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Samira preferred the night shift for many reasons, but the nosiness of her co-workers was not one of them.
She liked the cases better. Like how the night made her move faster. Liked how the patients and their families were usually too tired to be Karens. She liked how she wasn’t under Robby’s watchful eye, every move being scrutinized. She liked Parker and John and the quirky energy that the night shift nurses bring. She liked how much more appreciated she felt working nights than days. Shen and Ellis acted like she had come home and saw the light when she transferred to nights on a more permanent basis.
She didn't particularly like sleeping during the day, and research has shown that working nights decreases your life expectancy, but with the way Samira takes care of herself, she didn’t expect to be a centenarian by any means. So, all things considered, it wasn’t all that bad.
Besides, night shift was where Jack was, which made everything else worth it.
*****
Samira had started her night shift acting braver than she felt.
She had gotten a full 12 hours, ate a protein-packed breakfast at sunset, and had even done yoga before coming in.
All things to prepare her for her day ahead, because this was the day she told Jack Abbot she was in love with him.
John knew about her plan. Ellis had given her the confidence to execute it after a daytime girls’ night with too much wine. The night charge nurse, Paloma, had an inkling because when Samira hadn’t walked in with an eager smile on her face, she asked her what was wrong before she could even glance at the board.
It had been months. Years, if she really wanted to dig deep and think about it, of Samira Mohan’s feelings for Jack Abbot.
She also thought that he had feelings for her too, which was the only reason she could muster up her bravery to confess her feelings.
He stared at her for far too long. They could read each other's minds and anticipate the other’s actions. One time, he honest to God gave a patient a concussion because he called Samira a bitch. When a new grad nurse nicked Samira with scalpel, Jack had patched her up with a tenderness that made her want to cry.
He stopped wearing his ring six months ago, right around when he first offered her a ride home after her car’s AC went out in the middle of summer.
It was a lot. Jack Abbot filled her senses and she was finally being brave enough to say something.
When she walked into her shift, after being questioned by Paloma, she made a bee line for where Jack was charting.
“Hey,” she greeted, trying to keep her voice light and calm.
“Hey,” he said, looking up from the computer to look at her.
Samira sucked in a breath. “Can we talk after the shift?”
If her statement alarmed him, his expression didn’t show it. “Yeah,” he agreed easily. “Do you need a ride home?”
She nodded.
A calculated choice, of course, because she knew that her taking the bus would give her motive and opportunity to be alone with him in his car after their shift.
“Great. Find me later.”
He turned back to his charting without preamble.
Unshaken, as always. Samira was pretty sure that the phrase everyone dreaded the most was hey, can we talk? But Jack seemed entirely unaffected.
She turned around, almost running straight into Dr. Shen, sucking obnoxiously on his iced coffee and looking at her with raised brows.
Even when she squinted her eyes at him, he didn’t budge.
“What?” she blurted.
John gave her a pointed look. “You’re doing it today?”
Her stomach dropped. What was so wrong with today? Was it someone’s birthday? An unfortunate anniversary? Samira wracked her brain trying to figure out what could be such a cause for concern, when-
“It’s a full moon, Samira.”
Oh. She rolled her eyes and prepared to turn away from the conversation.
“I’m serious! That’s bad luck and you know it!”
“I don’t believe in all that, Shen,” she replied coolly. “There is no data to support the idea that the ED somehow gets busier on full moons. It’s just a superstition.”
Dr. Shen shrugged, the ice in his coffee clinking as he did. “I don’t know, you know what they say. I’m not superstitious, I’m just-”
Parker’s voice cut in like a knife as she interrupted their conversation with, “If you quote Michael Scott in this ED, I will kill you.”
“You’re lucky that Gloria doesn’t haunt these halls past 5 pm, or she’d be giving you a write up for threatening a coworker,” he shot back immediately.
“Oh, please,” Parker scoffed. “I would like to see her try to get rid of any of us. This place would fall apart without the warm, guiding hands of the night crew.” She reached behind Samira and pulled two gloves from the dispenser and tugged them on roughly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shove some fucker’s arm back into its socket before ortho can take the priveledge from me.”
John just shrugged and calmly turned towards the ambulance bay, somehow right as Paloma shouted bus incoming! As if he had some sort of second sense for it.
Samira rolled her eyes once more before tugging on a pair of gloves and joining him in walking swiftly towards the bay.
“What do we got?” John asked as the EMTs unloaded a man on a stretcher who was bleeding profusely from what seemed like dozens of tiny cuts.
“George LeStratt, 32, injuries from walking through a glass door. BP 145 over 95, tried to stop some of the bleeding in the field.”
