Chapter Text
August, 2025
Three hours left.
Jack didn’t bother checking the time again. The clock hadn’t budged the last three times he’d looked, and he was starting to think it never would.
His shoulder throbbed, a dull ache from an old break that had never fully healed. Not that he’d ever given it the chance; it hadn't exactly ranked high on the list in that string of injuries. But suturing a forehead gash in bad lighting and worse ergonomics certainly hadn’t helped. He rolled it once, twice. Still there. Still his.
The chart in front of him was for a kid with a concussion who wouldn’t stop talking about his ex-girlfriend between bouts of nausea, even though his said ex-girlfriend was in the room with him, and had been very unaware that she was an ex. Jack had nodded, grunted in the right places, and ordered a scan mostly so he could hand the kid off to imaging and steal a few minutes of silence in the hallway before the next patient.
It wasn’t that he hated the job. Most days, at least. But being an ER doctor was like being in love with something that kicked the shit out of you daily and then asked you to stay the night. Some days he wanted to pack it up and run. It wasn’t an unfamiliar urge. He was good at running. He’d run before. Left things behind like they weren’t going to follow him. Turns out those things always did. Things that deserved better than a disappearing act and a silent exit.
The station was half-empty, the usual circus currently at play around them while nurses went from room to room. The overhead lights buzzed just enough to grind at his nerves. His scrubs smelled faintly of antiseptic and something that might have been chicken soup from the cafeteria. He hadn’t eaten. Didn’t remember if he had breakfast. When was the last time he ate? Might have been yesterday. Might’ve been last week, for all he knew.
Fuck the day shift.
He wasn’t supposed to be working the day shift. That was Robby’s little island of misfit toys. No, Jack worked nights, and he rather preferred it that way.
But since the small exodus of those who had survived COVID and decided they’d finally had enough after PittFest, and Langdon being away on his extended ‘vacation’, hands were shorter than they usually were until the new doc started on Monday.
So, Jack worked the day shift.
Which fuckin’ blows when your entire circadian rhythm is thrown off from living like a bat, but hey. What does he know? He’s just a doctor.
He didn’t prefer nights because they were easier. They never were. The sun would go down, and with it, apparently, went everyone in Pittsburgh’s goddamn sanity. The ER turned into a zoo the minute the sky went dark. Drunks with head wounds, panicked parents clutching feverish toddlers, psych holds screaming about voices, gunshot victims left bleeding through makeshift bandages on the curb of the ambulance bay. The triage board lit up like a Christmas tree.
Easy? Fuck no.
He’d seen people sprint out of medical school only to crumble on the night shift. Couldn’t hack the chaos. Couldn’t handle the volume of it all; the patients, the noise, the sheer sensory assault of it. People thought the night shift was slow. That was a myth told by people who’d never stepped foot in an urban ER at 2 a.m. when the meth hit and someone rolled in without pants demanding an exorcism.
The waiting room had a near-constant seven-hour wait and somehow still kept getting longer. Nurses ran on caffeine and spite. The vending machines always ate your cash. No one finished their coffee while it was still hot. Half the time the computers froze mid-charting and the other half, someone was vomiting on them.
But nights were loud. They filled the gaps. They didn’t give you peace. They gave you distraction. Blunt-force, blood-and-paperwork distraction. A wall of chaos he could throw himself into over and over again just to stay upright. They didn’t leave room for ghosts.
That was what mattered when morning would come. He’d return to an apartment he didn’t remember renting, an old dog who huffed when he walked through the door like he had been the one to work a twelve hour shift, and the fridge of a 48-year-old widowed bachelor. The silence there wasn’t peaceful. It was suffocating. A long stretch of you made it home, now what? that he never quite had an answer for.
He’d walk the dog. He’d turn the scanner on and let the garble fill every room. He’d tell himself that he fell asleep on the couch again because of the exhaustion. Not because in the living room, he could hear the noise of the city outside his windows like a lullaby. Not because he couldn’t find rest in a bed that still felt too big. Not because her things still hung in the closet beside his own. Not because since the night she left and hospice erased every last bit of her, the apartment had been achingly still. But he’d been telling himself that same sorry excuse for nearly eight years now like someday he might actually believe it.
