Dixon's Pretty

You adjust the angle of your hands instead, shifting slightly over bone and cartilage, trying to find some better position, some better leverage, like maybe all that stands between this woman and another few minutes of life is a matter of inches.

“Call it,” Robby says.

“One more round.”

You are already pressing down again when you say it. Your voice comes out breathless, raw around the edges. Somebody at the head of the bed is squeezing another bag of fluid. Someone else is reciting numbers you are no longer taking in. The nurse nearest the cart glances toward Robby and then away just as quickly.

“We’ve been at this for thirty minutes.”

“I know.”

The words leave you sharper than you mean them to. You still don’t look at him. You are staring at your hands like if you focus hard enough, if you do not let your eyes leave the task in front of you, then nobody can make you quit yet.

“Just one more. Her rhythm was changing.”

“Her rhythm was V-fib for twenty minutes before it went flat.”

That one lands. You hate that it does.

Your arms keep moving for another few compressions before the sentence catches up to you properly. Your elbows start to lock. Your shoulders ache from effort and from refusal. The woman’s skin is cool in a way that does not belong to somebody who had been talking less than an hour ago.

Robby steps around the table. You can feel him there even before you look. The shift in the room gives him away. It always does. Attention folds around him without anyone meaning it to. He stops across from you with his arms crossed and his expression already set in that closed-off, unmovable way that means he has made a decision and will not be moved from it.

“The dissection was too extensive,” he says. “The bleed was too fast. There was nothing more to do.”

“You don’t know that.”

His eyes lift to yours for the first time in the last minute. “Step back from the table.”

You keep your hands where they are.

There is blood on the sheet. Blood on your wrist. Blood drying dark at the edge of one glove. You can hear your own breathing under the monitor, under the suction, under the noise of the bay outside the curtain. Your chest feels too tight to hold all of it.

“Robby—”

“Step back.”

The room stills around the order.

You don’t know what finally does it. His tone, maybe. Or maybe it is the look on the nurse’s face when you glance up and find her standing there with the next thing already in her hands and nowhere to put it because there is no next thing anymore. Maybe it is the woman on the bed herself, who does not move beneath your hands no matter what you do.

Slowly, you let your arms fall.

The absence of motion feels obscene.

You step back from the table because he told you to, because someone had to be the one to stop, because your body has reached that ugly point between exhaustion and disbelief where following an order becomes easier than fighting it. Your hands hang uselessly at your sides.

She had been awake when they brought her in.

That is the part of this your mind keeps circling back to with a kind of sick insistence. Not the open cavity. Not the sound the monitor made when the rhythm changed shape and then lost it altogether. Not the smell of cautery and blood and antiseptic clinging to the trauma bay. Just her face. Pale and frightened and trying so hard not to show it. The way she had looked from the gurney to you as they rolled her through the doors, eyes glazed with pain and still searching for someone to answer her.

She had told you her name.

As if that mattered.

As if you could keep hold of it for her.

As if there was some dignity left in being known when your body had been torn open from the inside.

You had leaned down so she could hear you over the rush of the bay and said it back to her, and for half a second she had looked less afraid.

Then, just before they pushed the sedation, she had caught your wrist with surprising strength and asked if somebody would call her kids.

You had said yes without thinking.

Of course you had.

“Time of death,” Robby says, glancing toward the clock on the wall, “22:14.”

The monitor answers him with its long, unbroken tone.

Nobody says anything after that.

The room has that terrible, familiar quiet to it now. Not silence. It is never silence in the ED. There is always noise somewhere. Phones ringing at the desk. Shoes against linoleum. A paramedic giving report in the next bay. Someone laughing too loudly at something down the hall because life keeps happening even here. But inside the trauma room, there is that suspended sort of stillness that settles when a body becomes a body again and everyone standing around it has to remember what comes next.

One of the nurses lowers her eyes to the chart in her hand with far too much concentration. Another moves toward the back counter to busy herself with wrappers that do not need gathering yet. Nobody looks directly at you.

You tug your gloves off one finger at a time because your hands have started to shake.

“Are you crying?”

Your head comes up too fast.

Robby is looking straight at you, not cruelly, that would almost be easier to absorb. There is no contempt in his face, no overt softness either. Only hard steadiness that makes everything he says sound like fact whether you agree with it or not.

Your eyes sting all at once. You hadn’t even realized it had gotten that far. Everything had felt too hot, too pressurized, too tight in your throat to separate one sensation from another, and now a tear slips over before you can stop it.

You wipe it away with the back of your wrist so quickly it smears.

“No.”

His gaze drops briefly to your face again, then back up. “You’re crying in my trauma bay.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are standing in the middle of my trauma bay in tears,” he says, flat and matter-of-fact, “and you are not useful to me right now. Step out.”

Your mouth parts. Nothing useful comes out of it. You hear yourself say, “I just need a minute.”

“I don’t have a minute.” His voice is not loud, but it sharpens enough to make you tense.

“There’s a man in bay three who has been waiting twenty minutes. I need doctors who are present. Not standing over a body feeling sorry for themselves.”

Heat rushes through you so quickly it makes your face burn.

“I’m not feeling sorry for myself.”

“Then what would you call it.”

The answer swells up in you so fast it almost chokes you. You can feel every pair of ears in the room pretending not to listen. Your throat tightens until speaking hurts.

“I would call it that she came in conscious, Robby.” Your voice catches in the middle of his name and you hate yourself for that more than anything. “She told me her name. She asked me to call her kids and I told her I would, and I think I’m allowed a second to—”

“You’re not.” The words are immediately thrown back.

You stare at him and he doesn’t look away.

“I’ve watched you do this since your first week here,” he says. “Every bad outcome. Every patient that doesn’t make it. It’s all over your face. You carry it around the department for hours after the fact, and I’ve let it go because you’re a good resident. Technically, you’re very good.”

The bay feels colder all of a sudden.

“But this is a problem.”

You do not move.

His eyes flick over your face in a way that makes you feel exposed in the ugliest way, not seen but rather assessed.

“You are too emotional for this environment.”

There it is.

Not because the sentence is especially dramatic. It isn’t. He says it as evenly as he says anything else. That is what makes it worse. It does not sound like anger or frustration or something thrown out in the heat of the moment. It sounds considered. It sounds like a thought he has had before and finally decided to voice.

The woman on the bed lies between you, silent and still and covered now to the chest.

You swallow around the ache in your throat. “That’s not fair.”

“Maybe not.”

He reaches for the next chart from the rack beside the door.

“But it’s true. You need to decide whether you can do this job or you can’t, because I won’t have you falling apart every time we lose someone. It’s not fair to the patients, and it’s not fair to my staff.”

“Robby—”

“Get some air.”

He says it like an order, not a kindness.

“Come back when you’ve got yourself together. I won’t have you in here like this.”

Then he turns and leaves.

The doors swing shut behind him with a soft mechanical hush.

For a moment, you can’t move.

The room blurs strangely at the edges. Someone passes you on the way to the sink. Someone else starts quietly discussing postmortem tasks with one of the nurses. Life resumes in pieces around you, practical and necessary and horribly normal.

