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Robby hosts a party on June 30th every year. And every year, everyone—almost everyone, Samira corrects herself, almost—in the emergency department who isn’t working that evening crowds into the back room of Donovan’s two blocks from the hospital, drinking themselves silly until well into the night. It’s largely symbolic; contract renewals and evaluations have been done for weeks. Her board results arrived in the mail six weeks ago. The ink on Samira’s offer letter for the position of junior attending is dry. But when Robby makes his rounds with a bottle of champagne in each hand at 11:55, filling up plastic champagne flutes for his residents and interns, something wild and fluttering still beats in her chest.
At 11:59 the countdown begins.
It doesn’t feel real, this arrival into the future she’s been meticulously planning since she was thirteen. Valedictorian of her high school class, followed by four years on a full ride at Rutgers Honors College, medical school at the University of Pittsburgh. Clinicals, internship, residency. The constant grant applications and reporting cycles to fund her research. Her research—the article she published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine followed by an offer from an agent looking to connect her with an editor at The Atlantic who was looking for something similar but more longform, more personal, more easily digestible for your average reader. And now: offers of funding, a permanent position on PTMC faculty, invitations to speak on panels at conferences and med schools across the country. A fucking book deal.
Seventeen years ago, almost to the day, Mohan Ganesh died in the emergency room at JFK Memorial Hospital in Edison, New Jersey. She cannot undo it. She knows that now. No matter how many patients she saves or how many patients she can’t, it can never be fixed. And now, after all the sessions with the EAP counselor that the program provides, she thinks that her father—wherever he is now, broken down to an atomic level and scattered in the sea, returned to the everything of the universe from which he came—would laugh at her forever thinking that she could. But he would have loved her for trying.
Ten… nine… eight…
Trinity throws an arm over her shoulder. Victoria snakes one around her waist.
Seven… six… five…
In the dark private room at the back of Donovan’s, fifty members of the Pitt crew—maybe a little more, maybe a little less—are crowded together among dark lacquered wood high top tables, pushed in together on the long booth-style seating, holding each other where their shoes scuff over worn floorboards. They’ve all been drinking for hours, playing pool with very minimal skill, singing along too loudly to music.
Four… three…
Samira thinks about how eighteen months ago, she would have declined the invitation to come at all.
Two… one… Happy New Year!
It’s past midnight in the east, and Samira Mohan is no longer a resident at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. And ironically—or unironically, depending on whose phone is currently connected to the speaker—Matchbox Twenty’s How Far We’ve Come is playing. Loudly.
Trinity is halfway through refilling Samira’s cup with some disgusting flavored vodka (and Samira, for some reason unknown to her, is letting her) when Robby wraps an arm around Samira’s shoulder in a gesture that is clearly more a directive than a request. Robby watches with an amused expression on his face as Trinity finishes the pour and then offers him a swig from the bottle, declining politely before steering Samira out of the room, towards the back entrance of the bar.
Suddenly, mild concern blooms in her chest.
There are too many attendings still inside for this to be some dumb male hazing ritual, some rite of passage between training and board-certification that she must endure standing next to a dumpster. Besides, Langdon wasn’t grabbed. Just her. Robby hasn’t even been actively pissed at Langdon in months.
“Nothing bad,” Robby says, handing her down the few steps onto the pavement. “Just needed to talk to you somewhere uh, away from everyone else.”
“Everyone, or Princess and Perlah?”
“Yes.” Nodding, Robby throws back what little remains of his bottle of Yuengling, before picking at the label with the blunt nail of his thumb. “So I’m gonna say something, and then you can tell me fuck off. Or you can do something with the information. I’m not—well, I am biased. I know what I think. But I’m not gonna tell you what you should think. Or do. So please don’t report me to HR, because this is probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.”
Samira has had just enough alcohol this evening to say: “You better not be in fucking love with me, Robinavitch.”
Alarmed, he makes eye contact with her then, irises brown and startled. “No—god no. I think of you like a—not like that.” He barks a laugh. “No, not me. And listen, I know this is going to sound ridiculous coming out of my mouth, because you’ve met me—”
A warm summer breeze plays in the hem of Samira’s dress; she wasn’t on the schedule today, so she didn’t arrive at the party in scrubs. She has the next two weeks off too, a gap she conceded to under duress when negotiating her job offer with Robby and administration. So today she slept in later than she has in years. Went to a pilates class. Got herself an overpriced iced coffee and bought herself new books. Scrolled through listings for apartments closer to the hospital, and nicer than her current abysmally small studio. Showered and diffused her hair, did her makeup carefully, and picked out a dress she bought well over a year ago but never had the occasion to wear.
She can list off everyone in the room back inside. She knows who’s not in there because they’re working the night shift. She knows who’s not in there because they chose not to come.
There was a look on Abbot’s face when she declined the fellowship offer from Shock Trauma, the research opportunity at UCLA. There was a look. But tonight, he didn’t even come.
“Robby. Just say it.”
“Abbot’s in love with you,” he blurts out. Awkward now, he places his empty bottle on a windowsill, reaching for Samira’s biceps. And she can tell, because she knows Robby, has known him for six fucking long years, that he is dead serious. “Has been for years. Hasn’t said anything or acted on it because you were a resident and he’s the assistant program director, not to mention the eighty-seven HR violations and any hits you would take to your reputation. But I think—and correct me if I’m wrong. Tell me to shut the fuck up. But I think you might be at least a little bit in love with him too.”
The only immediate response Samira’s brain offers her is to shoot the cotton candy flavored vodka that Trinity poured at least a double of—directly into her mouth.
“I’m not sure how to read that as a response,” he replies, releasing her. Scrubbing a hand through his beard, he takes a step back, pointing at the door back into Donovan’s. “Do you want me to—”
“You’re not wrong,” she gasps, cheap vodka still burning the back of her throat.
Robby gives her a double take, eyes going comically wide. “I’m uh… I’m not?”
