Chapter Text
“All right, Santos, what do you have for me?” Abbot called, picking up the chart on the table and squinting at it as Santos turned around in front of the door she’d just closed to Room 16.
“Female patient, thirty-eight, two weeks postpartum. Came in an hour ago with a burning sensation in her vagina and chills, aches, fever of 101.3. I asked if she’d had sexual intercourse before her six week checkup and she got super defensive and upset, so I’m thinking the answer was yes and I’m also thinking uterine infection.”
He sighed deeply, leaning his head back and closing his eyes against the harsh fluorescents. Not uncommon, but way more common than he wanted to think about, that type of situation. “All right. Let’s try to get more details out of the patient before we jump to conclusions, though. If it’s more serious than an intrauterine infection and we do nothing but prescribe antibiotics, that’s gonna be an issue.”
“I don’t think she’s gonna want to talk to me anymore,” said Santos, wincing a little.
He handed her the chart. “Figure it out. The only person here right now with a glowing bedside manner is Dr. Mohan, and she’s in Behavioral One right now trying to sweet-talk Old Jim out of putting paperclips up his—”
“Okay, okay, got it!” Santos went back into the room, hands up in surrender, and Abbot half-smiled to himself as he checked the chart again. Good kid, heart in the right place, but God, did that whole building-rep-with-patient thing need work. He circled back through the floor, checking charts and asking after some of his patients who’d been on the floor since six the previous evening. The clock on the wall read 3:43 AM. It had been a mostly quiet night shift, nothing too insane. Not that he’d say that out loud and jinx the place. Abbot didn’t believe in that shit, but he wasn’t about to bring the ire of everybody else down on his head.
As he put the newest chart back and turned to screen the intakes on the monitor over the Hub, he caught a glimpse of Dr. Mohan’s black hair and warm brown cheek inside the white-walled behavioral room, where she was gesturing and smiling at the patient inside. He allowed himself one quick glance, one flicker of his mouth that could maybe, kind of, be defined as a smile before turning back to the screen.
Samira. Slow and steady, quiet, methodical and passionate: he’d liked her style since day one and then he’d grown to like her, too. The way she took her time with everybody. Patient. Gentle. She could take anything he could throw at her, and then some. He’d snapped at Robby weeks ago— administration had been on his ass again about the amount of time spent on each patient and how Mohan was dragging the average up with her approach and he’d said something about it that wasn’t very nice and Abbot had turned on the ball of his foot and looked him dead in the face.
This is the fourth time you’ve talked down on Mohan to me. You don’t want one of the best doctors we have here on your shift, then have her moved to mine.
Tight. Dark. A tone that he knew Robby knew would express the maximum amount of Not Fucking Around-itude that Abbot meant to get across. And Robby’d done it. So now Mohan was on his shift. And Abbot didn’t give a fuck about average treatment times or turnover or patient satisfaction rates or any of that pencil-pushing shit from up above in the ivory tower. He cared about saving lives. And he cared about—
He didn’t want to dwell on who— what he cared about: not the time or place and this was work, not downtime. Might as well check on Old Jim, he thought, checking his watch and realizing she’d been in there for over forty-five minutes. As he pushed the door open, chart in hand, he came face-to-face with a scene previously hidden by the frosted glass of the door: Old Jim, who wasn’t all that old, maybe in his forties like Abbot, was thrashing around on the bed, wrists restrained, pants down, dick out, with an unbent paper clip slid almost halfway into his—
“Soooo, how’re we doing in here?” asked Abbot pleasantly, turning toward Mohan, who looked sweaty and a little flustered, which was extremely attractive, and he kind of hated himself for even thinking that she looked attractive but she did and that was that and he had to physically stop himself from reaching out and tucking a loose coil of black hair behind her ear. Goddammit, stop it. She’s like thirty, look at her; she’s probably engaged to someone in finance or engineering or some shit, tall and handsome and young and you’re— you’re—
“Oh, just great, thanks for asking,” she said, blind to his inner turmoil. “I have been as persuasive as I can possibly be, but James here is extremely resistant to the idea of removing the paperclip from his urethra due to—”
“That’s how the CIA’s gonna find me, man!” shouted Old Jim, thrashing more.
“Oh-kay,” said Abbot brightly, checking the chart and shoving all of his feelings about Mohan way, way down into his gut where he could shut them up and focus on the issue at hand. “Infection?” he asked Mohan as an aside.
She nodded, exhaling hard, and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “Redness and irritation around the urethral opening, low grade fever. I can’t knock him out to remove it without permission from admin, and you know they take forever to sign off on shit like this.”
He cast his voice into a low murmur. “Have we considered one of those long-reach grabbers? I think that would be a good approach, you know, stick it out from a safe distance and—” Abbot made a pinching motion with his hand, and Mohan averted her eyes and pressed her lips together in a fight to not smile. God, he loved that; loved making her smile. He turned back to Old Jim, who eyed him suspiciously. “How’s the CIA trying to find you?” he asked, tone gone very serious.
Old Jim lifted his head and made eye contact. “They’re sending out 5G waves. The vibrations, man. The vibrations in the metal of the paperclip, they repel the 5G. Paperclip. Nine letters, right? Nine. P-a-p-e-r-c-l-i-p. That’s a perfect number. Three times three, and that’s the holy trinity, right, so the metal’s perfect for turning away the powers of Satan. Because he’s the prince of the power of the air, and that’s the 5G. Nobody can see it. Nobody but me.”
Mohan opened her mouth, but Abbot shook his head, tight and minimal, and she got the message; didn’t speak at all. God, he liked her. Quick on the uptake when she needed to be. “Can’t argue with that,” he said calmly to Old Jim. “Tell you what, though, the CIA? They started doing this thing where they use 6G now, right? And the 6G can see only metal. All metal. Even paperclips.”
“6G,” repeated Old Jim, looking slightly awed, but still suspicious.
“Yeah, like 666, you know?” Abbot lifted his eyebrows like he was prompting the other man jutting his chin at him: see? You know, you’re smart, figure it out .
“How do I know you’re tellin’ the truth?” demanded Old Jim, and Abbot knew he had him: he reached into his T-shirt’s collar with a thumb, pulling out the chain of his dog tags and rattling them a little.
“I know everything they know,” he whispered conspiratorially, and Old Jim’s eyes widened.
“Those goddamn motherfuckers,” he said heatedly.
Abbot tucked the tags away, keeping a look of quiet authority on his face. “Dr. Mohan here’s just trying to help you.”
Old Jim rattled his wrist restraints and lifted his head. “I didn’t know about the 6G. You shoulda told me. Shit, Doc. Get this thing outta me.”
“We thought you knew. I’m real sorry about the misunderstanding. Dr. Mohan, you want to…?” Abbot indicated the man’s bare crotch, bent paperclip and all, and Mohan stepped over, gloving up.
“All right, sir. I need to know how many times the metal might be bent in there,” she said, lifting Old Jim’s flaccid penis with its DIY decoration dangling out of the tip, and Abbot stepped back, letting her do her job and leaving the chart on the door. She’d do a great job, get that thing out, put the man on antibiotics and maybe also get him a bed in an inpatient place, depending. More likely that he’d be released, since he wasn’t technically a danger to himself. And then he’d probably be back in here a month down the road, wearing a homemade tinfoil suit.
