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It didn't come right away, the debilitating anger.
She spent the 48 hours off after the fourth dazed out of her mind or crying hard into the shitty throw pillow on the ratty secondhand loveseat in her bare apartment. Then, after the tears dried out and the dehydration headache kicked in, the last 10 hours of her day off became an unequivocal exercise in panic and disaster management. Frantically writing and re-writing her fellowship application for some program that might as well be fantastical at this point. It could be anything, she didn't care; geriatrics, ultrasound, or even pain medicine–which was even more competitive than the others and, in a perfect world where her mother had kindly dropped the bomb six months earlier (or, even better, a year), the fellowship she'd be applying for and working towards since her R3 year.
She was determined to put away the memory of her one-way arguments with Robby on the fourth in a corner of her mind that she wouldn't touch for at least another week. She'd done well on her first, and second day back in the pitt, where Robby did end up taking a sabbatical away to gods-know-where and Al-Hashimi stepped up to lead with full confidence after clearing up whatever HR problem that had appeared after that dreadful day.
Thursday morning, third day. Shen came to her during handover, gave her a fresh dunkin iced coffee that he had acquired by mysterious means, and begged her to take the night shift tomorrow to cover for one of the sick R3s.
Samira, feeling like she had regained her equilibrium again after days without Robby breathing down her neck, agreed to do it without much thought. She had to talk to Abbot about that letter of rec she needed, anyway.
It turned out to be a big mistake on her part.
Working alongside Abbot meant being reminded of the fourth again, because the biggest ER gossips–nurses, doctors, security and EMTs even–were still not finished talking about the attendings’ argument on that day. That fucking day. People would casually ask Abbot whether he’d heard from Robby or not and he answered nonchalantly with a no each time. But the mere mention of Robby and seeing Abbot being his usual steadfast self–guiding the residents on shift through their first-time batshit insane procedures, giving pointers to the med students making differentials, and praising Samira specifically for catching an aneurysm that went overlooked just in time–soured her mood somehow. As if she saw him acting as Robby’s doppelganger, an alternate self of her mentor who would tide her over her last year of residency smoothly without questioning her ability.
And it meant reliving every patient she had lost on that fucking day in between blank stares at the charts and lab results. A housewife who limped in through chairs earlier in the night reminded Samira of Helen Torres who had run off with a possible blood clot. A father with severe respiratory distress rolled into trauma one with his daughter following close and Samira saw Ana Diaz there, in the worry and desperation on her face. A sleepy and endlessly nosebleeding child in central 14 mentioned feeling bad about not being able to go to school in the morning and missing English, his best and most favorite subject in the whole world. The triple A English teacher came to mind, and it sounded like a cruel dark joke.
Samira's smile turned strained as she explained to the parents about the wait time for a pedes bed upstairs. She told Kayleigh, the MS2 on shift beside her, that she needed to take a five and all but threw the iPad towards the fumbling girl before speedwalking out to the ambulance bay.
July 11th, 2 AM, Saturday morning. Samira paced the entire length of the bay while holding back a furious scream in her chest. She box breathed her way out of another panic attack, but the heat in the pit of her stomach was unabating. To stop her hands from clenching open and close repeatedly, she grasped her head, fingers tightening on the roots of her hair, and pulled–hard enough to be on the edge of pain. Keeping her mouth open to keep breathing and not gritting her teeth.
All she could think about was what a miracle it was for Michael Robinavitch to go unpunched for so long on that day. That fucking day. She regretted letting herself lay down and take his thoughtless jabs on face value. He wasn’t just a dick; he was a fucking hypocrite. Worse of all, she knew. The whole hospital knew what happened at pittfest, when he trapped himself in pedes with the bodies and cracked. When he snapped unnecessarily at the residents for months afterwards for every little mistake, everyone let him be because they knew what he was going through.
It was unbearably comical in its stark unfairness.
