head. Tears well in her eyes, but she blinks them back so quickly that Jack would have missed them if he wasn’t staring directly at her, trying desperately to read her thoughts. “But I don’t know if I can keep forcing myself to show up here.”  

There are so many people up here. Darkened profiles she doesn’t quite recognize exchange leftover hot dogs and lukewarm beers. The next pop is faint, petering out with an understated sizzle. Red embers, then blue. Patriotic confetti fit for a patriotic day. Samira’s heart rate ratchets up into the triple digits. Someone oohs and ahhs, and it’s unclear if it’s ironic or earnest, though it probably doesn’t matter. Samira doesn’t look to investigate. She keeps her eyes focused straight ahead, furrows her brows, and brings this mystery cigarette—Trinity’s, maybe?—up to her lips, though she doesn’t actually inhale. Even in college, she wasn’t a smoker, never fell for the drunk cigarette propaganda or the vape epidemic. Still, the movement feels nice. She’s sure the routine is comforting.

Samira lowers her hand, cigarette with it, exhales as the next firework wizzes its way into the sky, and feels her heart sink when she sees that when it explodes, it’s green.

A shadow darkens the overturned milk crate beside her, someone approaching from behind.  Not now, she thinks uselessly.

“I didn’t know you smoked.” Abbot’s voice draws nearer, the sound of his footsteps ending when the toe of his boot brushes up against the broken wheel. It shifts under the slight pressure, and he reaches out immediately to steady her. The heat of his hand travels through the worn-through fabric that makes up the back of the seat, and even in the imagined, not-quite contact, Samira notices the coolness carried by his wedding ring. The absence of heat.

Samira clears her throat. “I don’t,” she admits. “It’s not mine. I’m holding on to it.”

“You’re holding on to someone else's cigarette?” He asks incredulously. She just nods. Her head feels so heavy on her neck. “Mind if I sit?”

Samira nods again, half-heartedly motions to the milk crate that’s been up on the roof since the eighties. Abbot lowers himself down with a grunt that he tries to disguise as a cough. He stretches both of his legs out in front of him, heels digging into the cement beneath him. Is it cement up here on the roof? That seems like it would be too heavy.

“You okay?”

“I think the day is finally catching up with me.”

“The crash is brutal.” He has said this to her before, after Pittfest, probably. They both know that tonight is different than Pittfest. Chaos does not an MCI make. The comment probably still applies. The higher you climb, the further you fall. Samira’s climbed pretty fucking far today. Far enough to reach the summit of her own thoughts and her own feelings and realize she doesn’t want to know this much about herself. That there are certain feelings best kept hidden away, even from yourself. “But you were incredible.”

Does your wife know you were shirtless in the ER today? That a resident had to patch you up because you have too much muscle mass to reach your own shoulder blade? She wants to ask so badly. Part of Samira thinks that if she does voice these questions, she’ll free herself of the impending explosion. He’ll feel guilty and she’ll feel guilty and this crush that has announced itself out of nowhere will disappear. Burst into millions of pieces, all of them scattered to the breeze. Infecting the water system somewhere, if they must.

His face is cast in a burst of purple light, and Samira can make out a faint grin. This is sure to end terribly.

Fireworks are like crushes in many ways. Childish, entirely frivolous, better from afar. It would be one thing if Abbot were a man she saw in a coffee shop from time to time. If he were a kind stranger who helped her change a flat tire, or even a neighbor who lived three floors up. If he existed on the periphery as ornamental set dressing. Instead, he takes up space. He fills a room and a conversation and a very important role.

Does your wife know about the Uber? Does she know how nice you are to me?