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The jingling clang of Samira’s ringtone startled her from a dead sleep. She never put her phone on silent at night. She didn’t receive enough social calls or texts for it to wake her frequently. If her phone went off in the middle of the night, it almost always meant that the hospital needed more staff than they were equipped with–a large trauma incoming or another doctor called away–and for Samira, the chance for a few more hours at work was more than a fair trade for a few extra hours of sleep.
Samira threw an arm across the side of her bed, grabbing blindly at her night stand for the ringing phone and glanced at the screen to see that Jack Abbot (ATTENDING!!!) was the one ringing her at 1:53, which was odd because she knew he had been scheduled for the night off. She thought, perhaps, that he had offered to fill in for Shen. Abbot was the only one in the hospital who could give her workaholic tendencies a run for their money.
“Hello?” she answered, switching on the lamp on her nightstand and sitting up in bed, unable to keep the gravel of sleep out of her voice.
“Doctor Mohan? Mohan. Mo-hun,” Abbot answered, and though his voice was thick and slurred in a way that Samira had never heard before, his pronunciation of her surname was perfect.
“Why don’t you correct people when they say your name wrong? You let me call you Mo han for months but that’s wrong. You should tell people how to say it. Samira Mohan. I’ve started correcting people. Made Robby practice it. Sounds too beautiful for people to always be getting it wrong.”
“Dr. Abbot, are you okay?” Samira asked softly, in a tone she reserved for handling overserved patients in the pitt.
“God. I love it when you call me Dr. Abbot. Makes it hard to think sometimes, ya know. When you’re across from me over a patient and looking to me for what to do. ‘Dr. Abbot’ and those big brown eyes. You look at me like you trust me. It’s intoxicating. Ha. Haha. Intoxicating. I’m intoxicated right now, I think.”
“Jack, are you by yourself?”
“No. Not by myself. ‘M at Patrick’s with Ellis. Ellis made up a drinking game. I have to drink every time I bring you up. I’ve had a lot of tequila. Hate tequila. Tequila’s bad decision juice.”
“Jack–” Samira tried.
“Hey! ‘Member the pigtail catheter?” His voice was excited, boyish in a way she couldn’t ever remember it being. “I think about that a lot. God. You were brilliant. You’re always brilliant. Smartest in the hospital. But you were so brilliant then. Knew you could do it. Fuck. Em gave me shit for months. ‘Risking patient care because watching your crush do something risky turned you on.’ But she was wrong. Not about it turning me on. ‘Cause it did. Turn me on. Definitely did. Your hair was coming out of its clippy thing and you got this determined look in your eye. Even though you were scared. But it wasn’t a risk. I knew you could do it. Can you believe you were only the second person ever to do that procedure? I can. You’re the future, ya know that? I keep telling Robby that.”
“Jack, I think you should have some water and get a ride home,” Samira said gently. She knew that Jack wasn’t the kind to get behind the wheel like this. Any person who had coded as many drunk driving victims as they had wouldn’t even consider it.
“Home’s lonely,” he whined. “I live alone. I know you live alone, too. You know what I mean. We come home from the hospital and there’s no one there. Could get a cat, I guess. I like cats. I know you had a cat. I’m not home enough to feed a cat. I’d need someone who works day shifts to feed it. Do you wanna get a cat with me? You can live with me and we can take turns feeding him. Would be nice to come home to you and our cat. My house is big enough. You can have your own bedroom or you can sleep in mine with me.”
“Abbot! Abbot, What are you doing man?” Samira heard, faintly in the background. Ellis’s voice sounded as though she were looking for Jack.
“I gotta go. Ellis tried to take my phone but I wouldn’t let her. She’s gonna try and take it again. Okay. Know you don’t work tomorrow so I’ll see you the day after. ‘Mkay. Love you. So much. Bye, Samira.”
—
Jack was absolutely certain that someone was hammering an icepick into the front of his skull. It was the only explanation for the throbbing pain radiating from his head.
His mouth was cotton dry and light was streaming in through his usually blacked out windows. Of all nights not to have pulled his blackout curtains shut, he had to pick last night, apparently. He tried to remember coming home and putting himself to bed but found that details of last night were largely a blurry mystery.
Fucking Ellis. She had insisted that he needed to “blow off steam.” Jack was a forty-seven year old workaholic with PTSD and a therapist. His usual idea of blowing off steam was lifting weights or DoorDashing burritos and a beer to the roof after a long shift.
He should have known better than to try and keep up with his thirty year-old resident. He’d done it before and every time, it led to nothing but bad decisions.
He groaned as he rolled on to his side, picked himself up into a sitting position and took inventory. There was the headache and the dry mouth. He felt his stomach turn over and the sides of his mouth flood with bitter saliva. Okay. So throwing up was a very real possibility as well.
He grabbed a crutch and made his way to his bathroom. Advil, Zofran, and the coldest shower he could stand later, he felt better, if only marginally.
