Northern Attitude // Jack Abbot
Part One [Not a problem you can solve]
Series Summary: An unwritten rule in life that after every prolonged period of hardship and uncertainty, there is going to be a period when you experience quantum leaps across multiple areas of your life. The only requirement is that you don’t give up on yourself. Jack Abbot never expected to see you again in any version of his reality…his late wife’s best friend. Especially not in his emergency department after a freak accident.
Chapter Summary: Jack comes face to face with a part of his past when you’re presented to him as his latest trauma victim. The haunting memory of your final encounter consumes his being.
Warnings: Heavy themes not suitable for sensitive audiences. (Reader discretion is advised) Drug Addiction. Mentions of mental health issues. Jack Abbot x Reader. Mentions of Jacks late wife. Medical inaccuracies. Jack Abbot Angst/whump. Angsty vibes. Enemies to lovers vibes.
Word Count: 3.5k
Author Note: I’m in desperate need of some Jack Abbot Angst/whump and I don’t know anyone more fucked up than me to provide that.
My Masterlist
The legend of Icarus is a famous Greek myth about a young man who ignores his father's warning not to fly too close to the sun. There’s an old saying that goes a little something like this: ‘Icarus laughed as he fell towards the ground, for he knew that falling…meant he had soared.’ It was used to humanise his mistakes.
“Ma’am, are you laughing right now?” There had to be a lesson in all of this; otherwise? What the hell were you being punished for now? “Can you hear me? Ma’am?”
The last thing you could remember, before what felt like a bomb went off around you, was the cocktail you’d been mixing behind the bar. It had been a regular night up until that point. Now? The entire world felt like it was crushing your soul. But much like Icarus…the sound of your laughter let the paramedics and other first responders know that you were alive, breathing and conscious.
“Y—yeah!” You coughed through a painful laugh. You couldn’t taste anything but iron. You knew enough to know that meant blood…and lots of it. “I—I don’t think I can move my body.”
Little did you know at the time, a runaway Ford F-150 had just barreled its way through the side of the dinghy little dive bar you’d been working at for the last three months. Three fucking months.
“She’s wedged in there real good, boss. How’d you wanna play this!?” It was the last thing you heard before the darkness came for you. The familiar sound of childhood laughter rang through your mind like it was only yesterday that you heard her voice. Your best friend's voice. Your dead best friend's voice.
Fuck; Were you next? Is this how death came for you? You knew that when your number was up there was nothing anyone could do to stop it…but you didn’t think this was how you’d go out.
“Y/n,” her voice was comforting amongst all the uncertainty that being in the liminal plane between life and death felt like. Everything hurt, everywhere, all at once. But at the same time you couldn’t feel it. Not when she spoke to you like the lady in light. “Not today, not yet, not this way.”
“I—“ You mumbled as first responders dug cautiously through the rubble to get to you. You could see her behind them. All she did was watch. “I can't breathe, please—help me!” Panic: the kind of adrenaline that makes mothers lift cars to rescue their children. The adrenaline that comes with a life-or-death experience.
“Ma’am, we’re going to get you out alright,” the first responder who had crawled his way between the remains of what had been the south-facing wall. On top of all that? on top of you…Was the truck and its driver. Holy unlucky.
“I’m not sure I wanna be saved.” It’s an unwritten rule in life that after every prolonged period of hardship and uncertainty, there is going to be a period when you experience quantum leaps across multiple areas of your life. The only requirement is that you don’t give up on yourself. “She’s here watching me.”
But giving up felt like the easiest thing to accomplish in your current situation.
***************
The night shift. The only shift Jack Abbot truly found comfort in. He wasn’t afraid to admit he wasn’t a good sleeper; the nightmares often overwhelmed him in his day-to-day life—so if the sun was down? He wasn’t closing his eyes.
“We’ve got multiple traumas coming in via ambulance.” Lena, the night shift charge nurse, called out from across the nurses' station. She wasn’t exactly talking directly to anyone, but she knew that one of the attendings or senior residents would come running at the offer of something juicy.
Jack's ears pricked at the sudden change in direction the night was about to take. He was charting. He wasn’t one to like falling behind with the people he’d been treating.
Up until now, the shift had been relatively quiet. Sure, it had still been a constant revolving door of never-ending night shift night crawlers, but this? This seemed like something he could actually sink his emergency medicine, trauma-trained teeth into.