Nights gave him excuses. He slept through the day because he had to, and no one questioned the sleeping habits of a man when he worked the graveyard shift. Unless you were to count his therapist. He sure as hell had a few opinions about it.
So now, he kept his nights full. Filled the silence with broken bodies and paperwork, caffeine and nurses who didn’t mind his attitude. He clocked in, he stitched what he could, inserted a sarcastic comment wherever necessary, and he didn’t ask questions he didn’t want answered.
It wasn’t heroism. It wasn’t healing.
It was noise.
And it kept the quiet out just long enough to get to the next night.
But a day shift was what they needed. So he showed up and kept his head down until Monday, when the new doc was supposed to show up and maybe take some of the pressure off. Not that he cared who they were. Green or seasoned, genius or idiot, they’d all end up chewed up and spit out by this place eventually. Everyone was. The smart ones stayed out. But the idiots like him were called back night after night like they were being pulled by a tether. It’s in our DNA, he’d told Robby. Like bees guarding a hive. He hadn’t been able to bleed it out just yet.
Jack dropped the pen he’d been absently tapping against the counter and scrubbed his hands over his face. Fuck, he really needed to get some sleep. With a tired sigh, he turned his focus back to the chart on the screen in front of him. A nurse walked behind him holding a coffee he knew damn well wasn’t from the staff room. Didn’t smell nearly burned enough.
“I smell that and I hate you,” he muttered. Princess winked and kept walking.
Someone stepped up to the terminal beside him, their fingers flying across the keyboard with the kind of precision and urgency that came from juggling five priorities at once. Robby didn’t bother to look up, eyes locked on the cascading data across his own screen as he typed.
“How’s your kid in five?” Robby asked casually, squinting at the screen before he remembered that he was fucking blind and went feeling for his glasses.
“Ear infection,” he said, earning a grunt of agreement from Robby. “Kid threw less of a fit than the grandmother did about waiting in Chairs for six hours.”
Robby huffed a humorless laugh. “Yeah? Her and everyone else in that waiting room.”
Robby signed out and was already halfway to the next room before the credentials screen even finished flashing on the monitor. He turned on his heel, pointing back at Jack without slowing down. “Hey, I’ve got a tib-fib in twelve. Seventeen-year-old female, fell at cheerleading practice. You mind?”
“Do I get to take a buddy?” Jack called after him, tilting his head toward the gaggle of baby doctors clustered near the nurse’s station. They all seemed to perk up at the sight of Robby’s brisk pace, like ducklings imprinting on a very tired, very sarcastic mother goose. “Yes, go on, young ones,” he muttered under his breath, already pulling the kid’s chart and glancing over her intake vitals and notes. “Follow him to the cool shit. Save the world.”
“Whitaker,” Robby said, voice cutting through the low hum of conversation.
The kid’s head snapped up from the far end of the counter, where he was frantically trying to rub something off his scrubs with a tissue. Something flickered across his face, somewhere between hope and outright horror.
He froze, tissue mid-swipe.
“You’re with Abbot,” Robby finished, jerking his chin toward Jack without waiting for a response.
Jack scrubbed a hand down his face and cast a glance at the elevator. Maybe the new doc would walk through those doors early and spare him. No such luck. He straightened up, caught Whitaker’s wide-eyed stare, and glanced at the clock.
Two hours and fifty-five minutes. No dice.
He waved him over, pushing off the counter and heading toward trauma twelve. “Let’s get after it, Doogie,” he said, already mentally sorting through the probable fracture protocol. “If she pukes, it’s all yours.”
Whitaker stuffed the tissue into his pocket with a stiff nod and scrambled after Jack, jogging a few steps before falling into stride beside him. His eyes locked onto Jack like he was trying to absorb everything by proximity alone.
“I’m assuming you haven’t made it this long without seeing a compound fracture?” Jack asked, glancing sideways as they approached the trauma bay.
