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“You got an hour?” He catches Dana as she’s walking to her car. She has changed into her street clothes – jeans and an oversized leather jacket that he thinks must belong to her husband, who was a biker back in the day (or so the stories go). Donor cycles, she always calls them, shaking her head. The worry in her eyes belayed by time and the fact that Benji hasn’t got much further than the end of the block on his Harley in years.
She looks exhausted; looks like she’d quite like to ignore him or flip off and keep walking. “I have a bed,” she tells him baldly, eyebrow raised and somehow perfectly poised despite the chaos they have left behind them, just metres away through the ambulance bay doors and onto the ER floor, “two kids and a husband I haven’t seen in sixteen hours.”
“Please,” he says, is not above begging for this particular favour if he needs to, “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
---
The worst thing about Covid is how normal it makes Jack feel. How easily he slips into the welcoming embrace of chaos; adjusts to the endless, pointless deaths and the all too familiar sights of colleagues and friends splayed out on gurneys in front of him. Once upon a time, Jack had practiced medicine in a stab vest in a tent in the arse-end of nowhere. Was so good at it that he can still feel the adrenaline rush sometimes, when he closes his eyes – the guilt and fear and joy of it all. In the outside world, a pandemic rages. In the ER, there is overcrowding and uncertainty and here he is, in the middle of it all, the one calm man against the storm.
All that’s to say is that trying and failing and fighting to save the lives of people he loves is his baseline. And admittedly there’s less blood and guts on show in a cytokine storm than a hail of bullets or an IED, but the end result is the same. He’s equipped to deal with it, to compartmentalise and process in ways that the rest of the ER isn’t – or at least that’s what he’s telling himself. Straight-backed and fighting through, holding his head up high. Signing death certificates by the dozen and praying for some middle-aged idiot to take a chainsaw to their hedge and lose a limb in the process, just so he has something in front of him that he can fix.
It all starts to fall apart over a single week – the thin veneer of coping mechanisms that are holding The Pitt together by a string starting to fray. Jack’s composure beginning to slip. At first it’s just Adamson calling in sick, which isn’t ideal, but they can cope with it. Then the older man’s daughter brings him in the next day, coughing and running a fever and still trying to direct them all around even though he’s attached to an IV. And it’s not long after that that Robby is calling him back into the ER in the middle of the night, asks him (on a couple hours of sleep, caffeine and prayer) to hold the ship steady while he tries to work a miracle. In the Medical Corps, Jack learned a lot about Hail Mary’s - was always taught that it gets worse before it gets better - but this one never seems to swing back around. There’s no cinematic ending - no lives saved - and by the time he’s hanging up his stethoscope in his locker, pulling out his backpack, he realises it’s been three days since he’s seen Samira’s face in anything other than the contact picture on his phone.
*
He gets an Uber home that night, because he’s not stupid enough to drive. Has seen first hand how fast tiredness can kill, and God, if it was just him then maybe it would be fine, but it never is. MVA’s are heavy on the collateral damage and he’s seen one too many lives ruined, one too many families torn apart, to consider adding to the statistics. Is dropped outside the townhouse he’d bought after his wife died – all his shit in boxes and left in the spare room for a year until he could bare to touch it, to unpack and remember the life he’d led before the rug had been pulled from under his one remaining foot. Turns the key in the lock, checks his watch and realises how late it is – finds Samira sitting on the couch anyway, legs tucked up underneath herself on the navy velvet. A journal he knows she’s not reading open across her knees and mug of still steaming tea in her hand
He walks straight past her, exhausted – waves half-heartedly, tosses out an I love you pro-forma, rote and no less true because of it– strips and sits under the shower in the spare bathroom. Sticks his scrubs directly into the washing machine on top of hers, starts a load running and changes into the hoody and shorts she’s left for him on top of the dryer - crumpled in a heap because Samira Mohan never been through basic training, has never met an ironing board she got on with. It drives him wild and he forgives it in an instant, the same way he copes with odd socks on the bedroom floor and hair ties and claw clips scattered across the counters – because the alternative, because not having her things strewn across his entire house, is unimaginable.
She’s still there when he comes back out into the living room, curled in on herself and radiating something that might be exhaustion or anxiety or fear - at a certain point they all start to look the same. He sits down heavily next to her, planting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands,
"Adamson died today."
