Archive of Our Own

You are good at this.

That’s the first thing people learn about you at Pitt. You move fast, think faster, and carry a kind of brightness that makes twelve-hour shifts feel survivable. You remember names. You bring extra pens. You laugh easily. You’re the resident everyone wants in the room when things go sideways, because you make chaos feel manageable.

They started calling you Sunny not long after you arrived.

It was half a joke at first, then it stuck. You were relentless, upbeat, the human embodiment of reassurance. The kind of person who made even the worst nights feel lighter just by being there. The name followed you through residency, through long shifts and longer weeks, through moments when you were running on fumes and still smiling anyway.

You are almost done with residency. Close enough to taste it. Close enough that attendings stop hovering and start trusting.

For years, you belonged to days.

You belonged to Robby.

He took you apart and put you back together in your first year. Taught you how to breathe in a trauma bay. How to talk to families. How to walk out of a room where someone just died and keep going. Somewhere between mentor and miracle, he became your person. Your anchor, your constant.

If anyone asked him, he’d tell them you were his right hand. His best resident. His closest friend, besides Jack.

Jack Abbot had always been there, just at the edges.

A presence more than a person. Someone you crossed paths with in hallways, in passing consults, in the aftermath of bad nights. He never called you Sunny. Barely used your name at all. Just a clipped, impersonal Kid, delivered without heat or humor. Not unkind. Just distant. A reminder of the years between you, of the line he kept firmly drawn.

You didn’t take it personally. You fired back when he deserved it. Rolled your eyes. Kept moving.

And then PittFest happened.

You’d gone on your day off, telling yourself you deserved something bright and stupid and normal. Music. Food trucks. Sun on your face. A crowd that felt like life.

Then the first shots cracked through it.

You don’t talk about it much. No one really does. It lives in the walls now. In the way that alarms sound sharper. In how every crowd feels like a risk. In the way you sometimes flinch when a gurney hits a doorframe too hard.

You were in it, though. Not watching from a screen. You dropped to your knees on the asphalt, hands already moving, already pressing, already shouting for someone to call 911 like the crowd needed permission. You tore fabric for pressure and counted breaths like numbers could keep somebody tethered here.

And when the ambulance doors opened, you climbed in with one of them. A stranger whose name you never got, bleeding into the torn shirt and your palms. You rode with them to the Pitt, shoulder braced against the sway of the rig, voice steady even when your stomach was trying to climb out of your throat.

Afterwards, you kept showing up, you kept smiling. You continued to be the version of yourself that everyone expected.

But something in you shifted.

Depression has been a low, familiar hum in you for as long as you can remember. After PittFest, it turned up, like someone’s fingers on the dial, not enough to knock you flat but enough that you could not ignore it.

Daylight started to feel wrong. Too bright. Too loud. You found yourself lingering after shifts, watching the hospital quiet, feeling more at ease at three in the morning than at noon. Nights felt honest. No pretense. No performance.

The decision didn’t come all at once. It grew in you slowly over the next few weeks.

Robby was confused when you told him.

Hurt, too, even if he tried not to be.

“You’ve built something here,” he said. “With us. With me.”

You told him you just needed a change.

You didn’t tell him that staying on days felt like suffocating. That every laugh felt rehearsed. That you were tired of pretending the world hadn’t cracked open.

So, you went to nights.

Jack Abbot didn’t greet you with warmth.

He never did.

But now he wasn’t a figure at the edges anymore. Now he was constant. Prickly. Demanding. Distant. Not cruel. Just uninterested. Where Robby guided, Jack assessed. Where Robby softened, Jack sharpened.

You expected resistance.

You got indifference.

He didn’t welcome you. He didn’t test you. He treated you like any other resident who had wandered onto his night shift. Orders were clipped. Corrections were blunt. And when he addressed you at all, it was never Sunny.

Just Kid.

You didn’t take it personally. You fired back when he deserved it. Rolled your eyes. Kept up.

He didn’t stop you.

For the first few weeks, you existed in parallel. You did your job. He did his. Conversations were efficient. Professional.

And then, slowly, something shifted.

It started with a dry remark after a messy intubation.

A raised brow when you challenged a call.

A muttered, “Bold choice,” when you took a risk that paid off.

You fired back.

He didn’t shut it down.

Sarcasm gradually became the way you communicated. What started as sharp jabs between you turned into playful banter, reflecting a subtle shift in your interactions. The space separating you was no longer defined by cold professionalism, but it hadn’t yet blossomed into anything resembling real warmth. Instead, it was something in between—a new understanding growing quietly, signaling that the dynamic between you was changing.

Lena noticed first.

Ellis started smirking every time you and Jack crossed paths.

Shen began lingering, waiting for the next exchange.

You told yourself it was nothing.

For a while, it was easy to believe it was just nights, just friction—simply two colleagues navigating the push and pull of the ER and figuring out how to operate as a team. The banter, the challenges, the moments of sarcasm—they all felt like routine parts of the job, ways to manage the tension and long hours that came with the night shift.

But beneath the surface, something was quietly changing. You hadn’t yet realized it, but Jack Abbot had started to notice you in a different way. His attention lingered, searching for the person behind the professional mask you wore so well. This subtle awareness marked the beginning of a new dynamic—one where Jack was no longer willing to let you fade into the background or keep your defenses up without question.

Without you fully understanding it, Jack was drawing you out, refusing to let you hide behind routine or sarcasm. Every exchange, every shared glance across the chaos of the ER, became a step toward something more honest—an unspoken acknowledgment that your connection was shifting, even if neither of you could quite say how or why.

Nights settle into a rhythm.

Traumas spike and ebb. The halls breathe. The city outside quiets. You learn the language of the dark hours, the way the ER becomes a smaller, stranger world between midnight and dawn.

Jack becomes a constant.

So does the banter.

“You going to stand there thinking,” he asks one night, eyes flicking over your shoulder at a patient crashing in Bay Four, “or are you going to actually order labs, Kid?”

You don’t look at him. “I like to build suspense. Keeps everyone engaged.”

“Someone’s blood pressure is eighty over forty.”

“See? Riveting.”

He exhales through his nose. You swear it’s almost a laugh.

It’s in these small spaces between crises that you start noticing things.

The way he shifts his weight after long stretches on his feet. The tension in his jaw when the ache catches. The way he never mentions it.

Another night, you pass him in the hall with a tablet tucked under your arm. He’s leaning more heavily on the counter than usual, keeping weight off his right side.

“You’re favoring it,” you say, gently, like it’s just another clinical note.

He glances at you. “It’s fine.”

You nod. “Didn’t say it wasn’t.”

You keep walking.

Ten minutes later, when he comes up short near the nurses’ station, there’s already a chair waiting. You don’t point it out. You don’t hover. You set a cup of water beside it and slide a tablet into his hands.

“Charting’s portable,” you say lightly. “Revolutionary concept.”

He watches you for a second longer than necessary.

Then he sits.

You don’t make it a thing.

You never do.

And he doesn’t realize, not yet, that this is when he starts noticing how carefully you see him. Not with pity. Not with curiosity. Just with quiet respect.

It feels the same as the coffee.

A cup appears on the counter at three in the morning. White chocolate and caramel. Exactly how you take it. You assume it’s a mistake and drink it anyway.

A granola bar slides across the desk when you’ve skipped dinner for the second night in a row. No comment. No eye contact.

“You’re going to crash,” he mutters once, when you sway after a code.

“I’m resilient.”

“You’re human.”

It’s said like an accusation.

You don’t realize he’s started tracking your meals. Your hours. The way your shoulders tighten after pediatric calls. The way your smile goes brittle near the end of a shift.

You don’t realize that he positions you away from the worst rooms on nights when the ER feels too much like PittFest.

You don’t realize that he steps in when your voice falters, just once, and lets you recover without spectacle.

You think it’s a coincidence.

The rest of the night shift does not.

Lena raises a brow every time Jack sets something in front of you without a word.

Ellis starts assigning bets on how long it takes before one of you snaps.

Shen lingers in doorways, openly entertained.

“You two bicker like an old married couple,” Lena tells you.

You scoff. “He barely tolerates me.”

From across the nurses’ station, Jack says flatly, “That’s not true.”

You blink.

He doesn’t look up from his chart.

Nights keep moving.

You don’t see it yet.

But Jack Abbot has started orbiting you.

And the dark is watching.

The thing about orbit is that it looks like nothing from the inside.

A cup of coffee here. A remark there. A chair that appears before anyone asks. It’s easy to dismiss as routine, as coincidence, as the strange teamwork that happens when people spend too many hours together under fluorescent lights.

So, you keep showing up.

Tonight is no different.

PTMC greets you with the same hiss of sliding doors, the same smell of disinfectant and stale coffee, the same layered noise of alarms and voices that never fully quiets. You get through security, swipe in, and head straight for the lockers.

You’re a few minutes early.

You’re also… off.

There’s nothing obvious you can blame, nothing you can name or hold up as proof. No single cause, no dramatic moment—just the slow, persistent heaviness of a bad day that refuses to let go, settling over you like a dense layer of humidity. Your skin prickles, stretched uncomfortably tight, while your thoughts jostle for space, too loud and insistent against the quiet. Everything feels slightly off, as if you’re moving in slow motion, a half-step behind your own actions, unable to quite catch up to yourself.

You spin your locker combination with practiced hands, hang your coat, swap shoes, and tie your hair back until it’s neat enough to pass as composed. The mirror inside the locker door catches your face for a second.

Your eyes look tired.

Not the normal kind of tired. Not the end-of-a-long-week tired. Something duller. Heavier.

For a second, you think about your therapist. About the way she would tilt her head and wait you out when you tried to make a joke. About the gentle, infuriating patience. About the question you already know is coming.

How are you really doing?

Your phone sits in your pocket like a weight. You could text. You could ask for an extra session. You could do the responsible thing…

You do not.

Not because you don’t want help.

Because it’s handoff, and you’ve built your life around showing up. Because there is always a reason to push it down for later. Because later feels safer.

You shut the locker door a little harder than necessary and head out.

The hub is crowded, day shift bunched together in that familiar semicircle around Robby. Javadi is perched nearby, pen already in hand. Santos stands with her arms crossed, watchful. Whittaker and Mohan hover near the computers. King leans against the counter, looking like she’s holding herself upright on spite and caffeine.

Dana is mid-update, calm, and efficient as she trades staffing notes with Lena. Lena listens with that sharp, no-nonsense focus that makes it clear she’s already triaging the night in her head.

You slide into place like you have a hundred times.

Robby’s gaze finds you almost immediately. It lingers, a fraction too long, like he’s reading something you didn’t mean to show.

You give him Sunny anyway. The version everyone expects. The one that fits like armor.

The night shift trickles in.

Dr. John Shen arrives first, quiet, scanning the track board like it’s a puzzle he’s already solving. Dr. Parker Ellis follows, composed and unhurried, her presence steady as she takes in the room.

And then Jack.

He doesn’t rush. He never does. He just appears, calm as a locked door, eyes sweeping the group once before settling on the board. For a moment, you feel the weight of his attention, brief and assessing.

Like always.

Robby waits until everyone is in place.

Then he starts.

“Alright,” he says, pen tapping the paper in his hand. “Let’s do this.”

He begins running down the list of patients in the ED. Room by room. Situation by situation. What’s stable, what isn’t, what could turn ugly fast.

You listen. You nod at the right moments. You write quick notes in the margins. You keep your posture open, your smile easy, your voice ready.

