yes, life can suck

Jack met Robby’s gaze.

“His dead wife fucked him up.” The words came out low, not audible to anyone close but still seething, dripping with disdain. “I’m not your brother. A brother wouldn’t have done what you did. You…” he scoffed, looking Robby up and down in disgust. “I don’t know what the fuck you are.” A step back and he grabbed his bag from under the counter, hoisting it over his shoulder, all in a single smooth move. He couldn’t remember the last time he left early but Henderson could handle the last 20 minutes in charge.

He took a half step back as Jack straightened, brows still in, eyes narrowed; concern, but a deeper worry, now. And before he could speak again, Jack was talking, and his heart… sank. He hadn't said that, had he? At least not like that. Not what he'd meant. He lifted his hands slightly, palms open, a clear sign of surrender. Now the brows were lifting as his mouth opened, heart tightening somewhere near his navel, at Jack's overt rejection.

"That's not what I said, Jack," he insisted, now, "And that's not what I wanted. I wasn't trying to ruin your relationship," which Samira had been roundly denying, he wanted to say, but decided that slandering her was maybe not the best decision right now. "I just wanted her to be careful. I was about to talk to you about the same thing, man. I was just trying to protect you, to protect both of you," he insisted, falling into step behind him, realising he was making to leave. "Jack." he said, more firmly now.

Jack looked from Robby to the nurses and doctors glancing in their direction. hearing what Robby was saying. Wasn’t it bad enough Robby thought that way about him? But he included Samira in it and now his coworkers. The people who used to respect him, come to him with problems, seeing him as a rock against the ocean were now hearing about how he had demons.

His gaze slowly made its way back to Robby. He wondered if the person he once trusted with his life could see the hurt, betrayal, and rage in his eyes. He should throw every word back in Robby’s face. Remind him all of the times he had talked him off the ledge, about his own demons, all of the shit he has done to have Robby’s back.

No. It would make him no better than Robby. The tension released from his body and hands fell slack.

There was a feeling of dread starting to build in his chest, a feeling of something wrong. Jack was acting... weird. Blocking him out. He swallowed hard, frowning, tilting his head to see how Shen avoided the other man. Then he looked around. There was a berth around them. Everyone was avoiding Jack, which meant he had been acting like this for... a while, then.

Jack met Robby’s gaze.

“His dead wife fucked him up.” The words came out low, not audible to anyone close but still seething, dripping with disdain. “I’m not your brother. A brother wouldn’t have done what you did. You…” he scoffed, looking Robby up and down in disgust. “I don’t know what the fuck you are.” A step back and he grabbed his bag from under the counter, hoisting it over his shoulder, all in a single smooth move. He couldn’t remember the last time he left early but Henderson could handle the last 20 minutes in charge.

“No.” He didn’t bother turning around to say it, keeping his gaze glued to the computer screen in front of him. There was a deep fear he might lose his composure entirely if he was forced to look at him. To add insult to injury, he had called him brother. “Henderson is handling hand off today. He’s got everything you need.”

“No.” He didn’t bother turning around to say it, keeping his gaze glued to the computer screen in front of him. There was a deep fear he might lose his composure entirely if he was forced to look at him. To add insult to injury, he had called him brother. “Henderson is handling hand off today. He’s got everything you need.”

Robby was right. She deserves better than this. Than him. He was fucked up.

“I needed to talk to you…about us.” Rip the bandaid off fast. Quick and painless. It was the best thing for her. He had baggage and a dead wife, all the other shit Robby had said about him.

“This…isn’t going to work out between us. It was fun, but we were foolish to think this could actually go anywhere.” His head falls back with the words rushing out of his mouth, but they aren’t painless like he had wanted. Each syllable is a stab to his gut over and over again, leaving him standing in a puddle of his own blood but he doesn’t stop. He keeps going despite the pain.

