Chapter Text
Samira has excruciatingly specific parameters for what is and is not a diner. Not that Jack can begrudge her that; he’s particular about many things. But it does narrow down their options for a post-shift breakfast to Benny’s on Federal Street, unless they drive to a secondary location. He doesn’t mind. After twelve hours on the emergency department floor and four tours of duty, pancakes are pancakes and coffee is coffee.
One of Samira’s patients overnight has her amped up to a specific degree of Samira-ness, eyes bright and wild, black curls spiraling out from her head. She’s wearing his coat, an old leather bomber jacket that’s seen better days.
She looks better in it than he does.
“There was a woman I went to med school with who came from money,” she explains, ripping open two brittle packets of sugar to dump into her coffee, ignoring the float of grease that lingers at the surface. “Her parents paid for her to freeze her eggs the summer between undergrad and our first year because she wanted to be a surgeon. So you know, graduate med school at twenty-six, finish residency at thirty-two, then fellowship can take another year or two on top of that and by the time she finishes and has normal working hours and can be pregnant without a program director breathing down her neck about repeating a year, her fertility will take a nose dive.”
It’s not that Jack can’t relate to her concerns, it’s that his own were put rather decisively to an end many years ago. He keenly remembers turning thirty and taking stock of his career, his marriage, and his twenties. His thirties were for promotions and travel and shoveling money into a Roth IRA. To wring everything possible out of the Army that they could to put them in the best position possible for children, civilian life, and the rest of their lives.
And then.
“How old are you?” he asks, knowing the answer.
Samira Mohan’s life has been fairly prescriptive. She graduated high school in the top twenty, double majored in undergrad, and went directly to medical school. She didn’t meander or drop out of anything or waste time trying to figure out what to do with her life.
“I just turned thirty,” she replies, fidgeting with the paper placement.
“Plenty of women have children at thirty, Mohan,” he says, sparing her a smile that he can’t be bothered to tuck away. “Plenty of women have children into their forties. The clock isn’t ticking.”
What he wants to tell her, what he wants to say into her beautiful, shining face is that the clock doesn’t care. The seconds aren’t steady and the minutes don’t come along in an orderly fashion. Sometimes the clock stops. Sometimes the clock doesn’t chime at the top of the hour. Life comes along when it wants to, and blows the clock into smithereens.
“My ovaries would disagree,” Samira scoffs, pushing her cup in its saucer to the edge of the table as their waitress walks by.
Barely hesitating in her stride, the waitress refills her coffee, and Samira thanks her with a tacit nod.
“I mean, even if I manage to leave the hospital long enough to meet someone this year, we wouldn’t get married until I was what? Thirty-one or thirty-two? And that’s if I meet the right person right off the bat.” She swats her hand around her face. “What if I don’t? I always thought I’d move home to New Jersey and my mom would introduce me to a roster of nice, career-oriented men. Instead she found a guy herself.” She pauses, screwing up her face into a caricature of disgust. “Who is neither nice, nor career-oriented.”
Samira’s mother married a man closer to Jack’s age than her own. Not that Jack is in a place to make judgements, but he is suspicious of a man in his fifties who elects to charm a lonely woman in her sixties out of her house and onto a year-long cruise. He’s heard their colleagues chide Samira for her concerns, writing them off as paranoia. But Jack knows the cruise’s itinerary almost as well as Samira does, as much as she checks in with her mother at every port of call to make certain that she hasn’t somehow been helped overboard.
Jack cocks his head to the side, and sips at his own coffee. He used to drink it black, solely concerned with the utility of the caffeine he needed to consume. After the amputation and rehab and all that followed, his weight loss and wastage became enough of a concern that his wife made it a project to dump as many calories into him as possible.
Which is to say, he puts more sugar in his cup than Samira.
“Sounds like it would have been a bad idea to trust her judgment anyway,” he says, trying to imagine the coterie of suitors her mother might have drummed up for Samira’s grand return to her hometown in New Jersey.
It feels plausible that at least one of them would like golf.
“Yeah. Probably,” Samira mutters, eyes widening in hypothetical horror. Sighing, she rests her elbow on the table, and then her chin in the palm of her hand. “If it takes me two or three years to find the right person, then I won’t get married until I’m halfway through my thirties. And then we’re talking about a geriatric pregnancy. And sure, I’m a doctor, I know that maternal age over thirty-five is only one risk factor. I’m otherwise healthy. It’s not that big of a deal. But egg quality—”
None of the literature will assuage her fears.
