Chapter Text
After four shifts in a row where the other staff give her a very wide, very lonely berth, it’s Santos who calls Samira out on her newfound prickliness with a characteristically brusque question lobbed her way by the computers on Thursday: “So did your cat die or something?”
“I don’t have a cat.”
“Like, you never did, or you did and now you don’t and you’re taking it out on us?” Whitaker, in his third change of scrubs of the day, nudges Santos' shoulder. “What? It’s true, she’s pissed about something, I just wanna know what.”
“Maybe don’t piss her off more,” Javadi mutters, barely audible under the sound of her fingers typing away.
Samira, deciding to be nice and not play into their claims that she’s mad about something, bites her tongue. She tries her hardest.
Until a minute of tense silence passes. Perlah sucks her teeth and starts talking to Princess, words Samira can’t understand but she knows are about her, and she explodes.
“It’s none of your business,” she starts, and even Langdon coming out of Central 10 stops to listen, “but if you have to know, I’m pissed because I’m having the week from hell trying to find someone to take to my stupid, overly competitive cousin’s wedding before tomorrow, and I put off trying to find the plus one I RSVP’d for, and none of my Hinge dates have gone even remotely well, but my entire family thinks I have a boyfriend and if I don’t bring a boyfriend with me to the ‘weekend of celebration at a resort and spa in beautiful Nantucket’,” her hands go up on their own to air-quote the words from the off-white, tastefully thick invitation that she knows Kashi had slaved over like she was Patrick Bateman, “I’ll be branded the old maid cousin forever even though I’m only twenty eight, and everyone will laugh at me for the rest of my life,” her voice has risen to a level she didn’t know it could get to, but you learn something new every day, “and it won’t matter if I’m a doctor or if I have a very expensive apartment and no roommates in downtown Pittsburgh or if I’ve finally struck up a good relationship with the girl who sells honey at the farmers market and now gives me a discount, because if I show up to this wedding without a boyfriend, I’ll be a loser.” She finally takes a breath, moving her hands wildly in the air to punctuate her next statement: “But it’s none of your business anyway!”
The embarrassment hits her as soon as she’s done speaking, skin turning into the surface of the sun under everyone’s gaze. Everyone. Including Dana, looking over her glasses, low on her nose, with a kindness Samira’s not sure she deserves after disrupting the floor so badly that a couple patients who can walk actually have gotten up from their beds and are poking their heads out to gape at her, too.
“I’ll date ya, Spinster, even though I don’t normally swing that way,” says Myrna in her raspy voice with a wink, fucking Myrna in her handcuffs, who has christened her with a new nickname that will absolutely replace Slow-Mo in the minds of every single ER staffer for the rest of all time. This story will get told over and over again. Even when she’s moved on, even when she’s in the ground, the employees of the Pitt will still talk about Dr. Spinster Mohan.
There’s laughs and giggles all around, but she gets the sense that it’s more at Myrna’s offer than at her outburst. That’s a relief, at least. She grimaces as she makes eye contact with McKay, her face sympathetic as she shrugs. They’ve grabbed drinks a couple times, and Samira remembers that McKay had told her that she’s focusing on her kid and work. “There’s nothing wrong with being single!” McKay had exclaimed, exasperated, right before she’d gotten a few free drinks out of the sucker next to them at the bar who thought he’d had a chance of changing her mind.
Abbot’s voice is loud and curt, cutting through the chatter easily, while he steps out from the office. “What’s going on out here? Do we not have enough patients to treat?”
Dana, mercifully, agrees. She gives a shooing motion. “You all heard Dr. Abbot, let’s get back to it.”
The rest of the shift goes fine. Perfectly fine. As she’s working with the next few patients (broken leg, UTI, baby with a fever), no one else says anything, though she does get a kind little smile from Jesse that says that he heard what happened but he doesn’t care. Too bad he’s gay. He’s kind and can actually hold a conversation, and that salt and pepper hair is —
“Dr. Mohan,” Abbot calls from somewhere behind her as she’s finishing up her last chart before she hands off to the night shift. “Come see me before you clock out.”
“Sure,” she replies without looking. She’s not worried, not really. Abbot’s exceedingly fair in his feedback, even if he’s been challenging her more than she’s used to while he’s been covering for Robby today. After she takes her bag from her locker and hoists it onto her shoulder, she heads toward the office; Abbot comes out and directs her towards the stairwell.