You pull the second glove off and let it drop. Then the first. You don’t look to see where they land.

The walk out of trauma feels longer than it should.

The hallway beyond is all fluorescent light and polished floors and people moving too fast for your thoughts to keep pace with. You keep your chin up because there are only so many humiliations one person can survive in ten minutes and you’ve already endured enough for the night.

Past the nurses’ station.

Past two med students huddled over a chart.

Past a family clustered near the vending machines with the same pinched look everybody gets when they have already been waiting too long and know they will be waiting longer.

Nobody stops you. Nobody says your name. If anyone notices your face, they’re kind enough not to point it out.

“Too emotional for this environment.”

The sentence follows you all the way to the elevator.

You jab the call button and stare at the numbers above the doors with fixed intensity that comes from trying not to shatter in public. Your jaw aches from the force of holding it together. Your eyes burn. You can still feel the woman’s pulse under your fingers from earlier, back when there had still been one to feel, faint and racing and there.

You shut your eyes.

You need to decide whether you can do this job or you can’t.

The elevator opens with a soft chime. You get in before anyone else can.

The ride up is mercifully empty.

You press the button for the roof and lean back against the wall, arms folded tight over yourself like you can hold your insides in place if you just press hard enough. The mirrored panel opposite catches your reflection and you have to look away. Your face is blotchy already. Your hair is half falling out of its tie. There is dried blood near your cuff. You look exactly how you feel, which is never a good sign.

By the time the doors open again, the pressure behind your eyes has turned blinding.

The roof is cold enough to make your lungs seize on the first breath.

The night air comes hard and sharp off the city, smelling faintly like rain on concrete and the exhaust from the streets below. Pittsburgh spreads out beneath you in layers of yellow-white lights and dark buildings and distant traffic.

Somewhere down there, people are ordering takeout, walking their dogs, kissing on couches, sleeping through the night. The thought makes something in your chest twist.

You walk to the ledge at the far end of the roof and brace your forearms against it.

The first sob catches so hard it hurts.

Then another one follows.

And another.

It all leaves you in one brutal rush, like your body had only been waiting for privacy before it gave up the effort of restraint altogether. You bend over the ledge with your face in your hands and cry with all the gracelessness grief ever demands from anyone. Your shoulders shake, your breath stutters, your nose starts running and you wipe at it angrily with your sleeve and only make yourself cry harder because what else is there to do.

She had asked about her kids.

That keeps returning, cruelly intact.

Not whether she was going to die. Not whether she would be okay. Not even whether she was in the right place. Her kids. She had been terrified and in agony and bleeding out from the inside, and she had still thought first of them.

You had said yes.

The city below you gleams wet and indifferent.

You stay there until the worst of it empties out. Long enough for the cold to creep in through your scrubs and settle against your skin. Long enough for your face to go numb beneath the sting. Long enough that your sobs lose force and degrade into those ugly, hitching breaths that never quite feel satisfying.

Eventually you straighten.

Your palms rest flat against the ledge. Your eyes are swollen and your throat feels scraped raw. You stare out at the skyline and try to match your breathing to something steady.

The door behind you opens.

“I’m fine,” you say immediately, voice rough. You don’t turn around to see who it may be. “I just needed air. I’ll be back down in a minute.”

The footsteps that cross the roof are unhurried. There is a slight unevenness to them that your body recognizes before your mind does.

You close your eyes briefly. Of course.

“I’m serious,” you say, still facing forward. “You don’t have to stand here. Just tell whoever sent you I’m coming back down. I just needed five minutes.”

“Robby told me,” Jack says, “that a certain resident needed some air.”

His voice sits low in the night, roughened by sleep and age and that ever present rasp he seems to carry around even when he’s trying to be gentle. It lands somewhere under your ribs and stays there.

You laugh once, short and miserable. “That sounds like him.”

Jack comes to stand beside you at the ledge.

He doesn’t crowd you. He never really does. He just settles there near enough that the heat of him cuts through the cold a little, his forearms coming to rest against the ledge next to yours. You keep your face turned out toward the city because looking at him right now feels like a bad idea.

“I’m okay,” you say.

It sounds weak even to your own ears.

You try again. “Seriously. I just needed a minute.”

He is quiet for a beat. Then, “What did he say to you?”

Your throat tightens all over again.

“Nothing.”

Jack turns his head. You can feel it without seeing it. “Don’t do that.”

You let out a breath that almost shakes. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Yeah, you are.”

His tone stays calm. That somehow makes it harder.

You keep your eyes fixed on the city. “He’s tired. We all are. It was a bad case.”

“What did he say.”

When you still don’t answer, Jack shifts closer and lifts a hand to your jaw.

The touch is gentle. Warm. Calloused in a way that feels grounding instead of rough. His fingers turn your face toward him with barely any pressure at all, but you follow it anyway because resisting takes more strength than you have left.

The look on his face nearly undoes you.

It is not pity. Thank God for that. You think pity from him would kill you outright.

It is concern. His brows have drawn together, as his eyes move slowly over your face, taking in the tear tracks, the red rimmed eyes, whatever else is left of your attempt to pretend you were coming back downstairs like nothing happened.

“What,” he says quietly, “did he say?”

You hold his gaze for maybe two seconds before your chin starts to tremble.

“That I’m too emotional to be here.”

The sentence breaks in half on its way out.

Jack says nothing.

The silence gives you room to keep going and you almost wish it didn’t.

“He said he doesn’t think I can do the job if I fall apart every time we lose someone.” Your laugh comes out wet and ugly. “Which I wasn’t even doing, not really, I just…” You swallow hard. “She came in awake.”

Jack’s hand stays at your jaw. His thumb shifts once against your cheek.

“She told me her name,” you say, and now that you’ve started, it all spills too fast to stop. “She asked me if someone would call her kids before we sedated her, and I told her yes. I said yes like I could promise that, like I could promise anything, and then she was gone ten minutes later and he just called it and moved on and I know we have to move on, I know that, I know how this place works, but he looked at me like I was weak for even caring and I—”

The rest crumples in your throat.

Jack doesn’t let you finish.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, and he draws you into him before you can decide whether to resist.

You go without meaning to.

One second you are standing stiff and shaking beside him, and the next your face is buried against his chest and his arms are around you properly, one across your back and the other up at the base of your skull, broad palm resting there like he means to keep you together by sheer force of will.

The second his hand touches the back of your head, whatever was left of your composure gives out.

You grip the front of his shirt and cry into him like you have nowhere else to put it.

Jack just holds you.

He does not shush you. He does not tell you it’s okay when it very plainly isn’t. He does not offer some empty reassurance about how you did your best and that’s all anyone could have done. He seems to understand, maybe better than most people would, that the wrong words right now would make it worse. So he says nothing and lets you shake against him until the force of it starts to ease on its own.

His chest is warm beneath your cheek. You can smell soap and coffee and that faint musky cologne he wears too sparingly to ever name but that always somehow clings to him by the middle of a shift. His hand keeps moving once every so often against the back of your head, not enough to soothe in any obvious way, just enough that you know he is still there.