She leans into his side and he can't reach out for her, because if he does he might cry, and if he starts he's not sure he can stop. Her hair's up in a messy bun, and she looks bone tired, like she hasn't slept in days. Her thumb strokes a line back and forth across his shoulder, and he looks up at her, wanting to say something - to apologise or to kiss her or just put his face against her hair and breath until his heartbeat settles in his chest. He doesn't do any of those things though, because even as he opens his mouth, she beats him to it,
"I'm pregnant."
*
Jack would swear on his father’s grave that, in the sixty seconds that follow, his synapses stop firing. He tries and fails to process what she’s telling him – world tilting on its axis and thumping him back down to earth like some invisible hand has shot him with a round of epi. Gapes at her, says, “shit,” when he finds his voice – half out of wonder and half in fear. It makes her laugh a little, wind her fingers through his as she rest her head on his shoulder.
“Shit sounds about right,” she agrees, thumb on his wrist where his pulse is thumping under the skin, “I just - I needed you to know.” They don’t keep secrets - it’s part of their deal. The margins between this thing between them working forever or crashing and burning are too thin. Balanced on razor wire and building a home there.
“Thank you for telling me,” he tries to keep his voice even, thinks carefully – through the fog - about what he should say next. Is still hesitating when she smiles at him – not her usual smile, mind - not the one that can light up an entire day, make him feel like a teenager taking a girl out for ice cream for the first time - but it’s something nonetheless.
“We’re not going to talk about now,” she tells him, face nestled in the space between his shoulder and his neck, “I don’t know what I think and you’ve been up so long I’m not convinced you know what day it is – this, whatever we decide to do, deserves more. This should be a conversation.”
And yeah, how lucky he is that she’s smarter than him. The smartest person in almost any room she’s in. But what they are going to do isn’t the question on his mind, or rather it absolutely is, but it’s not the most important one, “Are you okay?” he asks her, voice breaking just a little.
Emotions he couldn’t name if he had a hundred years flood her face. “Not really,” she says, voice small in a way he hates for her, as if she’s something broken, lacking capacity for all the greatness he knows without a shadow of a doubt she possesses. Allows him to drag her into his lap and wind his arms round her, hold her, stroking patterns down her spine as she sobs into his chest. Feels his heart crack open, the pieces rearranging themselves – knows without a doubt that there isn’t a single thing in the universe he wouldn’t do to make her happy, to stop the world for a minute and let her catch her breath.
“I’m sorry,” she tells him eventually, voice muffled in the side of his neck, “about Adamson.”
“Yeah,” he exhales, not knowing what he’s apologising for really – what feeling he’s trying to express, “I’m sorry too”
*
Jack is back in The Pitt less than twelve hours later. A full night of sleep off the back of the pills Samira had handed him after they’d changed for bed. Chucked back with a gulp from the stale bottle of water that’s been on the bedside table for who knows how many days at this point. Had woken up just in time to hold back Samira’s hair as she’d lost her breakfast – all of two crackers – into the toilet bowl. Driven her over to Presby for her shift when she’d straight up refused to even consider taking the day off.
She’d been due to start ages before him, so he is far too early for handover. Pokes his head through the ambulance bay doors. Sees that everything is under control, shoots Dana a one handed salute and wanders up to the roof to think. To drink his coffee and watch the sun rise.
In the clear light of morning air, Jack hovers his fingers over the contact list on his phone; swipes past Ravi. They have been friends since they were twenty-one years old. Since Jack had two legs and more of his sanity. They have jumped out of a plane together and co-run a triage centre in a hurricane. Jack is the godfather to both of Ravi’s sons and the other man had driven eighteen hours cross-country to pick Jack up from the airport after Sarah had died and the army had sent him on a desperate, reeling, trip home from Iraq. Their friendship is built in blood, is deep enough that Ravi feels like a part of him. Naturally, Jack had chosen to pay back all that history by seeing Samira across the busy, sticky floor of the least shit bar in Pittsburgh (that had been available on short notice, anyway), and falling so quickly he’s surprised he hadn’t hit his head on the way down.