Even as something in your chest tightens with every mention of violence, every reminder that the city doesn’t sleep just because the sun goes down.

Robby keeps talking.

Jack keeps his eyes on the board.

And you brace yourself for the night.

Nights settle over the ED the way a blanket settles over a body. Not gentle, exactly. Just inevitable.

Handoff breaks apart into motion. Day shift peels away in loose clusters, voices fading toward the exits. The board updates. Monitors keep chirping. The hospital keeps breathing.

You tuck your tablet under your arm and step into the current.

Trinity Santos falls in beside you like she’s done it a thousand times, even though she hasn’t. She looks more awake than anyone has a right to be at this hour, hair pulled back, eyes sharp, shoulders squared.

“Tell me you’ve got something good for me,” she says, glancing at the track board.

“You want good, or you want manageable?”

She snorts. “Same thing.”

Dennis Whittaker appears on her other side, coffee in hand, expression mild in that way that usually means he’s bracing for impact. There’s something faintly domestic about the two of them now, a familiarity that wasn’t there months ago. Roommates. Shared routines. The kind of closeness forged by necessity and bad takeout.

“Don’t start,” he says, already reading Santos’s face.

“I didn’t say anything,” she replies, innocent as a lie.

“You were about to.”

You can’t help it. The corner of your mouth kicks up, just a little.

Santos points at you. “See? Sunny gets it.”

The name lands softly in the middle of the chaos. Familiar. Easy. Like it belongs.

You swallow around the sudden tightness in your throat and make your voice light. “I get paid to get it.”

Whittaker’s mouth twitches. “She’s not wrong.”

Lena calls out assignments from the charge station, voice carrying over the noise. She rattles off rooms, priorities, who’s taking what, and who’s floating if something goes sideways. Dana’s notes are already being translated into tonight’s reality.

“Shen,” Lena says, pointing with her stylus. “Central seven through eleven, plus the psych hold if it escalates.”

Shen nods once, already moving.

“Ellis,” Lena continues, “you’ve got peds and fast track. Keep an eye on waiting room times.”

Ellis answers with a calm, “Got it,” and heads off, unhurried as ever.

“And you,” Lena says, looking at you. “You’re with Jack tonight. Trauma side.”

A small ripple of something goes through the group. Not dramatic. Just noticed.

Santos lifts her brows like she’s watching a show she likes. Whittaker’s gaze flicks to you, then away, like he’s trying not to look too interested.

You keep your expression neutral. You’ve been with Jack plenty of times now. It’s fine.

It’s normal.

Jack is already moving, tablet in hand, scanning his assignment list with that steady focus that makes it hard to tell what he’s thinking. He doesn’t look up until you’re close enough to fall into step beside him.

His eyes flick over you once. Quick. Assessing.

“Kid,” he says, like it’s a designation instead of a name. “South 22 is yours. Chest pain. Workup started. I want labs, EKG, and a plan before you come find me.”

“Yes, sir,” you say, sweet as sugar.

He pauses, just long enough to make it clear he hears the tone.

Then he keeps walking.

Santos watches him go, then looks back at you, grin sharpening. “He calls you Kid like you’re twelve.”

“He calls me Kid because he’s allergic to basic friendliness,” you reply, already pulling up the chart on your tablet.

Whittaker hums. “He doesn’t call everyone Kid.”

“That’s not comforting, Dennis.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Your tablet lights up with the patient’s info. Another shift. Another list. Another set of lives intersecting with yours for a few hours in the middle of the night.

You take a breath.

Push the mask into place.

And step into South 22.

You cut past The Hub and angle toward the south hall, the noise thinning for a few steps before it swells again. South runs quieter than North, but that’s relative. The monitors still chime. The intercom still crackles. Someone laughs too loudly somewhere behind the doors of the break room, and it sounds wrong in your bones.

Room 22 is half-lit, the curtain pulled back. The patient sits upright on the bed with a gown that doesn’t quite cover his stomach. Mid-fifties, sweaty, anxious. A blood pressure cuff squeezes his arm at intervals like it’s trying to wring the truth out of him.

The nurse at the bedside gives you a quick look. “Mr. Harlan. Chest pain started about an hour ago. Pressure, central, radiates a little into the jaw. Took two nitro at home, no relief. EMS gave aspirin. He’s still at a seven out of ten.”

You nod, stepping into your practiced voice. “Hi, Mr. Harlan. I’m one of the residents working with Dr. Abbot tonight.”

His eyes widen slightly. “Am I having a heart attack?”

“Maybe,” you say, calm and honest, because lying helps no one. “But we’re going to find out quickly. We’re going to take good care of you.”

Sunny. That’s the version you offer. Warm. Steady. Unshakable.

You ask the questions, quick and focused. Past medical history. Medications. Allergies. Family history. Smoking. Pain onset. Associated symptoms. The answers spill out in nervous bursts.

As you talk, you’re already moving. You tap the tablet screen, ordering labs. Troponin. CBC. CMP. Coags. Chest x-ray. You request an EKG if it hasn’t been done yet, and the nurse points at the strip on the counter.

“Already done,” she says. “Here.”

You pick it up and scan it, your brain sliding into the familiar pattern. Rate, rhythm, axis. ST segments. T waves. It’s not a dramatic STEMI. No obvious tombstones. But there are subtle changes, and subtle gets people killed if you ignore it.

“Any shortness of breath?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he admits, eyes darting toward the door like he wants to run.

“Okay.” You keep your tone even. “We’re going to get you on oxygen and keep a close eye on you.”

The nurse starts moving. You update the monitor settings. You keep the patient talking, grounding him, grounding yourself.

When you finish the exam, you step out to the workstation just outside the room and start documenting. Your fingers move fast across the tablet. You keep it clean. Efficient. No extra words.

The board pings. A new arrival. A psych hold is escalating in B2. A triage note that reads like a disaster waiting to happen.

You ignore it for the moment. You have a plan to build.

Footsteps approach. You don’t look up right away because you already know the gait.

Jack stops beside you, close enough that his shadow falls across the screen.

“How’s twenty-two?” he asks.

“Chest pain, pressure type. EKG with nonspecific changes, but I don’t love it. Labs pending. I ordered trops, chest x-ray, and coags. I want serial EKGs. I’m thinking ACS until proven otherwise.”

Jack leans in just enough to glance at the EKG strip on the counter. His face stays unreadable.

“Pain still high?” he asks.

“Seven out of ten. Nitro didn’t touch it.”

He nods once. “Get him morphine. Keep him on the monitor. If trops bump or his pain changes, I want to know immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

His eyes flick to you then, quick, assessing the way they always do. Not your screen. Not the room.

You.

He lingers for a beat, like he’s deciding something.

Then his gaze drops to your tablet again. “Good work, Kid.”

It’s not warm. It’s not praise, exactly.

But it lands anyway.

He turns and moves back toward The Hub, already getting swallowed by the noise.

Behind you, Santos appears like she’s been conjured.

“Was that Abbot?” she asks, voice low and delighted.

Whittaker hovers behind her, coffee still in hand. “It was Abbot.”

Santos’s grin sharpens. “He just said ‘good work’ to you.”

You keep your eyes on your screen. “He says that to everyone.”

Whittaker makes a sound that suggests he’s never heard Jack say that to anyone in his life.

Santos looks at you like she’s about to start taking bets. “Sunny,” she says, dragging the name out. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” you reply, too fast.

Santos’s brows climb. “That’s what people say right before something.”

You glance at her.  “Go do your job.”

“I am doing my job,” she says, backing away. “My job is observing and being right.”

Whittaker shakes his head, but he’s smiling as he follows her, leaving you alone with your tablet, your patient’s labs, and the faint, unsettling feeling that something is shifting under your feet.

The monitor inside Room 22 chirps again.

You take a breath.

And you go back in.

Two hours later, the night had settled into its usual grind.

Room 22 stays steady. Mr. Harlan’s pain drops after meds. His first troponin is negative. The second is pending. His EKG doesn’t worsen, but you don’t like “doesn’t worsen” as a plan. You update Jack once, then again, and each time he gives you a clipped nod that means keep watching.

In between those check-ins, the ED keeps chewing through people.

A vomiting teenager in South 19. A lac that shouldn’t require stitches but will. A confused elderly man who keeps trying to climb out of bed. A psych hold in B2 that spikes, settles, spikes again. Someone in triage swears they’re dying and then asks for a blanket, as if it’s a personal insult that one wasn’t offered first.

It’s constant motion, constant noise, constant need.

Santos and Whittaker move like a unit now, unintentionally synchronized. Coworkers turned roommates turned something else, the kind of closeness forged by shared space and shared exhaustion. Santos is sharp-edged and relentless. Whittaker is steady, the calm to her storm. They argue about who forgot to buy more coffee filters for the apartment and then turn around and tag-team an IV start like they’ve practiced.

Lena runs the board with a kind of quiet authority that makes the whole place feel held together by her spine alone. Dr. Parker Ellis floats through fast track and peds with the same composed precision, never rushed, never rattled. Shen checks in on B2, then on the waiting room, then back again, eyes always scanning, always thinking.

You keep pace.

You keep smiling when people look at you.

You keep the mask snug.

And still, you feel off.

Not sick. Not injured. Just wrong in a way that isn’t visible.

You catch yourself staring at the ambulance bay doors longer than you mean to. Listening too closely for footsteps. Flinching at sharp sounds you can’t control, like your body is waiting for something it refuses to name.

A gurney hits the edge of the doorframe hard in the south hall, metal clanging against metal.

Your shoulders snap up before you can stop them.

You force them down.

In. Out.

You tuck your tablet closer like it’s a shield and return to Room 22.

Mr. Harlan looks at you with watery eyes. “Am I gonna be okay?”

You give him Sunny. Warm and certain. “We’re watching you closely. You’re in the right place.”

He nods like he believes you.

You step out and update the chart. Your fingers move fast, efficient, clinical. You can do this part in your sleep.

Your phone vibrates in your pocket.

A calendar reminder you forgot you set. Therapy. Next week.

For a second, you consider moving it up. Sending the message. Asking.

You stare at the notification until the screen dims.

You don’t do anything.

Because there’s always another task. Another patient. Another reason to push it off.

You’re scrolling through orders when a shadow falls across your tablet.

Jack stops beside you, close enough that his presence changes the air around you.

“How’s twenty-two?” he asks.

“Second trop is still pending,” you say. “Pain is down. No new EKG changes. I’d like to keep him for serials.”

Jack nods once. “Good.”

The word is simple. Flat. Not praise, not comfort.

But it eases something in you anyway.

He turns to move off, then pauses.

His gaze flicks to your face, quick and assessing.

“You eat?” he asks.

It takes you a second to understand the question.

You blink. “What?”

“Food,” he repeats, like you’re being deliberately dense. “You eat?”

It’s not gentle. It’s not caring, not on the surface.

It’s practical. Commanding.

You recover with your usual deflection. “I’m fine.”

Jack’s eyes narrow slightly. “That wasn’t the question.”

The pause that follows is short. Barely a beat.

You could lie. You almost do.

Then you shrug, forcing lightness back into your voice. “I grabbed something earlier.”

It isn’t true. Not really.

Jack studies you for a second longer than necessary.

Then, without comment, he reaches into the pocket of his scrub jacket and sets something on the counter beside your tablet. A granola bar. Still wrapped. Unopened.

He doesn’t look at you as he does it.