One of the fresh-faced med students who had saddled up next to Samira said, “Damn. Bad luck,” in a way that you would respond to a friend who got stuck at all the red lights and not a man in your care who was bleeding all over the stretcher.
Samira cocked a brow at her.
“What?” the med student asked, defensive. “I’m just saying… broken glass. Bad luck.”
Samira sucked in a sharp inhale of breath. Bad luck.
Full moon, broken glass.
Bad luck. Bad luck on the day she was supposed to tell Jack Abbot how she feels. Fuck.
Samira shook her head like it would shake the thoughts from her brain. It doesn’t matter, she tried to tell herself. That’s all phony, anyways.
But the kernel of self-doubt had been planted.
But it didn’t matter… right?
“Move him to Trauma 1,” Shen said, interrupting her spiraling thoughts. “We need to stop the biggest bleeders before we can do anything else.”
Right. Medicine. Guy bleeding out on the gurney who somehow walked through a glass door. Glass that was apparently not tempered, based on the array of shallow cuts across his body.
Samira scanned him for arterial bleeds as she tried not to dwell too much of the clock ticking down until her shift ended.
Bad luck. Bad luck.
*****
The Glass Guy, as Shen had dubbed him, had ended up needing a total of thirty seven stitches across his larger wounds, and had needed so many bandages that the poor nurses had to make several runs to the supply closet. But, he ended up alright, and he had been discharged a few hours after his admittance.
Her shift was now halfway over.
Samira and Jack had worked on a few cases together, her trying to remain as normal as she could with her impending, (hopefully) life-changing declaration scheduled for the end of their shift.
Six hours into her shift, she was in the break room, trying to take a moment for herself and eating her protein bar, when Ellis burst in with a shit-eating grin on her face and said, “Samira, you’ve got to see this.”
When Parker said that, she usually meant it, so Samira popped up and speed-walked over to the observation room where, being crowded by a huddle of nurses and student doctors, was a woman with the pointy end of one of those hook-handle umbrellas lodged into her shoulder.
An open umbrella. Inside.
Samira gave a flat look to Parker, who was looking at her expectantly.
“Really? An open umbrella?”
Parker shrugged. “We can’t close it, that would cause too much movement. I tasked one of the newbies with holding the umbrella steady while Jack assesses potential damage to the surrounding tissue.”
Sure enough, Jack was at the woman’s shoulder, with a green-looking med student holding the handle steady.
“I thought I told you to take a break, Mohan,” Jack said as he ducked around the obnoxiously orange panels of the open umbrella, staunching the bleeding. “You still got a minute and a half left of your ten.” He didn’t even look at a clock, like he had an internal timer for Samira’s breaks.
“A minute and a half is nothing, Dr. Abbot. I’ll make up for it by leaving a minute and a half early.”
He laughed. “That’s a good one. We both know you won’t do that.”
“You’re right,” she smiled. “I won’t. But you never know, today might be the day.”
Parker’s cocked eyebrow jumped even higher. She gave her a look that said, shut up, Ellis. Let us flirt in peace. If ribbing about her being a workaholic was flirting.
She shrugged and walked out into the hall, but not before leaning in and whispering “Bad luck!”
Samira tensed. Full moon. Broken glass. Open umbrella.
Jack. In front of her. Removing an umbrella from a woman’s deltoid. He somehow looked sexy, even while backdropped by orange nylon and clearly running on five hours of sleep.
Bad luck. Back luck. Bad luck.
On this day, of all days.
Not that it mattered, of course. Not that she believed in folktales or superstitions.
But when she was about to make the biggest leap of her life, wouldn’t she want the universe on her side?
She sighed. “Alright, Abbot. You ever removed an umbrella from someone?”
“I have,” he confirmed. “But not from the shoulder.”
They shared a knowing look and a secret smile.
Bad luck. Bad luck. Bad luck.
*****
Eleven hours into her shift and one more hour until it ended. One more hour until her and Jack would have her talk, just like she asked for.
It was suddenly seeming like the worst idea in the world.
She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her hair was falling out of the clip, there were faint lines under her eyes, and her skin was shiny- with sweat or oil, she didn’t know.
Samira thought about her life with Jack as it stood.
What they were doing was safe. It was good, really good, and their interactions always left her with a pep in her step and a secret smile on her face. They lightly flirted, sure, or at least what Samira thought was flirting. She honestly couldn’t tell.
But what she did know was that there was always a line that they didn’t cross.
They sent each other case studies, but only did it over email or passed them in person. Never over text.
He got her coffee, but only the shitty black coffee spat out by the ancient Keurig in the lounge. Nothing fancy.