By the time your crying slows to uneven breaths, your fingers are bunched in his shirt.

You loosen them immediately, mortified. “Sorry.”

Jack huffs softly above you. “No.”

The one word is almost enough to make you laugh.

You pull back just far enough to look at him. His hands stay where they are for a moment, one at your back, one still cupping the base of your head. He studies your face with that same awful steadiness from before, except there is warmth in his eyes now that Robby’s had lacked entirely. Anger, too, though it sits lower.

“She had two kids,” you say, because it is somehow the only thing left that matters.

Jack’s expression shifts.

“Both their names were on her intake form.” Your voice trembles again, quieter this time. “She wrote them herself. She made a point to spell them out. Like she wanted to make sure nobody got it wrong.”

For a second, Jack doesn’t say anything. He just looks at you.

Then his hand leaves the back of your head and comes up to brush beneath one of your eyes with his thumb, wiping away a damp line you’d missed. He does the same to the other side, slow and unhurried.

“I’ll make sure somebody talks to her husband before the shift ends,” he says.

You blink. “Okay.”

“I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

Something in your chest loosens a little at that. Not much. Just enough to hurt differently.

“Okay,” you say again.

Jack lets his hands settle fully around your face then, palms warm against your chilled skin, thumbs resting near your cheekbones. He tips your head back a fraction so you have to look at him properly.

“You belong here.”

Your eyes sting all over again.

“I mean it,” he says. “Don’t let him put that shit in your head.”

You try to laugh and only manage a watery sort of exhale. “I’m trying not to.”

“Try harder.”

That gets the ghost of something out of you. Not a full smile, but close enough that his mouth softens in answer.

“She asked you to call her kids because she trusted you,” he says. “Patients know when somebody gives a damn. They know.”

His thumbs brush once more beneath your eyes.

“That doesn’t make you weak. It makes you the kind of doctor people remember when the rest of this place starts to blur together.”

You have to look away for a second because the alternative is crying all over again, and you are beginning to suspect you may never stop if given enough encouragement. Your gaze lifts to the dark stretch of sky above the hospital, then drops back to him.

“I don’t know what to do with it,” you admit.

“With what.”

“All of it.” Your throat works. “Them, after. The ones we lose. The things they say before. The families. I don’t know where I’m supposed to put it.”

Jack is quiet for long enough that you think he might not answer.

Then, “You don’t put it anywhere.”

You look back at him.

His expression has gone older somehow. More tired. Like the answer costs something to say aloud.

“You carry it,” he says simply. “That’s the job.”

The cold wind curls over the roof and tugs at the ends of your hair. Somewhere below, a siren whines past the hospital and fades.

“I don’t want to carry it like this.”

“No one does.”

His hands slide from your face to your shoulders. He squeezes once.

“But if you stop feeling it entirely, that’s when I’d worry.”

The words settle deep.

Not because they solve anything. They don’t. The woman is still dead. Her kids are still about to learn something that will split their lives into before and after. Robby still said what he said. The shift still waits downstairs, unfinished and unforgiving.

But Jack says it like somebody who has learned to live with the weight rather than outrun it. Like somebody who knows exactly how much it costs and still thinks it is worth paying.

You draw in a slow breath.

The air still bites, but it fills your lungs a little easier this time.

Jack watches you do it. “There you go.”

You roll your eyes weakly. “Don’t.”

“What.”

“That.”

A corner of his mouth turns. “You want me to stop encouraging you to breathe now?”

You lean your forehead briefly against his chest again, more from embarrassment than despair this time. “I hate you.”

“Sure you do.”

His chin dips to the top of your head for a moment. You feel the shape of a kiss there a second later, absentminded and so gentle it nearly hurts.

You stay like that longer than you mean to. The city stretching below. The roof cold underfoot. Jack standing steady in front of you like he has nowhere else he needs to be for these few minutes, even though you both know that isn’t true.

Eventually he eases back enough to look down at you.

“You coming back?”

You think about it honestly.

Your eyes still ache. Your face probably looks terrible. The thought of stepping into trauma again makes something inside you flinch. But beneath all of that, under the humiliation and the grief and the rawness of being spoken to like that in front of a full room, there is still the sharper thing that got you through med school and internship and every impossible shift before this one.

You are not done.

“Yeah,” you say.

Jack studies your face like he’s checking the answer for cracks. Then he nods once.

“Good.”

He turns toward the door and holds it open for you.

The warmth of the stairwell meets you first, then the fluorescent light, then the familiar smell of hospital air. You step through and start down the stairs beside him, not saying much. There doesn’t seem to be any need for it.

By the time you reach the floor again, the ED has swallowed up the roof and the quiet and those five stolen minutes like they never existed. The board is still full. Somebody is calling for respiratory. A child is crying somewhere near triage. Whitaker rushes past with a portable monitor tucked under one arm and barely spares you both a glance.

You fall back into step because there is nothing else to do.

At the desk, Jack peels off toward another bay with a brief hand at the back of your shoulder as he passes.

You make it three steps toward trauma before Robby appears at the end of the hall.

He is flipping through a chart as he walks, glasses low on his nose, expression as impassive as ever. If he is surprised to see you back, he does not show it. He comes to a stop in front of you and looks up.

“You good to rejoin us?”

The question is so infuriatingly clinical that for a second you cannot answer.

Jack, who had gotten halfway down the corridor, stops.

You see the moment he decides to turn around.

You also see the moment Robby notices him doing it.

“I’m fine,” you say before either of them can speak.

Robby gives a short nod and starts to move past you.

“Hey.”

Jack’s voice cuts through the hallway cleanly.

Robby stops.

A few heads lift at the station. Nothing dramatic. Just that subtle turning of attention that happens in a place where everyone is always listening for the next bad thing.

Jack comes back toward the two of you, slower this time. There is no rush in him at all. That should probably scare people more than shouting ever would.

“What,” Robby says, not looking especially bothered.

Jack stops beside you, close enough that the line of his shoulder almost touches yours. “You wanna explain to me why she came upstairs crying?”

The air around the three of you changes, and you almost instantly regret telling Jack anything, you should have known he wouldn’t have shame in telling him what he did was wrong.

Robby’s eyes flick briefly to your face, then back to Jack. “Because she got attached to a patient and picked the middle of my trauma bay to fall apart about it.”

You feel yourself go rigid.

Jack’s jaw tightens. “That right.”

Robby closes the chart in his hands. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Make time.”

The station has gone very still behind you.

Robby regards him for a moment. “I said what needed to be said. We were in the middle of a shift and she was no longer useful in the room.”

Jack’s laugh is short and humorless. “Useful.”

“That’s the job.”

“No,” Jack says. “The job is keeping people alive when you can and treating them like human beings when you can’t. That includes your residents.”

Robby’s face does not change, but his eyes harden slightly. “If she wants to be here, she needs to learn how to function.”

“She was functioning.”

“She was crying over a dead patient.”

“She was crying over a dead mother who asked about her kids before you put her under.” Jack steps a little closer. “You think that’s a some flaw?”