Santos ran back into him by the northside nurses’ station. “Hey, Dr. Abbot,” she said breathlessly. “Our postpartum mom came clean. Her boyfriend was pressuring her into sex. Bloodwork showed a septic infection in the uterine wall.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Abbot wearily. “All right. Antibiotics, and give her as many resources on domestic violence as you can.”
“Actually, she started hemorrhaging a couple minutes ago. I had to send her upstairs for surgery.”
He couldn’t even feign surprise at that. “Well, shit. You need a floor cleanup?”
“Already on it. Um, and Perlah said there’s a broken arm in Pedes?”
“I’ll check in on it. Thanks, Santos.”
“Sure,” she said, and scurried back off toward the intake area.
God, he wanted a cigarette. He hadn’t taken a break the whole shift, apart from a five minute lull spent in the bathroom at midnight-thirty eating a sandwich with one hand and taking a piss with the other. He’d quit smoking years ago. Figured with all the issues he already had, he didn’t need to add a nicotine addiction into the mix. And sometimes he just needed something to do with his hands. What was this, hour fourteen or fifteen of his shift? He’d go home right before Robby came in. Pass out on the couch. Take his leg off, put his knees up. Until then, Abbot headed toward Pedes. Life waited for no man, and definitely not for him.
Mohan finished writing up her chart and turned around to leave the behavioral room. Her back was sore and her eyes ached. That had been hard, delicate work, removing a paperclip bent in four places from the length of a man’s urethra. Worse than catheters. Jeez. She’d had to put him on antibiotics because she was pretty sure he had a kidney infection along with the physical tissue infection in his urethra, too. How the hell had Abbot managed to talk Old Jim down? She’d have to catch him and ask if she got a chance before his shift was over.
They’d grown closer over the past months. Really close. Nothing anyone could possibly construe as unprofessional or inappropriate, obviously, but after several months of dancing around each other and trading compliments and small smiles and odd moments where he’d brush her hand reaching for something and she mulled over whether it was on purpose or not while purposely doing the same thing to him, she’d found him on the roof one morning as the sun was starting to peek over the horizon, lighting the world in a pinky lavender haze after one of the worst nights in the Pitt they’d had in weeks.
She’d been trying to find a place to sit and cry. He’d been standing on the edge over the parking lot, eyes shut, wind ruffling his silver-shot curls and a look of deep, apathetic exhaustion on his face. They’d lost a ten year old whose older cousin had been playing with his mom’s loaded, unsecured gun, a boy who’d been alive on arrival but dead by the time Abbot had finally called it, after an hour of desperate work. But he’d turned and looked at her, and he must have seen something because then he’d climbed back over the rail and come to sit by her in silence as she’d pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed into her hands. Arm around her shoulder. Hand rubbing her back. Heavy voice, raspy with his own tears. It’s gonna be okay, Samira. It’s all right. Let it out. It’s all right.
They hadn’t met on the roof again, but sometimes they had their breaks around the same time and stole a few moments of sitting by each other and eating in silence. Sometimes they happened to be in the same elevator. Made small talk. But something about their relationship had shifted in some indefinable way from something more than just an attending and a 3R. Abbot wasn’t the type to sit around and talk about his past life, bond with people. She still didn’t know much about his personal life, and he didn’t ask about hers. But he was fairer than Dr. Robby and Mohan was glad she’d been moved to night shift with him. And she liked how strong and sure his hands had been on her back, comforting. Reassuring. And she liked the way her name had sounded in his mouth. Samira. Samira. And she liked the maybe-flirting, the way it was completely explainable as ordinary, the way it was also completely explainable as—
No, no, no. She did not need to think about how he said her name or how his forearms looked when he was concentrating on sutures or the soft curls of his silvered hair or the thin delicate wrinkles at the back of his neck when he lifted his head to look at the monitor: she needed to focus on her patients and not her stupid maybe-kind of crush on her attending. Mohan read over the intakes and was trying to decide if she should take the alcohol poisoning in Room 6 or the vomiting and diarrhea in 10 when Perlah poked her head around the corner.
“Dana says you need to go on break,” she called.
“I’m fine,” said Mohan, “thanks.”
“Admin rules. Mandatory fifteen for every seven hours, and you’re on hour fourteen so you get thirty.”
“Is it a good time?”
“Yeah, there’s no urgent anything right now, and if there is, Collins came in an hour ago and she can handle it.”
Mohan sighed. “All right. Tell her I’m in the break room if she needs a hand.” She made her way back through the doors past the Hub and around the curved hallway near the north nurses’ station, heading for the door to the breakroom, but just as she reached it, Abbot stepped out of the pediatric room, glancing her direction, and something about the way he looked got her ears hot and she didn’t know why so she ducked her head and pushed the door open, avoiding his gaze. Jeez, Samira. You’re acting like a college student. Could you be any more obvious? Inside the small breakroom, she headed to the sink and flicked on the electric kettle, waiting for the water to boil as she got down a mug and some of her stash of powdered chai from that generic Asian mart across the river in the Hill District that she kept in the back of the cabinet.
The door opened. She glanced over. Abbot was coming in, and he gave her a nod before sliding down into the plastic chair at the table and leaning his head against the wall with a sigh. Clearly, he was exhausted: that was obvious from the set to his face and the heavy way his shoulders rested, so she didn’t say anything and just stood there while the water boiled and she made her chai and then slipped over to sit in the other chair, sipping the steaming liquid. Awful. Watery. But hot and caffeinated, which was all that mattered. “Perlah strong-arm you into a break, too?” she whispered.
“Mm,” he mumbled. “Told her if I sat down I’d fall asleep. Keep talking. I can’t rack out on the clock.”
She smiled. “How’d you know how to handle Old Jim?”
“Oh, that? Easy.” Abbot opened both eyes and hauled himself forward with a sigh, elbows on the table. “You don’t reason with crazy. You out-crazy the crazy. Meet them where they’re at. Somebody dead seriously believes that purple elephants are taking over the government, you don’t tell them they’re crazy and stupid and wrong, you say, actually, it’s the pink elephants, many people don’t know this, you’re now on the inside track, and you can stop the pink elephants by doing exactly what I say.”
“Out-crazy the crazy. I’ll have to remember that.” She sipped the chai.
“It’s an art. Don’t go too overboard or they get suspicious. Don’t hit too softly or they won’t believe you. Small, short, credible.”
“Like the dog tags. Nice touch. Handy prop to have.”
He let air out of his nose in a thin chuckle as his dark eyes darted to her face. “They’re not a prop. Very real, unfortunately.”
“No, I mean in the sense of using in the circumstances that you—” She shook her head, stumbling over her words. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“Wait, why did you say unfortunately ?”
Abbot shifted his weight. “Dog tags are unfortunate, Mohan. They’re morgue labels on the living.”
“Why do you wear them, then?” This was the closest thing to a real conversation they’d had in weeks, and she was intrigued. If they were real, he’d been in the military before he’d been a doctor, but she’d never heard a word about it from anyone, let alone Abbot himself.