There are three people Jack calls when he’s in trouble. Ravi is out, for obvious reasons. His therapist is home-schooling four kids under seven, has clients in worse shape than Jack - who isn’t even standing on the wrong side of the barrier this morning – who is actually enjoying the feeling of the wind on his face, the sun in his eyes. Does some mental maths and figures that Emery, night owl that she is, won’t be asleep just yet, and clicks on her contact picture instead. Listens to her rattle off statistics and talk about idiots, out clapping with pots and pans, while they pay their nurses next to nothing and twenty-something’s party behind closed doors. Lets her rant until she’s run out of steam, until she pauses, asks him why the hell he’s calling her anyway.
“Uh,” he hesitates, thinks he should probably just rip of the band aid and admit to it, “Samira’s pregnant.”
“Christ, Jack,” she says, “Do you not know how contraception works?” It is probably not an entirely unfair question, but is also rather beside the point at this late juncture. “Really, she continues, “didn’t you work at Planned Parenthood for six months?”
Ironically (in the Alanis Morrisette fashion, anyway) this is true. After he’d been politely let go from the first hospital he’d worked in after rejoining civilian life, for refusing to fast track a board member’s wife through the ER queue, a friend from med school had offered him a temporary cover job at the clinic she managed. If he wasn’t such an adrenaline junkie, and if he wouldn’t have eventually ended up going to jail for murdering a placard carrying excuse for a protestor, he might even have stayed there longer. “I’m aware of the fundamentals of the human reproductive system, yes.” He tells Emery, a bit of bite to his voice. Settling into the familiar pattern of their always slightly confrontational interactions.
Her response is only a sigh though, as if she understands the gravity of what he’s told her. “What are you going to do?” she asks him eventually and he only shrugs into the silence, because that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?
Knows exactly what he’ll do if she doesn’t want this. Knows he’ll figure out how to get mifepristone in a global pandemic. Will break laws to get her mifepristone in a global pandemic if he has to. Will hold her hand and not let her feel guilty about it for even a minute. Might even believe she’s making the right choice – the sensible decision not to lump herself with a baby before residency, not to tie herself to an old man like him.
But if she does want this? He’s less sure. Hasn’t allowed himself to even consider it. Hasn’t allowed himself to want or hope or god-forbid plan, because those things have never worked out well for Jack Abbot. He’d gone to war just to become a doctor and watched do no harm go to hell in a handbasket. Wanted a career and lost a foot because of it. Met a woman, put on a tux and made vows in front of his family and her God and then lost his wife too. His lack of faith in the universe may be pathological, but it certainly isn’t unwarranted – a precedent for every neurosis.
He scrubs a hand across his face. Like always, he tells Emery the truth, “Whatever she wants me to.”
*
She’s been piggybacking off his journal subscriptions since three weeks after they’d met. When she’d admitted she didn’t have access to the (fairly obscure) paper he’d been using to back up his point in a text chain that had started out as an argument about MVA outcome statistics and ended up becoming something more. Something that had him offering to print it out for her, to buy her a coffee and talk it through together in person – like a date, Samira, if you want it to be. Now, of course, she has all his log ins. Prints out her own pages at the library and brings them back to their kitchen table to dog-ear and mark up with three different colours of highlighter and a rollerball. Fills up his email inbox with notifications that she’s added a new bookmark on her ever expanding list of things to be read later.
In the days after she tells him, before they’ve had a chance to talk it through, her research takes a decidedly new direction. Has her downloading articles about pregnancy and termination and newborns. A paper on the risk of Coronavirus to expectant mothers (which he will absolutely be reading and having a panic attack about later, if the way his breath catches in his throat when he sees it is anything to go by).
Samira has never met a crossroads, a decision, she hasn’t researched the hell out of. Via the novel investigative method of journal-based stalking, he follows in the tracks of her brain as she thinks it through, as she tries to figure out whether to turn left or right. He is scared, more than half of the time. Terrified to have a baby, terrified not to have a baby - and even through it all, he feel lucky. Samira will see the variables he doesn’t; is both braver than him and more logical. He has absolute faith that her decision, whatever it is, will be the right thing in the end. And he can wait – panic and overthink and support her, however he can, however she wants– until she makes it. Be ready to hold her hand when she does.