They worked flawlessly with each other, but they never sought out cases that the other was on.
In front of her were two roads.
She could either tell him how she felt, or she wouldn’t.
Either keep everything the same, or take the risk.
If her risk paid off, she would bet that her happiness would increase tenfold. He could drive her home without her having to come up with a stupid excuse. She could kiss him whenever she wanted, and they could talk to each other at work without balancing on their stupid invisible line.
He could come over to her apartment. He could be in her bed. She could be in his bed. Either worked, honestly, as long as she got to sleep with him somewhere in the plan.
If her gamble was wrong, she knew Jack wouldn’t be the type to completely shut her out and embarrass her. He would be exceedingly nice about his rejection of Samira’s feelings, and maybe that was the worst part. He would never be mean to her, never ignore her, but it would just be so weird. She would lose everything she had built up.
It had seemed like a safe gamble to rip off the bandaid today, but now she wasn’t so sure.
Full moon. Broken Glass. Open umbrella.
Bad luck. Bad luck. Bad luck.
Samira sucked in a breath.
What was waiting one more day? Or another week or month. It didn’t really make a difference in the grand scheme of things. She had waited this long, she could wait an unknown amount of time for him.
She’ll tell Jack eventually.
Just not today.
*****
The last straw came with only one hour left in their shift.
A five car pileup caused by an out of control van ramming into a truck while it was spreading salt on the road in the early morning, causing it to flip and hit three more cars.
13 victims total. Road salt spilled across an intersection, shutting down the lanes.
Spilled salt. 13 victims wheeled into the ED with various severity of injury.
“This has got to be a fucking joke,” Samira bemoaned to no one, really, but Ellis heard her and laughed.
“I think the universe is against you, Mohan. Two things are a coincidence, but it’s been, what? Four? That’s a pattern.”
“It’s five,” she grumbled halfheartedly while assessing an unconscious man’s certainly broken wrist. “It’s a full moon. The broken glass, the umbrella inside, the spilled salt and 13 victim car crash. It’s like the universe is telling me this is a horrible idea.”
Parker shrugged. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea. You know he feels the same; it’s just hilarious that today of all days is when we see apocalypse-level symbols of bad luck come into our department.”
“That who feels the same?” one of the med students squeaked, Samira completely forgetting that she was supposed to be educating the young future doctor in the room and not gossipping with her friend.
Parker glared at the med student. “You don’t ask questions, you answer them. Now, what about this patient are we most concerned about?”
The med student gaped like a fish, looking back and forth from Samira and Parker before settling on saying, “Well, we already secured his airway, so the next step is-”
Samira tuned out, already creating his treatment plan twelve steps ahead. One more hour to make her choice.
She could tell him later, she reasoned. It wouldn’t make a difference.
*****
“Are you still gonna do it?” Parker asked, stretching her arms behind her back.
“I don’t know, Parker,” Samira sighed. “The only thing I need now is a black cat sitting on Jack’s car when we walk out there.”
“Please, Samira. Abbot is the black cat.”
She laughed. She had a point.
Finally, she and Abbot did their last rounds (and then some), getting strong-armed by the day shift enough to finally step into the locker room and gather their things.
“Still need a ride, Mohan?” Jack asked.
She considered the situation. She bussed to work in anticipation of her plan, so her car wasn’t at the hospital and she really didn’t feel like bussing back.
“Yeah. A ride would be great.”
He nodded. She picked up her bag and followed him out of the break room.
When they got to his car, there was thankfully no black cat sitting on it for the universe to laugh at her some more.
She got in the passenger seat while he got into the front. Once they were buckled in, Jack expertly backed the car out, one hand spinning around the wheel.
The drive to Samira’s was short. Quiet, but not tense, them both decompressing after their 12 plus hour shift.
Once he parked at her apartment complex, he turned to her.
“Do you want to talk now?”
Samira’s heart rate picked up. She envisioned the two roads in front of her.
Bad luck. Bad luck. Bad luck. Bad luck. Bad luck.
“I… no, actually. I’ll tell you later.”
His brows furrowed. “Later when, exactly?”
She shrugged, looking down to play with her fingers in her lap. “I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next month.”
“Samira, you’re making me nervous here.”
She wished she could tell him it was nothing to be nervous about, but of course, she was rather nervous about it, so she didn’t even know what to say.
“Are you leaving?” he pressed on, finally showing some cracks in his stoney exterior. “Transferring to another department, getting a fellowship across the country?”
“No, no, nothing like that-”
“Are you sick? Are you ok, Samira?” And, oh, how her heart broke over the way he said those words. She thought about his wife, the snippets of stories he’s shared with her, and the pit in her stomach grew.