“Any more info to share?” Jack asked with a grin. The adrenaline was beginning to flow. That pure energy boost he’d been lacking this shift was about to roll in.
“Truck versus dive bar, multiple crush victims—that’s all I got for now,” Lena replied as she walked away, heading off to follow up with a few of her nurses who were treating the homeless man in South Ten.
“Ellis, you’re with me; let’s roll.” Jack elevated his voice as he reached for a set of large, blue latex gloves and a white paper trauma gown.
“Right behind you!” Dr Ellis called back as she took strides across the emergency department. Mimicking Jack's actions with a pair of gloves and white paper gown. “Something intriguing to get us through the last few hours.”
“I’ll say,” Jack agreed with a sigh. “I’ve actually been considering switching to the day shift just to get a look at something interesting.” The chill of the fresh Pittsburgh air smacked them both in the face. Reviving their systems like a warm cup of instant coffee.
“That’s blasphemy.” Ellis smiled. “You wouldn’t abandon us like that.” The two stood beside one another, ready and waiting for the arrival of what would be the first of many ambulances.
“The darkness is an all-too-comfortable place to be, Dr Elis,” Jack replied with a shy smile. The half-lipped smirk he wore so casually as he crossed his arms across his chest. The whirl of ambulance sirens filled the silent void of the ambulance bay.
One by one, they piled in. Screeching tyres came to a halt with a quick heist before familiar faces jumped out of the rig. All shouting out the important statuses of their respective patients.
“What have we got?” Jack allowed his resident to take charge; after all, PTMC was first and foremost a teaching institution.
“Multiple crush injuries; victim is in and out of consciousness frequently but refuses physical administration of pain relief.” Huh, Jack frowned. He didn’t hear that all that often when a major trauma was reported. He took a few curious steps forward to get a better understanding of what was coming into his emergency room. “Unknown age, name, weight and condition—multiple fractures present on sight, possible internal bleeding, but vitals are weak, unstable at best.”
“Okay, let’s get her into trauma one,” Ellis demanded with a commanding tone Jack was nothing but proud of. He took great pride in training his night-crawling crew to keep their composure in difficult situations. It was like seeing a small glimpse of his own reflection in every one of them.
But that thought was quickly lost when Jack caught sight of who was actually strapped down on the stretcher. A face he hadn’t seen in years. Bloodied, bruised and broken.
You were conscious enough to take him in for five seconds. The sight of a man whom you hadn’t seen in years. That pain only welled in your eyes as memories flooded back like Vietnam War wounds.
Both of you spoke at the same time, practically over one another. Neither of the sentences seemed to reflect any form of endearment, to say the very least.
“Oh, what the fuck,” You cried out. If you weren’t in hell already, this surely had to be purgatory. You knew that the last time you’d seen Jack Abbot, you’d taken it too far…now it all seemed to add up. You were going to die under his watchful eye, and that revenge would be the sweetest form of therapy for him. You deserved this, all of this. “J-Jack?”
“Un-fuckin-believable,” Jack growled. This wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted to have to deal with. He thought he was about to have some fun…now he was facing the harsh reality of his past. A part of him that had no business being brought to the surface. A part he watched walk out of his front door on a Wednesday morning three years ago…
He stood in the ambulance bay with a frown engraved into the weathered lines of his face. Arms still crossed over one another. What the hell were you even doing here? How did you end up in the state you were in? And what were you doing at a dive bar? How did you end up under Jack Abbot's responsibility again? And the most important question that rattled its way around the folds of Jack's mind was how he had been presented with one more chance to save you from yourself weather he wanted to or not.
“Someone run me a full drug screen panel before we sedate her!” He shouted as the adrenaline of seeing you again kicked in. “I wanna know what's in her system and how fucking much!”
“You know her?” Ellis replied, rather concerned. Jack was red in the face as his steps grew heavier behind her. The ghost of his failures weighed him down. Hallucinations of you that he downplayed for so long, he thought his was one of them.
“Not anymore I don’t,” Jack mumbled under his breath as he caught up. “She saved my life once; I owe her one.” It was a confession that could clear a room, but Dr Ellis knew better than to ask any more personal questions.
************
Three Years Earlier - Jack Abbots Townhouse.
“Officers?” It wasn’t exactly what Jack was expecting to be greeted with the second he got home, but the two police officers who stood on his porch were more than likely just happy to see him. It meant they didn’t have to deal with what they knew was behind the front door. “We got a problem here that I'm not aware of?” Jack knew what the problem was. You had a name after all.