With a sigh, Samira places her empty cup down next to Robby’s empty bottle. Then she presses the heels of her hands into her flushed cheeks as years’ worth of memories flash through her mind on replay. She knew. She must have known. She must have known what it meant that they're always moving perfectly in sync, that they’re always each other’s first choice to work together on a trauma. Must have known what it meant that they know each other’s coffee orders from the cafeteria, that they return case reports and journal articles to each other highlighted and annotated, conversations in cramped print in the margins. Must have known that the way he mentored others was different from how he mentored her, not better or worse but different in how he’ll glance away instead of prolonging eye contact at times, how his voice will reach a lower register instead of softening, how he’ll always be the first to offer to do up the back of her trauma gown.
She’s known, known for certain all the way down to the marrow of her bones, since he looked up sharply from his workstation eight weeks ago when all the commitment deadlines passed, and she formally let Robby know that she wouldn’t be taking any of them. Abbot looked up, face soft with shock, mouth dropping open to reveal his boyishly crooked teeth. She told Robby that she wanted to remain at PTMC and continue researching and continue writing, and Abbot looked at her like she told him he was going to live.
She’s known, because she doesn’t feel a spike of anxiety at Robby saying that Jack Abbot is in love with her. Has been in love with her. She must have known, because it feels like she’s already accepted it.
Just like she accepted her feelings for him, months ago.
“You’re not,” she says.
“Because it’s up to the discretion of the department head whether or not two attendings in their department are permitted to be in a consensual workplace relationship,” Robby continues. “And I know I’m a hypocrite, but I’m not that must of a—”
“Where the hell is he?” Samira asks.
It is past midnight, her curls are perfect and glossy, and she looks cute. So if Abbot likes her even in a pair of boxy scrubs and a trauma gown, he’s going to lose his mind when he sees her like this. Samira knows he’s not scheduled to work tonight. She's checked at least four different times in the scheduling app. So where is he?
“He is on his way,” Robby says, hands dropping onto her shoulders. “Because I harassed him into coming. Bullied him? Convinced him.”
“Because…” Tilting her head, she feels something like affection diffuse through her body. Of course. Of course he didn’t show up when the party started at nine. “Because it’s past midnight. Because by every metric, I am no longer a resident.”
“Correct.” Robby nods. “So if you want to wait out here, I can wait with you because I don’t love the idea of you standing out here in the dark alone. Or you can come back inside and he’ll get here when he gets here, and I don’t give a shit what you do in front of your coworkers because that’s your decision. But I’m pretty sure I know what Jack’s on his way here to do.”
“Fuck it. If he doesn’t, I will.”
Robby chews on his bottom lip, smiling. “You’re gonna run him over like a sixteen-wheeler, aren’t you?”
A little breathless, Samira nods.
“He’s not gonna know what hit him. Years. What a fucking asshole.”
Laughing, Robby hops up the steps to the little concrete pad, pulls the back door to Donovan’s back open, ushering Samira to step inside first. Immediately it’s dark, and it’s loud again, but it’s joyful. It’s past midnight. It’s July 1st, and Samira Mohan’s residency is over. The rest of her life has finally begun.
++
Jack Abbot isn’t entirely sure how, but less than five minutes after entering Donovan’s Tavern and making his way to the room in the back, he has a beer in his hand and Samira Mohan in his lap. The beer is handed to him by Robby, who meets him at the door, his smile suspiciously wide. With a hand clapped to his shoulder Jack allows himself to be led to one of the leather couches at the far end of the room, settling down into it as his eyes scan the thinning crowd for Samira. It’s close to one in the morning, and people have started to go home.
Maybe he’s too late. Maybe that’s what he really wanted, to push off his arrival until it was plausible that Samira and the group of residents who gaggle around her would have moved onto their next spot. Headed to a club. Headed to a party. Headed to drink on the floor of someone’s kitchen.
By the time he finds her—hair loose, red cotton swishing around her thighs, lips curled into a smile—she’s approaching him with a plastic nine ounce cup of white wine in her hand. Opening his mouth to greet her, he’s interrupted by the weight of her settling down onto his thighs, one of her arms winding around his neck. “Good morning, Abbot.”
(Technically, it’s his afternoon.)
He can tell she’s been drinking. He can also tell she’s not drunk.
He’s been a fool for many things but at his old age of forty-six, Jack knows better than to question a good thing that has, quite literally, fallen into his lap. Attempting nonchalance in the same way he attempted nonchalance when he pulled on a decent pair of black jeans and a tight white t-shirt that Ellis once told him looked good with his biceps, Jack adjusts his arms, letting his free hand drape over the rounded top of her thigh. “Good evening, Mohan.”
There are plenty of other places for her to sit. There’s space next to him on the couch. There are empty chairs and bar stools and hell, even an entire table for her to perch on if she felt so inclined. But here she is, in his lap. Staring at him like she owns him. Maybe he didn’t need to be so concerned about what to say to her. Maybe he shouldn’t have spent the past few weeks in intermittent panic. Maybe he should have shown up when the party started, watched her from across the room until the clock struck midnight.
“Was wondering when you’d get here,” she murmurs over the lip of her cup. “Was worrying you might not show.”
Jack traces the tips of his fingers over her knee, watching her face before allowing them to trip further up her leg. The skirt of her dress is flared, the fabric cascading down from her waist and flouncing outwards, revealing a large stretch of soft, velvety thigh. He hides his fingers under the hem, waiting for her to balk. She doesn’t. Instead, she gives him a small, secretive smile, and takes another sip of wine. The angles of her face are bathed in golden candlelight.
“You know I’d hate to let you down,” he replies.
It feels very possible that she’s been waiting for July 1, 2026 as much as he has. It also feels very possible that Robby ratted him out. Jack can’t find it in himself to be pissed off about it with a lapful of Samira Mohan.
Then she shifts her weight between her legs, pressing the cleft of her ass down into his dick. Jack feels every muscle in his body tense, alongside a sudden rush of blood to the more sensitive parts of his anatomy. It’s a close call, but his hand doesn’t move on her leg. He does allow his fingers to grip further into the softness of her flesh. Not a warning, but a promise. Gaze raking over her, he takes a long sip of lager.