He just turns and walks away, already absorbed back into the night.

You stare at it for a long moment.

Like it might bite.

Like it might be proof of something you aren’t ready to admit.

Across the nurses’ station, Santos is watching you with the kind of expression that means she’s filing this away for later.

Whittaker follows her gaze, then looks away fast, like he’s trying to pretend he didn’t see anything.

Lena doesn’t say a word.

But the corner of her mouth twitches.

You pick up the granola bar.

You haven’t opened it yet.

You just hold it, thumb rubbing over the wrapper, and tell yourself it means nothing.

Just nights.

Just friction.

Just a job.

You don’t see it yet.

But the dark is patient.

And it always collects what you try to leave behind.

Midnight creeps in without ceremony.

The clock flips over at the nurses’ station, and nobody cheers. Nobody even comments. It’s just another hour, the hospital claims, another stretch of dark where time doesn’t behave normally.

The Hub is bright with screens. The track board glows like a living thing. Santos and Whittaker are posted there, charting shoulder to shoulder, styluses moving in quick, efficient strokes. They look like they’ve settled into a routine despite the chaos, familiar enough now that neither of them pretends the other isn’t part of their orbit.

You’re halfway through an order set when Jack appears beside you, silent as ever.

He doesn’t say hello.

He never does.

He leans in, his presence quiet but unmistakable, as his eyes move quickly across the lines on your screen. The faint, lingering bitterness of his coffee mingles with the crisp, sterile scent of sanitizer, both clinging to him and marking his nearness in the artificial glow of the Hub.

“Why is this CT ordered?” he asks.

You don’t glance up. “Because I enjoy wasting radiology’s time.”

Jack’s gaze flicks to you. “Try again.”

“Because her pain migrated, her white count is up, and her guarding is worse. I’m ruling out the thing you’ll be annoyed I didn’t rule out.”

A beat.

Then, dry as sand: “Good.”

You make a face. “Was that approval? Did you hit your head?”

Jack shifts his weight, unimpressed. “Don’t get sentimental, Kid.”

From the Hub, Santos’s eyes are on you both like she’s watching a tennis match.

Whittaker doesn’t look up from his charting. “He’s hovering.”

“I’m supervising,” Jack says, still staring at your tablet.

“You are standing here,” you point out. “Voluntarily.”

“Correcting,” Jack adds.

“Sure, you are.”

Jack huffs, the sound escaping him almost like a subdued laugh. Without looking up, he reaches past you to tap at something on your screen, focusing on the task at hand. In the motion, his knuckles graze lightly against the side of your wrist. It's a fleeting contact—so slight it could be dismissed as accidental, nothing more than a byproduct of proximity. Innocent in context, the touch carries no apparent intention, yet its presence lingers between you, understated and easily overlooked.

It still sends a jolt through you, bright and sharp.

Jack doesn’t react. If he notices, it doesn’t show. He keeps his eyes on the tablet, finger tapping once more.

“Order Zofran,” he says. “And bump her fluids.”

You swallow. Force your voice to stay level. “Already did.”

His brows lift a fraction. “Then why is it not in the active list?”

You glance down, realize you hit the wrong order queue, and scowl. “Because technology hates me.”

Jack’s mouth tilts, not quite a smile. “Sure, it does.”

From the Hub, Santos leans closer to Whittaker, voice dropping low enough that it turns into background noise. Her grin is bright and mischievous.

Whittaker doesn’t even look up, but the corner of his mouth twitches like he heard every word anyway.

A beat later, he exhales through his nose and mutters, still focused on his charting, “Please stop saying things like that in a public place.”

Jack doesn’t even glance their way. “South eighteen,” he says to you, voice returning to business. “ETOH. Came in with friends. She’s tanking her sat and she’s a little combative.”

“Lucky me,” you mutter, already moving.

“Kid,” Jack adds.

You pause, turning back.

He holds your gaze for a beat, eyes sharp in that assessing way of his. Then he nudges your tablet slightly closer, like you were about to forget it.

“Don’t get yourself hit.”

It’s said like a warning.

Like an order.

Like he’s thought about it before.

You blink once, surprised by the directness, then recover with your usual deflection. “If I get hit, I’m writing it off as an educational experience.”

Jack’s eyes narrow. “Don’t.”

It’s one word. Flat. Final.

You nod, a little more seriously than you mean to, and head down the hall with Whittaker close behind.

South 18 smells like cheap perfume and vomit.

The woman on the bed is maybe twenty-three, mascara smeared, hair tangled, eyes half-lidded. Her friends hover near the wall, pale and guilty and too sober to know what to do with themselves.

“She was fine,” one of them insists, voice trembling. “She was literally fine and then she just… she fell.”

You keep your tone calm. “How much did she drink?”

They exchange looks.

“A lot,” another admits. “Like… a lot a lot.”

Of course.

You step closer, checking her airway, watching her breathing. Her oxygen saturation dips, then climbs, then dips again. She tries to sit up and immediately gags.

You get her on oxygen. Order fluids. Zofran. Labs to check for anything more than alcohol, because you’ve learned not to trust anyone’s definition of “just drunk.” You ask the friends about pills, about substances, about anything she could’ve taken.

They swear it’s just alcohol.

It’s always “just alcohol” until it isn’t.

By the time you step back from the bed, you’ve already built the next hour in your head. Rechecks. Airway watch. Fluids. Labs. A plan if she doesn’t clear.

Whittaker stands at the foot of the bed, tablet tucked against his palm, expression carefully neutral in a room that smells like cheap perfume and regret.

“Can you stay with her while I update Dr. Abbot?” you ask, keeping your voice low.

Whittaker nods once. “Yeah. Go.”

You glance at the patient one more time. “Hey. Keep your head turned for me, okay?”

The woman blinks up at you, unfocused. “You’re… so shiny.”

“It’s the lights,” you say, and you make yourself smile because that’s what you do.

You step out into the hall and start walking back toward The Hub.

You don’t get far.

Behind you, there’s a wet gagging sound, the unmistakable warning that comes right before disaster. Then a choked, horrified noise that can only be Whittaker.

You pivot.

The curtain to Room 18 is half open. Whittaker is standing just inside the doorway, shoulders locked, chin tucked, eyes fixed on his scrub top like he’s trying to convince himself this is not happening. The woman on the bed has flopped sideways, face turned toward the rail, and one of her friends is hovering nearby with both hands over her mouth.

“Oh my God,” the friend whispers, horrified. “I’m so sorry. She just—”

Something dark and unpleasant slides down the front of Whittaker’s scrubs.

He closes his eyes.

Not in anger.

In acceptance.

From down the hall, Santos is already at the Hub, frozen mid-chart, eyes wide, stylus hovering above her tablet. Her hands lift like she doesn’t know whether to help or start clapping.

You take one look at Whittaker’s face and bite the inside of your cheek hard enough to hurt.

Because laughing would be cruel.

But also.

Whittaker exhales slowly. Very slowly. Like if he breathes wrong, he might also throw up.

Something dark and suspiciously chunky drips from the front of his scrub top.

Santos makes a strangled sound. “Huckleberry.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, voice tight.

Santos’s eyes flick to you. Then to Whittaker. Then back to you.

“You owe him hazard pay,” she announces.

Whittaker closes his eyes. “This is my life.”

Jack appears at the edge of the Hub, taking in the scene in one glance.

He looks at Whittaker.

Then at Santos.

Then at you.

For a moment, his expression doesn’t change at all.

Then, dry and inevitable: “Go change.”

Whittaker opens his eyes, resigned. “Yes, sir.”

Jack’s gaze stays on him as Whittaker shuffles away, shoulders slumped like a man marching to his own execution.

Santos watches him go, then murmurs, “It’s like the universe just hates him.”

Jack’s eyes flick to you. “Room eighteen.”

“Stable for now,” you say. “On oxygen, fluids running, Zofran. Watching her airway.”

Jack nods once. “Good.”

You hate how much that word lands.

You hate how much you want it.

Santos clears her throat. Loudly. “So, are we going to talk about the whole touching thing or—”

“Trinity,” you warn.

Jack’s head turns slowly toward Santos.

Santos lifts both hands, innocent. “I’m just saying. I have eyes.”

Jack’s stare holds.

Then he looks back at you, voice flat. “Kid. Come on.”

And you follow him back into the night, heart a little too loud in your chest, trying very hard to pretend you didn’t feel that brief brush of his knuckles on your wrist like it meant something.

Because it doesn’t.

Right?

Not yet.

The next few hours blur into the kind of work you can only do when you stop thinking about time.

Mr. Harlan in South 22 stops being your patient and starts being a handoff. The second troponin bumps, the pain creeps back, and Jack’s decision is quick and final. Cardiology is called. The cath lab is notified. Surgery becomes inevitable. You watch the gurney roll out, the man’s fear swallowed by movement and bright lights, and you feel something loosen in your chest when you realize he’s still alive.

It’s not relief, exactly.

It’s the quiet gratitude of a win you didn’t have to bleed for.

South 18 steadies, too. The drunk girl’s oxygen comes up. Her breathing evens out. The fluids do their work. The Zofran does its job. She stops trying to fight the blood pressure cuff and starts drifting in and out of sleep, sweaty and miserable and alive in a way that makes you want to shake her.

Her friends hover near the door with guilt written all over their faces. At some point, one of them whispers, “Is she going to die?” and you answer without snark even though you want to.

“No,” you say. “But she’s going to feel like it tomorrow.”

It should be easy to stay light after that.

It isn’t.

The night keeps delivering bodies like offerings.

A kid in peds with an asthma flare that doesn’t respond as fast as you want it to. An older woman with a hip fracture and a jaw clenched so tight you can hear her teeth grind when she moves. A man with chest pain who swears that it’s just heartburn until his EKG proves he’s lying to himself.

Somewhere around one-thirty, a psych patient in B1 starts screaming again, and the sound crawls under your skin. It’s raw. Ragged. Uncontained. It hits something in you that already feels too thin.

You find yourself gripping the edge of the counter at The Hub until your knuckles pale.

You loosen your hands. Force them to relax.

In. Out.

Santos drifts by at two, tablet tucked under her arm, hair pulled back, and eyes sharp. She looks like she’s running on caffeine, adrenaline, and pure stubbornness.

She points at your face. “You’re fading.”

“I’m not fading,” you say automatically.

“You’re fading,” she repeats, satisfied, and keeps walking like she’s filed the observation away as evidence.

Whittaker passes behind her, finally changed into clean scrubs, expression haunted in a way only bodily fluids can create. He offers you a sympathetic look.

You don’t know why that’s the thing that almost breaks you.

You go back to charting before your face does something you can’t control.

At three, the coffee appears.

It’s sitting on the counter near your tablet like it’s always been there. A paper cup with a plastic lid. Warm enough that you can feel it without touching it.

White chocolate and caramel.

Exactly how you take it.

You stare at it for a beat, stomach tightening.

Because nobody gets that by accident.

You glance up.

Jack is across the Hub, checking vitals on the track board, jaw set in concentration. He doesn’t look at you. Doesn’t acknowledge the cup. Doesn’t offer anything that could be mistaken for tenderness.

He just keeps working.

Like, he didn’t go out of his way.

Like it means nothing.

Your fingers curl around the cup before you can overthink it. The warmth seeps into your palm. You take a sip.

Sweet. Comforting. Familiar.

It’s stupid how much it helps.

It’s also stupid how the help makes you want to cry.

You swallow it down with the coffee.