“Hi, Jack,” One of the men spoke up as he tucked a few fingers into his vest and took a more relaxed approach. “We got a call about a disturbance, just some loud music, screaming—“ It wasn’t anything that hadn’t been addressed before, but Jack knew that you were one more call away from being dragged off to the police station. He couldn't let that happen. He promised his late wife a long time ago he’d take care of you the same way you took care of her, of him.
His elderly neighbours, however, were growing increasingly wary of your recklessness while left unsupervised at night. It had become a favourite pastime of yours.
“I’ll handle it,” Jack sighed as he walked up the porch stairs. He ignored the pain of his prosthetic as he did so. “She’s uh, she’s not doing well, I know that, but uh—“ Jack was tired. He’d been pulling a string of night shifts to keep his mind occupied while he tried to come up with a way to get through to you. He’d been reaching out to local rehab centres and even spoke to Langdon about his own experience. Nothing seemed to work, though, only because you had no interest in listening to what he had to say. “I'll take care of this, please?” Jack bagged, pressing his hands into a prayer-like motion. Something he didn't often do. But for you? He’d pray to whatever God or Goddess was on call in the moment.
“We were kinda hoping you’d say that.” One of the officers replied with a small nod. His lips remained pressed together in a line so tight that Jack assumed it was to keep himself from saying something smart…or worse…something dumb.
“Good luck, Dr Abbot.” The other followed as they went down the few short steps that led back down to the footpath. Jack never replied. He didn't even turn around. He simply shook his head and wrapped a tired hand around the door handle. Unsure of what to expect from you when he stepped inside.
“You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you?” Jack really didn’t need to ask; the lingering smell of bourbon in the living room gave your vices away. It had become a cause for concern a while ago. The drinking…the self-administered drug use…his prescribed pads that kept going missing. “How many prescriptions were you gonna write tonight?” Jack let his bag fall to the ground, much like he finally let his own presumptions about your ability to take care of yourself fall.
The silence that followed was deafening. Jack watched as you got up off the couch and stumbled across the living room towards him. His eyes narrowed on you like he hardly recognised the best friend before him. The best friend who had once saved his life. The idea of returning the same favour was getting harder to reciprocate.
“Screw you, Jack.” Was all you replied with a slightly slurred tone that you were all too familiar with. You weren’t sticking around for a lecture on the risks of drug and alcohol addiction. Not from Jack. You couldn’t handle it. He was the only person on earth you didn't want to hear it from. Call it shame. You couldn’t handle the way he looked at you like he was looking right through you. A ghost in his own home.
It was the hand that wrapped itself around your forearm that stopped you from getting any further away. Jack's digits squeezed at your bicep; he was tired of this routine. Coming home every morning to find you in a state. To clean up your mess. He was scared one day he’d come home and find you dead or dying.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Jack raised his voice, still as calm as always…but there was an urgency in his tone that made you feel like you were about to be lectured by your father. Jack Abbot wasn’t your father; he was your dead best friend's husband. He was all you had left. He was your lifeline. The last thing standing between you and complete chaos. The only person who hadn’t given up on you completely because he understood what it was like to lose it all. He understood what it was like to be left behind in a world you didn't want to be in.
But if he was looking for an autopsy, or a half-assed half apology, then you knew Jack picked the wrong time to make that plea. It was never irrelevant that you stopped taking your medicine, but he always gave you the benefit of the doubt. Until even that ran dry. Like right now…in this very moment.
“What’s your fucking plan? Huh? You gonna call the cops?” You pulled your arm from Jack's grasp as he stood stoic and tall before you. His chest heaved with anger that felt like a hot knife to his burdened heart. “Cause I’m fuckin’ pretty sure they were just here, and you told them you’d goddamn handle it!” You shoved him. Jack didn’t move. Not even with a prosthetic that was begging to be taken off. “SO HANDLE IT!”
“You don’t see what’s happening, do you?” Jack didn’t push back, but he argued. “You can’t,” He continued with a begging tone behind his angry, dark eyes. “Please, let me help you.” The utter desperation that leaked through his pores didn’t go unnoticed, but the drugs in your system numbed you wholeheartedly of any wrongdoing. “For fuck sake, Y/n, I care too much about you to trust you to be on your own!” This was Jack Abbot's way of handling it. He didn’t know what else to do besides beg you to stop trying to kill yourself with drugs and alcohol. Not that that was ever your intention. You just couldn't handle being sober.