“Stop squirming,” he chides her, voice rumbling up from deep in his chest. He smiles. He doesn’t mean it. More importantly, Samira knows he doesn’t mean it. “You’re gonna get us in trouble.”
“What if I want trouble?” Her voice is soft, and next to his ear.
Inhaling deeply—inhaling the scent of her, warm floral perfume and laundry detergent and something uniquely Samira—Jack looks at her. Really, really looks at her. He hasn’t allowed himself the luxury in years. Hasn’t permitted himself to linger on her warm, dark eyes, or how her curls escape from any clip or scrunchie, how her lips quirk into a smile when they speak to each other, or how her hands brush against him as they work side by side over a case.
“Then… I’d say we’d better head out,” he replies, words rasping out of his throat.
He wants to keep talking, god he wants to keep talking. Wants to tell her about every filthy fantasy, every dirty dream, every fleeting thought that’s transversed his fucked up brain. Wants to tell her that he’s thought about what it would be like to fuck her quick and fumbling in a dark alley, what it’d be like to hold his hand over her mouth as he gets her off on his fingers in an on-call room, what it’d be like to bend her over the back of his couch and roll his hips into hers until he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. But what Jack Abbot wants—what he really, truly wants—is to take her home, spread her out on his comfortable bed, on his stupidly expensive cotton sateen sheets, and plant himself between her thighs until she’s shaking and pliant and dazed from orgasm. He wants to know what it would be like to wake up next to her. He wants to tell her that the only good dreams he has are when he dreams of her.
His eyes trace down the graceful lines of her neck and shoulders, stumbling over her sharp clavicles and then downwards again, over the swell of her breasts where they push up out of the neckline of her dress. One of the straps of her sundress threatens to fall off her shoulder; he wants to help it along.
“But you just got here,” she replies, before finishing her wine.
A protest that isn’t a protest. He knows she can feel him, half-hard under her. They could stay here; the party will continue for another hour or so. No one would care, least of all Robby. Tonight, Heather Collins is on shift at the Pitt, pregnant with Robby’s child and wearing Robby’s ring on her finger. No one would care—they might be interested, but they wouldn’t care. No one would care, because he doesn’t give a shit if they give everyone something to talk about. His feelings for Samira are plain, and obvious. Anything she wants from him, he’ll give.
Samira is sitting in his lap, her fingers combing through his hair. Her skin is warm. He likes the weight of her on top of him. He likes the way the square neckline on her dress exposes her sloping clavicles, the thin silvery stretch marks at the top of her breasts. He wants to taste her lip gloss. He wants to slide his tongue up the line of her carotid.
Jack thinks she doesn’t care about secrets either.
“I only came here for you,” he replies. Slowly, slow enough that she can stop him if she wants, his hand drifts further towards the apex of her legs. He pushes the nail of his ring finger under the lace trim of her panties, maps the jut of her hip bone. “So, I’ll go wherever you go.”
His words have the intended effect: emboldening her.
“Then… I want you to take me home,” she replies. He knows this tone of voice on her: it’s the way she sounds when she’s reaching the same conclusion as him, when she’s nodding in reference to a case report they’ve both read, when they’re preparing to try a procedure that’s only ever been attempted once, around the globe. “Your place isn’t too far from here, right?”
Jack nods. It’s a ten minute walk. Donovan’s isn’t far from PTMC, and neither is he. Even in the worst of weather, commuting on foot is better than trying to find a parking space on the deck. But still, he’s waited for Samira for years. He can wait another twenty minutes if she’d feel more comfortable in her own apartment. “We could go to yours, if you’d prefer it.”
Samira laughs, a little dark and a little breathless. “Why? You’ve got a bed, don’t you?”
The sound goes straight to his erection; they can both feel it. Licking her lips, Samira grinds down on him as much as she can strewn across his thighs, the expression on her face somehow both tentative and sure.
“I sure fuckin’ do,” Jack replies. He drops the pretense of drinking his beer, setting the bottle down with a clink so he can grab both of her hips, one under her dress and one over. He wants to take her home, he wants to learn every inch of her soft, bronzed skin, wants to learn what sounds leave her lips when she’s mindless with pleasure, wants to learn how to get her there. Wants to make her breakfast in the morning. “A nice one, even.”
Samira slides off his lap, gets her feet under her, and stands. Jack Abbot knows better than to keep a good thing waiting; that much his mother managed to teach him. So he laces their fingers together when offered, pointedly avoids the joyous look on Robby’s face as Samira grabs her purse off a random table. Rubs her waist, palm light, as she says her goodbyes to Santos and Whitaker and King. He can feel his phone buzzing in his pocket, no doubt Ellis and Shen haranguing him via text message from across the room.
They ignore the wolf whistles as they exit Donovan’s hand-in-hand.
The ten minute walk to his townhouse on the Mexican War Streets takes closer to twenty, Samira pushing him up against walls and fences, fisting her hands in his shirt as she presses their mouths together each time the impulse strikes her.
Finally, they get to the townhouse with navy siding and sun bleached yellow shutters that he’s called home since he moved into the city from the suburbs his wife loved, lived in, and died in nine years ago. Earlier today, he bought condoms for the first time since the pandemic started in 2020. He hasn’t lived like a monk. In his early days of being a widower he’d drink anything and fuck anyone in order to feel anything, something. He enjoys the occasional encounter at a conference or speaking engagement with someone who will only be clinically weird about the BKA. He even used to have a longstanding arrangement with someone from one of the veteran support groups he drifts in and out of, mostly out of these days. He’s dated, mostly people he’s been set up with, but no one that he’s ever sought out for himself. He hasn’t lived a celibate life since Jess died. But none of the people he’s taken out to dinner or tumbled into bed with have made him look forward. He’s only ever been looking back.
Not until Samira. Not until she made him believe in the future again.