By three-thirty, your smile starts slipping in places you can’t control.

You forget to add the little lift at the end of your sentences. You stop laughing at jokes you would normally laugh at. Your patience runs thinner, your answers shorter. You can feel your body trying to conserve energy by cutting off anything that isn’t strictly necessary.

A gurney clips the corner of the south hall doorframe, and the metal clangs loud enough to make your heart jump.

You flinch before you can stop it.

You recover fast, but not fast enough.

Jack’s voice comes from behind you. “You okay?”

It’s the first time he’s asked it like a question.

You don’t turn around right away. If you do, your face might give you away.

“I’m fine,” you say.

A pause.

Then, flat and unimpressed, “That wasn’t an answer.”

You breathe in through your nose and keep your eyes on the monitor you’re pretending to read. “Just tired.”

Jack steps closer, close enough that you feel him without seeing him. His presence fills the space at your shoulder. Steady. Grounded.

“Go drink your coffee,” he says. “Then take five.”

You let out a soft, disbelieving huff. “Are you telling me to take a break?”

“I’m telling you to follow instructions, Kid.”

You turn your head just enough to catch his profile. He’s looking at you now, eyes sharp and unreadable.

“You’re bossy,” you say, because it’s easier than saying anything true.

Jack’s mouth twitches. “You’re deflecting.”

Your throat tightens.

You lift the coffee cup in a small salute. “Yes, sir.”

For a split second, Jack’s expression changes.

The sharpness slips. Something darker takes its place, heat and focus folding into his gaze as if he’s suddenly looking at you differently. His eyes drop, just once, to your mouth. His throat works as if he swallowed something he didn’t mean to.

Then he catches himself.

“Don’t,” he says, quieter than before.

You blink. “Don’t what?”

Jack doesn’t answer. He just holds your eyes for one more beat, a warning and a boundary wrapped in the same look.

Then he turns and disappears back into the shift.

But you feel it after he’s gone.

The pause.

The change in the air.

The way it suddenly felt like the hospital wasn’t the only thing watching.

The night keeps stretching.

Patients cycle in and out. Rooms get cleaned. The waiting room thins and fills again. The overhead lights never dim.

By the time the clock nears four, you can feel the edge of yourself. Thin. Worn down. Fraying in places you didn’t know could fray.

Sunny is still there.

But she’s quieter now.

And the hospital can always tell when something is about to break.

The lull doesn’t feel like relief.

It feels like the pause right before something drops.

By four, the ED quiets in short, suspicious stretches. Less foot traffic. Fewer voices. The monitors still chirp, but the cadence changes. Even the lights feel harsher when there’s nothing urgent to focus on.

You stand at The Hub with your tablet angled toward you, fingers moving through chart updates you’ve put off. Notes. Dispo plans. Orders you meant to discontinue. The kind of cleanup that keeps the board honest.

Your eyes keep flicking up anyway.

To the ambulance bay doors. To the hall. To nothing in particular.

Your body hums with edge and fatigue. A tightness under your skin that doesn’t loosen, no matter how many times you tell yourself you’re fine.

You’re updating a progress note when someone steps in close behind you.

Jack.

You don’t look up. You know the shape of him without seeing him, the way he moves like he has a map of the ED in his head and doesn’t need to check it.

He reaches past you for something on the counter. A flush. A roll of tape. A pen. You don’t even register what it is at first.

What you register is the contact.

His hand lands on your hip, just above the waistband of your scrub pants, steadying you as he leans in. It’s light. Barely any pressure. The kind of touch that would be meaningless from anyone else.

From him, it steals the air out of your lungs.

Your fingers freeze on the tablet.

For half a second, your whole world narrows to the warmth of his palm through fabric and the simple fact that he did it like it was normal. Like you were familiar. Like you belonged.

Then he’s gone.

The hand lifts. The space behind you empties. Jack moves away with the same calm he always has, as if nothing happened, as if he didn’t just tilt the axis of your night.

You swallow hard and force your fingers back into motion.

You do not turn around.

You do not look at anyone.

You keep charting.

Across the Hub, Santos pauses mid-scroll, stylus hovering. Her eyes track Jack’s retreat, then snap back to you, brows high enough to touch her hairline.

Whittaker’s gaze flicks up too, quick and startled, then drops back to his tablet like he’s just witnessed something he isn’t emotionally prepared to process.

Lena doesn’t look up from the board.

But the corner of her mouth tightens, faint and telling.

No one says a word.

The silence is loud anyway.

A few minutes later, you finish the note you’ve been pretending to focus on and set the tablet down, hands suddenly too warm. Your skin feels too aware of itself.

You tell yourself it was incidental.

You tell yourself it didn’t mean anything.

You tell yourself you’re reading too much into it because you’re tired and wound tight, and your brain is looking for something to latch onto that isn’t dread.

The lull stretches.

Then the radio crackles.

Lena’s head lifts immediately, her posture changing, focus sharpening like a blade.

“EMS inbound,” the dispatcher says. “Two patients. GSWs. One chest, one abdomen. ETA three minutes.”

The words drop into the Hub like a stone.

Everything shifts.

Your stomach turns over.

Not because you can’t do it.

Because your body remembers things your mind would rather forget.

You reach for your gloves.

The ambulance bay doors feel a mile away.

And the night finally shows its teeth.

The words barely finish leaving dispatch before the ED is already rearranging itself around them.

“Two traumas,” Lena calls, loud enough to cut through the lull. “T1 and T2, now. Blood bank on standby.”

The ambulance bay doors are still closed, but the energy shifts anyway. Gurneys are cleared. Supplies get pulled. Someone checks suction. Someone warms fluids. The crash carts roll into place like they’ve done this too many times.

Jack is at the center without raising his voice.

“Shen, with me. Santos, Trauma One,” he says, already gloving up. “We take the first.”

His eyes flick to you once. Sharp. Grounding.

“Ellis, Kid, trauma two, Whittaker with them.”

You nod. You move.

Because there isn’t time to do anything else.

The ambulance doors slam open.

Two gurneys come through fast, paramedics shouting over the noise.

“Two males, mid-twenties,” one paramedic calls. “Multiple GSWs. Both chest and abdomen are involved. The first patient took at least three rounds, breath sounds diminished, and hypotensive. Second patient, abdominal wounds and suspected thoracic involvement, pressure’s been tanking. We’ve got two large bores in each, fluids running.”

They’re young. Too young. Faces that don’t belong on trauma beds.

You force your focus down to the work.

“Transfer on three,” Ellis says, calm as a metronome. “One, two, three.”

Your patient lands on the trauma bed, and the room swarms. Monitors scream. Someone cuts away clothing. Blood is already everywhere, soaking through dressings and sheets, painting the floor with dark footprints.

You see the wounds now. More than you wanted to see.

Chest. Lower ribs. Abdomen. A flank wound that won’t stop welling.

You don’t have time to feel anything about it.

“Airway?” Ellis asks.

“He’s altered,” Whittaker answers, hands steady as he positions oxygen. “He’s losing it.”

“Breathing?” you snap, already pressing gauze down hard.

“Tachypneic. Shallow. Sat’s dropping.”

“Circulation?” Ellis asks.

The blood pressure flashes a number that makes your stomach drop.

Hemorrhagic shock. Fast.

“Two units O-negative,” you call. “Massive transfusion protocol. Now.”

Whittaker is already moving. “Blood bank notified.”

Ellis’s gaze flicks to the chest wound. “Needle decompression kit. Now.”

You hear Trauma One through the wall, voices stacking. Jack’s calm, razor-sharp commands. Santos is calling out times. Shen answered with clipped precision. Two rooms. Two fights.

One hospital trying not to drown.

Ellis works fast, controlled, and decisive. The patient jerks when the needle goes in, a sound ripping out of him like it hurts to stay alive.

“FAST,” you say, and you don’t wait for permission.

Gel on skin. Probe down. Screen flickering gray and black.

Black where there shouldn’t be black.

Free fluid.

Your throat tightens.

You switch views, chasing answers. The heart view is poor, the chest view chaotic, but everything about him screams the same message.

He’s bleeding in places you can’t reach.

“We need OR,” you say, voice tight. “Now.”

Ellis nods sharply. “Call it.”

Whittaker is already on the phone, voice low and urgent. “Multiple GSWs to the chest and abdomen. Unstable. Positive FAST. We need surgery.”

You keep pressure on the abdomen. You pack what you can. You hang blood. You push fluids. You direct hands to where they’re needed because if you stop directing, your mind will notice how much blood there is.

The patient’s eyes flutter open once, unfocused, searching.

You lean in automatically. “Stay with me,” you tell him, voice firm. “Stay here.”

His lips move like he’s trying to answer, but no sound comes.

The monitor alarms change pitch.

A sharper note.

The kind that makes everyone in the room move faster.

“Pressure’s dropping,” Whittaker says.

“Give calcium,” Ellis orders. “Epi ready.”

You try to stay inside your training. Inside your job. Inside the steps.

Pack. Press. Reassess. Repeat.

But the bleeding doesn’t care about your steps.

The patient arrests.

The room snaps into a different kind of motion. Compressions. Epi. Blood. Rhythm check. Shock if indicated. Again.

You take over compressions when Whittaker’s arms start to tremble. You count out loud, voice steady on purpose.

“One and two and three and four…”

Ribs give under your palms. Sweat runs into your eyes. Your arms burn.

You don’t stop.

Because you don’t get to stop.

Somewhere in the distance, Trauma One erupts into a flurry you can feel through the wall. A shouted order. A response. Then Jack’s voice again, controlled, relentless.

You cling to that sound without meaning to. Proof that you aren’t alone in this.

Minutes stretch. The kind that feels endless and instant all at once.

OR calls back. They’re tied up. They’re coming. They’re not coming fast enough.

Your patient never stabilizes.

You pull him back once. Twice. Each time weaker. Each time shorter.

Ellis checks pupils. Checks rhythm. Checks the clock.

The room slows around the edges, like everyone is waiting for the inevitable.

Ellis swallows, jaw tight, and her voice comes out calm. Too calm.

“Time of death,” she says, reading the clock. “04:58.”

The words land like a weight.

Final.

The monitor’s flat line holds steady.

For a beat, nobody moves.

Then the room starts to peel apart because the next patient is already waiting somewhere out there.

You strip off your gown and gloves.

It’s automatic. Mechanical. Peel, snap, discard.

You don’t look at your hands.

You don’t look at the bed.

You back away slowly, as if you move too fast, your body might finally catch up.

Whittaker says something behind you, soft. Maybe your name. Maybe Sunny. You don’t respond.

You step out of Trauma Two into the hallway, and the lights feel too bright.

The Hub is right there. The center of everything. Screens, voices, movement.

You walk toward it like you’re on rails.

Lena looks up the second she sees you.

Her expression shifts, sharp focus turning into something else. Not softness, exactly. But concern, clear and immediate.

“Sunny,” she says, coming around the desk. “You okay?”

Your mouth opens.

For a second, you almost tell the truth.

Instead, you give her the version that keeps you moving.

“I’m fine,” you hear yourself say.

Lena’s eyes narrow. She doesn’t buy it.

You swallow. Force air into your lungs. “I just… I need a minute. I’m going out for some air.”

Lena hesitates, like she wants to stop you.

Like she knows where “air” can lead.

Then she nods once, slowly. “Okay. Don’t be long.”

You nod back, already turning.

You walk out of the ED.

Past the doors.

Past the sound.