He remembers reading the exact same literature himself, fretting over the impact of the IED blast on sperm motility. Worrying that by the time he got the flashbacks and nightmares and hypervigilance under control, it would be too late. Worrying that if they started trying too soon, he’d be learning to walk alongside his child.
And then.
“Does your insurance cover fertility preservation?” he asks. The residents have an entirely different insurance program than the faculty and staff.
“No. Of course not, even though it would encourage residents to delay reproduction until we’re no longer needed on twenty-four hour calls,” she complains, rubbing her cheek on the ribbed cuffs of his jacket, a self-soothing behavior he’s certain she does not notice. Just because it’s unconscious, doesn’t make it any less endearing to him. “Sure, they’ll cover what they’re required to in regards to prenatal care and we get six weeks of parental leave, but that’s about it.”
It’s abysmal, in all honesty.
“How much does it cost to freeze your eggs, out of pocket?” he asks, leaning back against the flaking red leather booth as their breakfasts are slid deftly down onto the speckled tabletop. The plates are hot, fresh from the industrial dish machine and the warming lights.
Samira wastes no time tucking into her Greek omelette, shoveling a mouthful of feta, tomato, and spinach past her lips.
“I don’t know,” she grumbles, chewing like someone might take her food from her.
Jack doesn’t take it personally. He eats most of his meals alone in his apartment, hunched over at the counter or his computer, reading a journal article or one of the professional forums available to him through the dozens of associations he’s enrolled in over time. These days, the only times he takes in a meal in a manner resembling a human being are when he’s stuffed into a booth at a restaurant with a coworker.
“Don’t lie to me, Mohan,” he says, cutting into his stack of pancakes with the side of his fork. “I know you’ve researched it.”
Sighing, she stabs her fork into her breakfast potatoes.
“Ten to twenty thousand per retrieval cycle. Close to a thousand dollars a year in storage fees. There’s no way I can afford it. I’m drowning in student loans and my car crapped out earlier this year and I barely can make my credit card payment—”
What he says next does not formulate in his brain. The words are on his tongue and then moving past his teeth without him thinking them at all.
“I’ll pay for it.”
Samira blinks twice, almost dropping her fork. She recovers, but only barely.
“What?” she asks around half-chewed potatoes.
He can feel the flush that starts at his hairline, studiously ignoring the prickling warmth that spreads down his face to his neck and chest. “It’s stupid that the hospital doesn’t cover it. I’ll pay for it.”
“Abbot,” she scolds him, leaning over the table. “You can’t do that.”
He wants to. He wants to, for entirely selfish reasons. He wants to, because he remembers having these discussions with his wife. He wants to, because he knows exactly what it’s like to find yourself at forty, looking back and wondering what the fuck happened to make everything go so terrifyingly, gutwrenchingly, world-endingly wrong.
“If it’s causing you that much distress, I definitely can,” Jack says, systematically tearing open the packets of butter that came on his plate.
He has to move quickly before his food cools off too much, excising the pats of butter from the plastic wells with the tip of his knife, shuttling them in between layers of pancakes for efficient melting. Syrup is next, rolling over the fluffy, craggly dissections of glorious, golden-brown carbohydrates.
There’s a tidal rush of feeling that he has to swallow back. Keeping his eyes on his plate, Jack sorts them out into statements and facts, parsing words out of pure, relentless emotion. When he flickers his eyes up towards her, Samira has eaten a third of her omelette. She rests her fork on the burgundy-rimmed plate, picking through the jams stocked in the little holder. She debates between strawberry and grape, but always chooses strawberry in the end.
“Embryos are hardier than eggs,” she frets, scraping her knife over one half of her toast. “More cells, more likely to survive freezing. But then there’s fertilization and embryology lab fees, and it’s not like I have a partner who can provide the second half of the equation anyway.” She frowns, picking up the second triangle of bread. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, this is all hypothetical.”
The toast, now slathered crust-to-crust with jam, crunches under her molars.
“It doesn’t feel hypothetical to me.”