And when Abbot stepped outside looking for her, he found her on the ground, sitting against the wall, elbows on knees, hands still clutching her head, face hidden from view, shoulders shaking with rage or mirth, as if she was undecided whether to cry, again, or laugh uproariously.
“Mo-han?” he sounded surprised. “Are you alri–”
“It's Mohan.” Samira wheezed out the words and they came out a garbled mess in between gasps.
“Sorry?” he was kneeling now, a hand hovering over her shoulder, hesitant. “Do you need–”
“It's not Mo-han.” her voice clearer, then louder, trembling with anger; “Mohan. It's my father's name. It might be the only thing left of him that I can still hold on to.” The pictures of boxes in her room that her mother had sent on Tuesday night. The long conversation over chat about finding a good realtor. The way she only answered her mother’s call briefly so that they didn’t have to talk about what it really meant to leave behind the most important part of their lives and, with it, everything her father ever was.
She didn't see Abbot’s face when she mentioned her father. If she did, she might have felt a smidge bad about snapping at him and would have reconsidered not continuing her angry rant. But she didn't know that Abbot was flushing red with embarrassment and anguish, lips moving without sound, trying to find his voice and say something. Anything at all. He wasn’t nearly as lost as she was, but far enough to hate himself a little bit for his ignorance.
“I never cared enough to correct anyone before. But now,” she inhaled deep, “Now I've had it. I'm done. I'm fucking done. I became a doctor because of him, my father. He died because they didn't care enough to keep him in the ED for a couple hours more to run tests. They let him die,” a strangled noise, “Made me watch him die. Alone, in our house.” On the sofa they had spent many nights and weekends sitting, watching movies, laughing, riling up her mother until she gave up and joined them in a picture-perfect family moment.
In the ambulance bay a lifetime away from the memory of the last time she ever felt complete, Samira lifted her face, drenched in angry tears, and glared at Abbot like he'd killed everyone she'd loved. He looked stricken, with a clenched jaw and widened eyes.
“I can't do this, Abbot. If being an emergency medicine doctor here in the pitt means I have to be haunted by my mistakes every day and not care enough to let them affect how I treat my patients, maybe I am better off somewhere else.” she sobbed openly, something she'd swore never let herself do in front of her superior–to show the cracks in her armor and expose her wounds. Face now twisting into a sneer, ugly and full of spite. “I’ll still be a doctor because I fucking earned it. I worked too hard for this. But I can't do it here because Robby clearly doesn't want me here. I’m not good enough for him and this place.”
“Hey, hey,” Abbot’s hand was still hovering, a palm raised in front of Samira’s eyes, a silent question that went unanswered. He telegraphed his movements clearly as he reached forward to grasp her shoulder, slow, giving her a chance to shake him off. She let him touch her, and to her surprise, it felt grounding enough to settle her still-running breaths. “Don’t say that. You, Samira,” A hitch in her throat at the mention of her name out of his lips, a faint jolt through her nervous system that she refused to acknowledge just yet, “are the most brilliant doctor in this ED. Whatever Robby said, it had nothing to do with you. He was projecting–”
Samira laughed in disbelief. “You’re not my direct superior, Abbot. He is. He’s the one who’s been evaluating me since R1, and he was right; I’m too slow, too cautious. What does it say that I started my R4 year with an absolute fuck-up like last week? A panic attack in the middle of the shift?”
Abbot’s expression darkened, “You weren’t the first doctor who fell apart in chaos, Samira. Robby fucking knew it, and I–” He cut himself off, hesitant, but decided to barrel through anyway, “I’m sorry. I was frustrated with him too. Hell, I’ve been throwing a boatload of ropes for him for months and he never once took any of them. I could’ve done more, but I knew he’d just drift away further if I’d pushed him harder.” He took a deep breath, steadying himself, and leaned further down, closer, to stare directly into her eyes with the intensity of an MI. “That’s not important now. What’s important is, I’m failing you. As a mentor and a colleague. I apologize. I will try to do better to show you that you belong here, Sam–” A brief, cautious pause. “Mohan. Please. You went through worse days. Pittfest. The bridge collapse earlier this year. You thrived. You’re driven and you pay attention. You give your patients the exact care that they need, and it shows in your records. When time is of the essence, you fucking delivered, okay? You were made for the trauma bay and triage. You’re our future. I sleep better at night because I know if I’m unlucky enough to catch a bullet through the head someday, this place would run just as smoothly with doctors like you in it.”