Instead of commending her on her early-morning LP like she hopes for — she knows he’d seen it, had caught his eye and two inspiring thumbs up through the glass of Trauma 1 — he asks, “What color are you wearing?”
Samira looks down at her scrubs and wonders if he’s been colorblind all along, a detail that’s escaped her notice. “Uh, blue?”
“For the wedding.”
“For the wedding.”
They both look at each other, Samira more blankly and confusedly, for a beat. Abbot raises his eyebrows, patient for a moment more, before he says, “The wedding that you told everyone about two hours ago.”
Right when she thinks that she’s made her peace with everyone in her family and at work thinking that she’s going to die alone, Abbot makes her feel warm under her collar about it. “I recognize that sharing anything about that was a lapse in judgment that detracted focus from the critical work that we do to help our patients.”
He scoffs. He really, actually scoffs. “Save that shit for Robby. You did great work today. I’m asking because I have the weekend off.”
Maybe all the stress has been getting to her (it has; she feels her eyelids wanting to twitch), but what he’s saying isn’t making sense. “So do I.”
“Dr. Mohan,” Abbot says, one corner of his lips moving just slightly upward as he crosses his arms against his chest, “If nothing has changed since your announcement, then you’re still looking for a date for your cousin’s wedding. I have the next three days off. I’ve been told, once or twice, that I’m a great wedding date. And I have a few different suits for different dress codes and ties in various colors.”
“But —”
“You can say no —”
“Why?”
His careful eyes find hers in that sort of disconcerting way he always makes eye contact whenever they talk to each other. “I really like wedding buffet food, and I don’t like my residents to feel like they’re losers.”
“It’s an entire weekend with people you don’t know.”
“I know you.”
“We’d have to pretend,” her voice falters before she rights it, “that we’re dating. At the bachelorette party a couple weeks ago, I told them that I’d be bringing my boyfriend as my plus one.”
“I took an acting class or two in college. I think I can manage.”
Abbot stares at her while she tries to think of a response. His offer is better than Myrna’s, but she still can’t believe he’s serious. “I really can’t ask you to do this.”
“Well,” he says, “it’s a good thing I’m doing the asking.”
Samira’s mouth twists on its own while he keeps staring at her. She’s usually not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but … “Are you sure?”
“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
She slips her phone out of her back pocket, opens up her contacts app and extends it out to him. “I don’t have your number. And my dress is pink.”
*
Their plane leaves at noon the next day. He meets her before TSA, and they stand there with their bags for a second, not knowing how to greet each other, before she reaches for a hug. His hands on her lower back are warm, even through the fabric of her sweatshirt.
“Is this okay?” he asks directly into her ear.
“Oh, uh,” Samira answers, her eyes widening as she tilts her face into his shoulder, “this is okay. Good that we’re getting started with …” She trails off, not sure how to phrase it in a way that doesn’t scream he’s an attending and I’m a resident and we’re going to a wedding under the ruse that we’re dating and we have to look like we’ve been dating.
“The physical side of things?”
He pulls back enough to be able to see her face as she murmurs, imagination wandering to places it really shouldn’t go, “Yeah, that part.”
He lets her go, then. The line to check their respective bags is short enough that they don’t have to wait too long, and they make their way to the front of the security line without a problem. The next available agent checking IDs beckons them up gruffly.
“Passports,” the agent says in the tone of voice that says she’s had a bad day and that they better not make it worse. “You two together?”
Samira hesitates on what together means to the United States Department of Homeland Security, but Abbot smiles slyly and replies, “Sure are.”
It satisfies the agent, who takes their passports, scans them and waves them onto the conveyor belts with weariness. In the process of taking their shoes off, Samira grasps onto the nearest available object, which happens to be his — Dr. Abbot’s — Jack’s — what the hell does she even call him now that they’re doing this? — forearm. His very taut, muscular, veiny forearm. Has he always had those?
Jack, she settles on Jack, offers to stop for something on their way to the gate. “Couple diners, or we could go to a bar, or Starbucks,” he says, while he looks at the map on the terminal wall. When he mentions Jimmy John’s next, his stomach audibly grumbles, making her laugh.
She looks at the map too and identifies what might just be the holy grail. “TGIF.”
“I had no idea you felt so strongly about days of the week,” he comments while he follows her, just a step or two behind.