“I guess I think of myself as already kinda dead. The tags are a courtesy.” He flashed her a crooked, close-mouthed smile, and she didn’t know whether to grimace or laugh.
“Wow. Great stuff there, Dr. Abbot.”
“See, this is why I don’t socialize much,” he said, lowering his eyes as the smile dimmed to something smaller, quieter. “Therapist says the morbidity is a coping mechanism, but I think it was pre-installed before the PTSD ever came around.”
Mohan nudged him under the table with her foot gently. “Well, fortunately, your gallows humor has no effect on your quality as a doctor.”
He lifted his gaze and his eyes creased into a wreath of smile lines. “Mee- oww, ” he said. “There’s a hot compliment if I ever heard one.”
“Sorry,” she said, laughing as she drained the rest of her watery chai. Her stomach was fluttering and flipping and this was ridiculous: she was almost thirty, she did not sit here with butterflies in her stomach and was he flirting? “How about, uh— ooh, Dr. Abbot, you’re sooo competent and nice, and everybody who’s ever come into the hospital just loves you so much—”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “Nah, that’s laying it on way too thick. Remember? Don't go overboard or the crazy gets suspicious. Everybody? There’s got to be at least a few people who come in here and leave hating my guts.”
“Okay, you have a point. Maybe that one guy from last week who tried to punch you because you said he had chlamydia.”
“Last week? Mohan, that was two days ago.”
“Sorry, it’s all kind of blurring together.”
“See, this is why they’re making us take breaks,” he said, sighing like it was a great injustice. “Shen passed out on the job two weeks ago and now it’s everybody’s problem.”
“Kind of nice, though. Sitting down and just talking like a human being.”
“Beats the roof,” he said, nodding, and that was the closest he’d come to ever acknowledging the day they’d lost that kid and held each other and cried up there. “We’ve got air conditioning here, for one.”
“Yeah, and a microwave.”
“Ah, you could put a microwave on the roof. You’d need a hell of an extension cord, though.” He shifted his weight, leaning a little toward her with a small smile on his face. “We’d have to, uh, run it through the window or something.”
She mirrored him, leaning in and narrowing her eyes very seriously. “Do they make hundred-foot-long extension cords, Dr. Abbot?”
Why was he leaning in even closer? The smell of his skin wafted through the air: warm and musky, faint smell of antiseptic. “They just might. We’d have to look, Dr. Mohan.”
I don’t even remember what the hell we’re talking about. “Really, really hard,” she whispered, and his eyes slipped down to her mouth, then back up as if he was afraid she’d noticed, his breathing gone abruptly ragged for a split second—
The door opened. Both of them jerked away from each other as Mel, fresh and early for her shift with her lunchbox in her hand, stepped three paces in and then checked herself like she’d just clocked what she’d seen. “Oh,” she said awkwardly, staring from Mohan to Abbot and back again, “Um—”
“Fridge is pretty full if you’re looking for somewhere to put that, Dr. King,” said Abbot casually, as if he hadn’t been three inches from Mohan’s face a second ago.
“Oh, it’s not a problem. I usually anticipate the fridge being full and I put an ice pack in the bottom,” she assured him, lifting the lunchbox. “Or bring nonperishable food.”
Mohan would not look at Abbot. She wouldn’t. “Heads up that Perlah’s got an eye on everyone’s hours today. She’ll make you take fifteen for every seven.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” said Mel vaguely, stashing her lunchbox on the top shelf of the cabinets by a stack of Styrofoam cups in a plastic sleeve before she turned around and looked at both of them again like she couldn’t quite figure out how to say what she wanted to say. “Were you guys... kissing?” she finally asked, cheeks red.
“No,” said Mohan, at the same time that Abbot said with great relish, “Oh, absolutely, I come in here to kiss my residents all the time. Revolving door of ‘em for thirty minutes a shift—”
“He’s joking!” Mohan blurted out, frantic and loud, shooting a glare at Abbot and making a face, then turning back to the baffled-looking woman standing in the middle of the floor. “He’s joking. Nobody was kissing anybody.”
“Oh. Okay. It just— your faces were extremely close. I thought—”
“Ah, Mohan just bet me I’d blink first in a staring contest,” said Abbot, injecting just the right amount of exhaustion into his voice as he leaned forward and rubbed his temples. “We were trying to stay awake on the fifteen. Long night. Stupid game.” He waved his hand.
“Yeah,” said Mohan firmly, nodding. Her heart was going a million miles a minute. “That’s exactly what it was. A game to stay awake.”
Dr. King lifted her chin, nodding. “Oh. Well, the best way to stay awake is physical activity or engaging in something mentally stimulating. Uh, good luck, and I’ll be out on the floor, Dr. Abbot. See you soon.”
“You can get stared by checking the case in Pedes. Fractured radius. See if the X-Ray I ordered is any closer to getting done."
“Thanks! Will do.” Mel smiled and headed out, shutting the door behind her, and Mohan turned toward Abbot, incredulous.
“Revolving door?” she asked, not knowing whether to laugh or be appalled.
“‘That’s exactly what it was. A game to stay awake’,” he mimicked robotically, a smile twisting his mouth to one side and lifting his cheeks as he crossed his arms and leaned back. “You’re lucky the one doctor who takes everything at face value was the one who came in here, because I think you’re the worst liar we have in this hospital. What was that?”
“That was me agreeing with you!” She nudged his foot under the table. Not quite a kick. “You can’t joke about that stuff to people, Abbot. It’ll open some kind of— I don’t know, harassment investigation.”
“Nah, that requires a pattern of behavior. And depending on who you ask, I’m a crazy asshole, or a grudge-nurser, or a man of mystery, or a loner. But the one thing nobody can say about me is that I have a pattern of fucking around with people at work.” He tilted his head back and cleared his throat, sighing as he reached up with both hands to lace against the nape of his neck and stretch his head back, and she noticed, not for the first time, the wedding ring on his left hand.
So… so he hadn’t been flirting. Okay. She’d overthought it. Thank God she hadn’t done anything. “I guess the rates of, uh, getting into relationships in hospitals are pretty high,” she said, because she had no idea what else to say. “Cheating, too, probably.”
Abbot’s head was still leaned back, face pointing at the ceiling, angelically lit in fluorescents that smoothed out the weathering of his skin. “Yup. So are divorce rates for doctors. It happens, you know, when you spend more time a day with your coworkers going through high-stress shit than you do with your family, your partner, whoever. Trauma bonding. Your brain cooks up in a soup of hormones and before you know it you’re cheating on your fiancé or your spouse or your partner with the ambulance driver you see every day. Or a nurse who helped you staunch a bleeder.” He tilted his head up and casually, so casually, without even looking at her, added, “Or someone you found on the roof of the hospital having a mental breakdown, who sat with you.”
Mohan felt like someone had jerked her chair out from under her. Like she was free-falling, dizzyingly fast, yanked from stationary nothing to whirling through space. “Well, it wouldn’t be cheating if I did it,” she managed, numb. “I, um— I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t have anybody. I mean, I don’t— I have my mom, but she lives in New Jersey, uh, I—” Why are you talking about your mom in this conversation, what’s wrong with you, shut up! “I am trying to say that it’s not infidelity if the person isn’t already in a relationship,” she said very quickly before snapping her mouth shut and looking at the Formica tabletop. Oh, God, she’d completely fucked that up, what was she thinking, what—
When he spoke, it was quiet, measured, matter-of-fact. “Well, it wouldn’t be infidelity for me either.”