A muscle shifts in Robby’s jaw.

“No,” he says. “I think dragging that kind of emotion through every bay in the department is a liability.”

“Bullshit.” The word drops bluntly between them.

You glance at Jack despite yourself. He is looking at Robby now with of cold clarity you don’t often see from him unless something has truly gotten under his skin.

“You don’t get to talk to her like that because you’re tired,” Jack says. “And you sure as hell don’t get to decide she doesn’t belong here because she still has a pulse.”

Robby’s expression shutters further. “This is between me and my resident.”

Jack does not even blink. “Not if you’re saying shit like that to her, it isn’t.”

Somewhere behind the desk, someone pointedly starts typing very loudly.

Robby looks past Jack to you then, as though you are suddenly the only person in the conversation worth addressing.

“Are you able to continue your shift?”

The professionalism of it is almost funny.

You square your shoulders. “Yes.”

“Good.”

He turns to leave again.

Jack lets him get two steps this time.

Then, “You owe her an apology.”

That finally makes Robby stop in earnest.

He turns back more slowly than before. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

Robby’s mouth flattens. “I am not doing this in the middle of the department.”

Jack folds his arms. “Should we go somewhere quieter, would that suit you?”

For one absurd second, you think Robby might actually laugh. He doesn’t. But something unreadable flickers across his face.

He looks at you. Really looks this time, something more difficult to parse. You don’t know what he sees there. You don’t know if he sees anything at all besides another problem waiting to be solved badly.

When he speaks, his voice is lower.

“I shouldn’t have said it like that.”

It is not much. It is nowhere near enough. But it is also probably the closest anyone in this hospital will ever get to hearing Robby say he was wrong.

The words catch you off guard anyway.

He adjusts his hold on the chart. “Take five more minutes if you need them. Then I want you back in three.”

You nod once.

Robby leaves before either of you can answer.

The tension goes with him in increments.

Jack exhales through his nose and looks down the hall after him like he is still considering whether to follow. Then he glances at you.

“You okay?”

You let out a tired breath that almost resembles a laugh. “I think so.”

“That was a terrible apology.”

“It was,” you agree.

“But?”

You look toward trauma, where the doors are swinging open and shut around the blur of another incoming patient. “But I heard it.”

Jack watches your face for a second, then nods.

“Alright.”

He gives your shoulder one last squeeze before stepping away. “Go be too emotional somewhere productive.”

This time you actually laugh, small and startled and real.

Jack’s mouth tips faintly at one corner like he’d been aiming for exactly that. Then he turns and heads back into the noise.

You stand there for one more second in the middle of the corridor, breathing.

Then you straighten your scrub top, wipe once under your eyes in case there is anything left there to betray you, and push back through the trauma doors.

The shift is still waiting.

So are the patients.

So are all the impossible, unfinished things that will remain impossible and unfinished long after tonight is over.

You go anyway.

Because the truth, ugly and inconvenient and still intact beneath everything Robby said, is that he was wrong about the part that mattered.

You do belong here.

The constant will-they-won’t-they between you was buried under layers of hierarchy, rules, and morals — under the unsaid understanding that whatever this thing between you was could never be acted upon. Not while you were his resident, anyway. 

The obvious power imbalance was a line Jack Abbot would not let himself cross, no matter how desperately he wanted to.

Only now, that wretched line isn’t there anymore. For the first time since he met you, you’re both on even ground. The world is your oyster, as it were; all the opportunities lie now at your feet. You need only to reach out and take it.

“First intubation as an attending,” Jack hums from the opposite side of the hospital bed, eyes glittering with amusement behind his safety glasses. “How’s it feel?”

You scoff a quiet laugh and shake your head. “That question got old about the fourth time you asked it, Dr. Abbot…” you deadpan, sewing the trachael to the unconscious patient’s neck.

Reggie Brice; thirty-two-year-old male; exhibiting crush injuries to the chest and pelvis from a gnarly car pile-up. Seven people, including this one, were rushed in requiring immediate assistance. The rest were brought in with sustained head injuries, concussions, or minor fractures that needed tending to. You know that there has been at least one confirmed death.

“Well, it’s a big deal,” the man scoffs. “Why do you think we all chipped in two dollars to decorate the break room? Those grocery store cupcakes actually mean something, you know?”

“Well, I am honored…” you sigh in a distracted monotone.

Jack squints. “Yeah, I can tell. You look downright emotional—”

You take a step back to assess, gaze flickering to the monitor at your side. You find the man’s blood pressure continuing to climb, which is less than ideal for the injuries he’s sporting now.

“Pressure’s too high. We gotta fix that, or he’s gonna crash,” Jack announces in a sharper tone, though it never quite loses its laid-back edge. He always works best under pressure, in truth. “We could always crack the chest, cross-clamp the aorta—  buy him some time till we get him a room.”

“What about preperitoneal packing?” you suggest, gesturing over the patient’s lean stomach with gloved hands. “We do a simple midline incision below the umbilicus, pack like hell around the bladder, keep the bleeding in check until we get him upstairs.”

Jack’s silence is less than reassuring.

You peer at him behind the glasses sitting low on your nose, stumbling over yourself as you brace for an inevitable rejection. “I know it’s more of an OR procedure, and I’ve only done it once, but—”

“Hey…” Jack cuts in softly, brows raised to his hairline. “You’re the boss here, kid. Remember? We’ll do whatever you wanna do.”

Your eyes narrow, despite the funny feeling flaring in your chest. His voice, all deep and gravelly and gentle, has always had a way of piercing right through you.

“I’m not a kid anymore, Abbot,” you remind him. 

So there’s nothing standing in your way anymore, old man, you’re really saying.

Jack grins wide, like he can hear it in your silence.

“Force of habit,” he shrugs. “Now, c’mon. Let’s do it your way, boss.”

You’re wrists-deep in the conscious man’s pelvis, packing the blood clot around his bladder while Jack holds the Deaver retractor in a steady head. You fall into a strange sort of rhythm together, the way you always do, moving with each other without ever having to speak. Though, for some reason, you can’t seem to stop your hands from shaking.

“This is good, right?” you murmur behind your mask, shoving more gauze beneath the man’s sliced skin.

“You’re doing great,” Jack praises muffedly, without missing a beat, though he flashes you a stern look behind his glasses a second later. “You’re an attending now— You know what you’re doing.”

You swallow hard with an unsure nod. “Right… Yeah…”

Jack smiles at your sheepishness — a stark contrast to how methodically your hands move — though the expression gets hidden behind his blue surgical mask. “Don’t worry. It’s always a little weird at first. You’ll settle in in no time.”

You scoff a harsh breath through your nose. “You’ve been uncharacteristically sweet to me today. You know that?”

“I’m always sweet,” Jack squints. “But I can always get meaner, if you want. You know, if my kindness isn’t impressing you.”

“Hm,” you shrug and swipe your gloved fingers under the fatty tissue of the fleshy linea alba. “Jury’s still out.”

“Well,” his brows bounce. “I guess I’m just gonna have to try a little harder, then, aren’t I?”

