The first time you met Dr. Jack Abbot, you were too drunk to remember his face.

You remember flashes instead. Neon beer signs bleeding into blurry color. The sharp smell of rain and cigarette smoke outside the bar. Someone kneeling in front of you while the world tilted sideways beneath your feet. A low voice telling you to stay awake. Large hands steadying your shoulders with practiced calm instead of panic.

Later, you learn he’d introduced himself three separate times while checking your pulse because you kept forgetting his name.

“Jack,” he’d said dryly. “Try to remember it this time.”

At the time, he’d just been another exhausted man in dark clothes with tired eyes and the kind of composure that only comes from seeing horrible things too often. You hadn’t known he worked nights in the emergency department at PTMC. You hadn’t known he was a veteran. Or that hidden by tailored fabric and careful posture, was a prosthetic leg and enough grief to drown a person twice over.

You definitely hadn’t known he was a widower.

That part comes much later.

Slowly.

Because nothing with Jack Abbot happens quickly.

Dating him feels less like falling in love and more like standing near the edge of the ocean at night—cold water creeping over your ankles inch by inch until one day you realize you’re submerged completely. He never says too much. Never overshares. His affection exists in quieter places—like replacing the deadbolt on your apartment door without mentioning it.

He spends most nights inside the controlled chaos of the ER, where fluorescent lights buzz overhead and trauma bays fill faster than anyone can clear them. Jack thrives there in a way that’s almost unsettling. Blood on the floor, screaming families, failing heart monitors—it sharpens him instead of breaking him. People joke that he’s is impossible to rattle.

You know that’s not true, though.

Because sometimes, after late shifts, he comes home and stands silently in your kitchen at dawn with shadows under his eyes so deep they look bruised. And sometimes, he lets you hold him anyway.

The staff at the hospital know about you, technically. Mostly because Jack started turning down nurses, patients, and drunk strangers by muttering, “I’m seeing someone.” Nobody believes him. It becomes an inside joke eventually. Robby insists you’re imaginary. Dana claims Jack invented you specifically to avoid human interaction.

He never shows them photos. Partly because he’s private. Partly because of the age gap.

Not because he’s ashamed—he tells you that immediately, firm enough that you believe him—but because hospitals are gossip factories and he’d rather your name not come out of anyone’s mouth but his own.

Then the Fourth of July happens.

The ER becomes a warzone before midnight. Fireworks accidents. Drunk driving collisions. Burns. Broken bones. Blood everywhere. In the middle of it all, a baby girl arrives wrapped in a smoke-stained blanket with no identification and no parents.

Baby Jane Doe.

Dana says someone will come back for her eventually.

Jack says nothing.

But over the next few days, he keeps finding reasons to check on her between patients. Standing beside her bassinet during charting. Adjusting the tiny hospital cap slipping over her eyes. Watching her sleep with an expression so unfamiliar it almost frightens him.

Nobody comes for the baby. No calls. No family. No leads. And at seven in the morning, exhausted after another endless shift, he’s staring down at the sleeping little girl.

Then—he gets an idea. So he texts you. It’s sort of fun now that you’ve taught him how emojis work.

Do you want a baby?

😏

Not what I meant 🙄. There’s a baby at the hospital who needs a foster home.

u should’ve started with that 💔

So you walk into PTMC just after sunrise and there, in wrinkled black scrubs, is Jack.

Dana looks up from the nurses’ station first. Beside her, Robby glances over the top of a patient chart with clear confusion already written across his face.

“There she is,” Jack smiles, gesturing you over.