#pittvet

She certainly feels ridiculous. She feels like a bobble head with a helmet on her head. With elbow pads and knee pads, too. It's been years since she's had cause to wear anything like this, adding to the feeling the of strangeness.

Looking around them, she adds, "I can't believe so many people have free time on a Monday." Her schedule is unpredictable, so it isn't unusual for Samira to be off during the week and wondering what all these other people are doing in the middle of the day, but it's the first Monday off she's had in a long while.

And she normally isn't at a park. She normally isn't balanced on top of a skateboard, clutching onto Abbot's hands.

if cassie were to untangle all the mired & mismatched threads yarning together to stitch the story of her life, she suspects she'd find herself unable to discern how any of them mended together in the first place. recovery to toiling medical school ; cobbling stability out of whirlwind hours of parenting & cramming textbooks with fried nerve endings late in the night ...

& now, another labyrinthine pathway she'd stumbled down.

abbott.

a rush of breath pushes free to rifle the rufous slough of her bangs, twigging akimbo after another long shift. knuckles steeple on her hips ; she isn't looking at him, not yet. cassie draws up her index finger & thumb to brace the bridge of her nose.

after a solid thirteen hours of charting & dogging after every single trauma thrust through the door, she's beat, synapses flickering. it's hardly the time to confront feelings after every ounce of empathy has been dredged from her body.

she squeezes her eyes closed, shags her head. a ragged chuckle breezes on the aftermath of her exhale. " i think you're asking the wrong person. "

stirring under the covers, reality is groggy and difficult for annie to find. her head feels heavy, an exhaustion in her that's deeper than she's used to even first thing in the morning. she's not sure which she notices first: the tug of the tape tugging at the fine hairs on her arm or the beeping coming from above her head. letting out a soft breath, she shifts slightly under the thin sheet and blanket, the mattress beneath her not feeling right at all.

in what feels like mere seconds for her, it's a slow few minutes of annie stirring and slowly acquainting herself with her surroundings. the exact moment the realisation enters her brain is clear in the way her body stills and the rate of her heart in the monitor above her head picks up slightly in pace. the next breath that leaves her is a sigh, her still groggy mind somehow knowing exactly where she is. the place she doesn't want to be. the place she never intended to visit again.

while he hasn't been ignoring jack per say, robby knows fully well that the answers he's been giving his friend haven't been the responses that he's wanted to see. it's with samira's encouragement that he finally picks up his phone and sends jack a message that comprises more than three words or even just a thumbs up in reply to the concerned questions he's been receiving. it's no surprise then when he receives such a quick reply back and the agreement for jack to come over the next day.

when jack had messaged that morning asking that they meet at his house instead, it hadn't taken baran long for her to know exactly why their coffee catch up had changed locations. inherently, a part of her had already known why the last minute change had occurred, but robby only confirms it to her as he makes their morning coffee after the morning school run. then comes the laundry list of worries, instructions and warnings from robby that has baran crossing the space between them and pressing a soft kiss to his lips to disrupt which soon follows a gentle reminder that she knows what to do.

robby drops her off a few houses down, the constant just in case that they're living through lately. each time that baran meets with jack outside of work, the thought steadily weighs more on her mind. the lines between her and jack, her and robby and jack and robby continue grow fainter and she knows it won't be long until one of them slips and the charade will be up.

for lack of better phrasing, jack had a staring problem. alright, maybe it wasn't a problem per say. it was just . . . a habit. he looked at everyone with that same steady attentiveness that could be dangerously easy to misunderstand if you didn't know him. he listened. he checked in. andrea taught herself not to read into it. not every thoughtful glance meant something. not every lingering conversation carried hidden meaning. that was simply who jack was. so she'd stopped trying to convince herself there was anything different about the way he looked at her. because if she was wrong, work was the last place she wanted to complicate by admitting she'd developed a very inconvenient attraction to one of the attendings. not when she genuinely liked the friendship they'd settled into. not when there was far more to lose than to gain. that's why she kept it to herself. or at least, she'd thought she had.

the department was still buzzing behind them as they stepped out, another night shift finally behind them. she adjusts the strap of her backpack higher on her shoulder as she falls into step beside him, the two of them making the familiar walk toward employee parking. that is until his words stop her so abruptly she nearly misses a step. "what ? " she turns toward him, genuinely caught off guard. for a second, her mind scrambles through every possible explanation except the right one. then she looks at him. really looks. there's something different in his expression. if this was what she thought it was . . . that meant he had noticed. she hadn't flirted. at least not intentionally. if anything, she'd spent months trying not to. leaving food in the break room fridge specifically for him in case he hadn't brought anything becoming more frequent. waiting before heading to the parking garage if she saw him still finishing notes. laughing just a little too hard at jokes that probably weren't that funny. the way she somehow always ended up standing beside him during traumas without ever meaning to. she'd never considered those things obvious. they hadn't even felt deliberate. it just felt natural. apparently natural wasn't the same thing as subtle. she lets out a quiet breath, somewhere between a laugh and complete disbelief. "i should probably make sure we're on the same page. mostly because i don't wanna make myself look like an idiot right now. — what are you referring to ? "