“A few,” Whitaker nodded. “We had a lady come in on my first day with a degloved open fracture after being pushed off the train platform, so I think I can handle it.”
Jack pushed open the door and held it for Whitaker with a smirk. “Then this is nothing, kid.”
Jack pulled the curtain aside with one hand and stepped in first, holding it just long enough to let Whitaker slip in behind him before tossing it shut with a practiced flick of his wrist. The too bright room was tight, all antiseptic fumes and the fluorescent hum that was always suddenly louder without the ambient hallway noise.
A woman leaned over the bed, doing her best to comfort the teenager on it, straightened up at the sound. Her hand stayed on the girl’s shoulder, but her wide, panicked eyes flicked immediately to Jack. The school badge clipped to her lanyard jingled slightly.
The girl on the gurney looked up, her jaw clenched so tight Jack could almost hear her grinding her teeth. She was doing everything she could to hold it together, but her face had gone ashen, slick with a thin sheen of sweat. A few strands of bright copper hair had slipped loose from her blue-bowed ponytail and clung limply to her damp forehead. Her hands were fisted in the sheet, knuckles bleached white.
Jack’s gaze dropped to the leg; angled wrong. Obvious deformity. Ugly enough to make your gut turn. Not the worst he’d seen, but close enough for a first-timer to flinch, which thankfully, Whitaker did not.
Jack didn’t need an X-ray to confirm anything. That leg was well and truly fucked up. Undoubtedly so. He knew a fucked up leg when he saw one.
“Abigail Morgan?” Jack asked, sanitizing his hands while he stepped further into the room.
The girl shifted her gaze to him, wincing as she moved, and gave him a look like he’d asked the stupidest fucking question she’d ever heard. “What gave it away?”
“Had a hunch,” Jack said, sliding onto the stool and tapping in his credentials to unlock her chart on the screen. The girl hadn’t looked away. She was staring him down; those blue eyes stormy and uncomfortably familiar, locked in and unflinching. Something about them itched at the back of his mind, tugged at a memory he couldn’t quite pin down.
He turned back toward her with a faint, crooked smile. “I’m Doctor Abbot. Got a student shadowing me today. Mind if he sticks around?”
Whitaker gave a small wave. Abigail didn’t move.
“Sure,” she said, dry as bone.
Jack exhaled softly through his nose and stepped toward the bed to get a better look at the leg. The swelling was hard to miss. “Ouch,” he muttered, mostly to himself. Then he looked at Whitaker. “Doctor Whitaker. Have at it.”
Whitaker stepped forward, trying for approachable. Jack resisted the urge to roll his eyes; he was a good kid, really. Would make one hell of a doctor once he got out of his own head. Jack just wished he wasn’t so goddamn awkward in the meantime. “So, what happened?”
Abigail didn’t even blink. “Pyramid went wrong. Flyer slipped her liberty, took me down with her. I landed crooked. Leg snapped. Coach lost her mind. Cue ambulance. Now I’m here.”
“I’m not sure what half of that meant,” Whitaker admitted, crouching to inspect her toes, “but it sounds like it hurt.”
“Brilliant deduction,” Abigail muttered, wincing as he palpated her foot. Jack nodded slightly as Whitaker checked her pulses.
“Isn’t it a little early for practice?” Whitaker asked. “I thought school didn’t start until September.”
“Most fall sports start over the summer,” Jack provided, still observing the leg. “You’ll see a spike in concussions, sprains, fractures, and dislocations come July and August. Teenagers plus turf equals full waiting room. It’s the golden season for adolescent overconfidence.”
Whitaker nodded. “Well, your coach made the right call. It’s definitely broken.”
Abigail gave him a look like he’d just told her water was wet. “Gee. You really think so? Is that your official diagnosis, Doctor?”
Jack bit the inside of his cheek. Little smartass. He always had a soft spot for the snarky ones. Whitaker moved to feel for her tibial pulse. Jack watched closely as Abigail flinched, her breath catching hard in her throat as she pinched her eyes shut.