“It’s over, Samira.” All of things she had stashed around his apartment. The idea of them not being there…

His wife dying fucked him up. He doesn't do long-term relationships. He's got baggage.

He'd told himself not to think about it. Told himself there had to be context missing. That Robby hadn't meant it the way it sounded. It hadn't worked. Because it was Robby. His best friend. The one person who'd seen every ugly part of his life and stayed anyway.

If he could look at Jack and believe that was the truth—that his marriage, his grief, everything he'd carried since Amelia died had left him too damaged to build a future with someone—then maybe Jack had been lying to himself. Maybe Samira wasn't seeing him clearly yet. Maybe she was only seeing the version of him he wished he still was.

"Sam..." Her name barely leaves his lips before he has to stop and force himself to breathe. "This..." He exhales shakily. "This can't keep going." The words sound hollow, like they don't belong to him. "Whatever we've been trying to build..." His throat tightens. "It ends here."

His free hand curls into a fist until his nails bite into his palm. Every instinct is screaming at him to turn around, get in his Jeep, and drive to her apartment. To let her tell him none of it mattered. To believe her. But the doubt had already taken root, and once it did, he couldn't ask her to build a future on top of it.

The overhead speakers crackle to life somewhere behind him, followed almost immediately by the familiar call for incoming trauma patients. The sound has never felt so welcome. Jack drags a hand across his face, swallowing hard before forcing the last words past the lump in his throat.

"...I've got to go. We've got incoming traumas." His voice is rough now, worn thin. A long pause follows. "Take care of yourself, Sam."

The exam room curtain slides open with a soft scrape before Jack steps inside, tablet balanced loosely in one hand while he scans over the chart. The ER noise follows him in briefly—distant monitor alarms, overhead pages, somebody arguing with triage somewhere down the hall—before the curtain falls shut again behind him.

“Alright,” Jack says tiredly, finally looking up toward the patient. “I’m Dr. Abbot.” His voice is rough around the edges in the way that suggests he’s several hours and at least two coffees past exhaustion, but his attention settles fully here now anyway. He sets the tablet down against the counter before stepping closer to the bedside.

Jack tips his head slightly, enough to rest it briefly against Robby's temple. His jaw tightens once before he forces it to relax again. "You think trauma's a competition?" he asks quietly. "That there's some scoreboard somewhere?" A humorless breath leaves him. "There isn't." His thumb brushes once against the back of Robby's neck. "Your brain doesn't care whether it was a war zone or a hospital hallway. It doesn't care whether it was one bad day or a hundred. It just knows something scared the hell out of you and now it's trying to protect you from it." He lets the words settle before continuing, softer now. "And I don't do this nearly as well as you think I do. I just hide it better." A faint laugh escapes him. "You know how many times I've ended up sitting in my apartment at three in the morning because something dragged me back there? More than I'd like to admit."

"Because your brain didn't hear a car backfire," he says quietly. "It heard a gunshot." He gives a small shake of his head. "You didn't choose that. You didn't stop and think, I'm going to panic now. It happened before you ever had a chance to catch up to it." His thumb brushes once against the back of Robby's neck. "That's how this works. Your brain recognized something it thought was dangerous and hit the alarm before it bothered checking whether it was actually true."

[txt: trouble] Robby said that about me?

[txt: trouble] About my wife?

[txt: trouble] we need to talk

His fingers hover anxiously over the keyboard, the ED still bustled with chaos behind the glass while he felt his life falling apart around him. Finally he settled with hitting the call button.

[ txt : *jack❤︎ ] Jack, losing a significant other fucks up most married people. My mom maybe not so much, but I saw it at the VA. I see it *here* ..

Samira doesn't want to admit how many times she checks her phone for another text from him, wondering if he and Robby spoke, wondering what Robby might have told him about her -- liability, too slow, too young, too naive -- before the ringing of her phone pulls her from washing the same plate a third time.

Robby was right. She deserves better than this. Than him. He was fucked up.

