Chapter Text
Jack’s eyes close as soon as his bag is stowed and his ass hits his seat. The woman beside him is knitting? crocheting? knitting? something with a handful of legs (sleeves?) and fringe that reminds him of the shag carpet in his living room growing up. Her needles click together. It’s a nice, soft, reliable sound. Knitting, he’s pretty sure.
He’s mid-plane, aisle; other passengers bump past him, pushing or dragging their carry-ons. Usually he’d help load the overhead bins. Tonight he tells himself that the flight attendants have it handled. He focuses on keeping his legs within the space assigned to his seat, knees pressed together; his right thigh twinges, low on his vastus lateralis. That’s gonna be a bitch to roll out during layover, if he even has time. The last he glanced at his phone, his connecting flight hadn’t been assigned a departure gate yet.
And no answer from Mohan.
Which was fine.
Really.
He hadn’t expected an answer, not exactly.
She didn’t owe him one. That was the point: he owed her. He’d wanted her to know that he knew, and that he intended to follow up when he could. When he could do it right, not distracted and half-assed. Mohan deserved a proper apology, face-to-face, as soon as he was home from this clusterfuck with Robby –
Jack heaves a deep, slow breath through his nose. The overhead lights illuminating the cabin glow bright red through his closed eyelids. His seatmate’s needles click beside him. Jack presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, drags his palms down his face.
He should’ve asked more questions while he had the charge nurse on the phone. He should’ve demanded to speak to the head attending. He should’ve required a presentation over the phone like it was a consultation call from Presby rather than a basic human courtesy; Robby’s treatment team trying to summon people who cared about him to his bedside two thousand miles from home.
He should’ve kept Robby from leaving that night: stolen his keys, pocketed a spark plug, knifed a tire. Picked a fight. He could live with a facial fracture and a meeting upstairs if it meant delaying Robby’s departure by twelve hours, a day –
What ifs, wishful thinking. He knows better.
He would’ve ended up on this flight eventually.
Boarding is nearly finished when Jack hears her: a quiet, warm, “thank you so much,” just a hint breathless at the passenger entry door.
Jack’s eyes snap open. He would know –knows– her voice anywhere: Doctor Samira Mohan just boarded his flight.
Instinct pulls Jack to his aching feet; he grimaces as neuropathy shimmers through his right knee, into his shin and the memory of his ankle and foot. His lapbelt snags around his hips as he stands stooped under the overhead bin, his hair brushing against the plastic. Jack paws at the buckle – if he looks away, closes his eyes for even a second, Mohan will disappear, he’s sure of it. Because he’s hallucinating.
It wouldn’t be the first time, but it would be the first time in a long time.
Four years, almost, since he walked into South 17 expecting an elderly woman with a seizure history and a splitting headache and found Cait –and their dog– instead. Teddy lay at the foot of the bed, thumping his tail impatiently, and Cait soothed, “Hush, Teddy, Daddy’s coming to bed soon.” She turned toward him, wearing one of his old threadbare t-shirts that she refused to let him throw away. “Right, Jack?”
Like she’d been expecting him, waiting for him, her hair braided for bed.
The worst part was he’d gone to her, reached for her, he was tired, so tired, he wanted to crawl into bed and sleep with her tucked against his chest like they used to –
His patient with a seizure history and a splitting headache did not appreciate being woken by a “blithering idiot doctor.”
Robby insisted, with the weight of Upstairs behind him, that Jack take another week off. And then another, just to be sure.
Mohan closes in. Her mouth twists in concentration, a hint of teeth, as she searches for her seat. She’s wearing travel clothes, a tee shirt and leggings, tennis shoes – always practical, Mohan, even in his imagination. Her hair is down, curling around her collar, somehow a darker shade of black than normal. Wet, Jack realizes, the ends soaking into her shirt.
Jesus Christ.
He’s imagined more and worse – but here? Now?
He needs some fucking sleep.
Jack shifts his weight onto his stump, grinds it against his socket in the way that makes colors pop in his vision. The way he does when he needs to wake the fuck up right fucking now in the Pitt, or someone is gonna die.
Colors pop – green, yellow, pink. His stump burns, then smarts, then aches. He’s awake.
And Mohan is smiling at him.
It’s a small, fleeting thing, almost sheepish; he could mistake it as a trick of the lighting if not for the way his heart kicks in his chest. Like a truck backfiring.