*
She slips into bed beside him. Had come home from work and showered, braided damp hair over her shoulder and dragged a pair of his boxers up her hips, pulled an old t-shirt over her head.
“I know you’re not asleep,” she whispers, pressing the curve of her body against his back, lips on his shoulder blade.
“You caught me,” he agrees, mumbling. Had been dozing fitfully for the past couple of hours, brain stuttering to full consciousness when he’d heard her key turn in the lock. “Shift went okay?”
It’s the height of summer and her feet against his calves are still, somehow, cold as ice. “It went,” she tells him. Lets silence stretch between them, lazy - unremarkable for all that it actually is. That he’s allowed to be held in someone’s arms and belong there. “Jack,” she says eventually, little more than a whisper into the darkness, into his ear, “I want this.”
His heart skips a beat, body frozen in a tense line he knows she must be able to feel. Doesn’t know what he’s supposed to think or say – couldn’t name the emotions if he had three hours on his therapists couch. “This?” he asks her. Knows what she means, of course he does. Has to hear her say it out loud nonetheless.
“This.” She echoes, “Us, this life, and a baby. All of it.”
“Are you sure?” he has to ask. Shifts round so that they are facing one another. So that he can see her eyes glittering in the sliver of light coming through the gap in the curtains before she tucks her chin into the crook of his neck. Feels her nod even before she answers him, even before she tells him yes.
He relaxes, slowly then all at once. Presses a kiss to her hairline. “Okay,” he tells her, all soft-like, suddenly so tired he can barely keep his eyes open, “then that’s what we’ll do.”
*
They are eating Cornflakes standing up at the kitchen counter the next morning when Jack is struck by a sudden thought. “Shit,” he exclaims, half-turning towards her, “Your mom. We need to get married.”
“We don’t need to do anything.” She tells him, slightly reproachful, reflexively. Thinks about it for a moment, “No you’re right, we absolutely do need to get married.”
Somehow, it stuns him. Even though it was him who had the thought, vocalised it – didn’t quite ask the question. After he’d buried Sarah, the shape of his life had changed before his eyes – the wedding ring put away in a drawer; the house in the suburbs, with all its spare bedrooms, swept away in a wave of grief. He’d thought he might spend the rest of his days moving from half-empty bed to ER floor until they’d put him in the ground next to her. Never thought he’d have this second chance – never thought he’d find another person out there in the universe that he’d love enough risk his heart. Never thought he’d get married again.
Samira, standing next to him, fond smile on her face as she watches him process, knocks his knee gently with her own, “You’re not going to ask me properly?”
He feels the corners of his mouth tug upwards. Sees the way the morning light, filtering through the shutters, hits her face, her collarbone. Never has anyone looked so beautiful. “I don’t have a ring.” He says, regretful, patting at pockets empty except for a spare scalpel left over from yesterdays shift.
“Well,” she tells him, ever practical, stars in her eyes, “that’s solvable.” Puts her cereal bowl down on the counter next to his. Reaches round to unclip the long chain that hangs around her neck – the one that holds the delicate golden wedding band her grandmother had passed on to her after her husband, Samira’s grandfather, had died. “You can use this.”
He takes it from her, slips the ring off the chain and holds it in his palm. “Okay,” he asks her, “You ready?” Feels an overwhelming rush of affection when she nods, reaches out for his free hand and tangles her fingers through his. He meets her eyes and finds he’s utterly sure about all of it. Whatever else may happen, he’s sure about her,
“Samira Mohan,” he says, “No grand speech, just this: I love you. And I know,” he continues, “this wasn’t the plan. But planning hasn’t worked out all that well for me up until now, so do you want to throw away the map together? Have this baby, get married?” he chokes out a laugh, “preferably in the nearest courthouse, ASAP, so your mom doesn’t murder me in my sleep?”
She grins and rolls her eyes. Doesn’t answer immediately and God, that should make him nervous, but he finds that it doesn’t, not at all. “Pretty please?” he prompts, never as sure of anything in his life as her answer.
“Oh go on then,” she tells him, and he slides the gold band onto her finger where it fits perfectly, like it was meant to be there. Winds her in closer so he can kiss her just as the alarm on his phone, the one that tells him he needs to leave for his shift, starts to blare.