Past the lights.

Your hands start shaking as soon as the doors close behind you.

And you keep walking anyway.

~

The ED doesn’t pause for grief.

It never has.

Jack keeps moving because that’s what the job demands. Because there’s another patient on the board, another nurse with a question, another set of numbers that can turn ugly if you look away for too long. He gives orders with the same steady tone he always uses, even when his chest still feels tight from the last hour.

Two young men. Multiple rounds. Too much blood. Not enough time.

He doesn’t let himself think about their faces.

He doesn’t let himself think about how many times he’s done this, how it never gets easier, how it still crawls under the skin if you give it an opening.

He turns back to the track board, tablet in hand, posture locked into control. Shen is beside him, quiet, composed, already charting. Santos is still in motion, hair stuck to the back of her neck, gloves snapping off with a sharp tug.

“Bed turnover,” Jack says. “Get them cleaned and reset.”

Lena answers without looking up. “Already on it.”

The department keeps breathing.

Jack is supposed to breathe with it.

Instead, he feels that faint, persistent itch at the base of his skull.

Not the grief. Not the adrenaline.

Something else.

His gaze sweeps the Hub, automatic. The way it always does. Counting bodies. Finding his people.

Shen. Ellis. Whittaker. Lena.

Santos, leaning against the counter for half a second, catching her breath.

And then, a blank space where there should be movement.

Where there should be a resident with bright eyes and restless hands and a voice that fills silence like it has the right to. The one who keeps the air in the department from going stale. The one who, against Jack’s better judgment, makes the nights feel less like a slow grind into nothing.

Kid.

Sunny.

He tells himself it’s ridiculous, how quickly he’s noticed her absence. How his body reacts before his mind can justify it.

But it’s been like this for weeks now. Not dramatic. Not obvious. Just… consistent.

He’s started knowing where she is without even looking for her.

A glance at the board, a tilt of his head, and he can usually track her through the department like there’s a thread stretched between them. An invisible pull. A constant awareness.

He hates that. He hates needing anything.

He hates that his shoulders loosen when he hears her voice nearby. That the air in his chest feels easier when she’s in it.

He tells himself it’s practical. She’s competent. She keeps up. She can think under pressure. That’s all.

It’s not all.

He takes one more sweep of the room.

She isn’t there.

His stomach tightens.

He tells himself she’s charting. In a room. In a hallway. Washing blood off her arms. She can disappear for two minutes without the world ending. She isn’t fragile. She isn’t new. She’s almost done with residency.

Still.

His eyes keep sweeping.

The itch turns into something sharper.

He steps closer to the Hub, scanning the hallways branching out from it. South. North. The trauma corridor. Behavioral.

Nothing.

He looks at Lena.

She’s watching him in that way she does when she already knows what he’s about to ask.

“Where is she?” Jack says.

He keeps his voice flat. Neutral. Like it’s just logistics.

Lena doesn’t blink. “She said she was going out for some air.”

The words hit like a punch in the sternum.

Air.

Jack’s grip tightens on his tablet so hard his knuckles pale.

He keeps his face neutral because the nurses’ station is not the place to show fear. Not his fear. Not anybody’s.

“How long?” he asks.

Lena hesitates, and that hesitation tells him everything.

“A couple of minutes,” she says, too careful. “Maybe five.”

Jack nods once, like that’s fine.

Like it doesn’t matter.

Like his pulse didn’t just spike hard enough to make his vision narrow.

He turns without another word and walks, fast but controlled, toward the ambulance bay exit.

He tells himself it’s nothing.

She needed air. She went to stand outside the doors, let the cold hit her face, shake it off. People do that all the time after a bad call.

He and Robby do it.

He and Robby have done it more times than either of them would admit.

He pushes through the doors into the ambulance bay, the chill cutting through the heat of the department. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. The pavement is damp with old rain and old blood. The night air is sharp and unforgiving.

He scans the area.

The wall by the bay doors. The corner near the dumpsters. The spot near the railing where people stand when they need to breathe without being watched.

Empty.

His stomach drops.

He moves farther out, eyes tracking shadows, corners, anywhere a person could disappear for a moment of privacy.

Nothing.

The itch at the base of his skull becomes certainty.

Jack stops.

And he looks up.

The roofline is a dark strip against a darker sky. A shape he knows too well. A place that holds too many memories. Too many conversations. Too many silences.

For a second, his body refuses to move.

Not because he’s frozen.

Because the thought lands with absolute certainty, heavy and cold.

Roof.

His stomach drops so hard it feels like falling.

He should have seen it sooner.

He should have seen it weeks ago, the way her smile started looking like effort instead of instinct. The way Sunny became something she put on, not something she was. The way she laughed a beat too late, or not at all. The way her eyes went distant after certain calls.

He noticed. He did.

He just filed it away like he files everything away. Noticing the signs, he convinced himself that simply being aware was enough, as if observation alone could resolve the situation. He treated the act of keeping his concern contained as a solution, believing that so long as he didn't let it out, it couldn't become a real problem.

Tonight, he should have clocked it the second she walked in.

Her smile came just a fraction too late, and there was a shadow in her eyes. When she replied, "Yes, sir," his perspective shifted for a moment, filling him with self-loathing—because it wasn’t meant to feel like this.

He’s been fighting it. All of it.

There’s a pull between them, undeniable and persistent. Jack is always aware of her presence, a subtle but constant thread tying his attention to wherever she is in the room. He finds his breathing comes easier when she’s within his line of sight, as if simply seeing her steadies something inside him. His attention drifts toward her again and again, unbidden, as though his body has decided she’s important and his mind never had a say in the matter. It’s a physical response, automatic and unintentional, revealing just how much she’s come to mean to him without him ever truly acknowledging it.

He’s been telling himself it’s his responsibility. That’s how he’s justified the constant awareness, the way he tracks her mood and performance, the way his concern for her never quite lets up. He frames it as duty: she’s his resident, he’s the attending. She’s nearly finished with her training, and she’s become one of the best. He tells himself he needs good people around him, and that’s all this is—professionalism, mentorship, the need for competence in a demanding place.

But he knows, deep down, that’s not the whole truth. He tries to convince himself that his attention is only about the job, about the team, about the work. He wants to believe it’s just responsibility.

Except it isn’t. There’s something else—something he can’t quite name, but can’t deny, either. He’s started needing her in a way that has nothing to do with staffing and everything to do with the quiet, terrifying fact that she’s become a fixed point in his nights.

He can’t lose that.

He can’t lose her.

Jack turns and moves before the thought finishes forming.

Back inside. Through the doors. The waiting room blurs at the edges as he cuts across it. He doesn’t slow down for anyone. Doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t explain. He doesn’t have time.

He aims for the elevator first because it’s logical.

He stabs the button.

The seconds stretch.

Too slow.

His chest tightens, breath coming sharper, faster. He can hear his pulse in his ears, loud enough to drown out the hospital.

He pivots hard and heads for the stairwell instead.

The door swings open, and the cold stairwell air hits him. He takes the steps two at a time, hand dragging along the rail for balance, leg protesting with every landing.

He ignores it.

Pain is nothing compared to this.

His mind won’t shut up.

She said she needed air.

Air.

The words echo like a warning.

He thinks of the roof in winter, the wind cutting and cruel, the city lights too far away to matter. He thinks of Robby standing there once with his hands on the railing, face turned into the dark like he was trying to decide something.

Jack thinks of the way he’d spoken to Robby that night.

Controlled. Like control could keep tragedy out.

Don’t.

He thinks of the way Sunny looked after PittFest, bright smile intact, hands steady, voice warm. He remembers believing it. Wanting to believe it.

He should have known better.

People don’t walk out of something like that untouched.

He should have noticed how hard she worked to keep being Sunny. How she never let the cracks show unless she thought no one was looking. How she kept taking more shifts, more patients, more responsibility, like being useful could replace being okay.

And Jack, idiot that he is, let her.

Worse.

Jack watched her.

Tracked her.

Held the thread between them tight enough to tell himself she was fine as long as she stayed in orbit.

And now she isn’t.

His stomach twists again.

He takes the next flight faster, breath burning. His leg screams. He doesn’t stop. He can’t stop. He can’t be too late.

Not her.

Not this.

His hand hits the last landing. The door to the roof is ahead.

His mind flashes through images he doesn’t want.

A body on the other side of the railing.

A scream he doesn’t get to in time.

A name that becomes past tense.

He swallows hard, throat tight.

He thinks, brutally, irrationally, of the way she looked at him when she said yes, sir. Of the brief, dangerous heat that had sparked in him and how he’d shoved it down because the hospital is not a place for weakness.

And because wanting her is a weakness.

Because caring like this is a weakness.

Because he’s already lost too much to afford it.

He takes the last steps like a man running out of time.

He hits the door and shoves it open.

The roof air slams into him, cold and thin.

And for one violent second, the only thing he sees is the railing.

The drop.

The space beyond it.

Then he sees her.

Not on the usual side.

Not near the spot he and Robby use.

On the right, half-hidden by the angle of the wall, leaning against the railing with her arms wrapped around herself. Shoulders shaking. Quiet sobs pulled tight like she’s trying not to make noise.

Alive.

Here.

Still here.

Relief hits him so hard it’s almost anger.

His throat tightens. His eyes burn.

Jack says her name before he means to.

“Sunny.”

His voice comes out rough.

She flinches and looks up, eyes red-rimmed, face wet, the mask gone completely.

And he realizes, with a kind of sick clarity, that he has been losing this fight for a long time.

~

The air up here is colder than you expect.

It cuts clean through your scrubs, through the sweat that dried on your skin in the trauma room, through the heat that still clings to your hands even after you washed them twice. The wind tugs at loose strands of your hair, and it should feel like relief.

It doesn’t.

It feels like nothing can get in far enough.

You lean against the railing on the safe side, forehead tilted toward the metal, arms wrapped tight around yourself like you can hold your body together by force. The city is a smear of lights beyond the roofline. Distant. Unconcerned. Alive.

You press your eyes shut.

It hits you all at once, like your brain waited until you were alone to stop pretending.

The image of the bed. The sound of the monitor. Ellis’s voice was calm and final. Time of death.

Your throat constricts, and a sob slips out before you can swallow it back. Then another. Then the dam gives up entirely, and you fold forward, shaking, breath coming in jagged pulls that don’t feel like they belong to you.

You don’t want to be loud.

You don’t want to be seen.

But your body doesn’t care what you want.

You cry anyway.

Hard enough that your ribs ache. Hard enough that your hands go numb where they grip your elbows. Hard enough that it feels like you’re paying for every moment you kept smiling downstairs.

For every time you told someone you were fine.

For every time you acted like PittFest hadn’t carved something out of you and left the edges raw.

Your face is wet. Your nose runs. You hate it. You hate that you can’t stop.

You hate that it’s five in the morning and the hospital is still down there, still moving, still expecting you to be Sunny.

You draw in a breath, and it catches halfway, turning into a broken sound you don’t recognize.

You press your forehead to the rail and try to make your lungs work.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

The roof door slams open behind you.

The sound is violent in the quiet. A sharp bang that makes you jerk, heart leaping into your throat. Your hands tighten instinctively around yourself, shoulders snapping up, and for a second, your body is back in chaos, bracing for the next hit.

You don’t turn right away.

You can’t.

Then you hear it.

Your name.

Not Kid.

Not resident.

Sunny.

It isn’t said like a joke. It isn’t teasing. It isn’t casual.