Throughout his speech, Samira was shaking her head, refusing to take in his praises for what they were, and when he mentioned the bullet, she let out a frustrated noise. “Stop. Abbot. Don’t say that.”
“I’m serious. In fact,” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ll give you a chance to prove me wrong. There’s an MVA coming, two minutes out. Tell me now that you’re not ready to handle it and I’ll let you step away.”
Samira froze, and for a moment as she stared back at Abbot, closer as she’d ever been, her thoughts were consumed by how vulnerable he let himself be seen without the veil of authority that he so readily wore at work. Something in his eyes, the slant of his brows, the determined line of his mouth, the shadow that fell on him under the harsh fluorescence light that made him look haunted and emphasized every line on his weathered face; every imperfect detail of him, his everything close enough to reach beyond physical means, told her an undisputable fact. For the first time, she realized that the way he looked at her was hers and hers alone–after years of hundreds and hundreds of patients and long nights spent deep in discussion of case studies, procedures, and throwaway stories of outlandish desert surgeries. And there was something burning underneath his unshaken stare, some unexplainable emotion he had been hiding for a long time that threatened to spill out.
“Abbot, are you–”
The sound of a siren closing in from the distance cut her off, and his grip on her shoulder tightened.
“Can you handle this, Dr. Mohan?”
Before he even finished his question, Samira already knew the answer. Her body familiar with the urgency of outrunning death, she stood up and ran back inside to glove up. She came back out in under twenty seconds to stand beside him, giving him his own pair with a resolute expression.
Abbot took the gloves with a silent thanks and a small quirk of his lips. The sight of his smirk sent her head reeling, and she was taken aback by her sudden awareness of his natural charm, right now, after all this time. After all the wordless communication they had exchanged across the nurse station with a single raised brow or a disbelieving shake of the head. After the way he rigidly kept his head forward when she cleaned out his bullet graze wound. It was genuinely baffling how oblivious she was. “Breakfast after shift? I’d be happy to continue shittalking Robby with you over a heaping plate of waffles, and I heard you’re looking for a fellow–”
“Willyouwritemealetterofrecommendation?” She blurted it all out in one breath; scared she’d chicken out if she delayed it any longer; worried that she’d be overwhelmed by something other than anxiety and nerves in his presence after tonight. Possibly something completely wrong and inappropriate. “I’ve been wanting to ask–”
The ambulance screeched to a halt in front of them, and the doors opened wide. Abbot stepped forward with unrestrained anticipation, head still turned towards her saying: “I already have one written out for you.” Lightly and casually, like they were already sitting down in a diner somewhere with a steaming pot of coffee between them and not in the middle of the ambulance bay preparing for a gory horrorshow.
“What?!” Her shocked exclamation was interrupted by the EMT rattling out the vitals of the guy they rolled out of the car and into the trauma bay. The man was lying down sideways, an iron pole sticking out of his chest just below his right collarbone. She and Abbot exchanged an incredulous look over the skewered guy as he babbled out something about one too many negronis at the party. A hoard of nurses and two of the med students greeted them inside, ready for transfer. The ticking clock, the instruments, and the gears shifted back into place.
There was nowhere else she’d rather be.
“Well,” Abbot sighed, and looked around as he gave a beat to make sure everyone’s got a hold of the unlucky man they’d need to prepare to be un-skewered, hopefully with no active bleeding anywhere other than the hole on his chest. “I’m afraid the party’s not over yet, my guy. On my count, one, two–”