“And maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough this morning," Jack's voice was rugged. He wanted to punch you in your throat for all of this crap. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. This whole ordeal had been hard enough for him to endure. Seeing you turn into a shell of a woman he once knew was just the icing on top of a rotten, fucked up cake. “But I’m here to keep you the fuck alive, because I don’t trust you enough to do that!”
“Oh—” That hurt. But you could hurt Jack more. “But you sure trusted me enough to keep YOU alive when you got your own damn leg blown off!!” Tears welled in your eyes as you watched Jack's whole face vacillate between shock, horror and sadness. You went there. You really went there.
“Don’t—go there.“ Jack could never forget how you saved his life. How you risked your own to get to him when he needed it the most. When he closed his eyes to rest his head, he could still feel the warmth of the explosion. But right now that didn’t matter. You weren’t trying to save him right now. No. You were trying to hurt him, the only way you had left. With words that stung like venom. “You don’t get to go there, Y/n, YOU'RE A GODDAMN DRUG ADDICT!! Look at yourself!!”
The living room felt as cold as a morgue as the two of you argued. If Jack's elderly neighbours had called the cops on you for some shit house singing, they were really gonna hate this.
“You think you’re so badass cause you lived?” You laughed as tears streamed down your face. You knew what you were. You knew deep down you needed help. But the grief you felt…the utter weight of the loss and pain that consumed you daily was all too much for your sober self to handle. You didn’t want to help. You just wanted to be numb. “News flash, Abbot—I'M THE REASON YOU LIVED!!”
“I said don’t go there.” On her death bed Jacks wife had told him that Chronos, the Greek god of time, carried a sickle. He used it to cut a hole, a tear in the cosmos between heaven and earth. Chronos did that to separate this world from the next, to separate the known from the unknown. But right now, Jack felt like he was falling right through that liminal space between life and death all over again. Except she wasn’t the one dying…nor was he. This time, he was watching you die a slow and painfully lonely death. Self-administered and self-inflicted.
“And while you were dying, you were calling out for the wife who left you—“ It didn’t play out exactly like that. It was more of a plea, a cry for mercy if anything. Jack wanted to die, and you wouldn’t let him. He wanted to be loved by his wife in an afterlife of eternal peace; however that may have looked for an agnostic soul like himself. But you refused to let him die. And now you were throwing stones from a glass fortress. “So let’s play the who’s more fucked up game a little more.”
“God, do you hear yourself!” Jack was more than angry. After this, he was sure he’d end up in a room full of doctors and an inkblot. “You’re not yourself, Y/n! You're sick!”
“Get out of my way.” You couldn't take this any longer. You needed to leave. You shoved past Jack with quick heist as he followed you down the hall.
“You may have lost your best friend, but I lost the love of my life—I won’t stand idly by and watch you slowly fucking kill yourself,” Jack argued with you as he continued to follow you to the front door he’d not long come through. “Y/n! Don't you walk away from me!”
“Stay the hell out of MY life!” It stung like poison, the hurt in your voice. But Jack knew you needed to hear all of this. You were sick, and you needed help. Help he was willing and able to give if you just let him.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING!?” Jack followed you out the front door. The pain in his chest mimicked a heart attack. He thought he deserved it; Jack knew he hadn't done enough to intervene when he could have. You had fallen too far down the rabbit hole and couldn't get yourself out. He finally understood how Robby felt with Langdon. The self-absorption of failing someone you loved and cared for was just as painful as watching them fuck their own life up. “Y/N!” Jack called out after you, anger bellowed from his tongue. The lines on his forehead were so deep he knew it age him. You aged him. You had carried the weight of his grief, his pain, for so many years that it had finally caught up to you.
“ANYWHERE WHERE YOU AREN'T!" You shouted back over your shoulder as you hurried down the stairs. The truth was, you had nowhere else to go. But you knew for sure you weren't going to stay with Jack. Not after this. You didn't want his help. He couldn't save you from yourself any more than you could.
“Fuuuck!” Jack growled under his breath as he stood at the top of the stairs and watched you disappear down the street. He knew you were heading in the direction of the park. But that was all he knew. And it would be the last time he'd see you for a hell of a long time.
So long he thought for sure you got yourself.
***********************************
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