“You don’t have to soldier through it, kid,” Jack said, softer now. Her eyes cracked open and met his. She blinked hard, swallowing something down, but kept his gaze like she had something to prove. He gave her a small, reassuring smile. “Crying’s pretty standard in this wing of the hospital.”
“I’m good,” Abigail muttered through gritted teeth, wincing again. “Planning to save the breakdown for the reset. I’ve already picked out my favorite curse words. I want to earn that f-bomb.”
Jack exhaled a soft, amused breath and watched Whitaker press down gently on her toenail. The color was slow to return. Not great. Jack caught it, watching Whitaker’s jaw twitch in confirmation, along with the subtle pinch of Abigail’s as she tried to hide the discomfort.
“Smart,” he said with a small, approving smile. “You’ll want to save some of those for later, trust me.”
Abigail gave him a small, tight-lipped smile in return, but it wasn’t the playful, deflecting kind he’d expected. No, it was a little too tight, like she was trying to convince everyone in the room she was tougher than she felt. Jack felt that flicker of recognition return, gnawing at the back of his mind. It passed as quickly as it came. Maybe it was the familiarity in her tone; that dry wit wrapped around something stubborn and resilient. It reminded him of someone. Must be one of those faces, he told himself.
“Whitaker,” he said, folding his arms across his chest as he looked over at the kid. “Walk me through it.”
Whitaker cleared his throat and started, “Uh, sixteen-year-old female—”
“Seventeen,” Abigail corrected, still gritting her teeth. “I’m seventeen.”
Jack smirked, glanced at her, and gave Whitaker a nod.
“Right. Yeah. Seventeen-year-old female—”
“Seventeen-year-old female with no prior health issues,” Abigail cut in, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, voice flat and bored. “Dropped out of a cheer stunt, like, maybe six feet up. Landed wrong on the leg, heard a snap, saw stars. Now I’ve got a tib-fib that looks like it lost a fight with gravity. Closed, probably comminuted, but we’ll let imaging be the judge of that. Moderate swelling. I’ve got pins and needles in my toes, so you’re gonna want a neurovascular check before you even think about reducing it. Probable axial load with a side of torque. Could be some knee damage too, but hard to tell over the bone trying to jailbreak through my skin. Pain’s at an eight unless you touch it, then it’s a thousand, so stop touching it. Arms and head are fine; didn’t try to catch myself, just kind of ate it. Currently riding a two milligram IV push of morphine. Not enough to feel good, just enough to keep from screaming.”
Abigail turned that tight-lipped smile toward Whitaker again, this time laced with teeth and sarcasm.
“More drugs, please.”
The room went still. Even the monitor seemed to hesitate before beeping again. Whitaker froze, wide-eyed, hands hovering mid-air like he wasn’t sure whether to examine her or applaud. He shifted his weight awkwardly. “What she said…” he mumbled, glancing at Jack like he was waiting for the punchline.
Jack raised a brow. “Well, thank you, Doctor House,” he said, giving the leg another glance. “Not bad. Big Grey’s Anatomy fan, or did you go to Google Med School on the way over?”
Abigail snorted softly through her nose. “Neither. My mom’s a doctor.”
He looked at her again and then turned to the woman standing at the foot of the bed, who looked far too squeamish in an ER to be a doctor. She immediately raised her hands.
“Oh, no. Coach. I’m just the coach,” she said quickly, paling a little as she caught sight of the leg. “Mom’s on her way.”
“And Grey’s is painfully inaccurate,” Abigail added, as if personally offended. “Every person on that show would literally be in jail. Like, three times over. I could get more sound medical advice from ChatGPT.”
Jack fought a smirk. “Spoken like someone who’s been forced to watch it against her will.”
“Mom hate-watches it,” Abigail said flatly. “She needs something to cuss at when the Eagles aren’t playing. I think it’s therapeutic for her. Some people journal, some people do yoga; she crashes out over made-up doctors. Whatever works, I guess.”