“I don’t, but I do want some of the worst mozzarella sticks in the world,” she replies, shrugging a little — there had been a TGIF a couple blocks from the main building back in med school that everyone had frequented, watered-down cocktails be damned — before they get to the host, who gives them a table for two in the otherwise near-deserted restaurant.
They have plenty of time before boarding starts, so they put in their orders for drinks and appetizers and let the kind, pimply server stumble over his words as he says he’ll come back for their entree orders. Jack takes a pan-seared potsticker, dips it into the zhuzhed up soy sauce, takes a bite and asks how they met.
“At work,” Samira replies, “obviously. How else would we meet?”
“Any of the ways people meet,” Jack says.
“But we met at work. You didn’t, I don’t know, drive me from Chicago to New York the summer after graduation.”
Jack leans back in his seat, enough for her to watch him deliberately wipe his sticky hands on his napkin. He’ll reach for the hand sanitizer in his bag soon enough, the same as she will when she’s done with her condensation-sweaty Long Island iced tea. “When Harry Met Sally,” he says. “Good movie.”
Because they’re not at work and they have time to chitchat, she doesn’t feel too bad about quizzing him, “And we didn’t meet on a train to Vienna.”
“Hmm — ah — the one with Ethan Hunt?”
“Before Sunrise, with Ethan Hawke,” she corrects, trying not to laugh. He’s forty-whatever and definitely not what she’d immediately call a rom-com type; he can’t help his limited knowledge in comparison to her admittedly deep bank of rom-com meet-cutes. “And you didn’t call into a radio relationship expert and tell the entire nation that you’re a sad, handsome widower.”
“That one’s Sleepless in Seattle. Meg Ryan, right?”
His voice doesn’t break or anything; he doesn’t show any signs that she’d forgotten about the ring on his finger. But, realizing her mistake, she meets his eye on purpose and says, “Sorry.”
He waves one hand somewhat dismissively. “It’s alright. It’s been a long time since anyone described me that way.”
“That way, like, sad?”
“Yup,” Jack says, a sardonic lilt to the word. “My therapist said I’m ‘working through my tragedies,’ which feels a lot like ‘sad, but functioning sad’.”
Samira’s fascinated, probably too much, by his admission. He has a therapist. They worked on things together. People don’t usually call him sad. Mysterious, maybe; she’s asked him on plenty of different occasions where he’d learned a technique and he’d responded with “med school” or “war” or, once, “Psych 2 on a Tuesday.” If she presses, he’ll give the procedure to her with him supervising, calm but firm, from a couple feet away, but he won’t give her a proper answer. If this is going to work, she has to get to know him enough to be able to convincingly act like she knows him.
“How long were you together?”
“Three years, altogether. Love at first sight, and we got married after five months.”
“How long ago …?”
“... did she die? It’s alright to ask. You’re working up a patient history.” She bites her tongue to stop herself from saying that she’s never been as interested in a patient as she’s interested in him — where did that come from? — and instead lets him keep going. “It’s been twenty one years. Car accident. I was in Afghanistan.” There’s a detached quality to his voice, like he’s said the words enough times to not have to think about them, like they’re not raw anymore. It makes her heart hurt.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s …” His gaze drops down to the plate in front of him. “It’s been a long time. It’s not alright, but the grief never gets smaller, your life grows around it. ”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but admits, softly, “I guess it does. It took work to feel like it was okay to grow, to have something good happening in my life.”
“Your dad, right?”
Samira nods, takes another sip of her drink, reaches for a lukewarm mozzarella stick with a disappointing cheese pull. She doesn’t cry anymore just thinking about it, but sometimes when she’s having a frank conversation and it comes up, she feels her throat try to tighten up. Now’s one of those times. “Yeah. Fifteen years.”
Jack nods, meets her eyes. “Sorry.”
The server picks that moment to come back for their entree orders. She gets the chicken tenders, objectively one of the safest options in the menu, and he orders a burger. The kid goes off, and they pick at their food for a minute or two before Jack asks, “So — the stupid, overly competitive cousin. Which side of the family is she?”
Samira snorts. God. He’d really listened to that whole rant. It feels like a million years away, even though it’d been less than 24 hours ago. “Kashi. Dad’s side. Everyone there is from his side, and it’s important to me that …” that they know I’ve made a life for myself that Dad would be proud of. “That they think this is real,” she says quickly instead.