“No, Jack, I promise-”
“Then just tell me, Samira,” he all but begged. “I want to hear what you have to say.”
Her head remained down, not looking at him.
“Can we go up to your apartment? We’ll talk up there?’
She nodded. She felt like a toddler being gentle-parented.
“Ok, Samira,” he sighed, unclicking his seatbelt and unlocking the car doors. “Let’s go.”
She followed suit, heading up the stairs of her shitty walk-up and unlocking the door with a slightly trembling hand.
He followed her into her living room, just standing and staring at her with arms crossed across his chest as she put her bag and keys down. She tried not to think about how good it always felt to be the center of his attention.
He waited for her to speak. Patient. Always so patient, this man.
Choices. Life is full of choices. Just make one.
She steeled herself. Swallowed her pride, straightened her spine. “Do you believe in superstitions?” she asked.
If he was surprised by her question, he didn’t show it. “What, like saying the ED is quiet?”
She shrugged, trying to find the words she meant to say. “Yeah. Like… like bad luck.”
Jack thought about it thoughtfully, not at all like she thought she was out of her mind for asking him these asinine questions as the rising sun poked its head into her apartment. “I don’t think so, no.”
She knew that he was not a religious man, that he didn’t believe in fate or karma, so now she was at an impasse. Grasping at straws. “So you don’t believe in anything?”
“I believe in you.”
Samira furrowed her brow. “That wasn’t the question.”
“Well, that was my answer,” he shot back easily.
He took a cautious step forward, bending slightly to look her in the eye. Not condescendingly, not like Robby, but as if he was grounding her. Reminding her that he won’t leave.
She matched his eye contact. She probably looked like a kicked puppy.
“Why can’t you tell me today?”
Samira pursed her lips and mulled over her thoughts in her head. She weighed if she should dive headfirst into the crazy or back out when she still could.
“I… because of the bad luck. The guy walking into the glass door, the open umbrella, the 13 victim car crash, the spilled salt.”
He cocked his head, trying to piece together the puzzle Samira was throwing at him.
“And it was a full moon. There’s too much bad luck, it might change your… reaction.”
He cracked a smile. “It was a full moon,” he pointed out unhelpfully, gesturing towards the rising sun in her window. “Now it’s not. Can you tell me now?”
“I think they compound,” she helplessly tried to reason. “It might be months of bad luck, all those things happening in one shift.” Now she was just being avoidant and she knew it, but she was digging herself into a hole and she was beginning to panic.
“But what if it’s not months of bad luck? What if it’s just broken glass? It’s ,em>just an umbrella, it’s just the moon?”
She didn’t respond. He barreled on.
“Samira, I promise that whatever you’re going to tell me, my answer will be the same today as last week as a month from now. I promise.”
She took a deep breath.
“You promise?” She tried and failed to keep her voice from shaking.
Through the fog of choices and bad luck, she could always see Jack clearly.
“I promise,” he assured, unfolding his arms and taking another step towards her.
Samira had butterflies in her stomach like she was confessing to a middle school crush. Her palms were sweaty and she was a little bit nauseous, maybe from her lack of eating and maybe from the very real possibility that her and Jack never speak again after she commits to telling him this.
But he promised her. And she trusted him more than she trusted anything in the world.
“What if, hypothetically, I would tell you that I had feelings for you?”
He blinked. Once. Twice.
“I’m in love with you.”
He said it with such certainty that tears immediately sprung to her eyes. She sniffled, like a sick kid in the ED.
“Really?” she asked, even though she knew the clarification was unnecessary. “No hypotheticals?”
“No hypotheticals,” he assured. “Just the truth.”
She nodded, sniffling again. “Ok. Ok.” She took a step forward. “That’s good. Because I’m in love with you too.”
He smiled. “Alright then. It’s settled.”
She reached out, putting her hands on his waist, pulling him closer. He hesitated, but ultimately bracketed her face with his hands, large palms spanning her neck and thumbs slowly brushing her cheeks.
They stood like that for a while, absorbing each other’s body heat and relishing in finally getting to be so close, before Samira broke the silence.
“Do you think we’re cursed? Because of all the bad luck?” The small smile on her face gave away that she was joking, her fingers tightening their grip on his shirt.
Jack laughed. “Sweetheart, I think we’ve saved enough lives together that the karma is stacked in our favor. I think we’ll be just fine.”
She smiled. Stood on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his chapped lips. Chaste, but full of meaning.
Samira pulled back slightly, Jack chasing her mouth as she went.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I think we will be.”