She looked over at him, startled, but he wasn’t looking at her face, he was looking at her hands where they rested on the table, or maybe at something past her hands that she couldn’t see. “I thought— I mean, you wear a wedding ring,” she said hesitantly.
He looked up at her, keen-eyed and sharp. “Well, I wear dog tags, too,” he said.
The room felt somehow way too big and empty and also incredibly small and close at the same time. Her skin had broken out in goosebumps. Her mouth was dry. “Yes. You do,” was all she could force out of her trembling lips as they stared at each other, mere feet away from each other. I could lean over and kiss him. I could. I could—
“Fifteen minutes are almost up,” he said swiftly, and stood, swaying for a moment to get his balance. “See you out there, Mohan.”
“Abbot,” she said, and got up, following him to the door. “Abbot, wait.”
“The ER waits for nobody,” he said, pausing and looking back at her. Something unreadable was in his eyes, something quiet and pained and stifled, and she reached out and touched his hand. Not held it, no: she just let her fingers brush the back of his knuckles and, startled, felt his hand jerk toward hers sharply.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said immediately, backing up a step.
“What?” he asked hoarsely, staring at her.
“Sorry, I— I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I was reaching for your hand, you— sorry, didn’t you—? You just smacked me away. You—” She looked down at his hand, and saw that the one she’d touched, the left one, was trembling.
He saw her watching. He curled his hand into a tight, white-knuckled fist, all freckles and veins. “No, I didn’t,” he said with some effort. “Sorry, I mean. I didn’t mean to hit you.”
Mohan put her hands over her eyes, despairing of ever getting a normal sentence out. “No, you didn’t—” God, why was this all wrong? “Look.” She put her hands down. “I get off fifteen minutes after you do. You’re parked in the garage, or…?”
“Garage, yeah,” he said after a second. “'93 Ford Bronco. Aftermarket gray. Plate number VDP 4193. Top floor, east corner by that support pillar.”
She had to smile. “That one space nobody else uses because they can’t parallel park well enough to not lose their mirror reversing in?”
“The very same,” he said, his face relaxing a little.
“Okay. If you want to have a real conversation about whatever— whatever this is, wait for me. In the car. I’ll come to you.”
His dark eyes glinted. “What if I’m busy and I have to leave?” he asked.
Was he testing her? “You’re an ER doctor getting off the night shift. You have absolutely nothing to do but go home and sleep.”
Abbot’s tone took on a lighter tone. “You don’t know that. I could be waiting on an important delivery at home. I might have a dog I gotta let out.”
“It’s your decision, Abbot,” she said, turning to put her mug back in the sink and heading back to the door. As she moved past him, reaching out to put her left hand on the doorknob, she tilted her head up: he was about five-nine and she was five-six and her eyes were just about level with his nose. “But if you leave, you’re never gonna know what I wanted to say.”
His eyes searched her face, his lips parting a little, and Mohan didn’t give him a chance to say a thing before she pushed past him, out the door, her right hand just grazing the side of his hip. Plausible deniability. A total accident of position, nothing intentional: she could easily write it off like that if she wanted to. But Abbot didn’t say a word. Just remained exactly where he was, stock-still, as she slipped out and shut the door behind her.
Oh, my god. She let air out of her lungs in a thin stream as she marched back to the Hub and picked up a chart at random, trying to clear her head: only another hour or so. She could get through this. She’d have to.
Frankly, the fact that he’d been a combat medic for almost ten years was the only thing that saved Abbot for the rest of his shift. He went on autopilot: he was skilled enough for that and there was no immediately pressing life or death case presenting on the floor. Long ago, he’d learned to exhibit the symptoms of present, clear awareness. Eye contact. Small smile. Repeating names. All of that shit. Meanwhile his mind was about a million miles away, his brain humming and flickering like a propane tank or something about to fucking explode as his eyes and awareness kept drawing themselves to the dark head of Dr. Samira Mohan as she walked into a room or turned to talk to a nurse or Collins or someone or, worse, bent over the Hub counter to ask Perlah a question. Dark scrubs, tantalizingly featureless, outlining her thighs, her ass, and Abbot had to go to the bathroom to dump cold water down the back of his neck for a full minute to recover.
This is fucked up, he thought blindly, staring at this reflection. Old man. Middle-aged, anyway, probably prematurely aged by the stress and the sun and the PTSD and all the other shit he’d been through in his life. When had his hair gone that gray? When had he developed those deep-creased lines on his forehead, around his eyes? When had gravity started tugging the front of his cheeks down, the corners of his mouth? This is fucked up. Who am I kidding? She doesn’t need this. I tried to warn her. I did. I tried. That touch on his hand, warm and gentle, had spooked the shit out of him. Verbal playful maybe-flirting was one thing— and he’d been pushing it, he didn’t know why— but she’d reached out and brushed his knuckles with her fingers and he’d jerked, accidentally knocking her hand away and she’d thought he’d hit her, hit her, he’d never hit her, he’d never hurt her in a million fucking years, not if someone held a gun to his head and ordered it. His skin was still tingling on the back of his knuckles, her touch present like a ghost that wouldn’t fucking leave. I don’t have a pattern of fucking around with people at work. He’d meant that as an explanation. As an indirect way of telling her she was different, she was special: she’d taken it completely wrong or else he’d not said it right because then she’d started talking about cheating, of all fuckin’ things, and he’d tried to bring it back around—
He could not stand here in the bathroom catastrophizing, goddammit. It was almost five. He was a goddamn doctor and he needed to get his head screwed back on and stop feeling like he was going to disintegrate thinking about Mohan’s beautiful big brown eyes and wide smile and the way her nose crinkled up when she was excited. And he could not meet her in the garage. He could not. It was only gonna go one way if he did, and he didn’t think he could handle her face when he let her down, told her this had been a misunderstanding and he wasn’t— wasn’t—
You cannot do this shit. You cannot do this. No. You cannot fucking do this. Massive breach of professional etiquette or what the fuck ever. Massive. Do not do this. You can’t. Abbot gripped the sink’s edge to stop his fingers from shaking. Nothing had felt better than Mohan saying she didn’t have a boyfriend, nothing. The image he’d built in his mind of her perfect match, a six foot four young god with cheekbones that could cut glass and two working legs, had dissolved immediately, replaced by absolute stunned shock as he belatedly realized there was literally nothing standing between them anymore. Nothing. Just them: a beat-to-shit combat vet with gray hair, an extensive amount of sun damage, and a prosthetic leg. And a beautiful young doctor, gentle and intelligent and warm, full of life and light even when she was clueless, who always smelled like clean soap and the faintest hint of cinnamon-vanilla. So obviously he could not do this, no matter how badly he wanted to. Could not ruin her life. Could not meet her in the parking garage on the top floor, alone, to talk about their feelings.
But if you leave, you’re never gonna know what I wanted to say.