Ordinarily, if he was home alone, he’d make it around on crutches, but the constant shift in his weight caused by leaning on them was not helping his nausea, so he pulled on his prosthetic and a pair of sweatpants, forgoing a shirt, and made his way to his kitchen.
He made coffee, black and strong, and stood at his counter. Checking his phone, he pulled up his texts with Ellis and sent off a middle finger emoji. She responded promptly.
Enjoy your hangover, old man.
Good Luck with Mohan.
What could she possibly mean by that? Ellis knew about his thing for Samira. It was a source of constant teasing, but Samira hadn’t been there last night. Oh, god, he thought, as he realized he must have texted her when he was drunk.
He quickly opened their text chain and was relieved to see that the last message he had sent her was a JEM article he had mentioned the last time they had post-shift breakfast together. The relief was short-lived.
There were three new texts from Samira.
Let me know when you get home safe, please.
Ellis texted me that she confiscated your phone but that you are in bed.
When you’re up for it, we should talk about that call.
That call. Abbot checked his recent calls and was horrified to find an outgoing call to Samira Mohan lasting 3 minutes and 11 seconds from early this morning. Fuck.
The anxiety cut through some of the fog in his memory as last night began to come back to him in pieces. Ellis plying him with tequila every time he said Samira’s name. Sneaking away from Ellis at the bar when she threatened to take his phone.
Samira’s voice, thick with sleep.
His mind couldn’t grab a hold of every word he had said but he caught enough to know it was bad. Very bad. HR write-up for sexual harassment, bad, certainly. Maybe probation, bad. Maybe termination, bad.
A new wave of nausea slammed into him that had very little to do with tequila. He needed alka seltzer and a breakfast burrito. He needed a time machine. He needed to change his name and move to Peru and never be heard from again.
He was genuinely considering how much money he had in his bank account–certainly enough for a name change and to live comfortably in South America for the rest of his days–when something began pounding on his frontal lobe.
That seemed illogical. No, something, someone was pounding on his door.
He made his way to the entryway, and through the glass panels of his front door, he saw Samira Mohan standing on his front porch holding a brown paper sack in one hand and a CVS bag in the other.
He considered pretending he didn’t see her, turning and walking back into the house. But alas, it was not one-way glass in his front door, though he made a note that it wasn’t a terrible idea. No, she caught his eye through the glass and tilted her head, raising an eyebrow as though she could see into his brain, see what he was contemplating.
Reluctantly, he opened the front door. He took her in and briefly forgave himself for the night before. After all, looking at her, dark curls hanging softly to her shoulders, brown eyes sparkling with an intensity that said she knew something he didn’t, who could blame him for thinking about her when his inhibitions were at their lowest. Surely, she could bring even stronger men than him to their knees.
In his hangover fog, he must have stood there looking at her for longer than was appropriate. She cleared her throat, “Abbot,” she said, her voice unreadable, “the least you could do is let me in.”
“Of course, Mohan,” he said, cowed, opening the door and gesturing past himself for her to enter. She walked across the threshold, and though she had never been inside his house before, she made a beeline for the kitchen. He followed.
She set her bags on the counter and began opening them. She pulled out two aluminum foil wrapped bundles from the brown paper bag, a bottle of yellow gatorade and a box of alka seltzer from the other. “Glasses?” she asked.
Abbot thought he must be going insane. He had no context for what was happening, but nevertheless nodded to the cabinet above the sink. Samira grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and plunked two tablets from the box into it.
She turned to him, handing him the glass and he drank it in one go without question. “I figured you had Zofran but probably not bubbles. She handed him one of the wrapped bundles and he peeled back the foil.
“The burritos are from Berto’s. I got you the brisket one with the salsa you pretend isn’t too hot for you to enjoy.”
She picked up one of the bundles for herself and began unwrapping it. He knew her well enough to know that hers was filled with crispy tofu and avocado.
“Mohan, what is happening here?” He asked, mystified, unable to connect the dots between her casual actions and his bad decisions from the night before.
“I used context clues and deduced you’d be A) very hungover and B) trying to avoid me. I decided to mitigate both.” He couldn’t parse her tone. He knew she should be furious, and there was a note of frustration to it, but there was also humor, even superiority.
He swallowed. He thought he would have more time to workshop this apology but she seemed determined to leave him no time to get his bearings.
“Mohan, I’m so–” he began.
“Oh, I think we’re waaaaay past Mohan, territory, Jack. Don’t you think?” She cut him off. She set down her burrito to cross her arms and look at him appraisingly.
“Samira, then,” he corrected. “I am so sorry. I was so inappropriate. I completely understand if you report me to HR. Hell, I’ll go with you if you want. I know drinking is absolutely no excuse but I was drunker than I’ve been in years. I’ve been trying to keep from making you uncomfortable for so long and I guess I just–”
“How long?” She interrupted him again.
“What?”
“How long have you had a crush on me?” she asked. Annoyance. He was definitely getting that much.
“Crush,” he repeated, cringing.