“What can I say? I have high standards, Dr. Abbot.”

Your concentrated gaze flickers from the incision to the man standing across from you. Something mischievous glimmers in your eyes, crinkling at the edges with a smile he can’t see behind your mask. The air between you charges in a flicker.

“You doin’ anything after this shift?” the man wonders suddenly, passing you another stack of gauze with his free hand. “You know, to celebrate?”

“I don’t know…” you sigh and turn away again. “I guess it depends.”

“On?”

“Whether someone can give me something better to do than collapsing face-first into my bed.”

“I think I could make a pretty strong case,” Jack quips.

“Ooh…” you hum. “Do tell.”

“Something involving food. Definitely,” he starts. “Maybe something a lot more filling than two-dollar vending machine snacks.”

“Very compelling start, Dr. Abbot…”

“And maybe— if you’re so inclined,” he croons drily. “Something where we don’t talk about work for an hour. At least.”

You flash him a deadpanned stare. “Well, now, that’s just way too far.”

“Hm. It was worth a shot,” he shrugs.

“I guess we’ll just have to see how the rest of your performance goes...”

His eyes widen in amusement at your sudden teasing, not nearly as shy as he’s grown accustomed to. “Oh, so I’m the one being evaluated now?”

“Yep,” you nod once, popping the p.

“And what happens if I pass?”

You meet his gaze once more, with something a little shier around the edges. “Then I’ll… let me take you somewhere for breakfast in the morning,” you shrug, trying to be casual, though your wavering voice gives you instantly away.

A smile curls slow at Jack’s mouth behind his surgical mask. You can see it squinting the very edges of his light eyes as he nods in response. “Looking forward to it—”

The glass door across the room swings open without warning. 

Your heads whip simultaneously, half-expecting to find a grey-scrubbed nurse standing there, hopefully with some information about the state of the suddenly flooded OR. You find a strange man there instead — late fifties, bearded, tall but with a beer gut that hangs over the top of his baggy jeans. There’s dark blood on his t-shirt and the collar of his beige jacket, dripping from a cut on his temple.

His narrow face is strikingly hollow; his eyes are painfully empty. You figure he must be one of the victims from the pile-up. He wears the shock of it all over, no doubt.

“This is a sterile room, sir,” Jack tells him, authoritative but never unkind. “If you’re family, I’m gonna need you to wait outside. I’ll have a nurse give you the details— and maybe take a look at the cut of yours.”

“I’m not his family,” the man says in an even monotone, with a gritty drawl that insists he’s from somewhere further south. There is little inflection in his voice, the same way there is little emotion on his bearded face. He just lingers there in the doorway, frozen still in a way that feels almost uncanny.

Your wide eyes flit to Jack, glimmering with apprehension. Your stomach twists with it, too.

Jack’s firm gaze never wavers from the stranger across the room. “Either way, sir, you can’t be in here—”

The older man’s weathered right hand reaches slowly for the inside pocket of his jacket. Something silver glints beneath the bright white fluorescents overhead. It takes you a second too long to realize what it is — a gun.

The world narrows in an instant. The oxygen gets sucked out of the room all at once. Your chest hitches for a breath it cannot take.

You don’t realize until then that you’ve never seen a pistol this close before — or at all. Your brain detaches in an instant accordingly, protects you now by convincing you that this is no longer your reality. That you’re only dreaming. That everything around you is just a movie you’re watching from faraway.

“Hey, hey, hey…” Jack cautions on bated breath, bloodied hands raised in surrender. 

His wide eyes dart between the man and the glass door, where the stranger is just out of view of the hallway. He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, as he takes slow steps towards the assailant. 

“Let’s just— Let’s just take a breath here, alright, man?”

The monitor beside you begins to beep wildly when your hands freeze. Your body jerks when the sound fills the silent room. 

Your gloved hands move on autopilot, adjusting the Deaver retractor in Jack’s absence and continuing to pack the bladder with the remaining gauze. The work is the only thing anchoring you now — the glaring acknowledgment that, if you don’t finish up here, the man in the bed will die before he makes it to the OR.

“That man there…” the stranger says in a distant voice, like he’s not all the way here either. “He was driving the car that hit my wife… Blew a red light… Came out of nowhere…”

Jack’s expression shifts. He reaches for his jaw with slow hands, plucking the surgical mask from his right ear, and letting the left side hang by his chin — allowing the man to see his face. 

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”

“He killed her… On the scene…” the man continues, gravelly voice tighter now. “I was trying to scoop her brains back into her skull— Do you have any idea what the kinda shit does to a person?”

“That’s hard, man,” Jack nods sympathetically but stands his ground at the head of the hospital bed all the same, planting himself firmly between you and the stranger across the room. “I get it.”

“You don’t—” the man snaps, harsher now.

You flinch when his voice rings suddenly through the room, trying to pack the wound tight with half-numb fingers.

“You don’t just get to— to fix him like nothing happened. Like her life didn’t matter—”

“It does matter,” Jack assures with a rapid nod. “Your wife matters, I promise.”

“Then let me do something about it—”

Jack’s chest tightens when the man’s knuckles turn white around the gun. He holds it steady despite his troubled state, like he knows exactly what he’s doing with it. Jack understands, then, that if he lets that gun off, it’ll hit exactly whatever this man wants it to — wherever he wants it to.

“There are two other people in this room who had nothing to do with what happened to your wife, man,” Jack tells him. “And I know you don’t want anyone else to get hurt. I know that.”

“You’re right… I don’t want anyone else to get hurt…” the man nods, voice heavy and trembling. “So tell her to stop—”

The gun shifts over Jack’s shoulder, aiming right for your head.

A pained whimper sounds in the pit of your tightening throat. You can hardly see the incision below you as burning tears gather at your waterline. Your shaking fingers scramble for the sutures to stitch him back up again.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Jack blurts, stepping in front of the gun again without a second thought. He keeps his gloved hands raised, but his sympathetic stare turns stern in a flicker. “You’re talking to me right now, alright? So put the gun back on me— We’re gonna figure this out together.”

“I said— tell her— to stop!”

His thumb flicks the hammer of the gun with a daunting click. 

“I can’t!” you hear yourself whimper. “I can’t stop, Jack— He’ll die.”

“I know, kid…” he says without looking back at you, with a voice much more even compared to yours. “I know. Just keep going.”

“Stop!” the man bellows. “Or I swear to god, I’ll shoot you both in the goddamn head!”

Jack is not perturbed by his yelling. He wants him to yell, wants him to cause a scene so that someone’ll check in and call in a Code Silver. He just doesn’t want that gun to go off. So he keeps his voice calm as he counters gently, “And what happens next? If you kill us— If you kill him. What are you gonna do after?”

The man hesitates for a moment. His grip falters on the gun, as if he hadn’t considered the question until that very moment.

“I know you want your wife back… But this isn’t gonna make it any better.”

“Maybe not,” the man says. “But it’ll make it stop.”

He doesn’t elaborate on what ‘it’ exactly is, but Jack doesn’t need him to. He’s been where this man is standing — not physically, maybe, not with a gun in his hand; but in the deep, dark void reserved only for a special, gut-wrenching sort of grief. 