It’s the other side of the line where he himself stands at forty-six, looking back at steadier times with longing. He misses the days when he had plans for his life beyond his next therapy appointment and reminders to pick up his prescriptions. He knows the cost of waiting, now. He knows the cost of making plans.
“You’re my attending,” she says, squirming in her seat.
“I’m also your friend,” Jack answers. They’re friends on purpose, even, with the sort of intentionality that comes from scheduled outings and social routines and a feeling of sameness that cannot be shaken. “What if you got a sperm donor?”
Her face scrunches up around the bridge of her nose.
“I don’t like the ethics of anonymous sperm donation,” she says, and he’s not surprised at all to hear that she’s already given it some thought. He catalogues that away; Samira wants a baby because she wants a son or daughter, a lifelong relationship, not just somewhere to shove her feelings of loneliness. “I feel like my kid should know where both halves of their DNA come from. Be able to ask questions. Have a relationship. Updated medical history. I don’t know. I miss my dad, and I don’t know what it would have been like to have never met him, but—”
Muscles of her jaw working under rich, tawny skin, she sets the remnants of her toast down onto her plate. Samira Mohan wants a family. She wants somewhere to put all of the love that has accumulated inside her with nowhere to go.
“Okay, so use me,” he says, like it’s simple.
He decided on fatherhood once, as a much younger man. It feels like a cruel blessing that it never happened, that they never progressed a monthly debate to stop using birth control, never gave the idea much more serious thought than idle discussion of names and the preschools in their area and their waiting lists.
He can’t imagine how he might have handled being forty-two, a widower, and the father of a grade schooler. Would he have bundled them off to Gen’s parents? Would he have tried to hold them too close? Would he have crumbled, useless in his grief, unable to love in a way that was of any use to a child? He wanted to die. He wanted to follow Gen into her grave.
What would that have done to their kid?
Samira’s fork clatters to the table, startling herself. “What?”
“I’m willing to do all those things,” Jack says, voice surprisingly even.
Mouth set into a heavy line, she picks up her coffee almost defensively. She gulps it down in two swallows, staring at him with narrowed eyes.
“Hypothetically?”
“Sure, hypothetically,” he says, shrugging a shoulder. Many things are hypothetical, right up until they’re not. Like IEDs and car crashes. “Listen, if you finish residency and get out of here and meet the right guy, then you can destroy them. If not, and it's five, ten years from now, you know that you can decide to have a baby. Be a mom. Have a family. And I’ll probably still be alive—”
Jabbing her fork into the back of his hand, she says rather forcefully, “You better still be alive in ten years.”
He smacks the tines away, the quirk of a grin flashing at the corner of his mouth. He meets her eyes, dark and intense. A jolt of something potent strikes down his spine. It resembles affection, or maybe something stronger. Her eyes narrow again, and she returns her fork to her omelette, picking it apart into bite-sized pieces.
“You’re very kind,” he demurs, laughing quietly.
“You’d want to have joint custody of some frozen embryos with me?” she mumbles, kicking him under the table. She aims for his real shin, the spongy tip of her orthopedic sneaker bouncing off his tibia.
Thoughtfully, he picks up a piece of bacon. It’s salty, and a little too fatty for his liking. But Benny’s Diner is a five minute walk from the ambulance bay doors, so Jack can forgive subpar breakfast meats.
“Why not? You’re responsible, smart, and very pretty.”
Rolling her eyes, she presses the side of her foot against his. Jack feels that jolt again, flashing down to the very root of him. As much as he tries to hold onto that feeling, it flares out through his limbs, washing out through his fingertips and what remains of his toes.
“Are those your only qualifying factors for the mother of your hypothetical children?”
“They’re some of them. I can extol your virtues, if you’d like,” Jack replies.
The tone and cadence of his voice aim for some kind of plausible deniability on his end. He cannot admit to his therapist, let alone to her, that he does not struggle to think of her well. He does not have to analyze or formulate his thoughts in order to give her praise. It would be an honor to have a child with Samira Mohan, the future of emergency medicine.
He’s plenty stupid at times, but not about her.
“It wouldn’t even be that hard, I still have the letter of recommendation I wrote for you saved as a PDF on my phone.” He could fish it out of his pocket right now and show it to her. Fellowship application season is over, they’re not sealed anymore. “Honestly, the bigger question is if I’d fit the criteria you have for the father of your hypothetical children.”