“Always being interrupted, huh?”
She grins at him, presses his hand to the flat of her stomach, the almost unfathomable sense of possibility there, “Guess we’d better get used to it.”
*
“Want to tell me why I’ve just received a calendar invite to your wedding. To my sister?” Ravi asks, sounding slightly bemused, “a week from today?”
“Uh,” Jack responds weakly. Had not in fact been the one to send said calendar invitation and is mildly impressed by Samira’s deviousness in overcoming his slight reluctance to tell his best friend, “Surprise?”
“You could say that,” Jack can practically hear Ravi rubbing the back of his reck, that expression he always gets when he’s trying to decide whether to ask the follow up. Jack had only met the other man’s father – Samira’s father – once before he had died. Dressed in a nice suit at his medical school graduation – remembers a tall man with an impressive moustache, a kind smile. Remembers the same analytical expression that so often graces Ravi’s face when he’s contemplating his next move. “Any particular reason for this incredibly last minute invitation?” his friend settles on eventually, knowingly.
“We’re having a baby,” Jack admits, softly.
“No shit,” Ravi says, all sarcasm. There aren’t that many reasons to get married that quickly in a global pandemic, Jack supposes. “Congratulations,” he continues, “whatever you do don’t tell my mom until after the wedding – as much as I’m looking forward to the aunties having something else to gossip about for once”
“It’s the plan,” Jack confirms, and then, because the other man is his best friend. Because Samira is Ravi’s baby sister and fifteen years younger besides. Because Jack should probably check he’s really as okay with this as he’s acting, “Listen, man-”
“It’s a good thing, Jack,” Ravi cuts him off, “You’ll both be good at this – and however much it baffles me - you two are great together.
“She makes me happy.”
“You make her happy,” Ravi echoes, “No accounting for taste I suppose.” If the other man was standing next to him now, he would deliver a knock to the shoulder. Because he isn’t, Jack settles for a sigh instead.
“I hope so.” He says, half a prayer, half conviction. Will spend the rest of his life trying to make Samira happy if she will let him.
*
It's his wedding day and he’s off shift. Has been for about an hour, actually, but the locum never showed up and while there’s plenty of nurses for once, they’re about four doctors down on where they should to be. Drowning under the weight of new admits and consults that need to, but haven’t yet, happened. Wheezing breath and PPE and never enough time.
“I just need an hour,” he tells Robby, half-apologetic, half defiant, “I’ll come back and work a double after.”
Robby, who looks like he hasn’t slept or shaved in a week just shrugs, “It’s not like it can get any worse. Some of us may as well have a life.” It’s half sarcastic, a little pointed and Jack thinks when he gets back, he might show him the ultrasound photo he’s been keeping in the pocket of his cargo pants. Charge to two hundred and yell clear - shock him into some kind of a reaction. Illicit some kind of indication that the Michael Robinavich he’s worked beside for the better part of three years is still in there somewhere.
He texts Samira, all apologies, watches three dots bounce up and down as she messages him back – tells him that Presby are facing the same thing and she’ll be headed back in that direction just as soon as they’ve got the paperwork taken care of. It almost makes him laugh. They are similar, in ways that most people don’t recognise, and certainly never clock on sight alone. Workaholics, steady and research led. Scared, a lot of the time – to get things wrong, or make a mistake or lose the things they care about again. Big hearts hidden behind no-nonsense grimaces. Utterly lacking in the ability to say no to a shift, even when they’ve already worked twelve hours straight, even on their wedding day.
He almost laughs, but doesn’t, grins at phone screen instead. Texts her back, I guess we’ll have to raincheck that first dance then, chucks his phone back in his pocket and jogs over in the direction of the staff carpark, towards the double doors he’d seen Dana exit out of not thirty seconds before.
---
“So let me see if I’m getting this right,” Dana is looking at him, arms crossed over in front of her chest, still standing opposite him in front of rows of neatly parked cars, “You need a witness for a wedding at the district court. And it will only take an hour?”
“Less,” he bargains, “I told Robby I’d be back on the floor inside of sixty minutes.”
“Christ,” Dana looks like she wants a cigarette, “And they say romance isn’t dead. Actually,” she adds, shaking her head a little, “Did I know you were seeing anyone? Who are you even marrying?”