Jack nods, like go on. “What do I need to know about her?”
She doesn’t know exactly where to start, so she just rambles. “My dad and her dad, my Uncle Jay, were brothers. He’s an architect, she followed in his footsteps. She’s my age, and our moms were — are still, I guess — pretty close, so we grew up together. Like, we shared clothes when we were toddlers, we went to the same schools, everything. Our houses were right down the block from each other. We grew up in Boston, Back Bay, don’t know if you’re familiar with it. She has two younger brothers, Indy, Indra, technically but he really liked Harrison Ford a lot when we were kids, he’s four years younger, and Ravi, who’s twelve years younger than us. Kashi was always just a little better than me at most things, and she always liked to … I don’t know, lord it over me? English, social studies, math. By the time we were in high school, she’d sort of made it her goal to outdo me. Or, that’s what it felt like. And this was right after my dad had died, so it was just …”
“Not a good time.”
“Exactly.” She looks up from where she’s been swirling her straw in circles around her nearly-empty glass, lifts her shoulders in a shrug. “We went to the same college, if you can believe it —”
“Cornell,” Jack says.
“Yeah — how? —”
“It was in your file.”
Right. He’s read her file. “Cornell. Kashi made a point of doing all the cool things, but better than me. If I made a good connection with a professor in my department, she’d become best friends with the chair of her own department. If I got into a selective club, she’d somehow manage to become the best friend of the entire executive board. If I went to a frat party —”
Jack snickers. “You went to frat parties?”
“Hey,” she replies quickly, feeling her cheeks heat, “it was — they were — everyone went! Like, everyone, okay,” and behind her eyelids flash memories of the thrill of Delta Chi guys eyeing her up in cramped basements with neon lights, “and they were fun. The point is that if I got invited to a frat party, she’d already be there with her tongue down the president’s throat.”
He coughs, covering his mouth with the side of his fist, but she can tell he’s just trying to disguise more laughter. “Okay, I think I get it. What about her fiancé?”
“Hayden. He’s a civil engineer, they worked at the same company while she was doing an internship or something. He’s really something.”
“In your opinion?”
“In everyone’s opinion.” It comes out almost wistful.
“Mhm,” Jack says, consideringly, but there’s still a laugh in his eyes. Not at her, but with her, like he’s commiserating with her. It feels leaps and bounds better than the reactions she’d got from her Hinge dates this week. As she’d explained the situation to try to suss out if she could be around them for the entire wedding weekend, each and every encounter had felt a little like torture; on top of what she assumed would be torture from Kashi and everyone else, what was the point of pretending she had a boyfriend if she couldn’t pretend to stand him? Jack is an easy conversationalist now that he’s opened up a little, and she knows he’s taking mental notes on what she’s saying.
“So, this Hayden guy. Is he …” He tilts his head, gestures with a hand at himself.
Samira fills in the blank and says, “Old?” at the exact same time Jack goes on, “White?”
They both take a moment to stare at each other before they laugh.
“I grew up in Boston.”
“And I apparently grew up when Boston was being founded.”
They keep talking over their entrees. She briefs him on the rest of the guests and he asks all the right questions; by the time they board their plane (they have to stop in Boston before heading on, but thank everything they don’t have to change planes), Jack’s already identified which family members and friends are most important to their little (big) ruse. He lets her take the window seat, doesn’t manspread beyond the limits of his middle seat (though his knee does brush hers in case she wants a bag of pretzels) and makes her laugh by fake-clutching, dry and defeated, at his chest when they go through a brief spot of turbulence. At baggage claim in Nantucket, he pulls her bag off the belt with care, then takes her hand in his suddenly.
“Look at me,” Jack says lowly, urgently, and she immediately follows his direction as he squeezes her hand. He grins at her — a real, big grin — and says, “I’m pretty sure that guy with the sign that says Samira Mohan and plus one is waiting for us. So we’re starting now.”
“Oh,” she replies, a little breathily, because his eyes look at her very warmly. “Yeah, uh, Kashi’s the sort of person who sends car service to the airport.”
He passes her her own bag, then immediately takes her hand again, blunt fingers grazing over her knuckles. It’s the grasp of someone who’s sure, who doesn’t have to practice interlocking their fingers with their partner, who’s been seeing them for a while. It’s perfect.
“Here we go,” he says.
“Here we go,” Samira replies, smiling back at him.