“It won’t. Trust me,” Jack says with a shake of his silver head. “I lost my wife ten years ago. Not like you did, but it still hurt like hell, man, I can tell you that…”

The man softens slightly. It’s the first time since the crash that someone’s tried to level with him, that someone’s actually understood. 

Jack takes a hesitant step forward when he catches the stranger’s resolve starting to slip.

“And I can tell you it doesn’t stay that way forever…” he continues. “Whatever you’re feeling right now, I know you think it’s never gonna stop. But it will. You just have to let it.”

Another step forward.

“You see the woman you’re pointing that gun at?” Jack wonders with raised brows, nodding his silver head in your direction. “I like her… I really like her. And I didn’t think I was capable of feeling anything again.”

Your chest aches at his words. Your glasses fog from the warm tears clinging to your bottom lashes. Your clammy hands fumble with the surgical needle.

The man’s finger loosens slightly on the trigger, and Jack takes another cautious stop. 

“And this is really bad timing, man, ‘cause I was gonna take her out after this,” he confesses with a not-quite smile. “But for that to happen, I need us to walk out of here. All of us.”

The beat of silence thereafter feels borderline suffocating. It wraps its cold hands around your neck and strangles you.

Jack almost thinks he’s gotten through to the man. He can see the cracks starting to fissure throughout his hollow face; the flicker of hesitation, the realization of what he’s doing — where his dark mind has led him.

“So you’re saying…” the man trails off and swallows hard. His drawl is much too soft for the words that spill from his mouth a second later. “…If I shoot her, you’ll understand how I feel?” 

Your blood runs ice cold in an instant.

Jack’s shoes squeak hard against the tile as he lunges for the man before you can blink. He pushes him into the wall with an aggressive thud and tries to shove his gun out of your direction. You bend over the bed on instinct, covering your patient without a second thought.

Two shots ring out.

You expect to feel both of them, or perhaps nothing at all, as your limp body hits the floor. You keep your eyes shut and your jaw clenched tight, bracing yourself for pain or certain death.

The harsh ringing in your ears is slow to fade. When your hearing finally returns to you, and your eyes peek slowly open, you find a sea of bodies crashing into the room like a tidal wave — and you, yourself, still standing.

Your head swivels on your shoulder, still half-hunched over your patient. Your gaze drags unwillingly past the blur of bodies and dark scrubs until it finds Jack, lying flat on the ground instead of you.

It takes your brain a long moment to make sense of it — the strangle ngle of his body, the stuttering of his chest, the tear in his shirt from the bullet, and the wet crimson darkening the tile beneath him. The sight doesn’t fit, doesn’t belong. Not to Jack, anyway; not to the man who’s far too steady, too solid, to ever look like this.

And the worst part of it all — the part that will follow you long after this moment ends — is that that bullet was meant for you, and that Jack didn’t even hesitate to take it instead.

The ED descends into a different sort of chaos than you’re used to. The PTMC fractures, splinters into something unrecognizable, as voices overlap and distort in your ears. “Gunshot wound— Attending down!” you hear someone shout, followed by a quieter, “Help me get him up,” and a harsher, “Someone get me a fucking line!” 

None of it feels all the way real. 

It’s like looking through the rest of the world through a fishbowl, where everything is blurred and warped and muffled. You can see armed guards detaining the crying gunman in the foreground of it all, along with Jack’s body being transferred to a stretcher, right before Samira ducks into your tunnel vision.

Her dark brown eyes are lined with exhaustion from her double shift as they dart attentively across your face — the first person to reach out for you in the midst of all the chaos.

“What do you need me to do?” is all she says.

Your voice comes out strangled. It sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else entirely as you choke through panted breaths, “F-Finish up his— his sutures, and… and get him to the OR... Walsh has a… has a room ready for him, I think—”

Your legs feel half-numb as you step back from the patient before you, left totally unaware of the chaos surrounding him. You stumble for the entrance, peeling off your stained gown and bloodied gloves as you go, and follow Jack’s body as they lead him out of the room. 

You migrate to his side like it’s muscle memory to you, struggling to find your footing in the midst of the growing crowd as the doctors rush the gurney to the elevators. For every step you take, Shen and Crus seem to take three more. It makes it nearly impossible to keep up in your stupor.

You crane your head to catch a peek of the man from behind the towering bodies before you. “I-Is he okay?” you wonder breathlessly.

The gurney jerks too hard around the corner, scraping the side of the wall.

“Motherfucker!” Jack groans.

“Well, shit— He definitely sounds the same,” Parker quips from beside you.

“How are you feeling?” Crus calls from the man’s side. “Talk to me, Abbot— You’re still with us, right?”

“Not unless you two learn how to maneuver a goddamn gurney,” Jack jokes through gritted teeth.

“Page Walsh,” Shen tells Lena with a stern nod, pushing the button for the lift. “Make sure she’s got a room open.”

The doors part with a ding. They wheel the stretcher inside, and you make sure to squeeze in with them, elbowing past the attendings and nurses to get to Jack’s side.

He’s clammy and pale when he comes into view, writhing in place as he clutches at his ribs. His black scrubs are stained a darker color from the blood spilling from the wound, which turns the white towel pressed there a deeper shade of scarlet than you think you’ve ever seen.

Your trembling hand reaches for him on instinct. You press your palm over his bloodied knuckles — keeping some pressure there, reminding him that you’re still here.

“Jack?” you call to him in a voice taut, as your teary eyes dart wildly across his scruffy face. “Jack? A-Are you okay?”

He swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His head turns slowly, just enough to find you, and he blinks wildly to clear the blur in his vision. The corner of his mouth twitches in a faint hint of a smile when he spots you standing over him.

He clears his throat, but his words still come out a little gravelly as he arches an expectant brow and says, “Told ya…”

You shake your head, features screwing in confusion. “Told me what?”

“That I’d make a good case…” 

Your chest flares. Something wells suddenly in your throat, though you can’t be sure if it’s a laugh or a sob. You just scold him instead. “It’s not funny, Jack—”

“Hey. You’re the one who said you had high standards, kid…” he rasps. 

His eyes fall over your form, trying to assess you despite his dwindling vision. You watch his scruffy features twist with concern a second later. His chest stutters as he questions breathlessly, “Whoa— Is that… Is that my blood? Or yours?”

You tilt your chin to follow his gaze. Only then do you feel the warm blood trickling down to your elbow; only then do you feel the white-hot, searing pain of the bullet that had grazed your shoulder. 

You feel very suddenly like the world is spinning around you. 

The stares you get return, as everyone else seems to notice too, only adds to the dizziness. 

“You’re bleeding,” Shen observes sharply. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you got hit?”

“I-I’m fine,” you insist despite the waver in your voice, shaking your head to fight the lightheadedness away. “I can’t— I can’t even feel it, okay? I swear.”

“Get someone to take a look at that when we get upstairs, alright?” Shen commands with a stern glare. “I mean it.”