Whitaker gave her a stunned look, like she’d just switched languages mid-sentence. Jack let out a short breath through his nose and turned back toward the monitor with a nod.
“Guess Netflix’s cheaper than therapy,” Jack said, tapping a quick note into the chart. “Let the pros handle it from here though, yeah?”
“I’m letting you,” Abigail deadpanned. “You’re just doing it slower than I would.”
That earned a real laugh from Jack; short, surprised. It caught him off guard as did the flicker of recognition that followed. It crept into him again, taking root in a way that made his throat tight. There was something in her cadence. The way she landed sarcasm like a punchline she didn’t care if anyone caught. It stirred something just out of reach that he couldn’t grasp. Had he treated this kid before? He’s sure he’d remember the little jackass if he had.
“Alright.” He stood, exhaling through his nose. “Doctor Whitaker’s got it from here. Neuro check and get her splinted before imaging. I’ll put the orders in and call ortho. She’ll deny it till her leg falls off, but she’s hurting. Let’s get ahead of it. What do you want to give her?”
Whitaker blinked, but answered quickly. “Another two milligrams morphine IV, slow push. Monitor vitals. Reassess in five?”
Jack gave a small nod of approval, folding his arms. “Good call. Write it up, I’ll sign off.”
He turned back toward Abigail. “You’ll want to start practicing your list, kid. This next part is gonna suck.”
“Lucky me,” she said, offering him a withering look. “Thanks for the encouragement, Doc.”
Jack chuckled, already walking away. “Anytime. Nice to meet you, Abigail.”
Jack had just started toward the curtain when he heard her voice again, smaller this time. Softer. Nervous.
“Doctor Abbot?”
He turned. “Yeah, kid?”
Abigail wasn’t smirking now. No sharp wit, no dry sarcasm. Just a girl in a hospital bed with a busted leg and scared eyes. “Can you tell my mom where I am when she gets here?” she asked quietly, then added a soft, “Please.”
It was the first time she’d sounded like a teenager since he walked in. Like a kid who just wanted her mom.
Jack nodded, something in his chest softening. He gave the kid a small smile. “You got it.”
But he didn’t move right away, because she was still holding his gaze with those blue eyes that he knew. He knew those eyes. At least, he used to.
Still, he forced the thought back down. Just another name. Just another kid with blue eyes.
Jack stepped out and pulled the curtain closed behind him, the soft swish of fabric muffling the sounds inside. The coach remained at the girl’s side, still speaking in low, steady tones, her hand moving instinctively to smooth damp hair from the kid’s clammy forehead. The girl was trying like hell to keep it together, teeth clenched, eyes glassy, fists twisting the sheet in silence. Jack had seen it before; kids who’d bite down on pain like it owed them something. He knew it all too well himself. This one was barely holding the line.
Back at the nurses’ station, Jack ignored the lukewarm coffee at his elbow and keyed into Abigail’s chart. His hands moved by habit alone; stable, neuro check pending ortho consult. He read it back once, almost absently, before calling the order down to radiology. As the line rang, his gaze wandered down the corridor to her room. The curtain was drawn, but he could still picture her: the clenched jaw, the sweat on her brow, the way she white-knuckled the sheet like pain was a battle she wasn’t about to lose, welding dry wit like a weapon.
It wasn’t just the attitude that stuck with him. It was the way she held it all in. Like someone who was trying to prove to the world that she could and was stronger than it. The shape of her face. The bow in her hair. That hard-earned edge in her voice that pulled forth blurry memories from the shallow grave he’d tried burying them in a long time ago.
“Abbot.”
The sound of his name tugged him back. Jack turned to find Dana watching him over the top of her glasses, brows raised.
“You good?” she asked, already skeptical of whatever answer he might give.
“Just peachy,” he replied, offering a dry half-smile.
“You sure?” she pressed. “You’ve been staring at that room like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Jack exhaled through his nose, shaking his head. “Nah. Patient just… looks like someone I used to know.”
