Gilmore Girls Trash

Some of us are, very informally, cobbling together a collection we’re goofily calling Kosher Pitt Fic.

We go into it in the FAQ & Rules, but it’s an “own voices” kinda deal for fic that centres on or explores Jewish identities and themes. It’s for fic you’ve written that you feel you wrote Jewishly.

It’s not about representation, per se. Mostly because we don’t think representation can only be accurate and authentic on the criteria of “own voices” alone. The world is full of thoughtful, talented writers whose work proves how conscientious their research is. This isn’t about “well-written Jewish character,” it’s casting the net wide to see what Jewish themes Jews are deliberately including and using The Pitt as a springboard to explore.

(And calling it a “collection” makes it sound way more serious than it is! fr we just hope you’ll share whatever cool stuff you’ve written.)

The heart isn't what the poets say it is. There's no physical love stored in those four chambers, no devotion pumping through the mitral valve, no longing pooling in the ventricles. It's just muscle. Myocardium, beating sixty to a hundred beats per minute, pushing five liters of blood through sixty thousand miles of vessels. A pump. A machine. Cells firing in sequence, electricity and chemistry, nothing more.

He's held hearts in his hands. Cracked chests in trauma bays, reached inside, felt the slick wet weight of the organ that keeps a person alive. There's no mystery in it. No magic. Just tissue that works or doesn't, that beats or stops, that can be measured and monitored and, sometimes, saved.

And yet.

He looks at the image. The ghostly flutter of her valves, frozen mid-motion. The dark space of her left ventricle, caught between one contraction and the next. Jack knows how to read an echocardiogram. Knows the shape of a heart when he sees one, and this one is hers.

He'd printed a single frame — wallet-sized, black and white like an old lover's memento — and slipped it behind his driver's license where no one would think to look.

This is the thing that keeps her alive. This small engine, tireless and automatic, working while she sleeps, while she laughs, while she looks at him with those eyes that make him forget what he was saying. Every moment he's known her, this heart has been beating. Every moment he will know her, it will beat still.

The poets got it wrong, but they got it right too.

Love isn't stored in the heart. But when he thinks about losing her — he hadn't been there when she crumpled over in chairs, but he remembers showing up for his shift hours later, remembers the way so many pairs of eyes had flown to him, the way despite there being nothing between them (yet, yet) everyone knew — it's his own heart that seizes. His own chest that tightens. His own pulse that stutters and races and forgets its rhythm.

The heart doesn't hold love. But it knows when love is threatened. It knows when something precious is at stake.

Four chambers. Four rooms in a house he wants to live in forever.

He traces the outline of her ventricle with his thumb. The image is already wearing at the edges, soft from being handled too often, looked at too long.

He doesn't need it, really. He has her now, the real her, warm and breathing and wonderfully alive and waiting for him at home right now. He could throw this away and lose nothing.

Jonathan Bailey as Tim Laughlin in “Beyond Measure" (Fellow Travelers - 1x06)

Iconic looks Hilary Duff has worn during The Lucky Me Tour. The dresses are designed by the incredibly talented, Kelsey Randall. Details on the dresses include glow-in-the-dark stars, CDs and butterflies.

Iconic looks Hilary Duff has worn during The Lucky Me Tour. The dresses are designed by the incredibly talented, Kelsey Randall. Details on the dresses include glow-in-the-dark stars, CDs and butterflies.

Twelve-year-olds are utterly terrifying.

Samira has known Harrison well for about a year now, ever since McKay told her this job couldn't be her life and decided to help her make that happen. Which apparently meant weekly coffees, occasional movie nights, and somehow becoming the kind of person Harrison complains to about his history essays.

She likes the kid. She does. He's smart and funny and only mildly insufferable in the way all twelve-year-olds are, and McKay's done a hell of a job raising him.

She's reconsidering all of that right now.

There's been some kind of childcare situation — Samira caught something about a babysitter and a dead car somewhere inconvenient — and Harrison is camped out in the break room with his iPad and a bag of chips someone scrounged up from the vending machine, waiting patiently for his mom to finish her shift. It's fine. It happens. Samira has poked her head in twice to check on him, and he's been perfectly content ignoring her in favor of whatever Minecraft world he's working on.

The problem is that she's in the break room now, grabbing one last coffee, and so is… Everyone else? Jack, early for his shift as always, Victoria, Princess, and Dana, all crammed by the mug cabinet.

And all that commotion makes Harrison look up from his iPad.

"Oh, hey," he says. "Is that your boyfriend, Samira?"

The room goes silent.

Samira's coffee sloshes over the rim of her mug and drips onto the floor. This is unimportant. "What?"

"The guy you're always texting." Harrison points at Jack with a Cheeto. "Is that him? He looks like how you described him."

Victoria makes a sound that is a rather good approximation of a dying seal.

"I don't—" Samira's voice is doing things it has never done before. Hopefully will never do again. "I haven't described— You're so silly! I don't have a—"

"Yeah, you do. You told my mom about him. She said you got all—" Harrison makes a vague hand gesture that somehow perfectly conveys giggly and stupid, dismissive in that preteen boy way. "You know."

Princess is visibly vibrating.

"Harrison," Samira says carefully. Warningly. "I think you're confused, kiddo."

"No, I'm not. You said you liked his freckles and curly hair and that he was really nice." Harrison squints at Jack, assessing. "He has curly hair."

Jack, the traitor, is just standing there with his coffee, looking deeply amused. He has not helped. He has not denied anything. He's just watching her crash and burn with that little smile on his face, and Samira is going to kill him later after she (sorry, McKay, hope you'll understand) kills Harrison. Perhaps then she'll move to another country and change her name too, for good measure.

"Lots of people have curly hair," she tries.

"You also said he—" Harrison frowns, trying to remember. "Something about his arms? Mom told you to stop then."

Victoria might pass out. She's looking rather… faint. Samira's not sure she's breathing.

Dana, somewhere behind her, mutters, "Lord give me strength."

"Okay!" Samira says, far too enthusiastically. "Harrison! Don't you have homework? I feel like you have homework. Let's talk about your homework."

"It's Saturday."

"Let's talk about getting ahead on homework."

"Samira." Jack's voice is warm and way, way too entertained. "It's alright."

Harrison looks between them, utterly unbothered by the chaos he's unleashed. "So is that a yes? He's your boyfriend?"

The silence is so, so loud.

Jack takes a sip of his coffee, still smiling. Samira stares at Harrison, then at Jack, then at the door, calculating whether she can make it out before anyone stops her.

"...Yes," she finally mutters. "Fine. Yes."

Princess gasps.

this one finally escaped drafts hell