“I needed to talk to you…about us.” Rip the bandaid off fast. Quick and painless. It was the best thing for her. He had baggage and a dead wife, all the other shit Robby had said about him.

“This…isn’t going to work out between us. It was fun, but we were foolish to think this could actually go anywhere.” His head falls back with the words rushing out of his mouth, but they aren’t painless like he had wanted. Each syllable is a stab to his gut over and over again, leaving him standing in a puddle of his own blood but he doesn’t stop. He keeps going despite the pain.

“It’s over, Samira.” All of things she had stashed around his apartment. The idea of them not being there…

[txt: trouble] Robby said that about me?

[txt: trouble] About my wife?

[txt: trouble] we need to talk

His fingers hover anxiously over the keyboard, the ED still bustled with chaos behind the glass while he felt his life falling apart around him. Finally he settled with hitting the call button.

The year after Jack returned from combat as an amputee was the hardest either of them had ever lived through. Maria poured every piece of herself into helping him survive it. Physical therapy appointments. Nightmares. Panic attacks. Learning how to navigate prosthetics and pain and the anger that came with both. She carried him through the parts of recovery he hated most without ever making him feel weak for needing her. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, though, she stopped paying attention to herself. The headaches became more frequent. She grew tired more easily. Sometimes she’d lose a thought halfway through speaking or stare off for a second too long. Jack noticed pieces of it, but every explanation sounded reasonable enough at the time. Stress. Exhaustion. Worry.

Neither of them realized how serious it was until Jack woke in the middle of the night to Maria seizing beside him in bed. At the hospital, the scan showed a massive brain tumor. Six weeks.

Jack blamed himself instantly and completely. He was a medic. A trauma surgeon. He spent his entire life catching symptoms in strangers, spotting things other people missed, and somehow he hadn’t seen this happening to the person he loved most in the world. But Maria never let him carry that guilt around her. Even after the diagnosis, even when the medications made her weak and sleepy, she still looked at him with the same adoring warmth she had on their very first date. There was never anger in her. Never resentment. Just love. Fierce and unwavering right to the end.

As the tumor progressed, Maria became too weak to leave the house. Jack refused to let her final weeks become nothing but hospice visits and medications. She had been a kindergarten teacher before everything, adored by her students, so he arranged quiet little visits from the children she missed so much. He learned how to cook all of her favorite meals, spending hours teaching himself Italian dishes just to see her smile over a few bites of homemade pasta or soup. Their house became smaller and softer somehow during those weeks, filled with blankets, old music, poetry books, and the desperate tenderness of two people trying to make time slow down.

One night, after a few glasses of her favorite wine, Jack helped her upstairs and settled into bed beside her. Maria rested her head against his shoulder while he read aloud from her favorite poetry collection, his voice rough and tired but steady enough to lull them both toward sleep. Sometime during the night, while the house sat quiet around them, Maria passed peacefully beside him.

After she died, cooking became deeply personal to him. It’s one of the only places where Jack allows himself to be soft without realizing it. The kitchen quiets his mind in a way almost nothing else can. Measurements, repetition, the slow process of building something carefully with his hands—it grounds him. Most of the recipes he still makes are Maria’s. Some nights he cooks because he’s stressed. Some nights because he can’t sleep. And some nights because grief still creeps up on him hard enough that he needs to feel close to her again.

Over time, cooking also became Jack’s truest form of vulnerability, other than allowing someone to see his amputated leg. He struggles to say how he feels outright, especially after Maria. Words get stuck behind fear and guilt and the instinct to keep people at arm’s length. But if Jack cooks for someone—really cooks for them—it means something. It means he’s paying attention. He remembers favorite meals, dietary restrictions, how someone takes their coffee, what comfort food they crave after a bad day. Cooking is how he takes care of people when he doesn’t know how to let himself say I love you, I’m scared of losing you, or you matter to me more than I know what to do with.