Dana didn’t say anything right away. Just looked at him a beat longer before giving a small nod and turning back to her work. He stared down at the monitor, her name blurring slightly before him. You’re just tired, he told himself. Seeing ghosts where there are none. It wasn’t new. Sometimes it was a flash of red in a crowd that he’d follow without realizing, a snorted laugh across a room that made his breath catch. He’d spent years chasing those ghosts. He thought he’d finally stopped.
He cleared his throat. “Hey, can you flag me when Abigail Morgan’s mom shows up?”
Dana glanced back over. “Yeah, sure thing.”
“Thanks.”
Whitaker flagged him on the way out of bay six. “Bowel obstruction,” the kid said, already pulling on gloves.
“Nope,” Jack grunted, waving him off. “On your own. Godspeed.”
He didn’t wait for the groan that followed, just veered off toward the guy in nine complaining of chest pain and armed with a hundred pounds of excuses about why he hadn’t touched his meds in six months. Jack listened, nodded, poked, prodded, ordered an EKG, and moved on. Bed fifteen had a diabetic foot ulcer that probably should’ve been seen a week ago, maybe two. He flagged podiatry, jotted the note, sanitized his hands, and moved on.
At some point, radiology had come for the Morgan kid. He didn’t see it, just noticed the bed empty when he passed. Later, the images came through and confirmed what he already knew: spiral fracture of the distal tibia and fibula. Comminuted, soft tissue damage, the whole nine yards. He’d seen worse, but it would still be a bitch to recover from. She wouldn’t be back on the sidelines anytime soon. Poor kid.
Next was a nineteen-year-old who’d absolutely not been vaping “just nicotine,” given his heart rate and the fact that he couldn’t remember his own name.
Jack finally checked the clock again. An hour forty-five left. He could do an hour forty-five.
“Abbot,” Dana called, catching his attention as he passed the nurses' station. She gestured down the hall with her pen. “Your broken leg’s mom is here.”
Jack gave a brief nod and grabbed one of the iPads off the charging station, pulling up Abigail’s x-rays as he headed down the hallway. His fingers swiped quickly, sorting through the images to find the right ones. He was already mentally preparing for the conversation ahead, but it was always a little different with parents. They didn’t want just the facts. They wanted reassurance.
He barely looked up as he reached the room, pulling the curtain back with one hand. Inside, soft voices exchanged words in a gentle murmur between Abigail and her mom. The woman stood bent over the bed, her voice low and steady as she smoothed a thumb along Abigail's cheek in gentle strokes. The girl had clearly started to cry, eyes puffy, tears fresh, but she clung to the comfort like she hadn’t let herself need it until now. A faded denim jacket hung over kelly green scrubs, creased and thin at the elbows and shoulders, the seams nearly white with age. Her daughter’s same bright auburn hair was twisted up neatly and held together by a flower-shaped clip that was clearly borrowed from her daughter’s bathroom counter.
“How’s the leg, House?” Jack asked as he stepped fully into the room.
The woman straightened up, her hand still resting on the girl’s arm as she turned toward him.
And then time stuttered.
Froze. Punched the air right out of his chest.
Blue eyes met his own, and suddenly, it was 1995 again.
Blue eyes that hadn’t changed at all, that same impossible shade of blue now wide in recognition. The same high cheekbones and sharp jawline, the bright hair, just a shade deeper than her daughter’s and flecked with gray. He could still feel that hair on his skin, smell sun and lavender in it. The same freckles scattered over her nose in the same constellations he used to map out with his thumb when they’d lie in the grass behind her parents’ house.
He knew that face. Not just in the vague way someone might resemble a memory, but knew it. Muscle-deep. Bone-deep. Etched into him like a scar. Even the jacket looked the same; the same rip in the collar that she used to play with before she kissed him goodbye.
Older, yeah. So was he. But the years had been kinder to her, or maybe they’d just left the parts he remembered untouched. She was still her. Still as beautiful as the night he ran.
She stared at him, lips parted and stunned, like he’d conjured himself out of thin air.
“Jack?” she breathed.
God. Even that was the same too.
He blinked, still not breathing.
“Beth.”