Not until she made him believe that he had a future again. That maybe his survival could be more than just a death sentence handed to him in another form. That yes, everything that has happened to him—the amputation of his leg, the death of his wife, the loss of his career—has made him a fundamentally different man than he was a decade ago. That maybe, the man he has become has a right to exist. That he doesn’t have to prove his worth in order to exist. He doesn’t have to apologize for existing. In many ways, Jack Abbot is still unrecognizable to himself.
But Samira knows him. Recognizes him. Sees him.
Loves him anyway.
(She must love him. Why else would she suffer him? Why else would she endure him?)
Two locks. His front door has two locks. He slips the first key he needs into the deadbolt on top, Samira plastering herself to his side, sliding her hand down into his front pocket. Jack flips through the keyring in his hand—Jeep, back door, garage door, storage unit—until he reaches the right one in the loop, forcing the tremor in his hand to remain still long enough for him to fit the correct key into the doorknob. Twists his wrist, pushing the heavy wood door open, trying to ignore the way Samira is massaging his dick to full hardness through two layers of fabric.
Huffing a laugh, Jack grabs both her wrists in his hands. Making a small noise of discontent, Samira allows him to maneuver them both inside and kick the door shut behind him. He finds himself backed up against it almost immediately, and releases Samira’s hands so he can feel behind him to do up the locks and latch the chain. Several things happen at once: Samira fits one of his thighs between hers, both grinding down on him and pressing her leg into his cock with a fluid, perfect movement. Jack lifts his hands to her shoulders, hooking the straps of her dress with his fingers, pulling them down to reveal the most beautiful pair of tits he’s ever laid eyes on. The revelation that she hasn’t been wearing a bra all evening hits his bloodstream like a narcotic.
Then, without warning, Samira clenches her hands in the fabric of his shirt and hauls them both down onto the floor.
++
Objectively, Samira knows she should care about making it to Abbot’s bed, or at least his couch. Somewhere soft and civilized. She got a good view of his living room in the five seconds she let herself look—plushy leather sectional, low pile Persian rug, overstuffed bookshelves, a coffee table scattered with journals and empty coffee mugs. A Tiffany glass standing lamp, a couple of scented candles. Soft woolen throws on the sofa, scattered boucle pillows, paintings hanging on the wall. Jack Abbot has a home, has evidence of a life that has been hard and traumatic but still something he’s hollowed out and made comfort out of, and it makes her immeasurably fond of him.
He also has what looks like an incredibly soft rug in his foyer.
It’s not a very large foyer. Just big enough for a solid oak sideboard table with a bowl for keys and mail. An antique mirror hangs over it, silver starting to peel away from the glass, tarnishing slightly. A wall sconce on a dimmer switch is turned on low. A couple of brass coat hooks have been installed on the opposite wall, holding a parka and a hoodie. A pair of muddied running shoes lay on their sides.
She has known that she is in love with him, the Jack Abbot who badges into work at PTMC four, five, six nights a week. The Jack Abbot that she’s worked double shifts with for years. The Jack Abbot she met on her first day of her first EM rotation in med school. But she’s never had access to this part of him. She’s seen him vulnerable and upset, snarky and sarcastic, exhausted and ill. She’s seen how every time he’s been able to snap his spine into a military bearing and clasp his hands behind his back, shirking weakness like she’d apply a bandage to ease a wound. She’s seen the shroud, threadbare and worn. She’s seen the hints of the man underneath. The shape of him, the details that cannot be obscured by compartmentalization and therapy skills and professionalism. Samira wants to go grocery shopping with that man, she wants to do laundry, she wants to make a monthly budget and quibble over what car to buy. She wants to get overly invested in episodes of This Old House and introduce him to Bollywood movies. She wants to be annoyed and disappointed and bothered by him. She wants to be elated and comforted and to find out all the ways he will make her happy. Because he does already. She just wants more.
And right now, she wants to have sex with him without any further delay.
Which is how she ends up pulling Jack down with her to the floor, straddling him, smiling at the stunned look on his face. Samira knows if she was literally anyone else on the planet, that little move of hers would not have been successful. She would be in an arm bar instead of planting her hands on his chest, rolling the lower half of her body against his.
“I thought,” he gasps, hands coming to her waist. She can feel him through his jeans, hard and wanting. “I thought I was taking you to my bed.”
“And I’m sure we’ll get there eventually,” she replies. “But we’ve waited long enough.” Stooping, body curving forward and down, she ghosts a kiss across his lips. “Don’t you agree?”
She wants him. So very badly.
Blinking up at her, Jack tucks an errant curl behind her ear. Somehow, that simple gesture induces a full body shiver. In response, Jack gathers all of her hair in one hand, holding it in his fist at the nape of her neck. His other hand trails up and down her abdomen, charting her from the dip between her clavicles, to her solar plexus, down to her navel. Then, tentatively, he brushes a thumb over a tightened nipple, watching her face for her reaction.
She’s not sure what he sees, but Jack says, “Yeah, baby. I do.”
Unerringly, his fingers go to the side zipper on her dress. She can only imagine he scoped it out earlier when she was in his lap. They pull the gauzy cotton fabric up and over her head together, letting it fall to the floor beside them. Entranced by the look of focus on Jack’s face she reaches for one strappy sandal, and then the other, slipping them off her feet. She’s left in only a pair of breathable viscose bamboo briefs in a practical maple color, a couple of shades lighter than her skin tone. His fingers trace the lace he was feeling out earlier.
There’s a telltale hitch in Jack’s breath. “How do you wanna do this? Because I’ll do anything you want me to, Samira, I swear to god.”
“I have an IUD,” she says, hands going to his belt, deft fingers undoing the buckle. “And my last STI panel was clear. So I’m good if you’re good.”