“Your words, Jack. Well, technically Walsh’s I guess. ‘Risking patient care because watching your crush do something risky turned you on.’” She bracketed the words Emery had taunted him with in air quotes and Jack felt a blush heat his cheeks then spread all the way down to his bare chest. He was mortified.
“You didn’t remember that part, did you?” He closed his eyes, shaking his head in answer. “Do you remember asking me to move in with you so we could get a cat?”
“The cat part is a little fuzzy but definitely there,” he replied, sheepishly.
“So, I repeat. How long, Jack?” Samira put a hand on her hip and looked at him impatiently.
“Since the end of your intern year, about.” He admitted. It wasn’t as though he could be humiliated any further at this point. “But I swear. I would never intentionally put you in an uncomfortable position. I was never going to do anything about it–”
She put her head in her hands, a look of disbelief across her face. “Oh my god. You’re an idiot. I’m an idiot.”
That pulled Jack up short. “I know I’m an idiot and I’m trying to apologize for that, but why are you an idiot?”
She ignored his question. “Two years, Jack? You’ve wanted me for two years ? If I had known that all it would take for you to make a move was cheap tequila, we would have our fucking cat by now!”
Jack couldn’t make the cogs in his brain work hard enough to track this conversation. He suspected that even without the hangover clouding his thoughts, he would still have trouble understanding what she was saying.
“I am…confused,” he managed.
“I can see that.” Her voice was exasperated but somehow fond. “Let’s try this a different way since your brain doesn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders right now.”
She reached over and took the burrito he realized he was still holding and set it on the counter. She closed the space between them, tilted her head and brought her mouth up to press her lips firmly against his. Jack froze for a second, his brain still lagging, before realizing what was happening.
He kissed her back, lips moving against hers. He felt her let out an exhale that seemed to lighten her entire body, so he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her in.
Jack had been hungover enough times in his almost 50 years on this earth that he thought he had tried every hangover cure there was. None of them came close to kissing Samira Mohan. The feelings of anxiety seemed to melt away; the last vestiges of his headache seemed to dissipate. She opened her mouth to his and moaned, bringing her hand up to his chest and he felt lighter than he had in 15 years.
He pulled away and looked down at her, her lips wet with saliva and a self-satisfied look in her eyes.
“Oh,” he said, knitting his brows together in understanding.
‘’Oh’ he says,” she mocked, fondly.
“So. You’re not mad?” he said in disbelief.
“Oh. I’m plenty mad. You were just never going to do anything about it? What the hell kind of bullshit is that, Jack?” She asked, incredulous.
“Some might call it ‘noble,’ sweetheart. Chivalrous, even,” he answered.
“God, you’re old,’ she teased. “Chivalry doesn’t mean making choices for me. If this is going to work, you have to let me make my own choices–with all the available information.”
He had to laugh. It was just so her . He hated the nickname Robby sometimes let slip, always jumped on his case when he did. Slow-mo. It pissed him off. She wasn’t slow. She was smart. Thoughtful. Analytical. Needed to see a problem from all sides. Needed to have all the facts. He really was an idiot not to realize this would extend to her personal life as well.
“I really am sorry about that. It won’t happen again,” he promised sincerely. She was smarter than he was anyway, if there was something they needed to figure out, surely she was the one who should do it.
“It better not,” she chuckled.
“So you’re not going to HR?” he asked, mostly teasing.
“Not yet. But in a few months, when we move in together, we’ll probably have to do some paperwork,” She said, matter of fact.
“We’re moving in together? That’s awfully fast, Samira,” he pretended to chastise, knowing full well that if she wanted to forgo the few months, he would rent a u-haul today.
“No one’s ever accused me of moving too fast before,” she laughed. “But I’d argue that two years is a glacial pace. Besides, how else are we going to feed our cat?”
“Well, I can’t argue with that logic,” he allowed. Looking deep into her eyes, he reached out to touch a curl that framed her face, pressing it between his thumb and forefinger. It was as soft as he had imagined. They stood there for a moment, neither of them saying a word.
She looked pensive before her expression went a little shy. “I know you don’t remember everything about that phone call, but do you remember what you said to me before you hung up?”
Jack thought back through the haze of last night before the last words he had spoken to her caught up with him. Understanding colored his face. “Oh, honey,” he said, looking down at her.
“I understand if it was just something you said. People accidentally say things before they hang up. I once said “bye, mom” when I was hanging up a call with Dana. And you were drunk so it’s not like I expect–” she rambled.
“I love you,” he said, firmly. She deserved those words sober, though they were true even when he wasn’t.
Relief warmed her expression, her shoulders dropping, and a soft smile bloomed on her lips. She leaned her head to where his shoulder met his chest, pressing the side of her face into him before exhaling into his neck. “I love you, too,” she breathed.
He pulled his arms around her and they stood there in his kitchen a while, wrapped in each other as the morning sun came in through his windows. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and for the first time in his life, he was grateful for bad decisions.