Your wet eyes harden in an instant. “I’m not leaving—”

Jack’s hand, still weak on his side, twists over the damp towel to grab yours. His bloody fingers are cold and trembling as they struggle to find purchase on your smaller ones. You hold him with enough strength for the both of you.

“You got hurt ‘cause of me, kid. At least let someone—”

“Hey,” you snap, meaner than he’s ever seen you. “That was not your fault.”

“Let ‘em take a look at you, alright?”

You shake your stubborn head. “I need you to focus on yourself right now—”

“I am,” he insists. His gravelly voice never loses its humorous edge, and neither do his glassy eyes lose their tenderness as they flit back and forth between yours. “And I’m not gonna be okay if you aren’t, alright? So just… please.”

Your features crumple at the pleading look he gives you — with his eyes all squishy around the edges, and glazing over with unshed tears.

The elevator stills with a ding, shattering the tense moment. It jolts faintly, just enough to make your swimming stomach feel sicker. You catch yourself nodding despite your better judgment. 

“Fine…” you tell him in a fragile voice.

Jack tries to smile but finds the strength to slowly leave him, a little like the blood trickling from his side.

“I’m in good hands,” he assures you, then turns to the attending on his left. “Right, Dr. Shen?”

The younger man’s brows lower. “Didn’t you just call me a motherfucker?” he quips.

Jack’s weathered face twists as he’s wheeled out of the elevator. “…Did I?”

Your hand slips from his as you watch him go. Something about it feels wrong, though you can’t exactly place why. You just know it feels like something ripping in two — like the torn skin of your bloody shoulder, times a thousand.

The room they put you in is achingly quiet; the kind of quiet that makes everything else seem ten times louder. The green-white fluorescent bulb clicks and buzzes mercilessly over your head, drilling straight into your skull. The AC hums gently alongside it in a mundane sort of symphony that matches the empty room you’re in — where only one hospital bed sits beside a shuttered window, in front of a porcelain sink and mirror.

Everything smells like stale air, sharp antiseptic, and metallic blood.

You stand before the cloudy mirror with your scrub sleeve pushed up your shoulder, kept awkwardly in place by your chin. You struggle to do your sutures with a hand that won’t stop trembling. 

You don’t realize how ardently you’re still shaking until the needle slips across your skin — not enough to do any real damage, but enough to make you hiss through your teeth when it stings. You clench your jaw and pull the thread through, until the raging skin around the laceration pinches together again. Your features flicker as you try and fail to ignore the dull burn that spreads up and down your arm a second later.

The fiery sensation is the only thing keeping your mind distracted from all the rest of it — the way the gunshot made your ears ring; the way Jack’s body jerked before it hit the ground; the way the man called out for his wife when security pinned him to the floor.

You tug the sutures harder, relishing in the sting. You push the needle through once more, harder than necessary, and let it slip a little sloppier than you should — anything to take your mind off of it.

“Careful…” a voice cautions from the doorway.

Your head whips over your shoulder. You blink rapidly as your brain struggles to catch up — like you half-expect to find yourself back in that room; like you half-expect to find the man from before standing there.

You feel a little like the ground has been pulled from underneath you when you find Robby there instead, rubbing disinfectant between his calloused palms.

Someone downstairs must’ve called him about Jack, and about the Code Silver currently turning the PTMC to shambles. And, based on the surgical mask sticking out of his jacket pocket, you figure he must’ve just gotten back from checking in on him in the OR. 

His dark eyes flit from your face, to your shoulder, and to the supplies scattered across the sink before you.

“They said you were supposed to be getting looked at,” he says. “Not playing DIY surgeon.”

You huff out a breath that would’ve passed for a laugh any other time. 

“Everyone else is busy… At least I can make myself useful this way…”

You can’t bring yourself to meet his gaze. You can’t stand the way he’s looking at you now. His gaze is too sharp, too focused. It’s like he’s studying you, cataloging, assessing — the same way you do with your patients. The thought of being so helpless makes your stomach twist. 

Robby doesn’t argue, but instead lets his eyes linger on the slight tremor in your hands. The leftover adrenaline is likely buzzing like electricity in your veins just now. You’re bound to crash at any second.

“I know you don’t want my help,” he starts slowly, sauntering further in with his arms crossed over his chest. “But at least lie and say I did your sutures— so Jack doesn’t try to kill me when he wakes up.”

“I think he’ll know you didn’t do ‘em when he sees how neat they are,” you joke drily.

“Rude…” Robby scoffs, sneakers scuffing as he plants himself at your side. You can see the leftover slumber in his swollen eyes more clearly now, as he ducks down to look at you. “Want me to get you something for the pain, at least?”

You shake your head instantly, not trusting your voice enough to speak without wavering.

“You sure?” he presses.

“I’m fine,” you snap. “I’m not the one in surgery.”

He is not dismayed by your anger. He knows it’s not meant for him. 

“Well, Jack’s doing just fine. Walsh is finishing up with him now,” he tells you. “Honestly, I think the hardest part is gonna be keeping him off his feet for the next little while…. ‘Cause there’s about a hundred percent chance he’s gonna want to come back to work when he’s discharged.”

You exhale sharply through your nose in place of a laugh as you tie the sutures and cut the excess with a pair of small medical scissors. 

You just barely catch sight of your delirious smile in the cloudy mirror before a chuckle sputters suddenly from your mouth. The sound of it fills the quiet room as you tumble into a fit of half-drunken giggles, bowing your head and propping your gloved hands on the porcelain sink.

Your shoulders shake as your laughter turns quickly into sobs.

Robby softens instantly. “Shit… I’m sorry…”

“I’m fine,” you blurt once more and shake your head. Your voice is strangled through the tears in your throat, but you dismiss him anyway. “I’m fine. I-I don’t even know why I’m crying, so..”

“You went through something traumatic tonight,” he coos. “Everything you’re feeling is completely normal.”

You shake your head again. “I should’ve gone with him— I should be helping in there—”

“You’d just be a liability,” Robby shrugs, a little blunt but not entirely unkind. “You’re still in shock. Your hands are still shaking— I wouldn’t let you anywhere near an OR like this… You’re better off here, and you know it.”

You turn your head to flash him a teary-eyed look. Your chin quivers as your taut voice trembles, “He asked… He asked me if I wanted to go out with him when we got off,” you confess in a strangled whisper.

Robby’s brows raise to his hairline. “Did he?”

You nod slowly. “And I was gonna say yes…”

“Good…” the older man nods, lip flickering into a smile beneath his beard. “About time…”

“So he can’t… He doesn’t get to…” You stumble over yourself to get the words out. “He doesn’t get to not come back after that.” 

Robby’s sympathetic grin widens at the stern, wet-eyed glare you give him. He takes a slow step closer and splays a warm, comforting hand along your back.

“Jack Abbot is the most stubborn son of a bitch I’ve ever met,” he tells you. “If there’s even the slightest chance of him coming out of that OR just to take you out, then… He’s gonna take it. Trust me.”

“Yeah,” you quip drily. “He better…” 

Jack wakes after surgery to a tingling ache in his side and a heart monitor beeping faintly overhead, pervading the strange silence surrounding him — a silence he doesn’t usually allow himself.