It’s cracked at the edges, rough with something you’ve never heard in his voice before. Relief. Need. Fear. Something close to pain.

You lift your head on instinct, blinking through tears.

Jack is standing in the doorway like he ran here. Like he didn’t stop to think. His chest rises too fast, his shoulders still tight, his face drawn in a way you’ve never seen on him. His eyes lock on you, and for a second, he looks… wrecked.

Like he’s been holding himself together by force, and he’s one breath away from splitting.

He crosses the distance between you in a handful of strides.

You barely have time to register that he’s moving before he’s there, hands on you, pulling you off the railing and into him with no warning, no hesitation.

His arms lock around you tight.

Too tight to be polite.

Tight like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he lets go.

Your cheek presses against his chest, the fabric of his scrub top warm against your face. His body is rigid with tension, muscles wound hard, like he’s still in the stairwell, still running.

You can hear his heart.

It’s pounding, fast and heavy, loud enough that it drowns out the wind.

For a second, you go still, stunned by the contact. By the sheer certainty of it. By the fact that Jack Abbot is holding you like this, like you matter, like he can’t stand the idea of not having you in his arms.

Then your breath shudders.

And you break all over again.

A sob tears out of you, harsh and humiliating, and you clutch at his scrub top like you need something solid to keep you upright. Your fingers twist into the fabric, desperate. You don’t even think about what it means. You don’t think about the line you’re crossing.

You just cling.

Jack’s grip tightens for a fraction of a second, as if he’s bracing himself too.

His chin dips toward the top of your head, breath warm against your hair.

“Jesus,” he murmurs, voice low and raw. The word sounds like a curse. Like a prayer. Like both.

You can’t find words.

You can barely breathe.

All you can feel is the solid press of him, the steady weight, the fact that you’re not alone up here even when you wanted to be.

His heartbeat keeps thundering under your ear.

And for the first time in hours, something in you loosens, just a little, because his arms are holding you like he won’t let you go.

Jack doesn’t loosen his hold.

If anything, he draws you in closer, like he’s building a wall around you with his body. Like, he can block the world out by force if he holds on hard enough. His chest rises and falls against your cheek, breath still uneven, heart still hammering like he ran here on pure fear.

You keep crying until your lungs burn.

Until your throat is raw.

Until the tears turn into something slower, heavier, like your body is finally spending the grief it’s been hoarding.

Jack stays.

He doesn’t tell you to calm down. He doesn’t ask you to explain. He doesn’t try to fix it with logic or medicine.

He just holds you.

His hand spreads across your back, firm and steady, a constant pressure that tells your nervous system something your brain hasn’t been able to believe for weeks.

You’re not alone.

The wind cuts across the roof, but his body keeps the worst of it off you. Your face is still damp against his scrubs, your fingers still twisted in the fabric like you’ll fall apart if you let go.

Jack’s chin rests against the top of your head for a beat.

Then his mouth brushes your hair.

Soft.

Barely there.

A kiss that feels more like a promise than a choice.

Another follows, gentle and slow, pressed into your hairline like he can’t help himself. Like he’s grounding you and grounding himself at the same time.

You go still, breath hitching, the contact so intimate it makes your heart stutter.

Jack doesn’t pull away.

His voice drops low, rough with something that doesn’t sound like him.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. The words are quiet, meant for you alone. “I’ve got you.”

Your throat tightens. You try to speak, and nothing comes out except a broken sound that makes your cheeks burn.

Jack’s hand moves up, fingers splaying at the base of your skull, not gripping, just holding you there. Keeping you close.

“You can let it out,” he says. “All of it.”

His mouth touches your hair again, soft and steady. His breath warms your scalp, and the gentleness of it hits harder than anything else tonight.

“I’m right here,” he continues, voice low. Certain. “You’re not doing this alone.”

The words slip past your defenses like they were always meant to.

Your body reacts before your mind can argue. The tight coil in your shoulders loosens. The clenched ache in your chest eases enough to breathe around it.

Your hands unclench from his shirt.

Slowly, hesitantly, your arms slide around his waist.

The movement is small, almost shy, like you’re afraid of what it means.

But once you’re holding him back, even lightly, you feel the difference immediately.

The steadiness.

The strength.

The way his presence holds you up without asking anything of you in return.

Your sobs start to quiet. Not because you’re suddenly okay, but because his arms around you make it possible to stop fighting for air. Your breaths turn less jagged, more even, the tears tapering off into the occasional shudder.

You stay pressed against him, forehead tucked into his chest, listening to his heartbeat as it slows from frantic to heavy and steady.

You’ve never felt anything like this.

Comfort that doesn’t demand you perform.

Safety that doesn’t come with conditions.

A man who doesn’t ask you to be Sunny right now.

Jack’s mouth brushes your hair one more time, lingering a fraction longer.

His hand stays on your back like an anchor.

And in the cold quiet of the roof, with the city far below and the hospital still moving without you, you realize the truth in a way that scares you.

This isn’t just kindness.

This is Jack Abbot choosing you.

And he isn’t letting you go.

The wind keeps moving around you, cold fingers tugging at loose threads and damp hair, but Jack’s hands stay warm at your waist.

You can feel him start to come down from the panic. His heartbeat slows under your cheek, heavy and real. His grip loosens just enough to be a choice instead of a lifeline.

He doesn’t let go.

He shifts back a fraction so he can see your face.

“Look at me,” he says softly, as if it matters.

You do, blinking through the last of the tears. Your eyes feel swollen. Your cheeks are damp. The mask is gone, and you don’t have the energy to rebuild it.

Jack’s gaze holds on you, steady and intent.

For a beat, he doesn’t say anything, like he’s weighing words he’s avoided for weeks.

Then he exhales slowly, and you can see the decision settle into him.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says.

Your stomach flips.

“Do what?” you manage, voice rough.

“Pretend,” Jack answers. His jaw tightens, then relaxes again. “Pretend you’re just another resident. Pretend I don’t notice you. Pretend I don’t—”

He stops, like the rest is too exposed.

You swallow hard. “Jack…”

His eyes flick over your face, taking in the redness, the tremor in your breathing, the way you’re still braced like you’re expecting something to hit.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” he says, and the honesty in it is raw enough to sting. “And it…” He shakes his head once, like he’s angry at himself for even reacting. “I’m done fighting it.”

You should be terrified. You should be backing away. You should be thinking about the rules and the consequences and how messy this could get.

Instead, all you feel is relief so sharp it almost hurts.

“I didn’t think you…” You let out a shaky breath. “I didn’t think you could feel that way about me.”

Jack’s mouth tilts, humorless. “Why?”

Because you’re Jack Abbot, you don’t warm up to anyone, you call me Kid like it’s armor, you look at me like I’m a problem you refuse to solve.

You don’t say any of that.

You just whisper, “Because you’re my attending.”

Jack’s gaze drops for a second, then returns to your eyes. “That’s the problem.”

The words are blunt, practical. The Jack part of him is reaching for the one thing he can control.

“We make this complicated,” he says. “We make it risky. For you.”

You blink. “For me?”

“Yes.” The word is flat, final. “You have a career. A future. People love to talk, and this place eats people alive if it gets the chance.”

You can’t help it. The tiniest, watery laugh slips out. “I’m almost done.”

Jack’s brows lift a fraction.

“In a few months,” you say, voice steadier now that you’re holding onto something other than grief, “I’ll be an attending. Not yours. Not anyone’s. So it wouldn’t matter anymore.”

Jack stares at you for a beat.

Then, to your surprise, he lets out a short, rough laugh. Like the sound got knocked out of him by the sheer audacity of your optimism.

“You’re unbelievable,” he murmurs.

“You’re the one who dragged me into nights,” you counter, lips twitching despite yourself.

“I didn’t drag you,” he says.

You lift your chin. “You were absolutely part of the gravitational pull.”

Jack’s mouth tilts, and this time it’s closer to real. “So what, we keep this quiet until you get your wings.”

You nod, seriousness sliding back in. “Out of the hospital.”

“As much as possible,” he agrees immediately.

You snort. “Good luck. Lena already knows something. Santos is probably building a conspiracy board. Whittaker’s going to start flinching every time we make eye contact.”

Jack huffs, almost amused. “Rumors are inevitable.”

“Bets too,” you add.

His gaze sharpens. “Let them talk.”

You blink.

Jack’s hands tighten just slightly on your waist. Protective. Certain. “As long as it stays gossip and not a report,” he says. “As long as nobody upstairs catches wind, we’re fine.”

You swallow, the reality of it settling in. “So we keep it clean.”

“We keep it smart,” Jack corrects.

You nod. “Okay.”

The quiet after that is different. Not empty. Not haunted. Just still.

Jack studies you again, the humor fading into something gentler. Something careful.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and it isn’t a throwaway question. His voice drops low, steady. “Really.”

Your shoulders sag on a long exhale.

The truth is heavy in your chest, pressing at your ribs like it’s been waiting for permission.

“No,” you admit.

The word is small. It feels like a failure and a relief at the same time.

Jack doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look away. He stays right there, waiting.

You swallow. “Since PittFest… I’ve been struggling. More than I want to admit.”

Jack’s jaw tightens, not in judgment. In anger at the fact that you’ve been carrying it alone.

“Loud noises,” you continue, voice quiet. “They startle me. Like my body thinks it’s happening again. And tonight…” Your breath catches. You force it out. “Tonight I had a flashback. For a second, I wasn’t in Trauma Two; I was back there. And it just felt too much.”

Jack’s eyes soften, barely, like he understands something he never wanted you to understand.

“I feel like I’m performing,” you confess, the words spilling now that you’ve started. “Like, Sunny is a character I have to play, so nobody worries. Like if I stop smiling, people will realize I’m not holding it together.”

You laugh once, bitter and small. “Which is stupid because people probably already know.”

“It’s not stupid,” Jack says immediately.

You shake your head. “I think I need to go more often. Therapy. I’ve been going, but… I think I need more. I can’t keep pretending this is fine.”

Jack’s breath leaves him slow, like he’s been holding his own too.

“Good,” he says simply. “Do it.”

You blink. “Good?”

“Yes.” Jack’s gaze holds yours, unwavering. “After PittFest, I went more, too.”

The admission lands quietly, but it hits you hard. Because Jack doesn’t volunteer things. Jack doesn’t offer softness unless it’s earned.

“I didn’t know,” you whisper.

“You weren’t supposed to,” he replies. Then, softer, “It helped. Not because it made it disappear. Because it gave it a place to go.”

Your throat tightens, but the tears don’t spill this time. They sit behind your eyes, warm and aching.

Jack leans his forehead toward yours, not quite touching, like he’s giving you the option to pull away.

“You don’t have to be Sunny up here,” he murmurs.

His voice dips lower, rougher, like the words taste unfamiliar.

“Not with me, sweetheart.”

Your breath catches. Your chest aches in an almost sweet way.

You close the last inch yourself, forehead resting lightly against his.

The city keeps shining below.

The hospital keeps breathing without you.

And on the roof, with Jack holding you like something precious and real, you finally let yourself believe the words.

Not alone.

Not anymore.

Your forehead stays pressed to his, the contact so gentle it feels like a secret the wind can’t steal.

Jack’s hands slide up from your waist, slow and careful, until his palms cup your cheeks. His fingers are warm, rougher than you expected, thumbs resting along your cheekbones like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he lets go.

You make a small, embarrassed sound that you immediately regret. “I must look awful.”