Jack pulls his shirt up and over his head, leaning up on one elbow and then the other, balling the garment up in his hands before shooting it off somewhere behind her. It’s only natural for Samira to believe that he has no qualms about her proposal, so she goes for the button on his jeans, carefully eases the fly down over his bulge. Lifting herself up onto her knees, she gives him room to start shucking his pants down his hips. His shoes require some negotiating—she nearly loses her balance bending over backwards to untie his boot to get it off the prosthetic foot at his direction, a request she’s fairly certain he makes in order to stop her from wrapping her hand around his cock—but they eventually manage to get each other naked.
What follows next is a rush of sensation. Jack’s hands find her tits again, cupping and squeezing and massaging, rolling her taut brown nipples between his forefingers and his thumbs until he discovers what she likes. And she knows that everything is heightened by the novelty of it, the excitement of finally, fucking finally getting what she’s wanted for so long, but when Jack bands one of his arms around her lower back to pull her down, to make it so he can suck and bite and lick at her flesh, she swears she feels a sopping rush of wetness between her thighs.
She’s been ready and wanting since she sat in his lap in Donovan’s, since she squirmed on his thigh and felt the damp spot in the gusset of her panties.
But Jack is committed to making sure that she’s ready. As he mouths at her breasts, his hands skirt down to her hips, and then her ass, urging her to rock her folds up and down the length of his erection. He has to be able to feel how wet she is—he has to, but one of his hands moves between her thighs anyway, finding her clit with clinical precision. He figures out quickly that she likes light direct touches, or blunt fast ones that glance over the clitoral hood. When she gasps and arches her back, hips lifting up off of him, he wastes no time. Holding her above him, he slips one finger into her, and then another. Down to the knuckle; Samira can feel herself drip down onto his hand. Knows that he can feel it too, his pupils expanding wide with lust, a deep groan tearing from his chest.
“Holy… sweetheart, is this all for me?” he asks, voice already sounded fucked out and raw.
Fingers pumping, his thumb finds that bundle of nerves again. He’s going to make her come. He’s barely touched her, and she’s going to come. This has never happened before. Samira flings a hand outwards, gripping onto the sideboard for support as she fucks herself down onto his hand.
“Yes,” she hisses, her other hand flailing as it lands on her thigh. “Yes, yeah, fuck—this is what you do to me. Oh shit, I’m gonna—I’m so close. Jack, I’m so close. Please.”
“Yeah you are, honey. You’re so close, I can feel it.”
She can hear it, the obscene sounds of his hand moving through her pussy, flushed full and drenched with arousal. Jack rocks his hips unconsciously, his cock sliding along and up between her ass cheeks. She wants to look at him, she wants to touch him, she wants to put him in her mouth, in her cunt. Her entire body throbs with need.
“What do you need?” he asks. “Tell me what you need. You got this, just tell me what to do.”
“Faster,” she moans, for once in her life not overthinking her answer and just listening to her own damn body. “Faster, please—”
Pleasure overtakes her quickly. A high, breathy whine escapes her lungs when he immediately complies, fingers angled so that they push against her g-spot with every quick, deliberate thrust. His wrist must be cramping, his cock must be aching, carpet fibers are probably abrading the pale, freckled skin on his back, but he doesn’t stop until a sound she doesn’t recognize explodes out of her, her body clenching down around him.
Gently, Jack pulls his fingers out of her.
Slowly, her body relaxes back down onto him. All she can think of is one word: more. Forcing her breathing to slow, Samira opens her eyes to Jack sucking the taste of her off his fingers. A second word enters her lexicon: now.
Uncertain if her knees (or any of her other joints) have turned to gelatin in the last few minutes, Samira pushes herself up carefully, raking her nails through the curly silver hairs that cover his chest, the sparse trail that leads down his belly, to the wiry hairs at the base of his dick. She reaches for him, hard and flushed red and drooling pre-cum from his slit, notching the thick head of him into her center. The expression on his face turns to bliss when, as he’s still tonguing the flavor of her orgasm off his thumb, she sinks down onto him inch by inch.
The stretch is delicious.
His head rolls back. He grips her hips so hard she wonders if he’ll leave bruises. “Fuck,” he utters under his breath. Planting his feet on the ground, he punches up into her, movements sloppy and loose. Samira gets no small thrill of delight in making the composed, reserved Jack Abbot lose any measure of his control. “You feel—so good Samira. You feel fuckin’ amazing.”
Giving a tentative thrust down onto him, she laughs; a small, relieved sound. He feels so good inside her. He feels so goddamn good. This part gets to be easy. This part gets to just be good.
“Right back at ya, champ.”
Jack’s laughter joins with hers. “Tell me what you like. Please, god, tell me what you want me to do, Samira. I want this to be good for you. I need to be good for you.”
Planting one hand on his shoulder, she drops down to him until their chests are pressed together. He keeps saying these things that make her want to kiss him, so she does. With her curls falling down around their faces, she tongues at the seam of his mouth. He opens for her, lush and waiting. He’s been waiting. Waiting for her to notice him, waiting for her to want to be his friend, waiting for her to return the journal articles he’s lent her. Waiting for her to realize he’s the only person in the department who’s never disrespected her, never second-guessed her, never doubted her. Waiting for her to finish her residency, waiting for her to decide if she’s going to leave for a fellowship, waiting for her to fall in love with him. Waiting to hear that she’s going to stay. Hoping, pleading, silently waiting for the news that she’s going to stay.
She’s done making him wait.
“Hold onto me,” she murmurs into his lips. “Let me take what I need.” A hand comes up to cup his jaw, squeezing lightly. “Make yourself feel good. I wanna feel it when you come inside me. I wanna hear it. Sound like a plan to you?”
A self-satisfied grin splits her face when his face flushes red from the roots of his graying hair to his neck and chest. Swallowing hard, he nods as much as her hand will let him. “No complaints.”
She means to make it slow, to drag it out and make it last. But she finds the right angle after just a few testing rolls, finds the exact way to swivel her hips to make his cock rake against that spot inside her, to grind the swollen bundle of nerves that her clit has become against the ridge of his pelvis. It’s good. It’s too good, so she chases it. Jack’s hands find the curve of her ass, not guiding but assisting her, easily catching onto the pattern her body is striking against his.