I know what you want to say, he thought, staring into the drain of the sink where the tiniest bit of mineral deposit was accumulating from the tap water, the tap water from the Allegheny River that flowed down to meet the Monongahela and become something new together, that was doing that right outside this hospital, right under his feet, right now. I know what you want to say, Dr. Mohan. But I’m not gonna give you a chance to say it, because I can’t ruin your career like that, I can’t live the rest of my life knowing that you worked your ass off to get where you are and for the rest of your fucking career you got labeled with the This Resident Messed With Her Attending tag because I couldn’t keep it in my goddamn head or my pants.
He raised his head and took a breath. He’d explain that, at least. Maybe he owed her that. But he wasn’t gonna hang around the parking garage for fifteen minutes to do it. No, he’d explain tomorrow, avoid a conversation where they were both wiped from a sixteen hour shift and their brains weren’t operating at full capacity. And she’d understand, because she was Mohan and that was just the kind of person she was. She had to.
After dumping her scrubs in the locker and changing back into her clean tank top from the previous day and a pair of leggings, Mohan signed out, slung her bag over her shoulder, and headed for the stairs to the garage. She’d seen Abbot for the last time maybe around thirty minutes ago, and hadn’t seen him leave: that was normal. Collins, bridging the night and day shift, took over the shift change briefing at the Hub before Robby was due to come in around seven. Her heart was thudding painfully loudly in her ears as she darted up the stairs to the roof of the garage.
She knew exactly where she was going. Back corner of the roof, where a concrete pillar almost blocked the space. One of the anesthesiologists had backed into that pillar a month ago and complained to admin about it, and in the Pitt they’d all laughed for a week. Ooooh, I backed my Mercedes-Benz I bought with all my anesthesiologist money into the load-bearing pillar and scratched it, oooh, I’m gonna have to buy a Lexus now, this is sooooo unfair. But Abbot had taken over the space, expertly maneuvering his car backwards into it, hood pointing out like a lurking animal, just enough space between the door and the back wall of the garage to let him in and out. She’d seen him a few times, sliding it in backward, and it struck her that the corner there, hood facing out, was the best place and way to park on the roof if someone wanted to be hidden and also see everything going on up there.
Mohan pushed the heavy door wide and stepped out onto the top floor of the garage into fresh morning air, startling a few pigeons who had congregated on the asphalt. They flew off in a fluttering mass of warbling coos, up through the open sides of the garage and out to the early pre-dawn light. The fluorescents overhead in the canopy that offered sun protection to the cars parked up here were clicking off, one by one as she made her way down the central aisle, past a few cars parked here and there. Down to the end, turning right, down to the corner, and there was the pillar, tucked in close to the last parking spot at the end, and there was the dark gray old Bronco. And Abbot inside it, in the driver’s seat, head tilted back on the headrest, completely passed out, face slack and chest rising and falling.
She bit down on her lower lip. Should she wake him up? Maybe stand outside the driver’s side door and stare at him? She couldn’t open the passenger side door because he was parked so close to the pillar. Real conundrum here, Samira. That was fine. She circled around to the left side, the driver’s door, and looked at him for a moment through the tinted window with her back to the concrete half-wall. He must have racked out up here the moment he’d gotten off work: his keys were in his lap and his camo backpack was on the passenger seat. She almost hated to wake him. Maybe she shouldn’t. Maybe she should leave a note. But he’d waited, so obviously he wanted to talk. So she raised a hand and rapped lightly on the glass.
Abbot jerked to wakefulness almost instantly, eyebrows flying up and head jerking forward, hands flying up as if to cover his face as he searched around and in a split second found her. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, muffled and quiet from inside the car, covering his face with his hands.
“Hi, sorry. I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“Ah—” He looked at her through the glass, picked up his keys, looked at her again, and motioned her backward with his hand. Mohan moved down by the rear door so he had space to crack the driver’s side door open and swivel his body, knees out. He’d taken off his prosthetic, and his right pant leg flapped empty below the knee, his left shoe planted on the running board. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he said roughly, rubbing his eyes. “Shit.”
“It’s fine.” Clearly, he was exhausted and maybe not in the mood for a conversation. Mohan jerked her thumb over at the rest of the cars dotting the floor. “I can go, I’m parked way over there. I just— I said I’d come, so I came.”
“Yeah, you did,” he said, looking at her with an inscrutable expression on his weathered face.
“I’ve been standing all shift. Can I get in and sit?”
He swallowed visibly, his throat moving as he ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Uh, my car’s a mess.”
“I don’t care.”
Abbot blinked. “Okay. You’ll have to climb in through the driver’s side, though. Here, let me get out, I’ll get my leg back on and—”
“Oh, no, no, you don’t have to do that.” Mohan stepped forward. “I’ll just climb over you, it’s fine. You don’t need to— I know being on it for that long can’t be comfortable, you know, no matter how ergonomic it’s made to be.”
“Climb over me?” he asked, chuckling as she stood by the door and gauged the space. “What am I, a fence?”
She handed him her tote bag. “Just move your bag,” she said, smiling and shaking her head, and he shifted back, knees facing the wheel, to reach over and push both his and her bag to the floor of the passenger side. Then she hoisted herself up to the running board, twisted to plant her left knee over his lap, turned her body to face him so she could pull her other knee up off the running board, and immediately got stuck between him and the steering wheel, which dug into her back. Her face was right in his, warm and solid and he looked completely blank, like he was actively trying to not look any kind of way. Which was understandable. Because she was actively straddling him in the driver’s seat, and this was now awkward. “Um. I’m so sorry. Can you move the seat back a little—”
“Yeah, yeah, let me just—” He leaned forward, chin pressed into her arm, to reach the lever under the seat, and pulled. The whole seat slammed itself backward fast under their combined weight, and came to a sharp halt, sending Mohan’s bare neck right into Abbot’s face, and the only thing that stopped her from smashing her nose against the headrest was her hands coming up to brace herself against his shoulders fast as lightning, instinctive and quick. He exhaled harshly, hot damp air gusting down her skin, and she tightened her hands in his shirt, the sound of him sending heat all over her stupid body and the hair went up on the back of her neck as his hands came up to cup her back, press against her shirt and the skin and flesh below it. As his face turned into the hollow of her throat, his nose pushing into the dip of her collarbone. “Mohan?” he rasped, low and hot.
“Abbot?”
“Close my goddamn door.”
She reached out with her right hand, groping for the handle: she hauled it shut with all her strength and then Abbot’s mouth was open against her skin, Abbot’s hands were sliding up her back, mapping out the texture of her shirt, the topography of her body like a surgeon trying to decide where to make the first incision, where the best pressure point might be. She lifted her head, lips parted as heat boiled her gut and lit up her body like fireworks, and saw the back of his car: the rear seats had been ripped out and replaced with a sleeping mat, a single pillow in a yellowed pillowcase pushed to the side, and two hard-sided Pelican cases latched shut and secured to the floor with a strap but she didn’t have time to think about any of that because her whole body was pressing into Abbot, trembling as he touched her and touched her and licked and kissed up the side of her throat. Shallow breaths ripped out of her throat in stuttering little jerks. “Ah-ah-ah-Abbot—”
“I wasn’t gonna stay,” he gasped against her skin, into the fall of her loose hair. “I wasn’t gonna fucking stay, I wasn’t gonna let you do this, let you throw your life away, fuck, goddammit—”
“I don’t care, I don’t care,” she moaned, gripping the beck of his head and burying her fingers in his soft curls and pulling and he bucked up against her, a low moan escaping his throat. “Please, Abbot, please do you know h-how long it’s been since I’ve done anything that wasn’t fucking going to work at eight at night and sleeping all day and— Doordashing and— I don’t— I don’t have anyone, just touch me, please, please just touch me—”
“Holy shit,” he gasped, gripping her tank top. “We cannot fuckin' do this in the front seat.”