He pauses. Had thought Dana knew (has always found it best practice to assume she knows everything). Sticks a hand in his pocket and fumbles with his wallet. He keeps a photo of her in there; a printout that he walked all the way to the drug store to pick up just so he could slide it under the plastic film and carry a piece of her with him. Probably makes him look about a thousand years old, but it reminds him of home. Reminds him that he’d once been handed his own father’s belongings, all bagged up in plastic. Had flipped open the wallet (the same one he carries with him now) and found a picture of his mother, arms around his toddler self. Known he’d been loved and crushed by it.
With careful fingers, he slides out the picture: Samira, caught in a laugh, caught in a sunbeam. Flips it over and hands it to Dana.
She whistles softly when she sees it, and yeah that’s probably fair. Samira is out of his league on any day of the week. A tornado, a rush of adrenaline, everything he never knew he wanted. “What did you do,” Dana drawls in response to the picture, to his slightly sheepish grin, “knock the poor girl up?”
She’s joking, he can tell. Has hit the nail on the head entirely without meaning to. “Yeah,” he tells her, grimacing, “about that.”
*
It’s hard to imagine a stranger wedding party. Three out of the four of them in scrubs. A request for the quick version, please, and blinding smiles all round. Ravi with his phone held up, Emery on Skype, sat on her sofa with Ryan’s red hair just about visible in the corner of the screen.
The ceremony itself is a blur to him. He says all the right things, timing impeccable, but the words don’t matter, not really. He’s already made a thousand promises to Samira, in a thousand different ways. Repeats his name, vows to honour and cherish, lets his eyes flick down to where his hand is entwined with Samira’s own; swirls and delicate lines of henna covering her fingers, tracing up her arms. His thumb strokes along one of the lines on her wrist – slightly crooked, because he’d been the only one available to apply it. Sat at their kitchen table after twin fourteen hour shifts, his tongue stuck out in concentration and the reading glasses he mostly pretends not to need balanced on the end of his nose. Had met Samira’s scepticism with mock offense, a protest that he was a battlefield surgeon once upon a time, and steady hands might be the only thing he can promise her with any degree of reliability. A bunch of takeout boxes from the place three blocks over that does the best falafel surrounding them and the sound of her laughter every time he messes something up.
She squeezes his hand when the say I do. Looks up at him, eyes shining with emotion, and lets herself be pulled towards him for the obligatory kiss. Sometimes, Jack thinks that world is a collection of things that could right, if he only he knew which pieces to put on the board, if only he knew the rules of the game. And today – maybe just for today, but today nonetheless – in this courthouse, with his friends and Samira and the unmitigated hope of it all, he wonders if he might just be getting the hang of it.
*
After, when he’s shaken Ravi’s hand and let Dana take some pictures on her phone. When, his watch buzzes to tell him he’s forty-five minutes down on his hour time limit and they’ve said hasty, heartfelt goodbyes to their witnesses, he kisses Samira – his wife - in front of her car.
It’s starting to rain, but she doesn’t pull away until they hear a thunderclap in the distance. Summer storms. It’s good luck, apparently, if it rains on your wedding day and Jack will take everything that he can get.
“Back to work?” he asks her, longing for a simpler world – the kind where they don’t have to drive away from each other – pulled apart by a sense of duty that’s greater than either one of them. Knows he’s be bored within days if he got it. Knows that despite it all, the horror and the loss and new beginnings - if he died today, he’d die happy
“Yeah,” she tells him easily, hanging off his hand, pulling away but seemingly unwilling to let go, “Lives to save.”
He stands beside her car, stupid grin on his face, until she’s sat in the driver seat, windscreen wipers going furiously. He has raindrops running down his face and he can’t bring himself to care. I love you, he mouths at her, through the window, a moment just for them.
She blows him a kiss, one hand on the steering wheel, love you too.
*
Their daughter – born screaming, born perfect - is called Maya. The second, five years younger, is Kit. For the rest of his life, when someone mentions the pandemic, Jack will think about the chaos of it all – the repetitive, hopeless panic . Will think about his eldest child, of friendship and kissing his wife against a car in the rain. Will wave a hand, say it was awful, say it wasn’t all bad, not really.