Just as her thighs start to burn and her back starts to protest the exertion, he tightens his hold on her, bracing her upright. Widening the stance of his feet on the floor, he picks up where her stamina is starting to falter, catching onto the rapid pace she’s been enjoying. Samira feels a new sheen of sweat break across her forehead, her chest, her forearms. She feels like she’s being lit on fire from the inside, every little spark of pleasure turning into a conflagration at once. Their bodies work in sync, each anticipating the other's next move just as easily as they do in a trauma bay. It would almost be infuriating, how quickly Jack has learned what to do with her, what she likes, what she needs—if it wasn't so intoxicating. He knows her mind. Of course he knows how to make her lose it, too.
She realizes, a little belatedly, that she's babbling. His name, how he's making her feel, how long she's wanted to do this. That there have been shifts that by the end of the night, all she's wanted to do was follow him to his car, the old Jeep Wrangler that he's spent too much time and money modifying to his accessibility needs to ever sell or get rid of, and straddle him in the driver's seat, work off the adrenaline high on him, just like she is now. How there have been shifts that have left her feeling so low and despondent that she's imagined what it would be like to be on the receiving end of his intense stare until she felt awake again, alive, real.
“I know, baby, I know,” he replies, and Samira has never liked a term of endearment coming from a man’s mouth before now. Has always found it condescending, found it slimy, found it uncomfortable. But Jack looks at her with more than just a hint of worship in his eyes, calls her honey and sweetheart and darling like they’re all an extension of every iota of respect he’s shown her, been showing her, since the day they first met. “I’ve felt it too, I’ve wanted it too.”
“Yeah?”
She sounds breathless and desperate, even to her own ears.
“Yeah, Samira, fuck—” He’s interrupted by a plaintive groan; she can tell he’s fighting to hold on until she orgasms again. “You’re the fucking future, baby, you’re everything. You’re the smartest person, any room you walk into. It drives me fucking nuts—”
And that's it, isn’t it? Abbot has always looked at her and seen the whole of her, not just the sum of her parts. Samira has been the object of men’s desires before, has been fetishized and objectified and placed into tiny, prescriptive boxes. There have men and women that she’s dated, men and women who she hoped saw her. Who didn’t. Not really. Never in the ways she needed. There have been men and women who cheated on her with white girls, who lashed out when she didn’t adhere to their idea of who she should be, who were shocked when she ended the relationship feeling nothing more than a sense of overwhelming relief.
Her body gives her no warning; her climax rips through her with all the force of a lightning strike. Something akin to a scream tears out of her throat, her legs pressing in against Jack’s rib cage as her body clenches down around his girth. Samira tips out of her own mind, moaning roughly as sensation knifes through her, her nervous system teetering on the edge of pain and pure bliss. Jack’s thumb finds her clit again, easing her through it. Distantly, she can hear his words of encouragement, can feel his arm wrapping around her lower back, pulling her down to rest on top of him. He kisses his way up her jawline to her ear, bites at the tender spot under the lobe. Sucks hard, scrapes his teeth down her throat.
“Please,” she whimpers. Somehow, she’s still coming. “Please, please, please—”
Suddenly, she’s on her back, getting fucked across the rug as Jack fixes his mouth to the tendon that latches her shoulder to her neck. He hoists one leg up into the crook of his elbow, and then the other. Another moan escapes her, hands flailing out to catch herself on the doorframe from the entryway into his living room, holding on with what strength remains in her.
It shouldn’t be possible, but moments later she feels another orgasm building.
When Jack sets his teeth to her collarbone, it hits. There’s nowhere for her body to try to run from it. Her legs are immobile, unable to squeeze in or wrap around him. Her nails bite into the white paint covering the trim. Her head tips back, spine arching, curls twisting into a mess spilled across the floorboards. She feels flayed open, distraught with satisfaction, complete. So incredibly full.
“Come in me,” she begs. “I wanna feel you come inside me Jack, please, please—”
Grunting, his motions slow into a telltale grind, followed by short, abortive thrusts. She feels his cock swell and release inside her, feels the warmth of it, feels the mess. Jack comes with his nose pressed against her sternum, breathing hard. When he lifts his head, eyes bleary, there’s a line of spit connecting him to her left breast.
Samira does something she’s never done after sex before: she laughs.
Giving her flank a fond squeeze, Jack lowers her legs out of his hold, and rolls off and out of her. Giggles keep bubbling out of her, even as he pulls her onto his chest, combs his fingers through the ends of her curls. Presses a kiss to the tip of her nose, reaching down to find the release on the prosthesis.
“Oh fuck, I’m sorry,” she says, wiping an errant tear from her eyes. “Does that hurt? I should have asked—”
“Does that hurt?” he scoffs, looking at her with an immeasurable expression of affection. “Baby, you could have cut off the other one a couple of minutes ago and I doubt I would have noticed. Don’t apologize, I had the time of my fucking life.”
“You’re sure?” Suddenly, she feels a bit bashful.
She’s never literally jumped a man before.
“Oh no, the most beautiful woman in the world rode me so hard I have a little bit of rug burn on my ass. She came so hard on my dick she screamed. Someone put on that sad Sarah McLachlan song.” His hazel eyes are bright, illuminated in the dim lamp light. His fingers trace over the dip of her waist. “Are you comfortable, or should we move to the couch?”
“I’m not sure that I could walk,” she admits, hiding her face in her hands. She has zero feeling in her quads. Her legs won’t stop trembling. Aftershocks keep rippling through her, and the only thing she’s entirely and certainly aware of is his cum dripping out of her center.
Jack barks a laugh. “You’re welcome.”
++
In the end, he doesn’t have to carry her to the couch. Jack gets his bearings first, procuring a set of forearm crutches from the umbrella stand in the corner. He levers himself upwards with a practiced grace. Leaning his weight on the right crutch, he holds on his left hand, pulling her onto her feet. Catches her as she sways, struggling to find her balance.