“Please,” she begged, rolling her hips down against his and he groaned, hand tightening in her shirt. “Please.”
“Someone. Someone’s gonna see us.” He mouthed at her neck and she squirmed in his lap: the position was not gonna work anyway because her knees were stuck too far back like this to let her grind down on him. “Samira. Get— get into the back.”
“The back,” she repeated, looking back up at the rear of the Bronco and the flat sleeping pad. Her brain must be short circuiting. “You haven’t even kissed me on the lips yet and you’re trying to fuck me in the back of your car?”
“Well, shit, let me fix that,” he said, and got his hand tangled in her hair, at the back of her head, pulled her face down to his and kissed her so hard and deep that it felt like she was spinning, his tongue slipping over her bottom lip, teeth pressing in, gasping against her mouth and she gave him as good as she got. No quarter. No surrender. She sucked his bottom lip between her teeth and pulled softly, and he made a noise like he’d been shot, one hand sliding under her ass, cupping her hard. “Get in the back, get. In the back. Please. Mohan.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, letting go of him and disentangling herself from his body, sliding sideways and wriggling into the open rear of the Bronco through the gap between the driver and passenger seats. She rolled over, scooting back, as Abbot coiled himself up, right knee planted between the seats, slipping his compact, lithe body through the gap and sliding forward on his hands and knees to plant himself on top of her on the mattress pad and kiss her again, bracketing her head with his forearms. Her hair tangled around his wrists, his fingers, but he was kissing her again and pushing his hips against her and Mohan reached up to slip her hands up inside his shirt, up his sweat-damp back, her short nails scrabbling for purchase as she rocked up against him. “Fuck,” she gasped, breaking the kiss. “Oh, my god. I was going to talk. I had a whole— speech planned out—”
Abbot pulled his head back and looked down at her, his cheeks flushed and his lips swollen. “We can stop, if you want to—”
She shook her head. “No, no, shut up, get back here—” and she got one hand in his hair, tugged him down to kiss her again, let him moan softly and rock into her body again as her free hand slipped down to cup his crotch, mapping out something heavy and thick, and Abbot’s breath stuttered as he broke the kiss and ground down into her palm. “Yeah?” she panted.
“I don’t— I do not have condoms in my car, Mohan.”
“That’s fine, I have the Depo shot, just get your pants off—”
“Son of a bitch,” he rasped, peeling himself off her and kneeling, head bent to avoid the roof of the Bronco as he started fumbling with his belt on his knees and she sat up and slid herself back and took off her leggings, kicking them off and pushing them to the side. She almost missed it as she turned back to him and he leaned in for another kiss, one hand in his pants and one cupping her chin, but he was halfway out of his underwear and he was— he—
“Do you have lube in your car?” she asked, breathing heavily as she broke away from him and tugged down her underwear.
His smile lines deepened as he flashed her half a real smile, with teeth, showing the overlapping front incisors she rarely ever saw that gave him a boyish charm almost alien to the isolated, quiet doctor she knew. “No, I don’t keep lube in my car, Mohan.”
A laugh bubbled up in her throat. “Shit. Okay. I just—” She gestured at his body helplessly, breathing hard. “I don’t think that thing’s going to fit without some serious help.”
Abbot shrugged and gave her a sly, sideways look. “Well, I can always put my pants back on and head up to Radiology, ask about borrowing some lube from the ultrasound m—”
“No, no, you’re not going anywhere, absolutely not,” she protested, reaching out and hooking her fingers through his belt loops to tug him close, and his breath trembled a little, his eyelids fluttering. “We’ll work it out. I got this.”
“You always do,” he said, strained and quiet. “I— I got an idea, though. Roll over. Hands and knees for me.”
Shit, she thought, heart rate racking up inside her chest, and slipped to all fours, facing away from him and toward the back of the Bronco, where she could see the two hard-sided cases again, a cooler, a few bags of clothes and granola bars and cans of ravioli and what was going on in here? She did not care. She was so hot all over she couldn’t even breathe as Abbot reached forward, pushed her shirt up past her breasts, tugged down her bralette, and palmed her, leaning forward over her body, T-shirt brushing against her bare skin. “We’re gonna get you nice and wet,” he whispered, low and rough, and she shut her eyes, stifling a moan as his hand sneaked down between her bare thighs, cupping her, pushing. “Yeah? That okay?”
“Yes, yeah. Oh, my god.” She pushed back against his hand, gasping a little and hanging her head as he used his fingers to stroke gently, pressed a line of kisses to her bare skin from her shoulder down to the small of her back, his fingers still pushing against her and sending shocks of bright, hot feeling all over her, everywhere, everywhere. “Abbot,” she gasped, trembling.
“It’s Jack,” he said without preamble, and shifted, his body lowering, and then his mouth was on her and she was choking against the mattress, knees apart, ass up, tilting back toward his face so he could eat her out from behind as he slung his head sideways and lapped at her with tiny, kitten-soft licks. Her fingers dug into the foam of the mattress, into anything they could reach as she hung on for dear life.
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Ab—Jack, fuck, fuck wha— wh— uhhhhhhnnnggghh oh my god oh my god—”
“Mmmm,” he hummed between her thighs, and she tilted her chin to her chest to look down under her body at his head, which was partially upside down, red, and sweating, nose jammed against her skin and buried half in her black curls. One eye flashed open and found her, winked, and then his fingers slipped in, gentle and exploratory, curling up against her insides and she choked on her own tongue and jerked her face back up into the air.
“Can you please just fuck me, pl-please—”
“Hang on,” he said, moving his hand. “You’re not ready yet.”
“Yes, I am, fuck—”
“I’m the attending, and no you’re not.” He pulled his fingers out and rubbed at her clit again with two, and she ground her teeth and shuddered against his hand, seeking the pressure. “Ahh,” he whispered. “Yeah, okay. You wanted this, huh?” Softly, he pushed up against her, giving her the pressure she’d been trying to find, and Samira’s breath left her in a thin little whine as she squirmed down against him, panting. “I got you. I got you.”
“Take your fucking shirt off,” she rasped, turning her cheek to the side. Half her hair was stuck in her eyes, but she could see him as he reached up behind his head, yanked his T-shirt off from the collar up, over his head. The dog tags around his neck clanked, landing against his sweaty chest, between two well-formed, rounded pectoral muscles in a thatch of silver and brown chest hair and he was so, so pale under that shirt, all the smooth freckled skin from mid-bicep to the base of his neck protected from the sun. “Yeah?” he asked, shooting her a look as he balled up his shirt and tossed it to the corner, biceps and forearms bulging and wiry, hard with muscle.