Jack’s mouth tilts. A smirk, quick and familiar. “Only a little.”

You pull back half an inch on instinct, eyes widening. “Excuse me?”

His chest gives a quiet shake, the sound of a laugh pulled from him like it didn’t have permission. “Come here,” he murmurs, voice soft, and his thumbs sweep lightly over your skin, catching the last of the wetness there.

“You’re still beautiful like this,” he says, and the words land with an honesty that makes your throat tighten all over again. “You’re… you. Even when you’re not performing.”

You blink hard. “Jack…”

His eyes don’t leave yours. Not for a second.

“I’m lucky,” he adds, quieter. “That you trust me enough to break in front of me.”

Something in your chest gives, not painful, just… open.

Jack’s thumbs brush along your cheeks again, wiping away what’s left. He tilts his head slightly, gaze dropping to your mouth, then back to your eyes like he’s asking without asking.

You don’t answer with words.

You lean in, breath catching, and Jack meets you halfway.

The kiss is soft at first, tentative, like neither of you wants to startle the moment into disappearing. His mouth is warm, steady, careful. Relief threads through it, a quiet tremor of you’re here, you’re here, you’re here.

Your hands find his shirt, clutching at him the way you did when you were crying, but now it’s different. Now it’s want, now it’s choice.

Jack makes a sound so low you feel it more than hear it, and the kiss deepens without rushing. He angles closer, keeping one hand at your cheek, the other sliding to the back of your neck, thumb pressing there like an anchor.

You move with him, instinctively, as if your bodies already know the shape of this.

The second kiss isn’t tentative at all.

This second kiss is more complete, more confident, a culmination of everything unspoken between you. There’s a fullness to it, filled with all the playful teasing and simmering tension that’s built up over time. The touch is hungry, but the hunger is tempered by something softer, a tenderness that seeps in and settles inside you. It’s as if warmth is slowly spreading through every part of you that had been cold, easing away the distance and uncertainty that once stood between you.

Coming home.

That’s what it feels like, startling and immediate.

Jack’s forehead brushes yours when he breaks for a breath, his hands still framing your face, his mouth hovering close enough that you can feel his next exhale.

He looks at you like he’s memorizing you.

Like he’s decided, completely, that this is real.

And below you, the hospital keeps running. The city keeps shining. The night keeps moving.

But up here, in Jack Abbot’s hands, you finally stop bracing for the fall.

Jack’s mouth stays close even after the kiss breaks, like he doesn’t trust the space between you.

His hands are still on your face, thumbs brushing softly over your cheeks as if he’s checking that you’re real. The wind tugs at your hair, cold and insistent, but you’re warm where he’s holding you.

You kiss again anyway.

It’s shorter this time, but it lands deeper. A quiet, sealing thing. Relief and promise braided together so tightly you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

When you finally pull back, you rest your forehead against his again and let out a long breath.

“We should go back downstairs,” you grumble, because if you don’t say it now, you might never say it.

Jack makes a sound low in his throat that is unmistakably unhappy. Not quite a groan. Not quite a laugh. Pure reluctance.

“That’s the last thing I want to do,” he admits, voice rough.

You huff a small laugh, wiping under your eyes with the back of your hand. “Yeah, well. People will notice if I vanish for an hour and come back looking like I fought the wind and lost.”

Jack’s gaze flicks over your face, softening. “They’ll notice anyway.”

“Then we give them less to notice,” you counter, trying for stern and landing somewhere closer to fond.

Jack’s hands slide down from your cheeks, slow like he doesn’t want to stop touching you, and settle at your waist again. He holds you there for one more beat, anchoring himself.

Then, finally, he nods.

“Okay,” he says, and it sounds like a concession.

You start toward the door together, shoulders nearly brushing. Jack keeps himself half a step behind you, close enough to block the worst of the wind, close enough that you feel him even when he isn’t touching you.

The stairwell is colder than the roof, a hollow concrete quiet that makes your footsteps too loud. You descend side by side, the sound of it echoing in the tight space. Jack’s hand finds the small of your back once, brief and steadying, as if he can’t help checking that you’re still there.

You don’t comment on it.

Neither does he.

When you reach the floor, the hospital noise pours back over you in a wave. Alarms. Voices. The constant hum of machines. The world you left behind is waiting and impatient.

Jack pauses just outside the stairwell door.

His eyes catch yours.

Not long enough to be obvious if someone walked by. Just long enough to say I’m here.

“Go,” he murmurs, all business on the surface again. “I’ve got it.”

You nod, grateful and nervous all at once. “I’ll be quick.”

You split off toward the locker room before you can overthink it.

The locker room is quiet in a way the rest of the hospital never is. A little pocket of stillness that smells like soap and sanitizer and old fabric.

You lean over the sink again and splash your face one more time, letting the cold bite. It stings, but it clears the fog.

When you look up, the mirror shows exactly what you expected.

Red eyes. Blotchy cheeks. Mascara smudged at the corners like you lost a fight you didn’t mean to have.

“Okay,” you mutter to yourself, voice hoarse. “We can work with this.”

You dig into your bag and fish out the small emergency makeup kit you keep for the same reason you keep extra pens: the hospital requires you to be prepared for chaos, even the quiet kind.

You swipe a damp paper towel under your eyes, careful. Then a quick touch of concealer. A few strokes of mascara to undo the damage, to make your lashes look like they belong to someone who slept more than three hours in the last week. You smooth your brows. Pinch a little color back into your cheeks because it’s amazing what five seconds of pretending can do.

Then you redo your ponytail.

You pull it down, comb your fingers through it, re-tie it tighter and cleaner, twisting until it feels controlled again. You tuck the loose strands back like you can tuck your feelings back with them.

When you’re done, you stare at yourself.

You look… together. Mostly.

But that isn’t what stops you.

It’s the way your shoulders sit.

Lower.

Looser.

Like someone took a hand off the back of your neck. Like the weight you’ve been carrying hasn’t vanished, but it’s shifted. Spread out. Less concentrated in the spot where it’s been grinding you down.

You inhale.

The breath goes deeper than it has all night.

You don’t know if it’s because you cried. Because you told the truth. Because someone finally saw you and didn’t turn away.

Maybe it’s all of it.

Maybe it’s Jack.

Your stomach flips at the thought, and this time it isn’t dread. It’s something warmer, steadier.

You turn toward your locker, spin the combination, and pull the door open. The inside is familiar clutter. Your coat. A bag of snacks you never eat. A spare set of scrubs. The little things you keep because you’re always one bad shift away from needing them.

Your fingers close around a soft sweater, worn from use. You shrug it on, the fabric warm against your arms, comforting in a way that feels almost indulgent.

Then you shut the locker, exhale once, and step back out.

The corridor outside is bright and loud. The Pitt is waiting the way it always does, hungry and relentless, full of people who need you.

You walk back in anyway.

Two hours until handoff.

And for the first time in a long time, you don’t feel like you’re walking back into it alone.

When you step back onto the floor, the Pitt doesn’t change.

But the way you move through it does.

You can feel eyes flick to you, quick and careful. Not accusatory. Not curious in a cruel way. Just… aware. You were gone long enough for it to be noticed, and everyone on nights has the kind of instincts that catch absence the way they catch a change in vitals.

No one says it outright.

They let you come back without making you explain.

You stop at the Hub to update a chart on a new arrival, fingers moving fast over the tablet, reorienting yourself to the board. The familiar rhythm clicks back into place, steadier now that your chest isn’t locked so tight.

Lena drifts by with her tablet tucked under her arm. She glances at you, pauses just long enough to take you in.

Then, casual as anything, she says, “You look better.”

It comes with a warm little smile that looks almost strange on her, like she doesn’t use it often.

Before you can answer, she’s already moving again, voice calling an update to a nurse, returning to the current like she never stopped.

The simple kindness of it hits you harder than it should.

You swallow and keep charting.

A few minutes later, Whittaker appears at your elbow, a cup in hand. He sets it down beside your tablet with the same careful gravity he uses when handing off meds.

“Here,” he says.

You blink at it. “Dennis…”

“Don’t,” he cuts in, deadpan. “Take the coffee. It’s medically indicated.”

You can’t help the soft sound that escapes you, halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “Thank you.”

Santos is behind him, leaning on the counter as if she owns it. Her eyes sweep over your face, then flick briefly toward the stairwell, then back.

She waggles her eyebrows in a way that’s so blatant it should be illegal.

You stare at her for half a second, incredulous.

And then, for the first time all shift, you actually laugh.

It’s small. It’s tired. But it’s real.

Santos grins like she’s won something. Whittaker’s mouth twitches as if he’d rather die than admit he’s amused.

You don’t give them anything. No explanation. No confession. You just sip the coffee and let them have their moment.

The three of you end up working a case together before the hour is out. A patient with a persistent fever and a history that varies depending on who asks. Santos is pushing for one differential. Whittaker is calmly backing it up with labs. You're threading it all into something that makes sense, ordering what you need, asking the questions that make the picture clearer.

It feels good, in a quiet way, to be useful again without feeling hollow.

By the time you’re done and the patient is settled, the clock is creeping toward six.

The edges of the night are starting to soften. Not brighter, exactly. Just… closer to morning.

You take your coffee back to the Hub and settle at one of the computers, swapping from tablet to workstation so you can make sure everything is clean. Dispo notes. Orders. Loose ends tied down. You’ve always done it this way, especially for Robby.

If you leave a mess, he’ll handle it.

But you’ve never been good at letting people handle your mess.

So, you make sure the charts are in order. You make sure the board makes sense. You make sure nothing is dangling that could trip someone up when the day shift walks in.

The Hub is quieter now. Not silent, but calmer. The night shift is running on that last stretch of stubborn momentum.

Jack comes in a few minutes later, stopping at the adjacent workstation as if it’s a coincidence. Like, he isn’t aligning himself with you without even thinking about it.

He doesn’t look at you right away.

He logs in, taps through a chart, checks labs, and updates a note with the same efficient precision he always has.

Then his gaze flicks to your cup.

His expression doesn’t change, but his voice shifts into something dry and almost amused.

“Who got you that?”

You glance at the cup, then at him. “What?”

Jack nods toward it. “Coffee. You rarely buy yourself coffee.”

Your mouth twitches. “I do sometimes.”

Jack’s eyes slide to you, unimpressed. “You don’t.”

You roll your eyes and take another sip. “Whittaker and Santos got it for me.”

“Hm.” Jack’s gaze drops to the label. “What is it?”

You shrug. “White chocolate mocha.”

Jack pauses, like he’s processing an insult.

Then he says, deadpan, “No caramel?”

You blink. “Excuse me?”

“Amateurs,” he mutters, like it’s a diagnosis.

You laugh again, quieter this time, warmth curling in your chest. “I’ll let them know you’re disappointed.”

Jack’s mouth tilts, not quite a smirk, not quite a smile. “You should. The least they could do is get my girls' coffee order right.”

You can feel heat bloom across your cheeks as you turn back to your charting, a quiet smile lingering on your lips. Your fingers move over the keys, updating your last note, but your awareness keeps circling back to Jack’s presence at your side. He’s steady, grounding—close enough that his nearness feels significant, a silent reassurance you can sense without needing to look.

An hour ago, you were falling apart on the roof.

Now you’re here, coffee in hand, work in front of you, the Pitt humming around you as morning creeps closer.

And you keep charting like you always do.

Just… lighter.

The last hour of a night shift is always strange.