His eyes crack slowly open, dry and unfocused for several long moments. They dance across the ceiling tiles as he blinks the haze of sleep from his gaze. He struggles to recall how he got here — in this dim recovery room, which he had never seen as a patient until now. He remembers the stranger with the gun first, the warmth of the blood that came spilling from his side second, and the way you cried from him third.

Your name spills from his dry mouth like it’s the only word he remembers.

“Great. Now I owe Crus twenty dollars,” he hears a familiar voice joke from his side. Jack’s head swivels until he finds Princess standing there, checking the IV hanging by his bed. She smiles softly down at him and quips, “He said the first thing you’d do is ask for her. I thought for sure you’d want a beer.”

“Yeah…” Jack rasps, then clears the gravel from his throat. “I could go for that, too…”

“Want me to go grab her for you?”

He hesitates. “Is she… Is she okay?”

“She’s great. Last I heard, Robby was patching her up,” the woman grins. “And, for what it’s worth, she was asking about you, too…”

The anticipation of seeing you again was somehow worse than the pain, blooming something sharp in his abdomen, and only slightly ebbed by the morphine drip. 

The minutes drag on. The heart monitor at his side counts the seconds instead of his pulse. His fists curl against the stiff hospital sheets when he remembers the sticky red blood that had dripped slowly down your arm — the way you so easily brushed it all off, the way you so desperately wanted to stay at his side.

The door creaks softly open.

Something tightens in his chest.

You linger in the doorway for several long moments, as if you aren’t allowed to come any closer just yet. You’re bathed in the shadow of the lamplit recovery room and backlit by the too-bright hallway outside. He can only vaguely see the outline of your features from here — weighed down with fear and exhaustion and relief. 

The laceration on your arm has been cleaned and sewn. It’s still raging a little around the marred edges, but will heal into a thin scar in a few weeks’ time — a story you’ll tell for years to come.

Jack grunts as he struggles to sit further up on the raised bed, but hides it by clearing his throat. “You look good…” he observes in a rasp.

“Are you flirting with me, Dr. Abbot?” you joke with narrowed eyes.

“I am,” he quips back. “Thanks for finally noticing.”

You scoff a faint laugh and shut the door behind you with a quiet click. You can’t help but feel a little like the air has thinned as you walk further inside. You focus on your wringing hands the entire way to his bedside. You don’t have the strength to meet his unwavering stare, still puffy from a medically induced slumber, but never once straying from your face.

“You okay?” he wonders aloud, shattering the silence between you.

You huff a weak laugh. “I’m not the one who just came out of surgery, Jack…”

“Fair point…” he nods.

“But yes… I’m okay,” you add, if only to appease him. “What about you? How do you feel?”

Jack exhales a heavy breath, chest deflating behind his thin hospital gown. “…Like I got shot.”

That almost gets a real laugh out of you. 

“Yeah. That— That makes sense…”

You flounder in place for a moment, before reaching for the chair by the curtained window and dragging it closer to his bed. Jack is able to eye you more clearly when you settle into the cushioned seat by his side. He can see the redness in your eyes, the tension in your jaw, the way your clammy hands hover like you’re not quite sure what to do with them. 

Whatever closeness you had before those shots rang out is long gone now. You orbit around him like he’s a stranger to you, like you’re not quite sure what to do with him, like you’re too scared to get any closer.

He bows his head, made of mussed silver curls, in a feeble attempt to meet your stare. He silently begs you to look back at him, but you never do.

“I’m okay, you know?” he coos to you, equal parts because it’s true and because he knows you need to hear it from him.

“No, I know, I just—” You cut yourself off when your fragile voice finally breaks. You shake your head to yourself and swallow hard, picking at the skin of your thumb until it starts to bleed. The scratch there blurs as burning tears gather once more in your gaze. “I can’t stop thinking about it, you know? If you wouldn’t have— have gotten as hurt if… you know, if you weren’t standing in front of me like that—”

His chest twists at the thought of you blaming yourself for it. The burning sensation there hurts him far worse than the one at his side.

“You would’ve gotten it a lot worse if I hadn’t.”

Your eyes snap finally to meet his gaze, though your stare is much more hardened than he’d like.

“But what if something worse had happened to you? Huh? What if you died, Jack?” you scold in words that spill faster from your lips than you can stop them. “Were you even thinking about that?”

“No.”

His honesty stops you cold as much as his lack of hesitation.

“I guess I was just thinking about you…”

The room goes eerily quiet, saved only by the even beeping of the monitor at his side and the distant voices talking in the hall. 

Jack holds your gaze even as it weakens around the edges, even as it glazes over with burning tears you can’t seem to keep away. A rogue droplet clumps your bottom lashes together when your eyes flick down to his abdomen, to the place beneath the blanket where you know the damage lies.

“You’re not supposed to do that to a person, you know?” you whimper. “It’s cruel.”

Jack’s brows furrow. “Do what?”

“Make someone like you, and then— And then get yourself shot,” you stammer, gesturing wildly with your anxious hands. “Make someone almost lose you before—”

Your breath hitches.

Jack leans further in. “Before what?” he presses gently.

“Before they’ve even gotten to have you…”

His lip flickers with a weak smile. “You do have me,” he assures. “You’ve had me way before I ever asked you out— You know that.”

“Yeah,” you scoff with a grin of your own, much sadder in comparison. “So much for that date, huh?”

Jack’s eyes narrow in a challenging stare. “And what makes you think it’s not happening?” 

You blink owlishly back at him. “Do you want a list, or…?”

That earns a weak chuckle from him, until he winces at the ache it puts in his side a moment later. He cradles the bandaged wound with a grimace, and your chair scrapes the tile when you stand. “I’ll tell Princess you need more morphine,” he vaguely hears you say, though he reaches for your hand before you can stray too far.

You still in place. Your wide eyes fall to the fingers around your wrist, warm like a furnace, and calloused like softly textured velvet.  

“I’m okay,” he tells you, then takes a wavering breath in before repeating more firmly. “I’m okay— And you’re not going anywhere— And I’m not missing our date for the world, alright?”

Your features screw, hardly convinced.

“We’ll order something here,” he shrugs. “Hell, we can eat the cafeteria food for all I care, just… Don’t leave. I mean, I kinda got shot, so…The least you could do is indulge me a little…”

You cave instantly under the weight of his light-eyed stare. Your chest hitches with a quiet laugh. “It’d be a pretty grim first date…” you quip.

“Yeah, well…” he trails off, smoothing his thumb over your knuckles. “I plan on having plenty more, less grim ones with you, so…”

Your eyes narrow in a cynical squint despite the smiling tugging at the edges of your mouth. “That’s very presumptuous of you, Dr. Abbot…”

“Well, you could always so no,” he croons drily.

“Not a chance,” you argue without pause, gripping his hand with great strength — an unsaid promise. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Getting rid of you?” Jack echoes with a scoff, wincing when it hurts him but smiling up at you anyway. “That was never a part of the plan, kid— I took a bullet trying to keep you, in case you forgot."