“Yeah, shit, yeah,” she whispered, and lifted herself up and back toward him, tugging her own shirt off as he buried his face in the crook of her neck and shoulder from the back and just inhaled her like she was the best thing he’d ever smelled in his life. One hand came up to cup at her left breast and the other slid down between her thighs. The dog tags were hard and warm at her back, his sweat-matted body hair tickling her skin, and his dick was pressed snugly at the small of her back, broad and heavy and hotter than the rest of him, which was saying something, because he felt like he was single-handedly heating the inside of the car to tropical levels.
“You’re so fucking beautiful, Samira,” he breathed against her neck, and she felt her face go warm along with the rest of her. “God. God. I kept telling myself, kept saying. You’d never want me. I’m too old, I don’t, I don’t have anything you could possibly want.”
“You respect me,” she whispered, and his breath trembled on her skin. “You like me and you respect my work and my methods and I like you too, Jack, I like being on your shift and if anybody puts me back on days I’ll—”
Abbot’s voice dropped down into a low, brutal register. “Nobody’s putting you back on days. Nobody.” His hand slid down her thigh, curling around her muscle. “I’ll lose my goddamn mind if that happens. I told Robby. No. No. You’re mine, you’re my R3 and I’ll be damned if I let you go anywhere you’re not goddamn appreciated.”
She let out a weak little sound, trembling, as heat sank low and heavy in her gut. She couldn’t help it. Appreciated. Respected. Wanted. Loved. I’ll be damned if I let you go anywhere. His fingers slipped between her thighs and delved in with a slick, obscene sound. “Oh—” she gasped.
“There we go,” he said, and gently, slowly, giving Mohan time to move and support herself, pushed her forward over to her hands and knees again with his free hand until she was on her face again with her ass in the air and he was kneeling between her thighs, hands on her ass, thumbs spreading her open, slicking her up. “Easy does it. Don’t want any microtearing. Easy.”
She thought she might die if he didn’t get that fucking thing into her. Like, right now. Immediately. First class, expedited, overnight. “Put your goddamn cock in me, Jack, please—”
Something broad and heavy nudged against her as he fit himself in, and then pushed in. And in. And in. And Mohan let her mouth fall open and her eyes fall shut and just felt it all, pushing the limits of her body and full and thick and every nerve on fire until he finally bottomed out, trembling, both hands on her waist. “Holy God,” he moaned. “You’re so fuckin’ tight, Jesus, Samira—”
“Move,” she begged, cheek mashed into memory foam as she slammed her fist down on it to punctuate her demands with a dull, absorbed thunk . “Move, move, fucking—”
“Shit,” he said abruptly, and came forward, chest pressed to her back, his weight on her like a brick wall. “Don’t. Shh. Be quiet.”
“What,” she gasped, desperate for friction but unable to get any leverage in this position. “What—”
“Someone’s just parked in the garage,” he breathed, really close to her ear and she shuddered, fingers clutching the mattress. “Shh.” His hand came down to cover her head, stroke her hair. “Don’t move. Nobody comes over here, but they will if they see the car moving.”
“Fuck, who is it?” She reached up to scrape her hair out of her eyes. “Who’s—”
“I think,” he rasped, close to her cheek, hot and heavy. “I think it’s Dr. Langdon.”
Her skin tingled all over. A bead of sweat rolled into her eye. “Shit.”
“Just saw the back of his head. Shh. Stay put.” Mohan exhaled, shaky and quiet. This was unbelievable. A crime against humanity. Jack Abbot’s dick in her, to the hilt, and she couldn’t move. Slowly, quietly, she rolled her hips about an inch, desperate for anything, something, everything she was consumed by burning need. By her ear, Abbot let out a trembling breath, huffing into her ear. “Goddammit, Samira,” he panted, his hips helplessly following hers in a jerking, half-abortive movement. “S-shit.”
“Car’s not moving,” she gasped. “Is it?”
“No. It’s not. It’s.” He flattened himself down, pinning her flat to the floor of the car, the mattress. His dog tags clattered across her back, skittering and clinking. “It’s.” His hips rolled again, controlled and quiet and not nearly enough friction: Mohan whimpered and he shoved his hand up against her mouth. “Shhhh,” he hissed. “You’re gonna get us— fuckin’ caught—”
“You’re the one moving,” she panted, tilting her face up away from his palm. “What the fuck’s Robby gonna do when he pulls in up here at seven and s-sees you fucking me in the back of the—”
The noise that left Abbot’s throat was probably not even human: he buried his mouth against the skin and the juncture of her shoulder and neck and scraped her hair off her skin with one frantic movement, then started pumping his hips in quick, short thrusts, not enough to shake the Bronco but enough to make Mohan bite down on her lip and whine through her nose. “Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit,” he chanted, forehead against her, nose pushing like some animal seeking heat, warmth, life.
“Where’s Langdon, is h- uhh- he still out th—”
“God damn it uhhh fuck, ah—” He lifted his torso up for a brief moment to look, cooler air touching her back as the dog tags rattled and drifted over her skin, and paused, his hips still pumping slowly as he watched, head turned. And Langdon must have gone, found the door down to the stairs or the elevator because suddenly Abbot was back down on his hands and knees, fencing in her body with his torso and limbs and fucking her like his life depended on it and it was deep and perfect and everything she wanted and she had to fight to not shriek in the car, bring everyone running. Instead, she covered her own mouth with her hand, moaning through her nose, and Abbot saw it, bent down, rolled so they were both on their right sides a little, and popped his left fingers into her mouth. “Quiet, you be quiet,” he gasped, his right arm wrapped around her waist and his hand splayed out against her skin, half her left breast, clutching like he was afraid to let go. She made low, urgent noises, but didn’t shriek. “Good girl. Oh, fuck. ”
“Mmmm,” she moaned, sucking on fingers that tasted like the inside of gloves and her own body and salty sweat, her tongue curling, cheeks hollowing. “Mmm—”
“Ah—” He bent his head against her neck again, let out a whimper. “Fuck. I’m gonna come. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m gonna come, I can’t—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay—” She reached down and touched herself, fingers rubbing and awkwardly bumping the underside of his dick as he helplessly rocked into her, gasping, sweating: his fingers ripped out of her mouth and braced on the window, which was fogging up and beading with moisture by now, humid as a greenhouse, and just as the sun peeked over the horizon, high as they were in the air, pale gold light touching them, she came, bucking backward into him and making a terrible, ragged sound that sounded more like something being killed than a sexy, confident woman experiencing probably the most insane orgasm of her life. And Abbot choked out something she couldn’t understand, slurred and heavy, and then he was gone, shaking against her, into her, emptying himself of all he was, everything, everything as light illuminated the hair on his corded, lean arms and the condensation on the windows and turned it all to gold.
They lay there breathing for a moment. Just breathing. Abbot’s arms were heavy, circling around her, and Mohan felt wrung-out and clear-headed and light as air, soft and at peace, sore and puffy between her legs. He was breathing like he’d run a marathon. She shifted a little, rolling over and facing him carefully: it was kind of cramped back here. Good thing both of them weren’t that tall. As he lay on his back, eyes half shut like a cat, gravity pulled his features back and smoothed out his face. Sunlight glittered on his stubble like silver frost. Inside, away from the sun, his curly hair had seemed dark, shot with silver: now, touched by the sun and the open air and away from the night and the fluorescents, it was a riot of color. Silver and gold and red and brown, every color and none of them at once. Suddenly, she wanted to hold him. “Roll over,” she said quietly. “On your other side.”