It’s not quieter, not really. The Pitt isn’t ever fully quiet. But the edge changes. The air thins. People start moving with that specific kind of fatigue that makes everything feel slightly unreal, like you’re watching yourself work from a few feet away.

You keep charting. You keep checking in on rooms. You keep doing the small, necessary things that make handoff smoother. A last set of vitals here. A medication reconciliation there. One more reassessment on a patient you don’t fully trust yet.

Jack is… around.

Not hovering the way Santos would say it. Not in a way that draws attention if someone isn’t looking for it. Just consistently within your orbit. A few feet away at the track board. Passing behind you in the hall. Appearing at the doorway when you’re finishing with a patient.

Like he’s keeping an eye on the floor.

Like he’s keeping an eye on you.

You try not to think about it too hard. Thinking about it makes your chest warm and your stomach flip, and you don’t have the time or the privacy for either.

So you do what you do best.

You keep moving.

By six-thirty, the board is as clean as the Pitt ever allows. Rooms are labeled. Dispo plans are updated. Loose ends tied down. Whittaker is finishing a note with the expression of a man who has seen too much bodily fluid for one lifetime. Santos is on her third lap around the Hub, restocking things no one asked her to restock because she can’t sit still when she’s tired.

Lena checks the clock, then the board, then the clock again.

"Alright,” she calls, voice carrying. “Let’s be ready. Day shift’s coming in hot.”

The doors open in a familiar wave.

Robby first, coffee in hand, shoulders slightly squared like he’s bracing for whatever the night left him. Dana is right behind him, already talking as she steps in, eyes scanning staffing and rooms. Javadi slips in with her usual alertness, Mohan follows, focused, calm. Collins and McKay filter in with the rest of the day team, along with nurses clustering toward their usual spots.

The Pitt reshapes itself around the transition.

Night shift gathers. The day shift gathers opposite. Tablets come up. Eyes go to the board.

Handoff.

You take your place without thinking, already shifting into that clean, clinical rhythm. You can feel the fatigue in your bones, but your mind stays sharp. It always does at handoff. It’s like your brain knows this is the last thing you have to do right.

Lena starts, voice steady. “Okay. Here’s what we’re walking into.”

Updates start moving around the group. Patients. Rooms. Plans. Pending labs. Consults. Who needs watching. Who needs a push.

Shen gives a concise summary on Behavioral. Ellis updates peds and fast track. Santos rattles off trauma aftermath with that blunt competence that makes it sound easier than it was. Whittaker covers his rooms, voice steady, face tired.

Jack speaks next, voice even as he updates on the cases he managed overnight. He is all control and professionalism, every word placed cleanly, every plan clearly stated.

He doesn’t glance at you once.

He doesn’t have to.

You can feel the proximity like a pulse.

Robby clocks it anyway.

You see it in the way his mouth tightens for a second. In the way his eyes sharpen. In the way his attention stays on Jack a beat longer than it should.

You give your updates too, clear and organized. The new fever workup. The patient in South 18 is now stable and sobering with fluids and monitoring. The chart cleanup. The little things that matter.

And throughout it, Jack stays close.

Not pressed to your side, not overt. Just never far. Close enough that if you turned your head, he’d be there. Close enough that your shoulder almost brushes his when the group shifts.

It shouldn’t mean anything.

It does.

You don’t look at Robby until you’re finished speaking, until you’ve handed off your last patient, and there’s nothing left to say.

When you do, his gaze is on you.

Not your tablet.

Not the board.

You.

For a beat, it’s the same look he’s always had for you. Familiar. Protective. Reading the parts you don’t say out loud.

Then his eyes flick, quick and sharp, to Jack.

Robby’s expression doesn’t change much. He’s good at that. But you know him too well not to see the calculation behind it, the question forming without words.

He looks back at you.

You give him a small smile.

And an almost imperceptible shrug.

Not dismissal. Not defiance.

Just: It’s complicated. I’m okay. I’ll tell you later.

Robby holds your gaze for a beat longer, then the corner of his mouth lifts in return.

A quiet acceptance.

A promise to follow up when there’s room to breathe.

Then he turns back to the board, back to the shift, and the handoff keeps moving as if nothing happened.

The handoff continues.

The night officially becomes morning.

And when it finally breaks apart, when day shift disperses into rooms and night shift starts drifting toward lockers and exits, you realize you made it.

You made it through the worst shift you’ve had in a long time.

And you didn’t do it alone.

The locker room smells like soap and fatigue.

Night shift filters in in small waves, everyone moving with that slow, careful efficiency that comes after twelve hours of being needed. Lockers slam softly. Shoes change. Hair comes down. Scrubs get folded and stuffed into bags, like the shift can be contained if you pack it away.

Santos is still talking, voice bright even with exhaustion. Whittaker looks like he might dissolve if someone looks at him too hard. Lena says something to a nurse at the door and gets a tired laugh in return.

You keep your head down and focus on your own routine.

Unlock.

Bag.

Phone.

Your fingers hover over your therapist’s name for half a second.

Then you do it before you can talk yourself out of it.

Hey. Can we move my appointment up? I’d like to come in sooner if you have anything available.

You stare at the message for a beat, heart thumping like you just jumped off something.

Then you hit send.

The relief is immediate and strange. Not joy. Not fixed. Just… a clean, quiet sense that you did one thing right. One small thing that’s yours.

You exhale, shoulders dropping.

You gather your things and close your locker with a click that feels like punctuation. You slide your sweater on, sling your bag over your shoulder, and step out into the corridor.

The Pitt looks different in the morning. Same lights, same noise, but the edges are softer. Day shift has taken over. The current has changed direction.

You walk toward the exit and find yourself looking for Jack without meaning to.

A glance left.

A glance to the right.

The Hub is busy. The track board is surrounded. You don’t see him.

Your stomach gives a small, uneasy twist before you can stop it. An old reflex. The part of you that expects good things to vanish if you don’t keep eyes on them.

It doesn’t last long.

You push through the doors, and the outside air hits you, cool and clean compared to the hospital. Morning light sits pale over the parking lot, the sky washed out like it hasn’t decided what kind of day it’s going to be yet.

And there he is.

Leaning against the wall near the exit like he’s been there the whole time. Like, he didn’t even consider leaving without you. Jacket on, backpack slung over his shoulder, expression calm in that unreadable way that used to frustrate you and now just feels steady.

Your body relaxes so fast it’s almost embarrassing.

Jack’s gaze finds you the second you step out, and something shifts in his face. Subtle. Soft at the edges. Real.

“Hey,” he says.

You manage a tired smile. “Hey.”

He pushes off the wall and closes the distance, not rushed, not dramatic. Just sure. Like he’s done pretending that you’re optional.

His hand finds yours.

Warm. Firm. Fingers threading with yours like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Your breath catches anyway.

Jack glances down once, then back up. “You good?”

You let out a quiet laugh. “Define good.”

His mouth tilts. “You standing?”

“Barely.”

Jack hums like that’s confirmation of something, then turns you both toward the lot, keeping your hand in his like a tether.

You walk a few steps in silence, the hospital doors closing behind you. The noise fades. The air opens up.

You swallow. “I messaged my therapist.”

Jack’s grip tightens a fraction. Not possessive. Not controlling. Just… relieved.

“Good,” he says immediately. “Sooner?”

“Yeah,” you admit. “As soon as she can get me in.”

Jack nods once in approval of the decision and the fact that you made it. Like he’s proud and trying not to show it.

You glance at him from the corner of your eye. “I’m trying to do better.”

“You are,” he says, simple and certain.

The words settle in your chest like something warm.

You take another breath, a little deeper. “I haven’t been taking care of myself.”

Jack doesn’t interrupt. He just keeps walking, steady beside you, the morning air lifting the ends of his hair. His attention is on you in a way that feels almost physical.

You keep going, because he’s making it easy to keep going.

“I’m not sleeping much,” you confess. “Or… sleeping well. And sometimes I forget to eat. Or I just don’t have the energy to cook anything real.”

Jack’s jaw tightens, the muscle working once. You can feel something in him shift, not anger at you, but at the fact that you’ve been doing this alone.

He doesn’t lecture.

He doesn’t ask why.

He just says, “Okay.”

Like he’s filing it away as a problem he intends to solve.

You glance up at him, wary. “Okay?”

Jack looks at you with that steady, uncompromising focus he uses in a trauma bay.

“You’re coming home with me,” he says.

You blink. “Jack—”

“No,” he cuts in, not harsh, just firm. “I’m feeding you. Then we’re going to bed.”

Your mouth opens, then shuts again.

Jack’s gaze stays on you, unyielding.

“And,” he adds, like he knows exactly where your mind is trying to go, “I mean sleep. Just sleep.”

The way he says it makes heat flicker low in your stomach anyway, quick and involuntary.

You roll your eyes, but it doesn’t land with any real bite. “Bossy.”

Jack’s mouth tilts. “Get used to it.”

A giggle slips out of you before you can stop it, soft and surprised, like you forgot your body could make that sound after a shift like this.

Jack glances at you, a quick look that feels like he’s cataloging it, tucking it away.

“Good,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

You squeeze his hand, your fingers still threaded with his, and you let yourself lean a little closer as you walk.

“Okay,” you say, smiling despite yourself. “Fine. Feed me and put me to bed.”

Jack exhales a laugh that sounds like relief.

“That’s the plan,” he says. “And sweetheart?”

Jack’s thumb strokes once over your knuckles, slow and grounding.

You look up at him.

His expression softens just a fraction, the hard edges easing like he’s letting himself be seen on purpose. “You’re not doing this alone anymore.”

Something in your chest tightens, then opens.

You don’t get a chance to answer.

Jack stops walking.

He turns you gently, like he’s making sure you’re steady, like he’s putting himself between you and the whole world. His hand slides from yours to your waist, firm and sure, the other lifting to your cheek with the same careful reverence he had on the roof.

Your breath catches.

“Jack—”

He kisses you.

Not tentative this time. Not careful, like he’s afraid of doing it wrong.

It’s the kind of kiss that knocks the air out of you and puts it back in a different order. Full and unhurried, like he’s got all the time in the world, even though the sun is climbing and you’re both still wearing the night shift on your skin.

His mouth is warm and certain, pressure deepening until you make a soft sound you can’t stop. His hand at your waist tightens and pulls you closer, your bodies fitting together like they’ve been heading toward this for weeks.

You grab his jacket without thinking, fist curling in the fabric. Your other hand finds his chest, fingers splaying there as if you need proof he’s real.

Jack kisses you like he’s choosing you.

Like he’s not holding back anymore.

Like he’s been starving, and he finally stopped pretending he wasn’t hungry.

The world falls away around the edges. The parking lot, the pale morning, the distant sound of hospital doors opening and closing behind you. None of it matters.

All that exists is the way his thumb sweeps your cheek, the way his mouth moves with yours, the way you can feel the smile he tries to hide when you kiss him back harder.

When he finally pulls away, it’s only far enough to breathe. His forehead rests against yours, his breath warm, his voice rough.

“Come on,” he murmurs, like it’s an order and a promise. “Let’s get you home.”

You blink up at him, dazed and flushed and suddenly very aware that you’re in a hospital parking lot at seven in the morning.

Your mouth curves anyway. “Okay.”

Jack’s hand finds yours again, fingers threading with the same quiet certainty as before.

And you let him lead you forward, heart full and light, like the shift finally ended in the only way it could.

With you still here.

With him still here.

Together.