Samira looks at him like he’s lost his mind.
“I don’t think the missing leg is heritable.”
Jack takes another bite of bacon. It’s more chewy than it is crispy, but he likes it that way. Most places ignore your preference when you order, the line cooks in the kitchen managing too many tickets to monitor the crowd of pork on the flat top. But at 8:30 AM on a Tuesday, Benny’s is only a quarter full. Jack gets his soggy bacon, even if it is a little too streaky.
“Maybe you missed that day of medical school,” he snarks back.
Samira continues like she didn’t hear him. “Neither is PTSD.”
“You don’t know that,” he counters. “We don’t know everything about telomeres.”
“No child of mine is joining the military,” she says, the left side of her shoes a firm presence against the right side of his boot. “If they’re losing a leg, it’s in a car crash or, I don’t know, an OSHA violation. A lawsuit will be involved.”
He doesn’t talk much about his time in the military. When he does, he’s careful to paint it with a disaffected gloss. He speaks of performing crics under fire, in the dark, as if it is normal to him because he has to. He remembers the weight of his field kit and CAT tourniquets on his tactical vest, the heft of the ballistics shield pressing in on his chest and his waist. He remembers, and he smooths out the details, making them normal. Making them useful.
He was in the military.
He wishes he wasn’t.
“Agreed,” he says fiercely. “They can get PTSD the old fashioned way. One of us fucks up really badly, and then when they’re adults, we pay their therapy bills.”
There’s a gleam in her eye that he can’t quite place.
It’s a little disquieting. He knows Samira Mohan.
He knows when she’s smiling because she’s pasting it over something she wants to hide, and when she’s smiling because she’s truly happy. He knows when her feet are sore and when her back has started to ache. He knows when she’s hungry, so he can toss her a protein bar. He knows when she needs to be pulled aside and given a moment to pull together her thoughts, when she needs someone to check in, when she needs someone to let her know she’s moving in the right direction, and when it’s time to stop. He knows when her period has started. He knows when her mother has called. He knows when her rent is due.
“You’re pretty hot, though,” she says, pulling him back out of his thoughts. “You have that going for you, historical poor decision making aside.”
“Yeah, so you should think about it.”
Carefully, he presses his big toe against the squared box of his boot. Edges the sole as close to Samira’s as he can. He doesn’t do this. They don’t do this. They’re friends. They go out to eat and gawk at horror movies and walk in the park when the weather’s nice. They share annotated articles and more than once, she’s slept in his guest room when it’s snowed.
“And if you decide it’s a no, just don’t tattle on me to Human Resources,” he whispers conspiratorially, like this whole conversation was just a prolonged joke if she so chooses. “They’ve got enough to handle with Robby’s bullshit.”
“Human Resources would tremble in fear if they knew we were even having this conversation,” Samira whispers back. A sharp noise escapes her throat, half-formed. Chewing on her bottom lip, she cards her fingers through the tangled curls hanging at her shoulders. “You really want to be my baby daddy?”
Her tone is an attempt at irreverence. It doesn’t quite land.
His gaze lowers to the plates and cups scattered between them. Out of the corner of his eye he spots their waitress, no longer careening around the counter, shoes squealing over the non-slip mats as she refills carafes of juice and coffee, replenishing what she can after the morning rush before the lunch crowd arrives.
With two fingers in the air, he catches her eye and signals for the check.
“Gotta keep you around in my life somehow,” he says.
Samira’s applied for fellowships at UPMC and PTMC and Carnegie Mellon. Jack can recite each and every program he’s written a letter of recommendation for, tooled and tweaked to meet the requisite strengths and qualifications, spilling out exact truths to make her into the ideal candidate.
In his opinion she is. Samira Mohan would do well in emergency ultrasound and research, in EMS and in administration and leadership. She’s the ideal candidate for anything she sets her mind to.
Like motherhood.
He snatches the check off the table before she can even look at it, giving it a quick scan before folding it in half and hiding it away in his front chest pocket.
Tucking her hands into her lap under the table, Samira squints at him. And then she laughs, head shaking, front teeth showing through her parted lips. She looks good in his jacket. The leather swallows her slender frame, the unzipped halves criss-crossed over her chest. She holds it to herself like a blanket.
He is so immensely fond of her.
With a tired snort, Samira shakes her head. “You’re so full of it.”