“Mmm,” he mumbled, but he did anyway, barely even opening his eyes. She slid in and adjusted herself to slot against his body: his pants still clinging to his thighs, bare sweaty torso, and slipped her right arm up under his, hooking her hand up over his shoulder from the front of his body.
“There,” she whispered, nuzzling into the back of his sweaty head and inhaling the scent of him: scalp, faint traces of shampoo. In her arms, he relaxed, bit by bit, and then she felt his left hand come up and take her fingers, clutching at the tips and trembling a little. Like he was afraid to hold her hand, even though he’d just blown her back out in the back of a mid-size SUV. She squeezed his fingers back, and he let her do it before tightening his grip on hers.
“So, uh. About that conversation we were going to have,” he mumbled, voice low and worn, and she smiled against the back of his neck, the soft weathered skin that folded like the pages of a book she wanted to read and read forever.
“You know what? I can’t remember what I wanted to say.”
“Oh, good. Not just me, then.” He settled in against her, sighing deeply. “I don’t live in my car,” he added, like it was an afterthought. “Just so you know. I do have a house. This is for emergencies. Sleep deprivation, when it’s not safe for me to drive. I’ll just crash here and go straight back to work.”
“Ohhh. That’s why you park back here.”
“That’s why I park back here.” He drew her hand to his lips and kissed it quickly, like he was afraid he’d lose his nerve. “We can. You know. Uh. Chalk this up to… hormones. Exhaustion. Not thinking straight. If you want. We don’t have to act like it happened if you don’t… want to deal with, uh. All of this.” He lifted his other hand, indicated himself, the inside of the car. The mattress pad and the stained pillow and the hard-sided Pelican cases strapped to the floorboard. The cooler. The non-perishable food. “I’m not. You know. I’m not exactly the best adjusted guy out there, even if I wasn’t— fifteen years older than you, and, uh. You just. You deserve a chance to say no to the mess. The crazy.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, slotting herself closer along his body and kissing the back of his shoulder. “I’m touched, but I’m gonna have to pass on that offer.”
He sighed deeply and sniffed, then reached over to the pillow and handed it to her, folding his arm and resting his head on it instead. Samira covertly sniffed the stained fabric. But it smelled relatively clean and wasn’t greasy, so she tucked it under her head and stayed where she was. “What the hell was that line about Robby?” he asked a minute later, a smile in his voice. “I think I blacked out right about then. Jesus.”
Samira laughed against his skin. “Uh, sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Hey, you know. Out-crazy the crazy. Really smart doctor told me that once. And it looks like he was right. It works.”
“Oh, yeah? Doctor, huh? Real tall, I bet. ‘Bout thirty, thirty-five.” He shifted to lie on his side and face her, the curve of his shoulder rising up, dog tags hanging down straight by his throat. “Both legs, probably. Right? No? You’re shaking your head no. Uh-oh. Sounds like trouble.”
“No, no. He’s about five ten. Doesn’t have short man syndrome, though. Gives credit where it’s due. Blunt. Good at his job. Never heard him say a bad thing about anybody.” She laid her hands on his chest and brushed his nose with hers, and Abbot reached up to brush her hair off her shoulder, letting his fingertips rest on her skin a moment. “He’s a loner, though. Kind of a hard book to read. But I’ve never been a quitter.”
“Five-ten,” he said, smiling and shaking his head, and that was a real smile, beaming and brighter than the morning sun streaming into the car. “Very flattering. Thanks.” And he went in slowly for a kiss, which she gave him with pleasure, soft and smooth and warm as the light drenched them both.
It wasn’t like she could stay here forever. She finally broke the kiss and sighed. “Ugh, God, I have to get home.”
He sat up as she peeled herself off the mattress and raked her hair back off her face. “Yeah, you do. So do I. You know what, though? Dr. King was right. I’m awake again. Physical activity. I’ll be damned.”
Samira laughed aloud. “Hope it lasts until I get home. I’m ready to crash, and I need a shower.”
“Make sure you urinate, clean out everything.”
“Oh, my god, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Where the hell is my underwear? And also, uh, just incidentally, what’s in the Pelican cases?”
Abbot was tugging his black T-shirt back on. “Oh. Uh, top one’s got a spare prosthetic leg in case something happens on the job, bottom one’s got a trauma kit. There’s also a spare first aid kit in the floorboards and another one under the front seat.”
From the way he looked, kind of cagey, she figured this might be one of the things he meant when he said the mess, the crazy. “Smart,” she said approvingly, and his face softened as he turned away briefly, fumbling with his pants. “In case we run out during a mass casualty event.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly, and handed her a pair of balled-up gray bikini briefs. “Here.”
“Oh, thanks.” She slid her underwear back on awkwardly on her back with her legs up and rolled to search for her leggings. “You do need to wash that pillowcase, though.”
“It’s seasoning, it’s fine,” he said, his voice light and teasing.
“Seasoning is for cast iron skillets and food, Abbot, not for your head.”
“Oh, damn. Really? Must have got that confused when I was a kid.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes as she tugged her bralette and shirt back on. “Oxyclean and let it soak for like an hour. It’ll lift all that oil out.”
“Mohan,” he said quietly, and she paused halfway back to the front seat for her bag, looking back at him where he rested, foot up, arm bent and resting on it, fingers fidgeting. “One for the road?” he asked, looking right at her, eyes fixed on her face so intensely that she felt like he was hyper analyzing her every micro-expression.
“Come here,” she told him, turning back and sitting on the floorboards against the passenger seat’s back, and he leaned, half-crawled to her until he was leaning across her lap with his right arm holding him up and his free hand cradling her cheek. His mouth was so gentle, so soft: she parted her lips and let her tongue push in, lap against him. Sunshine warmed her cheeks. She closed her eyes and saw the pink of illuminated blood vessels against her eyes, the flutter-shadow of his hair as he moved into her. “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” she whispered, breaking the kiss and looking up at him. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he said softly, brushing his nose against hers and kissing her again, short and swift. “Okay.”
“Okay. I gotta go.”
“One more,” he whispered, smiling against her mouth as she giggled, “come on, just one.”
“Mmmm. Mm.” She took his face in her hands and planted a good firm one on him. “I really have to go,” she whispered. “Okay.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, letting her go and watching as she slid herself back into the front, grabbed her bag, and climbed over into the driver’s seat to let herself out. “Samira,” he said suddenly.
“Yeah?” Mohan looked up at him, curious, but he was just looking at her. Like she was the only thing tying him to the planet, like she was everything. Everything. And then it faded, masked by a smile and a ducked head.
“Nah. It can wait. You get out of here, drive safe. Okay?”
“I love you, too,” she said quietly, and waited until he’d made startled eye contact to pull the handle and slide out of the car, in the space between the door and the concrete half-wall. Sunlight beamed into her face, sideways, and he was behind the tinted windows, but she knew he was there anyway, and as she walked away on slightly wobbly legs to her own car, she only looked back once, as if she could still see him at all.