“Steady,” he teases.
The chaise part of the sectional isn’t far—something Samira suspects is intentional, with how many doubles Jack tends to work—but she knows she needs to make it to the bathroom. Working in the Pitt is already a hazard for urinary tract health; she’s not spending her first two weeks off in eight years getting up every ten minutes to pee. Jack ushers her in the direction of a door situated under the staircase to the second floor before walking further into the house himself, through a dark, well-appointed dining room that appears to mostly function as a home office and back towards what Samira assumes is his kitchen.
She goes through the motions of cleaning herself up, every muscle and ligament between her legs feeling sore and well-used. Looking in the mirror, she hardly recognizes herself. There's a flash of dissonance, some jarring recognizance to past encounters. A collection of hookups and one night stands and relationships she desperately wished would work out. Has she ever looked like this? Her lips so red and kiss-swollen, her eyes so heavy and satisfied? She’s heard the term sex hair before, she’s a millennial who used to read Teen Vogue, but she’s never had sex hair. Turning on the faucet, she splashes some water on her face. Foldes up a tissue into a square, runs it under the stream, and dabs off the worst of her smeared eye makeup. Dampens her hands and winds some of her messier curls around her fingers, neatening them up as much as she can.
She is naked in Abbot’s downstairs bathroom. She is naked in Abbot’s downstairs bathroom because she just had sex with him. She is naked in Abbot’s downstairs bathroom because she let him take her clothes off; because she is no longer a resident, because there are no rules against this anymore, because there’s no reason not to anymore. She’s not even currently employed at PTMC. She doesn’t officially become an attending for two more weeks.
She wonders if this should feel awkward.
It doesn’t.
++
He’s filling two steel water bottles with ice when he hears his phone ringing in the pocket of his jeans, abandoned near the front door. It’s Robby’s ringtone. The opening strains of Hotel California play, muffled through layers of fabric. Jack’s not on-call tonight, but he’s also not an idiot. Collins is thirty-six weeks pregnant. The moment the kid is born, he’s going to be picking up a lot of their shifts to help balance out the schedule.
Hooking the rubber-tipped bottom of a crutch into one of the pant legs, he fishes his phone out of his pocket. Verifies that it is in fact Robby, swipes the screen with his thumb with a bitten-off expletive, and puts the phone to his ear.
“I swear to god brother, if your kid has the most twisted sense of timing—”
Robby wheezes out a laugh. “No, thank fuck, and—and I tried to wait so that I wasn’t interrupting anything! Please tell me you’re not answering the phone in the middle of sex.” He pauses. “Actually, don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know.”
“Then why are you calling me? You are pretty damn near the bottom of the list of people I want to be thinking about right now, let alone actually fucking talking to.” Cradling his phone between his shoulder and his ear, Jack hobbles back to the kitchen. Filling the bottles with filtered water from the fridge, he wonders if adding Liquid IV would be overkill. It’s hot out, Samira’s been drinking, and sex is dehydrating.
He can practically hear Robby roll his eyes. “I have Samira’s phone,” he explains. “She must have given it to Mel at some point to hold, then, you know. Got distracted. I figured she’d want it back sooner than later, but I also didn’t want to just appear at your door and chuck it through the mail slot without warning.”
Briefly, Jack considers their activities in the foyer upon their arrival at his home this evening. Night. Morning. Whatever the fuck time it is. He is immensely grateful that Robby decided to use his critical thinking skills and call before coming over.
“Ah—yup. Good call.”
“Didn’t make it much further than the door, did you?” Robby asks, his voice threatening to dissolve into a gleeful cackle. “Don’t forget, these days I’m accepting thank you’s in the form of donations to kiddo’s 529 plan and offers to babysit. Don’t tell me you can’t. I’ve seen you, you find a way to hold every baby that comes in on the night shift. You’re a natural, Uncle Jack.”
“Fourteen nieces and nephews will do that to you,” he grumbles. “You’re a meddler, you know that? A world class yenta.”
“It worked! Had you in and out of there in fifteen minutes.”
The hinges on the guest bathroom door squeak as they open. Feeling not even the slightest trace of guilt, Jack hangs up the call, dropping his phone down onto the counter. Robby will either be by with Samira’s phone on his way home, or he won’t. Jack decides he doesn’t give a shit; he’ll buy Samira a whole new phone in the morning if it means he doesn’t have to see the smug look on Robby’s face the next time they hand off to each other.
“Robby decide to take a victory lap?” Samira asks, stretching her arms over her head. Gently, she rolls her neck and shoulders, joints popping quietly.
Jack is immediately distracted by the sight of her, long and lean, her body shaped by long shifts of the physical work of emergency medicine and the classes she takes at the gym. Her hair looks tamer than it did a moment again, her eyes slightly less wild. But she’s not embarrassed, and not ashamed, padding towards him on bare feet to accept the water she’s offered, gulping it down.
He forgot that the bathroom door isn’t that thick.
“Something like that,” he replies, letting his eyes wander. “What did he even say to you?”
Samira tilts her head, considering her response through hooded eyes. “One thing I did know, and one thing that I didn’t.”
“Oh?”
She takes another sip of water. “I knew that I was in love with you. What I didn’t know is that you loved me back. I didn’t know you were waiting for me. You could have told me, you know.”
“No,” he says, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close enough to brush a kiss against her temple, her brow. “I really couldn’t have. I needed to know that whatever you decided to do next, it was because it’s what you wanted to do. What you needed to do.”
Her brows furrow, expression quizzical. He can see her mind whirring to life, rapidly processing information, analyzing, preparing to deliver her conclusion. Moving his hands to her waist, she cups his stubbled face in her palms.