“Hi,” she whispers, ghosting her fingers over his as she passes. He turns his hand palm up, curls his fingers beneath hers, his own “hi” stuck in his throat.
Her nails shiver over his palm and catch gently on the underside of his knuckles.
A flight attendant closes the overhead bins behind her; Mohan glances over her shoulder, her smile quirking as she realizes she’s slowing him down.
“See you soon, Dr. Abbot,” she says as she moves away, further down the aisle. Jack glowers at the flight attendant as he closes the bin over his seat. He could’ve waited.
“Please take your seat and fasten your seatbelt, sir,” the flight attendant says, barely sparing Jack a glance. “We’ll start taxiing soon.”
Jack twists to see where Mohan settled before sinking into his own seat. Third aisle from the back, left hand side, window.
His seatmate leans over her needles as Jack rebuckles his seatbelt. “Do you two know each other?” she asks, conspiratorial.
Jack hums. He watches the flight attendants’ safety presentation without hearing a word. Real, then, he thinks.
X
The seatbelt light is still flickering when Jack reaches Mohan’s row. She’s digging through her backpack, head down, when he drops into the empty seat beside her.
“Shit!” Mohan jumps in her seat. Her AirPods case falls on top of her shoes. She bends to grab them, glaring at him as she straightens. “The hell, Abbot?”
Jack swallows the impulse to preen under the heat of her glare. He should feel bad – surprising her like that. He hadn’t meant to. Walking straight at her and all. Prosthetic legs aren’t exactly designed for stealth.
He should apologize – add that to his list – or at least take a stab at seeming sheepish. But he’s thirty-six or so hours into his day. Maybe thirty-eight. He tries not to count after thirty, the same as birthdays. Point is: he is apparently not hallucinating Doctor Samira Mohan’s presence, and this is the best news he’s gotten all day.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says. His grin smarts; his chest fizzes like the air in the cabin is carbonated. He used to wonder what drinking Willy Wonka’s Fizzy Lifting Drinks felt like. He thinks he knows now: the surprise appearance of the most remarkable, brilliant woman in the world on the puddlejumper carrying him toward some fresh, unknowable hell.
If he prayed any more, he’d bow his head in gratitude. Instead he leans back against the headrest, his entire body tilted toward her.
“Whatcha doin’, Mohan?”
She puts in one AirPod but holds onto the other. “Dunno,” she answers, shrugging. Through the golden haze of his delirium – or maybe just the cabin lights dimming – Jack notices she doesn’t quite look at him.
Samira Mohan is never a woman without a plan. She’s always a few steps ahead of him, glancing over her shoulder but never waiting for him to catch up. It’s one of the things he admires about her: how she leads so matter-of-factly. He can catch up or not, she doesn’t care; she’s racing forward, into the future, with or without him.
And Robby calls her Slo-Mo; Jack’s gonna punch him when he sees him next, he swears to God.
He’d forgotten how intoxicating the chase was, until he’d started working with her. And catching up – God, how addictive it was, just walking with her through a case, so synced they barely needed to speak –
Who could blame him if he let her edge ahead again, just for the joy of it?
Jack hums. Mohan inserts her second AirPod. Whatever her plan, she doesn’t want him to know. Yet. That’s fine. He’s a patient man. He appreciates a good mystery to chew on while they fly. It’s not like he has much else to distract him.
Besides the enigma of a woman sitting next to him, that is.
Jack glances at her. Just one more time until they land. If he allows himself any more, he’ll never stop looking…which would be fine, Jack thinks, all things considered.
She catches him, a knowing smirk tugging at her mouth.
A smile cracks his face again. He thinks he might be blushing.
Samira rolls her eyes at him. “Get some sleep, Dr. Abbot,” she says in the same tone she uses to recommend treatment plans to patients. “You’re giddy.”
Guilty as charged. Jack shoots her a two-fingered salute. “Yes, Ma’am, Dr. Mohan.” She turns away but he catches her incredulous laughter all the same.
He settles his shoulders back into his seat and closes his eyes. She’s right. He’s exhausted, slap-happy; if she hadn’t boarded the plane, he’d be passed out asleep already next to his knitting neighbor. He can at least examine his Robby Problem and its New Mohan Development with his eyes closed –
But his chest feels heavier as his breaths deepen.
Jack Abbot sleeps. Doctor’s orders.