“You’re a big part of why I stayed, Jack,” she tells him, eyes quiet and intense. “Whether you loved me or not. Whether I loved you or not. You’re the person who makes the bad days bearable. You’re the person who talks to me about my research. You’re the person who makes sure I get a win when I need one, or at least picks me back up when there’s only losses.” How many shifts have they ended on the roof? How many times has he sat silently next to her as she cried in her car? How many articles has he left in her locker, how many cups of coffee has he dropped at her workstation? He did it because he wanted to, because her reactions made him feel like he could be good, he could be whole. Because she was so young, so beautiful, so smart. “And no, you’re not the only reason why I stayed. But when I looked at the crossroads and decided to stay at PTMC after finishing my residency, it was in part because you’re there. I didn’t want to leave, and lose that. Lose you. I knew I’d never have that again.” She falters. “And maybe that’s a stupid, selfish reason, but—I love you. And I always want to work with you. I want to do everything with you. You make everything feel easier. You make me feel braver.”
For once, Jack Abbot is speechless.
Ducking his head, he captures her mouth with his. On the other side of the rush of endorphins and release, he feels languid and calm. Something like tranquility smooths together the frayed edges of his nerves. Their noses brush, her hands find their way back into his hair. He sucks on her bottom lip, worrying it lightly between his teeth.
“I love you,” he says against her mouth. “So much. So fucking much.”
Finally, they make it to the couch. Samira pulls him down on top of her, tugs at his curls until his head is pillowed on her breasts. He grabs one of the throw blankets—large, burgundy, and cashmere, a gift from his oldest sister after his last stump revision surgery a few years back—and pulls it over their bodies. Even in July his thermostat doesn’t budge; two hundred milligrams of sertraline on top of the rest of his regiment of finely-tuned mood stabilizers means that his HVAC is set to a crisp sixty-eight degrees year round. In the winter he’ll set it so the heat doesn’t kick on until it registers as below sixty in his bedroom.
“Comfortable?” he asks.
Samira nods, releasing a content sort of sigh. “What do you usually do on your nights off, besides listen to the police scanner?”
“Read whatever it is you’ve texted me to read during the day. See what changes you made in your manuscript in the Google document. Craft a list of questions about it to pepper into our next shift together.”
Jabbing a finger into his bicep, she says, “You’re just as bad as me.”
Jack snorts. “Yeah, but at least we’ve got each other. That’s gotta count for something. I can cook for you while you write, now. Do your laundry. Make your tea. Be the girl genius’ errand boy. Oh, fuck, by the way—” Outside, he hears a car’s parking brake engage, followed by a door opening and closing. “Robby’s dropping off your phone. You left it at Donovan’s. Can’t imagine how you forgot it.”
“That’s nice of him,” Samira replies. “I’m not moving.”
“I don’t think he expects us—” There’s a sudden thud, as if an iPhone 12 has been slid through his mail slot and landed face-side up on the floor. “I don’t think he expects us to. Do you want me to go get it for you?”
“Nah. It’s probably just eighteen texts from Trinity, ten heart emojis and a tag in an Instagram story from Victoria, and a string of reaction gifs in the night shift group chat from Ellis and Shen. And if I’m really lucky, a coupon for Plan B from Princess.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” Jack rubs his cheeks along her tits. Her marvelous, magnificent tits. Samira squirms under him, which is encouragement enough for him to suck one of her nipples into his mouth. “I’d hate for you to miss out on anything important. We could just steal Plan B from work, though. I don’t give a fuck, I’ll make direct eye contact with Princess as I take it out of the samples closet.”
Snickering, she shakes her head, encouraging him to move his attentions along to her other breast. Jack has no complaints, tugging at the other bud lightly with his teeth. Holds the flesh of the mound in one hand, snaking the other one down between them. She’s wet again.
“She’d just nod approvingly. Procuring the emergency prophylaxis is a man’s job.”
Samira’s hands find his shoulders, pushing him lower. Jack goes willingly, eagerly even, nipping and biting at the deep ochre skin he finds between her chest and her cunt, tongue laving at the salt-sweat flavor lingering on her curves.
“I can think of something else that’s my job,” he murmurs, mouth hovering over the untrimmed thatch of curls at her core. Eyes widening, Samira nods enthusiastically. Jack grins with the right side of his mouth, grabbing one of her hands and putting it on his head before gathering up her thighs, pressing them to his ears. Licking a stripe up the seam of her folds, he pauses, giving her one last meaningful look. “I can hold my breath for about a minute and a half… two minutes. Act accordingly.”
++
Two orgasms later, Samira folds herself over the chaise end of the sofa, one knee on the floor, one leg shoved up onto the cushions. Spread wide, she’s brought to a third orgasm, nails scraping against the leather of the couch. Jack spends himself inside her again, plastering himself to her back with a deep groan, spreading kisses across her shoulder blades.
He finally takes her to his bed, then.
Sits on the toilet lid, watching her rifle through his toiletries to select a face wash and a moisturizer to scrub her makeup off. Feels a deep sense of belonging when she wets down her hair, scooping out a dollop of his curl cream to finger comb through her strands. Heart beating slow, heart beating calm, he braids her hair for her the way his sisters taught him to as a boy. He lends her a well-worn t-shirt, a pair of boxer shorts he wears for the singular purpose of watching too much television on his couch. He lets her pick a toothbrush from the Costco eight-pack he buys once a year.
He sleeps on the left side of the bed, closest to the door. Easily, without the need for conversation or explanations, Samira takes the right.
And as easy as starting a central line, as easy as doing a horizontal mattress, as easy as placing a chest tube, Samira falls asleep on his thigh, her arm thrown across his lap. It’s almost four in the morning, not nearly his bedtime, so he grabs a well-thumbed copy of JAMA, pushes his reading glasses onto his face, and reads.
On his nightstand, connected to the charger, his phone buzzes. It’s Robby, because of course it’s Robby. He doesn’t need to look to know it’s Robby, circling back around to earnestness from his earlier teasing. Jack has better things to think about than whatever is on Robby’s conscience at four in the morning.
It’s July 1, 2026, and for the first time in many years, Jack Abbot is thinking about tomorrow and the promises it holds.
++
Samira Mohan has two weeks off before her attending position at PTMC officially starts. She spends both weeks in Jack Abbot’s bed.